Pixietown

@SocialGaff sending moral support!

Quite some years ago (2006-08), we brought the #OLPC AKA the 100$ laptop to Ethiopia as pilot. A surprising thing happened. The laptops were often without battery power in the morning. A thing that wasn’t anticipated. It had two reasons. One was the keyboard LED (it was removed in later series). It was used by the parents to have a light at home. The other was a bigger surprise. The parents used the mesh networking to discuss market prices for their produce. Fascinating. 1/8

(also, this is the song I was trying to sing, with the clip timed to start in the right spot: https://youtu.be/WiPcgmSQ5uI?si=B0aUtKQaORxBcoOw&t=40 )

The vocals are a little lost. Sorry about that. #music

So, like, I forgot the words to a song today. And most of the melody.

The only thing I remembered about it was that it was in Shrek. At the end. Somewhere?? And that the first two notes were a G and a D.

I assumed I was just singing that song (but had simply forgotten the lyrics) when I wrote this song.

Oops.

Anyways, I'll reply with the music so it can have its own CW.

@reese this is exactly the late night content I was hoping to see when I opened my phone tonight.

@j3s @woozong one of my favorite things to do when we get a big snow is to walk somewhere and achieve a small quest.

It's like the snow discourages running real errands, but walking through the snow to get half a gallon of milk or whatever just feels pretty dang good. It's so quiet and I feel so fulfilled afterwards.

@sandra so far as I've heard, Minnesota's public health insurance/low income health insurance covers gender care fully.

I can check with my gf, but I don't think she's had a copay for hormones, therapy, psych stuff, or most surgeries. I don't know if ffs/implants are fully covered, but I've heard laser and such can be, if you go through a bit of a process for getting it reimbursed and such.

Not exactly an answer for your question, but it might be a place to start a search? Most of the queers looking for roomies I know up here are immuno sensitive, so they're pretty cautious about living with folks they haven't met yet.

I wrote this important thread, please read if you can and boost for visibility.

Here's how to react if someone is having a generalized tonic-clonic seizure in front of you!

Different situations are taken into account to give as much info as possible.

Thanks to efforts by volunteers Nosamu and bai0, the Internet Archive's flash emulation just jumped generations ahead.

Mute/Unmute works. The screen resizes based on the actual animation's information. And for a certain group who will flip their lid:

We can do multi-swf flash now!

A pile of previously "broken" flashes will join the collection this week.

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash

@funnypanja here's a digital version that wasn't done with the 5 felt-tips I had to hand on a foolscap pad.

Partially blind guy here with an #a11y PSA:

I'm seing a trend away from "Text Size" sliders or old fashioned font dialogs and towards a few set choices "Default", "Large","Larger", etc.

This is a HUGE step backwards. Your 'larger' is *never* large enough for my crazy busted eyeballs when I'm using my 34" monitor.

If you must do this, please be sure to add "Largest" and even "ZOMG ARE YOU SERIOUS LARGE" options. Some of us REALLY need them, even if it seems insane to you.

I’m a Blind technologist and i’ve built the Dimensions Lab for #accessible tactile graphics and #3d models at New York Public Library. With the right tools, skill-building opps and community support, Blind people can break out of image poverty and excel at spatial thinking + design. This is me waving hello to folks in #Vis #Art #Graphics & #CreativeCoding https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/15/1074036/ending-image-poverty/amp/

This is wild! Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have created a prototype real-time monitor that can detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants in a room in about 5 minutes. They adapted a micro-immunoelectrode to use llama nanobodies that recognize SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins combined with a wet-cyclone sampler running at 1000 l/m. They oxidize tyrosines on the virus surface and measure with square wave voltammetry. #Covid https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39419-z

@wgahnagl yeah, that's rough.

If it's helpful, you could try interpreting it as a worker solidary in laziness wink. It's not like your coworker is likely to become less of an ass, but it might make your days more palatable.

And again, consider asking what that emoji means next time. It's the gentlest power move on the menu, IMO. Your coworker probably won't recommend you for promotion on the basis of emoji knowledge, so don't worry about that bit.

It's always wild to me just how different, culturally, my straight, politically-moderate colleagues can be sometimes. Making room for interpretation error is helpful, particularly in maintaining sanity.

Horror story wise, I've dealt with awful things from colleagues attributing my recommendations for tool design to my "discomfort with the command line" (not true) to them insisting on three architectural re-designs after a project is already code complete. When I would try to refute their slights, my boss would tell me to stop being disruptive and to focus on the agenda of the meeting. Often, the agenda that I wrote.

Anyways, in my exit interview, I mentioned this to HR, and they said, basically, that that's the kind of thing that a manager should resolve, not HR. Not helpful. But from the company's perspective, three senior colleagues treating me poorly was my problem, since they had Vast Technical Knowledge. (if you haven't read Aurynn Shaw's Contempt Culture/The That Guy Effect, I highly recommend them)

There's a certain level of bullshit in every job. Decide what will make you quit, and what won't. Sometimes you need to work a shitty job for a few years. At least, I did.

To deal with it, I would write down the bullshit that wasn't enough to make me quit (or take a phone video of me explaining it in a private space), and then let go of it. I'd take a little break, go for a walk, maybe get a shower or something to eat... Basically enough to give myself some time to re-set, and then do what I could to continue with my work. Otherwise, I was finding myself unable to work due to being incessantly full of rage.

I would usually review my notes a few times a year and decide if I wanted to quit afterwards.

I did eventually leave that job, but it was a planned thing, and the transition went smoothly.

@wgahnagl like, IMO, the wink is meant to mean "I'm not doing my job well enough, but I'm winking to let you know that you are new and I am not, so if I ask you to do extra work, it's OK".

I think it's probably meant as, like, a wry smile thing. Which is also a shitty vibe, but it's probably not a sexual harassment vibe. This seems a bit like a case of folks from one generation using emoji slightly differently than another, but idk if that's your case.

Additionally, folks in HR often don't have any training for sorting out this kind of thing, so be a bit cautious when asking them for help. Usually, hr is mostly there so employees talk to them before they would contact, say, law enforcement.

In my experience, talking with a manager (not even necessarily the one I report to, just one I like) for advice can be more helpful. Or another worker around your same level that's been there a couple years longer. I also found the workplace stack exchange really helpful for navigating stuff like this, too, especially when I was just starting out.

The good news here is that if you directly ask "wait, what's with the winky face?" they'll probably stop. And if they get extra weird, it's likely they'll escalate to a point where it's less of a gray area.

@wgahnagl this is very normal, but also very shitty.

Please consider donating: Help him fight back.

These White cosplayers stole an Indigenous language, copywrite it, & are now selling it back to the Indigenous community at exorbitant rates.

They recorded his grandmother speaking & now they are taking legal action to prevent him from accessing the language & *speaking his own language.* He is a language instructor.

#DataSovereignty
#Indigenous #Native #NativeAmericanLanguage #LanguageRevitalization #RayTakenalive

https://fundrazr.com/takenalive?ref=ab_43u20yPVM2S43u20yPVM2S

Fun fact: You can make your own #Amiibo at home, and they work in #TotK and any other game! You can also make them pretty, if you're crafty. I just don't care enough rn to put the time in. lol

To make them, you just need a phone with NFC support (yours probably has it) and NTAG215 stickers. I put mine in these little plastic coins to protect them. They work like a charm and are a much more affordable way to collect in-game content locked behind Amiibos--especially the ones that are harder to track down.

@reese everybody gonna have a good time