Toots 🦣 from 11/20 to 11/24

As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them for use under a free license, and I notice. Most have not, or I don’t notice. But I now add my commentary here, where I don’t feel restricted by message length.

Also, I don’t generally attach pictures to posts with quotations.

9:02 – Mon 20 November 2023

Image Not Shown: Used syringes viewed at a needle exchange clinic where users can pick up new syringes and other clean items for those dependent on heroin, on February 6, 2014, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Overdose prevention centers don’t lead to more crime from Futurity

The researchers found no significant changes in violent crimes, property crimes recorded by police, 911 calls for crime, medical incidents, or 311 calls regarding drug use or “unsanitary” conditions observed in the vicinity of the OPCs, and observed significant reductions in calls for homeless-related conditions.

Hashtags: #Addiction #Crime

It turns out that safety and security don’t cause street crime.

As I commonly suggest, I believe that more or less everybody already knows this, but I still appreciate having a quantitative study that I can point at.

12:01 – Mon 20 November 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

Black Elk

Hashtags: #Quotes #NativeAmericanHeritage

9:05 – Tue 21 November 2023

Content Warning: Nonconsensual Pornography

Image Not Shown: Civitai screenshot

Andreessen Horowitz Invests in Civitai, Which Profits From Nonconsensual AI Porn from 404 Media

A16z regularly announces investments the company is making on its site, but has not publicly announced its investment in Civitai yet.

Hashtags: #VCInvestment #AI #Consent

In case you had any illusions of these sorts of companies working for the public good, or even trying to avoid actively abetting illegal actions…

12:04 – Tue 21 November 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

If our social arrangements were so adjusted that each person could follow that calling in life which they are by nature adapted for, what a great gainer society as a whole would be.

Lucy Parsons

Hashtags: #Quotes #NativeAmericanHeritage

9:01 – Wed 22 November 2023

Image Not Shown: Screenshot from BBC YouTube channel show 'How colonialism killed my culture's gender fluidity'

Undoing colonialism in gender diversity discourse in the Philippines from Global Voices

It is quite saddening that a lot of self-proclaimed allies will chant ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights!’ and ‘Drag is Political!’ until situations call them to be actually political and pick sides.

Hashtags: #Philippines #HumanRights #LGBT #History

I hope that this story—the issue behind it, not necessarily this particular article—gets more attention.

12:06 – Wed 22 November 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

In the beginning the world was covered with darkness. There was no sun, no day. The perpetual night had no moon or stars.

Geronimo

Hashtags: #Quotes #NativeAmericanHeritage

9:06 – Thu 23 November 2023

Image Not Shown: A person reading at a desk at a library

The Humanities Are Priceless from OtherWords

As a Mississippi Republican official explained, under this minimized and monetized concept of higher education, state spending on college degree programs will require that they match the needs of the economy.

Hashtags: #Humanities #College

This feels like a difficult problem to crack, because so many students in technical fields would rather avoid humanities courses, anyway. And yet, I probably got more out of a random literature or history class than half my programming classes, because the latter often covered the same ground for weeks at a time.

12:05 – Thu 23 November 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Chief Joseph

Hashtags: #Quotes #NativeAmericanHeritage

9:04 – Fri 24 November 2023

Image Not Shown: people dressed in skins outside a cave, a woman seated at a fire

Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ — physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a gendered division of labor in prehistoric times from The Conversation

Fossil evidence shows females and males experienced the same bony traumas across their bodies — a signature of a hard life hunting deer, aurochs and wooly mammoths.

Hashtags: #Archaeology #Gender

Much as the study about drug treatment facilities, I believe that we’ve known this for quite some time from other evidence, but I still appreciate having more information to validate the conclusion that early humans didn’t actually have strict gender roles.

12:02 – Fri 24 November 2023

Quoted on Mastodon

Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.

Tecumseh

Hashtags: #Quotes #NativeAmericanHeritage

Bonus

Because it accidentally became a tradition early on in the life of the blog, I drop any additional articles that didn’t fit into the one-article-per-day week, but too weird or important to not mention, here.

Image Not Shown: Screenshots of Faircamp lined up behind its logo

Faircamp is a Free Bandcamp Alternative from We Distribute

Install some software on your server, point it at the folder of the music you want to sell, and your site’s pages will build themselves

While not a perfect solution, because it looks like it has no route to discoverability, this looks like a fairly solid system for handling sales. And for all the “alternative to Bandcamp” projects that I’ve seen over the last few weeks, surprisingly few of them have an interest in helping musicians sell…

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If you appreciate this sort of content, then you should probably follow me on Mastodon to get it as early as possible…and feel free to reply, at least to the good stuff.

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Credits: Header image is Circular diagrams showing the division of the day and of the week from a manuscript drafted during the Carolingian Dynasty.