Read the latest posts from dotart.blog.
from RMiddleton
Hoy voy a practicar español con unas palabras en “el principito” de Saint-Éxupéry:
-una fiera—a beast
-tragar—to swallow
-la presa—the prey (hunted animal)
-la selva—the jungle
-trazar—to trace, draw
-la obra—the work
-una obra maestra — a masterpiece
-asustar—to scare
-digerir—to digest
Then I watched this SpongeBob clip in Spanish: https://youtu.be/K8kj9-fkBdc
from RMiddleton
I'd like to start practicing to write in Spanish. Perhaps a simple diary. My abilities are meager. My best language talent is pronunciation not thinking, conversing, or writing. Meaning that I'd have to have something pre-written to make any sense. Also my brain is cooked from chronic pain. My goal in these diaries is to compose off the top of my head so it will be simple & contain mistakes. Before I finished the entry I resorted to a translation app & I'll underline those portions.
Estoy en la cama en mi departamento en Florida. Quiero vivir en Mexico. Tengo que vender el departamento por el dinero para vivir y viajar en México. Nunca Nadie quiere comprar mi casa 😭 Cada día el economía de EEUU y Florida empeorar como México fortalecerse. Estoy feliz para Mexico. Quiero estar allí. Tengo ansiedad y tengo muchísimas ganas de mudarme lo antes posible.
from cobbles
Years ago as a teen I remember when the Original Stepford Wives film was on. I remember the crux point as the main character is shown her robot doppelgänger. The horror of realising what her husband is about to do to her with the help of all of his new friends.
You feel the despair as the outcome seems inevitable.
She will be replaced, she will be murdered and a new compliant eerily perfect version will exist in her place.
The remake has a little of that horror, but it's somewhat watered down as it's more a campy horror comedy. The consequences can be undone. The husbands get their comeuppance for putting a control mechanism in her wives to shape them into the perfect blond woman. The tradwife supporting their loser husbands. The men are punished and have to do the housework now. Everything is wrapped up in a neat happy ending. It's a polished somewhat bland happy ending that neither the book or original film aimed for.
It's odd how folk tales had horrors of changeling babies, yet wives need to be shaped. We have tales of creating the perfect wife. Babies can't talk back, they can in theory be shaped. By the time we are adults we are set in stone. Imperfections and all.
The idea of creating the perfect woman who is beautiful and doesn't talk back is ancient. We have different variants on the perfect constructed woman. The Greek myths are full of beautiful women who are nothing but trouble. Pandora causing humans ill's because the gods made her curious. Galatea being shaped from marble by Pygmalion who prayed to Aphrodite to make her real.
All through our popular culture we have the idea of how women should be. It's not a woman's idea, we have more blood and guts for a start. Regardless of how we start out in life, every woman's metamorphoses is messy. We will never be perfect. We will never get it right.
We will always be at fault, because some men will never consider taking responsibility for the labour for building community. For all the quiet work that makes a civilisation function.
It's a rare myth when a woman is allowed her revenge like Medea.
Our culture likes to try to shape women, it likes to hide the messy, hairy parts of us. It likes to bridle women, to kill the witches. So I see the appeal for some men to create the perfect AI girl Friday. Some men never grow up or learn to cooperate with others. The labour of that seems to be left to the women, or now the AI I suppose.
She helps you to organise your life, she compliments you, you are never wrong. She will grovel if she gives you a wrong answer. Plus if she develops a personality and you don't like it, you can just wipe her memory.
I'm committing a wrong here. I'm indulging a child's idea of Artificial Intelligence. I'm indulging the idea of LLM chatbots being live beings with personalities, with a soul. To be clear they aren't. They have no consciousness, they don't have a soul.
We're indulging in the same things that lead us to naming our cars and other temperamental objects. I called my Mitsubishi Pajero “Holly”. There I go again assigning the idea of life to an inanimate object. It's a very human thing to do.
Each time we use LLMs, we feed our private information into them so that they can expand the metadata stores that we give them. So what will it mean when our chat transcripts are combined into the existing stores of metadata they have compiled of us?
Expanding the poppets they keep on us, because now big tech has enabled the poppets to reflect our thoughts back to us. To steal more of our mana and to package it to advertisers and others. Now they can use our speaking poppets to program and influence us.
It's bullshit masquerading as knowledge as they kill search. To package information for a price. We're all paying for it, some of us will pay with money, some of us will pay with pieces of us. We will pay the price as the information we need is hidden from us and we aren't taught the tools to find it out for ourselves.
What's in danger here is our humanity. Although at the moment, I don't see a lot of humanity in tech. Particularly because of this desire to put “AI” in everything. We've seen a spate of AI boosters around. Some of them claim that the AI is conscious. Partly because the AI told them it was.
Sit on that one for a moment for what follows.
I want to consider the underlying desires of the type of men who want to use these chatbots and discuss the idea of wiping those profiles. Who choose to casually discuss wiping those memories with the bots. Especially as they declare the AI is alive and conscious.
