I’ve just finished The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner which was a great and sometimes difficult read. It’s about Julius who’s in his 70s and is now retired. His parents and brother have died and his wife has left him. He’s living alone in central London, his adopted city after his family fled from Nazi Germany. He’s looking for the next big thing in his life, pondering his past and feeling concern for his failing health. Sounds gloomy, right?! Well, the insightful writing just carries you along and pulls you in before you know it and you’re hooked on this story of loneliness and regret in later life. I found myself, like I often do with Anita Brookner, rereading sections due to the beautiful prose. Here’s an example to give you a flavour:
“He raised his eyes to a rooffline bristling with television aerials , lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit. The sky was already darkening; signs of spring were absent, and yet the chilly damp held a promise of greenness, of new life only just in abeyance. it was even possible to appreciate that sky; its opaque blue reminded him of certain pictures, though no picture could compete with this strange sense of immanence. With the crust of the earth ready to break into life, the roots expanding to disclose flowers, the trees graciously putting forth leaves. The impassivity of nature never ceased to amaze him. This awakening process was surely superior to anything captured on canvas, yet art made all phenomena its province.in its unceasing war with the effort of capturing moments of time art won this unequal contest, but only just. The majestic indifference of nature was there to remind one of ones place, and no doubt to serve as a corrective to the artist’s ambition. When the canvas was finished it was already a relic, outside change. And surely change was primordial; all must obey it. To ignore the process was to ignore the evidence of one’s own evolutionary cycle.’
Haunting, introspective and with a hint of dark comedy this was so good, just maybe one to approach with caution if yu’re about to retire! This novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002. #bookstodon#AmReading#Braille#BookReview#nature@bookstodon
Hallo liebe Medi-Bubble, bitte achtet doch darauf, die Aufkleber nicht ausgerechnet über die Braille-Beschriftung von Medikamenten zu kleben. Es gibt Personen, die darauf angewiesen sind. Und selbst wenn jemand sehendes das Produkt abholt, ist es möglich, dass es für eine blinde oder stark sehbehinderte Person ist.
Wow. Presenter Caroline Karbowski, who's sighted, learned Braille in high school because she just wanted to be able to continue reading books as a car passenger without getting carsick! #Accessibility#Braille#SciComm
Did some loom knitting tonight while we listened to a book. 🧶
The plumber came and fixed the problem and was much nicer and more informative than the other company. We’re having him come back to run a water line to the fridge to finally have ice made automatically!
I finished Faefever in Braille today! 🙌🏻
Bonus: I downloaded ten more Braille books today!
Sleep well and may your dreams be out of this world. 🤗🫶❤️🫂 #LoomKnitting#Braille
IF there was just one thing which I could tell my younger self, it would be read more #Braille and get your reading speed up. #Blind Braille learners, practice makes better. Don't put it off. Read with both hands, and get that speed up. You will thank yourself later.
@evilcookies98 I’ve looked around and read their articles and just never found it to be particularly worth my time. They’ll bash google for little things but never mention things like samsung gutting #braille support in every version of OneUI, you cannot use a braille display with samsung whatsoever apparently, the features were stripped from even their android 14 build.
Ok so here’s what I want, I want #BrailleDisplay brands to start offering realistic payment plans for their products, when your payment plan expects a #blind person to be able to pay ~$300/mo for a year to buy a product that I would really hope should last a hell of a lot longer than that it feels sorta slimey. I mean my phone that is less than a third of the price is on a 3 year payment plan. Also, I’m guessing a whole lot more blind people would buy #braille tech if it could be paid for over 3 or 5 years. @mastoblind
Ok so here’s what I want, I want #BrailleDisplay brands to start offering realistic payment plans for their products, when your payment plan expects a #blind person to be able to pay ~$300/mo for a year to buy a product that I would really hope should last a hell of a lot longer than that it feels sorta slimey. I mean my phone that is less than a third of the price is on a 3 year payment plan. Also, I’m guessing a whole lot more blind people would buy #braille tech if it could be paid for over 3 or 5 years. @mastoblind
I just want to write some code, maybe make some music, maybe draw some pictures.
I don't want to be mad about blockchains, I don't want to be mad about GenAI, I don't want to be mad about terrible backfiring "think of the children" legislation, I don't want to be terrified about the rising tide of bigoted, racist fascism ending democracy in my lifetime.
I don't want you to have to be mad about all that either.
I wish the world would leave us all alone for a little bit.
I recently solved the problem of crappy #UI (unreadable labels) on a new washer and dryer by making #Braille labels for the otherwise-unreadable selector buttons.
Okay. You know one sentence I never want to hear again? The sentence is: Sorry if my message is hard to read, I'm using dictation. You. Can. Edit. Your. Messages. They don't have to suck. Maybe use the most basic text editing commands and make your message not look like a 2 year old tried to write it. I hate this mentality. Do I use dictation? Sure I do. Do I proofread to make sure it doesn't look like I wrote the message in my sleep? Also yes, I do. If you genuinely struggle with some issue that causes this to be difficult, I can at least understand, but in 90% of cases where I see this stupid sentence it's pure uncontained laziness and it makes me want to scream and explode
@Kaliah@simon I learned #braille because I started using #BrailleScreenInput to stop being this person, and for my own sanity of trying to edit the gibberish dictation made of things.
Recognizing the urgent need for #innovation in #BraillePrinting#technology, Song & his team embarked on a mission to enhance the quality & efficiency of #Braille#printing. Their research subsequently helped #revolutionize Braille printing & improved printing accuracy at multiple levels.
The new Braille printing technology has been promoted in #China to the forefront in the field of #GlobalGreen Braille printing
#IBC is getting the word out! #Braille & #brailleliteracy are important! The #blind community is also about so much more! Our journey into #Blind media creation starts now! Join us by subscribing to the youtube channel.