Collected Over Spread @collectedoverspread@qoto.org

Interesting thing I found out about #Bluesky : If you try to search the #WaybackMachine for an archived post on the bsky.app site, you'll get what looks like a blank page. However, the text and the author are still in the source code.

(Similarly, if you search for a more recent archive of one of their blog posts, the main content appears to be missing, but it's in the source code. But here for some reason the content shows up if you click somewhere on the page.)

This whole Twitter thread illustrates the problem with the common practice of copying things on the Internet. More people need to learn about #OpenContent #OpenCulture licenses, so they can, if they so choose, give explicit permission for others to share and reuse their work, rather than rely on inconsistent and uncertain social norms.

https://twitter.com/MadeiraSpotting/status/1772734852455919728

"But morality and social norms are supposed to be a different thing from law. In some spheres, it's more important to have hard-and-fast rules enforced by the government in a supposedly unbiased way; in others, it's more important to let communities make judgments using their own vague social norms."

"How Should We Think About Race And 'Lived Experience'?" by Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-race-and

It's worth considering the specific case being examined here, but I wanted to highlight this broader point. I think it's similar to something I wrote about a few years ago https://collectedoverspread.tumblr.com/post/650122325515223041/truly-deserving-of-condemnation

I've started calling this sort of thing "legalistic thinking," where people apply the strict standards found in law to discussions about morality.

I'm not sure how often #CreativeCommons checks this Mastodon account so I've sent them an e-mail about this.

"...while elements of the bill, such as getting animal control involved, appear intentionally provocative, banning student expression in this manner is no joke and presents serious constitutional concerns."

"Fursona non grata: Oklahoma lawmaker moves to ban 'furryism' in public schools" by Greg Gonzalez for FIRE https://www.thefire.org/news/fursona-non-grata-oklahoma-lawmaker-moves-ban-furryism-public-schools

I appreciate FIRE's dedication to responding to threats to free speech, but at the same time I'm sorry they had to take time to write this. I guess it's good to know that the stupid litter-box myth is alive and well in some places (sigh).

(There just so happens to be a furry convention in Oklahoma City this weekend. Hope everyone has a good time; maybe make some memes about this.)

"Everyone knows politics makes people crazy. But what kind of crazy? Which page of the DSM is it on? I'm only half joking. Psychiatrists have spent decades developing a whole catalog of ways brains can go wrong. Politics makes people's brains go wrong. Shouldn’t it be in the catalog?"

"The Psychopolitics of Trauma" by Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-psychopolitics-of-trauma

I've held off on trying to get on #Bluesky because it's still centralized in practice, but given that it plans to open up federation this year ( https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/11-15-2023-toward-federation ) it might be worth thinking about.

I plan to make this a proper blog post, but I will highlight one thing I like, the domain-name handles, which solve a problem that I've had to deal with on the #Fediverse (identity based on an instance which can go down).

"That’s where my mind was when I first saw the video: the importance of unambiguously condemning violence against one's political enemies, and that’s the article I was prepared to write going into this... That assumed, though, that there were political enemies to fight in the first place. Almost as soon as I started digging into the story, it became clear there was something more complicated, and more tragic, at hand."

"When 'Punch a Nazi' Goes Wrong" by TracingWoodgrains in Blocked and Reported https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/when-punch-a-nazi-goes-wrong

Even though I hadn't heard of this before, this hits closer to home than I'd like as someone who has long considered myself "furry-adjacent" and in recent years seemingly at odds with parts of the fandom. More broadly, it's an example of how online accusations can lose nuance and become exaggerated to extremes.

@creativecommons the "compatible license" provision in the legal code of the CC BY-SA 3.0 (Unported) legal code has been lost in the redesign.

Previous page from Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20230926144257/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
New page: https://web.archive.org/web/20230930133556/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Missing the definition of "Creative Commons Compatible License" previously in Section 1(c) as well as the provision for such compatible licenses in Section 4(b).

(Plain-text version is unchanged; these provisions are missing only from the Web page. Ports don't seem to be affected.)

An organization posting a public statement as an image on social media is nothing new. But making the alt text an abridged version of the statement and not the actual text in the image, that's certainly different.

(And again, the organization has a perfectly functional website where it could post this statement as proper text!)

#WritingInImages #WebAccessibility #accessibility #a11y

Some other perspectives on this hearing:

"In the midst of complaints that the presidents failed to adequately condemn antisemitism, scant attention has been paid to their opening remarks." - "University Presidents Were Right to Condemn Hate Speech and Defend Free Speech" by Stephen Rohde in First Amendment News https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-amendment-news/special-post-stephen-rohde-university-presidents

"I’m surprised by the people who think the university presidents were somehow tricked or couldn’t have answered differently. They weren’t and they could have." - "I know university presidents can respond better to odious speech — because I saw it happen at my school" by Ari Kohen for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency https://www.jta.org/2023/12/12/ideas/i-know-university-presidents-can-respond-better-to-odious-speech-because-i-saw-it-happen-at-my-school

#FreeSpeech #FirstAmendment #antisemitism

Seems like I'm not the only one frustrated by the response to college presidents' responses about at the recent "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism" congressional hearing.

Ken White (The Popehat Report) has written about this, and the title alone may be enough: "Stop Demanding Dumb Answers to Hard Questions" https://popehat.substack.com/p/stop-demanding-dumb-answers-to-hard

In the American political context, "Hate speech is free speech," has a specific meaning, and I think grasping this is critical for any discussion about how we handle objectionable speech, not just in the current context of the war in the Middle East but also in, for example, the context of social media.

#FreeSpeech #FirstAmendment