Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

this is probably a long shot, but does anybody anywhere within london/the m25 have a pile of minipci modems that are for sale/to be disposed of?
i need some /tiny/ line matching transformers from them....

Reason Studios accomplished something incredible, finally make an FM synthesizer feel simple, intuitive and fun to use, roughly 40 years after the first commercial FM synth.

There's no way this would have been so readable without the skeuomorphism aspect.

UI design take: Software synthesizers are often still in the Skeuomorphism UI paradigm.

And you know what? The ones that use it are most of the time much, much more readable than those with modern minimal flat design.

Ever wanted to quit doing something because you saw someone else doing the same thing better?

Don't, it's the evil capitalist in your brain saying this

It’s a pretty important point: if as a rail firm you provide enough accurate digital information you’ll reduce how often passengers ask staff what’s going on

And given pretty much every railway has a *staff shortage* it’s worth getting this right!

(And sure other railways have poor data quality, but at least they *try*. I’m not sure Eurostar is even trying here)

why are there so many of you

Saw some text online that made me want to turn it into signage. What good are graphic design skills if you can't have a little fun with them.😜

And if you do accomplice things long enough and stay committed, you eventually realize that eating this kind of shit pales in comparison to what the people you're accomplicing for are experiencing from non avccomplices every day.

So the question is, when you reach a breaking point, where do you jump? I think good people withdraw to recuperate and then return to the work. I think others let it turn them bitter and let it estrange them.

But if you are committed to being a true accomplice you must find a way to handle the challenges, handle the idea that random strangers will dislike you and distrust you for trying to support them. And be okay with that. Partly because it's just going to happen while you do the work, and partly because the supremacy depends on you getting alienated by that dynamic. So if you let it alienate you, then you are doing the work of the supremacy.

It's a real cusp. And it really defeats a lot of would be accomplices who try to use the fact of trying to do the work as an immunity against criticism or distrust.

Are you in it for your own reasons? Or do you have ulterior motives? I guess you'll find out.

2/2

I don't talk about this enough. And I do teach it when I teach antiracism and other social justice to white people or other people with culturally ingrained privilege/entitlement. But it's often a very hard earned lesson and successfully navigating it requires humility. Not just tacit humility but full note humility that is very difficult for many people to volunteer.

The lesson? It's that being an accomplice means randomly eating shit. If you do accomplice things, you will, probably frequently, experience stuff that your privilege demands retribution for, and that you must suppress that desire for doing.

It's because of trauma. The people you are accomplicing for are deeply traumatized. Your people made them that way. Constant self-regulating micro and macro aggression, perpetrated by you and your ancestors are the cause. So you literally cannot be trusted. Even if you show constant good faith through every test, even if 100% of the time you've faced adversity you've chosen the right, just path, there will be people who don't trust you and think you're the enemy, just looking at you. And despite what your privilege demands, that you make them understand you, you cannot. It would only make things worse.

1/

Linux is a bit shit sometimes,

There's your headline. I don't care whether you use linux or not; ten years ago that might have mattered, I might be trying to get more people to use it so that adobe or whoever would put more effort into supporting it, but that doesn't really matter anymore, these days everything either Just Works or there's a native equivalent that's better and I've no selfish reason to recommend linux anymore, so if you're happy with windows stick with windows.

If you're *not* happy with windows, here's the other half of that sentence at the top of this post:

Linux is a bit shit sometimes - but when it's a bit shit, it's a bit shit in the way of a cat who watches the mouse run across the living room floor, not in the way of a cat who suddenly decides to bite you for no reason. It's not *actively malicious,* it's just a bit shit sometimes, which these days is tbh pretty damn good compared with a lot of stuff.

Like, it's not bad because it's being hollowed out for investors, it's not bad because it's spying on you to make more money, it's not bad because its makers know you've gotta take it anyway, it's not bad because it knows it can get a lot worse before you look elsewhere, it's just... bad. But bad in like a normal way, like a bike with a wonky gear shifter and tyres that keep going soft, not like a bike that shows you adverts.

There's my linux recommendation.

LINUX: It's A Bit Shit Sometimes™

One more post about Linux and then I'll shut up about it.

(I can do that, because I outgrew the evangelical "Oh my god you have to try this it's so much easier" stage like ten years ago, it's possible for me to shut up about Linux now, which is nicer for everyone involved)

If you have to choose between something that used to be crap but is slowly getting better, and something that used to be alright but is getting inexorably worse, the best time to jump is gonna be when you get to see and take joy in the getting-better bit.

If you leave it too long and the thing you're jumping from has gotten intolerably, unusably bad, you'll be in a hell of a panic and it'll probably be at a super-inconvenient time. Give the New Thing a good sniff ahead of time and play around with it a bit in a non-vital setting, so that you're not moving in a horrible panicked rush.

Can anyone who has disabilities tell me how good Linux support is for Wacom or other digital tablets and if there's any speech recognition available for Linux (including the ability to give voice commands in addition to dictation)?

Whoever designed this notepad seriously missed a trick. Those first 2 composers should have been Chopin and Liszt

+1 I see very few women cycling alone https://bikepacking.com/plog/man-or-bear-debate/