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Lisa van Gelder

@lisavangelder.bsky.social
340 followers 799 following 59 posts

Engineering Leader, London. More cats than you might expect

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Reposted by Lisa van Gelder
Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 22h
“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books
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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 01/10/2026
"There are economists who study numbers, and then there are economists who ask what the numbers are hiding. Opoku-Agyeman has built her work around that distinction." WOW. 🥹 Grateful to The IMPACT Magazine for the kindest profile of #TheDoubleTax and me. Black-owned media FTW. #blacksky
theimpactmagazine.com
The Cost of Being a Black Woman in America Is More Than a Pay Gap: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman Is Measuring the Double Tax
There are economists who study numbers, and then there are economists who ask what the numbers are hiding. Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman has built her work around that distinction. A doctoral candidate …
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maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Yes every woman has been harassed, many assaulted. But every woman has also experienced invisible loss from moments she avoided harassment. She felt a space becoming unsafe, so she left, while men stayed on. And in leaving, she lost: opportunities, experiences, learning, promotions, even simply fun.
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Duncan Hothersall @dhothersall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
If attendance at a major women's conference was down 80% due to a boycott fighting against trans *inclusion*, it would be all over the Times, Telegraph, Mail etc. This last weekend, attendance at a major women's conference was down 80% due to a boycott fighting against trans *exclusion*. Crickets.
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Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Basically she has a choice: -implement trans segregation -get yelled at by the telegraph And oppressing an entire minority is a lesser, frivolous cost to her
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I just read a third or possibly fourth news article where the reality of an 'AI has discovered something marvellous!' story turns out to be GenAI somehow accessed material it had no permissions for, which was the outcome of an expert's years of work, and presented it without attribution. GenAI lies.
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Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 28/09/2026
Any time we hear "AI did this and this", it's not proof programs are becoming sentient, but that the humans deploying said AI did this (which is generally failing to deploy proper sandboxing measures to prevent an AI from going against security) It's not the AI that's rogue, it's the company
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QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 28/09/2026
The withdrawal of care from hundreds of Trans+ adults followed a blog by a gender-critical journalist and complaints made by a Conservative member of the Welsh Parliament
wearequeeraf.com
NHS Wales apologises for withdrawal of trans healthcare, admits "urgent review" still hasn't begun
NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee apologises for "distress" caused by a withdrawal of care but admits its "urgent review" had still not begun nearly a month after hundreds were denied care
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shaunt @shaunvids.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
it is incredibly fucked up that the UK government and police consider it a much worse crime to wear a t-shirt or wave a placard with 'palestine action' on it than to block ports and attack lifeboats
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Users hate AI. So tech made it mandatory. Even if you don't use it, it pollutes what you read and how systems make decisions. The computer's hallucinated word is final. And it needs all of your data to do it. In the age of no consent, UX exists to normalized complete acquiescence to surveillance:
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
The AI age is the "age of no consent"
"Inevitability" means design decisions are no longer informed by user needs; now they are unilaterally imposed. The users are the ones being designed.
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Saoirse “Ghost of a Victorian Child” Stone 🏳️‍⚧️ @saoirsestone.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The argument that trans people (especially trans women) should shut up and just vote for transphobic Dems is fucking baffling to me. Like, first of all, no demographic should be asked to co-sign a rollback of their rights! Period! Full stop!
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Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Nikole Hannah-Jones w/ a sobering follow-up on her decision yrs ago to enroll her daughter in a poor, majority-Black public school rather than a wealthier, whiter private school. You leave heartbroken for the kids being failed by this grossly unequal system. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/m...
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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The Beaverton @thebeaverton.com · 14/09/2026
Tech oligarchs agree calling AI "too dangerous" way cooler than just admitting it doesn't work
thebeaverton.com
Tech oligarchs agree calling AI "too dangerous" way cooler than just admitting it doesn't work
SILICON VALLEY - The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and GrokAI have released a statement agreeing that claiming artificial intelligence "could potentially kill all humans" sounds much more awesome than just admitting that they blew a fortune on glorified chatbots.
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A Jean Stevenson @amandajean.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Genital exams??? I would have never played a single sport. This isn’t reasonable stuff and thats great for them! Making sports suck for girls helps them in their other goals of getting women out of public life and reestablishing their preferred men on top.
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Ⓐnarchohoodism 🐈‍⬛ 🏴 @161bklyn.myatproto.social · 12/09/2026
www.thedailystar.net/opinion/view...
thedailystar.net
Are we not forgetting the genocide of the Palestinians?
What the Nazis did to the Jews, Israel is now doing to the Palestinians. I
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 12/09/2026
A trans man in the UK has been banned in the workplace restrooms after he was forced to use the women's restrooms to comply with the new EHRC guidance. The women complained because he is visibly male and so they told him he can't use any bathroom.
A screenshot of a Reddit post from the r/LegalAdviceUK subreddit by user Dijstraanon, titled "FtM transgender facing two different issues at work? England."
