Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"If I ever say 'this refactor was interesting' I mean that I learned things about myself, my coworkers, and our tech stack that I cannot un-know.

"If you stare too long into the abyss, you will describe it in stand-up as 'interesting.'"

-- Jeremy Wadhams (JeremyWadhams), 2021-11-09

"Republicans do not want [trans people] to exist. They've used indifference to not only further that goal, but damage those who are not even trans

"They come for us because they can

"They'll come for others because they weren't stopped

"And it. won't. stop."

-- Miss Gender (girldrawsghosts), 2021-11-04 (the rest of the thread provides context, examples, how bad it's getting -- start here)

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower (b. 1890-10-14, d. 1969-03-28; US President 1953-1961)

[In the US, today is Veterans Day; other places, today is Remembrance Day / Armistice Day. I wonder if part of the reason so many Americans need to be reminded annually that Veterans Day is a different thing, with a different tone, than Memorial Day, is because its origin, and how it is still commemorated elsewhere, is a lot closer to Memorial Day than to how we curently celebrate Veterans Day. Anhow, whichever version you're celebrating, may it be exactly the kind of day & commemoration you need it to be.]

"Software testing is a sport like hunting, it's bughunting." -- Amit Kalantri

"don't tell me Dave Chappelle isn't causing harm when a transphobe comes into my twitter mentions, misgenders me and dehumanizes me by reducing my identity to my genitals, all while paraphrasing something Chappelle said in his special

"this is why accountability matters"

-- Jerrica Transgender (JinkiesJerrica), 2021-11-03

"So, you had a situation where a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress reduced taxes on nearly every person in the country, but the popular argument from Tea Party types essentially boiled down to 'nuh-uh! My taxes feel higher!' despite that not being true.

"This gets a little into the problem we're seeing play out today. People are angry about things that aren't happening, but too many working in mainstream media are - at best - afraid to say so. This happened as angry mobs descended on school boards around the country to demand a stop to the teaching of 'critical race theory' to K-12 students. Good luck finding mainstream media outlets that will consistently say that these parents are protesting something that isn't happening. Instead, you're more likely to find yourself on the receiving end of a lecture that amounts to 'this issue is legitimate because these people aren't faking their anger, and how dare people tell them what they're mad about isn't happening.'"

-- Parker Molloy (ParkerMolloy), "CNN, spilled milk, and why any of this matters", 2021-11-07

"The best criterion by which to decide whether someone has been forced outside the pale of the law is to ask if he would benefit by committing a crime. If a small burglary is likely to improve his legal position, at least temporarily, one may be sure he has been deprived of human rights." -- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism [via Goodreads]

"Ok, apparently 'I'm a cat person' in his Tinder bio didn't mean he was a hybrid, lesson learned" -- Lycha Rose stands with BLM (tslycha), 2021-11-02

"Venom is an example of a villain who evolved into a hero because he was popular with readers and writers decided to rehabilitate him. By contrast, Magneto evolved into a hero because every decade since Reagan it's harder and harder to pretend he's wrong" -- L. Silvertongue, Esq. (PinkRangerLB), 2021-07-27

"Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself." -- Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

[Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating it!]

"The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians." -- George Monbiot

"The War on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November" -- Classy Warfare (classywarfare), 2021-11-01

"While sometimes imperfect, most adult platforms already have strict moderation and consent documentation policies in place, or have improved on existing practices. Non-adult sites, like Facebook and Instagram, report much higher numbers of abusive material than adult sites, but aren't held up to the same scrutiny as sites that host adult content.

[...]

"Discrimination against sex workers by banks and payment processors has a long history, and is made worse by groups that push institutions to comply with religious agendas under the guise of anti-trafficking efforts."

-- Samantha Cole, "Sex Workers Say Mastercard Ignored Their Concerns About New Regulations", Vice, 2021-10-15

"For those whose experience is to always have recovered from health problems, it seems to be easier to falsely believe that recovery is the norm and those who don't recover 'are doing it wrong' than to understand that health isn't guaranteed, and illness isn't personal failure.

"This misunderstanding does so much harm.
It's not new, but especially visible in the pandemic.

"Health is not a personal achievement. Chronic illness and disability is not a personal failure."

-- Ody (OdyO11), 2021-10-29

[To everyone celebrating one or more of Samhain / Celtic New Year, All Hallows Day (All Saints Day), or Día de los Muertos, may the day treat you well and may you have a meaningful observance.]

"Across a golden Autumn tapestry appear the spirits of our ancient selves demanding recognition and reward for one haunted night. Sated, they retreat from winter's onslaught and retire to subconscious hibernation for another twelvemonth." -- Stewart Stafford (TheVorbing)

"A study group of 39 PABV [Persons Affected By Vampirism] was recruited through personal connections of the authors. Supervision by a human subjects review board was deemed unnecessary due to the inhuman unnature of the subjects.

