Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Ingrid Tischer's name was mentioned several times at the recent SDS@OSU conference. Ingrid Tischer is a disabled white woman who works in the philanthropy sector. She blogs the hell out of that experience and much more, with honest surrealism and humor. She spouts “FEDup rants” opposing TED’s goal of making knowledge a commodity.

You can spend hours exploring her site; this essay lent itself to excerption:

My FEDup™ Rant: RespectAbility, Class and Race Privilege, and Leveling the Erring Field

( quote and great takedown of Hockenberry )

My last conference event was a free lunch, with fond farewells to new friends.

MyGuy & Bella pick me up at 115. We’re returning on the hypotenuse from the journey down on I90 to I60 to i70, traveling state and US highways. Sometimes known as blue roads because that’s how they’re shown on paper maps.

( and so we dawdled northwesterly )

I slowly packed all day Thursday with intermittent, frequent breaks on Twitter & DW.

Woke up, did my morning health work, then take Bella for a walk while MyGuy gasses car.

We’re out the driveway 943a on Friday

( “mundanity” )

Onward to Columbus tomorrow, where I get to meet forests_of_fire in person!

...and quantum physics and cooking too!

mrissa has written another wonderful essay, informed by her years writing great SF and coping with disability.

That Never Happened: Misplaced Skepticism and the Mechanisms of Suspension of Disbelief - Uncanny Magazine ( A quote and more to read else web )

Nasal rinsing (also called nasal or sinus irrigation) is a long-standing practice in Ayurvedic medicine. In this tradition, the "neti pot" is the tool to have.

( 500 words on joyful sinus rinsing )

I’ve tried to follow the Archive of Our Own's instructions to modify the ones on offer and achieved zilch.

What I want when I view the archive: [ETA, kluged something workable]

• Display the work text in the same font as my browser default
• Provide visual clue that when I've already given kudos to a work ( in detail )

In eight 50-minute episodes, the CONTAINERS podcast producer Alexis Madrigal explores how global transport changed from humans putting individual things in ships and airplanes to putting things into train-car size containers, which are loaded via huge cranes onto huge boats. Containerization is why cheaply-made goods have flooded the world. The series examines how this change, started almost by accident during the Vietnam war, has affected billions of people in small and large ways. The series is sponsored by Flexport, who are in the container business—and it is definitely not a puff piece.

I’m pleased that Madrigal has posted transcripts at medium.com/containers and you can listen from there or from CONTAINERS’ audio on Soundcloud

Containerization is why my supermarket stocks frozen, peeled and boiled Vietnamese soybeans, even though I live in Wisconsin, a soybean producing state. Alexis Madrigal (a writer for The Atlantic) asks what happens to the dock workers and the handful of sailors who move these huge container ships around the globe. He tells how Oakland residents fought back against the concentration of diesel fumes from the new container ports where thousands of trucks idle daily.

Episode 6 begins:

This is a story about heroes in West Oakland like Margaret Gordon. This is a story about people who stood up and said, “No, not on my watch.” This is not a story about the health department. And this is not a story even about the port. This is a story about people coming together to fight for justice. And they won. And they won big. And they won in a way that had influence on what’s happening in ports all over this country. And in fact ports all around the world. I think those are the true heroes, the Margaret Gordons … They drove this change and they deserve the credit.

The series digs in to the origins and beginnings of containerized shipping.

For a beautiful and informative demonstration of containerized shipping 2012, visit ShipMap.org. There’s an autoplay audio overview, and an animated interactive map showing all the container ships on the planet and what they’re carrying.

New! gluten_free a comm for sharing gluten-free recipes and resources is open for business! Come sign up and join the gluten-free cooking conversation!

All joy to runpunkrun for cooking (and baking) this up. I’m thrilled and will help stir.

This shouldn’t surprise me, since her fun SF thriller novels Persona and Icon posit a world where the United Nations has morphed into a celebrity reality show. Every Persona is managed by a crew of fashion, romance, and (er, yes, well) political advisors. ( more about her books )

https://www.genevievevalentine.com/category/red-carpet-rundown

Valentine’s commentary begins in January 2009 and comes right up to last week’s Oscars. Each post is heavily illustrated, and yet this may be a case where image descriptions aren’t really necessary, as Valentine’s snark is actually the point.

For example, the last item in her first post, https://www.genevievevalentine.com/2009/01/golden-globes-totally-random-red-carpet-rundown

However, the outfit I was happiest with was Renee Zellweger’s, because I think she sucks mightily, and now when people ask, “What has she done that’s so bad?” and I don’t have a clip of her acting available, I can just show them this and say, “This is what her soul looks like.”

( image, description and poll )

lj_writes does a much better job explaining this!

https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/2019/03/02/alt-text.html

lightgetsin relies on image descriptions, and her thoughts are crucial

https://lightgetsin.dreamwidth.org/308442.html https://lightgetsin.dreamwidth.org/308442.html

For sighted people, images can communicate a lot in a short time. On the web, tho, images come with a cost: bandwidth. Folks who don’t or can’t view your image can still get your message when you use image descriptions. "alt text" is the HTML tool to hold your image descriptions.

Web Accessibility In Mind — WebAIM — is an outstanding resource for ensuring that all users can appreciate your web content.

Spend twenty minutes at WebAIM to gain a confidence in applying the principles of alt texts. Their tl;dr about the content of alt texts: ( open me )

Read Markdown Simplifies Formatting Your DW Posts for an introduction and the formats you'll use daily.

