Raff Karva

You cross a finish line.

Someone enters your bib number into a publicly accessible gallery. Within two minutes they have 72 high-resolution photographs of your face and body, your full name, age category, finishing time (which suggests your health status), and running club affiliation.

No login. No identity verification. No data protection mechanism triggered. They have no relationship with you whatsoever.

This is not a hypothetical. I tested it.

———

I've been reviewing privacy policies of major UK sporting event organisers.

Medical data collected without legal basis, international transfers undisclosed, no separate consent for facial recognition, no documented data processing agreements with photography providers.

Nobody has looked at this properly yet. The full data chain — registration, results, photography, facial recognition — creates a biometric identification pipeline that any member of the public can access.

The ICO hasn't issued sector-specific guidance. I've written up the analysis and invited them to take a look.

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/privacy/beyond-the-finish-line/

@openrightsgroup@social.openrightsgroup.org @privacyint@mastodon.xyz @eff@mastodon.social

#privacy #photography #FacialRecognition #blog #RaffsReflections

Always focused, always alert.

#dog #photography #pointer

I have been harvesting UK media headlines for six weeks as part of a linguistics study. I ran a query this morning, election day, to count how often Scottish party leaders were mentioned across 25 outlets.

The Scottish Greens are polling second in Scotland tonight. Their two co-leaders got 40 mentions combined.

Malcolm Offord, whose party has never held a Holyrood seat, got 167.

Follow the link for more findings, including why this might matter.

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/media/the-loudest-voice-in-the-room/

#Scotland #Holyrood2026 #media #linguistics #UKPol #UKPolitics #ScotPol #Election #AI #RaffsReflections

@ScottishGreens@mastodon.scot @katenevens@mastodon.scot

Six weeks of UK media headlines. The election is done. Now we can compare.

Reform UK received 2.23x more coverage in UK-wide outlets than Scottish outlets from the same publishers. Their vote share was 2.21x higher in England than Scotland.

The Scottish Greens finished third in Holyrood. Their co-leader received zero BBC Scotland mentions in the six weeks before polling day.

Some more findings, including how UK and Scottish editions frame the same stories differently:

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/media/after-the-votes-were-counted/

#Scotland #Holyrood2026 #media #linguistics #data #RaffsReflections

RE: @RaffKarva@sunny.garden

"What photography actually gave me — and I didn't know I needed it until I had it — is self-reflection and self-discovery. When I raise the camera, something shifts. My breathing slows. My heart rate steadies. The noise that runs constantly in the background goes quiet. I am present in the moment.

Most of us move through the world on a kind of autopilot. We see without looking. We're present without being attentive. Photography broke me of that habit early, and I've never recovered — and I mean that as gratitude.

I didn't set out to find mindfulness. I found it through a viewfinder. And I've been going back to it ever since."

Mindfulness Through Photography

New post on Raff's Reflections:

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/photography/mindfulness-through-photography/

#RaffsReflections #Photography #Writing #Blog

A new post on Raff's Reflections:

Killing with Kindness: The Problem with Feeding Wildlife

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/wildlife/killing-with-kindness/

__

I often see neighbours leaving food out for foxes and birds where I live. I decided to investigate what the science actually says, and what I found troubled me enough to write about it.

The research shows feeding wildlife spreads disease, benefits common aggressive species over the ones that actually need help, and introduces antibiotic-resistant bacteria into wild populations.

The post isn't about judging neighbours. It's about what the evidence says and what people who genuinely love wildlife should be doing instead.

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/wildlife/killing-with-kindness/

#RaffsReflections #Blog #Wildlife #RSPB #Science #WildlifeWednesday

A study found AI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK political leader unprompted.

Six weeks ago I started harvesting headlines from 24 UK media outlets for a linguistic study on propaganda ahead of tomorrow's elections. So far, I harvested 51,710 headlines.

I just ran a query:

Farage: 429 mentions
Sarwar: 259
Polanski: 208
Badenoch: 171
Offord: 165
Findlay: 82
Greer: 26
Davey: 19
Cole-Hamilton: 17
Mackay: 12

The media made this happen.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/04/ai-platforms-nigel-farage-prompted-uk-politics-study

#UKPolitics #UKPol #AI #Elections #Media #Linguistics

RE: @RaffKarva@sunny.garden

"A few years ago I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was working sixty-plus hours a week, raising kids, coaching volleyball, running a scouts group. Privacy wasn't on my radar — not because I didn't care, but because I simply didn't have the bandwidth to notice. I was too busy living my life to think about who was watching it.

Most people are in that position right now. Not indifferent — just busy. Overwhelmed. Trying to keep up with work and family and everything else, with no mental space left over to worry about whether their smart fridge is selling their grocery habits to advertisers."

#RaffsReflections

Having been a user of both @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social and @ivpn@mastodon.social for a while now, I think their philosophies align well.

I'd personally love to see a close integration between these two organisations. Imagine a zero-knowledge OS paired with a zero-knowledge VPN and private DNS (IVPN's modDNS), all working together at the system level.

No affiliation with either, just a user who thinks the fit is too good to ignore.

New post on Raff's Reflections: my privacy journey. From being a genuine Google fan to GrapheneOS and Linux Mint, and why it happened.

Practical tool recommendations included for those who want to start somewhere.

It's been sitting in my head for a while, I'm glad it's finally out.

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/privacy/from-googler-to-grapheneos/

#RaffsReflections

#Announcement

After a few sleepless nights and what feels like eternity, last night I was finally able to launch a Print Store on my website. Self-contained** and built in HTML and PHP (I like to know how things work). No algorithms, no cookies, no tracking or tagging, no basket reminders, pop ups or ads. Just a print store that (hopefully) works. Small selection of my wildlife and landscape images from Edinburgh and Scotland. Check it out and let me know what you think.

