Daira-Emma Hopwood
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daira.bsky.social
Daira-Emma Hopwood
@daira.bsky.social
740 followers 400 following 740 posts
Zcash's official load-bearing catgirl. The only good fascist is a dead fascist.
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daira.bsky.social
Spent way too much time making this to not put it here as well.
An instance of the "No, it's the children who are wrong" Simpson's meme. In the top panel, Principal Skinner is asking "Are we the baddies?", with superimposed images of 5 authors with awful politics: J K Rowling, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Dr Seuss, and Orson Scott Card. The last of these includes a quote from Ender's Game to illustrate the point about these authors' deficit of self-awareness: "We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams." In the bottom panel, Skinner is saying "No, it's the children who are wrong."
August 7, 2025 at 8:55 AM
daira.bsky.social
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The twist is that this time they just keep building more of them.
A black-and-white photograph of the Hindenburg disaster. An enormous fireball erupts from the rear of a huge airship behind a black mooring tower, with burning debris raining down onto the buildings and vehicles below. The back third of the airship is in flames.
June 20, 2025 at 9:24 PM
daira.bsky.social
I love this photo! Reminds me of Rodchenko's poster of Lilya Brik shouting the Russian for "books!"
A famous soviet-era poster by Alexander Rodchenko. It shows a black-and-white image of a woman (Lilya Brik) shouting the Russian for "books!", against a bold red, green, and blue background forming the shape of a megaphone.
April 19, 2025 at 9:35 PM
daira.bsky.social
We have very little time to exclude DOGE and Palantir from sensitive systems, or they will enact a fascist surveillance dystopia like the world has never seen, solidifying their grip on power. They won't stop at the IRS, but they need IRS records to threaten and silence opposition.

archive.ph/oQ9iv
Headline "Palantir Is Helping DOGE With a Massive IRS Data Project" Palantir, the software company cofounded by Peter Thiel, is part of an effort by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to build a new "mega API" for accessing Internal Revenue Service records, IRS sources tell WIRED.
April 12, 2025 at 11:36 AM
daira.bsky.social
The article I'm referring to critically (not linking because of the UK Guardian's complicity with organised transphobia).
Screenshot of a Guardian article on 12th March 2025 by Jeanette Winterton. Lede: "I think of AI as alternative intelligence – and its capacity to be ‘other’ is just what the human race needs" ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’ ‘A machine-shaped hand’: Read a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model "I think of AI as alternative intelligence. John McCarthy’s 1956 definition of artificial (distinct from natural) intelligence is old fashioned in a world where most things are either artificial or unnatural. Ultraprocessed food, flying, web-dating, fabrics, make your own list. Physicist and AI commentator, Max Tegmark, told the AI Action Summit in Paris, in February, that he prefers “autonomous intelligence”. I prefer “alternative” because in all the fear and anger foaming around AI just now, its capacity to be “other” is what the human race needs. Our thinking is getting us nowhere fast, except towards extinction, via planetary collapse or global war."
March 13, 2025 at 1:29 PM
daira.bsky.social
Lol at the deletion. Here's a screenshot of the skeet I was quoting.
Stephen Judkins (@stephenjudkins.bsky.social): "There was a very popular post this morning claiming that Democrats will never stand up for trans rights, and then this afternoon every single Senate Democrat indeed stood up for trans rights. Maybe go easy on the dooming and performative dunking on Democrats?"