This sequel covers the rest of Dreamwidth’s Markdown support. ( 1100 words )

( creepy images - mean students - lovely DWers )

I'm thrilled that Markdown simplifies formatting your DW posts has proved popular and helpful. I didn't explore all Markdown's features to keep it short. I regret that now. I'm drafting a "Markdown: the sequel" post with the remaining features. In a better timeline, I would have written "Markdown: the novel," integrating the sequel stuff in the first post. I want to maximize reference utility for DW users in the next decade. Three ways to do this occur to me, and I bet you have a better idea.

( Three possible plans and a poll )

Great reading today from three places.

On DW:

seperis makes me laugh really hard about living with bunnies

Bunnies can eat through anything. Even zip ties. Even dozens of zip ties. Even all the zip ties. That is how I ended up with baby bunnies in the first place. They can also jump under duress three feet at a run and two feet just because they're assholes. (One of my tiny psychopaths can do three and a half feet, catch himself halfway over the top of the play area, and shimmy over.) Rabbits also like access to small, comforting, dark spaces to hide and cuddle (each other, not me).

https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1041231.html
further background on bunny ownership: https://web.archive.org/http://seperis.tumblr.com/post/166559117285/the-bunny-files

On Granta:

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist, prosthetic-wearing ass-kicker. She delivers the Donna Haraway smackdown I've been waiting 20 years for:

When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it. ( 286 wise words )

https://granta.com/common-cyborg/

I first encountered Jillian in her Tipsy Tullivan persona, as she excoriated AWP for their hostility to disabled writers:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/ucwfcyz-fipjq0u6v-fevomq/featured

To my delight, she was on one AWP 2016 panel, celebrating the 40th anniversary of her publisher BOA, reading several poems and a call to action/drinks. ( uncaptioned video )

On Captain Awkward
I subscribe to the DW captainawkward_feed

Cap addresses “Tips for staying positive when your body hates you.” from a PhD student dealing with sudden liver cancer. Cap wisely turns to the wisdom of disabled people, and offers lots of excellent suggestions.

What if I told you that you don’t have to feel positive or stay positive or be positive. Stay alive. Positive can wait.

[... snip ...]

Fight the idea that being sick is something you’re inflicting on others. You say: “I feel like I’m a drain on everyone around me and I can’t even contribute academically anymore.” This ableist framing is hurting you and other people.

Your worth is not based on how much money you earn, it is not based on how much research or scholarship you do.

http://captainawkward.com/?p=46182

I’ve just¹ learned that Ruth Badner Ginsburg, our brutally strong and smart Supreme Court justice, has a necklace she wears when she dissents from a decision the court hands down. This dissent necklace is a studded collar that stretches like a smile from one shoulder to the other, comprising 21 thumb-shaped wedges.

She wore it the day after the 2016 election.

You can buy replica pendants, earrings, tie clips etc., as well as stickers.
https://dissentpins.com/collections/dissent-collar/products/dissent-collar-sticker

Bustle has an illustrated article about RBG’s collection of “statement” accessories.
https://www.bustle.com/p/what-do-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-collars-mean-each-one-has-a-special-story-9288551

So I love oolong tea and I have exhausted all the vendors locally.

When I search online I get hundreds of results. Some are in India and China--the originators of tea! Cost is not my main criterion, but I don't want to throw money into the void.

I want a vendor who will actually ship what I ordered and that’s pretty much it.

Do you have a positive experience with an online tea vendor?

Dessa is fierce and smart and I love her music. She's a white rapper from Minneapolis on the DOOMTREE label.

https://www.dessawander.com/music/

( Links to two YouTube videos )

ETA: rydra_wong tells me Dessa is "half-Puerto Rican", not white.

ETA 2: I've now reverted my style so it no longer supports the "whispery" tags I describe below. I've frozen this post for posterity.

ETA: Ha! I thought I'd discovered a nifty workaround and instead I demonstrated how I didn't test something before I posted.

( in other words, never mind )

Let it be known that Tumblr did support awesome creativity! Particularly the 221B Baker Towers headcanon universe, where all the reboot characters are marginalized folks living in a poor housing estate. A delicious improvement on the class-bound glaring-white BBC version.

I've seen most of the creative art and writing on 221b-baker-towers Tumblr

…but just in case…

The original art manip and headcanon post, safe on AO3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/428754

Tagged Tumblr posts https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/221b+baker+towers

And on the Archive https://archiveofourown.org/tags/221B%20Baker%20Towers/works

I've been browsing the "tumblr purge" tags at latest things (as you do) and have stumbled on two wonderful resources:

For Android Users: Close to a Mobile App with Hermit

https://bluewinged-songbird.dreamwidth.org/tag/tutorial

bluewinged_songbird provides the step-by-step, with pictures!

For all of us: If you're used to Tumblr, how you do it here

https://potofsoup.dreamwidth.org/tag/dw+how-to

potofsoup has, of this writing, fourteen step-by-step tutorials, with pictures!

I learned new things, even after being here since 1-May-2009. It also made me better understand how Tumblr works.

Columbia Journalism Review is a trade magazine for journalists. Maia Szalavitz's article on "What the media gets wrong about opioids" opened my eyes wide—

The “relatable” story journalists and editors tend to seek—of a good girl or guy (usually, in this crisis, white) gone bad because pharma greed led to overprescribing—does not accurately characterize the most common story of opioid addiction. ( a truer take and a link )

I used to keep all my fanfic on Dropbox: all my PDFs, docs, epubs, audio files and plain text notes there to access from my iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro.

(I'm just one person, so I don't have to worry about managing versions.)

I can't seem to do this with iCloud Drive. When I create a Project folder at iCloud Drive's root level, my iOS apps can't see the data there. The iOS apps all want their files to be inside their own app-specific folders.

Is there a way around this?

x-posted to Ask.Metafilter