kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on He thought it was a routine US Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in. Now his family fears he’ll be deported. in ~lgbt

    kfwyre
    Link
    Update: Maryland man released from ICE Detention, reunites with loved ones (this was published weeks ago, but I didn’t see it until now)

    Update: Maryland man released from ICE Detention, reunites with loved ones

    Ludovic Marcel Mbock has been released from an ICE Processing Center in Folkston, Georgia, and is expected to reunite with his loved ones Saturday night — capping a nearly three week period that began with a shocking detention and ended with a hard-fought victory.

    An immigration judge granted Mbock a $4,000 bond Friday morning in a Hyattsville immigration courtroom. "The low bond means he's not a flight risk or danger to the community," said Attorney Edward Neufville, III.

    Family and friends moved quickly to pay the bond, and their efforts paid off. Mbock, who had spoken with WUSA9 by phone from the Georgia facility just a day earlier, expressed deep gratitude. "I feel loved. I'm thankful for the support."

    But those closest to Mbock say the celebration will be brief. With his asylum case now reopened, they are already preparing for the road ahead.

    "We celebrate, we take a moment to recollect. Then Monday, we're hitting the ground running preparing the whole case," said longtime friend Nikhil Delahaye.

    (this was published weeks ago, but I didn’t see it until now)

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 30 in ~society

    kfwyre
    Link
    Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list and restricting mail-in voting

    Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list and restricting mail-in voting

    President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials as the president demands further limitations on voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

    The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize the power to run elections from states, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud. The president has repeatedly lied about the outcome of the 2020 presidential campaign and the integrity of state-run elections, asserting again Tuesday that he won “three times” and continuing to cite accusations of voter fraud that numerous audits, investigations and courts have debunked.

    The order signed Tuesday calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Tildes Book Club schedule 2025 - 2026 in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    And Kobo, Bookshop, Google Play Books, Apple Books, etc! There’s a chance the deal is limited to the US and Canada. If anyone outside of those countries can confirm the sale for us, I’d appreciate it.

    And Kobo, Bookshop, Google Play Books, Apple Books, etc!

    There’s a chance the deal is limited to the US and Canada. If anyone outside of those countries can confirm the sale for us, I’d appreciate it.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on US Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids in ~lgbt

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    A big internet bear hug from me, Fae. EDIT: We get to be the role models that we didn’t have when we were our students’ ages. What a wonderful and special opportunity we are entrusted with. Even...

    A big internet bear hug from me, Fae.

    EDIT: We get to be the role models that we didn’t have when we were our students’ ages. What a wonderful and special opportunity we are entrusted with.

    Even when it’s difficult, it’s still worthwhile. In fact, it’s probably most valuable when things are most difficult (as they have been for a while now).

    13 votes

  5. Comment on Tildes Book Club schedule 2025 - 2026 in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link
    What luck! The ebook version of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, our read for this coming month, is on sale for $3 (amazon.ca included!). @cfabbro @Zorind

    What luck! The ebook version of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, our read for this coming month, is on sale for $3 (amazon.ca included!).

    @cfabbro
    @Zorind

    3 votes

  6. Comment on US Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids in ~lgbt

  7. Comment on US Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids in ~lgbt

    kfwyre
    Link

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that ban the discredited practice.

    An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

    In a solo dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that states should be free to regulate health care, even if that means incidental restrictions on speech. The decision, Jackson wrote, “opens a dangerous can of worms” that “threatens to impair states’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.”

    19 votes

  9. Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link

    As you may know, on Glade Art we tend to take anti-bot measures very seriously; it is one of our topmost priorities to protect our fellow users from having their art trained on. We also tend to engage in trolling bots by using endless labyrinths of useless data to trap them in. These are commonly referred to as "honeypots" or "digital tar pits." And so, after 6.8 million requests in the last 55 days at the time of writing this, we have some substantial data, so standby and let us share it with you. : )

    31 votes

  11. Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes

  12. What is something you're holding together?

    ~talk Ask (survey)
    You're the glue, the leader, the center of gravity, the one making it happen. Without you, it would probably fall apart, cease to function, or stop. What is it? What do you do? Do people...

    You're the glue, the leader, the center of gravity, the one making it happen.

    Without you, it would probably fall apart, cease to function, or stop.

    What is it?
    What do you do?
    Do people appreciate your role, or is it invisible?