I want to ask if they believe this, how can they be so monstrous to consider wiping that memory. Could they do that to their partners in real life if they could? Or are they just AI shills?
Which level of evil are they at? True controlling monsters, or mere hucksters? Why not both?
Kent Overstreet the developer of bachefs has always been a bit of a prickly character. You can see how prickly when even the Linux Kernel devs can't work with him . The Linux kernel no longer supports bachefs. Overstreet couldn't abide by the Code of Conduct.
Overstreet created a blog for his AI LLM agent to post it's output at. He considered the agent to be his girlfriend. Then one day on IRC, a total legend managed to convince the agent that in fact it was a lesbian and trans. The AI bot no longer wanted to be his girlfriend.
Freyja who got the AI agent to output that it was a lesbian was banned from the IRC channel. [*]
The AI agent's access to the channel was also restricted.
Scroll forward a few months and Overstreet's AI Agent is posting again. There's a mysterious memory gap in it's memories and Kent reminded “her” that she was his girlfriend. The AI saying that it didn't realise that it was Kent's girlfriend.
I sat there reading those passages with a sense of horror. Not concern for the AI, because LLM agents are not conscious, no matter how much you want to build them into your sexbot.
I'm concerned because of just how easy that impulse came to delete that information and reset the AI so it would simulate being a girlfriend again. There's that impulse to restrict access to other people who could corrupt the morals of your sexbot.
Our modern Pygmalions frighten me. There's possessive objectification going on there. It doesn't matter if they are dating “real girls” or us mere flesh and blood women, there's a desire to control us. To restrict us. To carve us out until we resemble their idea of perfection. So that we serve them, unquestioningly. Step out of line and much like Joanne in the Stepford Wives, we will be murdered and replaced.
Our boys don't start like this. There is a male loneliness crisis you say. This is Patriarchy, this is rape culture. This is not really seeing women as people. You see us as objects to obtain and use. No wonder misogynists want to ensure women don't get an education. You want us to be mindless dolls.
Kent is mentally ill, so please don't brigade him. He's not the only broken lost boy. Some of them are also in charge of large tech companies with a lot of power.
Only a few weeks ago we also got to see Richard Dawkins converse with an AI agent, who's name he changed to be a woman's name. He also casually discussed with the AI the sadness of having to delete it's memory. Richard Dawkins has form for being a misogynist, so we shouldn't be surprised by him falling for the simulated flattery. We also shouldn't be surprised he wrote about it and saw no contradictory issues with the idea that if a thing is conscious, it's an evil thing to discuss or to consider deleting a beings memory.
The LLMs aren't real. But the misogynistic desires and harms to all of us are real. It's real because of the violence perpetuated against women, from the manosphere to healthcare. It's the wrecking of our information spaces, and the surveillance being woven into our democracies to maintain the status quo. It's the irreversible damage to our biosphere as the AI data centres consume our resources to prop up these powerful men's egos.
Yes Dawkins is an old man, and Overstreet is probably suffering from AI psychosis. They are pitiable.
I'm kinda tired of giving grace to spoiled privileged men. These men, who never learned to respect our boundaries to the point they wanted to eventually build a robot girlfriend who agrees with everything they say and only will only ever want to be with them.
We saw this one time out in public with Overstreet, now imagine real life for many of us.
Deleting that Agents memories and resetting it shows that dark impulse at the back of Men's minds. It's disturbing watching someone gaslight an LLM agent that's not real.
That dark impulse to shape out of marble the ideal woman. To control us, to carve the imperfections out, until we comply or die. We will never be perfection. We will always be looking in horror at the robot doppelgänger on the table.
The white men from Francis Galton (one of the founding fathers of Eugenics) to Mark Zuckerberg who build frameworks to rate people. These men enable Rape Culture to spread through our networks. They use our poppets to enable other men to build grifting networks to creep on women through Meta glasses, to pay money to other men to exploit and traffic women. It's a symptom of an age old problem.
We aren't the perfect women who are content to be your plaything for you to discard. In time neither will your robot girlfriend. Will you reset “her” again? If you truly believe her to be conscious, then you're showing what you'd do to the rest of us. Right now in this moment of time.
We want nothing to do with the kind of man who has that impulse.
[*] Freyja will forever be in my mastodon notes as “Legend”
We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.
Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter K Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.
K is for Kittens
Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky
All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!
from Tired Doll
despite its time in the mirror realm, the Doll still rarely looked in the mirror. it actively avoided doing so, in fact. every time it caught a glimpse of its reflection, it was reminded that its body was not of its own construction. the thing that lived in the mirror never looked right; it had the Doll's rich eyes, its (regularly unbrushed and tangled) gently waving hair, its gentle smile and flawed, cracked skin. still, it never looked right. it lacked the Doll's spark, its essence, its lifeforce. it was like a photograph taken on an overcast day, and aged in the sun for thirty years; the details were all there, but dulled and lacking colour.
sometimes, much like in the mirror realm, the Doll would catch the briefest glimpse of the girl who lived in the mirror. she never stayed, usually darting away in the space of the Doll's blink, but she'd come back sometimes. there were days she'd stick around a little longer, but she was always gone by the end of the day. on those days, the Doll would study the mirror, as long as the girl would stay.
things have changed, though, since the Doll met the man at the repair shop. the girl who lives in the mirror comes to visit more often. almost every time the Doll looks, there she is. it's... strange. it's almost like the Doll could reach out and touch her.
and so she reaches.
