Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

You have to hand it to her, she's really good at this. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-harris-campaigns-in-north-carolina-while-biden-isolates-with-covid-19

I like to think that every time someone sees a lone masker (me obviously) on the ferry, it's a little tiny deposit in their "masking is ok actually" savings account, ready for a future withdrawal. After all, "masks when sick" is a big win compared to "never masks."

I’m a cis white male American Sign Language interpreter. I go into a lot of places and am nearly always welcomed and treated well. Mostly, I think it’s because of my work, but I’m aware my race and gender play a part too. That said, there are few places I feel my privilege more keenly than in courthouses. More than half the time, I’m waved past the metal detectors. I can walk past the bar in courtrooms without being stopped by bailiffs. When court staff learn who I am, I’m often greeted with friendliness, even deference sometimes, as there aren’t many people who do what I do.

When I see how others who don’t look or dress like me are treated while in the same spaces, I’m forcefully reminded that there are still two Americas. There is still so much work to do in the US, and I’m committed to that work.

In terms of equality and personal freedoms, this November is going to be the most critical and consequential election I’ve ever witnessed in my (not so short) lifetime. Please, please, please vote for democracy and against totalitarianism - because that’s what this vote will be. I’m more convinced of that than ever.

Buy Art From People Who Are Alive

@futurebird @stevegis_ssg I honestly like that aspect of alt text.

I have to tell people what I wanted them to see.

What's the point of including that graph?

It really helps people understand. I like that a lot.

It's really not limited to sight impairments.

This research has come up several times at a big climate conference: A huge majority of people are worried about climate change and want governments to do more to control the crisis. BUT they think they are in a tiny minority and nobody else cares. Everybody (almost) cares! You are not alone https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-actions-are-far-more-popular-than-people-in-u-s-realize/

I've already encountered several comments from people stating that to develop and maintain a browser you only need a handful of "talented engineers". That's a remarkable underestimate, but more importantly it ignores the fact that you also need a lot of people with skills outside of the technical domain, and that includes humanities.

I know that techbroism *hates* humanities, but it turns out you also need them when dealing with something as complex as a browser.

Make The Onion Satire Again

So I wrote a rant about Lean in software development on Twitter years ago. At the time I was diving into the background of Lean since I was confused about the implementations in software dev.

Anyway, Lean, as most people know, grew out of Just In Time Production at Toyota factories. In those factories it has a lot of fascinating, and very reasonable, implications.

This process was then copied to a lot of industries. But they tend to either misapply (as in software dev) or apply too rigidly. The last goes against the entire process, which is designed to be purposefully flexible and malleable. Based in people and learning.

Anyhow, when the chip shortage hit the auto industry after the pandemic, it took much longer to hit Toyota. Because they had a chip stockpile. Why? That seems to go against the process. But after Fukushima Toyota had realized that this was one of their vulnerabilities, and so they adapted.

If you have a large enough user base that people depend, for whatever personal, safety or security reasons, on your product, then I believe you have a positive obligation to those people to protect them from risks and failures they might never see or understand.

Not because anyone's dumb or incompetent, but because those threat actors make every effort to be invisible to their victims and impossible to understand to defenders.

@denschub @narinarinari I don't install my copy of Firefox through a blog. My copy of Firefox is silently updated in the background by my operating system. I allow this because I assume that Firefox updates will often contain critical security fixes, but will never contain nasty surprises such as backdoors for advertisers which passes them information about the things I see while browsing.

I shouldn't *have* to "care" what's happening on the Firefox blog to prevent my privacy being violated.

There's a difference between being aware of what is happening and putting yourself through intense physical and emotional stress by "doom scrolling" and posting things you might regret later.

Sign off, pet a pet, hug someone.

Though I might dance & celebrate when Biden wins, it will not be for him. It'll be in spite of what he & every mealy-mouthed norms-anxious compromiser has done to put us here. And then, when I'm done dancing, (it may take a moment) I will turn around and put my focus in a new place.

I'm filled with optimism because all caution is gone from my body. We can't afford an ounce of that.

For what it's worth disabled community has recognised this and there's stuff like the hashtag #Alt4Me where you can ask others to help write alt text for your post.

We need to give space for people to ask for help and not make them feel like a bad person for doing so.

Good work -- actual journalism -- from ABC News.
h/t Joy Reid
'No Blame?' ABC News finds 54 cases invoking 'Trump' in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889

Few facts are available about yesterday's top story.
Opinions, rumors, "theories", and conspiracies seem rampant.
Even reputable news outlets have allowed commentators to opine on "the current state of affairs".

As an elder, I vividly recall events from 1960, 1968, as well as Kent State.
I plan to wait for all the facts to emerge before listening to or reading commentary.

#USpol #USpolitics #TrumpShot #Trump