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[personal profile] andrewducker Wed 2025-04-23 12:00
Interesting Links for 23-04-2025
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[syndicated profile] questionable_content_feed Tue 2025-04-22 21:43
Sounds Plausible Enough
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[syndicated profile] hacker_news_daily_feed Wed 2025-04-23 00:00
Daily Hacker News for 2025-04-22

The 10 highest-rated articles on Hacker News on April 22, 2025 which have not appeared on any previous Hacker News Daily are:

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[syndicated profile] schneier_no_tracking_feed Tue 2025-04-22 16:03
Android Improves Its Security

Posted by Bruce Schneier

Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting idle for three days. iPhones have had this feature for a while; it’s nice to see Google add it to their phones.

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[personal profile] lnr Tue 2025-04-22 13:41
Letter to my MP

A letter to Pippa Heylings, Lib Dem MP for South Cambs, about the Supreme Court trans ruling

Attn: Pippa Heylings MP
South Cambridgeshire

Tuesday 22 April 2025

Eleanor Blair
[Address redacted]
CB22 5AE

eleanorb@gmail.com

Dear Pippa Heylings,

I'm afraid I think this message may be a little incoherent at times, but I needed to write now, while it is still fresh.

I am enormously concerned by the recent Supreme Court ruling on the use of the word "woman" in the Equality Act, and rather more so at the disproportionate response to this ruling by various organisations. In particular today both the BBC and the Independent are reporting that the minister for equalities Bridget Phillipson has said that trans people should use the toilets matching their biological sex, rather than their gender identity, and the alarming news last week that the British Transport Police now state that trans women (males) should be search by male police officers in future.

Someone asked me earlier today if I would be happy with males using women's changing rooms, and this was my response:

---

Yes. As a cis woman, a "biological woman" if you insist, I am absolutely happy to share changing rooms with trans women or with young children who are not independent enough to change on their own in the men's changing room.

And I also think *all* changing rooms should have at least some locking cubicles for privacy regardless of this opinion because not everyone can face being naked in front of other people even of the same sex. For all sorts of reasons from embarrassment to periods to colostomy bags to religion to previous trauma.

Stop thinking this is a gotcha, it isn't.

I'm *not* happy that British Transport Police have immediately officially changed their policy to state that trans women must be searched by male police officers. Or that the government are now saying the NHS must reconsider same sex spaces too.

It was *always* possible to exclude trans women from women-only spaces *if there was a legitimate and proportional reason to do so*. It seems that this judgment has shifted the bar considerably as to what is being considered proportional and that worries me, not just for "biological" women who will inevitably be caught in the cross fire (don't tell me it won't happen, it already does) but also for trans women and trans men and non-binary people who just want to get on with their lives in peace and not have to campaign for third spaces which don't currently exist in order to do so.

---

I don't know what you can do here, but I would like to see you speak out against this over-reaction to the Supreme Court ruling.

Yours sincerely,

Eleanor Blair
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[personal profile] andrewducker Tue 2025-04-22 12:00
Interesting Links for 22-04-2025
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[syndicated profile] questionable_content_feed Mon 2025-04-21 21:43
Cryptid Sighting

she probably would've done it by now

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[syndicated profile] hacker_news_daily_feed Tue 2025-04-22 00:00
Daily Hacker News for 2025-04-21

The 10 highest-rated articles on Hacker News on April 21, 2025 which have not appeared on any previous Hacker News Daily are:

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[syndicated profile] xkcd_feed Mon 2025-04-21 04:00
Air Fact
'Wow, that must be why you swallow so many of them per year!' 'No, that's spiders. You swallow WAY more ants.'
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[personal profile] andrewducker Mon 2025-04-21 09:56
Photo cross-post


In the future all zoo trips will look like this.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

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[personal profile] andrewducker Mon 2025-04-21 12:00
Interesting Links for 21-04-2025
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[syndicated profile] questionable_content_feed Sun 2025-04-20 22:01
Marten's Finest Hour

the most infuriating punchline I have ever written...so far

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[syndicated profile] hacker_news_daily_feed Mon 2025-04-21 00:00
Daily Hacker News for 2025-04-20

The 10 highest-rated articles on Hacker News on April 20, 2025 which have not appeared on any previous Hacker News Daily are:

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[personal profile] kaberett Sun 2025-04-20 22:53
vital functions

Reading. I continue to make slow progress with both What An Owl Knows (Jennifer Ackerman) and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke).

Writing. Grumpy e-mails to Labour, mostly? Grumpy e-mails to Labour. Oh, and separately to the DWP courtesy of My UC Journal.

Playing. I have tripped and fallen back into 2048. I do not know why I have tripped and fallen thus. There are other things I would rather be doing. Brain whyyy.

I Love Hue current status: just started The Alchemy/Knowledge/12.

Cooking. Two new-to-us recipes from East: caramelised fennel and carrot salad with mung beans and herbs, of which I am a fan but about which A is a bit meh; and Amritsari pomegranate chickpeas, with the decaf English Breakfast I bought the other week, which I also quite liked but A was mildly dubious of.

Today has featured a different Welsh cake recipe, from one of the charity-shop books I acquired for the purposes of the special interest in EYB indexing. This one includes honey and ground mixed spice; I am decidedly disconcerted by how much they taste like Wrong Texture Mince Pies when cool.