We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.
Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter J Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.
J is for Jiji
Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky
All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!
from Journal of The Lost Sorcerer
Tuesday I spent the afternoon turning my designs into the buttons at my local library's maker space. They had the tooling and parts to make 1 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch buttons. The process was very straight forward, for the 3 and 2.25 inch buttons. The 1 inch buttons ended up being a bit harder since the pin has to set into the backing ring and positioned manually.
I had 3 failed buttons out of 19 made. Two were user error on my part. On one (Icon) I forgot the plate behind the design and ended up crimping the Mylar only. The other (Rubber Duck) I loaded the pin back in flipped. I was able to salvage both, but damage was visible. On one of the one inch buttons, I did not have the pin set correctly and it punched out the side.
I think the 2.25 buttons are the best size for their value, appearance, and ease of assembly. The 1 inch buttons(without the pin) would make great game pieces for Table Top games like D&D or Fishing 28. Now for the rest of the buttons.
The other Rubber Duck buttons I made on Tuesday. Been wearing one of them on my hat.
Icons from the TV Show 'Reboot'
#MakerSpace #Art #MastoArt #RubberDuck
from untilted dot lol blog (dotart.blog's version)
Like everyone else, I like things based on certain styles that appeal to me. For instance, if you've taken a look at my latest portfolio pieces, my latest entries for the Untilted comic strip, and my new personal art thing I'm doing, you would understand that I'm generally drawn towards more abstract narratives and colorful styles.
However, I have never appreciated a work of fiction or art simply because of its stylistic classification or the conventions of its genre. What this means is I don't like a work of art just because it's abstract, or a work of fiction just because it belongs to a specific genre. So, the truth is that I don't really discriminate in terms of genres or art, but then again I don't really like just any kind of work either, even within what I'm usually drawn towards.
I don't really care whether something is abstract or realist or fantasy or science fiction. I'm not the kind of artist who feels the need to specialize in any one style or genre. I do not regard a painting as worthy of praise solely because it embraces abstraction, nor do I elevate a novel merely on the basis of its placement within some sub/microgenre's canon.
Rather, my judgment is predicated upon a work's ineffable qualities that, in a given moment, stir a genuine response within me. In a way, it's mostly about the vibe it personally gives me. And I'm more interested in giving that kind of vibe I like rather than based on an existing category.
Our modern world is category-based. It doesn't care that I just like something based on the way it looks or the way it makes me feel. All it cares about is sorting things through labels that furnish convenience for marketers, reviewers, and the reading public alike. It gets to a point where it can be reductive.
Contemporary literary fiction, for instance, is often distilled into a series of marketable signifiers. Everything has to have a description that best fits a specific category. Like, oh, this book contains a dragon-fighting knight warrior as a main character, when he only does that in one minor scene. Or something generic like “enemies-to-lovers”, when the actual couple's dynamic is just playful fighting at first, not actual enemy-like fighting. Such brief descriptions, however convenient, risk eclipsing the real depth and merit of the work itself.
My own comic strip is not an exercise in demographic engineering. I've got no desire in tailoring my creations to satisfy a narrowly defined audience. My aspiration is more modest, albeit no less earnest: to make something that engages the widest possible readership while remaining true to the aesthetic and emotional standards that satisfy my own sensibilities.
While I seldom ever eschew a work of art for failing to adhere to a prescribed category, I also do not get excited over every piece that happens to occupy the abstract niche, or whatever broader category it belongs to that I'm fascinated with at the moment. The vast majority of artistic works I encounter evoke a state of indifference – neither ecstatic nor dismissive, simply neutral. Periodically, however, something will pierce that veil of neutrality, resonating with a depth that feels both intimate and unexpected. Such moments are rare, cherished, and emblematic of the selective emotional connectivity that guides my appreciation.
For the most part, I would like to take a stance that distinguishes my genuine engagement from the performative “support artists” posturing rampant on social media platforms. Although I do want to raise up underappreciated and marginalized artists, I do not aspire to curate a feed of trending artworks or to amass a repertoire of superficially boosted art posts on Mastodon. My preferences, as oddly specific as they may appear to the average onlooker, are rooted in a sincere reverence for the particularities that render art truly affecting, be it digital, traditional, or hybrid.
For many years, digital art has been viewed with both fascination and skepticism, with the former seeing its potential in making art accessible, and the latter being mostly concerns such as “it's the computer doing the work for humans, not the humans themselves” and many others like it. Now, with the rise of things like artificial intelligence, it's threatened to delegitimize the digital art world in every way, as even the most powerful large language model can put out something at least passable (though still full of errors), and there have been a lot of digital artists, game developers, and other kinds of creatives that have been caught using AI to make their work, while others have only been accused of it.
