Tootfinder

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: job losses to AI, work used for training, falling wages and rates, freelancers losing clients, and more (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-until-the

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

Big thanks to the Fediverse Friends who wished me well or even just commiserated at the pain I've been going through.
I am feeling a lot better today, but I don't want to forget that pain, because I need to be mindful of the pain people are in every day. It's a struggle, it's a battle, and I wish we could all live pain-free lives.

Just finished "Far Sector" written by N. K. Jemisin and illustrated by Jamal Campbell. I don't normally go for Marvel/DC comics stuff and this was a good reminder why. Jemisin's authorship was the draw for me here, as well as some curiosity about what I might be missing out on by avoiding the classic comics lineage. I won't go into too much detail about particulars, but suffice to say it ends up feeling to me line a very neoliberal story dressed up in a veneer of radicalism, which is not what I'd expected of Jemisin. Particularly in light of current events, the "good cops" aspects of the storyline ring truly hollow. There's still a lot of neat parts, but I guess I also wound up disappointed by the sci-fi aspects in a lot off ways. I truly think Jemisin is capable of better than this, based on her other (excellent) work.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health, says she has been put on paid leave following the end of the government shutdown.
"I was not given a reason for being put on leave, but I strongly suspect it is because I have been speaking up in my personal capacity about the harms that I have been witnessing inside the National Institutes of Health," she said in a video posted to TikTok.
The notice Norton received from human resources stated that the…

Only using a CRT and playing from VHS gives you the rich analog sound and picture that the filmmakers intended.
I’m hearing and seeing so many details that get lost in the digital harshness of Ultra HD Blu-ray.

Dette er et problem mange av oss sliter med. Foreldre som er ikke-digitale i en digital verden, og systemene stŸtter ikke stedfortredere med fullmakter til å hjelpe!
https://www.nrk.no/ytring/fra-fullmakt-til-frustrasjon-1.17717776

Fra fullmakt til frustrasjon
Hvorfor skal det være vanskelig å hjelpe mor?

“How did it feel for the man who built a home, only to watch it turn to the rubble? How does a farmer stand before the land he tended year after year, now lying barren—no scent of soil, no whisper of harvest? How does a father tell his son the school he loved is gone, that the garden where he played is now only a rumor in the rubble? How does a mother walk through the ghost of a playground, finding a small shoe, a torn notebook, a toy she once mended? How do neighbors look at one another, wo…

Help Sehwel family with their medical treatment
I'm Joe in the UK, I've been in touch with Aseel from the Sehwel family for over a year now and have been following their difficult struggle to afford medication, shelter and food in Gaza. I'm creating this Chuffed campaign for the family to help afford these things and hopefully help them get out of Gaza when the opportunity arises. Here's Aseel's writing:

Re: discourse about #FediSoWhite
I'm a white man. Was on Twitter throughout #BLM and gained an awful lot of free education from Black folks on there. That was the start of me consciously following diverse folks which is a strategy that's improved my life immensely.
Back on Twitter before the Muskening, there was a lot of diversity. Black Twitter was a thing, and not just first-world (anyone else remember "O jewa ke eng?"). When I went looking for people to follow to diversify my feed, I found them in abundance.
That's why it's so clearly false to me when people claim that the fediverse is secretly diverse, and why anyone making that claim sounds suspect to me. Sure there are a ton of great Black and other POC folks you can find on here, if you look hard. But it's nowhere near the levels of diversity and community that were on Twitter. Which you would know had you been following those people before, so now I have to assume you weren't, and wonder why you feel qualified to make statements about diversity even though you haven't made an effort to engage with diverse voices before?
Also, if you were actually following some of the excellent POC voices on here, you'd know that across different servers and interest groups, almost every group has had a discussion of #FediSoWhite at some point. If all the Black people you follow are independently talking about the lack of community and diversity here, you've either got to believe them or start putting on your clown makeup, and the later is absolutely a choice.