alyaza [they/she] @ alyaza @beehaw.org

internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people.

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there’s certainly other things we can do to tackle racism, but tackling ground level stuff like inherently painting black as bad and/or negative is part of that.

i simply do not think that this is racist or worth caring about unless you make it (at which point i would argue yet again the problem is internalized, not with the phrasing used), and i think this is reflected in how the overwhelming majority of people who care about this are white people who want to feel good about themselves without doing anything that would actually tackle racism at the source or challenge their whiteness and how they might benefit from it. to me "whitelist/blacklist" is extremely representative of contemporary slacktivism--stuff that feels good but is functionally a red herring toward material progress on these issues. (notice, for instance, how much time we're wasting on even debating if this is valuable when we could be doing anything else. and how we're doing this in a thread where some people are just unambiguously being racist.)

see: "i think if you can only racialize this verbiage when you hear it that’s weirdness on your part." and again i think this very much people wanting to die on an unimportant hill that they can feel sanctimonious/virtue-signally about and scold people about instead of tackling actual manifestations of racism in the tech field.

i cannot stress this enough: if people want to address something that materially affects black people and other minorities in tech, that should probably start with the omnipresent discriminatory hiring practices and normalized racism--not terminology that requires racialization to be problematic. (and it should probably start with not checking actual black people's opinions on this subject like they're the reason any of this is a problem!)

You don’t have to play rap music and apologize for slavery to make them feel welcome.

i'll preserve this quote for people who disagree that the OP's post is needed, or who think there isn't racism on the Fediverse. it's insane how many of you are demonstrating the point.

there is no phrasing to be redone; it's the official wording, i am decidedly not a person offended by the whitelist/blacklist terminology, and i think if you can only racialize this verbiage when you hear it that's weirdness on your part. i'm sure there are some people who have problems with it, but i genuinely don't know that i've ever--as a black person--thought for a second about this outside of white people getting offended on my behalf. certainly not when online spaces struggle with so much actual racism, ignorance, and dismissiveness of those prior two things (as has been on display in this thread).

I always thought of beehaw as an inclusive instance.

most of the issue is and has always been off-instance users, who for a variety of reasons (some intentional, some because of UI/user experience/just plain unawareness due to the nuances of federation) tend to respond to threads like these in ways that our on-instance users don't. to combat this we may or may not switch to a whitelist in the future instead of a blacklist, which is what we have now; if that occurs, it will probably be when we move to Sublinks

there are difficulties but bluntly: these are only "unworkable" if you're dismissive (as your comment here is) and/or make absolutely no effort to make them work. you are largely vindicating the need for such a list.

“A lot of times, people are not drawn in when climate is the top line,” Stone told me. “So I like to start with [a question like] ‘O.K., what’s affecting your daily life?’”

That question led her to write a story about bus stops that lacked shade structures, which meant people who relied on public transit would have to wait for extended periods of time in direct sunlight, which is a dangerous proposition during heat waves. That was a story that began at a very local level — people in a community were advocating for more shelters at bus stops — but allowed Stone to draw the connection to the larger, planet-spanning problem of climate change.

this level of bloodthirst and dehumanization is not acceptable

you've earned a 3 day ban for this. do not argue with people when they tell you not to call them dude--and, respectfully, nobody cares whether you think it's gender neutral or not in appellation to other people

Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

Chris Rosslowe, an analyst at Ember, said the rise of wind and solar was narrowing the role of fossil fuels. “We are witnessing a historic shift in the power sector, and it is happening rapidly.”

The report found EU power plants burned 24% less coal and 14% less gas from the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2024. The shift comes despite a small uptick in electricity demand that has followed two years of decline linked to the pandemic and Ukraine war.

some people already do this (but with oil companies). one is actually quoted in the article here:

All jokes aside, even advocates of naming extreme heat aren’t sure what the best approach should be.

“I were in charge, I think I would name them Heat Wave Exxon Mobil, Heat Wave Chevron,” said Jeff Goodell, author of the book “The Heat Will Kill You First.”

The book’s title is certainly attention-grabbing, and Goodell said that’s the point — just like putting a name on extreme heat.

basically yeah; in Lebanon and Iraq you historically had/still kind of have sectarian and community paramilitaries because the government isn't functional enough to protect those groups (or intentionally doesn't). and Israel of course has a lot of under-the-surface ideological and religious sectarianism that could eventually break out into violence but historically has not. this would be the first step toward that happening

notably, there now appear to be paramilitaries in the mix here, which seems like an ominous sign for the future stability of Israel. healthy countries don't tend to have these

provided nothing else blocks it, this will once again go into effect starting in September.

Life expectancy in the country has now risen above the United States, to 78 years, from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949.

But China's retirement age remains one of the lowest in the world - at 60 for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 for working-class women.

The plan to raise retirement ages is part of a series of resolutions adopted last week at a five-yearly top-level Communist party meeting, known as the Third Plenum.

here are their demands from their letter calling for voluntary recognition:

• A horizontal staffing structure across the organization
• Two union-elected staff voting members to the Board of Directors
• Collective hiring and separation process, including collective decision making around layoffs, reduction of hours, new hires, and furloughs
• Full commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel by December 2024
• Standardized pay progression and yearly Cost-Of-Living Adjustment raises
• Expanded health, commuter, paid leave benefits for all staff
• A Curatorial Committee made up of three union-elected members in addition to the Artistic & Executive Director and the Director of Programs to approve events
• Consolidated HR administered by a third party company
• Two union-elected staff representatives in both the Finance and Strategic Plan committees of the Board of Directors, ensuring budgetary allocations to Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Liberation work and the maintenance and upkeep of to the theater

will be interested to see how many of these they can win through collective bargaining

the IWW successfully unionized three Peet's stores previously, and hopefully this will be their fourth; they filed for a union election on July 8 and seem to be awaiting that.

i'm pretty confident you are not correct that it's too late; in any case, chill out a bit