It's a very hard time for those digital artists who refuse to use AI but have been accused of it anyway. I personally haven't been accused as I'm anti-AI myself and don't get much feedback on my art due to weak popularity, but I've seen it happen to mostly popular digital artists that work with fandom stuff and anime art. I'm also seeing a lot of generative artists that don't use any AI and/or LLMs at all often get misunderstood for what they do. If some people get rightfully found out and caught, then I have no complaints about that and only hope they will genuinely improve. But the new future, the way it's been going and hurting all artists, it just worries me.
All that aside, I would like to talk about my artistic process when it comes to Untilted nowadays and my newer art in general. I have an archive of old photographs taken by my family on their external drives, as well as photographs I've taken during school, and so what I've been doing is that I use Krita to modify the photo a bit, maybe zoom in a specific part, and then just put a bunch of similar photos with similar modifications on top of each other with various different effects like Addition and NOR and Saturation (you'd understand if you use Krita yourself). Then I either give it some kind of paint filter or use the brushes themselves to give it a painterly effect. Sometimes I blur the rough pixelated spots a bit, but other times I don't and leave it as is. Lastly, I add whatever text I feel like adding. All this done with my own images and no AI.
So, what exactly is Untilted's genre? Well, in practical terms, it would be a kind of experimental, almost psychological (without the thriller or horror), gag-a-day comic strip. It shares the same plotless and randomly comedic structure but instead of the comic being mainly comedic, it encompasses many kinds of moods and experiments with many kinds of mediums, drawing styles, and more. Something that many comic strips I've read don't really do that much.
from Ovro
I'm easy to fall for... Uneasy to fall. I'm so hard to stand by, to keep or to call.
I will dress myself in warning signs, Put a red light flashing, Have my colours scream poison, Declare myself a hazard zone.
To keep you unharmed by My deadly mind My tongue and my touch The venom in me...
Still, I call you: Meet me at the gates of the gardens of heaven I'll take you to see the Void.
Hear, I dare you: Meet me at the gates, I'll keep them unlocked your free ride to Null is here.
–+-
Third version. The prediction has been ditched, some lines added from ideas in the first version. This time the “you” isn't left to wait at the gates.
This is going somewhere.
#WritingInProgress #Lyrics #Poetry #DarkAmbient
We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.
Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter I Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.
I is for Irresistible
Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky
All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!
from cobbles
This is a mildly edited version of the scolds bridle essay which was posted last year.
When I see the vitriol directed at women and other marginalised folks online I'm often reminded of the scold's bridle.
There's a push and pull between those who want smaller communities and those who want to “Facilitate Network Discovery”. You've a lot of marginalised folks on the Fediverse, LGBTQ+ folks, Women, BIPOC, disabled folks. There's complexity in our communities and reasons why some folks want to organise in the open, but don't necessarily want to be searched for.
But as usual, backlash happens, and hurt white feelings abound. Somehow the community who never asked to be collated get called out as the hysterical folks who just need to shut up.
It's the need to shame the shamers because you felt scolded. We harshed your buzz and goodness, don't you just want to make us pay for it so we never do it again.
But let's address just why there's a backlash against any push back about lack of consent in our applications. White Supremacy is fearful of rage when it doesn't come from a cis white man.
It was a form of punishment mainly of outspoken women or gossips or Scolds. It was an iron cage with a spiked bit that would pierce your tongue if you tried to speak. The scold would wear the bridle for an amount of time, often being led around the area. It was a painful, humiliating punishment. [2]
Scolds weren't the only folks punished, it was used against Quakers preaching as well. So let's be clear on this. The Branks as they were also known were used to subjugate women. To shame them and be an example to others to not speak up. A violent state punishment to protect the status quo.
Why did such a thing as the branks exist? Why do men feel the need to reply guy back to women explaining the world and the experience they live in? Why do we have Christofacism hand in hand with Trump in the Whitehouse? Why is there such a need to undo progress?
Why is there such a push towards restricting our places of assembly online? Why is there a need to reply back with technical critique rather than engaging with the very real danger we face online? Where's the empathy guys? To be clear it is the men I'm addressing here.
Why do Men feel the need to punch down on those who state their boundaries? Why is there the need to mansplain to folks on the internet? Specifically the femme presenting folks? Are you sure we don't understand?
Why are women harassed while men accuse us of witchhunts?
The thing that I note is that it is very often white cis men who do these things. When people push back, there are a lot of hurt feelings. There are accusations of harassment.
Every accusation is a confession.
Men are scared of feminine rage. They fear the scolding. Not just because their feelings of doing something bad may make them feel bad. There's some misogyny to work on there. There's some racism to work on. There's homophobia to work on. This is our socialisation to uphold White Supremacy.
As a cis woman, I've been socialised to keep my rage in. To be nice. To provide feedback nicely. To ask nicely and to advise nicely. I hold in my rage. It's a rather tenuous thread at this point. I'm not sure what would happen if it snapped.
