Tootfinder

So, today, a lot of folk are talking about how a very bad man named Sean Hastings has been violently threatening Adam Shostack for years and years.
 
I know Adam and think of him as a friend and we are connected professionally and personally, and of course I knew about Sean Hastings, but I was unaware that today was the day that Adam was going to finally talk about his nightmare, and he didn't ask me to say anything about my own experiences with Sean or coordinate with me on this.
 
I can't speak to Adam's experience but I do feel the need to tell people what Sean Hastings did to me.
 
The first thing Sean Hastings did to me was give me money in 2015. I didn't know him. You can actually see his name right in the front of the acknowledgements to my book on women in tech - because he contributed $500 to the 2015 Kickstarter I ran to fund it.
 
This is before I'd met Adam Shostack; Adam and I met in early 2016 when we sat on a Federal Trade Commission panel together in Seattle on startup cybersecurity. Adam's a major nerd and we bonded immediately over game design and his incorrect preference of Star Wars over Star Trek.
 
But soon, I would find out that there were strings attached to Sean's contribution. Apparently he thought that by contributing to a Kickstarter, he could turn guilt screws on me about who I could talk to, and demanded my time to help him publish books on girls in tech.
 
He began sending me harassing messages and emails after I'd probably RTed something from Adam, demanding that I pay attention to his claims about Adam Shostack. I did what any normal femme in tech does, which is go do the grey network check on Adam. In 2016, I spoke to several extremely prominent and trusted friends and members of the infosec community. The “Good Guy vs. Creeper” check on Adam came back from my folk with a resounding "Adam's the victim here". And I know some serious operators in the "keeping women in the infosec world safe" space.
 
Sean subsequently began publicly and privately bombarding my social accounts and email with demands and guilt and claiming that he was behind my success and funded me. This looked to me like a man who tries to control women and others with money, and I would wear out the red flag emoji if I tried to properly emphasize that. There's plenty more on Xitter if you want to go searching.
 
I didn't and don't want to think about this, any more than anyone else wants to think about awful things, but violent angry dangerous men like Sean do seem to operate on their own schedule, and I anticipate that Adam's public statement may trigger Sean Hastings making another outburst against me and the many other people I'm now seeing coming forward.
 
One last thing. I've experienced some of the same kinds of horrific stalker behavior that Adam and others in the community have, and while it's not relevant to this here, Adam was a profound support to me when my life was getting torn apart by two very dangerous, angry, violent people making false claims about me several years ago. He knows exactly what it feels like, because I think he's lived it for a couple of decades.
 
So, it occurs to me that I've actually continued to benefit from that $500 that Sean Hastings contributed to that Kickstarter. In my experience, it makes people apoplectic to learn that their money went to something that they hate. So, below, you'll find some screenshots, and the last image is my proof pic for a $500 donation just now to Operation: Safe Escape, which supports victims of cyber stalking and domestic tech abuse like those Sean Hastings has targeted. That makes me feel a lot better and I didn't even realize I was carrying any guilt over it until just now.
 
https://safeescape.org/ I strongly urge you to donate there as well if you were affected by this.

So, today, a lot of folk are talking about how a very bad man named Sean Hastings has been violently threatening Adam Shostack for years and years.
 
I know Adam and think of him as a friend and we are connected professionally and personally, and of course I knew about Sean Hastings, but I was unaware that today was the day that Adam was going to finally talk about his nightmare, and he didn't ask me to say anything about my own experiences with Sean or coordinate with me on this.
 
I can't speak to Adam's experience but I do feel the need to tell people what Sean Hastings did to me.
 
The first thing Sean Hastings did to me was give me money in 2015. I didn't know him. You can actually see his name right in the front of the acknowledgements to my book on women in tech - because he contributed $500 to the 2015 Kickstarter I ran to fund it.
 
This is before I'd met Adam Shostack; Adam and I met in early 2016 when we sat on a Federal Trade Commission panel together in Seattle on startup cybersecurity. Adam's a major nerd and we bonded immediately over game design and his incorrect preference of Star Wars over Star Trek.
 
