Dusty Perkins

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

Dusty Perkins reposted

No Context Achewood

@achewoodnc.bsky.social

On top of the routine disappointment in encountering another fear-mongering piece about healthcare for transgender people in the pages of a (formerly?) reputable publication like the Washington Post, I'm struck by a professor of philosophy writing under the circular, self-sealing justification...

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

If I Google "Alex Byrne philosophy professor" are there really going to be any results? Is this bullying for powerless people to mock someone when they use their power to deprive an unfavored minority of personal liberty?

My apologies to smug people in positions of power where they can posture to be dispassionately evaluating *the law* or *scientific evidence* to reach conclusions that constrain other people's possibility for being in the world (rights) and will lead to material harm for people who are not them.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

The chief activity of a philosopher being the discovery of one of these common beliefs to champion and hold apart from interrogation, no bias is detected here. Moving on.

Hey, remember a paragraph ago where the author held us responsible for a failure to go out and read their entire report rather than finding its conclusions justified by more than a grab bag of logical fallacies in this editorial?

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

Ah yes, the Orwellian effect of unpacking the assumptions built into language in a way that acknowledges the experience of others, rather than presumptuously privileging our own subjectivity.

There is nothing a philosopher likes more than avoiding careful language in favor of plain truths, and I have been told that the field is historically awash in universally accepted platitudes.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

I am at the age where my doctor has recommended that I schedule a colonoscopy. Do I need to get a referral to set up a zoom with an out-of-network philosopher and some anti-colonoscopy weirdos?

If this is absurd, it is the absurdity that Byrne and fellow editorializers offering cover for legislators who want to deprive people of the ability to make their own healthcare decisions are comfortable with.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

If I were choosing evaluators, I might think that people with decades of clinical experience supporting people with particular healthcare needs would be among the people best suited to make general recommendations on how to care for people with similar presentation?

Esp in light of how much noise those who are uncomfortable with the existence of transgender people have been making. But I guess I do have a bias towards making decisions about my own healthcare that center my needs and well-being without adequately weighting the opinion of some random academic.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

Surely, if authorship is so important in contextualizing and evaluating credibility, this author wouldn't have chosen to publish anonymously and then accuse someone investigating authorship and then critiquing them as incapable "rational debate".

Byrne is not doing work here that instills any confidence in this idea that intellectual fluency and skill in one domain is readily portable.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

If we are to accept the implication that excluded evaluators with greater subject domain experience would have been compromised by bias that derives from their knowledge and expertise, may we acknowledge then that any evaluator brings a bias...

...and what we are really talking about is which bias the author finds acceptable? Is there a name for the assumption that ignorance makes once's conclusions more valid? I don't think I've been asked to review the number of philosophical papers that would support such a claim.

Erin Reed@erininthemorning.com

We know. You left your name in the exif data on the PDF dude.

"the hostile reaction to our work shows why we needed to do it in the first place." Really? I know it would be in my own best interest to close the tab at this point, but I guess I'm to going continue to read the article just to gas myself up about how right this judgement was.

Dusty Perkins reposted

27 June 2025

Replying to @michaelhobbes.bsky.social

Hmm, I'm hearing reports elsewhere that if one's beliefs about sex and gender may derive from deeply held "religious beliefs that parents wish to instill in their children", it actually means that the government must carve out privileges for acting on those beliefs.

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

This is a fun one! I've missed the blue checks as a clear block signal, but seems like there are ways to programmatically block based on other signals

19 June 2025

#blocklists I've subscribed to continue to be effective at filtering out trolls without any additional effort.

Okay, I've turned off replies on the blocklist thread to keep it clean and pinned it to my profile. I've been here less than a week, so I'd be interested to hear what other resources people are using.

Dusty Perkins@dust.bloo.ski

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

More of this from @chuddletime.bsky.social The composability concept is great. Perhaps we need a way to delegate the composition to a trusted authority so we don't have to hunt down and follow dozens of separate moderation lists?

From @rahaeli.bsky.social Yes, I would not like to see or interact with these things

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

Next up from @hedgehogsafety.bsky.social I would expect that there's some overlap between lists from different groups, but the sea of garbage is vast and will only grow keep growing.

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

I don't see a way to make a list or starter pack for #blocklists so I'm just going to put the ones that I've found to be useful and trustworthy into a thread.

First, @skywatch.blue maintains a number of useful lists

Dusty Perkins reposted

Andrew Lisowski 💻

@hipstersmoothie.com

My latest labeler is finally working! What it shows for each politician - 3 labels for the top corp donators - 3 labels for the top industries that donate to them Subscribe to this labeler to be more aware of the interests our politicians represent 🚀 bsky.app/profile/us-g...

Configured SMTP for email verification on the PDS using the free-tier of service from resend.com to complete email verification, so I think it's all buttoned up for now. Interested to see the actually monthly cost and resource usage for running the PDS.

What does it look like when there are ⬜ multiple independent Relay services ⬜ multiple independent AppView services What do those services look like and what are the social and financial arrangements that would support them?

signal.orgPrivacy is Priceless, but Signal is ExpensiveSignal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal...

23 Nov 2024

This excellent mega-thread about AT Protocol vs. Activity pub gets to some discussion of conflicts between protocol values and funding model:

Christine Lemmer-Webber@dustyweb.bsky.social

And there *will* be a lot of pressure: Bluesky has taken VC money as investments; the pattern of such is that early on, things are very good and flexible, and after some time, the investors start placing pressure to enshittify. I have seen good peoples' orgs clawed from their hands. It happens.

Signal is an exemplar in that regard for functioning as a non-profit, and Meredith Whittaker and Brian Acton seem like amazing leaders who understand this. They cover 25% of $50M operating expenses from small user donations. Presumably the rest comes from larger donors?

bsky.socialBluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users - BlueskyBluesky now exceeds 13 million users, the AT Protocol developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped highly requested features like direct messages and video.

23 Nov 2024

Good post here on "Progress on atproto Values and Value Proposition" by one of the AT protocol developers @bnewbold.net Particularly the "credible exit" idea. bnewbold.net/2024/atproto...

bnewbold.netbnewbold.net

How do you sustain that without heading down the road to enshittification? Here's another $15M in venture funding and "we will begin developing a subscription model for features like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames". Yeah, try some things...

If you're designing a protocol and service that embodies certain social values, you also have to develop an organizational structure that is not orthogonal to those choices -- like so many user-hostile services that depend on the surveillance capitalism model end up with.

How are the infrastructure costs for the bsky.app relay sustained? Part of the reason it's nicer over here than places like Instagram and Twitter is because it hasn't been turned into an ad delivery platform, and there's not an algorithm goosing engagement by showing me things I didn't ask to see.

And it works largely like the centralized social media that people are familiar with because, even if you allow for distributed storage and identity management, the whole network is aggregated through a monolithic relay. You can search. You can see all the replies.

21 Nov 2024

Really like how lists make it easy to subscribe to blocklists here. Applied prophylactic blocking from the lists on @skywatch.blue

21 Nov 2024

When you click on the "Subscribe" button, you're presented with the option to mute or block all accounts in the list.

Another fine block list: bsky.app/profile/hedg...