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earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

240 followers 840 following 150 posts

Just a beaw in his late 30s. He/him. Bi, cis, autistic. Trans rights. Might be NSFW at times! pfp by @saintbull.bsky.social

Not an American.

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earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Great article! I noticed someone mentioned a software that would destroy computer monitors in a newspaper clipping linked from your blog and I can't help but wonder if this was real or just an urban legend.

"We know of a piece of software that will blow up people's monitors," says Don Huesman of conceptual Instruments in Philadelphia. "We joke about that as a means of copy protec-

November 1, 2025 at 9:27 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

With alt text, credits to Herta Burbe.

A comic in four panels.

Panel 1: A woman is seen in a busy workplace. She has many unfinished cases on her desk, and people, telephones and her computer are clamoring for her attention.

Panel 2: The woman wears a bear suit.

Panel 3: The woman in bear costume walks towards a bear den in a snowy forest.

Panel 4: The woman (still in bear costume) is hibernating along with the other bears in a warm, cozy bear den.

October 27, 2025 at 12:38 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Actually owls are mostly legs

Two photos of the same owl. In the second one the feather plumage has been lifted to reveal the long legs underneath.

October 24, 2025 at 9:11 AM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

But generally the MD-80s also had integrated front stairs so the rear door was more of a secondary exit.

A technical drawing of the front stairs on an MD-80 series airplane.

October 13, 2025 at 4:13 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

I have some questions about the current moderation practices of Bluesky.

1. Why haven't you banned Jesse Singal? He has shown a clear history of harassment targeted against trans people and has among other shared materials from the cyberstalking community Kiwifarms

2. Why have you banned Link? I can't see where he broke the rules of Bluesky, and to me it seems like a vindictive move against a Black person who called out the people in power at Bluesky.

3. Why do you mass ban Palestinians, even ones who have had their identities verified by other Bluesky users? To me it seems like you're just indiscriminately mass banning Palestinians who are asking for help in a crisis on Bluesky.

I need to know the answers to these questions in order to know if Bluesky is going to be a safe place for me going forward. Thanks in advance.

October 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

I would buy a pair of skis from this guy (Ski or Die)

The ski shop guy from the MS-DOS version of Ski or Die (1990).

September 24, 2025 at 12:05 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

It wasn't just the VW Harlequin, this color pattern was everywhere in the mid 90s. I remember I had a sweater with this color pattern as a kid.

A women showing off the ugliest sweater you can think off, in the colors red, green, blue and yellow.

A pair of sneakers dyed in an unappealing collage of red, green, blue and yellow.

An airliner from DAT clad in an atrocious color mishmash of, you guessed it, red, yellow, blue and green.

September 15, 2025 at 9:34 AM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

We had "Sesame Station" in Norway in the 90s.

A group picture of the original crew of "Sesam Stasjon". It features Leonora, a human woman who was the station's singeress, Max Mekker, a large blue muppet who's good at fixing things, O. Tiedemann, the human station administrator, Alfa, a yellow muppet, and Bjarne Betjent, a pink muppet with orange hair.

Exterior picture of an actual train station dressed up as the "Sesame Station". The station has a colorful clock tower added and a colorful train is displayed besides it.

September 13, 2025 at 4:20 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

My replies 2/2

You should spend less time punishing marginalized trans people who are calling out their oppressors and more time punishing people who are responsible for real, systematic harm against marginalized people such as Jesse Singal.

(...)

Less morality and sensibilities. More focus on actual harm and on following actual legal guidelines.

August 28, 2025 at 8:17 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Here's my replies 1/2

Many of the rules are vaguely worded and could easily be interpreted in ways that hurts marginalized communities including queers and furries. I'll get into more details on this in the other sections of this questionnaire, but I want to point out that you seem to lean a lot into thinking that moderation is all about "tone policing". This creates a kind of moderation that punishes trans people and other marginalized people who speak out against their oppressors, while protecting people like Jesse Singal who spread hated and harm against marginalized communities because they're good at playing the game of making their hatred seem "academic" and "correct".

If you continue down this path you risk that the communities that helped make Bluesky what it is end up leaving, thus losing a lot of the atmosphere this site is famous for and making it feel a lot more like Facebook.

The guidelines are worded in vague ways that can easily be interpreted in broad ways and cause a lot of uncertainty about what is accepted behavior and not.

