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St Louis news, ACAB 

The proper title for this is "Rookie pig hurls 2500lb steel rocket through bar storefront and at owner, arrests owner on fabricated assault charge in aftermath"

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/two-videos-lots-of-questions-after-police-suv-crashes-into-st-louis-bar-owner-arrested/article_4b1326f0-9ea1-11ee-b9f8-4bffd8753cda.html

I'd say this ruined my day but my sour mood doesn't hold a candle to the crap the couple victimized by these bastards went through.

We already know Google’s Web Platform Baseline does not consider AT, so it seems unlikely this will be tracked.

Numbers can’t go up if you report on your broken stuff!

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Imagine if *all* the listboxes on your site abruptly failed at once.

You would have to get on that *fast* given how much of a barrier that introduced. You might be shouted at. Sued?

Google Chrome broke listboxes across the web for all TalkBack users… let’s see… 9 months ago!

bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/i

#accessibility #a11y #Google #Chrome

kinda meta, more politics 

You can often see people complaining about things like the fediverse, going "but how do I know what instance to use???" - and that's not specific to the fediverse, it occurs in many places.

What I think isn't discussed often enough is how this seems to be indicative of a much broader societal problem; people have become so accustomed to choices being made for them, that it seems like they have entirely lost the ability to navigate social spaces and conflicts.

This same problem reoccurs in other contexts; consider all the reporting about how people are growing increasingly lonely and don't know how to make social contacts, for example. Or how social organizing is at an all-time low in many places.

And again, the same thing in any discussion around conflicts in social circles; arguments go in endless circles and nothing ever gets talked out or resolved. Nobody ever takes accountability, empathy is generally missing.

It's like a lot of people have completely unlearned how to exist in, and take agency over their social spaces, in the span of what, two decades? Should this not be extremely worrying?

(Disclaimer: this is written from my perspective, based on the people and communities I interact with - that's not just nerds, but it probably also isn't going to be representative of the whole world, and I don't know where the exact boundaries are)

Idk how anyone can interact with American medical systems for more than two hours without becoming radicalized lol

So, about that idea of using invite trees for preventing spam on fedi instances...

*Turns off phone so it can charge faster*
*Forgets to charge it*
:blobfoxgooglyholdingitsheadinitshands:

general moderation meta, fedimins, not a subtoot, but the legendary retoot 

- When marginalized people make progress, look to see who responds as if it's too much. It's usually a small percentage shift like from 95% to 90%, but watch for privileged folks who act like it's already past 50% and into their entire disadvantage.
- Look also for privileged people to take criticisms as attacks. As I've said before, when a marginalized person provides criticism, they'll remember how you respond, and they may never give you a second chance.

Unfortunately it seems that fatigue has sapped me of my strength here, so I'll stop while I'm still focused.

To sum up, it's very possible for admin and moderators to be not so great at identifying and responding to their own privileged assumptions. And while it may result in a set of moderation decisions that have no impact on their white users, the same decisions may expose marginalized users to unacceptable risks to personal safety and comfort.

My instance, rage.love, is moderated according to many principles that are tightly associated with the fedimins' general moderation priorities, and I'm happy to have that protection as a complexly marginalized user. I'm grateful for the moderators and their efforts, on rage.love.

I hope you're happy with yours.

4/4

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general moderation meta, fedimins, not a subtoot, but the legendary retoot 

Please note that I'm about to outline some basic principles of anti racism theory that are the baseline assumptions I've seen fedimins promote, what I promote, and what led me to join them originally. I'm not going to justify these points. If you want to discuss it, feel free to ask, but going deeply into it will require paying me my consulting rates.

Principles:
- It's not possible to be racist to white people. In general, it's not possible to be bigoted towards the people in power.
- Freedom of expression, unmoderated expression, promoting uncareful expression, not being sensitive to people with access needs (e.g. alt text) or trauma e.g. content warnings), are all problematic, and potentially traumatizing.
- When you are told by someone directly affected that something is problematic, you should take it seriously (unless you've seen it before and already evaluated it), and if you believe the criticism is valid, you should make amends.
- You can't unlearn racism or supremacy or colonialism and then just be good. It's a lifetime of learning and reviewing.

3/

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general moderation meta, fedimins, not a subtoot, but the legendary retoot 

I can't do the policy justice with some full accounting of what it is, but hopefully a useful summary is that moderators tacitly or actively associated with fedimins actively protect their users from servers that are not well-moderated and do not share the same priorities, which include many anti-racism principles and other social justice principles.

One big red flag is when moderators of other instances have enough unexamined privilege that they are apparently unaware of it and its impacts on their own thinking and decision-making.

I can't say that it directly follows that a host of other moderation issues are inevitable, but they are tightly associated with this fundamental issue (of unexamined privilege). And of course, there are confounding indicators too.

One thing I tend to look for, and that the fedimins folks I've known look for is understanding and supporting antiracism theory. And it is a fact that you can't do that while just sort of coasting along, being white. It requires study, active examination, and doing the homework (to confront and deconstruct one's internalized colonialist/supremacist enculturation).

2/

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"Why do people keep complaining about my privilege?" 

Because if you have some sort of privilege (most people do, even those who are marginalized on some axis!), and you don't recognize it, you are a danger to marginalized folks.

From their perspective, you are a "bull in a china shop"; you're going to say, do, or assume things that end up harming people, and you will not show accountability for it if you don't even recognize that you're doing it!

This doesn't mean you're expected to be perfect. It just means you're expected to recognize your imperfections and relative advantages, and live your life in a way that minimizes their harm.

So, about that idea of using invite trees for preventing spam on fedi instances...

Occasionally thinking about how incredibly visually stunning Myst IV was, to the point that it arguably still holds up today, almost 20 years later

People who post almost exclusively in a language other than#English but write their #alttext entirely in English fascinate me. As a #blind monolingual dude, I appreciate the alt text! It’s also fun to have something like the experience a sighted person might have when watching a video without subtitles; understanding the visuals but not the words is a fun and weirdly unique experience for me as someone who is blind, and I think there’s an interesting #art space someone could explore here. But #accessibility isn’t just a privilege for English speakers. Have we really become that western centric? If you are someone who does this, I’d love to try and non judgmentally understand your reasons. #a11y #i18n

Idea: A new #InfoSec conference called "The Boring Security Conference". It covers topics and hands-on advice that are what actually keeps organizations secure. No zero-days, no APTs and no "if the criminal does these 39 things in precise order and you're not watching your owned" talks.

looking at a online style guide for a not to be named organisation: "you may obtain our corporate font by requesting permission from us and contacting the foundry"

or: by reading the CSS and just downloading a TTF

and i am of a staunch opinion that once the shackles of the capitalist and statist oppression will finally be destroyed and the spirit of the person will be freed, there will be a boom in artistic expression that no generation has ever seen before. and i hope that i can live for long enough to see it happen before my eyes.

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what elon musk's speech about there having to be trillions of people so we get thousands of mozarts is leaving out is that there are already millions of the likes of Einstein, Sartre, Bach, Simone, Tarkovsky, Camus and others that walk in the same crowds as we do. the problem is that 99% of them die unnoticed because they're burdened with being homeless or working 9 to 5 jobs in office until their heart gives in.

@hyenagirl64 i agree. it also sends a pretty disgusting essentialist message that you can be a successful artist or academic only if you have the "right genes". not only it disregards the amount of work and reflection people put in to become excellent at what they love doing, it also has possible eugenicist or racist implications

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