I have issues with the way Games Workshop does some things. But I have to give them props for their stance on AI usage. #Warhammer boardgamewire.com/index.php/20…

My granddaughter is 3 months old, and I spend a lot of time complimenting her.

Telling her how pretty she is, or how clever she is, or how strong she is, or how fat she has got, or how good she is at sleeping. How good she is at blowing bubbles. How clever she is to fill a nappy...

and I thought, when does all this stop?

I feel like we should be congratulating each other for all these minor things.

So well done, if you've been to the toilet today. And well done for eating, and yay you if you had a drink earlier, and you stayed asleep throughout your nap? .Well done! 👏

Look at you! Doing so well at existing! Keep that shit up

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

Long biographical story of my mom, on the occasion of her birthday:

Today is my mom's birthday. She is 85 years old, which means she predates the entry of the United States in WWII by almost a year. That blows my mind sometimes

Imagine all the changes an 85 year old has seen over the years. Before marrying, her father had benefitted from FDR's CCC, a New Deal government work relief program that provided much-needed jobs as we crawled out of the Great Depression. Conditions took a long time to improve around the world. The little family started out in a small home in a rural area of the Midwest. Her mother had two vegetable gardens: one for the family, and one to sell to others. Her dad hunted for their suppers, which were often pheasant or squirrel. Her mom eventually got a job for Look magazine. Her father eventually got a job offer to work for a factory in California. They had few possessions when they moved and they made mom auction off her small shoebox of toys, promising her a new toy in California. That was her most cherished possession growing up, a stuffed Panda Bear she named Punkin.

The family started out in Compton. Mom experienced firsthand what racial inequality was like, and the injustice of it informed her politics for the rest of her life. (Much like the shock of coming across her great grandfather's marriage certificate which listed her Hopi great grandmother as "property.")

Just as the Depression lingered longer than history textbooks imply, the 1954 landmark Supreme Court ruling that made educational resources equal and ended segregation in schools did not have an immediate effect. Mom went to school before Plessy vs. Ferguson was even overturned, and the underfunding of Black schools was obvious. Not only was there no library at her school, but no books at home. Mom stole a dictionary and began reading it, to learn on her own.

The family moved to a different suburb soon after, a small home on a quiet street, with a surprisingly huge backyard featuring a grove of avocado trees. There was a cabin out back, where her dad and his friends would smoke cigars and play poker. At one point, he had to step away and he let mom take his place. She had learned by observing, and to everyone's surprise, she won. Besides learning to play poker, her dad taught her how to box, which came in handy when two mean girls wanted to fight her. The school wanted to punish her for defending herself, which they still do today, unfortunately.

She was an excellent student, and fulfilled her dream to attend UCLA, (several years ahead of Lew Alcindor). This made mom the first person in her family to have ever gone to college, let alone graduate school.

Mom met my dad in 1959, and they married a few years later. My dad was in the Air Force at the time, working as a cartographer. He had been stationed in Alaska before it had become a state, and he was so miserably cold there that it was the only state we were never allowed to visit.

Mom took time away from school while carrying me, and returned to graduate school only two weeks after I was born, with no help from anyone. They lived in a tiny apartment with a Murphy bed in the wall, and the only sink was in the bathroom, which is where she had to wash dishes. Our little family moved several times, to the beach and inland, until settling in a rented house and then buying the house next door, where there were often parties and extended family gatherings. Our next door neighbors were gay Nazis, which is a story in itself. Mom was very ahead of her time, and was already teaching me not to ever be racist, and that it was okay for men to be together, perfectly fine for a boy to wear a dress and carry a purse during dress up, and that there was no such thing as boy's or girl's toys.

My little brother was born shortly after my dad finished IBM school. IBM immediately moved us to Minnesota. There, dad worked as a computer programmer, and mom taught English, Speech and Drama at a local high school. She loved teaching and still misses it to this day. She realized that one of her students had run away from home and was living with a family who couldn't afford to care for her. After finding out that the girl's family didn't care that she was gone, mom took the initiative to get her moved in with us. We fixed up a room for her in the basement, and got her some much needed dental care. It was so hard on all of us that we couldn't take her with us when we moved, since we had never formally gotten custody. Mom arranged for her to stay with another family for her last year of high school, and she married soon after.

Mom divorced dad and we all moved back to California. Even though my dad had numerous affairs, my mom was seen by the family as a pariah because she moved into a apartment with her boyfriend, after the divorce He was kind, but didn't last.

Those were lean years. Because of the timing, in the middle of the school year, mom couldn't get a job as a teacher, and began working at IBM. Her supervisor realized immediately that she had untapped potential and she began moving up in the company. My first understanding of politics was when she was incensed that Nixon won re-election.

In a nearby city, she found a house for sale where the older couple were so anxious to sell that they let it go for what was left of the mortgage. Still working at IBM, she became a technical writer. She met a woman at IBM who seemed really cool, avant garde, a social norms rulebreaker. They started a relationship, in the not so welcoming 1970s. IBM sent us to Georgia. We sent the moving van ahead, and took two weeks in a Chinook camper to see the country. It was amazing. Mom directed our tour of the sights and experiences: of course, to visit the Hopi and honor them the best we could, to experience the unique fusion of Pueblo, Spanish, and Mexican food known as New Mexican food, Carlsbad Caverns, The Grand Canyon, the Space Center in Houston (which I thought was the most humid place on Earth until we got to New Orleans).

We eventually settled in Georgia. Two women could not buy a house together, so it had to be in my mom's girlfriend's name. Their relationship lasted ten years.

Mom had to move again, ('cause IBM) this time to Research Triangle Park where she became an information systems analyst, teaching technical writers the industry standards. She traveled extensively, putting the "International" in IBM. There, she met a man who wanted to marry almost immediately (red flag). They lasted four years. He had five children, including triplet boys, but only two came to live with them off and on.

