Blub blub baby

It is 222 A.D. You are the transgender Empress Elagabalus, "call me not a man for I am a woman". Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1776. You are "Public Universal Friend", a transmasculine nonbinary Quaker. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1906. You are Karl M. Baer, a trans man undergoing sex reassignment. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1930. You are Lili Elbe. Transitioning is new and experimental. (to be fair you did get a uterus transplant.)

It is 1966. You are in Compton's Cafeteria with a bunch of other trans people when the owners call the cops to throw you all out. You riot. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 1969. You are Marsha "pay it no mind" Johnson. You are in a mob-run gay bar when the cops attack. You throw a brick. There is a bit of a scuffle. Transitioning is new and experimental.

It is 2026. You are a transgender adult or child listening to the NYT and British Guardian claim this is the first generation anyone has tried transitioning in. Transitioning is new and experimental.

Kansas threatens to jail trans people who don’t surrender ID cards
https://www.thepinknews.com/2026/02/26/kansas-anti-trans-id-cards/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Trans Lives @trans-lives-PinkNews

In Northumberland in 1992, archaeologists found an interesting darning tool.

It was wooden, long & somewhat oddly shaped.

11 years later, a senior lecturer for #archaeology at Newcastle would mention how it was "obvious" what it was.

What was obvious? That it was actually an #ancient #Roman #dildo & the 90s scientist was a bit squeamish.

It's 16cm now, but may have been bigger (wood shrinks with age).

#history

A #Roman wooden bucket with a spout. While many such buckets probably once existed, this is the only one known to have survived from that period.

On display at Castellum Hoge Woerd, The Netherlands.

📷me

#archaeology #RomanArchaeology

✨ A little bit of cheek✨

We’re getting into the weekend early spirit by celebrating this lovely lady. With just a bit of stray drapery and instrument in hand, she looks relaxed and content, which is just what we wish for everyone these days.

#FrescoFriday #AncientRome #History

🪷 #Niankhkhnum and #Khnumhotep are saints of #Antinous for history's earliest depiction of a true-life same-sex mortal couple (not divine or mythological) kissing & sharing an Egyptian tomb for eternity. Their tomb was discovered 11 Nov 1964. Full tribute: https://antinousstars.blogspot.com/2025/11/niankhkhnum-and-khnumhotep-saints-of.html 🪷

I have a lot to do so decided to work from home today, and mother nature rewarded the decision with this cute little boobook owl sighting🦉

Good morning from Wollongong, everybody.

Reminder that AI is "propping up" the economy the same way a tape worm props up your metabolism.

It has completely choked off all capital investment to any other activity for years. It completely devours resources needed by any other endeavor. And for all that, it produces practically nothing that people want or need. It's strangling the economy.

A follow-on to my "Nazi Sucker-punch Problem" post, to address the most common argument I get, which boils down to:

"""
Moderated registration won't stop Nazis, because they'll just pretend to be human to fool moderators, but it will stop normal people, who won't spend the effort to answer the application question or want to wait for approval.
"""

Okay, I'm going to try to use points that I hope are pretty acceptable to anyone arguing in good faith, and I'm going to expand the definition of Nazis to "attackers" and lump in bigots, trolls, scammers, spammers, etc. who use similar tactics.

Attackers: we can group attackers into two main types: dedicated and opportunistic. Dedicated attackers have a target picked and a personal motive—they hunt. Opportunistic attackers have an inclination and will attack if a target presents itself—they're scavengers. In my years of experience as an admin on multiple Fedi servers, most attackers are opportunistic.

Victims: when someone is attacked, they (and people like them) will be less likely to return to the place they were attacked.

In general: without a motive to expend more effort, humans will typically make decisions that offer the best perceived effort-to-reward ratio in the short-term (the same is true of risk-to-reward).

Why does any of this matter?

Because it all comes down to a fairly simple equation for the attackers: effort > reward. If this is true, then the opportunistic attackers will go elsewhere. If it isn't true, then their victims will go elsewhere.

How can we tip that scale out of the attackers' favor?

By making sure moderation efforts scale faster against attackers' behaviors than against normal users' behaviors.

- A normal user only has to register once, while an attacker has to re-register every time they get suspended.

- A normal user proves their normality with each action they take, while every action an attacker takes risks exposing them to moderation.

- A new user / attacker likely spends a minute or two signing up, while a moderator can review most applications in a matter of seconds. Yes, attackers can automate signups to reduce that effort (and some do, and we have tools to address some of that, but again, most attackers aren't dedicated).

- Reviewing an application is lower effort than trying to fix the damage from an attack. As someone who gets targeted regularly by attackers from open-registration servers, I'd personally rather skim and reject a page-long AI-generated application, than spend another therapy session exploring the trauma of being sent execution videos.

I believe this points to moderated registration being the lowest effort remedy for the problem of the Nazi Sucker-punch. So before we "engineer a new solution" that doesn't yet exist, we should exhaust the tools that are already available on the platform today. Yes, we could implement rate limits, or shadow bans, or trust networks, or quarantine servers, but we don't have those today, and even if we did, there's no evidence that those would be a better solution for Fedi than moderated signups.

Will it stop *all* the attackers? No. But it will stop most opportunistic attackers.

Will it deter *some* potential new users? Yes. But communities are defined by who stays, not by how many come through the door.

https://lgbtqia.space/@alice/115499829288185416

Guide to the classics: 18th century novel Fantomina has a sexually curious, identity-switching heroine

Eliza Haywood was a bestselling 18th century author closely associated with the then-emerging genre of the novel. Little is known of her life beyond her writing.

by Nicola Parsons

https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-18th-century-novel-fantomina-has-a-sexually-curious-identity-switching-heroine-253949

Elisa Haywood at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3687

#books #literature

Federated End-to-End Encrypted Messaging is Coming Soon

https://wedistribute.org/2026/02/fediverse-e2ee-coming/

Hi! We're returning to Fedi after a hiatus (we were on Smutlandia before, RIP)

About us: We're a plural system of queer erotica writers. We enjoy participating in hashtag games and posting snippets, both of which tend to be explicit (with CWs!) since, well, our genre is erotica.

Current WIPs listed downthread!

-Gentian

hey fellow trans folks, i could use your input:

years ago my big brother had a huge, positive turn-around politically; and he has sway over his rural community as he's in a leadership position there. with his power and privilege he wants to see trans folks better supported

to that end, what he wants to educate himself on:

1) "what are the top priorities and concerns for trans folks just trying to live their lives?"

2) "what are the toughest aspects of being trans and living in a small town?"

The correct response is still "Fuck you Discord, too little too late".

They're only pulling back from March to later this year, and adding credit card options instead of face scans isn't addressing the issue of "fuck you, you don't need to know who I am".

@Em0nM4stodon https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/116127786561206440