But soon, I would find out that there were strings attached to Sean's contribution. Apparently he thought that by contributing to a Kickstarter, he could turn guilt screws on me about who I could talk to, and demanded my time to help him publish books on girls in tech.
 
He began sending me harassing messages and emails after I'd probably RTed something from Adam, demanding that I pay attention to his claims about Adam Shostack. I did what any normal femme in tech does, which is go do the grey network check on Adam. In 2016, I spoke to several extremely prominent and trusted friends and members of the infosec community. The “Good Guy vs. Creeper” check on Adam came back from my folk with a resounding "Adam's the victim here". And I know some serious operators in the "keeping women in the infosec world safe" space.
 
Sean subsequently began publicly and privately bombarding my social accounts and email with demands and guilt and claiming that he was behind my success and funded me. This looked to me like a man who tries to control women and others with money, and I would wear out the red flag emoji if I tried to properly emphasize that. There's plenty more on Xitter if you want to go searching.
 
I didn't and don't want to think about this, any more than anyone else wants to think about awful things, but violent angry dangerous men like Sean do seem to operate on their own schedule, and I anticipate that Adam's public statement may trigger Sean Hastings making another outburst against me and the many other people I'm now seeing coming forward.
 
One last thing. I've experienced some of the same kinds of horrific stalker behavior that Adam and others in the community have, and while it's not relevant to this here, Adam was a profound support to me when my life was getting torn apart by two very dangerous, angry, violent people making false claims about me several years ago. He knows exactly what it feels like, because I think he's lived it for a couple of decades.
 
So, it occurs to me that I've actually continued to benefit from that $500 that Sean Hastings contributed to that Kickstarter. In my experience, it makes people apoplectic to learn that their money went to something that they hate. So, below, you'll find some screenshots, and the last image is my proof pic for a $500 donation just now to Operation: Safe Escape, which supports victims of cyber stalking and domestic tech abuse like those Sean Hastings has targeted. That makes me feel a lot better and I didn't even realize I was carrying any guilt over it until just now.
 
https://safeescape.org/ I strongly urge you to donate there as well if you were affected by this.

Soooo....I'm doing a thing...🤭😏
As a lot of you know, Tooters shut down recently and the way it was handled in the end is regrettable.
However, I felt for longest time while it was up, that it was consistently one of the BEST run instances on Fedi with how they protected their users from some of the insanity that happens here.
That being said, with Tooters being gone, it leaves a bit of a hole in my Fedi heart and I know a lot of others as well.
So, I'm creating a new, very limited for now, politically-light (as little politics as possible locally), AI friendly (AI art welcome), Sharkey instance for some folks within my circle that I've grown to consider my friends.
The Social Zone is meant to be a place to escape the very political society we currently all live in and just be social with one another about our hobbies, interests, and day to day lives.
I'm still working out all the details but when I launch it, it's going to be invite only because I'm new to something like this and I want to get it right. Especially because those I will invite are people that are close to me and I don't want to disappoint them.
Depending on how things go for the next few months, including if I can even get this thing started correctly, I MIGHT be open to allowing more members in, down the line.
But, this is just getting started. I registered the domain yesterday and just started researching Sharkey today and how hard it would be to spin something up. Then, of course, there's configuration settings and administration with Sharkey that I have to familiarize myself with.
All in all, I'm very nervous, but excited that I decided to take this next step in my Fedi adventure and hope to eventually "give back" to the entire community, the same positive energy that you've all given me over the past wonderful year of being on this amazing platform.
Please do not ask for invites. I will not be handing them out anytime soon. I've already asked about 5 of you along with some IRL folks and I feel I would like some time to get this right for them first.
Thanks for reading. I hope you understand why I'm choosing to do this and hope you're as excited as me to see where things can go and understand why I feel it's important to have these types of "politically-light" spaces so people can escape such topics from time to time.
Keep on keeping on, Fedi. The future is bright and I'm ready to learn along with you. More info about TheSocial.Zone coming soon!
Your friend,
B.A.

Recently I silently restarted my old #blog, and I have been posting a few new #post s. Today I posted a new one. Go check it out if you want to hear me ramble about #tech, you might even learn one or two things 😅.
https://blog.c512l.dev/Autoconfig-hell/