I currently work as a social worker with people accessing cash assistance (welfare), and most of my participants live in the Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center areas. This past week after Daunte Wright’s murder has been devastating for them, and for me.
I’ve seen some amazing donation posts going around, with groups that are responding to the injustice of Daunte’s death.
Here are some groups that have been doing life-changing work in the Brooklyn Center community:
Project for Pride in Living - They have a free clothing program for really nice professional clothes for job interviews/jobs
Hired - They have a free laptop program (50% or more of people using cash assistance have no computer at home)
CAPI- They have free trainings like CNA, which only takes 3 weeks and can raise someone’s wages by more than $3/hr
CLUES - They help people get registered for free health care insurance
Please consider donating to one of these groups that serve the Brooklyn Center community, and if you can’t donate right now, please signal boost. We need your love and support!
I currently work as a social worker with people accessing cash assistance (welfare), and most of my participants live in the Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center areas. This past week after Daunte Wright’s murder has been devastating for them, and for me.
I’ve seen some amazing donation posts going around, with groups that are responding to the injustice of Daunte’s death.
Here are some groups that have been doing life-changing work in the Brooklyn Center community:
Project for Pride in Living - They have a free clothing program for really nice professional clothes for job interviews/jobs
Hired - They have a free laptop program (50% or more of people using cash assistance have no computer at home)
CAPI- They have free trainings like CNA, which only takes 3 weeks and can raise someone’s wages by more than $3/hr
CLUES - They help people get registered for free health care insurance
Please consider donating to one of these groups that serve the Brooklyn Center community, and if you can’t donate right now, please signal boost. We need your love and support!
everybody has to do their part. as a reference, this was posted on 1 june 2020. if any links are broken or direct to a place they should not, please feel free to add on with corrections. if there is new information with better knowledge, please feel free to share. thank you.
1. donate
do not donate to shaun king. he has repeatedly collected money to “support” black people, but no one knows where the money is.
BAIL FUNDS (ALPHABETICAL ORDER; NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST)
note: washington dc and new jersey have cashless bail systems.
minnesota freedom fund (as of may 30, 2020, they are encouraging people to donate elsewhere since they have raised enough money; as of may 29, 2020, they do not have a venmo, as some fraudulent accounts have been claiming, source)
reclaim the block (aims to redistribute police funding to help the minneapolis community)
twin cities dsa (provides fresh groceries and hot meals to people in minneapolis)
2. educate yourself
it isn’t enough to sign petitions and reblog/retweet/etc. nonblack people, including people of color, owe it to black people to educate themselves and correct themselves and the people around them on anti-blackness.
note: more links are in the masterposts linked below.
people need supplies to protest safely, and even if they bring supplies with them, they can often run out. if you’re able, stock up and hand them out to people protesting. for more supplies to donate, see the “george floyd action” google docs link in section 5.
water bottles (dehydration and heatstroke are not things people should have to deal with alongside bastard cops. if the police in your area are particularly violent or known to use tear gas, get the ones with the sports cap/suction-thing/etc so people can use them as emergency eye-flushes.)
snacks (make sure to take into account that people have allergies of all sorts. foods will have a little label that says “may contain” and then list any potential allergens. write the allergens on the ziploc (or any container you use) in permanent marker, or better yet, write the snacks included in the pack.)
masks (don’t forget there’s still a pandemic going on. also it will aid in deterring facial recognition when the police try to track down protestors, also part two, if the cops use tear gas, wearing a mask (with the combination of a scarf or bandana) will lessen the adverse effects. lessen, not stop.)
bandanas, scarves, etc. and goggles (ski goggles, swimming goggles, etc.) (see above for explanation on the scarves. same goes for the goggles. anti–tear gas and anti–facial recognition.)
clean shirts (for people who are heavily gassed. also helps deter recognition through clothing.)
wound care supplies (band-aids, packets of neosporin packets or a similar antibiotic, alcohol wipes, etc.; if you can, decant bactine into those little travel bottles.)
a sharpie or another type of marker (for writing bail numbers or emergency contacts on arms, hands, etc. it’s not enough to have your city’s bail fund number stored on your phone; the police won’t give it to you to look it up. give people a marker so they can write it down, preferably not washable so it isn’t easily removed.)
IMPORTANT: KNOWING FIRST AID
tear gas: if you’re hit, get out as fast and as soon as you can. take anyone you can with you. the longer you’re in the gas, the harder it will be for you to see, and it can irritate your airways, making it hard to breathe. if you’re hit, don’t run; it’ll only make things worse on your lungs. when you leave the area, take a cold shower. don’t use hot water (it will only reactivate the agent); don’t bathe (it will only spread the CS around). (source 1) (source 2) (cdc fact sheet on tear gas)
move them to a clean and ventilated area where it’s as safe as possible.
ask them if they’re wearing contact lenses. have them remove it. if they’re wearing glasses, rinse it with water.
solution of half liquid antacid, half water. spray from the inside going out, with the head tilted back and slightly towards the side being rinsed. if they say it’s okay, open the eye slightly while doing this. (source)
bullet wounds: the most important thing is to stop the bleeding. be sure to check for an exit wound and cover that as well. treat both wounds, but treat the worse one first.
making a tourniquet (a commercial tourniquet is best, but improvised ones can work as well if done properly; the most important things to remember is that tourniquets are for limb injuries and are not meant for the head or torso and that they have to be very tightly wound on the injury.)
