Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From a tweet of a screencap that looks like it maybe came from Facebook (on or before 2021-11-26 since that's when the screencap was tweeted):

Chris Scheetz: "Okay, I have a question. How did the movie Ground Hog Day finally shift to the next day for Bill Murray? Have we tried that yet?"

Shelley Delayne: "He breaks the cycle when he shifts his focus from himself to devoting himself to helping others. And yes: that's EXACTLY how we get out of this. All of this."

"She plays cello, and when you play cello you make everything you play infinitely better. It's a great instrument." -- Laser Malena-Webber (LaserMWebber), of The Doubleclicks (TheDoubleclicks), on her sister and bandmate, Aubrey Turner (aubreycello), interviewed by Callie Wright on Queersplaining podcast, 2021-11-26

[I too am quite fond of cello.]

"Where leaders are acting boldly and together, bringing together cutting-edge science, delivering services that meet all people's needs, protecting human rights and sustaining adequate financing, AIDS-related deaths and new HIV infections are becoming rare.

"But this is only the case in some places and for some people.

"Without the inequality-fighting approach we need to end AIDS, the world would also struggle to end the COVID-19 pandemic and would remain unprepared for the pandemics of the future. That would be profoundly dangerous for us all."

-- UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima (Winnie_Byanyima), World AIDS Day 2021 message

"Today's product development wants to be 'data-driven.' The focus is on quantitative methods to find product-market fit, usually by way of interviewing people who use the product, or interviewing people who represent majority groups that the org would like to see using the product. (Or, if we're brutally honest, attempting to triangulate info about one of these two groups from product surveillance data).

"Today's product managers contrast their data-driven approach with the 'I built this for me' approach we heard in interviews with founders from the 1990s. Despite its empirical strategic success, 'build for yourself' now gets cast as immature and shortsighted.

[...]

"In the 1990s, personal computers as a mainstream thing were brand new. That's when we get the paradigm-shifting 'visionary' internet successes like eBay, Google, Apple, Amazon, and eventually Netflix.

"You know where visionary ideas come from?

"Let's break this down, because I need you to see this.

"We describe ideas as 'visionary' when they break from majority logic to imagine a completely different future-one that serves currently unserved needs or poorly served needs in a completely new way.

"You know who has unserved needs or poorly served needs? Marginalized people. People that the current systems ignore or rebuff.

"Visionary ideas derive directly from centering people at the margins.

[...]

"Nowadays, of course, since rich, well-connected white men got to build the web from their dorms and parents' garages, they're already centered on it. Building for already-centered people doesn't produce visionary ideas. Tech has noticed, and so it has discounted 'build for yourself.'

"And THIS, my friends, is the false dichotomy.

"Product teams forget the context of the 'build for yourself' spirit that they discount in favor of data-driven decisions. And this has tragically obscured their potential for actual visionary work.

"Here's why: It's not 'building for yourself doesn't shift paradigms.'

"It's 'building for yourself doesn't shift paradigms if you are already the main character.'"

-- Chelsea Troy (heychelseatroy), "The Oxymoron of 'Data-Driven Innovation'", 2021-07-30 [The argument is clearer, including the need for real dversity&inclusion in hiring instead of just ticking boxes, if you spend fifteen minutes reading the whole thing.]

A good St. Andrew's Day to those who celebrate!

"Every society decides how much poverty they are willing to tolerate. But the answer should be 'none'." -- Shellpaw (ShellPaw), 2021-11-28

"Light one candle for the strength that we need
 To never become our own foe
 And light one candle for those who are suffering
 Pain we learned so long ago
 Light one candle for all we believe in
 That anger not tear us apart
 And light one candle to find us together
 With peace as the song in our hearts"
  -- Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), "Light One Candle", 1982

Today is
Gregorian: 2021 November 28 -- the first Sunday of Advent
Julian: 2021 November 15
Hebrew: 5782 Kislev 24 -- tonight will be the 25th of Kislev and thus the first evening of Hanukkah
Islamic: 1443 Rabi`ath-Thani 22
Persian: 1400 Azar 07
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.9.1.4
Indian: 1943 Agrahayana 07
Coptic: 1738 Hathor 19

[Happy Hanukkah or good Advent to everyone who celebrates either!]

"I will not rest until the Burger King is deposed and his hamburger empire is replaced with a loose federation of decolonized hamburger democracies" -- foone (Foone), 2021-11-24 [Better with context. Read from the start of the long thread or maybe from a little farther down after the theme is established.]

