I went to trans swimming last night and it was amazing.
Trans swimming happens weekly in two public swimming pools in London, one in South London, one in North East London. Each sets aside a pool for trans and gender diverse swimmers, we get our own changing room, and we have 90 minutes allocated in the evening where the pool is exclusively ours.
It is amazing.
I've been multiple times, but seeing the joy on every face to swim regardless of top surgery scars, bulging bikini bottoms, or even topless (pre surgery mascs and early HRT femmes).
But no one cares about the bodies... This is what makes it amazing. People just swim, splash, do handstands, snog, do lengths... It's just this really amazing safe space.
I can't describe how big a deal it is to feel this safe, and to have this space, and to do an activity that has such fear associated to it (trans person in a public pool and changing rooms).
If there's trans swimming near you, go swim! If you're near or in London, join us! If you're in London DM me for the WhatsApp group details for trans and gender diverse swimming.
Travel restrictions? Showing your papers and id? Does this remind you of anything? And they're sending letters out to our postal workers about these things
5,426 likes, 206 comments - joe_anybody on January 9, 2026: "Postal Worker received a letter on January 5th warning them of travel restrictions and having essential worker documents and IDβs at all times.
@adriano The color of carrots is actually fascinating bit of history. I suspect human selection is the cause of the colour and they are normally very dark purple or white.
David! Where are Carrot's brother and sisters? Also carrots, different colours. πΈ
@keeya Yes, it can be an evidence this 'encyclopedia' hallucinate information by regressing to the mean statistically since witch+black cat is a common trope.
well, funny that. AI facial recognition has already wrongly identified suspects despite the person being arrested looking nothing like the actual suspect.
Grok reminds me of this one Swedish childrens movie I saw as a kid where for complicated childrens story reason a poor family decides to pool all their money together and send the dad of the family to the circus, and it's very much implied that he took the money and fucked off to the pub, cus when he gets back he tells them all wonderous tales of all the fantastic things he saw at the circus and the whole ruse comes to a crashing halt when breathlessly describe the air acrobats as actually flying, like levitating off the ground, cus he was very clearly just bullshitting.
I think it's called "semantic leakage": you like the colour yellow -> you work as a bus driver. In this case, you are a witch by trade -> your cat is black. Can't wait for the next episode of avian intelligence! πΈ
Black carrots do exist, but it might have swapped the names and deduced the cat's colour from "black pepper", after concluding Carrot is the more girly of the names. Carrie + Charlotte = Carrot
Well, there's the old joke, that "in the dark, all cats are gray," about the idea that the appearance of sexual partners not mattering once you turn out the lights. And given Grok's other (slightly larger?) scandal this week...
If anyone has a service that will let me turn an Youtube RSS feed into a podcast, please let me know! I was using one a few years ago, but it no longer works. I would like to play the Youtube videos inside a podcast client.
@Micro SF/F by O. Westin Brings to mind one of my favorite MLP cartoons, Spike and Rarity are married with kids, and when Spike is available, the kids like to play rescue the dragon the evil princess.
"The power of the Gestapo was used to focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters, career criminals, the Sinti and Roma population, handicapped persons, homosexuals, and, above all, the Jews.
Those arrested by the Gestapo were often held without judicial process, and political prisoners throughout Germanyβand from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decreeβsimply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.
Contrary to popular perception, the Gestapo was actually a relatively small organization with limited surveillance capability; still it proved extremely effective due to the willingness of ordinary Germans to report on fellow citizens."
Right now is a really important time to be learning about the history of fascism in Europe.
Even if you think you know about Nazi Germany already, how well do you understand *how* it happened?
Did you know that Hitler's movement started initially quite violently, with him going to prison for a failed coup of government? Only after years of sitting in a cell did he organize a movement that would see him demolish democracy by *winning democratically*?
Do you know what the Night Of The Long Knifes is?
Do you know why seemingly normal, good natured Germans voted for Nazis?
Did you know that when Hitler rose to power, he did it with a *minority* of control in the Legislature? Their victory required tactical alliances with moderate Conservatives who believed that Hitler was just a man who said crazy things but wasn't serious about all of it. (Hmm, where have we heard that before?)
Did you know that the Nazi Party was basically always broke, and required heavy volunteer work by dedicated members?
Do you know what the methods of persuasion and political organizing they used?
Now is an incredibly important time to be learning about how Hitler came to power. We aren't going to see a one-to-one correlation with anything modern, but I'll tell you that you will absolutely start to notice trends.
This repository contains resources concerning unofficial Linux distribution aimed at visually impaired users. This distribution is called Vojtux. The name is based on first name of the main contributor; Vojtech. github.com/vojtapolasek/vojtux
Mastodon was recommended by a friend, so still figuring all this out. I'm a young writer trying to learn my craft by writing in public. Learn by doing, right?
Works are free under CC BY. 100% human. #introduction
In general, Trumps' knowledge is limited and he is not credible, except when he wants to satisfy his immature mind, in which case you should be cautious.
On that basis, the fact Europeans landed in what is now the USA in 1492 does not mean they owned the land, So the war of independence was not valid as you don't own the land either despite winning that war, So hand everything over to the dependents of the tribes the land was taken from.
@kevinrns Counterpoint: There are more than a hundred million people in the US attempting to defeat this Fascist crime ring. We can do more than one thing at a time. Just because people are planning for midterms (a very important task, I might add) doesnβt mean others arenβt working in hundreds of other ways to apply pressure right now.
