Notices by Shauna GM (shauna@social.coop)

"On Thursday, Jan 22 a group of about a dozen Vermont community elders entered the atrium of White Cap Office Park in Williston VT, home of ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.

For the next 3.5 hours, they sat together in silence, pausing every 90 seconds to read the name of someone killed in ICE custody, followed by a loud whistle blast.

Around 3:15 the Williston Police announced they had determined that the protestors were not breaking the law."

https://www.facebook.com/molly.grover.9655/posts/pfbid0XibZVUutTykLLWGphYGk25z1MG7eRs3UVfm4U2vPowtdH388s3XyiQ8HTCBtJVtSl

RE: https://social.coop/@shauna/115953443613321768

It can be hard to find/join activist communities, so let me at least tell you how I did it.

(If anyone else feels like they've meaningfully connected to local activist communities, lmk and I'll repost it. It'll be different for everyone but the more stories we can share, the better. Media makes it seem like the only way to get involved is to go to a march but that's actually one of the hardest ways to get involved.)

Ok, here is the story of how I got involved in Free DC.

Early last April, I heard about a community potluck happening near me. It was hosted by Free DC, which I had vaguely positive impressions of but didn't know much about. (They'd only started a few months before!) When I got to the potluck, I really loved the community vibe. I decided to check on their website to see what else they were up to.

I saw they were doing a meetup in my neighborhood a week or two later, so I put it in my calendar. I loved the idea of getting to organize with neighbors.

The meeting was hosted in someones house. People brought drinks and snacks. We talked about the different things we were interested in and brainstormed things to do. One idea: post flyers for the upcoming free dc ward meeting. We agreed to meet the next Saturday at a local coffee shop.

We met up. I wore a Spirit shirt because there was a game later and was delighted to see several others had done the same. (This will be important later.) We wandered around putting up flyers for an hour.

One of the people I wandered around flyering with took care of my cat when I had an emergency, by the way.

I went to more meetings. A group was tabling at a porchfest, I stopped by for a while. (One of the people I met tabling that day is my new ushering buddy. Another got me back into UU church.)

After seeing how tabling was done, I figured I could do it myself so I led a table at a neighborhood festival. One of the ppl I met doing that, I just went to his 50th bday party last weekend.

The last guy I mentioned...we got to talking in July about soccer. I mentioned the surprising number of Spirit fans in Free DC. He told me about how in many places soccer stadiums are the only safe form of protest. We decided to start Free Spirits. We had no idea what it would become. But when you like the people you're organizing with, it's fun to just try and see.

3 of us went to a Spirit game in Free DC shirts. Thanks to Spirit Squadron we got on the jumbotron before the game even started.

One week later, Trump occupied DC. Two weeks later, again thanks to the Spirit Squadron, thousands of people started chanting Free DC in the 51st minute of games - including fans at away games.

There's a lot more I've done, and so much others are doing, but hopefully that gives you an example of one route in.

There are so many ways to be involved. It's not just resisting armed thugs on the street. And if you do have to resist armed thugs on the street, isn't it better to do so with friends?

I used one of those Amazon "just walk out" stores at the airport a couple months ago and it overcharged me by $30. Just made up the amount.

Tried to dispute it with my credit card company but, of course, I didn't have a receipt, so they refused. So I guess my money's just Amazon's now.

Just a warning for folks: DO NOT USE THESE. I only did it because I was in a rush and about to get on a 6 hour flight (I genuinely forgot that you can just buy food on the flight, please don't judge me.)

@grimalkina

I want to make sure I understand you before responding.

You write: "the mechanism of dehumanization that is often at play allowing a perpetrator of violence to see their victims in a sweeping category-level as less than human and more objectlike, directly work to *shield* them from trauma"

I'm reading that as 'a perpetrator of violence dehumanizes their victims to shield themselves from [the pain/shame of their own actions, which would traumatize them if they acknowledged it]'.

@grimalkina

yeah, I think I do probably have a significantly different definition of trauma than you. for example, I would class dehumanization (at the interpersonal level) as itself a trauma response. my understanding is that experience of trauma is one of the strongest predictors of the later perpetration of violence although if you have counter-evidence of this (or, generally, any favorite papers on the subject) I would be happy to read them.

@grimalkina

Thanks, I'll check that paper out!

I wholeheartedly agree that trauma is not a sufficient cause for perpetration of violence, but I do think it's a necessary one (of interpersonal violence - my thoughts about its relationship to indirect & systemic violence are pretty unformed, though I think trauma has an important role to play there as well).

How are you using "psychopathologies"? Some people use it to mean "sociopathy", but usually it means all mental disorders.

I like the term 'traumatic masculinity' more than 'toxic masculinity'.

It provides greater clarity to both cause and effect. "Toxic masculinity" doesn't snap into existence fully formed, it is caused by the traumatizing way we raise men. And its effects are that it further traumatizes - women, men, everyone.

This term also provides real guidance to what healthy masculinity looks like (tho that's not for me to figure out). What parts of masculinity are not trauma responses? Lean into those.

LLMs cannot be allowed to become Limited Liability Machines

This advice is dependent on AI-induced errors being treated as an externality and thus not something the company is liable for.

I dearly hope that this does not become the case - the limited liability of corporations is bad enough. If companies are given any kind of legal pass for AI mistakes and hallucinations...

Somebody always has to bear the pain of mistakes. Capitalism and AI could combine to make sure the wealthy are never that person.

https://fosstodon.org/@atoponce/115787010150256693

Q from an activist friend about a Brother printer (MFC-j874dw) that was donated to Free DC but isn't working:

"It connected to my network but when I tried to print a test page it came out blank. I’ve been running the cleaning protocol but now it’s giving me a hard time recognizing the ink cartridges or saying they are empty when they are brand new. So it won’t even let me get to the cleaning option on the menu."

Any ideas on how to get help fixing this, or if it's not worth it?

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3m7gl7jfdns2x

Ahhh Tom Stoppard passed away.

He wrote a number of plays (& screenplays) of note but for me the work that will always stick with me is Arcadia. I read it as a teenager and have seen it performed several times as an adult. There are certain stories that evoke a feeling so sharply and strongly that they come to define that emotion for you. Arcadia is one of those stories for me.

Rest in peace, Tom Stoppard. I hope some day to write a story that has touched people the way your work has.

It's very long so there's basically no chance of doing this all in one sitting but...whatever, let's see how far I can get this afternoon with @fedify's "build a federated microblog" tutorial: https://unstable.fedify.dev/tutorial/microblog

TBH I may get stuck with basic setup, I've written a lot of javascript but I've largely avoided having to learn JS/TS package management. 😂 (Fun fact, I learned Vue over React or Angular etc because you can build absurdly complex apps while still just importing vue via script tag)

Living as a human in this here 21st century is in fact immensely complicated and relentlessly exhausting and most of us want fewer choices, not more. We want to *delegate*, abstract away, and never have to think about it.

Most people only want more choice if (a) it is their area of niche passion and enthusiasm or (b) someone else has made a choice for them that has harmed them.

We don't fix B by overloading everyone with choices, we fix B by building processes and culture to repair harm

"Everybody is gonna be happy. [...] They're actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance"

This is manifestly stupid but I need people to understand that there is very little in the world so universally enjoyable that you can replace "negotiate their own insurance" in that sentence and everyone will be excited.

This is esp a fallacy in FOSS:

"They're actually able to go out & own their own data"

"They're actually able to go out & choose their own server"

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m5ctukbbe52h