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srs bsns

@dedsrs / dedsrs.tumblr.com

intersectional feminist; leftist; USA based. topics of queer issues, the system, and assorted serious things. this is mostly a catalog of posts i find important, with minimal discourse from myself because that shit is stressful. REGs (TERFs/TWERFs, SWERFs, aphobes, biphobes, truscum), militant radfems, pedos/pedo apologists ("MAP"/"NOMAP"), bigots, right-wingnuts/alt-right/nazis, don't interact.

The science fiction short story magazine Clarkesworld is now temporarily closed to submissions after a deluge of AI-generated stories.

(Neil Clarke's blog post mentions that the February numbers are only for the first 20 days of the month, when they paused submissions.)

The problem, Clarke explains, is not that the AI-generated stories are as good as human-written ones. The problem is that lazy grifters think they are.

This clarification they posted is pretty grim.

[ID: A screencap of a quote-retweet by clarkesworld's official Twitter account. It reads: "Just to be clear, this is NOT the number of submissions we receive by month. This is the number of people we've had to ban by month. Prior to late 2022, that was mostly plagiarism. Now it's machine-generated submissions." The tweet being quote-retweeted is also from clarkesworld's official Twitter. It's an image of a graph that lists months by year on the X-axis and numbers going in intervals of 100 up to 500 on the Y-axis. The data shows every month having significantly less than 50 bans until December 2022 when it hits over 100, and then February 2023 when it skyrockets to over 500. The caption for the tweet simply reads: "Updated version of the graph." End ID.]

"When the publisher of Sports Illustrated and Men’s Journal announced last week that its magazines would start to publish AI-generated articles, its CEO assured readers that the practice wouldn’t result in a decline in quality."

Men's Journal's AI-generated article: 18 serious factual errors

CNET's AI-generated articles: rampant factual errors and also plagiarism

Using AI to generate articles is the modern journalistic equivalent of selling "strawberry jam" made of red dye and no strawberries

Person off screen: what are five things you would never do after working as a lawyer?

Man on camera: well the first thing I would never do after working as a lawyer is call the police. I think people need to be very careful, when they consider of the issue of whether or not to invite the police into their world, their life, or into their home.

The second thing I’d never do after being a lawyer is to talk to the police.

Number three, I would never allow the police into my home without a warrant. But to invite the police into your home, is to grant them permission to make observations to what’s inside. And who knows? You may have left your bong out.

Number four, I would never consent to a search of my vehicle, my home or my property. If police want to search my person or my home: get a warrant.

And the fifth thing I’d do: never submit to an interview without an attorney present. They tell you “you have the right to remain silent” and they also tell you “you have the right to have a lawyer present” before you ever speak to them.

I won’t be talking to the police.

stop feeling hopeless, start getting ready

If you are in a red state, your state either has an abortion ban in place or is rated by the Guttmacher Institute as likely to enact a ban. Your focus should be on protecting yourself and others who need abortions.

  • stop using electronic period tracking apps or software
  • educate yourself and others about pregnancy prevention and join groups that are making preventative birth control more accessible
  • learn the nearest and most accessible routes to states where you and your loved ones can access abortion
  • contribute to mutual aid funds to help transport people over state lines if they are in need of abortion
  • consider joining The Satanic Temple so you can claim protections under the Religious Abortion Ritual if you are prosecuted for obtaining an abortion
  • keep a stock of by-mail abortion pills for yourself and/or others who may need them (you may need to travel out of state to obtain them)
  • form community provider networks and see if you or someone you know can be trained to use manual vacuum aspiration kits or a Del-Em
  • all of the above should be done in complete secrecy using verbal communication, end-to-end encrypted apps such as Signal, or a VPN

If you are in a yellow state, you currently have constitutional abortion protections but they are in jeopardy. Get active in local political groups NOW to fight back against constitutional amendments to ban abortion. Your focus should be purely on political action.

If you are in Michigan, you currently have a ban in place which is being challenged, and your governor is working to add abortion protections into the Michigan state constitution. Your focus should be on supporting the work that is currently under way.

If you are in a green state, your state has constitutional protections for abortion that are unlikely to be challenged. Your focus should be on helping others to enter your state for abortion care.

  • connect with abortion access groups such as Aid Access, Abortion on Demand, the National Network of Abortion Funds, or Just The Pill
  • volunteer to help people enter your state for abortion care, either with transportation help or letting someone crash on your couch
  • if you live in a green state with no current or predicted primary routes from other states for abortion access, you can focus your efforts on supporting political action in other areas

If you are in a purple state, your state currently has no constitutional protections for abortion but is unlikely to implement a ban. You have two focuses: pushing for constitutional protections AND helping others to enter your state for abortion care (see green state list).

Hey, this is a good post overall, but please do not go to The Satanic Temple for legal help with abortions. They’re not really serious about helping people with that, they just do it as a publicity stunt. Their lawyers have never won a religious freedom suit anyway.