"The existence of the death penalty in America is not a deterrent. In fact it serves as the exact opposite. The death penalty models homicide as an acceptable form of problem solving in America." -- Adnan Khan (akhan1437), 2021-11-18

"Half of what your parents told you were lies to make them feel better or to stop you from having fun. The other half were to keep you from dying.

"Growing up is determining which were which."

-- 0DDJ0BB got the Booster. Go get yours (0DDJ0BB), 2021-11-24

[Wishing a fun and tasty Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating it today!]

From "The weirdest book in the world just turned 40. We talked to its creator", by Chris Kaye, interviewing Luigi Serafini, Insider, 2021-11-23:

"I've been drawing since my childhood. My parents were worried because I was drawing all the time. Like a disease, drawing for me. I preferred making drawings rather than playing with friends," he says. "So drawing for me was better than talk. When I draw, I enter into another dimension."

[...]

"So I don't know why but at a certain moment in my life, I started making pages of the Codex," Serafini continues. "And I always tell this story: an old friend, he invited me to a movie. I answered to him, 'I can't because I'm making an encyclopedia.' But I didn't know why and what I was drawing."

[...]

"40 years after, I keep drawing the pages of the Codex. It's a need for me, but I do other things also. I don't make only pages of the Codex. But I could make a page every day," he says.

"The study relied on a large experiment. Until 2016 users saw tweets only from accounts they followed, shown in reverse chronological order. After launching its algorithm, Twitter kept 1% of users in the old system. This let it measure how often its algorithm served up certain tweets, compared with the 'reverse-chron' method.

"In April-August 2020 the authors used this approach on 3,634 accounts belonging to legislators from 32 political parties. Although they did not detect political bias in the treatment of individual lawmakers, they did find a slant when grouping accounts by party. In all countries but Germany, the algorithm's 'amplification ratio' was lower for members of leftist parties than for members of right-wing ones.

[...]

"In 2019 we studied how Google ranks news stories, and found that accuracy, not ideology, explained its rankings. This is also true of Twitter. However, whereas Google gave higher rankings to more reliable sites, we found that Twitter boosted the least reliable sources, regardless of their politics. Left-wing sites with poor accuracy scores, like tmz, were amplified more than credible, conservative ones like the Wall Street Journal. ProPublica, a non-profit focused on public-interest investigations, had one of the lowest amplification ratios."

-- from "According to Twitter, Twitter's algorithm favours conservatives", The Economist, 2021-11-13

"under Wisconsin law, you can kill people in self-defense if you reasonably believe that doing is necessary to spare yourself or others from imminent bodily harm or death. This belief need not be accurate. Nor must it be reasonable from an objective perspective. It only needs to be reasonable from the subjective point of view of the shooter in the moment he or she pulls the trigger.

[...]

"Rittenhouse’s self-defense claims boast legal plausibility. But they also illustrate the difficulty of reconciling mass gun ownership and expansive rights to self-defense with the rule of law.

"Rittenhouse’s killing of Rosenbaum may have been lawful. But that was scarcely self-evident to the bystanders who heard gunshots and then saw a killer holding an AR-15. The group of protesters who proceeded to chase and attack Rittenhouse could have reasonably believed that killing the armed teenager was necessary to save others from imminent bodily harm. If Rittenhouse had a right to shoot Huber and Grosskreutz in self-defense, the latter had a similarly legitimate basis for shooting Rittenhouse dead.

"Put differently: Once Rittenhouse fired his first shots, he and his attackers plausibly entered a context in which neither could be held legally liable for killing the other. Whether one emerged from this confrontation legally innocent or lawfully executed hinged on little more than one's relative capacity for rapidly deploying lethal violence.

[...]

"If America's permissive self-defense laws and abundant guns open up a vast zone of permissible killing, the precise borders of that territory are shaped by white supremacy. In a 2013 study of U.S. homicides, the Urban Institute found that killings involving 'a white perpetrator and a black victim are 281 percent more likely to be ruled justified than cases with a white perpetrator and white victim.'

"A legal environment that favors the armed in their confrontations with the unarmed, police in their confrontations with suspects, and whites in their confrontations with Blacks is antithetical to social peace, let alone social justice. It is, however, quite favorable to the American far right."

-- Eric Levitz (EricLevitz), "Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Was Strong It’s also a threat to the rule of law.", New York magazine, 2021-11-19

"I will not 'walk together' with people who deny my human dignity.

"If I did, I wouldn't be walking, I'd be being dragged along against my will in a direction I have no wish to go in.

"That in itself is a denial of my human dignity for that isn't 'unity' but slavery."