March 4, 2025 at 5:04 PM
daira.bsky.social
Yup. (Slide from "Hormones for all", github.com/daira/transh... )
Slide titled "Testosterone" Testosterone is an androgen that is converted to dihydrotestosterone (DHT) by, as discussed in the previous slide, 5-α reductase. DHT is a much more potent androgen than testosterone is directly. The perception of testosterone is politically charged; it is frequently blamed for all kinds of societal ills — essentially any bad thing that people associate with men can be, and often is, attributed to testosterone. In the popular (and TERF) imagination, testosterone makes you aggressive and scary-strong and confers magical advantage in sports. This is a biological essentialist viewpoint disconnected from reality: no hormone actually works like that. FTM Resource Guide has a discussion of such myths written from a transmasc perspective. This feeds into widespread misconceptions about T’s safety profile and to it being classified as a controlled substance. To some extent, toned down versions of these misconceptions are common also within the trans community. I want to be very clear about how bad the standard of discourse about T is outside specifically transmasc communities. The common standard of evidence for talking about negative side effects of testosterone isn’t very much better than “making shit up”, and this unfortunately extends to some clinicians.
February 28, 2025 at 1:42 PM
daira.bsky.social
Omg lol. (This time it forgets a factor of a million in the conversion factor, and also that it needs to multiply by the mass in amu.)
Google search for "mass of a nitrogen molecule in eV/c^2". "AI Overview The mass of a nitrogen molecule in eV/c^2 is approximately 9.31 x 10^3 eV/c^2."
February 18, 2025 at 1:33 PM
daira.bsky.social
It only gets funnier (and sadder) when you expand the "explanation". Notice how the confident-sounding it seems when giving wrong answers — that's a choice in how the model is trained.
Screenshot of the explanation. "Conversion factor: To convert mass to eV, you use the equation E = mc^2, where c is the speed of light. [correct] Nitrogen molecule mass: A nitrogen molecule has a molecular mass of roughly 28.0134 atomic mass units (amu). [correct] Calculation: Since 1 amu is equivalent to 931.5 MeV/c^2 [correct], the mass of a nitrogen molecule in eV is (28.0134 amu) * (931.5 MeV/c^2) / (1 amu) [correct] which is approximately 28.0134 eV/c^2 [wrong, it failed to do the calculation it said was necessary]. Key points: * This value represents the mass of a single nitrogen molecule. * The "c^2" in the unit indicates that the mass is being converted to its energy equivalent using the speed of light squared."
February 18, 2025 at 1:21 PM
daira.bsky.social
Google should delete its shit AI model. (The answer is out by a factor of ~a billion, due to confusing amu with eV/c^2.)

I swear stuff like this used to work 5 years ago. I would mind the wrong answers less if AI wasn't also contributing to climate collapse and enabling techbro fascism.
A Google search for "mass of a nitrogen molecule in eV". The "AI Overview" answer starts "The mass of a nitrogen molecule (N2) is approximately 28.0134 eV/c^2 when expressed in electron volts (eV)." On the right is a snippet from the NIST WebBook correctly giving the molecular weight of N2 as 28.0134 atomic mass units (not the same thing as eV/c^2).
February 18, 2025 at 1:04 PM
daira.bsky.social
Absolutely. Slide from "Chemistry, Politics, Transphobia", available at github.com/daira/transh...
A slide titled "Estradiol": The form of estrogen used in HRT is called estradiol (“E2”). It is usually taken in the form of estradiol valerate (“EV”) for pills or patches, or either EV or estradiol cypionate (“EC”) for injections. It is metabolized to the two other forms of estrogen, estrone and estriol, in the liver. Estrone would be too weak for use directly in HRT and estriol is not licensed to be used for it. There is a systematic problem with undertreatment using estradiol. GPs and endos are terrified of the stuff and are very likely to undertreat you unless you push back. I’ve seen so many transfems suffering dysphoria due to undertreatment, or unnecessary side effects as a result. Because there is a lot of individual variability in the response to a given dose, you really need blood test results to tell you the resulting serum level. Your E2 serum level should be in the range 100–200 pg/mL (367–734 pmol/L). Reference: Endocrine treatment of gender-dysphoric/gender-incongruent persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline [Hembree, Cohen-Kettenis, Gooren, Hannema et al 2017] The safest forms of E2 for HRT are EV patches or EV/EC injections. As previously mentioned, patches and injections result in greater bioavailability than pills. In the case of EV this reduces the needed dose from between 4 mg/day and 8 mg/day for pills taken orally, to between 100 mcg/day and 200 mcg/day for patches (rated absorption for a patch worn continuously and fully in contact with the skin). 100 mcg is 0.1 mg, so you can see the huge difference (roughly a factor of 40) that the greater bioavailability makes. For injections, 2 mg/week would be typical, so the average dose over time is roughly on the same order as for patches (285 mcg/day of EC in that case, although EV and EC doses are not quite comparable).