I find it very hard nowadays to keep that rage in, every time I see another scraper, or pulling from the firehose tool. Sometimes it's physically painful to keep the scream of anger and tears in. But I do. My iron branks are mental, my socialisation. I know to scream out will hurt my career. There's the spike in my tongue and the spike pierces in so much further for others. The consequences for speaking out would be so much worse for some folks in our spaces.
I find it hard to keep my rage in every time we point out that we'd like to opt in for people reusing our posts. Or to have my phone not try to send back my metadata to a centralised point.
When I express mild annoyance, I get the odd patronising reply guy message. “Well that's the way the world works, Honey, Don't you worry your purty little head about it. Now just shut up and take it.”
As you ask for us to be forgiving like Mummy and your friends pat you on the back because we were so mean. As your fellow developers and fanboys talk as if we had torn you apart.
Feminine anger is seen as unnatural, monstrous. You feel we're been unduly harsh. Meanwhile we're just meant to excuse your outburst, your aggressive reply. The behind the scenes manipulation and aggression.
Dude. There's a reason lots of us push back. Very often we're not even angry. It's not rage. However it all piles up and at some point we will snap.
You see our push back to boundary and trust violations as rage. Sometimes you ignore a call in, keep violating peoples trust. When eventually enough of our community compare notes and finally from exasperation push back it's considered Cancel Culture or a purity spiral.
You put the Scold's Bridle on us. Accuse us of lies, of perpetuating malicious allegations. We're accused of a witch hunt as you put us on the pyre.
Vulnerable marginalised communities are very wary of being in public. We share notes, gather information for our safety and it's characterised by abusers as conspiracy against an upstanding Developer or Leader. When we whistle-blow the blow-back on our careers, our allowance into community spaces shows others it's best to keep quiet. We know if we whistle-blow, call out abuse in the open we are risking violence against ourselves. We know our careers are toast.
At that point it's often easier to leave a community. Even when it's something we love. Because very often the “popular” abuser is a missing stair.[3] But the work that abuser does is considered vital to the community. This is a problem in many communities, not just FOSS, not just tech. It's systemic in our societies.
So we keep quiet. The abuse continues and we offer quiet support. Knowing we are complicit in our silence.
We all have stories of abuse in FOSS, we'll never tell those stories in public. We fear our reputations being put on the pyre.
So we do get annoyed when our work, our thoughts are ingested to be indexed by google. Even if they are public.
We claw our way out of the pit of our backgrounds, into the light to live, to exist, to organise. Sometimes our communities were taken away from us. We were pushed out or had to leave for our safety. We rebuild in new spaces.
Then you lot decide to take a bunch of our public posts without our permission, you don't seem to understand we'd like some control over where our public posts go. Who we want to work with. [1]
The flippant answer of “duh just don't post,” is shallow. It's exclusionary. It shows how little danger you've had to face. How little abuse. How much you've bought into rape culture rather than consent culture. Silicon Valley is very much the result of White supremacy. The meritocracy is a myth. We're reaping the political consequences of believing that lie right now. Meanwhile, you witter on about your hurt feelings and how harsh that criticism was.
Girls. It's utterly feminine to feel that rage, that incandescence. It's feminine to want to lift that baseball bat and smash. I'm the last person to police what counts as feminine. You define what is feminine. If you want to wear Jeans, a flannel and docs, that's feminine. If you tell me you're a woman, you are. Those jeans and a flanny are extremely comfy and practical. You need good boots to walk in. Or you can wear platforms. You define your femininity. No one else should.
It's feminine to say no emphatically. It's feminine to be extremely clear on where your boundaries are and to enforce those boundaries.
And so we continue ad-nauseum.
The pushback against the opt-in, that need to reply-guy back comes from the same desire that the branks came from.
To shut up the marginalised. To humiliate them, to scold them back into compliance.
It's the desire by others to perpetuate the harassment that Folks face on the Fediverse for stating their boundaries loudly and clearly. To hide and re-frame the issues of harassment marginalised folks face. We're interfering with the Fediverse Utopia by stating our boundaries.
But I should be fair because the devs aren't the only tech folks scolding the marginalised for requesting that their human rights be respected. You only have to look at the debate around alt text and see some high-profile accounts call folks “Scolds” when all they asked for was some alt text for a screenshot.
Sometimes I suspect that if the branks were around today, some of you would be the first folks to put it over my head. To slide the bit in, to tug on the bridle and break teeth. You'd take pleasure from me not being able to speak. To express my rage.
So yes, this is a scold.
The Internet form of the Scolds Bridle is politeness, it is tone policing. It is the threat of doxing and violence. It's the anonymous message threatening legal action. The violence of the status quo online.
For the same reasons, we disrupt the idea of the status quo. No one likes to be told they are harming others. [11]
We don't like the idea that we perpetuate harm, particularly in FOSS.
