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Before you tell a disabled person that they need to “just make the healthcare worker mask”… please understand the imbalance of power that exists in hospital settings.

We can’t “just make them” do anything. If they refuse -our options are to take the risk or go without care.

There’s little recourse when a HCW refuses to mask - there’s almost NO recourse that exists in the moment.

You can file a complaint after the fact - but if the care you require is urgent or an emergency - that won’t help you

Imagine you’re taken to the emergency room with an urgent (or life threatening) issue. The doctor comes in and refuses to wear a mask.

Do you walk out? Throw a fit? These are not good options

Even if you manage to keep your composure and strongly advocate for them to reconsider - the longer you argue the more potential virus you’re being exposed to.

The more you “annoy” the staff - the greater the odds of retaliation or reduction in care.

This isn’t like telling a friend or a colleague to mask. The dynamic is completely different.

HCWs have the ability to help you or harm you. You want them on your side.

A note in your chart indicating you’re anxious, difficult, non compliant etc can follow you around and impact all your care going forward. Getting charts corrected and notes removed is a time consuming and difficult process

As a result many patients don’t push the issue. They delay medical care as long as possible and then just cross their fingers they will get a compassionate HCW when they do finally go.

These delays can also cause harm - and shouldn’t be necessary.

Hospitals have never been terribly safe places. They’re where the strongest and most resistant bugs thrive. They’re also where the sickest and most vulnerable people are.

At least before Covid it felt like hospitals were TRYING to prevent infection.

These days it’s as though any amount of infection control is seen as weak. People are actually bragging about how many times they’ve had Covid or about the risks they’re taking with their health. Staff aren’t masking even around babies, cancer & transplant patients

We have to change course. Our healthcare systems could barely handle the amount of chronic illness they were facing before Covid - they certainly can’t handle the constant influx of disabled patients and staff that Covid is causing.

This is why we need mandatory masks in healthcare settings. The responsibility to keep themselves and others safe should NOT fall on the vulnerable patient.

Many are unable to advocate for themselves - and others are unable to mask.

Mandatory masking protects everyone

Lastly - the solution to this problem should not be “don’t go to the hospital”. It’s not right to make ANY patient feel like they’re wrong for seeking care. Like they’ve somehow “failed” if they end up with Covid.

Until you’re facing a life threatening emergency or serious health challenges - you can’t possibly know what you would do.

Is it scary to go to the hospital right now? Of course. Is it also necessary? Absolutely.

Patients should never be blamed for needing care or for being unable to get HCWs to mask. The system is failing us - we aren’t failing each other.

If you need the hospital - you have all my love & support. It’s impossibly hard - and I will keep fighting to make it better.

As long as hospitals refuse to do what’s right to prevent COVID (hello clean air & mandatory masking)… the onus is unfairly on the PATIENT to avoid COVID.

My guide offers tips to reduce your risk of hospital acquired COVID (and other HAIs)

disabledginger.com/p/how-to-st…

#CovidIsAirborne #CovidCautious #CovidIsNotOver #CleanAir #WearaMask #Disability #LongCovid #Ableism #Denial #CleanAir #Pandemic #PublicHealth #InfectionControl #Eugenics #SafeHealthcare #N95 #Respirators #MasksWork #MaskUp #Spoonie #Discrimination #Dysautonomia #mecfs #pots #mcas #communitycare #wearamask #chronicillness #keepmasksinhealthcare #MaskBans #NoMaskBans

in reply to Broadwaybabyto

I’m sad that a guide on how to avoid COVID in hospital is even needed. But it IS needed.

What we need MORE is mandatory masking in hospitals. They would prevent the overwhelming majority of covid infections.

HCWs - you don’t need to wait for a mandate. You can CHOOSE to do the right thing and put a mask on! Protect yourselves and your patients - you will save a life.

disabledginger.com/p/a-plea-to…



@InnosearchAI Your About page begins with the following sentence:

"We are an e-commerce platform focused on making online shopping easy and enjoyable, especially for those with internet access challenges like blind or low-vision users."

