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Erika’s (Too) Online

@erikas.online

2.4K followers 680 following 14K posts

👩🏻‍💻 Linguist, anthropologist, writer 💖 Marriage + matchmaking expert 📍Chicago by way of Astana by way of Kyoto by way of Detroit 💬 English/日本語/Русский/יידיש 🆗 🏳️‍🌈 they/she • あの奴 • она • זי ✡️ 🤝 🇵🇸 land back worldwide Writing and more @ erikas.online

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · Oct 11

At last, a pinned thread that explains how all the shit I post about actually is connected, I swear

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · Oct 11

Hi! I’m Erika! I’m a linguist and anthropologist currently having adventures in writing outside of academia. This is a pinned thread to say hi.

My research has mostly centered on matchmaking and online dating in Japan, and the language and gender things that happen around that.

The Relationship People: Mediating Love and Marriage in Twenty-First Century Japan

The Relationship People examines the marriage industry and its clients in neoliberal Japan. It addresses what industry professionals are promoting to ease Japan’s low rates of marriage and childbi...

rowman.com

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 1h

I dropped it as soon as I finished the program I was doing, because it’s a meaningful free resource for a threatened minority heritage language of mine. But god did they ever make the app progressively less useful.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 1h

Which brings us back to hermeneutics and how we need to understand how humans build traditions and cultures of interpretation, even on a small scale like, say, bsky moderation. Still humans building a collective understanding and history of how documents get interpreted and operationalized.

Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc) @shengokai.blacksky.app · 1d

Quick definition: hermeneutics are the ways we engage in interpretation of a text. The texts in question here are user posts and the TOS. On this view, hermeneutics are essential to the task of moderation and are (in my view) why we shouldn't hand moderation over to a machine.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 1h

if it weren’t for nerds like us no one would do any education of any kind at all because oy what a shite job

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

One of those posts that is a tidy summation of what it’s like in my head (usually happening in some hellish mix of languages; at least Russian/Yiddish/English makes historical sense?)

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 1d

@joshuaraclaw.com помоги пожалуйста און fuck my brain װאָס װילט נישט писать ничего אופ יידיש без א ביסל רוסיש

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

The twin, unbearable burdens of nuance and actual social science knowledge. I get why people want to hide from it, deny it. It’s dreadful. Unfortunately I just don’t have a brain that lets me do that. Or a brain that lets me NOT try to explain.

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

There is transparently A LOT wrong with moderation on many many major sites but “machines do a first pass” isn’t one of them. How those machines are trained might be. How humans respond to appeals might be. How policy is made and interpreted? All connected problems. Image recognition per se? No.

hailey @hailey.at · 1d

even if we ignore the ethics concerns about the toll it takes on humans to have to review harmful content (many other experts here can speak more about this than i can!) we're still talking about an astronomical undertaking - one that also has to scale with sudden traffic spikes or user growth

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

Have linguistic anthropology PhD, can confirm. Also you can look at the politics of the entire 21st century, I was an adult for all of it, and it really fucking bears out this thesis.

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 9h

What Hailey actually said was not "AI is sentient and shouldn't be discriminated against". What she said was using language derived from bigoted terms used for human groups, in any context, normalizes that use in such a way to reduce the threshold taboo against using it for those humans.

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

I guess we had to be racist in a New York accent? I will now be thinking about this for the rest of my life.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 2h

literally one of the ways we distinguish borrowing from code switching! As a multigenerational Detroit Jew these words had R for me. But interestingly, the slur in question? not that it got thrown around a lot, but it had no R when it did (and I was carefully told to NOT SAY IT)

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Reposted by Erika’s (Too) Online

Brad @bradaltad.bsky.social · 6h

I cannot handle how the Dems' entire messaging strategy is devoted to chasing those three old white men in some Iowa diner who say "law and order" is their primary concern, to the expense of fighting fascism or standing up for immigrants or gay people or trans people or really standing for anything.

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

That beyond useless motherfucker

Reposted by Erika’s (Too) Online

John Carpenter’s ‘Halloran’ @profhalloran.bsky.social · 6h

¯\_(ヅ)_/¯

Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 7h

Durbin on whether Democrats can use reining in ICE in Chicago as a precondition to rein in the government says “can’t do that. It’s gotta be health care all the way.”

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

As someone who’s moved halfway around the world multiple times already: yes. All of this. Even at its easiest, it’s so hard and so unfair.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

Widespread agreement from the nominal left that borders are good and ought to be strong is killing so many people.

dr rv 🚐 (spooky 🎃) @rinewithoutacat.bsky.social · 6h

🚨 Canadian immigration news, we have the juuuust-introduced C-12! 🚨

It involves less privacy invasion for Canadian citizens, BUT the same bad rules for migrants + refugees—for ex, a one-year retroactive to 2020 claim clock that starts after entry.

www.canada.ca/en/services/...

Understanding Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, Bill C-12 - Canada.ca

The Understanding Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act (Bill C-12) proposes legislative changes to make Canada’s border security and immigration system stronger.

www.canada.ca

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

My responses are usually non-sequiturs like, “baby, we don’t just stab people in the face with things” so I suppose it doesn’t matter #linguistics

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

The baby (23.5 months) tries to talk around their pacifier like a mobster in an old movie talking around a cigar and it’s so endearing and I have even less an idea what they’re saying than usual.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

The baby (23.5 months) tries to talk around their pacifier like a mobster in an old movie talking around a cigar and it’s so endearing and I have even less an idea what they’re saying than usual.

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 6h

you think it’s a classic non-rhotic New York situation?

(who’s rewatching Daredvil for a fourth time to figure out wtf is going on with masculinity, class, violence, and rhoticity? couldn’t be me…)

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

Putting that degree in linguistic anthropology to work in combination with time spent living in a different authoritarian country 🫡 Tax dollars across three different countries at work from a time when we still thought it might be useful to know about other people.

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

Minorities are never pitted against each other and told to believe they have different class interests than solidarity with each other. That definitely never happens. That’s absolutely not a huge portion of the history of antisemitism. יידיש װאלט קײנמאל נישט

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

Seems relevant in our current political climate

Sheryl Weikal and the colorful Parrotlegals @leftistlawyer.com · 11h

I see a lot of people saying that a person charged with a crime deserves the chance to prove their innocence.

Please stop doing this because you have it backwards and this is really important.

It is ALWAYS the government's burden to prove a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

If only one guy gets to make the decisions that matter, and anyone who opposes him politically is basically committing a crime, we call that a dictatorship or authoritarianism. Just as a dictionary definition situation. In case anyone was wondering.

The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 12h

President Trump called for the jailing of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Truth Social.

The threat comes after Illinois sued the administration on Monday in hopes of halting the troops’ deployment. The National Guard arrived this week nonetheless. trib.al/pXoPcwu

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

I personally would be happier if my account lived someplace that didn’t moderate Black users according to weird standards that didn’t apply to anyone else, where I know I would be able to read what they have to say!

Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

oh hey this seems like a cool thing to do if you want to (a) support Blacksky and Black users and (b) make atproto much more genuinely federated

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 12h

So last night I migrated @gregpak.net from Bluesky to Blacksky's myatproto.social server for non-Black users! A few thoughts on the process for anyone thinking about this...

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 21h

whew. that took a while! but it looks like i'm done! all blobbed up in blobtown!

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

It would probably make much more normal posts

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Erika’s (Too) Online @erikas.online · 11h

Michael Alpert is also my uncle’s name and it’s so weird to look at because I’ve never actually met an Alpert I wasn’t related to!