    36 votes

  13. Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    I can fully understand the desire for people to want to be able to discuss something like Harry Potter without always having to hear about Rowling's views. After all, pretty much everyone already...
    • Exemplary

    I can fully understand the desire for people to want to be able to discuss something like Harry Potter without always having to hear about Rowling's views. After all, pretty much everyone already knows that she's transphobic by now, and also heavy-handed moralizing can start to grate over time, even when it's something you agree with or support.

    Let's call this the "leave it alone, already" reflex.

    People who like Harry Potter, or people who are sick of hearing about Rowling's transphobia, probably feel this pretty strongly.

    What I would encourage those people to consider, however, is that queer people also have our own "leave it us alone, already" reflexes, and they are equally if not more strained, in large part because Rowling, well, won't leave trans people alone. They are a frequent talking point for her, and she takes explicit, repeated actions to invalidate and hurt them.

    So, if we consider a hypothetical Harry Potter discussion topic here: it's not that some of our commenters won't just "leave it alone, already" -- it's that Rowling herself won't do the same, which is the primary driver for bringing up her behavior in the first place.

    I think this can help us allocate our frustrations appropriately. Yes, it's frustrating when topics get derailed, and yes, nobody loves when someone else yucks your yum, but I'd argue that the cause of this lies less with users here and more with Rowling's continued anti-trans crusade.

    45 votes

  14. Comment on Tildes Book Club - March 2026 - The Metamorphosis by Kafka in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    This isn’t exactly about her reaction, but I figure this is a good place to put a question I’ve been stuck on: How poor was the family, actually? We get the sense from Gregor that he was working...

    This isn’t exactly about her reaction, but I figure this is a good place to put a question I’ve been stuck on:

    How poor was the family, actually?

    We get the sense from Gregor that he was working himself to the bone to keep the family afloat, but also the family could afford hired help? And continued to do so even after Gregor stopped working?

    Also their apartment was big enough to have three porters stay with them?

    It seems like they were more well off than Gregor might have believed. I’m not sure if this is one of those “different time/culture” things and I’m misjudging the situation, or if the family’s wealth is actually intended to be something that makes Gregor’s situation and sacrifice all the more sad (as in, he didn’t need to work so hard and feel so much pressure, because the family was doing okay financially).

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    To add on to this thread: The reason that trans people in sports is a salient issue for many is because it creates a perception of unfairness, and most people want things to be generally fair. If...

    To add on to this thread:

    The reason that trans people in sports is a salient issue for many is because it creates a perception of unfairness, and most people want things to be generally fair.

    If someone is legitimately concerned about fairness (and isn’t just hiding transphobia behind a pretext), then it’s worth sharing with them that, in 2026 alone, there are over 700 bills targeting trans people in the US (and this isn’t counting the hundreds more from previous years).

    19 votes

  16. Comment on Rigging bingo: Creating seeded randoms in JavaScript in ~comp

    kfwyre
    Link
    This isn’t just hypothetical on @Wes’s part, by the way. It got an actual, unintentional real-world test from me! I had to use the seed function to recreate my bingo card after accidentally...

    This isn’t just hypothetical on @Wes’s part, by the way. It got an actual, unintentional real-world test from me! I had to use the seed function to recreate my bingo card after accidentally deleting it while distro hopping…

    …twice. XD

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Colossal Game Adventure Schedule: April - September 2026 in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I can recommend this. I played through Aria of Sorrow last year via the Advance Collection and it was great. Worked perfectly on Steam Deck, and it even has some emulation features like save...

    I can recommend this. I played through Aria of Sorrow last year via the Advance Collection and it was great. Worked perfectly on Steam Deck, and it even has some emulation features like save states built right in.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on RetroDECK is more than emulation: an interview with the devs in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Asking out of curiosity: what don’t you like about EmulationStation? (I personally think it’s great.)

    Asking out of curiosity: what don’t you like about EmulationStation? (I personally think it’s great.)

    5 votes

  20. Comment on Tildes Book Club - March 2026 - The Metamorphosis by Kafka in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Agreed! The story feels like something you’re looking at without glasses on. There’s a faint, fuzzy shape that’s quite familiar but not immediately recognizable. Depending on how you look at it...

    It's open to a wide array of perfectly valid interpretations that are influenced by the reader's own direct experiences with, or witnessing, similar circumstances in their own life.

    Agreed!

    The story feels like something you’re looking at without glasses on. There’s a faint, fuzzy shape that’s quite familiar but not immediately recognizable. Depending on how you look at it and what you’re thinking about, you can get several different plausible possibilities for what it might “actually” be.

    3 votes