In case you haven't heard, the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack is amazing. Here's the track inspiring me to post:
Off days suck. (ADHD, mh-)
me, sitting at computer: "I want to do a thing."
ADHD brain: "Nope! Tired, don't wanna focus, can't possibly do the thing."
me: "Fine, I'll go get a nap." *lies down*
body: *too awake to rest*
me: *stands up to head back to computer*
brain and body in collusion: "Yeah, let's stare aimlessly at a bright rectangle and yawn a lot!"
Fortunately, this only tends to happen on the one day a week I don't take my Adderall. Still, it's so thoroughly frustrating....
Class Action Lawsuit for Seattle Renters
"Do you or did you since 2016 rent a Seattle apartment maintained by one of the following companies: Greystar, Trammell Crow Residential, Avenue5, Equity, Essex, FPI, Lincoln, Security Properties, AvalonBay or Thrive?"
If so, you can join a class action lawsuit against these companies for rent fixing.
https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/washington-rent-price-fixing-scheme
Hello would you like a blue checkmark but don't want to give a billionaire money??? Well come on down to the Sevenish Magpies Memeporium and get yourself a REAL LIFE ACTUAL METALLIC BLUE CHECKMARK PIN (TM)
I am serious I just made a stack of these.
https://shop.sevenishmagpies.com/product/limited-edition-very-real-blue-checkmark-pins
Some proceeds will go towards throwing some money at vulpine.club!mastodon and Cohost Plus.
Nearly forgot with all the stuff going on, but the Desert Bus for Hope charity stream is starting tomorrow! https://desertbus.org/
twitter, meta
Boy I went on a journey of Not Getting The Point here, despite The Point slapping me in my pocket every few seconds: THE NEWBIES ARE SIGNING UP WITH THEIR REAL ACTUAL FULL HUMAN NAMES.
*That's* why I'm seeing so many people do things that to me seem bizarre. It's because I'm used to interacting with raccoons, crows, witches, impossible geometric shapes, inflatable coatis and the anthropomorphic personification of paint smell
fluffy rambles: The irony of "context collapse" https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/8334-The-irony-of-context-collapse #ContextCollapse #FluffyRambles #Language #Meanings
fluffy rambles: The Dangers of Context Collapse https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/3449-The-Dangers-of-Context-Collapse #ContextCollapse #FluffyRambles #Moderation #Algorithms #Discourse #AltRight #Bandcamp
How UX apathy leads to corporate capture
"No, $software is fine, users just need to learn how to use it"
"That's a stupid feature, nobody should ever need that"
If you've spent any amount of time in FOSS circles, you've probably seen sentiments like that all over the place. Unfortunately, they're a big part of why dubious corporations (eg. Microsoft, Google, etc.) have been able to co-opt the FOSS community.
Why? Because regardless of what you, as a technical FOSS person, believe is "necessary"... users are not going to care about that. They have certain expectations from their software in terms of feature set and ease-of-use.
Either you meet those expectations, or users go elsewhere.
Now, "it's FOSS, it gives you freedom" can sway that decision *somewhat*, but it only gets you so far. Most people care more about getting their stuff done, than they care about (to them) abstract ideals of "freedom".
And because of that, you're setting yourself up to be vulnerable to corporate capture - because corporations can superficially *claim* to do FOSS, but provide an actually accessible user experience, and suddenly everybody flocks to the corporate thing.
And sure, corporate FOSS has real problems compared to community-run FOSS. But understanding that requires a degree of nuance that most people won't see, and that you frankly cannot expect from people for whom FOSS isn't their whole existence. It's specialized knowledge.
Which boils down to a very simple reality: either *you* provide the UX that users want, or a corporation will do it for you, and with none of the community governance and long-term sustainability. Those are the options.
A great example of this is systemd; yes, it has plenty of problems. But because of the widespread insistence in FOSS circles that "nobody needs more than SysVinit", everybody flocked to an actually usable alternative the moment it appeared, monolithic design and corporate governance be damned.
Don't be that person. Listen to users about their needs. Take complaints about UX and accessibility seriously. If you don't, then you're not helping FOSS; you're harming it.
I 💖 @orrery
I 🕹️ retrogaming
I 🔊 chiptunes
I 🦄 ponies
I ☁️ cannabis
I � Unicode
and yes to 🤖 but #nobot
avatar art by Dana Simpson (danasimpson.com)