January 14, 2025 at 2:38 AM
daira.bsky.social
Careful with that. It's quite difficult to judge the dose. The effects can be quite spectacular if you get it right though (pic attached).
Photo of me in an altered state. I'm in bed with a lovely smile, tightly cuddling Blåhaj and Rainbow Dash plushies and petting our cat, Marco.
December 31, 2024 at 7:54 AM
daira.bsky.social
More research into medical fatphobia: www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/wha...
Research suggests that weight stigma is prevalent in healthcare settings and can affect treatment quality. For example: In a 2021 study, 66% of people who reported experiencing weight stigma also experienced it from healthcare professionals. In a 2022 study involving almost 1,700 people in Israel, 48% of people with a body mass index (BMI) higher than 25 reported suboptimal healthcare treatment. In the same 2022 study, more than 50% of the participants reported that healthcare professionals had made judgmental and insensitive comments. Older studies cited in a 2019 research review found that healthcare professionals spend less time with people with obesity during office visits. The results of a 2003 studyTrusted Source suggest that healthcare professionals’ weight bias affects their ability to offer empathy and support to people with obesity, which can affect the quality of their treatment. According to a 2019 review, healthcare professionals’ weight bias can deter people with obesity from seeking healthcare.
December 26, 2024 at 3:30 PM
daira.bsky.social
These slides are from my presentation "Chemistry, Politics, Transphobia" available at github.com/daira/transh...
Slide titled "End all gatekeeping" Your right to transition is not theirs to place conditions on. It never has been, for any trans person, and it never will be. No-one’s right to healthcare is theirs to place conditions on. It never has been, for any person, and it never will be. Gatekeeping is a fundamentally illegitimate and unjust practice. It is based in prejudice, and it reinforces cis supremacy, white supremacy, and ableism. I want to be very clear: *gatekeeping is discrimination*. It is a stain on society that should shame the medical profession. “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” —Emma Lazarus, 1883.
December 26, 2024 at 3:13 PM
daira.bsky.social
Alt text continuation.
Patients with a BMI of 35.3 or greater were less than half as likely to die within 30 days of surgery (over a range of surgeries that included riskier ones than typical gender-affirming ones) than those with a BMI of 23.1 or less. ['The Relationship Between Body Mass Index and 30-Day Mortality Risk, by Principal Surgical Procedure', Turrentine, Hanks, Stirmer et al, 2012.] For reference, 18.3 to 24.9 is often described as the "healthy range", 25 to 29 as "overweight", and above that as "obese", so this is saying that to the extent that there is a correlation between BMI and short-term surgery risk, it's a negative correlation even within the supposed "healthy range". The negative correlation between BMI and mortality after surgery is so well-established that some researchers have given it a name: the "obesity paradox". The only "paradox" here is that the evidence provides no excuses for continuing to practice medical fatphobia. Using high BMI as a contraindication to surgery, as GICs are still doing, is neither scientifically nor ethically supportable. Using low BMI wouldn't be either, of course. But we can be 100% sure that the NHS BMI threshold is pure fatphobia.
December 26, 2024 at 3:08 PM
daira.bsky.social
Contrary to the fatphobic assumptions of doctors, there is a *negative* correlation between obesity and serious short-term risks after surgery.
