A TikTok user’s account of a funny, but well-meaning, mix-up about trans terminology in her local neighbourhood group has gone viral on TikTok, racking up over 2.5 million views in just a couple of days.
Jessica Harris, who runs a cat rescue charity and goes by @jesslovespeters on TikTok, took to the platform to describe a very confusing online encounter that she was part of recently.
The TikTok video starts with Jess saying: “Female-to-male trans (people) and first time moms: y’all need to get together and decide who gets to keep the FTM acronym.”
She can hardly keep a straight face as she continues: “In my local neighbourhood giveaway group, this woman posted ‘FTM: looking for boy clothes’, and to be fair, she said ‘boy’. That should have been my first clue.”
Yes, the poster was actually a first time mom, looking for clothes for a baby boy, not a trans man looking for clothing donations. It’s an easy mistake to make, though, especially if you pride yourself on being a supportive trans ally, as Jess clearly does!
Still laughing, Jess continues her tale, saying: “So I messaged her, ‘hey I’m moving, my husband’s getting rid of some clothes, what size do you need?'”
Finishing her story, she explains: “And I just woke up to the most confused message back, saying she didn’t need full grown man clothes; she hasn’t had the baby yet.”
The amusing mistake clearly struck a chord with her followers, as over 6000 people commented on the video to share their reactions, and also discuss other confusing or shared acronyms that can cause similar issues online.
The top comment reads: “I’m a social worker but I can never say I’m a SW.” SW is shorthand for sex worker.
Another person shared their experience, writing: “Telling people I’m a Poly (Polynesian) and they’re thinking Poly (Polyamorous).”
A third noted another confusing shared term: “MLM = Men Loving Men. MLM = Multi-Level Marketing (Pyramid schemes).”
Other people simply complimented Jess for being so supportive, with one writing: “You’re awesome for wanting to support a FTM trans person in their transition with gender affirming clothes.”
When was the term FTM first used?
Many other commenters pointed out that the term really does “belong” to the trans community, rather than first time moms, as it has been used by trans masculine people since the 1980s.
According to The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, Lou Sullivan (1951 − 1991) first the term FTM as the name of his support group and of the newsletter he first published in 1986, which appeared generally on a quarterly basis beginning in late 1987.
The organization became FTM International (FTMI) in 1994, under the leadership of Jamison Green (1991 − 1999), growing from about 230 to around 1,500 members in 17 countries.
In contrast, the acronym FTM for “First Time Mom” gained prominence alongside the rise of online parenting forums and social media in the 2010s, so it’s a much more recent phenomenon.
Presented today at FOSDEM in Brussels was the state of gaming on FreeBSD by Thibault Payet. Besides various open-source games able to be compiled natively for FreeBSD, this BSD can get in on the Steam Play gaming scene thanks to the "linuxulator-steam-utils" project as a set of workarounds for the Steam Linux client on FreeBSD 14 and newer. Linuxulator-steam-utils builds off FreeBSD's Linuxulator support for running Linux binaries to enjoy the likes of Steam and even Steam Play (Proton) Windows games running on this translation layer for Linux and in turn running on FreeBSD...
The Colmi R02 is one of the cheapest smart rings on the market. It costs about $20, and is remarkably easy to hack. [Floyd Steinberg] took advantage of this to turn it into a rather unique MIDI controller.
What makes the Colmi R02 somewhat unique is that the manufacturer did not try to lock out users from uploading their own firmware. You don’t even really need to “hack” it, since there is no code signing or encryption. You can just whip up your own firmware to make it do whatever you want.
To that end, [Floyd] set up the ring to act as a device for musical expression. When connected to a computer over Bluetooth, data from the ring’s accelerometer is converted into MIDI CC commands via a simple web app. The app allows the MIDI messages to be configured so they can control whatever parameter is desired. [Floyd] demonstrates the ring by using it to control filter cutoff frequencies on an outboard synthesizer, with great effect.
