tehomet | Network

subtitle that didn't fit in the subject line: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

I'm going to say this prominently because I think it has caused some confusion among reviewers: This is a book by two nonbinary authors and the title is Life Isn't Binary, and it is NOT (primarily) about nonbinary gender identity! If you want a book that is primarily about nonbinary gender identity, this book may not give you what you're looking for!

Instead, it is about problems with binary thinking in all areas of life. There is a tendency for people to view many things in terms of two categories in opposition. Male/female and cis/trans, yes, but also Black/white, straight/gay, privileged/marginalized, body/mind, emotion/logic, friend/lover, us/them. The book examines and deconstructs these binaries and more, and encourages thinking about who currently benefits from their resultant flattening of nuance, and what we could gain from framing concepts in a less polarized way.

The book is short but extremely densely packed with ideas. I read it as a two-person book club with

dragonque, and every chapter elicited fruitful discussion about its points and how they related to our own lives and experiences. I have known

dragonque for a long time and I feel like I got to know them much better through talking about this book!

I do think at times it can feel too dense and too short for the vast scope of its thesis. The authors can state in one sentence an absolutely massive idea that could itself be an entire book, and that's the only thing they say about it because they're already on to the next point. (The authors have in fact collaborated on several other books which sound like they may elaborate on some of the things where I was like, "so, that's all you're going to say about that one? okay!")

But I found the book very worthwhile and thought-provoking, and after returning it to the library I bought my own copy because I expect I will be re-reading it, referring to it, or wanting to lend it to people.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/12/the-big-idea-cindy-cohn/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59775

When you’re trying to get folks excited about their own digital rights, a lot will depend on the examples you give them to understand the fight. As the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn certainly has examples. But which ones to choose? In this Big Idea for Privacy’s Defender, Cohn offers up her choices and explains why they matter.

CINDY COHN:

Do we have the right to have a private conversation online?

In this age of constant, pervasive surveillance, both government and corporate, how do you get people to believe that they can and should have that right?

And how do you show that safeguarding privacy is part of safeguarding a free, open and democratic society?

In Privacy’s Defender, my Big Idea is that by telling some rollicking stories about my three big fights for digital privacy over the past 30 years, I might inspire people not only to understand why privacy matters, but to actually start fighting for it themselves.

The challenge was different for each of the three stories I told. The first one, about cryptography, was in many ways the easiest, since it had a pretty straightforward narrative. Before the beginning of the broad public internet, in the early 1990s, I led a ragtag bunch of hackers and lawyers who sued to fight a federal law that treated encryption – specifically “software with the capability of maintaining secrecy” – as a weapon. We argued that code is speech and put together a case based on the First Amendment. By pulling in help from academics, scientists, companies and others, and by the grace of several women judges who were willing to listen to us in spite of the government’s national security claims on the other side, we won.

Many other stories from the early public internet are about men and the products they built. This one is different: It tells how some scruffy underdogs beat the national security infrastructure and brought all of us the promise of a more secure internet. But it’s otherwise kind of a hero’s tale with a dramatic ending when I was called to DC to negotiate the government’s surrender.

The second and third stories don’t end in such clean wins, which perhaps makes them more typical of how actual change happens when you are up against the government.

The second set of stories are about the cases we brought against the National Security Agency’s mass spying, starting after the New York Times revealed in late 2005 that the government was spying on Americans on our home soil. The fight was pushed forward by a whistleblower named Mark Klein who literally knocked on our front door at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in early 2006 with details of how the NSA was tapping into the internet’s backbone at key junctures, including in a secret room in an AT&T building in downtown San Francisco. This is the most cloak-and-dagger of the stories, made possible both by Mark’s courage and that of Edward Snowden, who revealed even more about the NSA spying in 2013 because he was angry at watching the government lie repeatedly to the American people, including before Congress.

As a result, Congress rushed in to protect… the phone companies, killing our first lawsuit. Later, after Snowden’s revelations, lawmakers passed some reforms to some of the programs we had sought to stop, but not nearly enough. In the end, the Supreme Court supported the government’s argument that – even though the whole world knew about the NSA spying and that it relied on access to information collected and handled by major telephone companies – identifying which company participated would violate the state secrets privilege. But we had dramatically shifted how the government did mass spying: ending two of the three programs we had sued over, scaling back the third, and providing far more public information about what the government was doing. In writing my book, I wanted to tell the truth about the progress we made without sugarcoating that we had not succeeded at nearly the scale that we did in the cryptography fights.

