Ghost of Hope

No TERFs or other fash. She/her

Public Key

npub1klenfdxcr4rfp4jlfzgsr3e7lzuy9gx9vlzdxfrergzkg3jn2mjs2rdgh7

NIP-05 Address

grayface_ghost_at_tech.lgbt@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst0ue5knvp635s6e053ygpcul03wzz5rzk03xny3u35ptygef4degr0ypne

Author Public Key

npub1klenfdxcr4rfp4jlfzgsr3e7lzuy9gx9vlzdxfrergzkg3jn2mjs2rdgh7

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Last Notes

2024-10-19 10:25:35

Subtooting because I don't want to ruin an excellent existing thread about how democracies fail - usually not in spectacular fascist insurrections but rather in slow, gradual, relentless small shifts to authoritarianism, and then through deliberate design or corruption into small-scale societal breakdown that serves to enhance the power of the leadership.
I have far less personal experience than those posting but I agree, from what I've seen.
What worries me though is determining the point at which the process can be reversed without violence. I fear the US might have already tipped. Biden had 4 years to undo the fascist takeover in the US and SCOTUS is still far-right, MAGA is stronger than ever. Labour in the UK is continuing the Tory ideological slide into rights erosion and oligarchy. You can argue neither had/have much room to manoeuvre - but that's more scary than to say it's deliberate.

2024-10-10 08:28:07

Subtoot but I'm left wondering if GPs are anything more than glorified chatbots with powers of referral to actual doctors.
Now, my sister is a GP and I know damn well how extensive their training is. But it seems many of them think they're incapable of prescribing hormone therapy for trans folk because it's so difficult and complex.
Bollocks. You're either transphobic or you're scared of the GMC going after you without the arse-cover of "NHS consultant gender medicine expert made me do it"
🤮🤮

2024-10-05 09:01:58

I really didn't see this coming. 22 billion for carbon capture and storage? The only things preventing us completely ditching fossil fuels right now in the UK are lack of energy storage and the need for grid upgrades.
Environmental considerations aside, large scale renewables are essentially free for decades once installed. That should be obvious even to Starmer. They need no fuel. That's the point.
I strongly suspect this is corruption at work. I can't see any other reason to take that much money and plough it into a technology that is virtually certain to go the way nuclear has gone - and by that I mean, it will become more and more expensive as renewables become cheaper and cheaper.

2024-10-03 18:20:00

Content warning: dumping manure on the US. I have a purpose though, I'm not attacking US frens.
Original intent of the US: Freedom.
This is a complex idea, but I don't think any other country has been founded on the principle. I applaud it. Of course it was flawed from the start, for various reasons but the most obvious one was you lot didn't end overt slavery until a century or so after you rebelled against the Sackville-Bagginses or whatever my current alleged-rulers were called back then, and you were largely shit at implemented the ending for at least another century.
What happened though? You turned a noble ideal into at best worship of an old document and at worst a christofascist pseudo-empire little better than the one you left.
Sort yourself out, lads. A nation founded on freedom might be a myth but it's a myth that could have become reality, as many of them do. You're not going to get there by signing up to suck the mushroom, if you see what I mean.

2024-10-03 17:56:07

Today's self-care exercise:
Blocking any fucker posting the news about Rosie Duffield resigning as if she's someone to be applauded.
Especially ones who say oh no, I'm sorry, I didn't realise she was friends with the Kennedy loon. Yeah we get it, you were fine with the transphobia.

2024-09-27 10:05:05

After watching Mehdi Hassan take on Eylon Levi the other day, I wondered if I could come up with a better plan for Israel to have followed after Oct 7. Because their spokespeople keep pleading, what else could we do but try to destroy Hamas? Here are my thoughts.
You already have a secure border between Gaza and the rest of Israel. It should not be beyond the capability of the IDF to prevent those kinds of incursions. Given the firepower of the IDF it should be a rather easy task.
Israel is not helpless against missile attacks. Maybe they could have ramped up defences against them, if missile assaults from Gaza were such a problem.
Supply chains into Gaza should be relatively easy to control. Some stuff will get through. But given the unprecedented control of the border Israel has had, it's a complete fail that Hamas had enough weapons to last longer than a week
Making the West Bank a success instead of stealing it would undermine Hamas politically.
Lots of options lads, big fail

2024-09-12 09:40:23

I broke my old phone case and the screen protector was cracked, so I spent ten quid and now I have what looks like a new phone
Checkmate upgrade cycle

