starless @starless@pixie.town

https://vincent.callebaut.org/category/projects/ This architect is doing some of the wildest solarpunk shit I've seen in my life! I don't know what to think about this?! Everything seems completely impossible :D Lots of cool designs though! Especially I've been wishing for an airship comeback, for many reasons, but vertical ones?! wild

I'm seeing a lot of proclamations that there should be no exceptions to describing your images or that there's no reason to interact with any that aren't described.

I know these mean well, but they are themselves ableist.

Disabled people know that access needs can clash. I benefit from described images, but I know some people struggle to write them because of their own disabilities.

And that's okay! The culture of image descriptions is great here but it should never be absolutist.

I challenged someone on their hardline stance on this once, and it blew up into a tiny fedi drama, with the nice outcome of more social solutions.

That's around the time people started to CW undescribed images.

My instance developed an emoji to indicate you'd like a media description added.

There's a group you can tag, @imagecaptionspls, that people follow who are willing to add descriptions.

And there's @PleaseCaption to remind you if you forget.

Please describe:

* your jokes/memes - it's no good saying "this is just silly, you're not missing anything"; let us be the judge of that! Also, being disabled isn't about being dull and worthy all the time.

* your artwork - I'm so sad when I see cool art I can't boost (and sometimes can't even discern :) )

* your gifs and videos - description isn't just for still images!

* your audio clips - yep, these can be described too!

Question to SFF reading people: can anyone think of a male author who's written gender-expansive settings and/or major recurring characters - really *engaging* with gender as a flexible concept?

eg works by Ursula Le Guin, Mary Gentle, or even characters in settings by Lois McMaster Bujold or Martha Wells... have any men written equivalent stuff that distinctly engages with non-binaristic gender?

I know they must have, but my brain's just not supplying names & examples.

Tonight the Emperor Norton Coffee Hour returns to the #CircusInPlace video chat!

For the new kids, it's an hour where us clowns get to have a coffee with internet friends before diving into an entire night of circus skills training.

Join us starting at 7PM UTC-5, and hang around all night as I practice juggling, handstands, and other gravity defying nonsense.

https://meet.jit.si/circushomegym

As always, I'm incredibly grateful for the company.

the harassment instances such as poast, nicecrew, etc are currently going through the introductions hashtag to try and find any queer people they can find to harass, as well as spamming it with their own shit.

a lot of the harassment replies /untag/ the original poster so they might not realize those are replies are there but other people looking at the post will see them.

please defederate from any such instances to keep your users safe, they're very nasty.

I have started using this metaphor when recommending friends to use it.

The metaphor extends to the available feeds:

'Home': chat w/ my friends circle, including neighbors and visitors you invited in.

'Local': building party, hang w/ neighbors.

'Federated': take a walk down the street, see weird stuff, chat w/ random strangers, but keep your guard up.

Of course, it's not a perfect match, but I think it quickly conveys the social experience and trade-offs between different instances.