The third set of cases had a similar trajectory – an early win in the courts and some reform in Congress but ultimately not enough. These were the “Alphabet Cases” – so named because we couldn’t even name our clients publicly, assigning the cases letters instead – that we brought from 2011 through 2022 to scale back a kind of governmental subpoena called National Security Letters (NSLs), which let the FBI require companies to provide metadata about their customers but gagged them from ever telling anyone what had happened.

Though an appellate court ultimately sided with the government, we did succeed in helping our clients participate in the public debate and use their own experiences as evidence to counter the government’s misleading assertions. We had increased the procedural protections for those receiving NSLs, including clearing the way to challenge them with standards that were not quite as stacked against them. And we had helped create a path for corporate transparency reports that at least gave some information to the public about how often these controversial tools were being used.

I wanted this book to bring readers with me into the actual work, the bumpy ride, the incremental progress of protecting privacy, especially in the courts, in hope that people will think about how they too can join the fight. What we worried about in the 1990s, and fought to prevent in the 2000s and 2010s, seems closer than ever: that surveillance becomes the handmaiden of authoritarianism. But even in our troubled times, I’m confident that we are not powerless and we can prevail if we are patient, smart, thoughtful and work together. The Big Idea is that privacy is not just a coat of anonymity that you throw on before doing something embarrassing – it’s a check against unbridled government power. And as it turns out, the actual work of protecting that privacy can make for a fun, exciting and surprising life.

Privacy’s Defender: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/12/the-big-idea-cindy-cohn/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59775

prettygoodword

diglossia (dai-GLOS-ee-uh) or diaglossia (dee-uh-GLOS-ee-uh) - (ling.) n., the use of two varieties of the same language in different social contexts of a speech community.

Typically, one is a high/prestigious mode and the other a low/everyday mode. A common example is High German and Swiss German, common throughout German-speaking Switzerland, but many countries where there's an official version used in schools and broadcasts (often based on the dialect of the capital) and local variants have this (outside the capital, that is). As a linguistics term, introduced in 1959 by American sociolinguist Charles A. Ferguson from Latin diglōssia, bilingual (with influence of French diglossie, bilingual), from Ancient Greek díglōssos, again same meaning.

---L.

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fancrafts/fanart/fics/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

oursin

Happy birthday,

bats_eye!

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34521

OTW recruitment banner

Are you interested in helping keep OTW news post spaces a welcoming and safe space for engagement? Are you fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish, and want to help us better reply to users all around the world? Are you a skilled organizer who enjoys working in a team? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting!

We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:

News Post Moderator - closing 18 March 2026 at 23:59 UTC or after 60 applications
User Response Translation Translator - closing 18 March 2026 at 23:59 UTC
Translation Volunteer Manager- closing 18 March 2026 at 23:59 UTC

We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.

All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.

If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.

News Post Moderator

News Post Moderation is a Communications subcommittee that is responsible for moderating comments on AO3 and OTW News Posts as well as liaising with other OTW committees to respond to individual commenters as needed.

News Post Moderators freeze, hide, or disallow comments that do not comply with our News Post Moderation Policy. We approve comments that do comply, respond to user questions and concerns, and communicate with other OTW committees so that users can receive helpful, accurate answers.

You must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. We are looking for volunteers who can maintain a consistent level of work, ask for help and collaborate both inside the team and with other committees, and make fair and objective decisions about what comments to moderate.

Applications are due 18 March 2026 or after 60 applications

Apply for News Post Moderator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

User Response Translation Translator

Are you fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish, and want to help us better communicate with AO3 users all over the world?

User Response Translation (URT) volunteers help AO3 committees to correspond with users in other languages. URT translators will assist the Policy & Abuse and Support committees by translating correspondence between these committees and AO3 users into specific languages. URT does not translate AO3 or OTW site pages, news posts, or fanworks.