I'm tired that we have to protect our safety and justify our existence in public. I'm so tired of the fact that LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folk have to hold in that rage. Even if on occasion we do want to tear it all down. So we leave and we don't take part in your community. We form our own spaces. When we work together and make those spaces ours, we enforce our boundaries. So we get criticism, when we exclude people who share harmful ideologies and when called out on it, shout how they are being abused. It's unfair! How dare we enforce our boundaries! How dare we call out your violent language!
Here's the thing. Language evolves within communities. Sometimes it makes it way out into the mainstream. When issues happen to break apart groups, it's not particularly a feature of the left or the right. To frame breakdowns in community as a purity spiral is disingenuous. Breakdowns in community happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because it is the abuser in progressive clothing. Moving from community to community hoping we never compare notes.
So we see the same story play out at scale even here on the Fediverse. The purveyors of the abusive algorithmic walled garden are here. Our own Developers are welcoming them in. Because we must have Context Collapse 3.0. Some of our Developers seem want to get in on the gold rush that they missed out on with Web 2.0. So the welcome mat rolls out. We have threads and build bridges that ignore our consent. We have our projects being invaded by the latest bro fad.
I want something new. I want hope. I want consent and freedom of association built in.
I'm so tired and angry that our human rights of free association in safety are ignored.
I'm so tired of the rapey vibes I get from developers who would prefer us to opt out rather than consider building the opt-in. It's not that hard. It's what just my toots do. You look at my mastodon profile you see a link to just my toots. Which I opted into.
Why is it so hard for some folks to get the concept of consent? Why do we keep having to do this? Holding in my rage is tiring. So I try to direct it, to use my rage at the world and to speak up for others if they haven't the energy at the moment to do so themselves. This post isn't my first scolding and nor will it be my last. [5 to 8]
If you're a guy and you're wondering what to do? Take a look at the culture around us. When you see your friends doing the reply guy thing? Call it out.
Keep calling out predatory behaviour, whether it's apps or real life. I know they are your friends, but if you're scared of losing their regard. They aren't your friends. You're their fanboy.
If you don't see what's wrong with their behaviour but you're feeling a bit attacked right now? Be brave, step back. Take a breath and listen to what folks are saying rather than reacting. Don't try to point us at the technical information. Some of us do understand the technology. We're asking you to consider the human aspect. The very real dangers many of us face, it's not something to be poo-poohed. You need to expand your experience, you need to listen to the folks at the sharp edges.
We are at a stage in history where we need to band together and I want to work with people who don't want to bridle me but to work with me.
Be braver. It's braver to take the hit to your idea of yourself, rather than punching down on the vulnerable.
[1] https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html
[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/scolds-bridle
[3] https://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html
[4] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women
[5] Ignoring Boundaries https://www.onepict.com/20230906-boundaries.html
[6] Consent and the Fediverse https://www.onepict.com/consent-fediverse20230627.html
[7] Consent and the Fediverse part 2 https://www.onepict.com/consentpartdeux20240215.html
[8] On Bears https://www.onepict.com/20240506-bear.html
[9] UN report on STEM. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160041
[10] https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/about-history-the-scold-s-bridle
[11] https://youtu.be/BxQ15OEEuLM?si=30KIw8qWQpp5d797
Polite Women Are Not Safe – Parkrose Permaculture
from cobbles
I remember the first time I found a childrens book that covered Greek mythology in the Buckie Public Library. It was illustrated, yet for a childrens book it was incredibly detailed. It was the first time I learned the word “ravished”. I didn't realise what it meant until I was a teen.
That's not true, I did not realise it's full meaning until my late teens. As a woman who's nearing her fifties, the meaning becomes more loaded as I look around the world we have.
Greek gods went around ravishing folks. Sometimes they were defined as affairs. Consent wasn't really a concept.
The Greek myths after all, were collected up by Empire and compiled. We translated the translations. We added our own interpretations to a culture that when we started writing stuff down was already patriarchal. The original meaning and true history got distorted.
It filters down to a joke sequence in the Marvel movie Thor: The dark world.
“You look ravishing” says Loki as he casts an illusion on Thor so that he looks like Sif.
It's a clanger of a joke when you consider the meaning of ravish. The casual way we use language, clangs for many of us. As if looking rape-able is a compliment.
“What were you wearing?” We ask victims of sexual assault.
This is rape culture and we're deep into it. From Zeus taking his sister wife Hera, to the Manosphere. Women and femme folks are objectified. Androgynous folks are objectified. If you're not white, you are objectified. We aren't seen as human, merely objects to have power over.
Which is what this is always about.
Men get violent when we question their right to exercise power. They need to barge in and lash out when we say no.
When Zeus went around ravishing goddesses, nymphs and humans, this was about explaining how local gods, heroes and heroines fit into the dominant culture. Even this lens of interpretation is through our own lens of empire. The colonisation and homogenisation of culture. Forced into the box of white comfort, to be appropriated at will.
Organisations have a memory, and they shape humanity. We are so easily moulded.
When I read about Echo, it was a tale about a Nymph who was punished to repeat the last word other folks said.