Slide from "Chemistry, Politics, Transphobia" titled "Transphobic gatekeeping amplifies health risks (14/14 – fatphobia)". It reads: The settled scientific consensus is that BMI is unacceptable bullshit. It is an "inaccurate measure of body fat content and does not take into account muscle mass, bone density, overall body composition, and racial and sex differences." ['Why BMI is inaccurate and misleading', Christian Nordquist, Medical News Today, January 2022.] Even if it actually measured body fat content, no matter what technical fixes were made to it — it would still be unethical to use it for gatekeeping. A research team at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, found *better* post-surgical short-term survival rates among people with obesity than patients of "normal" weight. ... Alt text continues in next skeet.
December 26, 2024 at 3:00 PM
daira.bsky.social
I tried to find out where this comic came from in order to credit it, but came up blank, sorry. There is this very similar version which it might be edited from, I'm not sure.
Similar image to the one above, but the woman is blonde, her bra is black and magenta rather than black, and the thought bubble says "I make *never being enough* look easy..."
December 18, 2024 at 9:15 PM
daira.bsky.social
Comic pane showing a red-haired woman with mascara and bright red lipstick, wearing a bra and lying back in bed with her arms folded behind her head. A thought bubble says, "I lay awake at night... My tits are too nice for my life to be like this..."
December 18, 2024 at 9:00 PM
daira.bsky.social
Screenshot of a one-star review of the Bluesky app by me on Google Play, about to be submitted. The comment reads: "It is unacceptable for Bluesky Social to throw trans users and other minorities under the bus by refusing to enforce its Community Guidelines. A notorious transphobe and literal pedophile-apologist was, by deliberate management decision, allowed to remain on Bluesky despite incontrovertible evidence of his harassment of many users; stated intent to harass more; posting screenshots with private medical information of trans children; and linking his own articles attempting to normalize pedophilia."
December 14, 2024 at 6:24 AM
daira.bsky.social
Thankyou, but I should point out that Zcash is the work of many people! zips.z.cash/protocol/pro...
9 Acknowledgements The inventors of Zerocash are Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Eran Tromer, and Madars Virza. The designers of the Zcash protocol are the Zerocash inventors and also Daira-Emma Hopwood, Sean Bowe, Jack Grigg, Simon Liu, Taylor Hornby, Nathan Wilcox, Zooko Wilcox, Jay Graber, Eirik Ogilvie-Wigley, Ariel Gabizon, George Tankersley, Ying Tong Lai, Kris Nuttycombe, Jack Gavigan, Steven Smith, and Greg Pfeil. The Equihash proof-of-work algorithm was designed by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich. The authors would like to thank everyone with whom they have discussed the Zerocash and Zcash protocol designs; in addition to the preceding, this includes Mike Perry, isis agora lovecruft, Leif Ryge, Andrew Miller, Ben Blaxill, Samantha Hulsey, Alex Balducci, Jake Tarren, Solar Designer, Ling Ren, John Tromp, Paige Peterson, jl777, Alison Stevenson, Maureen Walsh, Filippo Valsorda, Zaki Manian, Kexin Hu, Brian Warner, Mary Maller, Michael Dixon, Andrew Poelstra, Benjamin Winston, Josh Cincinnati, Kobi Gurkan, Weikeng Chen, Henry de Valence, Deirdre Connolly, Chelsea Komlo, Zancas Wilcox, Jane Lusby, teor, Izaak Meckler, Zac Williamson, Vitalik Buterin, Jakub Zalewski, Oana Ciobotaru, Andre Serrano, Brad Miller, Charlie O’Keefe, David Campbell, Elena Giralt, Francisco Gindre, Joseph Van Geffen, Josh Swihart, Kevin Gorham, Larry Ruane, Marshall Gaucher, Ryan Taylor, Sasha Meyer, Conrado Gouvêa, Aditya Bharadwaj, Andrew Arnott, Arya, Andrea Kobrlova, Lukas Korba, Honza Rychnovský, and no doubt others. We would also like to thank the designers and developers of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Core. Zcash has benefited from security audits performed by NCC Group, Coinspect, Least Authority, Mary Maller, Kudelski Security, QEDIT, and Trail of Bits. We also thank Mary Maller for her work on reviewing the security proofs for Halo 2 (any remaining errors are ours). [this is about a quarter of the acknowledgements]
December 11, 2024 at 4:11 AM
daira.bsky.social
More Americans are living in malls.