The post text reads:
"Brother in law is trans FtM and presents fully as a man. He's now facing an impossible situation at work with his employer telling him that due to recent legislation he must use the toilet of his birth gender. BUT several female colleagues have raised a grievance about him using their gendered toilet.
His employer has told him that he cannot use the toilet while he is at work until they sort it out and cannot give him a timeframe to do so. They do [cut off] have disabled separate toilets.
In the mean time one of his female colleagues has accused him of sexual harassment because he was used their gendered toilet. His menstrual cycle meant he needed to use the toilet.
He's been with the employer for just over 5 years but only in this location for 18 months. The location is mainly male with just a handful of females, and his workshop only has male toilets.
I do not know how to support him and as he's not in a union there is no one to turn too right now."
The post has an orange "Comments Moderated" tag, 169 upvotes, and 134 comments.
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 11/09/2026
VC Isn’t VC Anymore — Understanding the Rise of Cancer Capital. “We must understand that it is no longer a financial machine that is used to fund startups, but a political and social machine focused on dismantling democracy and civil society.” [anildash.com]
anildash.com
VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital
We really, really need to talk about venture capital. Because it’s not “venture capital” anymore.
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gamera obscura october edition @ohrobin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is unquestionably monstrous, but while it's an unprecedented personal gain for a sitting president, it is par for the American foreign policy course. Middle Eastern wars consistently produce enormous, concentrated gains for oil shareholders and military contractors. That is why we start them.
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Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
if you're the abc news editor who wrote that the nyc mayor attending the 9/11 ceremony is attracting "growing criticism" solely because he's a muslim then you are the criticism you're writing about
ABC:
Mayor Mamdani says he'll attend 9/11 ceremony despite growing criticism
Mayor Mamdani says he will attend New York City's annual remembrance ceremony.
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Emily Gorcenski @emily.gorcen.ski · 08/09/2026
Our Age of Silicon is Collapsing [2342 words] First new blog post in a while.
emilygorcenski.com
Our Age of Silicon is Collapsing · EmilyGorcenski.com
The breaking of the fragile bonds.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 06/09/2026
"So in summary: using AI for coding led to depression, apathy, existential dread, and worse software. Not good. Add on top of that the negative environmental, community, and economic impacts of AI, and it became extremely apparent to me that something's gotta change." brettcodes.com/im-done-usin...
brettcodes.com
I'm done using AI
Why I'm stopping using AI for coding (and anything else) after using it earnestly for a year and coming to understand the harms it causes on personal, societal, and environmental levels.
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onlycans @onlycans.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
just stop oil protesters got five years in jail for *planning* to do this to the M25.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 04/09/2026
“this person is bad so their work was always bad” is also a really dangerous view to take because it leads to - unconscious or not - a bias towards “but I do like this other person’s work, ergo they must be a good person” which, as we have seen over and over, is simply not true
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Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
One of the dangerous things with these ai addicts is that they live in and for this fantasy sci fi world. They will sacrifice anything and everything to make this sci fi fantasy come about. Human rights, the air we breathe, their own humanity. Their fantasy has overtaken the real world for them
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QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 02/09/2026
🚨 This week, confusing and conflicting education guidance has come into force amid escalating anti-trans rhetoric We unpack how it’ll impact Trans+ young people 👇 ✍️ @sophieperryportfolio.com
wearequeeraf.com
Section 28 2.0: A complex web of anti-trans guidance that will make it vastly harder to overturn
Anti-trans rhetoric has been spread across a growing myriad of guidance and documents, with Trans+ children headed back to school facing segregation and teachers banned from “encouraging” them to ques...
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Gloria Steinem died with fewer rights than she had during her lifetime. That fact needs to be front and centre of every media report, every dedication, every discussion of her death.
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Brandy Schillace @bschillace.brandyschillace.com · 03/09/2026
The link was to the post, but here is the article www.salon.com/2026/02/11/h...
salon.com
How the FDA fueled a menopause panic
Decades ago, women were told hormone replacement therapy would kill them. Now, there's a movement to demand justice.
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Martin Fowler @martinfowler.com · 02/09/2026
Rachel's Ramblings: Maybe We Shouldn't Be Reviewing All This Code: Or, perhaps the problem isn't that AI has broken code review, maybe it’s that we've been using code review to solve the wrong problems martinfowler.com/rachels-ramb...
martinfowler.com
Maybe We Shouldn't Be Reviewing All This Code
Or, perhaps the problem isn't that AI has broken code review, maybe it’s that we've been using code review to solve the wrong problems
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CN Lester 🏳️‍⚧️ @cnlester.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
But it also matters because language choices - 'remove' 'cut off' 'lop off' 'amputate' - are deliberately made to induce a wincing disgust in cis readers, and a sense of outrage that trans people are 'mutilating' ourselves (or 'being mutilated') - often in contrast to things like cancer surgeries...
