Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

I recently posted about how I prefer to see #hashtags positioned within #Mastodon content, as a #ScreenReader user. That post has picked up some momentum, and my thanks to everyone that has shared, favourited and/or engaged with it via thoughtful discourse.

I'd like to highlight that screen reader users vary widely in their consumption habits and preferences, and my views are nothing but personal predilections. Regardless of the approach you take, you are expressing an interest in making your content as #accessible and #readable as possible to an audience who experience the world differently to how you do. This is heartening and refreshing to many Mastodon newcomers, and extremely appreciated.

Accessibility is not a binary state, and you are not doing it "wrong" if you put your hashtags inline, or at the end, or both! There are many more impactful aspects to #SocialMedia #equity, like #ImageDescriptions (also known as #AltText), which are in abundance on Mastodon and a joy to read.

#a11y #inclusion #InclusiveDesign #ScreenReaders

In my experience, abusive and toxic people tend to make a bit deal about not being defined by their past actions, that there's some sort of separation between who they are and how they regularly treat people.

That's a cop-out. That's an attempt to sidestep the reality of their patterns of behavior.

Something I think all survivors of interpersonal abuse and/or toxicity understand, is that after a certain point, questions of whether someone is a good person or a bad person, has good character or bad character, is virtuous or sinful becomes irrelevant.

What matters is their patterns of behavior.

Anybody have any holiday gift ideas this year they particularly like? Bonuses for:

* stuff that gets used up
* alternately, things that aren't weird to acquire second-hand for gifts
* small or local-to-you producers
* "Oh I wouldn't have thought of that", off-the-wall
* not category-generic ("books", "art prints")

BREAKING: German government announces new service, in collaboration with train operator DB, which allows residents to receive train information by fax for the first time.

A lot of Mastodon instance admins are either getting their first hosting bill or getting a very increased bill from extreme growth and usage. Some may be experiencing bill shock.

Please make sure your paying/supporting them!

Twitter was free because you were the product. Mastodon doesn't work this way.

Many instances list a patreon or donation links on their about page.

Hey all, some colleagues in our local UX professionals group are seeking UX or design-specific Masto servers to join as a first server; any pointers?

Boosts appreciated!

OpenAI: Don't worry, #ChatGPT was trained to be safe.

The internet: we'll see about that https://twitter.com/NickEMoran/status/1598101579626057728

So I haven't seen this discussed anywhere, but I think it's an important thing to talk about: how neurodiversity often ends up being a conduit for transphobic sentiments.

For a while now, I've had a hypothesis about the interaction between these two things, and that hypothesis seems to be confirmed in pretty much every case I've looked at:

I think that a lot of neurodiverse people are some form of agender without realizing it, that they genuinely do not understand the experience of (affirmative) gender identity, and that this is a major conduit for transphobic sentiments to propagate.

Usually it goes something like this:
- "Why would anyone care about gender that much? That just seems like a social construct"
- Reads some transphobic thinkpiece about how trans folks "do it for the attention" and are "faking it" and how it's an "epidemic"
- This seems to match with their perception of gender identity (particularly deviating from AGAB) as being something that's "made up" and not really important
- "Ah so clearly trans people are just faking it and they have an agenda, that's why it doesn't make any sense"
- Proceeds to perpetuate talking points from the transphobic sources which they feel "enlightened" them on the matter

I'm... not sure what to do about this. In the cases I've looked at, the apparently-agender folks perpetuating these sentiments never seemed to do it out of *malice*, but rather out of confusion.

Essentially, they were victims of a cisnormative society just as much as other trans folks are, but they didn't realize it, and they ended up causing harm to other trans folks in the process.

That harm has been done, that it was out of ignorance doesn't change that. At the same time, this feels like a preventable problem? But I also can't ask of trans folks to "be patient" with people spouting transphobic sentiments.

So yeah, no idea what to do with this observation now :/ But hopefully pointing it out will at least be a step towards a solution.

a sad story with happy ending:
back in 1995, in the netscape days, there was this little site called Betrayal at Krondor Help Web. some icelandic guy did the thankless job of mapping every treasure chest, enemy, dirt pile, maze, and moredhel chest puzzle solution. i visited and used it for decades.

Professor Eysteinn Björnsson updated that #retrogaming site for 25 years, until he unexpectedly died in 2021. i am honoured to now host it in his memory in perpetuity at https://dimwood.net