@drahardja @kevinrns I'm seeing ever-larger anti-ICE protests, my state officials are filing molto lawsuits, and we're being quite loud about all this. Might not be enough, but it's what we can do.
If it comes to a general strike, I'll down tools and march.
@drahardja @n1xnx @kevinrns I think a lot of our national media is abdicating their responsibility to report how many large protests are happening, even in smaller towns. At the same time, it feels like the larger social media networks have become some mix of complicit, overloaded with ads, and/or filled with Nazis, bots and Nazi bots. That makes it hard for people to organize or self-report bc many people have either left those networks or don't feel they can trust those networks.
Presently, The dis-United States of America and Iran are both holding mass protests against their authoritarian regimes. All we can do from other places is wait and see which of the two succeed.
Also, the trending tab works. It has been a while since I was on Twitter, but I vividly remember the "For You" tab being worthless for finding people I wanted to follow.
And when you see something come through your feed boosted by someone you've chosen to follow but written by someone else, consider clicking through to that person's profile. If you seem to have some things in common, perhaps you'd like to follow them, or maybe you see other interesting things or people in the things *they* have boosted. This is how you build out your network. There's no algorithm to do it for you, meaning you get to make the choices, not someone else.
@oberstenzian People don't put up with bullshit for long here. If they try bringing their bullshit here, they will quickly find themselves banned or isolated.
Once they realize that their bullshit can't be forced on anyone, they'll run to Threads or somewhere else.
and if the #grok porn bot scandal was the final straw for you, good on ya but please take the time to talk to anyone you know who may still be reluctant to leave X and encourage them to follow you here and leave that shit show behind.
Reminder for my supporters on Patreon, the switch to monthly subscriptions is happening next week. Don't miss your last chance to adjust your pledge. The first "monthly" will be charged on Feb 1st. Update now to avoid surprises! (and thank you for your support!)
@realtegan Thank you for your support! Yes, the 'monthly' label will be converted by Patreon next week. Each tiers will be converted to 1:1 , so if you donate 3$ per episode, it will be converted to 3$ monthly next week.
Furious AI Users Say Their Prompts Are Being Plagiarized
Move over, Ship of Theseus β thereβs a new paradoxical thought experiment in town. Some power users of generative AI have grown so comfortable with their new tools β especially image-generating ones β that they now feel entitled to the specific prompts they use to churn out slop, as if the entire technology wasnβt based on the work of human artists that had been ingested without consent. Consider Amira Zairi, a self-professed βAI educatorβ and βambassadorβ for Adobe, LeonardoAI, and TripoAI, who posted a scathing rant this week on X-formerly-Twitter to her 49,000 followers. Her complaint? Other people were βplagiarizingβ her unique AI prompts. ββMake your own promptsβ isnβt advice. Itβs basic integrity,β Zairi wrote, using syntax that reads suspiciously like text generated by ChatGPT. βIβm honestly fed up. Changing a few words, renaming the prompt, or slightly rephrasing it doesnβt make it yours, the idea is still the same, the vibe is the same, and the results are obviously similar.β βAnd no, this isnβt about one or two people, and it didnβt happen once!!!!β Zairi continued. βCreating your own prompts is actually easier than copying someone elseβs work! Try it.β #AiSlop #AI Futurism
Friends and family of the 43-year-old man who was fatally shot by a Department of Homeland Security agent in Northridge on New Year's Eve gathered on Sunday to demand accountability and hold a candlelight vigil for their lost loved one.
![Website screenshot of Grokipedia with two information manually outlined on the top in red "black cat" and "Fact-checked"
David Revoy
Fact-checked by Grok 5 days ago
David Revoy (born 1981) is a French self-taught digital artist, illustrator, webcomic creator, and instructor renowned for his exclusive use of free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) since 2009, working on a GNU/Linux system. He is best known for creating the ongoing webcomic series Pepper & Carrot, a libre and open-source fantasy story about a young witch and her black cat, which debuted in May 2014 and has been translated into multiple languages through community efforts. Revoy's career spans over two decades of freelance work, beginning with traditional painting and street portraiture in his late teens before transitioning to digital media around 2003. His expertise includes illustration, concept art, art direction, storytelling, and teaching, with clients worldwide in publishing, gaming, animation, and education. Notable projects include serving as art director for the Blender Foundation's open movie Sintel (2009), contributing concept art to films like Tears of Steel and Cosmos Laundromat [...]](https://blog.taursnd.haus/photo/preview/640/7553582 "Website screenshot of Grokipedia with two information manually outlined on the top in red \"black cat\" and \"Fact-checked\"
David Revoy
Fact-checked by Grok 5 days ago
David Revoy (born 1981) is a French self-taught digital artist, illustrator, webcomic creator, and instructor renowned for his exclusive use of free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) since 2009, working on a GNU/Linux system. He is best known for creating the ongoing webcomic series Pepper & Carrot, a libre and open-source fantasy story about a young witch and her black cat, which debuted in May 2014 and has been translated into multiple languages through community efforts. Revoy's career spans over two decades of freelance work, beginning with traditional painting and street portraiture in his late teens before transitioning to digital media around 2003. His expertise includes illustration, concept art, art direction, storytelling, and teaching, with clients worldwide in publishing, gaming, animation, and education. Notable projects include serving as art director for the Blender Foundation's open movie Sintel (2009), contributing concept art to films like Tears of Steel and Cosmos Laundromat [...]")
Khurram Wadee
in reply to π΄ Seph π πΎ • • •like this
Andrew Pam and π΄ Seph π πΎ like this.