My favourite quote from professor Richard Dawkins is not the one where he calls the God of the Old testament a “capriciously malevolent bully”, or any of those where he otherwise openly mocks religion.
It's one where he doesn't even mention religion at all, even though he's destroying its very foundations.
(~3 min read)
I'm on a quest. A quest to find two words: one to describe gender, sexual and romantic minorities, and one to describe the rest.
I know, the title gives away the result, but please bear with me while I explain how I got there
(~3 min read)
Aparently, this question is getting asked more and more often nowadays, so let me put in my two cents worth. Are polyamorists part of LGBTQ+? And I don't mean those who, like myself, are both pansexual and poly, or both trans and poly, because of course we are. I mean: does polyamory itself make you part of the community?
(~4 min read)
I used to think that the biggest advantage of the Internet compared to the old-fashioned media is that the communication doesn't just go one way. It's not just a few people broadcasting to everyone, but instead it's everyone having an equal voice.
But having spent years on the Internet has taught me something more: most of those “equal voices” are stupid and spiteful. And that's I don't have to listen to all of them.
(~4 min read)
Four years ago I backed Font Awesome 5 on Kickstarter, and in return I received a license to use it and to access the pro features. The license might be perpetual, but the pro features, sadly, are not
If you don't subscribe to a Pro plan, you won't be able to install Font Awesome Pro using npm or yarn.
That's the one feature I need! And on August 1st it will be gone! My dev setup, my deployment setup, of multiple projects, everything depends on fetching Font Awesome from the npm registry.
Luckily, there's a simple way around it
So apparently I'm supposed to respect the belief that there are witches who have hexed the moon, because otherwise it would justify other people's homophobia.
What a pile of absolute bullshit.
(~2 min read)
I'm not kidding, everyone should have pronouns in their bio, if it's safe for them to do so. Yes, even if you're cis (= not trans). Yes, even if you're famous and everyone knows your gender already.
Here's why:
(~2 min read)
Nie żartuję. Każdx, kto może bezpiecznie to zrobić, powininx mieć zaimki w bio. Tak, nawet jeśli jesteś cis (= nie trans). Tak, nawet jeśli jesteś sławnx i każdy już zna twoją płeć.
Oto dlaczego:
(~3 min read)
I strive to optimise this blog's performance as well as I can. But chasing a goal of a lightweight website while keeping it pretty prevented me from realising the obvious truth that the most performant assets are… no assets.
So, inspired by Sijmen J. Mulder's directory of text-only websites, I decided to create a bare version of my blog.
Here's how it went:
(~2 min read) avris.it/lite
Nie mówiłxbyś osobie czarnoskórej, by głosowała na rasistę, bo jak nie, to…
Nie mówiłxbyś ofierze gwałtu, by głosowała na gwałciciela, bo jak nie, to…
Więc nie mów ofiarom homofobii, że muszą zagłosować na Trzaskowskiego, bo jak nie to PiS im zrobi z Polski strefę wolną od LGBT.
(~11 min read)
I keep running away from Polish homophobia. Geographically, I've left five years ago. But online? I'm trying not to read the news, not to engage with homophobes on Twitter, I'm unfollowing Polish accounts…
But I can't keep it up. The extent of queerphobic hatred, especially recently, is terrifying. I can't just idly watch my queer siblings suffer.
(~7 min read)
“A” in LGBTQIA+ stands for asexual, aromantic & agender – not for “ally”.
Being an ally is not a gender / sexual / romantic minority.
Being an ally is just basic human decency.
Yet another one of my projects, Naked Adventure, grew too outdated to support it. I had to rewrite it from scratch.
I took the opportunity to redesign it as well. (screenshots before & after at the bottom)
(~2 min read) naked-adventure.eu
There's plenty of reasons to love Daði Freyr's song (and my personal favourite for the 2020 Eurovision win) ”Think About Things”. But the most important reason is this: Daði is singing about treating his child like a human being. And that's why the song brings me to tears.
(~4 min read)
I've already complained about my mySN laptop here and here, but now it turns out, there's a part three to be written...
Having lived in three different countries and interacted with people from all around the world made me realise that Polish names have some pretty unique quirks – to which, as a native speaker, I didn't give too much thought, while foreigners find them quite strange.
(~4 min read)
Hackers know your password. I'm like 99% sure they do. Just go to ';--have i been pwned? and enter your email(s). See? Your password is as good as public.
(~3 min read)
Yet another one of my projects, Avi • Simple placeholder avatars, grew too outdated to support it. I had to rewrite it from scratch.
I took the opportunity to redesign it as well.
For me, gender is over.
Not in a sad, “Game Over” way.
In a happy, “Mission accomplished” way.
(~2 min read)
If every single person on this planet had a roof over their head, food on their plate, and access to high-quality, free education and healthcare, then I promise I would sod off from ever caring about how many billions does Jeff Bezos have.
But until that day, I care a fucking lot.
(~4 min read)
I keep hearing this one argument over and over again: “if I see things around me that have been created, that means everything had to be created, that means there is a god”.
What they don't seem to notice (apart from such extrapolation being unjustified) is that looking in that direction actually points us towards there being no god.
(~3 min read)
Przypomniał mi się dziś pewien cytat z JKMa, który ładnie ilustruje, jak Korwin potrafi robić kurwę z logiki.
My Twitter bio includes the words “Hail Satan “.
Except I don't believe in Satan (nor in his evil enemy, Jahwe)... So why the hell the did I put put it there?
(~2 min read)
LGBTQ+ does work. We go together, hand in hand. We fight for each other's rights. It's the “T” who threw the first bricks in Stonewall.
Blabbing about “separate issues” is just you trying to mask that you're EMBARRASSED to be associated with trans people.
It's transphobia
If you humiliate and discriminate others, I'm here to tell you I know your little secret: you think you're worthless, and you know you're too lazy to do anything about it.
Yes, of course the only person responible for a rape is the rapist – they're a criminal and should be severely punished. I'm in no way defending them, nor am I victim-shaming the victims. At most, I'm culture-shaming our culture.
With that said: other than chasing the perpetrators, there's also a big cultural change we need to make, if we want to reduce the number of rapes...
(~2 min read)
Polszczyzna, jak każdy żywy język, nieustannie się zmienia i ewoluuje.
W kwestii inkluywności płciowej obserwujemy na przykład trend powrotu do używania feminatywów. I choć jest to świetne dla reprezentacji kobiet w przestrzeni publicznej, to do neutralnej płciowo polszczyzny jeszcze daleka droga.
Osobom niebinarnym ciężko jest się odnaleźć w binarnym do bólu języku polskim.
(~10 min read)
The most important maths lesson in my life wasn't actually that hard. It wasn't even really about maths.
(~2 min read)
I've seen some begginer programmers asking themselves: why do I even need constants?
Variables I get, they're super important, but why have an extra thing that's like a variable, but worse?
It can't even change! And if I know that const NUMBER_OF_COLUMNS = 3
, why can't I just write 3
?
(~2 min read)
Under a news that yet another church keeps being an asshole towards queer people some guy is asking why don't they just ignore it and find a better church.
Oh the privilege...
This post is not about gays. It's about maths.
(~4 min read)
It's a very common trope in movies and series: people wondering whether, and when, and how they should say “I love you” for the first time to someone they're dating... people worrying about saying it too early, about the other person not saying it back...
But what if we stopped making such a big deal out of it?
(~2 min read)
As a kid I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea of salvation. It wasn't a big deal, I just accepted what they taught me at home, in church and at school, and assumed that when I'm older and wiser, I'll finally understand.
(~4 min read)