Notices by Will Tuladhar-Douglas (yetiinabox@todon.nl)

I have a request for the #ttrpg and #socialJustice folks.

Strap in; I don't usually do threads. But I need help from the angriest, un-White-est, un-eurocentric-ist corners, un-bound-by-gender-norm-ist corners of this place, the folks who play joyfully with their allies and kids because it's not a luxury, it's what we fight for.

(Sealions will be blocked instantly.)

My family---my children---love role playing games, and I have used collusive narratives with some rules, lots of world building, and dice since they were very small. But now that they are old enough to go looking on the internet, to read the rulebooks... we have a serious representation problem.

I guess it's (roughly) comparable to the systematic oppression in the #Fedi, though I really, really don't want to trivialise-by-comparison the appalling violence that Black heroes here are struggling to name and dismantle.

But when we look at the popular play-along videos or the books or whatever - we *are* the exotic at best, the horrors at worst. Everyone in those videos are the people who describe us as "the interesting family", the people who sabotaged our autism support groups with their instinctive racism, gender norms (and layer upon layer of other -isms).

1/n

The new government, unburdened by ideological conflict or any morals, expels refugees efficiently. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/19/uk-deports-record-number-of-nigerians-and-ghanaians-in-single-flight

So about the #SocialWebFoundation announcement... This sentence sort of sums it up for me:
"Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network."

So, not people but users.
No collaborators, organizers, activists, co-conspirators, fellow players, or colleagues, but influencers and brands.

It sounds like a dream from corporate USA, not an underground movement, mycorrhizal network, research collaboratory or emancipatory project.

I specifically do not want any influencers or brands in my timeline.

That is not what I want to build or live or love in.

PRC appears to have demanded that Paris museums erase the word 'Tibet' - but popular protests are having an effect.

https://www.phayul.com/2024/09/26/50970/

Tibetans and their supporters have been staging protests in Paris outside the Musée Guimet and the Musée du quai Branly. These museums both hold important Tibetan collections. Under pressure from the Chinese government the museums changed the name of the exhibits to remove the word Tibet. I believe the Guimet has restored the name Tibet, but so far the Branly has not.

https://www.phayul.com/2024/09/23/50953/

Y'know, I really just couldn't care less about efforts to link the Fediverse with Threads, or Bluesky, or whatever ofther privately owned cesspool people are flogging. I want walls and impregable barriers. I don't want any chance of infection.

This was my yesterday: https://www.thenational.scot/news/24528998.glasgow-university-strategy-help-refugees-settle-launched/

Today is 6 August. Practice peace, cultivate compassion, strive for wisdom.

May all beings be well.

#Hiroshima #Peace #Buddhist

Just so folks outside the UK understand: the fascists are rioting in England and Northern Ireland. There are no riots in Scotland.

#NewScots #RefugeesWelcomeHere #Scotland

@CloudyMrs

They don't. They're incompetent. The actual target was Stonehaven. No idea why, though.

Deleted my FB account. Meta will not feed their LLMs with my words.

I loathe emails and websites that address me as "Hey".

Friends use "Hey", if they are actually *talking* to me and I've got my nose in a book/hands in the dirt/eyes on a screen.

No business is my friend. Demanding my attention by insinuating familiarity simply provokes disgust and repulsion. It's not a person, it's not my friend.

End of grump.

We often complain that the future we have is not what we imagined.

I definitely did not imagine handheld "aurora enhance and share with folk worldwide" devices.

Much better than flying cars.

Thanks all. You and this place are indeed beautiful.

We'll all keep struggling to save it then, shall we?

#aurora

Twelve hours yesterday hanging wallpaper in a room with all the challenges - old plaster walls that I had patched and primed, complex ceiling angles, almost nothing true or square, random electrical fixtures. Weirdly, the indicator of success at the end is a total *lack* of salient features; all the wobbles and skew lines vanish in an anodyne haze of textured wallpaper blandness.

It's some sort of anti-Daoist triumph: enormous effort, no natural quirks remain. I would far rather live among the roots and branches of a vast, gnarled tree on a sunny mountain, but Northeast Scotland is too harsh for such impractical thoughts, and the sun is too weak to sustain them.

Ever since Xi consolidated his power, the Chinese Communist Party has been relentless in its efforts to suppress any criticism of the PRC outside China, especially around universities and the Confucius Institutes. There are student associations, supported by diplomats, who enforce the party line - and it isn't just students from the PRC, but also students from client states elsewhere. It's much worse inside PRC universities, sadly; a flourishing academic culture that developed after Deng has been crushed.

In any case, I am glad to see that at least in one egregious case a court in the USA has responded. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/25/chinese-student-jailed-in-us-for-threatening-to-cut-off-hands-of-activist

If UK universities were not dependent on PRC money, perhaps they too could actually protect their students and staff!

TZAG all.

In case you are doomscrolling:

An Italian court has rejected charges that Mediterranean refugee rescue NGOs were encouraging "illegal migration".

Automobile factory workers in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to create a union.

And I am out to weed and prune, now that the early morning shift of rock doves, stock doves, sparrows, rooks, jackdaws, starlings, blackbirds, magpies, dunnocks, robins, and who knows who else have been fed on too-old leftovers, peanuts, and seeds.

If, in these awful times, you wanted to do a PhD on religions and peace, here's a chance: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DGN788/research-fellow

Local question for #Scotland - in the past two months I've seen the wooden handles come off two valued hand-tools, a left-handed Japanese hand-hoe and an old weeding fork. Is there anyone about who could fit new handles to old steel hand-tools? I don't have even the rudiments of the skills needed to turn new hardwood handles and fit them.

I want an e-paper grayscale book reader that lets me take notes. Ideally, it would connect to Zotero. Do I have to roll my own, or is there something out there that does not require a mortgage?

Stop destroying forests and viral spillover pandemics will stop. Simple. We've been saying this for decades. Here's another paper which uses Australian data on eucalyptus blooms, flying foxes, and Hendra to say the same thing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/03/26/1240779167/how-do-we-halt-the-next-pandemic-be-kind-to-critters-like-bats-says-a-new-paper