2024-09-11 21:32:00

Remember kids, austerity is a political choice in this country. We have a strong currency and can print money as needed within certain limits.
Reeves is going to kill pensioners because she's either a fool or she's evil. And all but one of the Labour MPs gave her either tacit or active approval.
We've been saying it for years. They. Are. Tories. But you wouldn't listen

2024-09-09 16:28:23

- reply

@npub198t…hasj
Bad Neil
* boops nose with newspaper *
;)

2024-09-09 09:34:55

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/winter-fuel-payment-cut-labour-deaths-b2609340.html

2024-08-28 08:45:06

Hypothetical discussion
Starmer: We have no money to improve infrastructure
Me: Print some
Starmer: But if we do that there'll be too much money circulating and this will cause inflation
Me: Tax it back from the rich
Starmer: Rachel help
Reeves: What is this sorcery
Me: Modern Monetary Theory, I thought you were supposed to be an economist
Reeves: * pulls a giant chequebook labelled "UK ECONOMY" out of her handbag *

2024-08-28 08:36:24

Reminder that when Starmer says nobody knew about the so-called black hole in the public finances before the election, Stephen Flynn had actually brought it up in Parliament and Owen Jones had been talking about it through the entire election.

2024-08-17 14:00:18

It would be really really funny if Musk lost control of Tesla in order to keep Xitter afloat, and the new owner just threw all the nonsense like self-drive and locking people in and spying on drivers and random fires in the bin, and it became a successful company again based on good engineering and long EV range while Xitter got banned from Europe and became Truth Social Mk 2

2024-08-10 10:20:12

Apparently the police have restored order.
Funny that, it looks to me as though the countless thousands of protestors have restored order by frightening the fash into staying home.
Thanks to those who've done it. I tried to get to one but I'm struggling with things right now. You're heroes.

2024-08-09 08:11:32

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@npub1wxw…u5jn
Apologies all for boosting a link to Xitter but I thought this was important enough to break my rules. Thanks Katie

2024-08-03 11:33:16

People talking about failure to integrate, I understand. There are people out there who hate British values and just want to loot and wreck the country, bringing their ideology where it's not wanted.
But these people can be rehabilitated. Just look at Portillo who now wears bright clothes and makes charming documentaries about trains. Other Tory Ministers can be deprogrammed too. There's no need to send them to Rwanda.

2024-08-03 11:27:36

Silly me, I thought being a Nazi was about as anti-British as you could get, at least within our national self-written story
But it appears some of the Tories are instead blaming having black and brown people here. Some of the Tories doing that are black or brown themselves. Some of them are called Kemi Badenoch

2024-07-25 09:24:16

You have to remember that there are always degrees of bigotry.
When someone like Wes Streeting claims to be an ally to trans peeps despite trying to make permanent a ban on healthcare for trans kids - a ban which will kill children - and advocating revoking sections of the GRA and revoking statutory guidance on the EA, and parrotting tervert attack lines to the media, he means that he doesn't want us killed.
Directly.
Yet.
It's similar to the genocide of disabled folk that the Nazis carried out. "We're doing what's best for them." 🤮
Fuck you Wesley

2024-07-24 10:45:58

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@npub198t…hasj
Eeek

2024-07-24 09:50:53

Think I've screwed up my backups for over a year. It's not been updating some changed files but it's added new ones happily...
Guess I'm reading up on rsync today

2024-07-23 20:08:32

Wait. Only seven rebels?
We told you to vote Green.

2024-07-20 10:38:14

I don't know what to make of the whole Just Stop Oil thing.
I don't think I've ever criticised a jury before but their primary moral duty in my view is nullification and they failed miserably.
It feels like the US electors in 2016. Their primary moral duty is precisely to stop a criminal potential dictator like Trump from becoming President and they failed.
These are key moments in the collapse of a system, it seems to me. I hope I'm wrong. Starmer could undo this one very easily but will he? He has strong authoritarian instincts.

2024-07-19 10:15:03

I'm old enough to remember when IT departments made their own decisions on when to apply updates

2024-07-17 11:20:54

Tories are such pricks. Desperately afraid of freedom of movement even being discussed. Why?
Freedom of movement was the best thing about being in the EU. Tories are a bunch of fucking xenophobes and we left them in charge for 14 years.
And Labour are not going to fix it because they're scared of... What, exactly? Of upsetting Reform? Upsetting Reform just shows you're doing something worthwhile
#ukpol

2024-07-16 08:16:56

Morning all
For the last year or so I've been using the dreaded Dropbox to move stuff between my PC (main driver, Mint) and my Android phone and an Android tablet.
It's convenient and it works and it's putting my files on external storage and I don't want them there.
Best practice suggestions? In Ye Goode Older Days I'd just open a share on the Mint box and the androids would be able to read and write it but it's been a nightmare. At one point I was running FTP servers on the Androids just to get this going.
There must be an easier way.

