Why the Samaritans' Radar is bone stupid.

TW SUICIDE

The Samaritans have launched a Twitter Bot - those annoying things that follow you for no other reason than you once quoted a Beatles lyric or what have you - which will alert people's followers whenever they use a word or phrase on a list identified as having connotations of potential suicide.  I don't deny that this is a well-intentioned thing, but nonetheless it'll do more harm than good so I'm going to deconstruct it here.

1)  The Invasive Argument

  If you contact the Samaritans and they intervene then they are serving their purpose with your consent.  If you do not contact them, if you want nothing to do with them and they intervene anyway then that is an invasion.  Corporations can ask to be "whitelisted", ie the bot will ignore them, but in a shockingly arrogant display of paternalism individuals cannot.  You cannot in any way direct this thing to leave you alone.  If you are on Twitter then it deems you as being on its radar, and it will interfere in your business.

  We have this idea that all people who are contemplating ending their lives are lost souls in need of heroic salvation.  Some are, some aren't, but we cannot force this upon people from afar or we will ultimately achieve nothing.  Those who are genuinely bent on suicide will require something more than tweets to talk them down, if at all.  Those who want help, who want to be talked down, will often as not phone the bloody Samaritans!

2)  The Data Protection Argument

  This bot will end up sitting on a great list of tweets it has sent to people.  Essentially it is gathering links to personal data into a coherent archive without either the consent of those whose data it links to or any lawful authority to do so without that consent.  It is also potentially alerting people to the likelihood that someone has a mental illness, which is arguably a breach of Data Protection, the Equality Act, and accepted counselling ethics, and it'd be a daft judge that would consider the Samaritans to be acting as anything other than a counselling agency.

  Consider also that many people are followed on Twitter by their employers!  Telling an employer - rightly or wrongly - that an employee is suicidal could end up costing that employee their livelihood!
3)  The Equality Act Argument 

  Because disabled people, the mentally ill (as a subset of disabled), and LGBT people all have higher rates of attempted suicide and actual suicide than the rest of society, the negative effects of this bot will be disproportionately felt by these communities (and any others I've missed out), potentially leading to a civil breach of the Equality Act.

  If it inadvertently outs a person as transgender then that could arguably constitute a criminal breach of the Equality Act, which is highly likely given as one in three transgender people attempt suicide.  Furthermore:  a small subsect of feminists who notably use feminism as a front for transphobic bigotry has a proven track record of hounding transgender people to suicide.  The Sandyford leak happening at the same time as the release of Radar essentially hands these people an automated hit list.  All they have to do is follow the email addresses contained in the leak and see who pings the Radar, then lean on that person.  This is not a paranoid fantasy, this is a very real concern with genuine historical underpinnings.

4)  The Desensitisation Argument 

  If every time someone uses the language of bog-standard depression they get flagged to their mates as a suicide risk then their mates will turn the bot off or block it or what have you.  They'll grow sick of it and come to regard its warnings as spam, no different to the "Nigeria Letters".  When eventually the person is at genuine risk of suicide there will be a boy-who-cried-wolf effect in play and the warnings will likely go unheeded.

5)  The Own-Goal Argument

  Consider the arguments under 3 and 4, above, with suicidal people being encouraged or ignored.  Consider the argument under 2 with people's jobs being jeopardised (by the Samaritans, no less, who they might otherwise speak to after being laid off).  Consider the argument under 1, with vulnerable people feeling violated by the bot's interventions.  You have a person who is already at risk of suicide, who has had additional stressors, who has been dissuaded from reaching out to others, whose friends have been desensitised to their plight.  You've turned a person who might waver into someone more determined.  This has the potential to increase the rate of suicide in Britain.

For all these reasons I see Radar as nothing but a menace.

#fuckcispeople

Audre Lorde famously said "the Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house".  Well...

Division is the master's tool.
Misunderstanding is the master's tool.
Ignorance is the master's tool.
Confusion and anxiety is the master's tool.
Fear is the master's tool.
Having more hate for those below us than for those above us is the master's tool.

And all of these are forged in the minds of (some) cis people when we say fuck cis people.

Shit, the master has enough damn tools as it is!

Unintended consequences

Our Diane's bedroom window is some five or six feet above the roof of the shed.  Bill now sees the window as a new door, sort of like an elevated catflap.

He jumped in there today and Diane freaked out, which left me doubled up laughing and prompted the following doctored lyrics:

He's climbing in windows,
snatching yo kibbles up,
trying to get treats,
so you'd better
hide your yarn,
hide your mice.
Hide your yarn,
hide your mice.

He's since tried to climb out of my window, which opens not onto a shed but a storey drop.  Daft animal.  Well, come the heat of Summer she'll have to choose between sleeping with the window shut and melting or sleeping with it open and suffering the occasional cat burglar.

If he comes in the window at Hallowe'en I shall have to start calling him LeChat de Valois.

Well I shan't be growing those any time soon!

Casting around for what to do with the front garden, I decided on a pergola overgrown with climbing flowers and fruits.  Clematis and loganberries seems an ideal combination.  But then I can also plant flowers in the spaces between the legs of the pergola for ground cover and colour, so what to plant?

I was looking at blues and purples when I stumbled upon Hydrangeas.  They look lovely, but further research reveals that kids have started nicking the flowers to smoke 'em on the basis of a myth that they contain tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in cannabis.  They don't contain any THC but they do contain Hydrogen Cyanide, the famous Nazi death gas.  Now while there isn't enough HCN in a Hydrangea spliff to kill you there is enough to risk brain damage.

