internet gryphon, they/she
super interesting piece here. here’s a bit of it which illustrates just a handful of the many uses of a cellphone in prison, most of which are actually very banal or outright benevolent:
Most of what I knew about illicit electronics came from press releases and news stories that offered example after example of all the bad things people could do with contraband phones, things like trafficking drugs, making threats and running scams. While it’s true those things can happen, over the past three years I’ve also seen a lot of people use their phones for good. Some use them to self-publish books or take online college classes. Others become prison reform advocates, teach computer skills, trade bitcoin or write legal briefs. I’ve seen a whole plethora of savvy and creative uses that fly in the face of stereotypes about people behind bars. “Our cell phones have saved lives,” a man in prison in South Carolina told me.
it appears someone has whispered in his ear, as the tweet is now deleted and it’s making his right-wing supporters flip out
his first major firings:
Gadde was the one who had final call on banning Trump, as i recall.
a much necessary step both for the community but also generally: it is absurdist that we have entire sections of police for schools when 1) it demonstrably contributes to worse outcomes for everybody and 2) the conflict mediation and intervention generally needed in schools is something we don’t train cops for and simultaneously have entire professions dedicated to.
it’s that time of the year for this fun bit of levity. the week is only halfway done and runs through the 11th.
my general experience with this: i didn’t get one until 17, and the only time it was inconvenient was when i needed to schedule a pick-up time for the bus stop with my parents, since i’d have to rely on someone else’s phone. beyond that though, didn’t really have an issue not having a phone; even now, i mostly just use it when we go out and it’s not my primary mode of communication.
for example, there are two runescape wikis, because the official runescape wiki used to be hosted on fandom. they moved in 2018 because fandom is terrible, but the inferior fandom copy that is largely mothballed still exists (and still turns up 3rd if you search “runescape wiki”) because fandom basically won’t let you unilaterally close your community’s wiki, even if you want to move.
amusingly, one of the groups musk was using to fund this deal backed out earlier, so i’m not totally sure who he’s going to replace them with–but as expected this acquisition is a huge mess.
I’m not really arguing with your point or anything, free culture just doesn’t really save us here.
arguably a bigger problem with wikia/fandom is unintentionally caused by free culture: sometimes they’ll fight you on moving your content off their service–a thing they are technically justified by license in doing–which as i understand has historically been a problem with a few wikis fleeing the site.
beyond the points brought up in the article, a good way to tell this is not a good change is that i’ve seen so, so much confusion about what the change here actually does from users of netflix. obviously, this is quite bad for a corporation because if even power users don’t know what’s happening, it’s really unlikely people who don’t use netflix very much will either