You could theoretically just strap an accelerometer to your hand with a microcontroller and achieve similar operation. However, the magic of this is that it costs only $20 and it’s already in a form factor that’s optimized for wearing on your finger. It’s hard to beat that.
Files are on GitHub for those eager to experiment. We’ve previously featured some hacks of this particular smart ring, too, with [Aaron Christophel’s] efforts directly inspiring this work.
A U.S. federal jury has convicted Linwei Ding, a former software engineer at Google, for stealing AI supercomputer data from his employer and secretly sharing it with Chinese tech firms. [...]
Let’s consider this brief fable about a famous fairy tale figure without allies:
The problem wasn’t only Wolf. The problem was that Little Red Riding Hood was all alone with no allies in the forest to come to her aid! Without allies, Wolf felt free to eat Granny and Little Red Riding Hood, turning them into a hearty and tasty meal.
Now, let’s consider this second fable about certain world countries without a key ally:
Now that Round Orange Grifter with teeny-weeny hands has abandoned all our friends, the Angry Red Bear will continue to stomp on and kill the Lovely Yellow and Blue Flowers in the garden not its own. And the Hungry Giant Red Panda will fly above and sail across the narrow waters to gobble up the Beautiful Islands that wish, instead, to remain free.
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Now, let’s consider this longer parable about birds of differing feathers flocking together:
One day, not so long ago, the predatory birds of the forest planned a secret action to fly directly into the path of Eagle in order to ruffle its feathers and seriously damage its ability to soar high into the clouds. Many good birds witnessed this event, and they immediately came to Eagle’s rescue. They joined with the now weakened Eagle to clip the wings of its ruthless attackers.
Because of its friends’ compassionate and tireless help, the battered Eagle slowly healed and regained its former strength. It was again able to ascend the tallest treetops and the peaks of the mightiest mountains.
But as the years went by, Eagle grew timeworn and stout. And Eagle accumulated a vast abundance of food to eat and enough nests to comfortably accommodate all the birds throughout this and other distant forests. This lavishness of resources turned Eagle into a very arrogant bird, indeed, even though it gained much of its riches by taking from others without ever giving anything back.
But because Eagle was the most powerful bird in the forest — with sharp flesh-tearing talons and a strong hook-shaped beak that could stun and kill its prey in an instant — all the other birds of the forest flattered and bowed to Eagle by giving it whatever it asked of them.
They turned over much of their food to Eagle. They sacrificed their newly constructed nests to Eagle. They attempted to fly out of Eagle’s line of sight any time they could.
Eagle forgot how the good birds of the forest fought so diligently to protect Eagle after it was attacked. They helped Eagle without asking for anything in return, even when some of their bird friends died in battle for Eagle.
And one day after calling a gathering to the center of the forest, this altered Eagle, who perched on a high tree branch looking down on all its former bird friends gathered beneath, tweeted, “I don’t need any of you!” The sound of its tweet rattled the forest like a great earthquake, uprooting tightly planted pines and oaks and causing landslides from once sturdy mountains. “You are irrelevant and stupid,” squawked Eagle, who just upended the old order of the once-protected green and vast lush valley.
During his incessant tweeting, Eagle listed some demands: “I will be taking the trees and all the nests you have built to comfort and protect your families for many generations at the northern sector of the forest,” Eagle sternly warned. “I need this entire sector as a guarantee for my security if those predatory birds who once surprise-attacked me ever return to do me harm again.”
As the other birds began to shake and attempted to silence Eagle’s squawks, Eagle, with a pumped-up breast and outstretched talons, asserted that these demands would be carried out “one way or another, even if I have to raid your nests, destroy your recently laid eggs, and evict you from my property.”
Before flying off, Eagle informed the birds that they must gather their families and belongings and be on their way as soon as possible.
Left stunned and shaken, the birds merely looked around at one another. Hardly a sound could be heard among them.