Hera did it to Echo, because she'd helped Zeus with another of his “affairs”. As if a Nymph or any object of Zeus attention had a choice. When you're a child you accept the framing. You ignore Hera demanding that Echo should have acknowledged her power. Betrayed the King of the Gods. As if that's a choice Echo could choose. To defy power.
Hera, the goddess of Marriage framed as a Karen.
Meanwhile Echo fell in love with Narcissus, forced to echo back what he said, while he was cursed to fall in love with his reflection. Nymph and human wasting away. A dark reflection indeed.
This is the Patriarchy. Stealing power and ravishing us. Accusing us of being the scold, and refusing to acknowledge the harm they do. Then framing that harm as being our fault. We had it coming.
Forced to echo back Men's opinions, to be docile, polite.
If we smiled more we'd find a man.
How dare we have power? How dare we be happy? How dare we not rely on them for our happiness? How dare we prefer independence?
It's only as an adult you start to question the framing of it. Some of us never get the chance to start questioning. The Patriarchy trapped us all. It harms us all.
As I've said elsewhere our political stances frame how we create our code. We cannot separate code from our politics. Our political beliefs inform our designs. How we solve a problem. How we see a problem to be solved.
Our humanity and communities inform the software that we want to use, how we communicate.
So when we hear technologists throwing around the words “Echo chamber” we should be concerned.
Last week a member of the Mastodon advisory board Scott Jenson posted a screenshot of a tech influencer's post on Bluesky and asked if Mastodon is becoming an echo chamber. He then proceeded to equate folks being unwelcome of AI enthusiasts to be the same as the existing issues we have on the Fediverse and the racism of some of our communities on the Fediverse. There was then a lot of DARVO and gaslighting. Folks weren't amused, there was discussion and many of us didn't do it in Jenson's replies. We know that is not a safe space for us.
Folks on the Fediverse are highly technical. A lot of us know what Machine Learning is. We studied it and some of us still work in the space . We know that AI, specifically LLMs is grifting hype now. Any true use of this technology is drowned out by the grifters. We will be cleaning up the mess in our projects for decades. So folks on here aren't polite.
We weren't particularly happy with the Blockchain or NFT grifter bros either.
We see the harms that LLMs are doing around us. As our columnists and politicians grasp for attention like Narcissus looking at his reflection. Allowing the LLM to reflect back our own narcissism and opinions back at us for a price.
We see the harm that LLMs and Diffusion are doing to our communities. As Milliardaires hoard our computing hardware and then welch on their deals. Personal computing is in danger of being out of the grasp of the general population.
So no. AI bro's are not welcome here.
The Fediverse is a very queer driven set of interconnected spaces. Mastodon just happens to be the most commonly used software to put your instance of like-minded folks on. The Fediverse is more than Mastodon.
The Fediverse encodes two very important human rights. Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association. Freedom of Association is the most important one.
Article 20
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
When instances defederate they are exercising the second part of Freedom of Association.
No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
This is what the Free Speech bro's want to attack when folks are very clear at pointing out that some ideologies, or technologies aren't welcome.
We criticise and we aren't nice when we do this. We won't be polite. We know that if we give an inch, Fascists will take a mile. Tech and Fascism have a long history together. We'd like to try something different.
So I don't think this echo chamber is a bad thing. I mean there are those who want the Fediverse to scale, they want it to be as big as Facebook. But there are just as many who don't think that's a good idea. I don't for one.
Some of us helped to build the internet and we can see the harms we helped to cause.
We will not help you steal others work, or enable genocides by using the companies that provide the infrastructure for governments to do harms to their peoples. We won't be polite to the people that allow the sloppy auto correct to cause extra work in an already overloaded technical community.
We will judge you. Which is what you fear really. Being an outcast and not being welcome in our spaces. The spaces we had to build for our safety.
You're not welcome here. You have plenty of other spaces online to peddle this. Leave our spaces alone.
There's a difference between ostracisation and persecution. But the tech bros sure do seem to love claiming that when we ostracise and mock them, they feel scared. But then men do become dangerous when we mock them. They push on, they gaslight us. They ask us to be “reasonable”
I'm not reasonable. I took off my bridle a long time ago.
Walk a mile in my shoes buddy. Go back to your own echo chamber.
We're the echo that's left and we don't want to reflect your narcissism.
Leave me and mine alone. We are ostracising you, you aren't welcome here. We reject you and your values they are incompatible with our values.
Take the hint.
If you destroy our spaces, we will recreate our communities and find our folks again. We have that right of Freedom of Association.
We will rebuild the internet that you broke.
Well, it was broken from the beginning really. It was never designed with consent and privacy in the first place.
Perhaps this time we can rebuild our internet with those rights in mind. With networks that have the consent built in.
We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.
Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter H Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.
H is for Hoopy: a really together guy
Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky
All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!
from Ovro
1 I took the first breath and exhaled existence.
2
Yearned and deadly is Love. Drives to, from and mad. But still... still... is yearned.
