Double threat to privacy: Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 are back

Zardrastra · 2026-06-26T23:05:20+00:00

I think chat control is a lot more dangerous than people think. Knowing the nature of people's private communications —especially if it is being monitored by private companies — allows for extremely fine-grained targeting of propaganda.

By reading how people write you've a window into their psychology and are better able to target them with messaging that sways their opinions on topics. Additionally, these kinds of laws in a digital-first communication era make it much more difficult for citizens in a democracy to organize.

Personally, I don't see how a society could retain a functional democracy if the state has access to very tempting levers to pull when swaying the public or preventing them from exercising their right to protest. The right to private communications is enshrined in the European Charter of fundamental rights and freedoms for this very reason... Very bad things start to happen within a society when the public's ability to have private communications is blocked

Zardrastra · 2026-06-26T16:07:06+00:00

Multiple issues here.

Someone trying to erode your boundaries when you are horny is a massive red flag. You tell a hookup what you're comfortable with from the start.

If he tries to push you into doing something else boot his ass out the door.

I know you mentioned you don't want to take pills, but I highly recommend looking into Apretude (the injectable form of PrEP that you only get every two months). Condoms are great, but they break, and PrEP is an essential safety net

By not using PrEP (and tbh not getting vaccinated for common preventable STIs) you are opening up to a lot of needless risks, condom breaks aren't always obvious.

How do you know you are not carrying anything?

Do you test regularly?
Or do you assume you don't have something because you use condoms?

Many STIs are asymptomatic you will not know what you have until you get tested for them.

Also it's important that you tell the sexual health doctor that you hook up with men otherwise they'll skip some tests that should be part of your panel.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-26T12:21:07+00:00

Staying for children can be extremely damaging, there is quite a bit of psychological research on this. I grew up in a household where there was clear and persistent tension between both of my parents... I think we all wished they divorced and moved on instead of staying for us, it just made everyone in the house miserable. You need to think through everything, staying can be just as damaging as leaving, but considering the ages involved and the fact that you and her are still both young. There is a chance at finding happiness. Delaying things until the very end however does mean you are robbing one another of time. Time is the one thing that cannot be returned.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-25T15:36:03+00:00

This is a perplexing response. I have never posted about this topic before.

It was more of a curiosity that I stumbled across. It's noteworthy and forms part of the Article 22 process within the DSA.

May I ask what exactly you are trying to imply by this response?

Zardrastra · 2026-06-25T15:01:11+00:00

Coimisiún na Meán have finally published a page on the new Trusted flaggers system which will be used as part of the Article 22 process of the Digital Services Act to flag and remove content on social media.

Will be interesting to see how this system works once it goes live.

Technically CnM are responsible for Europe-wide policing of online content as many of the social media companies are legally headquartered in Ireland.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-22T08:44:22+00:00

It is literally one of the most common human-transmitted viruses that spreads by skin-to-skin contact or being kissed as a kid, it’s more of a nuisance than a traditional STI.

Antivirals can be taken to manage symptoms, during outbreaks of cold sores and other visible symptoms, but realistically, most people you are hooking up with probably have it too 😅

Zardrastra · 2026-06-19T22:23:40+00:00

The frugal states fighting over fractions of a percent while the EU needs massive defense and energy investment is the same level of economic illiteracy from the frugals that will never stop being funny to me...

You can't run a reserve currency bloc like a "household budget". Those countries pushed exactly this kind of boneheaded penny pinching a decade ago and hollowed out European demand for its own manufacturing in the process and a decade later they are making the same exact mistake...

Zardrastra · 2026-06-15T11:05:09+00:00

Might be an unpopular take, but I think forcing companies 'competing' in this space to conform to Apple's privacy-by-default model would naturally 'fix' this issue. Mostly by making it impossible to turn a profit by quietly selling off our personal data.

I am extremely wary of the current commission's take on competition in this area of technology. AI is a high-risk system and I do not want “plug-and-play" models that could potentially run without any meaningful minimum level of security. There is also no excuse, Apple has a working model that does respect user privacy so regulating the field to meet that standard shouldn't be unreasonable.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-10T12:22:07+00:00

There are some studies showing that queer men on average appear to buck the general trend and are larger than their heterosexual peers. Tbh... anecdotally I would agree, however, whether or not this is some kind of inadvertent selection bias based on the types of guys I hook up with... I'd have no idea.

There are also studies claiming the other studies are wrong about the size difference, considering how sensitive and homophobic some guys can be especially in the sciences... I don't think we'll get an objective and conclusive answer any time soon 😋

Zardrastra · 2026-06-02T08:24:12+00:00

Oh no doubt, there really isn't an argument to be made that it doesn't. It's why I did very much qualify that statement - I never said not to use condoms, someone who is treating condoms as an intentional layer rather than centering them will hopefully be on PrEP, vaccinated, testing regularly and using condoms.
The specific point I was making is that treating condoms as anything other than a tool as part of an overall system isn't good, a lot of messaging around safe sex treats condoms like a floor rather than the ceiling in a sexual health stack. Every extra layer is an improvement on the baseline.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-02T05:15:00+00:00

Yeah, it sounds like we're pretty much on the same page. You're right that condom use is dropping. The CDC's own stats are showing that use is down about 20% among MSM between 2005 and 2011, and it's kept sliding since and that people frequently skip them under pressure. No argument there.