"Ages of participants ranged from twenty-six through five hundred and seventy-three. PABV status was verified via measurement of vital signs, with qualified participants having a fingertip SpO2 at or below zero. Participants were surveyed on their nutritional and lifestyle practices, then broken down into five smaller focus groups which met weekly to sample a variety of proposed alternative PABV diets.

"Samples were served in identical plastic cups, except for the fresh human blood, which was served directly from a graduate student. [...]"

-- from "Evaluation of Alternate Nutrition Sources for Persons Affected by Vampirism", by pervocracy, 2021-10-26. [quoted text is from the Methods section -- if you read the rest, don't skip the Acknowledgmemts section]

"When I was growing up in the '60s, I watched a lot of television, watched a lot of movies. And the only, only positive representation I saw of anything transfeminine was Bugs Bunny." -- Susan Stryker, in Disclosure (2020, directed by Sam Feder)

"A new study of wooden artifacts found at Newfoundland's famed L'Anse aux Meadows site shows that Vikings lived, and felled trees, on North American soil exactly 1,000 years ago -- during the year 1021 C.E. The evidence, published today in Nature, means that these Norse seafarers accomplished the earliest known crossing of the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas. Such incredibly precise dating of the wood was possible thanks to an intriguing new method that examined growth rings for a once-in-a-millennium cosmic-ray event that showered Earth with high energy particles in 993 C.E. Finding that telltale spike in the tree rings allowed scientists to count additional rings outside that mark to pinpoint the exact year the Vikings cut fir and juniper trees here, as they lived and explored on the edge of the continent.

[...]

"Kuitems wasn't looking for outstanding examples of Norse woodworking skill. 'What we used was basically rubbish,' she says, 'which was really good for research because we were looking for pieces of wood that included their bark edges. If you have an artifact or even a construction beam, often those outer layers are stripped off.' The bark would be part of the ingenious dating method's endgame.

[...]

"By examining cells on the bark edge, the group could even determine in what season of the year each tree was felled."

-- Brian Handwerk, "New Dating Method Shows Vikings Occupied Newfoundland in 1021 C.E.", Smithsonian Magazine, 2021-10-20

"Morawska had spent more than two decades advising a different branch of the WHO on the impacts of air pollution. When it came to flecks of soot and ash belched out by smokestacks and tailpipes, the organization readily accepted the physics she was describing-that particles of many sizes can hang aloft, travel far, and be inhaled. Now, though, the WHO's advisers seemed to be saying those same laws didn't apply to virus-laced respiratory particles. To them, the word airborne only applied to particles smaller than 5 microns. Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn't understand one another.

[...]

"Epidemiologists have long observed that most respiratory bugs require close contact to spread. Yet in that small space, a lot can happen. A sick person might cough droplets onto your face, emit small aerosols that you inhale, or shake your hand, which you then use to rub your nose. Any one of those mechanisms might transmit the virus. 'Technically, it's very hard to separate them and see which one is causing the infection,' Marr says. For long-distance infections, only the smallest particles could be to blame. Up close, though, particles of all sizes were in play. Yet, for decades, droplets were seen as the main culprit.

"Marr decided to collect some data of her own. Installing air samplers in places such as day cares and airplanes, she frequently found the flu virus where the textbooks said it shouldn't be-hiding in the air, most often in particles small enough to stay aloft for hours. And there was enough of it to make people sick.

"In 2011, this should have been major news. Instead, the major medical journals rejected her manuscript. Even as she ran new experiments that added evidence to the idea that influenza was infecting people via aerosols, only one niche publisher, The Journal of the Royal Society Interface, was consistently receptive to her work. In the siloed world of academia, aerosols had always been the domain of engineers and physicists, and pathogens purely a medical concern; Marr was one of the rare people who tried to straddle the divide. 'I was definitely fringe,' she says."

-- Megan Molteni, "The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill", Wired, 2021-05-13 [Long article, but worth reading the whole thing to find out exactly where that 5 μm threshold idea came from!]

"Maybe you watch comedy specials to endure them, but I watch them to have a good time, and I stop watching them when that's no longer the case. Chappelle argues this makes me 'too sensitive, too brittle'; I just think I have better things to do than watch a standup set that could just as well have been a Fox News special. As a gay Black man, even when I'm watching a comedy special, my identity is inconveniently present. It's so annoying; I asked my queerness to chill in the other room so I could watch 'The Closer' in peace, but no such luck." -- Saeed Jones (theferocity), "Dave Chappelle’s Betrayal", GQ, 2021-10-11

"Let the record reflect that I wanted to title the essay 'At Least Use Lube If You're Going to Insist On Riding Us This Hard.' My editor went with a different approach." -- Saeed Jones (theferocity), 2021-10-11 on Twitter

"Manchin isn't just blocking bills that a majority of Americans want.

"He isn't just blocking bills that a majority of West Virginians want.

"He's blocking bills that a majority of Republicans in West Virginia want.

"In other words, he's representing nobody but his donors."

-- Monty Boa (MontyBoa99), 2021-10-20