She’s been coming for my friends for years. I don’t know why it took me by surprise that she came for me.

She’ll come for the rest of the rainbow eventually, whenever she decides she’s not getting cancelled enough to play victim on Twitter. Since transphobia is now the official policy of the US government, it’s not controversial enough of a take. She has to up the stakes.

She’s doing it to incite anger. She’s doing it to get a reaction. Suffocate her. Don’t be the oxygen in her fire. Turn your attention elsewhere.

If you want to monetarily counteract her bullshit, I encourage you to donate to the Transgender Law Center, the Trevor Project, and to seek out queer organizations in your local community.

Use this opportunity to loudly proclaim your support for queer people. Drown her voice with yours. If you’re like me and you’re walking around in the world with a Harry Potter tattoo, we have a duty to make sure our queer friends know we stand with them.

And remember that the real world is far more nuanced than hot takes on Twitter or tumblr. Who you are in your local community, how you vote (if you’re able), and where your money goes is far, far more important than trying to own one miserable woman online.

This also means they can spy on straight people just to make sure they aren't lgbt. This is not just against gay people, it's a cover up for violating human rights. It's never just against one group of people, it's always about controlling the masses while blaming a group of people so nobody looks at the root of the problem.

as long as you’re going to be labeled a threat to national security anyway, you may as well actually be a threat to national security

more sources. remove data about yourself online as much as possible, as often as possible. it won’t guarantee you anything, because they have plenty of other ways to surveil you anyway, but it’s worth it to try. use secure channels to communicate like Signal, not discord or instagram.

So, here’s the thing – this isn’t new. It’s an expansion, sure, but it’s not new. From the time I was 12 until my family got rid of our landline, I would hear the little click that meant our phone was tapped because my best friend’s mom was on a watchlist. Her crime was being an indigenous woman who attended protests. *My* phone (reminder that I was 12) was also tapped because of our association.

So to everyone saying “I hope [xyz country] will see how corrupt the US is,” they know. As long as the US holds this much economic and military power, they do not care.

This isn’t new.

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

Quick media literacy reminder – this is regarding Madison as a first name, not as a name overall.

Leelah Alcorn was a trans girl, a teenager, who sadly committed suicide nearly 10 years ago. I'm happy that her comic touches the hearts of so many people, years after her death.

I saved screenshots of her blog and last message to the world. Her parents had a lot of control over how she was perceived after her death, but it was also to prevent deletion by Tumblr itself. Even back then, Tumblr has been shadow banning trans women on this platform.

My heart goes out to all trans women who are struggling with society's expectations of who they are supposed to be and who they are allowed to be. May you find peace, growth, and respite from whatever you're going through. You deserve happiness, most of all. Thank you for living, thank you for being here with us.

details have been changed but i want you to imagine that this software is used in part to record payments and send out updated invoices. in this software there is a special process to send invoices to collections. generally, you use special filters to determine what does and does not get sent off to collections. but this person kept asking that poor trainer to run the collections wizard on all invoices. every one of them. unpaid. paid. brand new. all of them. and the trainer is like. i am not doing that actually. and the person keeps insisting. "i need the report" they keep saying. "this isn't a report" the trainer keeps explaining.

as far as anyone can tell, decades ago, the person who first worked with this software added a custom report that prints before you can run the collections wizard. they would go through that report manually highlighting every invoice going to collections, with a highlighter, because they didn't trust the software. because this was old software without any kind of autosave functionality, they could just abort the collections wizard after they got the report, before doing it again and manually flagging the invoices they highlighted. everyone using this software since then has just. done that. assuming it was necessary for some reason.

"please," the trainer kept saying. "can you tell me what the report is called. what is the report. can you scan the report and send it to me. we can just run the report. we don't need to run the collections wizard. we actually specifically should not. there is no report here. we would need to add that in if you want that. but you won't need to run this wizard to get that report. you can just get it. the report. without doing this."

"it's fine," they kept saying. "i can show you the report. just hit okay on the wizard and it should pop up."

@grison-in-space your tags pass peer review

Having had actual significant success with these people:

• learn to identify them immediately: if someone starts asking you about "the collections wizard", and it makes no sense, stop, stop trying to explain it to them with shortcuts, and ask them to take you through their old process. This will ascertain for certain that you are dealing with This Person.
• once you have identified them - and this is very important - accept that they did things by rote, and that ergo any change to that rote process is not, actually, "just a little bit different". It is a whole new process.
• No seriously just fucking accept it. Accept it immediately. You are now working with someone who has never used the kind of software or process or thing you are trying to teach them before. They have arrived before you a blank slate. You are starting from the beginning.
• if for some reason you are too rigid to do this, or do not have enough time, or just want to commit murder, this is the point where you run the opposite direction or hire someone else. but tell the someone-else this much.
• if you're not too rigid or overloaded: now you need to make them understand that this new process is Totally Different.
• Explain to them: forget about the old way. I'm so sorry - this is a total new way. I know. I know it's awful. It's Head Office's Fault. It's just how it is. I know they told you it would just be a little change. They lied. You can't do anything the old way anymore.
• I don't care if this isn't really true. It doesn't matter if it's really true. It's true for them, because they knew this new way by-rote, not by-understanding-the-underlying-principles. They now have to learn a new rote.
• (please note: if you are still going 'but it's just a little bit different - !' YOU are now, in fact, this person. Your by-rote is insisting that learning works the way it worked for you, and that using a system requires the way that you interact with the system. It doesn't! Remember that you also have to be flexible, as you demand someone change their system (that used to work fine for them) For You.)
• Stop trying to short-cut this step. Short-cutting this step will just make you both cry. Just accept you have to do this the long way. It's good for you. It'll build character.
• You will indeed get more pushback/upset at the beginning if you admit that you're needing them to learn something Entirely New. But it will be less than the rage/frustration/betrayal/resentment you get when you told them it was just a little change, and they end up having to re-learn everything they ever knew about doing their job, AND now they feel like either you lied to them or you're condescending to/judging them, and they hate you.
• Yeah that's totally a lot of work, isn't it. But you gotta do it! (You do GOTTA do it, right? You didn't just decide to change things Because It's Neater This Way or for another reason that prioritized your sense of what's Correct over that of those actually doing the job, right - it was for a reason?) (Oh good, glad to hear it, so I reiterate: yeah, it's a lot of work but you gotta do it.)
• Plan for this to take a realistic amount of time, which is about three times as long as the amount of time you wanted to tell the person you report to it should take, which is still going to be less time than it'll take if you DON'T just fucking plan for the fact that you'll need to retrain people from the ground up and then end up with three hours of a teams meeting and people crying because nobody understands at the end of it.
• Finally: if you hire someone else to do it, do make sure THEY understand all of the above as well, and aren't going to be a dick to your staff about it.

You're welcome!

COSIGNED

imagine being the literal richest person in the world and not thinking you're the machine

love green day for pissing off these losers with the same song for two decades and counting.

@theygender

You'd be surprised how often I'm told there is no interpreter at an event, there are no captions at an event, and they act like I'm asking for something absurd.

This isn't a performative dance routine interpreting what is going on.

But hey, deafies, we're woke now because we require interpreters.

This is all absolutely true. Also, to add, many deaf people receive a much worse education because the schools are unwilling/unable to invest in proper education for deaf people. So there are deaf people out there who struggle to read English because the structure of English is completely different than the structure of Sign Languages.

Also, Sign Language is NOT international. Signing in London is different that Ireland, or Paris, Toronto, Mexico, New Zealand, India-- some of the signing may be similar or even related but they are all different languages. So if you see several interpreters at an event or a news broadcast or en EU summit, and they are doing different signs, this is why.

And for the idiots who still don't comprehend that for many people English is a second language, even signers who were born in an English speaking country-- and still argue 'you get captions what's the problem' - Have you ever watched the auto-craptions on the news or a live event, or even a film on Amazon that they couldn't bother to get a human to properly provide subs? Yeah. A good percentage of the time, it's just word salad that means absolutely nothing. You're likely to just get a pile of words that may or may not have to do with anything going on in what you are trying to watch.

Some time, put on the news with no captions or sound. Put on a film or show you have never seen before, and try to lipread what is being said. Try to figure out what the plot or context is from just the actor's faces. Just try to engage when the only queues you have are facial expressions and movement on the screen-- if you can even see them talk at all, a lot of films and shows are shot over a shoulder with the back of someone's head.

Wear ear-plugs when you are out having a coffee with a friend and try to figure out what your friend is even saying. No music, no nothing-- just earplugs and trying to figure it out.

Do all of this for a week and then tell me that craptions are enough. Then tell me we don't need interpreters. After two days, you're going to be angry and frustrated because you don't know what the fuck is going on.

Interpreters do more than just tell you the exact words. They INTERPRET English language and put it into sign. They aren't just randomly throwing around their hands and looking silly. And they do it on the fly, live, as something is going. A good majority of the times, Interpreters have no idea what is going to be said. In those moments they are hearing something in English (or French, Spanish, what have you), figuring out what the best way to sign these words back to a sign-user base, and they have to do it all in seconds. It's a LOT of work.

So if you are at an event or you see two or even more signers who keep switching off after half an hour or an hour, know that the money is NOT being wasted having multiple interpreters there. They are not being lazy. They are doing a whole helluva lot, and their brains and hands and faces occasionally need a break.

So if you are hiring interpreters for an event, don't be surprised if they say you'll need to pay more to have several interpreters there. The interpreters are incredibly skilled, and they work bloody hard. If they tell you they need more than one, don't have a fit at them and try to talk them into just having one interpreter, thinking you can pay less. Understand that they work their arses off, and it's a very intense job that requires a lot of brain power and body power. So please, PLEASE be kind to interpreters.

And for chrissake, STOP DOING THIS. STOP DOING THIS. STOP FUCKING DOING THIS.