-- RevDaniel (RevDaniel), 2021-11-20

"[Trans Day of Remembrance got its start] in the wake of the November 28, 1998 murder of Rita Hester in Boston, who was grossly disrespected by the gay and straight media in that city, and in the wake of her being the fourth trans person in five years murdered in the city.

"The person who killed Rita Hester still hasn't been brought to justice to this day.

[...]

"Trans people are undeniably a part of the diverse mosaic of human life. You can find us on six inhabited continents on Planet Earth and we aren't going away or back into the closet.

"It's past time that people accept the fact we exist, and leave us alone so that we can survive, thrive, and be the best people that we can be.

"We would love for these TDOR events to become obsolete so we don't have to gather every November 20 to observe them. But as long as transphobic hate exists and is being stirred up by right wing politicians, conservative organizations, TERF's and fundamentalist religions, it looks like for the next few years we'll be gathering at venues around to world to remember the people we have lost."

-- Monica Roberts, AKA the TransGriot (b. 1962-05-04, d. 2020-12-05), 2019-11-20

[In the past year, depending on whose data set you use, 47 or 54 transgender people that we know of have been killed in the United States, and at least 359 worldwide, because of being trans. But note that not all trans people are correctly identified, or even officially reported as trans, when they are found murdered, so there are probably several we don't know about.]

"I feel like 'please acknowledge we exist' and 'please stop killing us' being the two trans-related days on the calendar is telling." -- Söphie (SBElikeswords), 2021-11-15

And, related to yesterrday's QotD, this is from "Denton [TX] library cancels story time, citing safety concerns" by Lucinda Breeding-Gonzales (LBreedingDRC), Denton Record-Chronicle, 2021-11-15 [bold emphasis added]:

The Denton Public Library on Monday canceled a children's story time scheduled for Saturday, citing safety concerns for library patrons and staff. The library said it had received complaints from people who mistakenly believed the event included books about transgender children.

The program, called Rainbow StoryTime, happens three times a year and is scheduled to coincide on days focused on marginalized groups. The Saturday morning program at North Branch Library would have included three titles about children accepting themselves and one another.

A statement released Monday said some printed materials incorrectly used the word "transgender" in reference to the program because the story time falls on the national Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to memorialize transgender people who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. The printed material, which was lifted from an age-appropriate transgender story time the library hosted in 2019, was then corrected.

[...]

The library reached out to the Denton Police Department earlier Monday before deciding to cancel the event. Bekker said the library wanted to discuss security and crowd control "in case a lot of people showed up."

The library later decided to cancel the event.

While the books don't make mention of sexuality or gender, the titles help adults and children consider and discuss differences, acceptance and self-expression, Bekker said. Inclusion is a part of the library's mission, and while the Rainbow family story time was a way to include transgender awareness in programming, Bekker said the titles were deliberately selected because they can appeal to a broader young audience.

[...]

"I got tired of hearing from Jim Mann and his parishioners," Maguire said. "They are a group that use this rhetoric that transgenderism is a mental illness and people who want to talk to children about gender are grooming them for sexual abuse. This idea that talking about gender is sexualizing children, that was something in almost every email I received from them."

[...]

"The people who object to this program are the same people who object to transgender people existing in public spaces," she said.

[The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance is tomorrow.]

History has repeatedly shown that, if you relentlessly (and groundlessly) reduce an entire marginalized group to the status of 'perverts,' 'predators,' and 'pedophiles,' it's only a matter of time before somebody violently acts upon those accusations.

Emmett Till wasn't killed by 'a few bad apples' -- his lynching was the direct result of a longstanding relentless racist smear campaign intended to conflate Black men with 'sexual predators.'

Matthew Shepard wasn't killed by 'a few bad apples' -- his murder was the direct result of a longstanding relentless homophobic smear campaign intended to conflate homosexuals (including lesbians) with 'sexual predators.'

If you brand a marginalized group en masse as 'sexual predators,' eventually someone (or many people) will violently act upon that. It's only a matter of time.

[...]

The only thing that I know for sure is that trans people are way outnumbered, so it's going to take a critical mass of cis people to call bullshit on all these 'trans women = sexual predators' campaigns and pseudo-news stories. Everybody needs to recognize these campaigns for what they are: stochastic terrorism.

Last week, I was mentioned by name in a violent anti-trans manifesto. It sounds surreal to say that out loud, even now, several days out. Part of me is still in shock, while another part of me is not especially surprised. Part of me wants to laugh it off, while another part of me wants to cry. I'm still trying to sort out my own jumbled personal feelings regarding this awful event. But one thing that I know for certain is that every single anti-trans activist who has pushed 'trans women = sexual predators' talking points over the last few years had a hand in this, even if they are reticent to admit it."