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Cwiar Cymru @cwiar.org · 01/09/2026
More appalling behaviour from the BBC. ⬇️ A trans person interviewed about their horrific experience having their surgery cancelled whilst in the hospital described as 'biologically female'. And then half the article devoted to praising the work of an unemployed transphobe. 🗣️ DEFUND THE BBC 🗣️
bbc.co.uk
Welsh Gender Service: Transgender patients told surgery cancelled in hospital
One patient said they were "heartbroken" after being told their surgery was called off 24 hours before.
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Allowing third parties to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship and deny trans people medical procedures opens up everyone's rights to opt or not for treatment to ideological challenge. History shows allowing erasure of rights for one group soon sees others targeted. It isn't a 'them' issue.
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"If you optimize a model to find exploits, you should expect it to find them — and prepare for that. OpenAI did not. They built a model, took the safeguards off, gave it the ExploitGym task, let it run, and didn't even monitor it. That's human decision-making." Understandable for non-tech folk.
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Lisa van Gelder @lisavangelder.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
It was never going to stop with trans kids
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Cal Horton (they/them) @fiercemum.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Just had meeting with kiddo's school. She has been fully supported, treated with full equality & dignity for years. All of that changes from September. Full segregation & humiliation across the board. The school staff cried in the meeting. This will absolutely lead to children's deaths 1/2
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Journalists need to stop describing these incidents in terms implying software has agency and intent. It does not. The people who created a faulty and dangerous product are the ones responsible for whatever happens, and must be held to account, with punitive financial penalties for damage done.
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I know this isn't terrorism. You know this isn't terrorism. The authorities know this isn't terrorism. But, once again, they have labelled protesters "terrorists", as part of the long-running programme to ensure that no one dares protest about anything any more. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Seven charged with damaging Trump’s Scottish golf course accused of ‘terrorist connection’
Course at Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort was painted with words ‘Gaza is not 4 sale’ and clubhouse was sprayed with graffiti
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Nisa Malli @nisamalli.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
“Only one type of person has ever questioned my ADHD, and that’s adults who have spent their lives wrestling with very similar traits. They’ve worked very very hard to convince everyone that they’re normal” - @pennyred.bsky.social lauriepenny.substack.com/p/the-great-...
lauriepenny.substack.com
The Great ADHD Myth.
Apparently, THE SYSTEM is to blame. For everything else, there’s Elvanse.
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Siobhán McElduff @siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
If I were a cis woman in England, I'd be so angry that this is what their equality boss considers important rather than all the actual harms and dangers of my day to day existence. This is where their limited resources will go. It's utterly harmful bigotry.
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Dex Anderson @dexanderson.com · 23/08/2026
hi i'm literally non-binary? we're still trans? The point isn't transmedicalism. The point is that the distinction between sex/gender has actually done a whole lot of harm because it created space for transphobes to argue that it's all in our heads.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 22/08/2026
Think about the audacity of them telling Black people that we're subpar DEI hires and such and these students hiring Black people to do their work for them and pass it off as their own.
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I realise I repeat this constantly, but I'll say it again anyway: The UK's approach to single sex spaces literally put us at odd with pretty much every single liberal democracy on the planet. There is no comparable example that is a liberal democracy.
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Bianca Michelle Parker 🏳️‍⚧️📚 @bumblebigirl.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"Unlike those other publications, we had only the most scrupulously journalistic motives for this lynching."
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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 18/08/2026
They're doing it again.
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Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Here is Gaslighting PART TWO - about how the anti trans gaslighting gave them victory (though that didn’t mean the end) #gaslighting #translivesmatter #lgbtq #bbcradio4 #psychology www.patreon.com/RobinInce/po...
patreon.com
To the End - Gaslighting Part Two | Robin Ince
Where were we? Are yes, we’d just got to here. This was when I would start having people come up to me after gigs and say, who is that perso
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Tom Phillips @tom-phillips.com · 18/08/2026
sorry is the problem that it's overmedicated or that it's undermedicated, really going to need you to make your minds up
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TACC @tacc.org.uk · 18/08/2026
"GENEVA – UN human rights experts* today warned that the UK’s revised Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions, and Associations, in force as of 5 August, may place transgender and gender-diverse persons at heightened risk of discrimination and exclusion." www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
ohchr.org
UK: Revised Code of Practice risks institutionalising discrimination against transgender and gender-diverse persons, warn UN experts
GENEVA – UN human rights experts* today warned that the UK’s revised Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions, and Associations, in force as of 5 August, may place transgender and gender-divers...
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The fundraising texts you delete are working on someone. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking. An 85yo in Ohio gave more than double the value of his home. A 91yo in an Indianapolis senior facility gave 25K times. The DCCC/DSCC don’t just tolerate the spammers who exploit seniors. They take part.
data4democracy.substack.com
Hook and Squeeze
How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.
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Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is part one of a blog post about gaslighting - in this case how the anti trans movement aims to break you , but it applies in many other situations and finding increasing number of people who have experienced some version of this www.patreon.com/RobinInce/po...
patreon.com
The Gaslight Years - part one | Robin Ince
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to dea
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