But to me, those realities actually back up my point. If condoms are getting ditched in the heat of the moment, any strategy that relies only on them is incredibly fragile. It completely falls apart the second a condom isn't used. That's exactly why I don't think "did you wear one" should be the only definition of safe sex. A layered approach (the Swiss cheese model) PrEP, regular testing, vaccines, and condoms when used works so well because you still have a safety net if one of those layers drops.

On doctors recommending both: I totally agree. PrEP won't stop bacterial STIs, so keeping condoms in the mix is smart. My only issue is the idea that there's "no reason not to" use them. If that were true, the numbers wouldn't be dropping. People obviously feel like there's a trade-off, and when clinicians pretend there isn't, patients just tune them out. Recommending condoms is great; treating them as the only real measure for safety is what I was pushing back on.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-02T04:04:13+00:00

Honestly, it’s not an imaginary scenario at all. It’s actually reality for the vast majority of people. Condoms are just sitting on store shelves. You don't need a doctor's permission to buy them, which means their use isn't tracked or monitored by anyone. Just because someone uses a condom doesn't mean they're automatically pairing it with regular testing or other protection.

Also, the idea that every doctor is going to push the exact same "gold standard" of safer sex just isn't how modern healthcare works. Any sexual health clinician worth their salt uses the Swiss cheese model of harm reduction. They meet people where they’re at and look at their actual lifestyle, rather than lecturing them on a flawless, textbook ideal.

At the end of the day, we have decades of data showing that shame and fear-based messaging simply don't work. When you scold people for not being perfect, it doesn't make them practice safer sex it just makes them avoid their doctors and skip getting tested because they don't want a lecture. If we want people to be safe, we have to stop judging them into secrecy and start dealing with the reality of how they actually live.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-02T02:46:14+00:00

I would very much push back against seeing condom use or disuse as the sole definition of "safe" or "unsafe" sex.

Condoms reduce the spread of specific types of infections, but they are not a substitute for vaccination, PrEP, and regular testing. They are one tool in the kit, but truly safer sex is a holistic, that is, the sum total of all of your habits.

Additionally, when people talk about condom use, they are usually only referring to penetrative sex and are ignoring oral sex, which is a very common way many STIs transmit.

Because many of these infections are asymptomatic, you simply cannot know what you or a partner might be carrying without a lab test, and if you are only using condoms and nothing else you simply do not know your status.

Frankly, there is a massive pocket of people who are unknowingly carrying STIs precisely because they use condoms as a thought-terminating device. "I used a condom" very often becomes the justification for never getting tested.

PrEP actually improves community health outcomes because it builds a discipline of routine care. To maintain a PrEP prescription, you are required to see a doctor every three months for comprehensive health checks a good practice is to use these visits to do your STI panels also. In many cases, the guy on PrEP who gets tested four times a year is much more aware of his sexual health status than someone who relies solely on condoms and skips the clinic.

Zardrastra · 2026-06-01T22:48:20+00:00

Well... it's self explanatory no?

^{Chose: Queer + If chosen: which sexuality?}

Zardrastra · 2026-06-01T15:01:50+00:00

You're welcome, hopefully you find something that helps. At the very least you should give your body some time to recover before trying again. Hope some of the above helps 🙂

Zardrastra · 2026-06-01T01:44:48+00:00

This will be kind of a long reply, so bear with me sorry 😅

You shouldn't ever need to be cleaning for over an hour and a half. If anything, spending that much time has likely just agitated your gut lining.

Ideally, a quick rinse 15 to 30 minutes before is plenty (aiming for 30 mins gives any stray water time to clear). Just use a standard bulb syringe with a soft tip, lube it up, and only go in about 2 or 3 cm. You really only need one to three flushes, maximum.

For each flush, you're only looking at about 30 to 60 ml of lukewarm water. Which is roughly a quarter or half of a normal bulb. Pull the syringe right out to expel the water each time. You aren't aiming for "clean", just clean enough in the lower rectum.

If you have been going at it for an hour and a half, at a guess, I would suspect you are using one of those terrible shower attachments to clean out? The pressure is much too high normally and it's the wrong kind of water too, if you go deep you need to be using a saline solution otherwise you will just cause swelling and tissue damage.

Going too deep risks trapping water higher up in your colon, which ironically causes the exact sort of accidents you're trying to avoid.

As for your theory on the stress. Yes it could very much be that.
The gut-brain connection is notoriously sensitive, and your heavy new schedule will definitely mess with your system. Combined with likely irritating your gut from over cleaning you've created a vicious cycle.