And besides, overall, shouldn’t we be more careful about trying to use religious liberty as a legal argument with issues of bodily autonomy? In plenty of allegedly “civilized” nations including the USA, some religions (not just Christianity) are still hiding behind religious liberty so they can get away with violating other people’s B.A. It all feels ethically inconsistent, and makes tons of religious leaders and politicians sound hypocritical. Can we really rely on religious arguments to secure true freedom, when some religions still say “it’s fine and legal to violate my own fully-grown newborn baby’s bodily integrity because my old holy book says it’s okay”?

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If you haven't yet thoroughly scoped out the laws on abortion in your state, you have to do it right now. Genuinely, please do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe. If you need to get help for an abortion, cover your tracks – Use a public library's laptop or some other device. Please stop using period tracking apps – that data can and will be used against you. Watch out for crisis pregnancy centers, they're pro-life scams designed to stop you from getting an abortion.

52nd Book I Read in 2022

Title: Becoming a Man

Author: P. Carl

Notes: Loved this book, was so sad to have to return it to the library after I finished it! Highly recommend.

atheists who insist that all religion is bad, that religion is a mental illness, that being a spiritual person with or without religion is a bad thing-- in short, the militant atheists-- rub me the wrong way. i don't want to ever be associated with them.

religion is bad when it hurts people. religion is bad when you do not have a choice in your worship, or when it is used to control people, or when it is used to bar people from living their lives as their authentic selves. it is bad when it propagates and excuses bigoted beliefs and policies.

religion is not bad simply for existing.

it is impossible to roll my eyes more than i am right now. im rolling them so hard im about to ascend.

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FAKE TRANS DOCUMENTARY/ORGANIZATION: Here’s the ridiculous story about how extreme the far-right is willing to go to dehumanize trans people. I was nearly tricked into doing an elaborate anti-trans documentary by Matt Walsh’s film crew this month. It started with an email from the “Gender Unity Project” a couple weeks ago. They claimed they were doing a film on the trans community and gave me names of well-known trans individuals and surgeons they had interviewed. It all seemed normal at first. I even talked to the producer (Makenna Lynn Waters) on the phone beforehand. She sounded like a well-meaning cis film graduate who was just curious about the trans community.

When we chatted, she claimed the documentary was self-funded. I was suspicious because she had finished college recently, but figured she was just rich (who has that kind of money?). Later, she told me the individual they were interviewing in Chicago had suddenly canceled (this happens, but is still sus). Then she offered to fly me to Nashville: where Matt Walsh lives. They finally sent me a release form this morning, which strangely didn’t have the name of the company on it. So, I looked up the Gender Unity Project. It used a registered agent to shield the company owners. It’s dubious but sometimes registered agents simply make it easier to incorporate. Then I looked Makenna Lynn up. Her name didn’t show up anywhere.

After some heavy Google searching, I realized she used her middle name as her last in our emails. I found the IMDB page of her real name (Makenna Waters). It turns out she’s a producer for the Matt Walsh show! That’s not a red flag: that’s a gun to your face. If you’re not familiar, Matt Walsh is a white supremacist who makes a living denying the basic humanity of trans people. She wasn’t just a producer for his show: she worked on over 200 episodes of it! I finally found her Twitter, which features videos of Walsh berating protesters and Ben Shapiro doing his usual BS.

I decided to look closer into the “Gender Unity Project.” After searching its state registration number, I learned it was registered to Justin Folk, a white supremacist documentarian who works for Matt Walsh and Prager U. His initials (jrkfolk) were also listed in the release I thankfully refused to sign. So, if you’re contacted by these slimy assholes, don’t respond. The last thing we need right now is another “gotcha” anti-trans documentary! Stay alert and take any media personalities with a grain of salt.

And they say we’re the ones tricking people?

You love to see it

[Video ID: A Tiktok made by @tblubear, an Indigenous woman, addresses the camera:

So you guys all know what's going on in the most corrupt state in the United States, and after they pass that ban now they are going to SCOTUS to try to kick down the Indian Child Welfare Act which protects Indigenous children and the whole reason they want to do it is so they can steal our children and put them in, quote, "good Christian homes." We cannot let this happen.

This will cause the complete erasure of Indigenous people. This is not okay. We need everyone on board, please share this before I get shut down. Please, our lives are literally on the line. Our existence is on the line.

This cannot happen.

We need you in D.C. and we need to go straight to the house and we need to demand that this injustice stop. /ID]

The strange thing about growing up in conservative Christianity and then leaving it behind is that there are a lot of secular/progressive spaces that engage in similar thinking while sincerely believing their ideas are counter to conservative ones. So I thought I would just make a list of things I was taught within conservative Christianity, the stuff that was either the core of our beliefs, or the social dynamics that we created. Some of the language I use is specifically either scriptural, or Christian-speak.

