alyaza [they/she] @ alyaza @beehaw.org

internet gryphon. admin of Beehaw, mostly publicly interacting with people.

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you can find a May Day event here

the website: https://onemillionchessboards.com/

the website for it is pretty comprehensive as far as i can tell

this strikes me as a fascinating idea--with a couple of eyebrow-raising backers--that is probably going to flop spectacularly because it's too minimalistic to the point of just being cheapskate

this is good because the guy was like 80, and he sucks. hopefully he'll be replaced by someone more progressive and willing to actually recognize the situation we're in

here's your fun fact of the day: the hierarchy of how unchecked your law enforcement is basically goes something like federal police > city police departments > rural police departments > sheriffs of any kind. apparently, while regular police are at least nominally accountable to someone higher up than them, we basically let sheriffs do whatever the fuck they want

whatever recourse you think you have against a PD usually and very explicitly will not exist against a sheriff, even if your governor is sympathetic--most states devolve an incredible amount of power to sheriffs while demanding basically no qualifications or oversight of them. also, most outspoken police you will ever hear are probably sheriffs in specific--they are hugely over-represented in politics because there's nothing stopping them from opining on politics even where ordinary police chiefs and the like are inhibited. (also their positions are usually elected and partisan, so they are politicians)

naturally, the mixture of election and targeting by the far-right over the past 50ish years means like 85% of these guys are just total cranks now too, because almost all of them represent Republican-leaning counties

FYI: we've banned this user because after communicating our disinterest in being used as an anti-China dumping ground to shadowbox with people who can't even see our instance, the user responded with a bunch of hostility about people pushing back on them.

yeah, no shit, that's not the same as "your entire company being predicated on the unpaid labor of children who you also let do whatever they want without supervision or actually working filtering features"--not least because you could actually get banned for both of the things i mentioned from 2010, while what's happening now is explicitly enabled by Roblox as their business model and an externality of doing business. as has been demonstrated by recent investigations into how they work down, they basically don't have a company without systematically exploiting children

it's been very strange to watch this game i grew up on--pretty innocuously, i should note--gradually morph into one of the most exploitative, undignifying, generally dangerous spaces for children online. the worst stuff i got into on Roblox in 2010 was online dating and learning about 4chan. now the company seems to openly revel in exploiting the labor of children and ripping them off

• Kazumi Watanabe ‎– To Chi Ka
• Sahib Shihab ‎– Sentiments
• Dr. Lonnie Smith - Boogaloo to Beck: A Tribute
• Takeo Moriyama - Smile
• Sevil - Sevil
• Collage - Kadriko

stuff that is basically jazz, even though it isn't actually:

• Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe - Ikengas in London

feels like Stop Antisemitism is really underrated in the "most evil domestic Zionist organization" department right now, this is literally a McCarthyist tactic

he assuredly won't win as an independent given his appalling numbers in the primary so, lol, good riddance

What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?

this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for--and i cannot stress this sufficiently--longer than i've been alive, and i've been alive for 25 years. so if we're going by this metric video gaming has been "ruined" since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don't find that a very compelling argument.

if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation--most "bad" gaming experiences at this point are just "i didn't enjoy my time with this game" rather than "this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion".

no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it

Seems like a pointlessly gendered classification.

sports bars by default cater to a male clientele, male sports, and male interests and therefore tend to have a "bro"-ey and "masculine" atmosphere that can often be offputting or outright hostile to the presence of women--women's sports bars by contrast don't, and generally have more interest in being inclusive community hubs and/or acting as substitutes to gay bars

in other words: no, it's not really a pointlessly gendered classification in the current situation. it certainly is not what i'd call the norm (nor has it been my experience) for sports bars to have a code of conduct which tells you being homophobic or chauvinistic or ableist isn't cool and could be grounds for your removal, as one of the women's bars downthread has

currently reading:

i mean, you can research this for yourself. here's what i found with about three minutes of Googling and following links

The Sports Bra:

The bar, which opened in Portland, Oregon, just last month, has already become a popular haunt for women and the LGBTQ community, especially since the city has lost all of its lesbian bars, a trend that has grown across the United States over the last several decades. There are only about 20 lesbian bars left in the country, compared to about 200 that existed in the 1980s. [...] But Nguyen, who is gay, stresses that the bar is welcoming of everyone. While a majority of its patrons are women, she said, the Sports Bra is an inclusive space that also attracts a large number of families and even quite a few men — many of whom, according to her, say they prefer watching women’s sports because female athletes “give 110 percent all the time.”

1972 Pub:

1972 Pub represents more than just a place to gather — it’s a symbol of progress, representation, and the power of community. Having a women’s sports pub in Austin means more spaces where everyone, regardless of gender or identity, can feel seen and celebrated. ⛹️‍♀️🏆

A Bar of Their Own:

• has an entire code of conduct that is gender inclusive

the names and addresses of many of these bars: right here

i'm not exactly a fan of gender roles or the nature of "manhood" or "masculinity" or gender expression generally myself and am supportive of their total de-emphasis, so my presumption is that the case for this is something like "manhood as a concept is so toxic and so intrinsic to the worldview that creates patriarchy and men oppressing themselves and others that we cannot create a better form of it, we can only get rid of it."

the problem is that this is almost exclusively the purview of radical feminism, and this was not productive for them historically (mostly it just took them very weird places, the SCUM manifesto being the most infamous manifestation of this). to say nothing of the fact that most radical feminism--and radical feminists--suck and have bad politics and analysis on queer issues in large part because of how that space of politics developed

Manhood ultimately will have to die though

bizarre take; i don't see why this is true or necessary at all

Then we slap a random-ass speed limit sign down and say “job’s done.”

we don't actually--the basis we derive most speed limits from is actually much worse, if you can believe that. from Killed by a Traffic Engineer:

Traffic engineers use what we call the 85th percentile speed. The 85th percentile speed is whatever speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling slower than. If we have 100 drivers on the road and rank them in order from fastest to slowest, the 15th fastest driver would give us our 85th percentile speed.

Traffic engineers will then look 5 mph faster and 5 mph slower to see what percentage of drivers fall into different 10 mph ranges. According to David Solomon and his curves, the magnitude of the speed range doesn’t matter as long as we get as many drivers as possible into that 10 mph range.

and, as applied to the example of the Legacy Parkway, to show how this invariably spirals out of control:

North of Salt Lake City, the Legacy Parkway parallels Interstate 15 up to the Wasatch Weave interchange where these highways come together. It’s a four-lane, controlled-access highway with a wide, grassy median and more than its fair share of safety problems.

So how did the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) respond?

It increased the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph. It said the speed limit jump will “eliminate the safety risk” on the Legacy Parkway.

UDOT conducted speed studies up and down the Legacy Parkway. It found that most drivers were going much faster than the 55 mph speed limit. Channeling the ghost of traffic engineers past, the safety director for UDOT said, “We decided to raise the speed limit to a speed that is closer to what drivers are actually driving. In doing so, we hope to eliminate the safety risk of speed discrepancy, which can happen when you have a significant difference between the speed most drivers are actually traveling and those who are driving the posted speed limit.”

In the case of the Legacy Parkway, the 85th percentile speeds ranged from 65 mph to 75 mph. Based on that and what it deems engineering judgment, UDOT originally proposed raising the speed limit to 70 mph. After community pushback, it settled for 65 mph.

According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), this slight adjustment is acceptable. The MUTCD specifies that speed limits “should be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.”