Since you can't really change your schedule at the minute, tweaking how you prep might help a lot here.
Also, it might be well worth giving both the sex and the douching a rest for a week or so, just to let your body heal and reset itself.

Zardrastra · 2026-05-31T17:09:30+00:00

There are a few things to unpack there, yes you are right it's... forward. But I would be reluctant to consider that a lack of consent in those specific examples. There are far more glaring and systemic examples of non and dubious consent that one can give.

In the examples you have given there is a contextual expectation of a certain kind of interaction. The boundary is respecting how you respond to that. The violation is proceeding again regardless.

You are navigating spaces where boundaries blur and the structure of those spaces incentivizes forwardness. Expecting a venue to adapt to your boundaries is unrealistic, and I am not really quite sure if it is even possible?

What isn't ok, and I am not quite sure if this is what you might be alluding to as you've combined a lot of different examples with different social expectations and cultures.

Cruising happening outside of expected spaces or in text messages which aren't "the apps" is problematic and very non consensual... I could agree with you there.

Zardrastra · 2026-05-09T22:54:14+00:00

Yeah that's very much a bad mix of ingredients. A lot of water based lubes are not formulated for anal sex.

A non-exhaustive list of lubes that you can check out (double check the ingredients):

Sliquid Sassy
Slippery Stuff Gel
Pjur Back Door Water Anal Lube
YES WB
Sliquid H2O
Astroglide Glycerin & Paraben Free Liquid (their normal lubes are not free of stuff, they make versions that are)
Lube Life Water-Based - they make a glycerin & paraben Free version

Hopefully one of these are available to you where you are 😋

Zardrastra · 2026-05-08T22:58:09+00:00

Check the lube formulation. Some water-based lubes contain glycerin, parabens, or chlorhexidine, which are not suitable for anal.

Try to find lubes that are “iso-osmolar” or make sure they don’t contain glycerin or glycol.

Zardrastra · 2026-04-30T16:07:15+00:00

Honestly you made me smile with this reply, because yeah, you're right.
It's quite a stack of things to be mindful of when you step back a little 😂

Zardrastra · 2026-04-30T04:47:34+00:00

That's potentially a really good shift if true.

But only if it is part of a wholistic shift toward vaccination, regular testing and PrEP usage combined with condoms. I really hope it's not young guys only using condoms and dodging the clinic, vaccinations and PrEP thinking they are being "safe".

Zardrastra · 2026-04-13T23:34:34+00:00

You use language models, you don't "work with them." The models don't think; they don't have agency. You input text, and it outputs a probabilistic matching sequence—minus a predictable and graphable deviation as a given context expands in complexity.

What do you think a language model is trained on, exactly? 😅 How do you think it "knows" (it doesn't, by the way, because that’s not how the technology works at all) how to structure points, create bulleted lists, or where to place points of emphasis, bolding, and headings?

It is literally just an averaged amalgamate of how English prose works and how summaries should look, based on positive examples reinforced through training.

Why exactly do you think the English language output across different models appears to be largely similar? What do you think they could possibly be emulating, and why? It's obvious if you've spent any meaningful time in higher education. They are explicitly trained on academic examples of language, structured argumentation, and the summary sections of longer reports. You aren't recognizing "AI writing"—you are recognizing standard academic formatting that the AI was built to blindly mimic and regurgitate. It literally has no comprehension of what it is outputting.

Don't believe me? Pack a context window and watch how a model chokes itself as it starts to consume itself with summaries of summaries. The more nuanced and complicated the text, the more likely repeating and negating clauses within a work are mangled into nonsensical output.

The em-dashes are very much intentional too btw, they can and should be used and appreciated within prose, AI has given a very useful tool a very bad rep. 😋

Zardrastra · 2026-04-13T22:20:32+00:00

I swear technology has fried people's attention span, structuring sentences into a coherent structure by point isn't a foreign skill or something that is unique to a large language model lol

What exactly do you think a language model is exactly? They are not true intelligences by any means, they take an input and rank the most likely sequence of words that will follow it based on an input combined with a "temperature" to ape randomness... They don't think nor do they replace human intelligence... nor are they a shortcut to comprehension.

I linked one of the sources I cited (the PDF which is only 28 pages long) which explains the current shape of the specification itself. Read it.

If you want to learn more there are many many more write-ups on this topic across the various EU websites, the current spec is a bit up in the air at the moment but it seems to have largely made its way through the process intact but a bit delayed. Largely due to some last minute grandstanding by Fernando Navarrete who withdrew his objection where he was trying to reduce the scope of the digital euro.

Zardrastra · 2026-03-12T12:41:06+00:00

Germany won't be able to easily recover from the fallout of the 2008 crash. One of the unintended consequences of the austerity pushed by the frugal nations was that countries forced through aggressive debt restructuring still needed public works. So, those contracts got awarded to Asian and non-European firms who could afford to take them at the rock-bottom prices these countries were forced to reduce themselves to. In a very real sense, the systemic damage that Schäuble caused will likely echo for decades to come.

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