“What are we going to do?” eventually cried one. “I don’t want to leave my beautiful home!” squealed another. “Where are we to go?” still another cried. “We have lived here for so long that I can’t even imagine living anywhere else!”
Then, from those assembled, a small yet gradually growing voice began to resound. With a shakey voice at first, then raising ever so in confidence, a small red bird with white stripes, who was known as Dannebrog, looked out at the others.
“We have always stood behind Eagle,” began this small creature. “We fought beside Eagle after the attack. We were very generous to Eagle, who always was welcome beside us. And we made it completely clear that Eagle could use our sector to set up all the defenses that Eagle thought was necessary to ward off those who attacked in the past.”
“That’s right!” responded the crowd in unison. One bird known as Erfalasorput — a bird of red and white with a matching-colored circle in the middle of its back squawked with much force: “Eagle forgot about our support and service at our own expense in the past. And now Eagle is trying to bully us into submission. And I for one am not going to give up my home to a bully!”
With that, loud cheers erupted from the assembled flock. “We will not submit!” began the chant. “We will not submit!” the birds repeated, exploding and ever-gaining intensity and power. “We will not submit!” became their new battle cry, bringing together these friends of a feather into a common and unifying alliance for mutual protection against the once-perceived invincible force of Eagle.
Indeed, these different birds, who were at times past rivals, had come together before to promote common aims, such as creating a system to more efficiently and equitably distribute resources and to share in the common defense. This alliance had included the full support and addition of resources from Eagle.
By Eagle’s recent unreasonable declaration to seize part of the birds’ terrain, Eagle had violated and, therefore, had personally withdrawn from its past binding commitments.
Eagle soon returned, expecting the birds to adhere to its demands, but this did not happen.
Standing up for all its friends, a bright and articulate red and white bird sitting upon a maple leaf began to chirp, “We are telling you Eagle, in one voice,” began the bird named Canuck, “we will not surrender to your bullying. Though individually we are weaker than you in physical strength and power, together, we will not submit to your unreasonable and, quite frankly, demented demands.”
“We will not submit!” came the loud and sustained chant from the crowd of birds. “We will not submit! We will not submit…!”
Europun, a dark blue bird with yellow spots, then took over the collectives’ response to Eagle, saying, “You have changed and attempted to dismantle the order of the forest. And we say then, ‘So be it.’ You can go off if you wish, and you can sit in your perch high up and away from your former friends.”
“We will not submit!” the crowd again erupted.
“Our choice, though,” continued the blue bird with yellow spots, “is to remain unified, and, in fact, to further strengthen our commitments to one another in your absence. We no longer look to you for our collective protection.”
Then with a light bulb seemingly switching on in Europun’s sparkling eyes, it said, “I now realize that in a certain way, we are grateful to you for helping us prove to ourselves that we can protect ourselves. We are grateful to you for helping us realize that ‘we’ve got this’ because we do, in fact, got this.”
Surprised and then grasping Europun’s poignant meaning of the last statement, a growing and continuous joyful shout echoed throughout the birds’ collective. And a new cheer erupted, “We’ve got this! We’ve got this! We’ve got this!!”
Overpowered by the sheer weight and impact of the birds’ resistance, Eagle hurriedly escaped into flight, traveling some distance away to contemplate its next moves after this unexpected turn of events. Eagle pondered all possible options in facing the reality that Eagle had never encountered this type of opposition previously.
Eagle saw only two possible ways to go: either live alone in isolation and lonely solitude or concede to the birds’ demands of actually going back to the way things were and had been during many decades of mutual commitment and benefit to all involved.
And Eagle thought, “Hey, if I tell the birds that we should go back to our original agreement, then I will be seen as the real peacemaker, the one who sacrifices my demands for the benefit of all.”
And Eagle’s face then turned from an expression of sullenness to one of pure joy when imagining, “Maybe they will even give me a special prize for taking such a reasoned and unselfish stand. They will place me above all past leaders of flocks that have ever existed, and my name will fly proudly ever after.”
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