---

I also launched a blog powered by Ghost recently, but due to Ghost's architecture, I decided to migrate the blog to Hugo while I only have three public posts. I'm almost done; two or three more afternoons to move everything to markdown and HTML.

If you're looking for a publishing platform with minimal input, Ghost is great. But for me, its code is too bloated and too script heavy. I like simple things that are easy to customise and debug.

My blog, Raff's Reflections, is and will remain RSS accessible. Photography, music, running, wildlife, outdoors, van life, linguistics and more. One/two posts per month. I'm not after building following — I disabled Ghost's subscriptions, members monetisation and analytics on day one. I just need a place to write freely. If it's not for you, please add #RaffsReflections to your filters list (after publishing, I might share blog posts here).

---

I'm off for a walk, wishing all a pleasant day!

---

**payments processed by Stripe

https://raffkarva.com/prints/

@Drahngis@social.vivaldi.net @Tutanota@mastodon.social

Age verification will make children MORE VULNERABLE, not less.

Once verification is in place, all platforms will be able to determine which connections originated from devices used by under-16s.

It is difficult to imagine the real-world impact on children who will have digital targets on their backs.

———

I have a son. To protect him online, I taught him how to use a VPN, private DNS server with tracking filtering, location spoofing and non-fingerptintable browser.

Shouting to the internet: "hey, look at me, I'm under 16" is the opposite to protecting children online.

———

The real culprit are for-profit social media. Introducing a legislation that bans algorithms and advertising would be:

1. Quicker,
2. Simpler,
3. More effective,
4. Benefit everyone, not just under 16's,
5. Stop the spread of far-right ideology among other vulnerable groups.

———

Age Verification laws are heavily lobbied by Meta (they started their campaign when the EU suggested banning social media algorithms).

You are doing Meta's bidding.

———

Over the past few decades, large corporate polluters (Exxon, Shell, etc) have successfully lobbied politicians to shift responsibility onto individuals to avoid being regulated.

We are repeating history, this time it's Meta and algorithm driven social media.

———

Edit: typos.

I'm harvesting data for a six-week study on linguistic propaganda techniques. Ran my script twice in 12 hours and got 6000 rows to classify.

6000 rows in 12 hours × 6 weeks = me questioning every life choice that led here.

(Unpaid. Spare time. Send coffee.)

#linguistics

RE: @RaffKarva@sunny.garden

Blog rebuilt. It turned out simpler than I expected.

I ended up using plain HTML and PHP. From now on, I will write posts offline in markdown, convert to HTML, upload. Such workflow is more aligned with how my brain works.

It's a shame I delayed learning HTML for so long. It's a lot of fun.

Link below in case you want to see what this post is about:

https://raffkarva.com/blog/

#RaffsReflections

North Edinburgh seagulls are in the middle of a brawl. It sounds worse than an eastern European parliament sitting.

Mindfulness Through Photography.

New post on Raff's Reflections — my first camera, film discipline, patience, and what happens in my head when I raise a camera.

https://raffkarva.com/blog/posts/photography/mindfulness-through-photography/

#RaffsReflections #photography #blog #writing

RE: @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu

Research shows it clearly: a tiny fraction of supersharers—many from coordinated troll farms—are responsible for spreading the vast majority of misinformation. Yet institutions keep blaming everyday people for the problem.

https://www.science.org/content/article/tiny-number-supersharers-spread-vast-majority-fake-news

Stop shifting responsibility onto victims!

We won't solve misinformation by policing individual shares when the real sources operate at scale.

We won't reduce pollution by asking families to recycle while corporations emit freely.

We won't address climate change through personal choices when billionaires fly private jets and yachts.

The pattern is the same: systemic problems require systemic solutions. Targeting individuals while ignoring the infrastructure of disinformation is both ineffective and unfair.

The EU Commission's post misses the mark entirely.

@jpmens@mastodon.social @hyc@mastodon.social

Homo-sapiens: 300,000 years.
Smartphones: 20 years.

"I can't imagine moving to Android"

NB: two months ago, I moved from iOS to GrapheneOS. It's awesome. I wish I had done it sooner.

I was walking Pojke one evening when something surfaced from my brain's background noise. Creep. Not the Radiohead version I've known since the nineties. Not Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox arrangement I love. Something quite different. Fully formed, waiting to be recorded. I got home and did exactly that.

Creep has followed me for a long time. "I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here." Those words land differently when you're neurodiverse.

This is track two of my unfolding project Bedroom Recordings. Very different from the first jazzy/funky Gm7b5 Jam I posted a few months ago. I'm a self-taught guitarist who only recently started recording anything. The vocals aren't there yet, I need someone who can carry them the way I hear them. But the song is there, and it felt wrong to sit on it. Proper sound mastering still to come, headphones or good speakers recommended.

Pojke on the cover.

https://lone.earth/w/kqobf4ZPk4C4WZcby69YFP

#music #musodon #MusicDiscovery #AuDHD #adhd

There are no swearwords in existence strong enough to convey what I think when I read this:

**Anduril the autonomous weapons maker doubles the size of its space unit.**

“The acquisition would significantly enhance Anduril’s ability to develop and deploy solutions across space sensing, tracking, and countermeasures, building on existing collaborations between Anduril and Exo to significantly scale the impact that we will be able to provide for national security missions,” Anduril said.

“We believe deeply that space must be secured in order to enable our activities, both in space but also on Earth,” Subramanian said. “If you can’t see in space, you can’t fight in space, and you’ve seen us work on a number of programs in that regard.”

------------

Imagine watching James Bond and deciding "I want to be that villain when I grow up."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/anduril-the-autonomous-weapons-maker-doubles-the-size-of-its-space-unit/