2024-07-08 12:20:16

Labour seem to be careful to avoid any suggestions that freedom of movement might return.
Why? The only people in the country that still think FoM was a bad thing are simultaneously whining about losing their Spanish residency

2024-07-05 10:54:12

I'm actually looking forward to seeing if the centrist melts were right and Starmer was just cosplaying an evil Tory scumbag in order to get into power. He cosplayed a socialist to get the leadership, after all.
I'm not holding my breath but it would be great if I've been wrong for years.
#ukpol

2024-07-05 10:32:48

- reply

@npub1fvt…83fu
His wig may have to be forcibly removed from his seat, however.

2024-07-05 10:31:51

Happy Prime Ministerless-time
Remember it only comes for a few minutes every few years
#ukpol

2024-07-02 10:04:38

Starmer is in favour of genital inspections before being allowed to piss.
Seriously, there's no other way to read what he said.
Don't vote Labour, there are plenty of other ways to get the Tories out. If you're in a close marginal, I won't condemn you for holding your nose but seriously, if you're still an actual Labour supporter now then you're no trans ally.
#UKpol #TransRights

2024-06-28 08:46:34

Sheesh. I didn't expect Starmer to go to war with Tennant too.
Even though he's a Tory. I guess people need reminding that he's also a transphobe.

2024-06-15 10:08:34

Subtle language point: I get wary when I see someone using "his or her" and "he or she" as pronouns.
These are in widespread use so they're valid English but to me when a native speaker uses them, that's starting to indicate transphobia. The trans-friendly singular pronouns for someone of undetermined gender are they/there.
Example: They were wearing a cool hat and I liked their shoes
Not: He or she was wearing a cool hat and I liked his or her shoes

2024-06-13 07:13:35

What did Brexit voters hope to get out of it? Seriously.
We know what the rich wanted, they wanted to evade new tax evasion laws coming from the EU.
Everything else was complete rubbish and it was complete rubbish before we did it. And anybody that spent more than ten seconds looking at the facts, knew it was complete rubbish.

2024-06-12 09:22:42

Parts of the US are making laws that ban wearing masks even if you are clinically vulnerable.
Like me.
This is eugenics. It's an attempt to kill the disabled. Wonder how long it'll be before the Heritage Foundation manage to bribe British politicians into doing it here?

2024-06-07 08:47:18

- reply

@npub19lt…qfjk
Thanks.
Did either of them propose actually doing anything significant?

2024-06-07 08:07:04

#ukpol
Have either of the Tory parties said anything about the climate emergency yet?
I understand it's not all that important that half the planet is going to be uninhabitable in a few decades/s but I thought it might be at least worth a footnote

2024-06-06 09:09:43

Interesting that Spain and South Africa, countries that have experienced full-on fascism and apartheid in living memory, are supporting the ICJ case
There can't be a connection surely
Meanwhile in the USA, sanctions for members of the court because genocide is fine when friends do it and we can't have people trying to stop it

2024-06-03 10:45:04

Random musing
Has anybody looked into gravitational potential energy storage systems for your wind and solar?
As in, using a motor to raise a large weight, then using that to drive a generator as it falls, on a still dark night.

2024-05-31 13:25:05

I don't know why people keep saying locking Trump up wouldn't help.
He's not a tough guy. He's an old bloke who's never done a day's work in his life and who ran from the draft. He's used to shitting on golden toilets and having his arse wiped for him by his servants.
He'll be eaten alive in a prison. He won't come out the same person, if he comes out at all.

2024-05-24 17:13:18

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@npub198t…hasj
* wipes sweat off brow *

2024-05-24 17:09:56

A fedizen I like and respect advises people to mute if someone's in the feed too much, and now I don't want to post at all. Because I'm probably that post-too-much-one.
Autistic life innit.
Amusing though that my phone corrects fedizen to geezer

2024-05-23 09:16:56

Anybody got experience of buying the sort of EVs you can pick up now in the UK for 5 or 6 grand? Old-shape Leafs etc.
Nay-sayers will have you believe they're down to 500 metres battery range and smell of poo but I'm not convinced