We are looking for volunteers who are at least 18 years old and fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, or Spanish. Applicants will be asked to translate and beta (edit) short text samples as part of the selection process.

Applications are due 18 March 2026

Apply for User Response Translation Translator at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

Translation Volunteer Manager

Are you a skilled organizer who enjoys working in a team, liaising with people, working with documentation and texts, and making sure everything runs smoothly behind the scenes?

The Translation committee is currently recruiting Volunteer Managers. Volunteer Managers coordinate localization efforts across the OTW: the translation of site pages, news posts, AO3 FAQs, AO3 Support and Policy & Abuse tickets, and any inquiries that reach other committees in languages they can't translate themselves.

While translators do the actual text translation and editing, volunteer managers support them by keeping track of priorities, deadlines, and pending tasks; assigning work; talking to and working with other committees to coordinate the translation of their content; uploading translated documents; documenting volunteer training, procedures, and workflows; checking in and actioning translators' feedback; and many other tasks involved in managing a wide, diverse and very active volunteer pool.

If you'd like to find out more about the work before applying, feel free to send your questions to translation@transformativeworks.org! Please note that you must be over 18 years of age to apply for this role.

Applications are due 18 March 2026

Apply for Translation Volunteer Manager at the volunteering page! If you have further questions, please contact us.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34521

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34516

Image of three books with text '17 Million Fanworks on AO3'

A lot has been going on at the Archive of Our Own (AO3) lately! In January, we celebrated 10 million registered users on AO3. February was all about International Fanworks Day, which we celebrated with several events, culminating in our 30-hour chat and games party over on Discord. And now, we've hit another milestone: 17 million fanworks on AO3!

With this many amazing fanworks, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to remember your favorites. This is why we have bookmarks on AO3! Bookmarks are a useful tool to save fanworks for re-reading whenever the mood strikes, or to recommend a work to other users.

And did you know that not only can you bookmark works posted on AO3, but also external fanworks you want to remember? To bookmark an external work, go to your Dashboard, and then to the "Bookmarks" section. In the upper right corner, there should be a button called "Bookmark External Work". For more information on bookmarks, check out our Bookmarks FAQ!

As always, we are beyond grateful for each and every one of you who contributes their free time, love, and effort to AO3, and helps us grow and flourish! We're excited to see what other achievements we'll celebrate together this year.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34516

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34511

Banner of a paper airplane emerging from an envelope with the words 'OTW Newsletter: Organization for Transformative Works'

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY

On February 15, Communications coordinated many International Fanworks Day (IFD) activities, including a Feedback Fest highlighting fanwork recommendations, an editing challenge in conjunction with Fanlore, and an IFD Discord server with games and chatting. Additionally, Translation helped make IFD materials available in 22 languages. Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating!

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In February, we celebrated AO3 reaching 10 million registered users! \o/

Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) focused on some important upgrades and bug fixes, including upgrading to Ruby on Rails 8 and improving the collection revealing process. They also published release notes for December's code changes.

AO3 Documentation began their biannual review of user-facing documentation.

In the past month, Open Doors signed five new agreements with moderators to import their archives to AO3! Fandoms include Highlander, The Magnificent Seven, My Chemical Romance, and others. They also completed the import of Slashknot, a Slipknot (band) fanfiction and fanart archive.

In January, Support received 3,811 tickets, while Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 7,972 tickets. User Response Translation completed 12 requests from PAC and 37 requests from Support. PAC continues to work closely with AD&T and Systems to combat spam that users have been experiencing across the site.

Tag Wrangling announced 28 new "No Fandom" canonical tags for February. In January, they wrangled over 648,000 tags, or around 1,400 tags per wrangling volunteer.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

Fanlore ran a Femslash February monthly editing challenge! Systems also helped upgrade Fanlore to a new version of MediaWiki.

In February, Legal had one of their volunteers participate in a briefing for staffers in the U.S. Legislature to gain a deeper understanding of copyright fair use. Elsewhere, Legal answered a number of questions internally and from users.

