Jim Parkin @ParkinJim@social.cleverlibre.org

I'm not one for taking many landscape shots, but sometimes, especially living here on #Mull I have to make some sort of an effort.

Mull is a beautiful location and offers stunning views.

Happy to share more, if people show sufficient interest.

This was the view towards Rum from Mull, on a rather colourful evening. Taken from the "hill road" leading out of Dervaig.

#landscape #scenic #sunset #scotland #photography

Sea level rise has continued to accelerate over the past three decades. 🌊 A @nasa study shows sea level rise will approach the one-foot mark for most U.S. coastlines by 2050. Learn how these projections could help coastal communities prepare: https://bit.ly/3TGiULh #NASAJPL

WE HAVE EDIT POWERS!!!! This would never have happened on twitter. Well, maybe for $8. #mastodon #TwitterMigration

Why we can't have nice things:

OK #Mastodon. I've seen several toots on #accessibility for #screenreader users, however, I've not seen one from a screenreader user (as far as I know). I've used ZoomText, Outspoken, JAWS (AKA JFW), Supernova, NVDA (Windows), and VoiceOver (both on Macs and iPhone). I don't have experience with Windows Narrator or TalkBack. I would like to rectify and clarify a few small things.
First off, any awareness of accessibility issues, and endeavours to make things more accessible is great. Keep going!
But…
Blind/low-vision people have been using the internet as long as everyone else. We had to become used to the way people share things, and find workarounds or tell developers what we needed; this latter one has been the main drive to get us here and now. Over the past decade, screen readers have improved dramatically, including more tools, languages, and customisability. However, the basics were already firmly in place around 2000. Sadly, screen readers cost a lot of money at that time. Now, many are free; truly the biggest triumph for accessibility IMHO.
So, what you can do to help screen readers help their users is three simple things.
1. Write well: use punctuation, and avoid things like random capitalisation or * halfway through words.
2. Image description: screen readers with image recognition built-in will only provide a very short description, like: a plant, a painting, a person wearing a hat, etc. It can also deal with text included in the image, as long as the text isn't too creatively presented. So, by all means, go absolutely nuts with detail.
3. Hashtags: this is the most commonly boosted topic I've seen here, so #ThisIsWhatAnAccessibleHashtagLooksLike. The capitalisation ensures it's read correctly, and for some long hashtags without caps, I've known screen readers to give up and just start spelling the whole damn thing out, which is slow and painful.
That's really all. Thanks for reading! 😘

So, if Twitter goes to hell and just becomes defunct, we’re going to lose entire chapters of recent history — including evidence of war crimes, human rights violations, and more. I hope we’re all paying attention to this and considering what we need to do to ensure that a billionaire can’t decide which parts of history to retain — and which parts to erase forever.

Enhancing biodiversity in a spruce plantation. A blog we wrote a few years ago has been reposted. Hope to reassess recruitment and structure again next year. https://www.ontarioparks.com/parksblog/biodiversity-killarney-tree-plantations/

Accidental attacks should be met with accidental counterattacks, article 5.420.

Tankies not impacted by #Ruschist missile strikes Concern Troll #Ukraine when they tell #Ukrainians to submit to #genocide.

Tankies will be the first to cry when Ruschists come for them.

There will be NO Minsk-3...

Been said repeatedly since March 2022 by #Ukrainians & their democratically elected leaders.

No imposed peace on 🇺🇦 by so-called Great Powers.

That imposed "peace" led to the 24th Feb invasion of Ukraine & the murder, rape, torture, trauma and maiming of millions of Ukrainians.

READ MY LIPS:
Without gas or without u?
Without you.
Without light or without u?
Without you.
Without water or without u?
without you.
Without food or without u?
Without you.
Cold, starvation,
darkness & thirst are not as frightening & mortal to us as ur
"friendship & fraternity"

Twitter remaining lifespan measured in hours or days?

@shengokai @lorenzlm Now, @Gargron makes an excellent argument about why he did not include QTs: because he sees Mastodon as a place for conversation; replies enable that; boosts share; QTs are performative, aimed at people other than the person being quoted. That performative nature leads to show-off nastiness. But it also cuts off the call-and-response that made Black Twitter possible. So many lessons to be learned about the essence of conversation and community here.

"The deepest power is that of determining what people consider normal. If you can persuade others that your way of doing things is normal, you have won. At the moment, many mature democracies are experiencing the normalisation of the anti-liberal far right. It’s vital to keep insisting that their norms are no part of an acceptable normality."

Timothy Garton-Ash at the FT

https://www.ft.com/content/02433224-248b-4dc5-b881-95a5d205e8e8

If I've just followed you, it's because you're someone I previously followed on Twitter from the CountrySkills handle. Great to find you here!