adult cpr tutorial (youtube video by cincinnati children’s; think of “staying alive” by the beegees or “uptown funk”)
4. be a source of information
be responsible with this. people’s lives are at stake. that being said, the media is a fucking joke and the best way to get accurate information in a grassroots rebellion is amongst ourselves. record everything, but if you are going to share any information at all, be sure to blur people’s faces.
signal (encrypted messenger app; messages delete after x amount of time): app store | google play
NUMBERS TO CALL FOR ARRESTED PROTESTORS (ALPHABETICAL ORDER; SOURCES LINKED TO THE NUMBER)
remember to keep phones OFF unless absolutely necessary. cell phone towers, stingrays, location notifs can all be used to track you and other protestors. don’t fuck around. if your phone must be on, keep it on airplane mode as often as possible and only communicate using encrypted methods. no, snapchat doesn’t count. (a twitter thread on stingrays, for those interested)
#blacklivesmatter (google docs by ambivaIcnt on twitter; includes information on relevant events, other masterposts, lists of petitions and donation links, how to protest safely and protests to go to, and more)
george floyd action (google docs; includes information on apps to download, supplies to buy and donate, places to donate to, protest safety, resources on unlearning racial bias, and more)
Josh Williams is actually up for parole this month, June 2020! You can write him a letter that he can use to attest to his character to the parole board. More info here: https://www.freejoshwilliams.com/freejosh
It would be a real shame if instead of being covered by paint, which can be removed, bronze statues of racists were to come into contact with saltwater or tomatoes and be destroyed by irreversible bronze disease.
So I can personally weigh in on this. I reverse-engineered the app, and feel confident in stating that I have a very strong understanding for how the app operates (or at least operated as of a few months ago).
TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device… well, they’re using it.
Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)
Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken
Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
The scariest part of all of this is that much of the logging they’re doing is remotely configurable, and unless you reverse every single one of their native libraries (have fun reading all of that assembly, assuming you can get past their customized fork of OLLVM!!!) and manually inspect every single obfuscated function. They have several different protections in place to prevent you from reversing or debugging the app as well. App behavior changes slightly if they know you’re trying to figure out what they’re doing. There’s also a few snippets of code on the Android version that allows for the downloading of a remote zip file, unzipping it, and executing said binary. There is zero reason a mobile app would need this functionality legitimately.
On top of all of the above, they weren’t even using HTTPS for the longest time. They leaked users’ email addresses in their HTTP REST API, as well as their secondary emails used for password resets. Don’t forget about users’ real names and birthdays, too. It was allllll publicly viewable a few months ago if you MITM’d the application.
They provide users with a taste of “virality” to entice them to stay on the platform. Your first TikTok post will likely garner quite a bit of likes, regardless of how good it is.. assuming you get past the initial moderation queue if thats still a thing. Most users end up chasing the dragon. Oh, there’s also a ton of creepy old men who have direct access to children on the app, and I’ve personally seen (and reported) some really suspect stuff. 40-50 year old men getting 8-10 year old girls to do “duets” with them with sexually suggestive songs. Those videos are posted publicly. TikTok has direct messaging functionality.
Here’s the thing though.. they don’t want you to know how much information they’re collecting on you, and the security implications of all of that data in one place, en masse, are fucking huge. They encrypt all of the analytics requests with an algorithm that changes with every update (at the very least the keys change) just so you can’t see what they’re doing. They also made it so you cannot use the app at all if you block communication to their analytics host off at the DNS-level.
For what it’s worth I’ve reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don’t collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren’t outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. It’s like comparing a cup of water to the ocean - they just don’t compare.
tl;dr; I’m a nerd who figures out how apps work for a job. Calling it an advertising platform is an understatement. TikTok is essentially malware that is targeting children. Don’t use TikTok. Don’t let your friends and family use it.
I’d heard a bit about this, but that’s worse than I imagined it could be.
I love how all these reblogs from ableds are like “boxes of paper are 20 pounds GOTCHA” as if every single person in a 60-person workplace needs to be able to lift a box of paper.
“What’s that, James? You tore your rotator cuff? Sorry, we have to let you go. What if the printer needed to be refilled and the other 200 people in this building were home sick? It just wouldn’t be fair.”
I deserve more intellectually challenging low-effort justifications for bigotry. Please try harder next time. 1/10.
hi! i’m a secretary with a lifelong congenital back issue that i had fixed via surgery.
the first thing i want to point out is that the box of paper that @bransrath posted is not the weight of the box. the 20 lb in that description is the paper weight, which is the amount of force a piece of paper can take before tearing. i know this because it’s described as copy paper, and copy paper is by default 20 lb weight. so posting that picture as a ‘gotcha’ in response to this post is ignorant at best and intentionally ableist at worst. in reality, that box probably weighs no more than 15 lbs.
secondly, i have never had to actually pick up one of these boxes ever. and i have to deal with them a lot, given that i’m a secretary who, prior to the pandemic, was printing off 1000+ pages of booklets per week. i’ve never had to pick these up because you can literally just open them, grab a ream of paper, and take it to the printer to load it in. there’s no fucking reason why you would need the whole box. most places, like my office, also store them on or near the ground because they’re heavy, so what i do is a just drag the boxes to their designated corner until they need to be used.
so “must be able to lift 20 lbs” is a tactic of discrimination, and there’s no excuse for it in office jobs like mine. i can’t actually lift more than 15 lbs and chances are, i’ll never be able to lift more than 20 lbs. i can still do all the duties of my secretary job, though, and it’s really easy to find work arounds for things like heavy boxes of paper. even i can, and my office literally employs 3 people including me. a weight limit is not a reason to deny someone a job.