There should of course be hard lines, such as revenge porn, real life rape and real-life abuse of children and animals. This kind of material should not be accepted.

But some of the rules is worded in ways that are very broad, vague and could hurt marginalized communities? What about furry content, which often has intelligent beings with animal-like characteristics or even completely looks like an animal? Even the popular videogame Baldur Gate 3 has scenes that plays with this idea in a sexual way. Or what about gay "twink" content, which has youngish-looking adults? NSFW fanart of aged-up characters from popular media? What about popular videogames like GTA, which can contain a lot of violence? The guidelines are so broadly worded that they could easily be interpreted to impact all of this.

You should work on making the boundaries a lot more clear and focus on content that causes actual harm to vulnerable people, children and animals in real life, and/or actual legal liability. Otherwise your moderators will end up spending a lot of time on moderating content that harms no one while letting a lot of actual harm slide because you don't have enough capacity to look at it all.

As the user base has been expanding, I'm sure you're having your share of pearl-clutchers who thinks that everything that goes against their personal taste should be censored. I would like to remind you that you have great moderation tools that lets people choose what kind of content they want to see or hide. Lean into those tools.

One last thing. You have a lot of detailed prescriptions on how labelers should be set up. Again there should be clear limits, labelers that work as outright harassment should not be allowed. But trying to have incredibly detailed prescriptions are incredibly hard to interpret fairly. Who gets to decide if a labeler is 'impartial' or not? This opens up for biased decision-making, not matter how hard you try to be impartial. I think you should pare back these guidelines a lot and focus on actual harassment, and let people choose for themselves what labelers work for them and not.

I wish there was more guidelines on AI generated content. Generative AI is unfortunately too often used to create deepfakes and other content that entails harassment and makes marginalized communities feel unsafe.

August 28, 2025 at 8:16 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

The "it's always morally correct" meme format with the text "You can always wish ill on JK Rowling - it's always morally correct"

August 16, 2025 at 8:13 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

An anthropomorphic white bear with a bi pride flag, art credit @roscowagon.bsky.social‬

July 29, 2025 at 5:20 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Nidaros Cathedral, Norway, before vs now.

A picture of the western wall of the Nidaros Cathedral, probably taken late 19th or early 20th century. The wall seems clearly diminished partly due to a fire in the 14th century and partly due to never actually having been finished. The whole building seems to have gone through centuries of wear and tear. It looks more like a ruin than anything else.

A contemporary picture of the same building. The western wall has grown considerably in size and has had lots of sculptures, spires and details added to it in addition to two towers and a large rose window. The central tower of the cathedral has had an impressive spire added to it. Picture credit by Holger Uwe Schmitt.

July 3, 2025 at 1:42 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Post your first cellphone

A Nokia 5110 with a blue cover. It's a very old cell phone, with an antenna poking out on the right side, physical number keys and a tiny monochrome display.

June 1, 2025 at 12:32 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Love the blanket that I bought from @artbycreeps.com ! Also the package art is cute!

A woven blanket with a pattern resembling a traditional painting of an anthro wolf man.

A package with a drawing of a cute canine creature.

February 28, 2025 at 12:11 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

They're forcing it on non-Americans too. Screenshot from Norwegian Google Maps:

A screenshot from Google maps. The Gulf of Mexico is labeled as: "Mexicogolfen (Amerikagolfen)"

February 11, 2025 at 11:35 AM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

January 24, 2025 at 8:58 AM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

This is BS, eating Christmas trees has never been a tradition in Scandinavia. This smells of ChatGPT. www.euronews.com/health/2025/...

The country's Federal Food Agency (FASFC) issued the unusual seasonal health warning on Tuesday after Ghent's local council launched a campaign last week urging people to recycle their Christmas trees in different ways - including eating the conifers.

The council suggested making flavoured butter and soup from the pine needles, which it said was inspired by traditional Scandinavian recipes.

"In Scandinavia, they have been doing it for a long time: picking the needles from the branches, briefly immersing them in boiling water, pouring them through a sieve and drying them on a clean cloth," the council said in a post on its website.

"Once the needles are dry, you can make delicious spruce needle butter with them for bread or toast".

January 10, 2025 at 6:29 PM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

Sunnyvale, 2008

January 9, 2025 at 8:22 AM

earlybearly

@early.beaw.net

We already have the CEE 7/7 plugs which works in pretty much all of Europe except UK, Ireland and Cyprus (which _should_ have a different plug as you have a different voltage level).