-- Julia Serano (JuliaSerano), "On Being Explicitly Named in a Violent 'Gender Critical' Manifesto", 2021-11-08 [bold emphasis in original]

From a long thread:

"The impact of the colonial project on First Nations' Peoples, and those forcibly removed from their homelands, is documented by the coloniser, where persistent erasures fail to tell the full picture of our diversities, including the complexity of our genders.

"This can't be surprising, not when they did it in a wholesale manner to their own people, putting them in gender boxes from which they could not escape.

"The info here include ways that these boxes can be challenged by cis people who want to support us.

"A difficult aspect for many who are trans, is navigating how others see us. Not feeling 'enough' is one that many share. Whether its others challenging our gender, asking about surgery/meds, or making assumptions about our pronouns, it can be unending.

"One job in #TransAwarenessWeek is for cis people to learn more, not just assume that they already know because they are supportive. Learning more about our complexities will mean a safer and better world for people who are transgender. It could give us space to breathe.

[...]

"Trans people include people of all ethnicities, disabilities, religion, cultures, life experiences, ages (I could go on). This might sound obvious, but there are assumptions that some people cannot be trans because of some aspect of their lives. Not so.

[...]

"Don't make jokes about our gender. Deciding that those in the binary don't look like your idea of a man or a woman, probably reflects your own insecurities. Deciding that those of us outside of the binary need to be sorted back into it, is not a thing.

[...]

"Affirmation or Transition? I say 'gender affirmation' myself. Some use transition, some both. I like affirmation, makes it hard for transphobes to trot out the 'horrors of detransition' when a 'reversal' of affirmation would...um... also be affirmation!

[...]

"On trans history. Yes, we've always existed. Evidence is potted cos that happens when erasures are homicidal. Instead I ask you for the evidence that people were only cis through our deep shared history. Genital check on everyone who ever lived, much?

[...]

"When I talk about the colonial project of gender, I mean it literally as an act of colonisation. It was - and continues to be - enacted primarily against First Nations' Peoples and those who were enslaved and treated like property.

"Colonisation radiates out, it encompasses and includes and contains. So of course the fallout is that the colonisers make their own 'less than'. They diminish and erase their own too. You can follow our lead, and resist.

"For non-Indigenous folks this doesn't mean co-opting or appropriating. It means getting in touch with your own culture. Find out how erasures occurred in your culture. Because I guarantee you that they did. Don't romanticise ours, it simply won't help you.

[...]

"Actual Awareness 101 is doing work in your day job and your home life to make sure that trans people are accommodated in ways that support affirmation and belonging.

[...]

"Actual Awareness 101 is talking to your kids about gender and listening to them talk about themselves, their friends, or their thoughts or concerns. I get asked for advice all the time, if I don't know I look it up."

[...]

-- Prof Sandy O'Sullivan (Wiradjuri, trans they/them) (sandyosullivan), 2021-11-13

[Trans Awareness Week is basically an educational lead-in to the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November (this coming Saturday), the day we remember and mourn all the trans people murdered over the past year because of their gender. At least in the US, there have been a record number of trans people murdered this year.]

"I'm all about transgender awareness week but awareness is not our problem anymore. People are very aware of us.

"Liberation and action is what we need more than awareness.

"Cis people, don't silently sit by as our rights are taken one by one."

-- Erin, Trail Mom (ErinInTheMorn), 2021-11-14

"the whole 'trans acceptance will scare off working class people' argument never made sense to me because even from very early in my transition, working-class people and service workers have consistently gendered me correctly. it's been largely privileged people who got it wrong!" -- noelia (MKUltaBeauty), 2021-11-14

"They love to pretend that the trans people who are in the news and magazines are the only trans people to exist." -- Rhianna BOOlove | Free Palestine (Rana_Strange), 2021-11-14

"that stereotype that trans people are all middle class (or white) is one of the most insidious strawmans because it effectively disappears the vast majority of trans people who are poor & lumpenized" -- Sage (_introspekt), 2021-11-14

"I want more theology by transgender people where we talk about our relationships with God and spirituality. Where we don't defend our right to exist but instead we talk about how our gender experiences have enriched our faith. I want theology by us and for us, but also for cisgender people so their minds can be opened and so they can learn from us (instead of just about us).

"The stories we tell matter. Who tells the stories matters. As transgender people, our stories mean something. We mean something."

-- Fr. Shannon Kearns (shannontlkearns), "Transgender People Must Survive", 2020-07-09