Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@qoto.org

It's hard to convince some of these people that, for example, a bill touted as "protecting kids" is actually an obvious anti-LGBT+ trojan horse even when the Republican sponsor of the bill has said so explicitly.

But then again, this demographic skews conservative by its very nature: the status quo has worked out well enough for them.

Likewise, the "soft" racism and other bigotries in this group go largely undiscussed because they prefer to see themselves as the Good White People.

Here's the archived version of the F1 story by McMansion Hell blogger Kate Wagner that Road & Track quickly pulled off its web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/

How are you today? I hope well enough. Today is pretty stressful as we watch the news cycle but please remember to take time for calming thoughts.

The news cycle shouldn't be yelling at you while you are awake, but it often does. Taking a break just to relax your mind is healthy and so often overlooked.

I have to share this. So my partner is on the DEI board for a nonprofit org, which consists of my partner, a gay black woman, a Latina woman, and a straight white guy.

I was working from the other room and overhead some of their meeting.

The guy, (Fred? Doug? Something like that. Let's say Fred), had coopted the meeting for the last hour. He was going on about how he didn't think the org needed a DEI committee...it went something like:

"Race is an outdated social construct."

"I don't see color or gender."

"If everyone was just chill like me, there wouldn't be an issue."

And so on.

I heard my partner trying to gently reign in his monopoly on the discussion:

"Maybe we should hear from one of the other members about their lived experiences?"

He kept going; transitioning into the topic of "handout programs":

"I mean, the opportunities are there. Maybe the story was different in the past, but now they just have to work for it like anyone else."

Note: my partner was (nearly still)born into poverty, abuse, a broken child welfare system, and has multiple chronic conditions.

I could hear the frustration in my partner's voice. No one else spoke up.

My partner got up and left the call for a bit. Fred didn't seem to notice, as I could hear him still talking away in the background.

Eventually the meeting ended.

The other two women said they thought they got a lot out of the meeting, and that Fred brought up some good points (though I must of missed those ones from the other room).

My partner came into my office and recapped the meeting in one looong sentence (they were rather agitated).

So what's the moral of this story?

If you don't know why diversity, equity, and inclusion are necessary, then you're probably the reason.

If you refer to inclusion and social systems as "handout programs" then you have probably lived a priveledged fucking life.

If you're sitting on a DEI board full of LGBTQIA+/BIPOC people and none of those letters apply to you, then you'd better pay close attention to the collective lived experiences and perspectives of those other members.

If all the above apply to you, then you're probably Fred (and feeling pretty called out).

Don't be Fred.

#DEI #LGBTQIA #BIPOC #Rant #Privelege #DiversityEquityInclusion

It’s wild how fast I lost interest in space travel when it stopped being presented as a collective accomplishment and became a competition between a handful of morally bankrupt white men.

I spent the last week scraping through a terabyte of GeoCities archives and collecting ALL THE #88x31 buttons! In the end, I gathered 29257 unique buttons (75k with duplicates). They are available at https://hellnet.work/8831/

Check them out!

I also have the dataset (~160MB), stats and a bit about the scraping process here: https://hellnet.work/8831/stats.html

#indieweb #smallweb #geocities #neocities

Appeals court blocks Fla. ‘Stop Woke Act,’ says it’s a ‘First Amendment sin’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/04/appeals-court-blocks-florida-stop-woke-act/

It is hard to find a more paradigmatic violation of the free speech clause than the govt censoring a private speaker because the govt doesn't like what the the speaker is saying

#fedilaw #fediprof #DeSantis #Florida #freespeech #speech #FirstAmendment #Florida #lawfedi

Look, you either believe the concepts of #free #speech and #censorship apply to #corporate platforms, or you don't.

You can say the #First #Amendment only applies to the #government, not #private entities—which is undeniably true—and therefore #social #media sites have no obligation to provide a platform for speech the owners of the site don't like. This is a reasonable and defensible position.

Or you can say social media sites are the new #town #squares, and therefore the owners have a moral if not legal obligation to allow anyone to say practically anything using their platforms. You can even point out that the government charters corporations, and is responsible for a lot of #telecom #infrastructure, so by allowing censorship in that particular environment, the government is at least complicit in interfering with free speech rights. This is also a reasonable and defensible position.

Maybe you can even try to find some kind of well-articulated middle ground between these positions, although I have to say I don't remember ever seeing anyone do so. I think most people *do* hold opinions somewhere between the two, but they don't tend to spell it out.

What they do instead is argue either side as it's convenient, which is irritating as hell. And *yes*, this is a rare bit of "both sides" on my part. I see a whole lot of leftish folks, who are generally not big fans of corporate power, deploying the first position against right-wing types—while complaining about the arbitrary and often clearly biased way #Facebook et al. censor left-wing statements.

The complaints are justified. Hypocrisy is not.

Just pick a position, be honest with yourself about what that position is, and stick to it. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, you have to be aware that the mechanisms of speech, and by extension the press, have changed dramatically over the last thirty years and will continue to do so. Knowing where you stand is important.

🎉 11th Circuit Court (many apptd by Trump administration) unanimously threw out Florida's "Stop W.O.K.E." Act as unconstitutional.
Court says government can't tell businesses not to have DEI trainings.

#HoneyFundVDeSantis #HB7 #Florida #DEI

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/honeyfund-v-desantis-stop-woke-act/

I asked Metro Police Dept. Officer Daniel Hodges what he thought of the ruling from SCOTUS today:

"Passing the buck to a Congress already half-filled with seditionists doesn't "turn the national temperature down". The national temperature is torrid, getting worse, and most notably not any business of the Supreme Court."

https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/supreme-court-unanimously-allows-trump-to-remain-on-2024-ballot-finds-states-have-no-power-to-enforce-insurrection-clause-especially-as-to-the-presidency/

They worry that boys might become violent if they lost to some girls. So of course they kicked the girls out of the tournament. Pathetic.

"What we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl."

https://www.wvxu.org/sports/2024-03-04/kentucky-girls-basketball-team-banned-southwestern-ohio

It's becoming clearer everyday - nothing we studied in our con law classes in law school matter any more - as long as the far-right Republican operatives sit in robes on the #SCOTUS.

There is no institution that will protect us from #fascism. The ballot box is all we have at this point.

So, the majority opinion in #trumpVanderson, adopted by five justices (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh), insists that
a) section 3 requires implementing legislation, which means
b) only one branch of the federal government, Congress, may enforce section 3, and
c) these five justices prescribe a wholly novel, extra-textual, and entirely unprecedented set of requirements for any disqualification legislation Congress might pass. 4/ #LawFedi

The justices in the five person majority in #TrumpVAnderson show, once again, their utter disdain for the most elementary features of U.S. rule of law. They disregard text and precedent and trample separation of powers. Unsurprisingly then, their decision is primarily a piece of partisanship only masquerading as judicial work. 5/ #RuleOfLaw