2024-05-20 09:24:54

You know, it could have been fun if we'd developed AI that was about accurate indexing and retrieval of the world's body of knowledge, instead of just pretending to be the pissed bloke in the corner of the pub that thinks he knows everything and has seriously racist tendencies

2024-05-12 15:53:13

Expect I'm losing Scottish followers right now because I care less about supporting a party that wants Indy but is useless for getting it, more than human rights for queer people.
Shrug. I lost a lot of friends when I transitioned. Lost a lot of friends when I left Labour after Starmer turned out to be a transphobic liar. I'll cope, somehow

2024-05-12 08:05:26

I haven't properly thought this through but modern corporations are strangely analogous to what people used to think of supernatural entities.
Some of the comparisons, particularly regarding wage slavery and binding contracts are obvious but have you ever stopped and considered that corporations have no objective reality in the physical realm? They are subjective consensual hallucinations given power through the collective mind, and if they're malevolent - which they always are to varying degrees - then they're practically the definition of a demon.

2024-04-26 14:26:37

Hoping for some free advice in English law, and I'm aware that would worth what I paid for it but still...
If I was to take on a contract as an independent consultant operating as a sole trader, and a HMRC investigation later decided that the contract was actually disguised employment, who would be liable for employers NI? This client is trying to get me to indemnify them against that.
I don't think IR35 strictly applies because there's no intermediary.
Tempted to tell them to feck off but...

2024-04-22 13:41:53

Amusing Pond differences in English:
I just heard an American lass refer to another woman as "spunky"
Excuse me, I seem to be channelling Beavis and Butthead

2024-04-21 13:00:42

Anybody know if you're allowed to use Bluetooth headphones and the like on Ryanair planes?

2024-04-16 14:25:02

If I was asked to be a Trump juror I'd jump at the chance.
Would I be objective? Hell no, send him down now, don't bother with the trial
What's that you say? Threats from the far right? Babe, I'm trans, that's old news
Seriously though, someone just observed that this is a mob trial and it's not surprising they're struggling.

2024-04-10 15:26:02

Seen more transphobes on the Fedi today than I have in the years ive been here.
Lots of "I support trans rights for adults but OMFG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" going on.

2024-04-10 11:42:58

Worth emphasising that the Heritage Foundation Tories and their useful idiots, are primarily going after trans rights to remove bodily autonomy arguments so they can then go after abortion.
Cis folk, wake the hell up. The USA has shown us exactly what their game is.

2024-03-29 10:30:17

Just laughed out loud.
I actually read a post that said "I don't see any threat from threads and I'm sure if they were found to be doing anything bad the fediverse would deal with it"
The Rohingya want a word mate.

2024-03-26 10:42:24

- reply

@npub198t…hasj
What's under the blanket?

2024-03-22 17:47:19

Opinion: Nobody should have a veto at the UN.

2024-03-15 18:34:52

Recs please
I'd like to have a go at VR. Not a lot of room here and I'm a black belt in taekwondo so probably best not to have a setup or games where I can be leaping about kicking stuff - the telly thanks you in advance as does the front room window.
I do most of my gaming on a PS4 (sic) and the rest on the PC.
I'm allergic to Meta products

2024-03-08 13:32:56

Anybody know of any good dictation software that's free, ideally FOSS-ish, runs on Android and/or Linux?
I've got a bunch of documents in PDF that I want to be searchable and OCR isn't cutting it. I could type them in I suppose but there's a lot of text and reading them would save my fingertips...

2024-02-18 20:46:30

Anybody know where I can get hold of some good, old-fashioned text-based adventure games for PC?
I just have a hankering to play one.

2024-02-14 21:34:39

I reckon the streaming channels are all having problems because there's too many of them. Subscribers are being shared out now.
Maybe they should all get together and have a single platform where they could put their shows, for a reasonable price.
They could call it something like Fletnix

2024-02-08 21:35:03

These anti-protest laws are, I think, not going to stop protests. They're going to make protests violent.
If half a million people take to the streets and it's illegal, are they going to stand by and passively let the police arrest them?
The Battles of Cable Street and Stockton High Street weren't against the fash. They were against the police protecting them.

2024-02-04 19:25:07

- reply

@npub1xjt…9ml2 wait....
In the Torygraph?
Wow.

2023-12-24 16:39:00

Seeing some vague posting about Spain removing queer protections, anybody got a good link or more details?

