Mark Risher adapts his viral Twitter thread about the security advantages of security keys like Ubikey and Google's Titan Security Key, and how they are game-changers for information security. Read the rest
Brown University researcher Lisa Littman has become the latest cause célèbre for academic freedom grifters after publishing an irresponsible article promoting "rapid-onset gender dysphoria," yet another disease model of gender identity and expression. Imagine a disease called "rapid-onset homosexuality" to understand the problem with "ROGD." Now all the usual suspects are defending her biased garbage. Read the rest
In Their Own Words is a new project that gives voice to the growing movement to do away with gender labels and restrictive expectations. As an example, here's an eye-opening comment from a participant named Jen: Read the rest
In this new video, Seriously.TV’s Dylan Marron speaks with four multiracial people about stereotypes, microaggressions, and life as someone who doesn't fit into an easy-to-define racial group. Read the rest
Published on Medium, Jennifer Coates’ “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.” is a thoughtful, empathetic, challenging personal essay about identity. Read the rest
As part of her MTV YouTube series Decoded, host Franchesca Ramsey digs into the complicated intersection of race, ethnicity, and heritage. Read the rest
Travel site Momondo interviewed 67 people about their feelings about nationality and patriotism. They then conducted a DNA test to show them just how global the world truly is.
[via The Daily Kos] Read the rest
This is Edgar Latulip of southwestern Ontario. The developmentally disabled man has been missing since 1986 but was just found about 120 kilometers from his hometown. Or rather, he found himself. Latulip had lost his memory due to a head injury after he disappeared and had created a new identity. Last month, he realized he wasn't who he thought he was. From CBC:
On Jan. 7, Latulip met with a social worker and told her he thought he was somebody else, Gavin said. The social worker found his missing persons case file and police were then called in. Latulip volunteered to have a DNA test done and on Monday, the results came back indicating he was Latulip.
Gavin said it is an unusual, but happy resolution to the case.
"When someone goes missing for an extended period of time, they don't want to be found and they're off the grid and we don't find them," Gavin said. "Or the other option, sadly, is sometimes people are deceased. I've never heard of something like this where someone's memory has come back and their identity is recovered.
"It is absolutely a good news story," Gavin added. "I try not to only think about his mother's side, but also Mr. Latulip's side where for 30 years you've learned a certain way and someone tells you and confirms to you that's not who you are. That's a lot to take in, personally, right, so there's interesting pieces for him as well."
"Ontario man missing 30 years suddenly remembers own identity" (CBC) Read the rest
Sterling Crispin uses evolutionary algorithms to produce masks that satisfy facial recognition algorithms: "my goal is to show the machine what it’s looking for, to hold a mirror up to the all-seeing eye of the digital-panopticon we live in and let it stare back into its own mind." Read the rest
The "30 Mosques" guys are producing some wonderful "30 Days Ramadan" videos this year that really give you a sense of what it's like to be a Muslim person in America. I enjoyed this one, featuring a young woman named Deena who loses her job, then decides chronicle her life through a photoblog. More about the project here. Subscribe to their video channel here. Deena's photoblog is here, and full of beautiful things. (thanks, Bassam Tariq!)
The BBC reports that record numbers of Britons are legally changing their name by deed-poll, and speculates on the factors that account for this (escaping your past, reverting to maiden names after divorce, merging names for marriage), but they miss the big one: the fact that you can't just change what you call yourself anymore. My grandparents all had fistfulls of names -- the names they were born with, their Hebrew names, their Yiddish names, their anglicized names, their nicknames -- and their ID, papers and records use a mishmash of all of them.
I've had several passports without my middle name ("Efram") which I've never used (though I'm not embarrassed by it or anything); however all the identity documents I've received in the past decade had insisted that all my names be present and identical on every piece, thanks to the growing use of databases and the growth of the Zuckerberg doctrine that every person should have exactly one name and that name should be identical in every context.
So while Britons might earlier have gone by names of their choosing with little trouble, today, officialdom requires that what you call yourself be what the state calls you, hence all the formal name-changing.
Read the restAnd it looks like this could be a record year, with an estimated 58,000 people changing their name by the end of 2011 - an increase of 4,000 on the previous year. A decade ago, only 5,000 people changed their names.
Many have been inspired by celebrities or their sporting heroes.
