About

This is, for now, a copy/paste of my introduction thread on Twitter, with some editing.

I’m a deaf-blind, asexual/aromantic trans/agender arctic fox Euromutt. I have a wide variety of interests, from law to biology to technology, and more, but my primary interest is justice. Justice is not about what is legal (or not) to do; it is about what is ethical, and that is fundamentally subjective. There are certain elements that are universal to all societies: Seizure of life or property is wrong, for example.

Social justice is particularly important to me because it’s so much rarer to find that I feel compelled to amplify. Social justice carries with it a requirement to be widely-read, since there are many seemingly disparate elements that are in reality tightly connected. I could go on, but this thread is supposed to be about me, so I’ll probably write an article about social justice soon.

My disabilities are, of course, tied to my views on social justice; I’ll answer a few questions you’re probably afraid to ask. I have some vision and some hearing left, but I describe myself as ‘deaf-blind’ because people already know what those words mean. Terms like ‘hard of hearing’, ‘visually impaired’, and ‘low-vision’ aren’t useful because it doesn’t give anyone an anchor of understanding to attach nuance to. I don’t need a screen reader and the font sizes I use are very modest. I wear hearing aids.

I’m ace/aro; I’m very sex-positive and do enjoy porn, but I’m not sexually or romantically attracted to people, nor do I generally form bonds (with humans) on an emotional level, but rather based on shared interests.

I read a lot of fiction, mostly urban fantasy like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series or pretty much anything Lois McMaster Bujold writes. I also read nonfiction occasion, such as Charles Mann’s 1491 and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the US. (p.s. Read Ann Leckie and Seanan McGuire.)

I also used to do a lot of tabletop gaming, featuring (primarily) the Final Fantasy RPG 3e by now-defunct Returner Games, Inc. (which I host these days), but also a variety of other systems like Evil Hat’s Fate Core, Exalted 2e, Mongoose Traveler, etc. Presently, I’m part of a Lancer campaign.

I’ve been a lowercase-g gamer since early childhood, growing up with NES and SNES and in two households which had computers for as long as I could remember. Final Fantasy was a staple, and Mega Man remains one of my favourite characters despite my being terrible at run’n’gun games. I’ve been primarily a PC gamer since the late 90s, however, because it remains the only platform with consistent and continuous backward compatibility, without the parade of rereleases so common to set-top consoles. But maybe we’ll stop seeing generational console wars soon. I’ve enjoyed Doom, Half-Life, Civilisation (despite its extremely colonialist view of history), Master of Orion, Stellaris, and untl recently Diablo and Starcraft. (Thanks, Activision Blizzard, for being craven cowards about Hong Kong.)

I’ve also been involved in libre software for the past 15 years or so, having contributed to a minor degree to Audacious, Angband, and ZSNES. I am a member of the core team at AdĂ©lie Linux and run the companion project APK Fission.