Personally, I really struggle with this wording. First, this implies that all blind consumers have Internet access issues, a term that, to me, seems rather broad and nebulous. As a blind consumer, I don't have challenges accessing the Internet. I have challenges trying to access Web sites which don't conform to established Web standards and guidelines. Why not just emphasize that your service allows online shopping to be a more accessible experience for everyone, including those who use assistive technologies such as screen readers.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to David Goldfield

I do hope you will share that feedback with them, as they seem open to it.
in reply to David Goldfield

Oh my bad you already did sorry. Lol. It’s been a long week and I need to go to bed. :-)


Time to make it official! I want to turn #GNOME OS, GNOME's home-grown distro for testing and development of the GNOME Desktop, into a real production-ready general purpose OS. I finally blogged about it: blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/202…

reshared this

in reply to Adrian Vovk

great write up

It's also important to note the fundraising opportunities it could bring from philanthropies and other non-technical investors.

It's difficult to explain what GNOME is, as soon as it becomes a fully fledged operating system; the mission and benefit to society is much easier to convey.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)



¿Nunca han pensado "se me antoja un buen #mezcal pero sólo tengo $20 MXN y son las 2 de la tarde"?

Bueno, en #Morelia tienen una respuesta clara:



Just posted on Six Colors: Use a cloned drive to recover from Mac failures

sixcolors.com/post/2024/10/use…



Our friend in Poland said that the AI hosts actually sounded quite dull... Don't know, haven't heard myself just yet... Radio station in Poland fired its journalists and replaced them with AI 'presenters' | Euronews euronews.com/next/2024/10/24/r…



standupstandup.tech/

A fundraising drive for the US Election Protection Hotline.

Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You can donate!

Then watch 8 minutes of nerd jokes about open source software and how programming skews your brain, and none about politics.



TJ watching football, because you know live sports don’t have audio description and announcement quality can vary and things move really fast, what a catch, I think. Lol.



Explore open source contribution guide: learn how to start, choose projects, make your first contribution, and join a global community. #DEVCommunity
dev.to/zlaam/how-to-get-starte…


Reaper made Easy Q&A coming up this Saturday 26 Oct.
As the end of October sneaks up like a cobra,
this Saturday brings Q&A, Jen might even stay sober.
Either way, Jenny K, Shay and muggins here will be there,
Helping peeps with the Reaps, til I'm too hungry to care.

Usual start time, 8PM UK, 3PM Eastern, or the equivalent time wherever you lay your hat.
TeamTalk details, a calendar invite and a way to send us something to play are all over at reaperteacher.com. The part where we listen to things people have shared and give them objective feedback has been getting popular, so if you've got something you want our take on, don't snooze on getting that uploaded, we can only play a couple things each month and most of the time, it's gonna be first come first serve.
As always, any amount of experience is welcome, and we do our best to make sure newcomers get their questions answered.

See ya there,

scott and Jen




A man got hit in the head with a can of Coke, but he was alright because it was a soft drink.


Fstab Options: What Are They, and When Should You Use Them? linuxtoday.com/blog/fstab-opti…


Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King pull onions amid McDonald’s outbreak
Onions have not been confirmed as the source, but restaurants aren't taking chances.
arstechnica.com/health/2024/10…


I want something like callgrind but that will let me make a plot of function call depth vs. stack space consumed.

Librsvg consumes a lot of stack. I've been reducing it gradually, but finding the functions that could be putting temporary stuff in the heap is very manual work.



“our lead shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse

this is why they focus on blockchains, a technology basically always used at the expense of its users”

#Bluesky

in reply to Molly White

i do think the degree to which bluesky is stressing that they do not use blockchains really underscores how toxic even a faint whiff of blockchain has become to any normal platform

#Bluesky



This is why I have been trying to warn about #BlueSky.

BlueSky has just been partially bought by a cryptocurrency company "Blockchain Capital" and appointed a blockchain / cryptocurrency expert to their board:

bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2…

The board member is a bitcoin researcher involved with NFT analytics.

BlueSky describe the tie-up with Blockchain Capital as a "natural partnership" and says the blockchain company has "a uniquely deep understanding of our decentralized foundation".

