“Under the shelter of each other, we survive.” -Mike Davis, RIP
Human, curious; designer, usability advocate, oss fangirl; snowboarder, Michigan kid, Motörhead fan. Former Model UN dork. Still a general dork. #nobot#noindex
A bibliophile's first nightmare: being hit by a flood. The second nightmare: being hit by a fire. The third, I think I may be living, right now: having to pack-up, move-out, then move back inside every damn book I own for ~1mo, to have our floors re-done. 😭
Ok, a fourth: having to clean cat-pee off of books, while also carefully separating semi-fused paper slipcovers from a likely years-ago spraying event. WHILE packing. :blobwizard:
@evan Something too many in the US are unaware of or choose to overlook: ALL UN member states are expected to provide citizenship paths to refugees, and to have reasonable criteria for discerning who is and who is not a refugee.
Also, the biggest impedance on proposed "two state" solutions to date, has been that none have offered Palestinian citizenship or intl sovereignty, to a Palestinian state. All have worked w/in an Apartheid structure. Which is also illegal.
@evan The dehumanizing rhetoric of "illegals" is intentional, in addition to painting immigrants as criminals. Most are seeking asylum; not "our jobs." While most lefties tend to grok that, the legal basis for it is less understood—and both recognizing it & shutting down the rhetoric, feels important.
We said the same thing about Jewish Europeans in the Holocaust. For children, there's also a robust "Christian" adoption market dependent on these crisis, globally. Colonist narratives, FTW.
@evan I absolutely agree; and moreso agree with @rabble's assessment that concepts of "citizenship" have been proven as too vulnerable an opportunity for gross abuses of power. The UK and US are colonist nations whose economic clout & mobility are dependent on the ongoing subjugation of millions; and, they're Israel's primary backers. TL;DR, Jewish safety & self-determination in parallel with the same for the Palestinian people, are regrettably the factors of least authority. :(
Just came across "Lingba Thai" on my phone, from when I lived on the opposite corner on 18th and Connecticut. A San Francisco of what feels like a lifetime ago! Nope, cannot bring myself to remove the listing, even though they went out of business around 2010ish, lol.
A cis-female friend here in Oregon who's 34, has been living with painful, recurrent ovarian cysts her entire adult life. She has seen 10 OBGYNs, requestjng an elective hystorectomy. She already has 2 kids. All are refusing her ask, insisting the consequences of "barrenhood" and risks of early menopause, are too high.
My friend is not Eve. There is no Adam. She just wants to end her relationship with an internal organ that's more rude than beneficial. Murica, why?
@kissane OMG it's SO EASY!! Just pull it out of the drawer, point it at stuff, and pew pew—DATA! It's had the same impact on me. Our nerdiness knows no bounds, lol.
@evan I first thought that was a sick April Fool's joke. I have so much more respect for the Wikipedia community, for allowing most of that content to exist—when so much of the world is working far too hard, to make those kids and what's being done to them, invisible. TY for sharing.
Love this open letter to Queen Bey and the Country Music community, from Carlene Carter; the grand-daughter of Country's first family. Can we have more of this wonderfully warm, encouraging, and inclusive enery in our world, please? Heaven knows all of our creative work would be better, if we all just got out of our shells and supported each other, more.
Work pride-point of the day: Included the following sentence, in design system documentation:
"Teenagers like to smoke pot while listening to Pink Floyd. For adult information scientists, curating a set of filter chips & designing each chip’s menus for a given dataset is a close equivalent."
@kevbob Just The Wall w/o any weed, did my mind/heart so good as a hyper-sensivtive, undiagnosed ADHD 12y/o.
Seeing Pink piece together his smashed-hotel-room mosaic with rapt attention, I felt so seen, lol; though I also wondered why he had to kinda ruin such a fun art project with all the cutting and dissociative stuff.
Shouldn't a rock star be able to destroy a hotel room and create a pretty mosaic out of the mess, without being a basket case? Oh, to be 12 again!
@kevbob I first listened to it in elementary school; my dad borrowed a colleague's car, and I found an 8-track of The Wall in its glove box. I didn't get it at the time, but a few years later rented the movie when we got our first VCR. Mind. Blown.
Jeeze, in hindsight, that was only 5 years after the film had come out; but at the time, it felt like a "real oldie." Wow. 🤪
As is my usual pattern after a contract ends, I'm going to be doing full time open source work for the next month, so get at me if you have suggestions of issues to work on, in any project
@Professor_Stevens Years of studying typography. Nowadays there's lots of terrific design books that speak to how to work with typography, effectively. "Thinking With Type" by Ellen Lupton, is one of my favs. Anything by Josef Muller Brockman, Jan Tschichold, or Willi Kunst, also high on my list. @aral
@Professor_Stevens "It Depends." Really, I'd be irresponsible to offer a prescriptive response that'd overlook context.
Hierarchy in design is all about balance, and drawing emphasis to the right things in the right ways. "When everything's a priority, nothing's a priority."
If you just want a word to stick-out in a paragraph on a white background; set the paragraph in a dark-gray, like #505050 400wt. Use a 600 to 800wt font colored with #000 to give it emphasis.
Visual contrast. Page hierarchy. Or, hell, blink-tag if pizazz might be in order.
"Let it be known, that…in recognition of his considerable contributions to Michigan through his art and political activism, it is a distinct privilege to honor the work and life of John Sinclair.” -Gretchen Whitmer, on behalf of the State of Michigan, 2021
The western evangelical money going into homophobic laws all over Africa isn't discussed enough.
"Who organised this summit of hate? The World Congress of Families (WCF), an elite international network led by US & Russian ultra-conservatives and best known for publicly & militantly opposing LGBT rights and abortion – though its members are also against contraception, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), divorce, single mothers and multi-generational households."
@timnitGebru Why, exactly, are multi-generation households bad... outside of their impact on the real estate industry and squelching of the need for new generations to Buy All The New Things All Over Again?
@raphaelmorgan I do not, either—but I couldn't figure-out the logic by Evangelicals in 2024. I know the (wasteful, stupid) economic reasons why post-War America created the "American Dream" myth of single-generation family homeownership w/ all the consumerist fixin's... I just—I mean, racism, duh. I'm 50, and obvs White—and still working hard to learn. @timnitGebru
@msquebanh Post-war America made a concerted effort to sell the "American Dream" of single-generation home-ownership, car ownership, and household consumerist gizmos, as part of the worldwide economic recovery from the war. Why the 1950s were the era of plastic consumerism and popular American culture. I also think it's lame, but it was helpful to learn the (shitty) "whys." @timnitGebru
Thursday, I updated my Mac to Sonoma 14.3.1. Tonight, I discovered my iTunes won't play any of my music except Bey's new album (purchased/downloaded Friday). In this moment, I'm actually ok with that. I'd still like to get to the bottom of what's going on, though.
How can Apple have a gazillion engineers & QA testers/evaporators, and still release buggy damn updates?!