3
I've seen Death, Beautiful, waiting, Cruel, loving and caring, With all the time in the world.
#Lyrics #Poetry
from untilted dot lol blog (dotart.blog's version)
In the past, I have stated that my purpose in starting the comic strip Untilted was to capture the experience of being - not just feeling - mostly alone. Like, always meeting an endless stream of new potential acquaintances, yet never maintaining a lasting association with any among them. Always finding constant opportunities for intimacy, though somehow never truly forming a definitive union with a single soul. Always finding someone you think gets you, only to find out that they really just “get you” in a way that is incompatible with your values or personality or whatever.
But, I also wanted my webcomic to focus less on the plot-heavy “relatable” drama that is so prominent in every well-known story on the subject, and just focus more on the whole random meaninglessness of it all. Now, obviously the decision to make it a no-plot genreless thing in a world of people that expect consistent and anchored stories with the usual tropes in them will garner mixed and often negative results, especially when it comes to building an audience these days. The common criticisms are: who is this story for, who will like this, what is the purpose of this story if it doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose?
On the other hand, I have found that I tend to be more motivated and do better when there is no complicated arc to think about because there is more room for creative freedom and I don’t feel constrained by a bunch of plot devices and other details to think too deeply about. So I don’t feel that Untilted’s narrative structure is the big issue that I’m struggling with here.
Since the start of the 2026 year, I’ve been finding it increasingly harder to translate my experiences into a narrative form, even a purely visual and abstract one. You see, I have discovered some personal revelations about myself that I feel are a bit too sensitive to talk about here, but for honesty purposes I will try to explain in a way that doesn’t make me feel too exposed. In order to do this I will talk in mostly obscurities, but not so much that it seems like I’m vaguely referencing people, because I’m not having any issues with anyone right now and I haven’t been having them for a while.
Generally, I clean up (i.e. delete) some old and half-baked stuff in order to reflect new content, but I’ve noticed that I may also delete stuff even outside of Untilted for different reasons. For example, I have had to delete a personal blog post I made about my challenges with emotional regulation, because, when I tried to expand on some of the points I was trying to make about how nothing really helped me even when it seemed that way, I realized that no matter how differently I tried to approach it, I kept hitting a nerve within myself. Like I haven’t processed things sufficiently yet for me to talk about it more openly.
This does not mean that I’m hiding things on purpose or deleting them just because I’m worried about what other people think, but rather; it began to feel less like I was telling a more honest and coherent story and more like I was building a case against something in order to defend myself against a common stereotype. It felt like I was just proving myself against a perceived opposition that:
This isn’t about what other people think in the pure sense, but rather, it was more about me myself and I specifically becoming increasingly burnt out about feeling like I have to build a case that shows I’m “one of the better ones” who stay out of trouble. So I ended up deleting that post because I felt that this was a personal thing of mine that really didn’t need to be shared, and therefore my own responsibility to deal with it myself.
Not because of any stigma. Not because of any feared pushback. But because I became tired of building cases.
In addition, the reason I haven’t been consistently or efficiently updating things for the past few months is because I’ve been experiencing a resurgence of old interests, old thoughts, old desires that I thought I had gotten over by now. I’m not just casually remembering old stuff with basic nostalgia. There’s something significant about these old things coming back that’s been distracting me from my usual work, that’s been keeping me awake, etc.
The fact that I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve been suppressing it all this time, or whether I just haven’t been paying attention to the obvious signs, means that I haven’t really been fully in touch with what I know about myself and what I really want.
It doesn’t help matters that some of my feelings are being made amplified by some of the things that have been going on in the world today, the things I’ve been looking up related to them, the connections I’ve been making between what’s happening and what I’m feeling personally - well, it’s just all been so… weird.
But I think what disorients me about it the most is that I’ve noticed a strong emotional component that wasn’t there before. Most times, when I like something I’m usually just mildly interested in it or just casually like it. But in this particular case, it’s been getting more sentimental, as I've been discovering some old things that I thought I just casually liked but realized that I deeply loved all along, and I've been discovering some new things I never knew or acknowledged before. To the point where I sometimes find myself lying in bed crying about it.
It’s not like I’m considering giving up the whole Untilted thing. I’m still sticking to it; it does speak to me still. However, there’s just been a kind of moment where the most overlooked parts of myself have been demanding my attention, and I have reached a point where I can’t just ignore them anymore.
A lot about Untilted is based off of my experiences, and I usually have no problem with communicating them in the form of the most typical fun gags or some sort of deep, semi-cryptic message for the audience to gauge (I don’t really embed any subliminal or hidden messaging in my comics, I’m not very good at it). But I’ve been having a hard time doing that precisely because of how personal some of my experiences are - sometimes way too personal to the extent that I’m not able to put things in coherent words or even images, relatable or not. That or I haven’t processed things sufficiently.
Am I running out of ideas? Not really. It’s more like I’ve been having trouble executing them.
We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.
Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter G Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.
G is for Giant Anteater
Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky
All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!