2023-07-03 17:50:45

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@npub1fwl…6a65 That was reality, we've clearly been locked in someone's idea of a VR joke since at least 1997.
I present as evidence the undeniable fact that politics in Britain and the US from 2016 have been written by either a novelist who one day aspires to be as talented as Nadine Dorries, or far more likely a disgruntled gamedev trying to throw everyone out of our suspended disbelief

2023-07-01 16:30:36

- reply

@npub1hpc…hjn3 Dad joke level 8 approved

2023-06-26 17:51:17

On the Facebook thing...
They're not trying to join the Fedi. They're trying to bring us into the FB/Insta sphere. You can argue that because it's AP-based that's not the case but I think you'd be wrong. The power imbalance is at least three orders of magnitude.
I'm in the Fediverse because I need social media and community that's essentially free from fascists and their pals, and from corporate manipulation of algorithms to shove them onto my feed whether I want them there or not. Ideally I want this freedom at the wider network level which I effectively have now because of great instances like this that have robust de-fed policies.
If I want to be on Facebook I'll reactivate my sleeping account. If I want to be on Instagram I'll use the account I probably have there but haven't used since the 14th century.
Frankly I think anyone who thinks they're acting in good faith is so gullible they should check their own shoelaces right now because I promise I just tied them together

2023-06-26 07:55:37

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 Oh, yeah. True.
I suppose I filed those in "speculation accounts" - I meant the kind of feeds that were doing basically "X reported happening: pic/vid evidence and link here"

2023-06-26 07:47:11

- reply

@npub1hpc…hjn3 I must have been online for too long, because I basically looked for accounts posting reports and not "analysis" and that turned out to be 99% true.
It was interesting seeing how far behind events the mainstream was though.

2023-06-17 13:19:10

I'm old enough to remember when a Google search would find what you wanted.
That's not facetious, it's been a few years since I could reliably find what I was looking for on the big G without getting to page 20 or 30. The latest "AI" shenanigans are really the final nail in the coffin, not the start of the problem.
We're basically already back to Web 1.0 where you need to know which sites to look at for decent answers. YouTube videos are better for tech answers than Google for example and that says it all.
"Don't be evil" - mate, you basically killed search, perhaps the single most powerful feature that appeared on the Web forever.
I'm actually old enough to remember when effective searching for technical answers was manually looking through a list of newsgroups for the right one in which to ask the question. If you got really lucky it was moderated and if the cybergods were with you the answer was in the FAQ and you didn't have to get flamed for asking

2023-06-13 10:53:05

Tech frens, where's the best place to look for programming jobs in the UK these days?

2023-06-12 15:39:42

I just watched five seconds of the debate on whether or not I should be allowed to exist and that's enough. I'm-Yer-Nazi or whatever her name is was referencing LGBA and Bindel without a hint of shame.
Back to learning Portuguese

2023-06-10 09:11:05

I'm about to change my mobile number because it's being spoofed. I've now got to go through my logins and try to find all the sites using 2FA by text. Always hated the idea.
Anybody got suggestions for forcing them to use something better?

2023-06-08 12:31:41

Starmer supporter starter kit
1. Pledges have to adapt to circumstances, the dictionary definition of a pledge isn't what Starmer means when he uses the word. It actually means "(n) any old thing you say to get elected and then throw in the bin"
2. When Starmer does something vile it's not because he's vile. It's actually part of a brilliant strategic 4D-chess campaign and as soon as he's in power you'll find out he's really a wonderful person and not the fascist he's been playing in order to subvert democracy
3. Anybody left of the Tory right is a plant of the Tory right

2023-06-03 12:45:39

I see where you Tories are coming from with Capital Gains Tax. People should be allowed to leave their savings to their children.
I'll compromise with you. Allow people to inherit a million quid without paying a penny in CGT, and in exchange increase the rate to 99% on any amount above that.
Excuse me sir, you seem to have turned purple and steam is coming out of your ears, are you okay?

2023-04-24 15:33:32

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#[0] You misunderstand. I can't see the post of mine that you replied to, on any device I have access to right now.
Haven't figured out why yet and I'm a software engineer :D

2023-04-24 09:04:14

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#[0] The thread chain is broken, possibly from the blocking, and I can't see the context.
By "these people" do we mean the ones who are actively seeking to enact laws that would have me executed for existing?

2023-04-23 21:32:23

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#[0] #[1] #[2] It's fascinating how you're arguing for the inclusion of people who want me, my child, my partner and my friends dead but you block everyone who even slightly and politely disagrees with you, as if our opinions are worthless.
I assume I'll be blocked now for politely questioning your magnificence so perhaps you could tell your remaining followers how that works? You just seem to want an audience rather than a discussion and the audience you seem to want is useless centrist melts who won't say boo to a fascist.