The Remic Rapids lookout beside the Ottawa river is almost accessible for wheelchairs and walkers, except for one small step between the two ramps. C'mon Ottawa, we can fix this kind of thing.
@david_megginson No but I don't mind raising awareness about invisible disabilities bc there's still so much ignorance, and that leads to discrimination and abuse.
The City of Ottawa has launched "Engage Ottawa", soliciting opinions from the public about affordable housing. I'm not optimistic that they'll pay attention to the feedback, but I thought I'd contribute anyway.
@johnefrancis@david_megginson remember the public consultation on public consultations… they buried and ignored the results. It was perfect Watson being Watson
Once there was a saying "If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going " Back then, Airbus had been plagued by issues with its fly-by-wire control systems, which (at the time) could override the pilot's inputs and fly a plane into the ground.
Fast foward a few decades and Airbus's systems are pretty reliable, since they've been forced to allow that their algorithms aren't always smarter than the pilots (aviation regulations are written in blood, as another saying goes).
… Now it's Boeing that's in the news every few days because of quality-control issues.
The thing about taking shortcuts, cutting oversight, and squeezing pennies in aviation is that the problems don't always surface right away.
You think you got away with it, but then years or decades later stuff starts falling off b/c of wrong fasteners, shoddy work, poor design, etc. You might never win back that public trust, even if your overall safety record is still good.
@mcdanlj@david_megginson Oh, one more quick thought: I've also flown an A320 full motion sim used to train actual pilots, and it was about the easiest thing I've ever flown in my life. I nailed a good landing on my first try and a nearly perfect landing on my 2nd try (the sim was setup with perfect clear weather with no failures and faults ... so I'm not bragging, real life would have been different, but just pointing out how much I like the airbus FBW system.)
@deborahh I get overwhelmed by notifications and clutter myself — modern apps are very noisy (literally and visually) and needy (please pay attention to ME!).
That's why I often make my windows fullscreen on my laptop, so that I won't see anything else, and why I use web sites rather than apps on my phone whenever possible.
It's not antisemitic to criticise Israel's terror attacks in Gaza any more than it's islamophobic to criticise Hamas's terrorist acts in Israel, or anti-Christian to criticise European colonialism.
By ejecting a black, disabled, female MPP for quoting the UN on situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories, the NDP has demonstrated that its social justice claims are just empty talk, and it's as neo-liberal as the others.
Among my hobbies, probably the weirdest one is circular slide rules. I was introduced to them 22 years ago when I started flying lessons, and have since branched out from the E6B to non-aviation circular rules. I like them because
@nyrath The DC-3 (designed exclusively using #slideRules) has never crashed due to a design defect, according to people I talked to at McDonnell-Douglas in the late 1990s. You can't say the same for Boeing's latest aircraft. I suspect there are two reasons for that:
GIGO: People trust the output of computers and skip common-sense sanity checks.
The DC-3 was overbuilt (to be on the safe side), while modern CAD allows companies to cut things closer to the margins for extra $$$.
I don't drink #coffee, and likely never will (I'm a lifetime member of Team Tea), but I'm puzzled about why so many people use machines with little plastic pods filled with industrial-processed muck.
You still have to fill the machines with water, so are they any easier than simply boiling the kettle and using a French Press? Does what comes out of those machines taste anything like actual coffee? (Sincere questions.)
@AdmiralFrosty Are percolators still a thing? I remember putting one on every morning for my parents when I was an early-rising kid in the 1970s (I guess it was their way to make sure I was entertained).
@david_megginson Not really, they're almost the worst way to make coffee. The way it recirculates and boils the coffee tends to give it a burned flavor. A cheap $20 drip pot will make a better pot, and be easier too.
I used to use one while camping, but you can get really good instant coffee today, so I just use that.
If Twitter and Meta are trying to be the Hilton (we'll do everything for you), the #fediverse is more of a co-op: we need to all pitch in and do some work sometimes.
That's why our #UX can never be quite as smooth and simple, but as in a co-op, the extra involvement is a strong community builder and a reward in itself.
@rysiek Granted, there is some accidental complexity still in the fediverse, but much of it is essential.
For example, there's no shortcut around requiring people to choose an instance (just as they must for email) — that's necessary to keep a federated architecture truly decentralised. And there will always be more cognitive load when you don't get a list of "recommendations" to follow. And some usability compromises are necessary to reign in bandwidth & CPU costs for smaller instances.
Bad headline: "Fediverse 'purists' reject Meta's Threads"
Good headline: "Meta's Threads fails at federation — unable to moderate abuse and hate speech"
My dad the judge taught me that it's not enough for justice to be done; it needs to be seen to be done. The world needs to see that problem is Meta.
(I recognise that we risk weeks of rising abusive behaviour before the defederation happens, and I respect the opposing arguments from people who want to prevent that.)
@soapone As an ideal, we take safety as a collective responsibility in the fediverse: people in vulnerable groups shouldn't have to keep fighting the same battle over and over in isolation.
Our reality is still very far from that, but the ideal should guide our actions. Waiting for the flood of abuse from Threads to happen before defederating them isn't an easy choice. While I disagree, I do understand why some instance owners have been proactive.
With frost on the way, this is probably my final significant harvest of 2023 (the tomatoes and chilis might keep coming for a week or so). As a newbie, I was fortunate to have a great growing season this year.