TWC is preparing their March 2026 issue on "Gaming Fandom" for publication. They also completed an update of TWC's editorial board as part of their ongoing work to expand TWC's scope, diversify their discipline in terms of historically marginalized fans and scholars, make the journal more international in scope, and increase multimodal approaches.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has concluded all Board-committee check-ins and is reviewing key themes across the organization. They also voted to approve an interpretative rule of one bylaw to better accommodate any future Board members with hearing disabilities.

Board Assistants Team continued work on various projects, including revamping the OTW Board Discord and researching projects on volunteer retention, public meeting best practices, and volunteer mental health.

Organizational Culture Roadmap continued work on the OTW Code of Conduct update project by finishing a summary of internal survey results and adjusting Code of Conduct drafts based on recommendations from an external HR firm. The OTW Crisis Management Plan has been finalised and approved by the Board.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

In February, Volunteers & Recruiting ran recruitment for seven roles across four committees and one workgroup.

From January 23 to February 21, Volunteers & Recruiting received 182 new requests and completed 295, leaving them with 61 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of February 21, 2026, the OTW has 985 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Communications Volunteers: 3 Social Media Moderators
New Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager and 1 Translator
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr and peaandsea (Chair Assistants) and 1 Volunteer

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Elizabeth Wiltshire (Organizational Culture Roadmap Head) and 1 Elections Chair
Departing AO3 Documentation Volunteers: 1 Editor
Departing Communications Volunteers: Abby (Social Media Moderator) and 2 Weibo Moderators
Departing Elections Volunteers: 1 Voting Process Architect
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Mei and 2 other Import Assistants, and 1 Chair Assistant
Departing Support Volunteers: Mily and RRHand (Volunteers)
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Indes, lifeisyetfair, PinkBrain, plantpun, and 14 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: Idiosincrasy (Volunteer Manager and Translator), 3 Volunteer Managers, and 1 Translator
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr, peaandsea, and 1 other Senior Volunteer; and 2 Volunteers

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34511

but_can_i_be_trusted posting in

100words

Title: 'Why?'
Fandom: Original Poetry
Rating: PG
Notes: Depressing concepts

( Why? )

james

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

verushka70

Back when Blind Spot premiered (sheesh, 10 years ago?? iz old), I had seen all the previews and thought it looked like a potentially cool show. Then I watched the first episode. I turned it off and switched to something else after the first 20-30 minutes. I simply could not suspend disbelief for the premise of the show.

It was like a bad rip-off of La Femme Nikita (the first one) but with amnesia and cardboard characters. The shaky camera work, pseudo 'cinema verite', was annoying as fuck, and the high overhead drone shots were already overdone back then. I have no beef with the actors; they're all decent and doing their best with what they've been given, which isn't much. Marianne Jean-Baptiste's role is especially thankless.

Why am I writing this? ( This is Francois Arnaud's fault, really: reasons not to watch this show even if you have Netflix and love Francois Arnaud )

I sincerely hope the other actors went on to bigger and better things, but I'm not sure this on their resume helped them do that. The only good things I can say about Blind Spot are the EDM that often shows up in the soundtrack is pretty good sometimes, and some of the actors have good chemistry. Neither of those is enough to redeem the show. The budget for it was clearly insane, which is sad - because so many better series could've used budgets like this, and used them way better than this dreck.

In short, do not watch Blind Spot. I mean, unless it's a drinking game or a "how bad could it be" dare.

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

ranunculus

No! I do not want to burn SF! I did burn brush up here though. Spent 6 hours tending the fire yesterday, after the weekly Henry St construction meeting on Zoom.
Burning sounds so easy. Light a fire and watch the pile burn, right? Not. Light the fire and feed it absolutely constantly for hours. Rake around it to prevent it from escaping. Throw bits of unburned wood back into the middle, add branch after branch to the top. Drag in new pieces, cut them up with the chainsaw or loppers and add, add logs. Lots of logs of all sizes. Keep picking up and dragging over more stuff. Keep cutting things, or breaking branches into 4' or less chunks. Wonder why you are hot, tired and thirsty and realize you haven't stopped for 3.5 hours. Stop for 5 minutes, sit down, drink water and watch the fire start to fade and die. Get back up and pile on more material.
Before:( Read more... )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3218/

Aww, the oceanic crust and the continental crust are getting married!

https://xkcd.com/3218/

starandrea

Marci heard the first red-winged blackbird two days ago, and I heard the first woodcock tonight. There are two whole crocus sprouts coming up through the snow in the front garden, plus a tiny bit of new green from the hardy irises, lilies, and stonecrop.