Eating. ... yeah it's been A Migrainey Week, and has consequently contained two rounds of Wagamama. TRAGICALLY I decided on the first of these to branch out and try Not My Usual. Not My Usual turned out to contain The Dread Mayonnaise (I had been lulled into a false sense of security by the number of things called "slaw" I had recently encountered that did not contain mayo). It was mostly salvageable...

Exploring. ADVENTURES in VAN HIRE for the purposes of moving SHED. This involved heading out to Hatfield, because the one fifteen minutes up the road was already Thoroughly Booked. We got to observe MORE FLOWERS and lo they were good.

... I think that's it? I think that's it. (A also went on another adventure to acquire roof box and appropriate rack, but I stayed at home for that one.)

Making & mending. I have not, technically, actually resumed A's pair of gloves, BUT I have now got the information from A I need in order to do so! So that's a progress.

... there has also been. Event prep. So much event prep. The meal ticket booklets for crew are all done; the potions are all sliced and folded ready for laminating (except for the one that needed someone to actually finish writing what it did); ... progress?

Growing. SO MANY SQUASH. Not all of the ones I sowed, but... a lot... have come up.

Somewhat irritated that somebody found my Bravest Dwarf Pea, which had actually managed to find and attach itself to the pea sticks, and severed the stem a little below said attachment. :|

Main infrastructural progress this week was getting all the railway sleepers and shed bits up to the plot (with significant and indispensable help from A). I've not done anything with them yet but they are there, I have plans, necessary hardware is en route, etc.

What else what else? First of the beans are in the ground. I was feeling decidedly surly about my redcurrant but this turns out to have been premature and unfair -- since last weekend it's unfurled a little more and is looking much more promising in terms of potential harvest. The raspberries also seem to be very much enjoying the mulch + semi-regular watering, which is pleasing.

Observing. I totally forgot to mention in last week's section on this topic that on the ride back from Anglesey Abbey we observed Many Cowslips, including at least one that was red!

Tulips continue fantastic. Irises are getting into the swing of things at this point. The bindweed is definitely waking up...

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[personal profile] andrewducker Sun 2025-04-20 12:21
Photo cross-post


Pop stars in the making.

(Pretty sure the one on the right has been up for three nights in a row and the drugs are now wearing off.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

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[personal profile] andrewducker Sun 2025-04-20 12:00
Interesting Links for 20-04-2025
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[syndicated profile] hacker_news_daily_feed Sun 2025-04-20 00:00
Daily Hacker News for 2025-04-19

The 10 highest-rated articles on Hacker News on April 19, 2025 which have not appeared on any previous Hacker News Daily are:

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[personal profile] kaberett Sat 2025-04-19 23:59
this evening I have been having a migraine and also reading about sheds

Conveniently I can no longer find the bit of the allotment rules that says No Bringing In Gravel, so I am making plans to blithely bring in gravel for the sake of a base for The Shed, which is Definitely going to Happen this time, Honest.

The chief component I am now missing is a floor. Conveniently, there's an almost-complete house being built just up the road, with a big skip outside it, which currently contains several large sheets of plyboard. I can't actually get at them (it's all behind gates), but I am intending to show up on Tuesday morning and look hopeful at whoever's working there then.

(I am also missing enough sharp sand to level, and the gravel, but gravel at least should be fairly readily acquirable. It is possible I am also missing Some Important Bits Of Wood, but I care less about that because I have so many bits of misc wood at the allotment that I am pretty sure I can cobble something together.)

I am not going to manage to get all of this together before I disappear off to a field for a week, but I'm optimistic about getting it done in time to e.g. actually fill the greenhouse with chillis for the summer (an irritating amount of said greenhouse is currently functioning as storage space and actually I'd prefer it to be growing space. Actually.) Even I have now read enough guides to putting sheds together that I'm at least half-convinced I can probably actually more-or-less work it out.

... I will report back either triumphantly or shamefacedly in a few weeks' time. Watch This Space, etc.

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[personal profile] andrewducker Sat 2025-04-19 21:56
A thought about the transgender court case - and the ECHR
The Gender Recognition Act was brought in in 2004 because the UK lost a court case at the ECHR in 2002.*

The court said:
"In the twenty first century the right of transsexuals to personal development and to physical and moral security in the full sense enjoyed by others in society cannot be regarded as a matter of controversy requiring the lapse of time to cast clearer light on the issues involved. In short, the unsatisfactory situation in which post-operative transsexuals live in an intermediate zone as not quite one gender or the other is no longer sustainable."

This is under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to a private life.

Placing "trans women" in a generally** different category than "women" is definitely putting them in an intermediate zone. And expecting them to make their assigned gender public is definitely taking the "private" out of "private life".

The UK is still a signatory to the convention. Cases can still be taken to its court. Leaving it would mean a *major* falling out with the EU. I suspect that if the UK tries to nudge things far at all that they will find the court takes a dim view.


*Fought, and lost, by Labour. Because they have never been onside in this area.
**It is possible to carve out exceptions in the current system. But they have to be justified on a case by case basis. A general finding that trans people are not of their legal gender is almost certainly not that.
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[personal profile] andrewducker Sat 2025-04-19 12:00
Interesting Links for 19-04-2025
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