When she retired from IBM, counting down to the minute during the last year, she returned to her first love: art. She had painted over the years, but it was in the fabric arts that her talent took off. She got into art quilting and was with a guild. She had a one woman art show and sold everything. To this day, she undersells her own jaw-dropping artistic talent.

That takes us up to today, where Alzheimer's is a bully that prevents her from doing things she loved, like reading books and creating art. She still has her movies, which she treasures and watches over and over again.

She has requested a small cake from a local specialty market. I think it's the least I can do.

If you've read all this, or even skimmed it, I thank you. I am biased, of course, but I think my mom has led an extraordinary life against all odds (I left out all the really bad parts.) And I'm lucky to know her. If she were not my mom, I would have sought her out as a friend.

More pics in next post.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to :thonk:

@p nah, but around 2015 my wife was doing a lot of running events and it was about 3 weeks before a half marathon and she kept poking the bear, daring me to run it so I did like one 5 mile run and one 8 mile run and then showed up and crushed it, beat her by like 15 minutes

never ran like that again. I suffer from an affliction called "extreme boredom" and when doing long distance running I start thinking about how this is such an absolute waste of my time and wishing I was able to do something productive instead of being trapped in a mental prison cell.

Also I just got really hungry, almost peeled off to go to a diner to have brunch instead

I do like long distance cycling though, because the scenery is better

If you share a video of a screen reader doing something, include the audio of the screen reader speaking. Do not just have a silent video with the speech captions shown. Otherwise, you’re preventing the very people who use screen readers from perceiving the video. 🤦

Mentioning this because I encountered this for probably the thousandth time today.

#a11y

#a11y

reshared this

in reply to Nick

what I didn't know is that Franklin was in part to honor MLK following his assassination - truthorfiction.com/charles-sch…

Wife has identical twin cousins in their late 20s, known them since they were babies. They both grew up to become music teachers (yes they're gay) and apparently one of them has been writing musicals? There's some online platform out there where you can publish / sell musicals?

Anyway their mom was telling me about this and mentioned that he sold copies of a musical about Auschwitz.

<Randy Jackson that's a no from me dawg>

Today Apple announced the Apple Creator Studio at $13 a month, and I think this is a good thing! It allows people to afford apps like Final Cut and Logic Pro that have been out of some people's price range, along with giving access to new features in these apps. Also, $3 a month for students is amazing. I think this is a jab at Creative Cloud, and I would go more for what Apple is offering.
in reply to Jakub 'unknow' Mrugalski

W Polsce funkcjonuje sobie taki dokument zwany kartą EKUZ. Z racji, że to zdecydowanie nie jest jedyna karta, jaką większość osób ma w portfelu, a wszystkie (zgodne z ISO 7810) karty wyglądają w dotyku prawie tak samo, można poprosić, aby na karcie umieszczono etykietkę w brajlu, na co istnieje oficjalna procedura. W przeciwieństwie do niektórych innych dokumentów, np. wspomnianego tutaj Dowodu, etykietka taka nie jest integralną częścią karty, jest to po prostu solidnie naklejona przez urzędnika foliowa naklejka.

I tutaj zaczyna się szkopuł. Typów kart jest kilka. Ten najpopularniejszy, tj. turystyczny, można bez problemu wyrobić przez internet, istnieje do tego dedykowana usługa EPUAP i formularz w ichniejszym XML-owym standardzie, tj. wypełniany on-line bezpośrednio na stronie, nie staropolską metodą drukuj-podpisz-skanuj (Polacy do za nią Nobla dostać powinni).

Gdzie jest problem? Procedura mówi, że w celu uzyskania brajlowskiej etykiety, należy umieścić odpowiednią adnotację na wniosku. Coś takiego można zrobić na marginesie dokumentu papierowego, ale struktura XML takiej adnotacji nie przewiduje. Mamy wobec tego wybór, czy wniosek składamy sami, ale bez etykiety brajlowskiej, czy działamy metodą z osobą widzącą i długopisowym wypełnianiem fizycznego wydruku (bo przecież o pliku w standardzie PDF Forms to w tym kraju można zapomnieć), i wtedy etykietę dostajemy.

in reply to Jakub 'unknow' Mrugalski

I jeszcze jedna rzecz, którą warto mieć na uwadze. O ile w przypadku Epuap, założenie skrzynki podawczej nie niosło za sobą konsekwencji prawnych poza faktem, że korespondencja związana ze sprawami składanymi przez ten właśnie system docierała do nas elektronicznie, w przypadku e-doręczeń jest inaczej. Jeśli skrzynkę do E-doręczeń posiadamy, wiele instytucji będzie kontaktować się z nami w ten właśnie sposób, przy czym nadal działa zasada, że przesyłka 2 razy awizowana (tutaj awizo to powiadomienie email) jest uznana za doręczoną po 14 dniach od pierwszej próby jej dostarczenia.

Innymi słowy, jeśli skrzynkę do e-doręczeń mamy, w naszym obowiązku jest sprawdzanie adresu email z nią powiązanego.

9 HOURS at THE OFFICE TODAY: Logging into my private Desktop I had to think about my 6 digit numeric PIN because I was already typing the work Laptops password. I'll leave up to you if that's good or bad. And my fingers start to get used to that ugly office keyboard. I should get a nice mechanical board there as well. Just not willing to spend the money.

We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing
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Civilians have had apparent seizures. One had his eyes roll back. Another had ribs broken. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen put in a chokehold. The government won’t say if any agents have been punished.
propublica.org/article/videos-…

#News #Immigration #ICE #DHS #Trump #Police #Minneapolis