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

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.

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

love these icons! what a clever way to draw symbols for:

- TV with antenna
- plate
- shortcuts with line
- tilted TV
- weird clock
- rectangles
- stuff
- McDonalds
- panorama
- street sign under snow

Okay, because things escalated quickly...

What is your favourite HTML element and why?

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>

I hate it when someone Slacks me with a simple "Hi Matt". Isn't it obvious? When you interrupt me, give me the whole thing at once, so I don't have to wait for a round-trip before I can make the most of the interruption. Let's not make this a bad high-latency IPC protocol.

Then again, in this case, the person messaging me isn't a programmer.

Chciałem pomóc osobie niepełnosprawnej wyrobić nowy dowód osobisty. Procedura jest dostępna online, więc powinno być łatwo i przyjemnie :)

Spoiler: wcale tak nie było 🧵 ↓

Pleased to announce this new partnership and privacy alliance with Windscribe, Ente, Notesnook, and Addy.io!

windscribe.com/blog/windscribe…

Windscribe Creates a Privacy-Focused Alliance

Windscribe VPN aims to create a robust, decentralized ecosystem of privacy products that puts users firmly in control of their data and digital footprint. 

^{Kailash "QAizen" Z. (Windscribbles)}

Last night I've changed my office's layout so I'm sat parallel to the window, rather than having my desk in front of it.

Pros: More effective use of space, closer to sockets, easier access to the radiator's valve, window handle and curtains, etc.

Cons: It's now way easier for me to get distracted by squirrels jumping from branch to branch in the trees.

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

We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing

^{cengiz.yar@propublica.org (ProPublica)}

FYI Montréal jacked up the property valuations AGAIN last year... so, Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce's 1.9% is a FAKE AF LOW % on the heels of that #BS.

cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mo…

#polMTL #MTLpoli #taxdollarshardatwork #propertytaxes #montreal #LIES

Gemini and Siri are teaming up. Will they figure out that humans are obsolete?

#AI #AISucks #SkyNet #Terminator #Cylons