green except spooky again @troodon@vulpine.club

albin.social is a new mastodon derived instance

it has many negative traits that mean you as an instance admin should defederate

-harvests user data, presumably from all federation as well as local users
-plans to run off ads fed that data
-for profit, corporate adjacent based monetary goals, instead of user centric
-no features to sell you other than "ads = stability" in their twisted logics

boost and defederate, folx

sharing on here too

so https://foursquare.com/v/sol-sips/5ac63c9a18d43b72307a7248 is a #vegan restaurant around affordability (sliding scale prices) in #Brooklyn! Def check it out. Run by a young Black woman (still in college) and she wanted to drop the (perceived) bar that #veganism is expensive and unattainable.

PLEASE donate if you can.
---
RT @gc_arilin@twitter.com
So apropos of absolutely nothing that may be in the news today, if you are in a position to donate to charity, https://transgenderlawcenter.org
https://twitter.com/gc_arilin/status/1054152196516798466

re lb that isnt a bad plan to support trans folx in scary times so, here's my info

i can afford this month's rent but i probably cant afford rent NEXT month and i almost guaranteed wont have my job come through AND pay me before then. i have a paypal at paypal.me/hoodiekitten and a cashapp at $hoodiehime

im doing my best to get a job but it hasnt paid off

if you haven't read the details of what's happening today with the trump (non-)administration, here's a summary from National Center for Transgender Equality

https://twitter.com/TransEquality/status/1054029067031400450

You can find the fax number o your regional office of the civil rights division of the Department of Health and Human Services here: https://www.hhs.gov/ocr/about-us/contact-us/index.html

Faxing or sending snail mail is better than emailing because it leaves physical traces and it can be seen piling up.

You can fax them for free by uploading a pdf to https://faxzero.com/

💫 Classic Doctor Who 💫
====================

Want to watch Classic Doctor Who, but don't want to slog through the boring episodes?

Check out my guide!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/

Now with recommendations for all the first and second doctor stories!

Cis people be like: "Why do you have to make everything about gender?" /s (x-post /r/insanepeoplefacebook) https://redd.it/9q4m99

Starting to see some stuff going around in different cities, and I’m going to put a list together, as well as phone, email, and geographical resources for reaching out to the DHHS OCR.

If you’re planning an action, please let me know— a lot of people have asked me about actions in other cities, and I’m not an organizer or with an organization, just a mad as hell person who wants to protect her friends at all costs, so fill me in!

I'd advise suspending federation with albin.social

They clearly say that they'll be doing data mining on accounts on their instance, wouldn't be out of the way for them to data mine anything they come across from the fediverse as well

Also, y'know, they're pricks anyway

Big. Motherfuckin. Mood.

Please join me in donating to the National Center for Transgender Equality. They need it right now. https://transequality.org/

Huh. The Hill and CNBC have just posted their own articles about the NY Times article about the proposed strict definition of "sex" from DH&HS, and they are articles specifically, technically, about the NY Times article. They make no additional claims and append "according to the New York Times" to everything, including their headlines.

This indicates that these large, mainstream media organizations *cannot find an independent source* to corroborate the NY Times story within a few hours on a Sunday. That is genuinely odd; they can reliably get staff memos from my employer within minutes of them being sent to an audience of a hundred people, so I'm intrigued that other sources cannot back up the NY Times on this other than by quoting them (which is moral support at best).

No matter how large the news agency is, nobody is above skepticism. The lack of alternative sources from CNBC and The Hill leads me to be suspicious about the accuracy of the story.

It would be nice for the NY Times story to be inaccurate, so of course this has some confirmation bias. We'll find out more across the coming week, most likely. So: maintain skepticism, stay alert, engage critical thinking before engaging panic reflexes, and *trust no one*, including me, without evidence.

NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html
CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/21/trump-admin-reportedly-aims-to-refine-legal-definition-of-gender.html
The Hill article: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/412418-trump-administration-considering-narrowing-legal-definition-of-gender

@SuzanEraslan I've read on birbsite that there's something going on today! https://twitter.com/1demerith/status/1054057313051570177

it's a community rally at 6pm until 7:30 at washington square park, NYC

Suspended albin.social. They state explicitly that they're collecting data so they can serve targeted ads. https://albinapps.com/privacy/ #mastoadmin

So, you can contact Alex M. Azar II, the Secretary of Health, on this issue.

E-mail Address:
Secretary@HHS.gov

Phone Number:
202-690-7000

Respect and love all tails.

seattle-local friends and acquaintances:

does anyone like stevia-sweetened soda? i accidentally ended up with 2 6-packs of strawberry and grape soda because i thought that they would be delightful and they were 0-calorie and the same artificial grape i love.

oh listeners, i was wrong.

i do -not- like stevia even a bit.

maybe you do though! and that's okay.

maybe you like it so much that you'll come take it off of my hands!

please come take my stevia-sweetened soda off my hands if you will enjoy it at all. it can be yours for the taking for the low, low price of coming to pick it up.

Don't forget to use seasoning when we eat the rich and powerful. Cumin is highly underutilized and a good Curry is really just perfect for winter 👌