Kris Sargent, MD @kristofor@social.cleverlibre.org

Cricut cutting machines, ubiquitous in schools, libraries and makerspaces, can be used to make embossed or stenciled tactile graphics. A Braille embosser costs at least $1500 — Cricuts cost a fifth of that or less. Today I learned that I can handle the hardware and make great stencils: all that holds a Blind maker back is a set of unlabeled controls in the software. Does anyone know somebody at Cricut I could talk to about making the interface more accessible? Boosters beloved on this one!

Twitter was never a healthy "public square" for most of us. Let's not rewrite history while eulogizing the hellsite.
Twitter was a frightening battleground where we managed barely to claw out an uneasy existence amidst the worst violent neo-Nazi extremists who constantly published our home addresses, threatened our kids' lives, and sent hordes of racist trolls into our mentions.
The same principles that allowed us to survive uneasily on Twitter will be required here in the #fediverse. Community defense, thoughtful pressure on moderation policies, and eternal vigilance.
There are no safe spaces but those we make safe through constant effort. We keep us safe.

@Tnicholsmd

Elon is usually "managed" by his employees. At Twitter, no one is stopping his dumber ideas.

Cryptocurrencies were always a scam, so that's no surprise there.

Zuck is terrified of decentralized social media and failing to find a solution.

The more dangerous ones are the competent ones that are not in the news.

>§#Ukraine's leaders will have to be "far-sighted" to secure peace, #Pope Francis said on Friday, suggesting that #Kyiv would have to make concessions to end the war with #Russia.

Maybe missing it, but why are these calls always directed at Kyiv? Russia could put on their big boy pants and be far sighted and offer concessions to end the war too, you know

Why do folks always talk about Russia like its an inanimate force of nature like a hurricane? They have agency too.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-needs-be-far-sighted-secure-peace-pope-says-2022-11-25/

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) on economics training and the new open access Core textbook:

"How is it possible that a coterie of self-appointed court sorcerers to the world’s governments manage to keep their jobs despite being regularly, predictably, and catastrophically wrong?"

Answer: indoctrination

https://capitalaspower.com/2022/11/at-last-a-new-econ-101-textbook/

Say that you're upset that the company you're still invested in is going to get banned from the App Store without saying it

ode to joy

50 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR TWITTER

You just pin your last tweet, Pete,
Request your archive, Clive,
You don’t need a blue tick, Vic,
Just get yourself free.

Hop on the tusk, Gus,
You don’t need to delete much,
Except your DMs, Jen,
And get yourself free.

Use Debirdify, Di,
Provide some alt tags, Mags,
Add a content warning, Tim,
To post sensitively.

Remember to boost, Ruth
You don't need to deny truth,
Just drop off the perch, Dirk,
And get yourself free.
#VerseThurday #TwitterMigration #FediTips

@taylorlorenz Huh. Apparently "Vox populi, vox Dei" is how you say "Leeroy Jenkins!!!" in Latin.

People ask me a lot about how we celebrated holidays in #prison . Needless to say, it’s not very festive. But here’s something I wrote a few years ago about jailhouse holiday cooking and small miracles behind bars.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/11/25/why-my-first-thanksgiving-in-prison-was-the-best-one-i-d-had-in-forever

"Against all odds," a lawyer was paid millions of dollars to help a giant corporation with $19 billion in annual profits file a preposterous bankruptcy which prevented cancer victims from exercising their constitutional right to a civil jury trial.

"Litigator of the Year." What an amoral profession.

https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2022/11/22/litigator-of-the-year-skaddens-allison-brown-achieves-success-against-all-odds/

Incredibly rare photo of Schrödinger's cat.

#Cat #Joke #schrodinger

If you’re wondering why hospitals are facing dire staffing shortages, and having to transition to crisis standards of care, just look at how health care workers have been treated over the last 2 1/2 years.

So many of my close friends and colleagues are working on an exit plan for the next 5 years if they haven’t already left. Some are staying only because of student loans.

This is exactly what we have been warning about.

Both #Google and #Apple will soon be facing an uncomfortable and crucial inflection point, brought about by Elon's #Twitter.

The terms of service for both firms' mobile app stores prohibit hate speech and a variety of other kinds of toxic speech that are rapidly becoming the norm on Twitter under Musk, and that (judging from his continuing statements) could soon become the majority of posts on the platform.

While it is arguable how well both Apple and Google have handled apps up to now that catered to the far right end of the political spectrum from day one, Twitter is a different case, since it has had (at least up to now) a much broader spectrum of users who by and large are not as tolerant of the kinds of speech on which most users of those other platforms thrive. The same can be said of most advertisers, many of whom have already paused their Twitter ad buys out of concerns regarding Musk's behavior and actions. Yet another factor is EU regulations that specifically prohibit much of the kinds of speech that Musk is now gleefully inviting back onto the platform.

The situation is complicated by many firms and municipalities using Twitter for important announcements, but as Twitter skews toward catering to fascism these entities would be wise to plan for other communications channels as soon as possible.

More imminently, it is likely that both Google and Apple, along with various of Twitter's infrastructure providers (some of whom, reportedly, haven't been paid for bills that preceded Elon's coronation), will be under pressure to reassess their participation in an increasingly toxic Twitter ecosystem. In the cases of Apple and Google, the calls for them to enforce their Terms of Service as written can only be ignored at the firms' own peril over time.

This will be an ethical test on a grand scale. We will all be watching. -L

In case you missed it, here's last week's comic illustrating the history of #Twitter in four panels:

In 1959, police were called to a segregated library when a Black 9-year-old boy trying to check out books refused to leave, after being told the library was not for Black people.

The boy, Ronald McNair, went on to became an astronaut. The library is also now named after him

For a long time, when I'd read a comic with Lex Luthor in it, and he'd be... I dunno, conspiring with a guy who's super power is that he is mediocre at riddles, and maybe Solomon Grundy or someone like that, in order to launch their army of poison turtles into Metropolis, I'd scoff and say, "it's unrealistic that the world's richest man would waste his time and money on something that's only going to showcase to the world how incompetent he is."

I owe DC comics an apology.

Amazon Alexa is a colossal failure on pace to lose $10 billion for the company this year. Good. Couldn't have happened to a nicer product. Stop normalizing filling your house with always-on microphones controlled by billionaires.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/