A combination of conscience and the fervent desire to not have my garden trashed (again) is why I'm not planting Hydrangeas until this idiocy dies a death.  A shame really, because they do look lovely!

Beds and other news.

So the builders have finished and I'm getting in the first of the raised beds.  I'm putting in four of the main beds, so I'll be growing potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, neeps and cabbages.  No photos until it's done because right now it all looks fuck-ugly.

This is being hampered somewhat by the fact that I bashed myself in the hand with a sledgehammer yesterday.  The right hand.  The hand that was holding the sledgehammer.  I'm actually impressed.  It's swollen, turning purple, two fingers are lacerated, but no bones are broken.

Having bugger all else to do this weekend, I'm thinking I'll jump the train down to Egham for a night at the opera, the new one about the Ap-ocalypse.

Until next time.

Edit: apparently my hand's a mess. The joints function but I've got periosteal cracks, weakened tendons, an injured pollical system, the ulnar nerve got banged up pretty good. 4 weeks light duties: no heavy lifting, no heat, no xbox; lest I give myself a crippled hand.

In Pictures: MugGate!

This is what happens when the same bunch of activists are cooped up together in the same place for too long. If they don't get new blood, new ideas, the occasional voice of reason, they start to get a bit... sidetracked. Next thing you know it's "OMG there are TOO MANY MUGS!"

  This is a real conversation that I was involved in.  I'm "Bill Door" below:

  It's funnier with rum.  

Update:  I've since been banned from Occupy London for "flaming".  Apparently it's now offensive to point out that we've got bigger things to worry about than mugs.  

Woodcare

  Thanks to the efforts of the weather, crap builders and one inconsiderate smoker (who has been soundly bollocked, fear not), my bench is in a bit of a sorry state.  I've brought it in, planed it and sanded it.  I also improved it by using the plane to round off the corners, making it more comfortable.  Granddad Rab would be proud-ish.  I'll give it another sanding tomorrow morning then varnish it.  Jobs like these make me wish I still owned a belt sander (we lost it in a move), so when I've a few bob spare I'll have to have a shufti on ebay.

  I picked up a trio of birdhouses today; they'll also go up tomorrow.  I can make my own easily enough, but I had a coupon that made these more economical to buy.  They're of a size to attract tits to the garden - stop sniggering!  Got dirty minds the lot o' youse!  Anywho, there's something of a debate on painting and/or staining birdhouses.  Some say do it, it makes them look pretty and can ensure that they're in keeping with the look of the garden.  Others say don't do it, that you don't know what chemicals are in your paint or stain and that it might poison the birds.  

  I have my own line of reasoning on the matter, and that is that if you put a glass over the entry hole and draw round it, then only paint outside the line, you should minimise the likelihood of stuff getting on the bird.  You should also refrain from painting the roof, as water on the roof might drip in through a gap in the wood, and don't paint over the baseplate.  The baseplate has gaps around it to allow air in and to allow any water that gets in to drain away, protecting nestlings from drowning or suffocation.  Painting this can occlude the gap and cause these problems.  Finally, never paint or stain the inside of the birdhouse.  This should remain largely dry in use, it may even pick up oil from the bird's feathers, so there is really no need to introduce chemicals into such an enclosed environment.  

Lastly then, I've found out how foxes are getting into the garden.  It's hard to see scale in a vertical photo, but this lot is six feet high!

Pics of the finished bench and the birdhouses in situ will appear either tomorrow or Tuesday.  FSM knows what I'm gonna do about Steptoe's Yard...

Rhizobium woes

Thus far, my beans aren't nodulating.  I still don't know if the deficiency is in cobalt or Rhizobium.  I've been looking online for a cheap way to test for the presence of Co whilst browsing Rhizobium stockists.

  Most places (quite sensibly) won't ship live bacteria to any address that isn't a school or college.  Trouble is that this includes Rhizobium.  Some strains of Rhizobium can infect humans, but not the same ones that infect beans.  Thus far, the only place I've found that'll sell me Rhizobium will also sell me Penicillium, Candida, and Staphylococcus. OH HELL NO!  I shan't publish the address because I don't want to encourage or facilitate stupidity.

  Staphylococcus is the genus which includes the dreaded MRSA.  Whilst certainly dreaded, MRSA lives on the skin of 1-in-3 of us and is only likely to harm you if you have an open wound or a compromised immune system.  Still, after the huge media flap over MRSA (ethical journalism FAIL!), you'd think they'd be careful with Staphylococcus.

  Penicillium gives us penicillin.  Penicillin is restricted for a good reason, in that overuse of it is what started this whole superbug fiasco in the first place.  People should not be making batches of dubious penicillin in their garden sheds.

  Candida is a fungus that gives you ringworm or thrush.  Bloodstream infections from Candida have a mortality rate of between forty and fifty percent.  A vengeful, twisted eejit who got hold of a batch of Candida could load up the Karcher, take it down to Westfield and give ten thousand people a dose of thrush.  It also makes wine go off and I can't be having that!

Suffice it to say that I shan't be shopping at a place so reckless as to offer any germs to anyone.

  So, I'm back to square one.  A mate's dad grows V. faba and he gets N fixation just fine, so I'm trying to get a clod of his soil to spread on mine.  He's fine with it, the only problem is he's down in Southampton.  Next time I visit Ro I'll stop by, but that won't be for a while yet.

I best get working on that Co test...