Still from Dawn of the Dead (1978). The four main protagonists (Francine, Steven/"Flyboy", Peter, and Roger) are sitting on a bench in front of railings overlooking a mall courtyard. Francine is holding a rifle and the others are wearing ammo belts around their necks. Roger's forearm and leg are bandaged. They look very tired.
December 7, 2024 at 6:41 AM
daira.bsky.social
Yes this is a subskeet of the following nonsense paragraph, which actively insults a generation of activists based on a straw-man interpretation of some of their words, in an otherwise excellent article. sadbrowngirl.substack.com/p/understand...
Quote: "The abstraction of transgender interests from transition into a fight for generic existence and rights also sustains frustratingly hollow claims to political action. It's not surprising that representation in corporate entertainment, euphemistic appeals to poetry, art, or the aestheticization of everyday life as beautiful have become venerated refrains in recent years, as if they were genuine political defiance. (The apotheosis is now surely the fully-memed trope of "trans joy.") They are disaggregated, private victories as distant as possible from the life-changing material effects of not being able to obtain hormones and surgeries, a driver of downward mobility. Because transgender culture since the 1990s had been virulently anti-transition, to the point of celebrating that "you don't have to transition to be trans," it has unfortunately found itself without strong resources to meaningfully oppose the attack on medical transition, which is a bread and butter, material concern, the stuff of class politics, not self-affirmation, idealised care, or representation."
December 5, 2024 at 6:22 AM
daira.bsky.social
Inspired by an eye infection and migraine yesterday (I'm feeling a lot better today).
STOP DOING LIGHT MODE * Computers were not supposed to burn out your retinas. * DECADES of the “desktop metaphor” yet NO REAL-WORLD USE found for having computer screens look like a desk painted Dulux Pure Brilliant White™. * Wanted to light up your parents’ basement anyway? We had a TOOL for that. It was called a TORCH. * “Yes turn on all the pixels and then turn off just the ones that convey information.” — Statements dreamed up by the utterly incompetent. LOOK at what Tech Bros have been demanding your Respect for all this time: Three screenshots all with bright white backgrounds: * a crowded Windows 3.1 desktop showing Program Manager; * the Accessibility settings menu on an Android phone (the text below "Colour inversion" says "May affect performance"); * an early version of Netscape Navigator showing the "Welcome to Netscape" page and "Netscape Security Upgrade Available". (This is REAL user interface design, done by REAL UI designers.) “Hello I would like a small power station to run my laptop please.” (emphasized) They have played us for absolute fools.
October 31, 2024 at 11:40 AM
daira.bsky.social
> Two years ago, a couple of high school classmates each composed a mathematical marvel, a trigonometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Now, they’re unveiling 10 more.
>
> For over 2,000 years, such proofs were considered impossible.

Am I missing something?
A proof of Pythagoras' theorem using only basic trigonometry and the identity "sin² theta = 1 - cos² theta". It has a drawing of a right-angled triangle with a vertical side of length a, horizontal side b, and hypotenuse c. The angle opposite to 'a' is theta. We essentially write "a = b tan theta" and "c cos theta = b", square the latter, use the identity to get "b² (1 - cos² theta) = a² cos² theta" and substitute to get "c² cos² theta - b² cos² theta = a² cos² theta", then divide through by cos² theta and handle the degenerate case cos theta = 0 separately. Not the most elegant proof but it works.
October 28, 2024 at 2:34 PM
daira.bsky.social
Screenshot from a mobile browser of an Internet Archive page with "Fab" in large red-on-white letters filling the screen.
October 27, 2024 at 8:02 AM