This list isn’t to say “stop thinking this way.” This is actually intended to simply be informative because sometimes social justice spaces assume, “we are crafting our ideals in opposition to conservative ideals therefore whatever we think surely must be the opposite of whatever they think,” without ever seeming to know that their language and ideals look and sound the same.

So, let’s begin:

Sin-leveling: x is bad, and y is bad, and all bad things deserve an equal reaction

Sin-leveling part 2: because all things are equally bad, there’s nothing wrong with inverting the consequences. Hurting others becomes acceptable (because it’s no different than doing something distasteful), doing something distasteful is unforgivable (because it’s no different than doing something harmful)

Avoid all appearance of evil: if I assume that your behavior looks wrong, then you are wrong, even if further context would say otherwise. You should avoid doing anything that others would see as wrong because you are not allowed the benefit of the doubt or to defend yourself.

Sin by association: x company contracted with y company. Y company engages in something sinful, which means x company approves of said sinful thing which means if you purchase from x company, you are condoning, supporting, and have actually committed the sin.

Think only on what is good: or as the pastor of my old church liked to call it, “garbage in, garbage out.” Whatever ideas, thoughts, words, arguments, stories, pictures, books, movies, songs, friends, love you put in your head will create the desire to become that. If you want to be good, you must avoid any bad thought because you will “slip” into wanting it and then be unable to stop yourself from being it. (For example, type into google “is secular music” and click on the autocomplete of “a sin”)

Language as an in-group test: if you do not describe your life, experiences, and beliefs with the exact same vocabulary and in-group speak, you are either not really one of us, or you’re someone who hasn’t thought through their ideas as deeply as I have.

By any means necessary: Also known in the ex-Evangelical world as “lying for Jesus.” If my words create the necessary beliefs and actions in others, then it doesn’t matter if I am exaggerating, saying half-truths, or using manipulative language, because I’m saving others and helping them do what’s right.

Touch not God’s anointed: any critiques of those our community trusts, critiques of those we’ve deemed “the good ones,” are actually people trying to sow discord and disunity to destroy our community and their voice should be silenced because they must be lying.

Judge not lest ye be judged: A scripture that we throw at people when someone says our leadership is abusive, a scripture we cry is being taken out of context when we want to harshly critique someone ourselves. 

There’s more, lots more, but this post is already fairly long. Once again, though, this isn’t intended to be combative. I just want people to know the actual social dynamics that a lot of us grew up with in conservative Christianity communities, so they know when sometimes they’re sharing those social dynamics, not countering them.

Like and reblog if your account is a safe space for trans lesbians. It feels like trans lesbians in particular get shamed and ridiculed a lot by people in and out of the community. If you’re reading this I want to let you know you’re valid and I hope your safe and doing well.

I don't know whose radar I fell on recently, but I'm getting rather tired of skeevy companies trying to get me to share my audience with them, and also charge me the privilege for it under the guise of "marketing and better performance management."

Listen. It's ADHD chaos or nothing. And second of all, if I ever wanted to hire people to help me manage the chaotic hellscape my online life has become, I'd hire from my Tumblr audience. Someone who could, y'know, survive on Tumblr.

No but seriously this is why I think that automatic postal banking along with automatic voter registration should be a thing.

If everyone gets a free bank account on their 18th birthday that means that everyone needs to be issued legal ID and a PO box mailing address on their 18th birthday and has a place that no one is allowed to access their money on their 18th birthday. Do you know how many awful stories there are about teens who were saving up to move out who had their money used by abusive parents because it was in a joint account and they have no recourse because it was equally everyone's money in the account?

Do you know how overwhelming it can be to try to get a bank account when you don't have proof of legal residence because you are eighteen years old and your parents never let you have a drivers license or get a job and you don't pay bills or have a rental agreement? How is an eighteen year old in an abusive household supposed to become financially independent if you need a credit card to get your prepaid phone to function but you can't get a credit card until you're 21 and you can't get a debit card because you can't get a bank account because your parents won't let you use your birth certificate to get a state ID or drivers' license? How is someone supposed to get away from an abusive partner when they need two forms of ID and two forms of proof of address and they get no bills and aren't on any insurance paperwork or vehicle registration because their partner specifically prevented that?

Fuck that. National system. You go through the post office. Your PO box is through the post office, you bank with the post office, you can apply for an ID and request copies of legal documents through the post office.

Make it impossible to close an account too; that way it's normal for EVERYONE to have a bank account that is all their own and that nobody else can shut down without a death certificate so you can't pressure your partner into shutting down a possible escape route.

Is it logistically complicated? Yeah. Would it be expensive? Yeah. Is it more reliance on the state and a system of capitalism than I would prefer? Yeah. But everything fucking sucks so let's try *something.*