The Moon is Rising

when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.

I love how every June this one gets dug up and passed around again, lmao.

oh no is this what we’re doing now

…relic…

*crumbles and blows away on the wind*

i saw someone say nobody needs to know what a .txt file is anymore. what the fuck is the world coming to

unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school

things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)

how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem

what common file types are

some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)

how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private

how to understand terms of service (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)

what a cookie actually is

internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl

basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)

common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)

how to not get a virus while pirating something

what a temporary email is and when to use one

red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)

what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls

ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)

an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous

a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps

a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)

some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself

athelind

From what I've come to understand, Millennials were the only generation to be taught basic computer literacy in grade school and high school.

My Gen X high school computer exposure was punch card FORTRAN (no, I don't remember any of it) and the bleeding-edge TRS-80 and Apple ][.

(My Boomer sisters didn't even get that much.)

Despite being a STEM major, I never touched a computer during my first ill-fated stab at college in the 1980s; at that point, computers were still for dedicated computer science majors, or were expensive toys that didn't do much. Returning to school a decade later got me access to some very thorough computer and library science classes that provided systematic rigor to what I'd learned messing around on my own on a 286 DOS machine.

By my understanding, in the 1990s, most of the information that @dreamsy990 provides above was fairly common curricula in US primary and secondary education.

(On the other claw, I had several Millennial classmates in fairly advanced courses in the late '90s who had to be slowly coached through things like "open a folder on your computer" before we could actually start learning the software.)

Things changed around the turn of the century, though -- not just because "No Child Left Behind" disrupted the entire US educational system, but because there was an assumption that "this is the first generation that grew up with computers, so they must instinctively know How This Stuff Works."

Unfortunately, that ignored the fact that the tech industry, through both operating system design and the advent of device-based apps, spent those years deliberately obfuscating "How This Stuff Works."

@dreamsy990 also noted:

seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl

Simple: the commercialization and monetization of the Internet relied upon people buying into the Panopticon. As I said back in the days of the Nym Wars: They needed to make you easier to track. They needed to make you a product.

When Facebook's CEO claimed that "the social Web can't exist until you are your real self online", I replied:

The logical fallacy, of course, is the conflation of "real self" with "legal name". You can't be your "real self" if you're always wondering, "what would my family think of this? What if my boss Googles me?" I am my "real self" online, and my "social Web" is woven among those who know me as "Athelind" and "Your Obedient Serpent". That other name? That's not my "real self", Ms. Sandberg. That's my banking information, and I know why you want it.

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My grandma just called and, among other things, said “You have hips. That’s good! Men like hips!” and then she interrupted herself to say “Women like hips. People of your preferred gender like hips. I can never remember” And I was like “Thanks grandma! My preferred gender is none of them, no thanks.” and she was like “Okay, no one will comment on your hips!” very self satisfied, like “aha, I have figured it out” I think like half her grandkids are some variety of not-straight and she can’t always remember which is which but she is the epitome of like “she’s a little confused, but she’s got the spirit!”

Update: I gave it some thought and my estimate was wrong. Of the grandkids that are out, it’s 1/3, not ½

I told my grandma that I’d told my friends about what she said and that some of y’all had said you wished she was your grandma, and she said “Well, you can never have too many grandkids!” So like…consider her your honorary grandma* I guess? *if you want an honorary grandma, that is

Update on my grandma: I told her my hair was standing up, but instead of straight line it was diagonal and she said “That’s okay, you’ve never been straight!” and then laughed so hard at her own joke I thought she was going to drop the phone

Happy almost pride month! Have my confused-but-supportive grandma!

An update: my grandma just called me to ask if I knew it was pride month