Plants that keep their green under the snow, so I can never tell when they're awake and when they're not, include the recently revealed euonymous, heuchara, ginger, pulmonaria, and lamium. Apparently last year I posted a picture of the first daffodil sprout on March 9, so I have been looking intently for them. Kathy has some, and they're up on the sunny street just south of us, but none in my gardens so far.

I do have these lovely haworthia flowers in my succulent planter, which I have on my calendar to water for the first time this weekend. How neat. Also a picture of Daphne walking with a friend, and some pretty photos of the sun and sky.

( flower & Daphne )

( sunrise and sunset )

silversea posting in

booknook

It's still Wednesday here! Are you making any progress in your reading?

toothpastepancake posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

siria

Improv
The Pitt RPF | ~5600 words | Shawn Hatosy/Noah Wyle | Thanks to

sheafrotherdon and

thermocline for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( It had been Sara's suggestion, of course. Noah would never have asked for it. Never even have thought of it on his own. But she'd said 'honey, I don't think three days on the beach are going to cut it this time', and so now here Noah was, sitting on the edge of a bed in a nondescript hotel room. Waiting. )

questionable_content_feed

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5784

At first I was like "is an Ed Sheeran reference going to make this comic seem dated" but then remembered Ed Sheeran's music sucks no matter what year it is

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5784

enchanted_jae posting in

drabble_zone

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Profile

tehomet

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July 2024

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Page Summary

pauraque - Life Isn't Binary by Meg-John Barker & Alex Iantaffi (2019)
scalziwhatever_feed - The Big Idea: Cindy Cohn
prettygoodword - di(a)glossia
glitteryv in recthething - Community Recs Post!
oursin - (no subject)
ao3_news_feed - The OTW is Recruiting for News Post Moderators, User Response Translation Translators, and Translati
ao3_news_feed - AO3 Celebrates 17 Million Fanworks
ao3_news_feed - February 2026 Newsletter, Volume 208
but_can_i_be_trusted in 100words - [Challenge #485: Innocent] Original Poetry: 'Why?'
james - Updates As They Happen or Within A Few Weeks After
verushka70 - Blind Spot TV series (review) (Fannish Fifty #17)
settiai - Aurendor D&D: Summary for 3/11 Game
ranunculus - Burn, SF
xkcd_feed - Subduction Retrieval
starandrea - "bluebird singing on a redbud budding, springtime sure got here all of a sudden" (doug stone)
silversea in booknook - RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday
toothpastepancake in fandomcalendar - Sunset Archive's Femslash Refresh Prompt Fest 2026
siria - 2597 / Fic - The Pitt RPF
questionable_content_feed - The Shape Of You
enchanted_jae in drabble_zone - Fake (Challenge # 492 - talk) Passion Flower 37

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better a mile wide than an inch deep

Network

Life Isn't Binary by Meg-John Barker & Alex Iantaffi (2019)

The Big Idea: Cindy Cohn

di(a)glossia

Community Recs Post!

(no subject)

The OTW is Recruiting for News Post Moderators, User Response Translation Translators, and Translati

News Post Moderator

User Response Translation Translator

Translation Volunteer Manager

AO3 Celebrates 17 Million Fanworks

February 2026 Newsletter, Volume 208

I. INTERNATIONAL FANWORKS DAY

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

IV. GOVERNANCE

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

[Challenge #485: Innocent] Original Poetry: 'Why?'

Updates As They Happen or Within A Few Weeks After

Blind Spot TV series (review) (Fannish Fifty #17)

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 3/11 Game

Burn, SF

Subduction Retrieval

"bluebird singing on a redbud budding, springtime sure got here all of a sudden" (doug stone)

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

Sunset Archive's Femslash Refresh Prompt Fest 2026

2597 / Fic - The Pitt RPF

The Shape Of You

Fake (Challenge # 492 - talk) Passion Flower 37

Profile

July 2024

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