(via @jwz)

This entry was edited (5 days ago)

reshared this



Mastodon is financed by crowdfunding instead of venture capital not because we don't know that venture capital exists, not because we don't have bills to pay, and not because venture capital isn't willing to give money to new social media platforms. VCs don't want a sustainable business, they want a big exit. Every VC-backed business is on a timer to deliver or die.


Life is a roller-coaster. It keeps getting stuck, frequently breaks down, no maintenance crew, has a couple of loose rails and someone threw up in one of the cars.


🕛Z #NowPlaying at the top of the hour, 2 hours of relaxing #NewAge, #ambient, and #meditationmusic on Northern Lights: The New Age Show, #live with Kelly Sapergia. More information is at ksapergia.net/northernlights/. Tune in either by visiting theglobalvoice.info and clicking on the Listen Live link, or go directly to theglobalvoice.info:8443/broad… #TGVRadio #audio #radio 📺🗣️📻🎶🎙️🌌🌈🫣🫰🩵🪬🫶


Trump gets to be lawless and Harris has to be flawless. They aren't taking the same exam.

-Van Jones



shitpost, kink adjacent

Sensitive content

in reply to Mer-fOKxTOwl

shitpost, kink adjacent

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in reply to Mer-fOKxTOwl

shitpost, kink adjacent

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Vyzera to tak, ze populacia SR ma vcelku problem¹ vyhodnotit, co im skodi viacej:

- mafiani vo vlade
- zvysenie DPH o 3%
- alkohol
- tabak
- marihuana
- nejaki bratislavcania debatujuci pri kave
- zopar qeeer manzelskych parov
- …

via @aktuality_bot

rockosbasilisk.com/@aktuality_…

¹ alebo su skratka az taki prajni, ze obetuju seba a rodinu kludne aj mafianom

This entry was edited (5 days ago)


This makes me want to scream and pull out my hair.

"Reduce your vocabulary by 10-20% to prove you're a human."

reshared this



Ballots damaged in USPS mailbox fire in Phoenix

nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elec…



#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today brings you 16 updated and 1 added apps:

* Paranoid's Pal - Privacy Lock: lets you quickly lock your device and safeguard your data

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo :awesome:



Apple created a Virtual Research Environment to allow public access to testing the security of its Private Cloud Compute system, and released the source code for some "key components" to help researchers analyze the privacy and safety features on the architecture.

bleepingcomputer.com/news/appl…




The purple glow of a fall sunset is incredibly beautiful


How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero quantamagazine.org/how-the-hum…
This entry was edited (5 days ago)


#IzzyOnDroid adopted the Contributor Covenant (see contributor-covenant.org/). So while in the past we suggested you to add our badge or shield to your Readmes when your app became available at the #IzzyOnDroid repo, now it's time for us to adopt a shield. The first of our repositories already have it in their Readmes, the others will follow soon, so you can easily find it: codeberg.org/IzzyOnDroid/.prof…

#codeOfConduct #contributorCovenant

This entry was edited (5 days ago)


On my way back from the glide demo. It was quite interesting. The prototype they had did not have all of the talking features like the one in the video, but I got to get a feel for walking with it at least indoors. Ergonomically it felt quite natural to hold the handle. Walking felt similar yet different to walking with a dog. I felt like I was able to go at a pretty comparable pace to walking with my cane. I got to speak with the founders and provide them with feedback. I can’t wait to see where this goes and try it out next year.


OMG, Harris also has Tyler Perry, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Springsteen in Atlanta? 😃 😃

I really should by ketchup stocks. 😃

Spanky has Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, Dennis Quaid?

Dennis Quaid went over to the dark side?

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to Carolyn

Dennis Quaid it's not new at all: he was already there in 2016.


UnitedHealth says Change Healthcare data breach affects over 100 million people in America techcrunch.com/2024/10/24/unit…


How the ransomware attack at Change Healthcare went down: A timeline techcrunch.com/2024/10/24/how-…


11 Useful X-window (GUI Based) Linux Commands linuxtoday.com/blog/11-useful-…