Sam Sneddon 🏳️‍⚧️

i think what bothers me most about how "terf island" has been used is that it implies there's some unique essential characteristic of the uk that's allowed trans rights to be rolled back so thoroughly. this can and will happen anywhere we let it

One of the first things you learn about trans competent primary care is how many of us routinely develop PVD, UTIs, and kidney stones from avoiding or not having access to bathrooms. As a fun bonus, the disinfo machine then uses this high prevalence to make mendacious claims about HRT.

The sanitizer always worked on parser or treewalker tokens (I think we changed which at some point?), which were I believe always bytes for pure ASCII or unicode for anything else, which doesn’t quite follow with that.

Right, I understand fine *what* it matches, I just am unclear on *why* we’re doing that!

I mean stripping controls isn’t the wildest thing to do, I just want to know if there’s some specific browser behaviour (quite possibly now very historic browser!) that led to this being included.

And to be clear I very much doubt Itch has enough volume to do anything *but* go to a high-risk processor, though they do at least have data on historic chargeback rates which helps any negotiating position wrt rates.

This is… intriguing. As far as I’m aware, Stripe is still one of the payment processors used by OnlyFans — of course, some of this is volume, but also we don’t know how bespoke OnlyFans’ contract is (what rates are they paying? are they obliged to do cascading payments?).

See also: all the Mission Winnow stuff.

The damning thing here, really, is using AI to select which submissions to pay attention to. (And okay, that may well be just rebranding of old ML stuff, but who knows.)

A random sample would be just about defensible. A selected sample is absolutely not.

'Rushed out' EHRC trans toilet guidance could be sent to govt as soon as August An EHRC representative has claimed its trans toilet guidance could be finished and sent to govt by August, court documents have shown.

Alex Parmar-Yee said the EHRC’s claim that it would seriously consider the submissions in just a month is “simply not credible.”

“This is an emergency, and we urge people to tell their MP now – this isn’t how we should make decisions about fundamental rights.”

www.thepinknews.com/2025/07/31/e...

So why does #Dublin Luas’s Cross City Green Line extension run on a loop around via Marlborough St rather than just go down O’Connell St in both directions? With the central division it looks wide enough for trams to turn, albeit not very fast…

Does anyone have recommendations for what to do in Dublin? Here till Saturday, and while I have plans to do a bunch of the normal touristic stuff, I don’t have that much planned.

Do I know any (by birth) British trans person who has acquired a GRC while living abroad, but where there was never any change of legal sex abroad?

The U.K. “online safety” act has had the consequence of censoring LGBT content and forums. This makes trans kids *less* safe. It means we can’t access any information about our community, healthcare or our lives without going through our parents.

Together with Labour’s other policy of banning

A screenshot of the Bluesky app, with a banner at the top: The laws in your location require you to verify you're an adult to access certain features. Tap to learn more.

This country is so deeply… cursed.

I have incredibly mixed feelings about digital credentials and the slippery slope of “well now it’s easy to require strong guarantees”, but in a country where so many sites now ask for photos of identity documents via unknown third parties, it doesn’t feel so bad…

Every time I get onto the Heathrow Terminal 5 station platforms, my brain says they’re north/south. Except I know they’re not, and I can’t never figure out where I get rotated by 90°.

This is conversion therapy by gauntlet. I can't imagine being 14 being interrogated by a panel of adults for hours over my gender. This is torturous. What other healthcare is subject to this?

But if a few people in masks start lighting stuff on fire? Then you have news. This creates an *enormous* attentional advantage towards the most violent and chaotic kind of protest.

There's a real attentional trap that all protest movements face and have faced for a long time. If you pull off protests that are polite and civil, even if large, they will struggle to get coverage. Reporters will dismiss them as not newsworthy.

(can’t find any evidence of anything requiring it — or anything requiring them to issue driving licenses!)

(can’t find any evidence of anything requiring it — or anything requiring them to issue driving licenses!)

The problems are really about access control to data, *especially* when it becomes easier to cross-reference (though it may be feasible anyway, as e.g. www.wired.com/story/doge-c... shows).

And access control is hard in the UK, where the constitutional safeguards are relatively limited.

A minimalist option — simply have the DVLA issue something akin to a provisional driving license to everyone — carries few of the downsides.

To some extent, with the Northern Ireland Electoral Identity Card and now the Voter Authority Certificate, we already have that, for those who can vote.

The problem has never been ID cards — it’s everything bundled with it, every time it’s been proposed.

The UK heavily relies on various ID documents (driving licenses and passports primarily), and leaves those without having to surpass a higher bar for various services.

I feel like this isn’t that unusual? Or at least, I’m super variable between different people.

If you would like to know what it is like living as trans right now:

I cannot think of a single week in the last 5 and a half years since I transitioned where a politician, celebrity, government or public figure of some prominence hasn't attacked trans people.

It is constant. Never-ending.

When the Cass Review came out last year, the NYT rushed to cover it complete with post notifications. After reviews in Germany and Utah came out supporting gender affirming care for trans youth, dead silence. You can be just as biased in what you don't cover as what you do.

once again cannot stress enough that people selling generated AI stuff can't even be bothered to read their own writing but think you should pay to

The mythologicalisation is always the thing; plenty of times I’ve had criticism met with “oh but look at the British of the same period”, and like yeah, sure… but they’re almost never put on a comparable mantel.

‘Comment of the day’ award goes to the Good Law Project.

And some folk will tell you the the Supreme Court ruling brought CLARITY?🤔

And a reminder for cis allies: the right thing to do when accused of being trans, of having a different AGAB, is to decline to answer. You might not like it, especially when being threatened with exclusion, but the more people who refuse, the easier it is for trans people.