Perpetually broke no-longer-a-college-student twentysomething. Is often defeated by the internet, social situations, and inanimate objects, not necessarily in that order. thisaintbc on twitter & dreamwidth.
Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don’t need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.
Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment’s notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.
Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a “locate then press” style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.
When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?
Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?
“wah wah what am I supposed to watch if all the actors and writers are on strik—“ my name is John Crichton AN ASTRONAUT a radiation wave hit and I got shot through a wormhole now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a LIVING SHIP, full of strange alien life forms help me help me listen, please is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted hunted by an insane military commanderI’m doing everything I can I’m just looking for a way home
Chats and check-ins take place on our discord server. We encourage you to check out the server in advance of the chat - and, if you’d like, to use it to hang out and support each other even outside of the officially scheduled chats! Everyone is welcome, whether you’re a participant, beta, cheerleader or just want to chat about due South and other C6D fandoms.
Do you ever lie awake wondering how the heck Gimli knows what a nervous system is
Clearly dwarves have medical knowledge far more advanced than that of the other races.
His Majesty Dr. Gimli, son of Gloin, Neurosurgeon, M.D.
gimli trying to explain his studies to legolas, a flat-earther
#*scroll down* #*remember that middle earth is canonically flat for elves and round for everyone else* #*scroll back up & smash that reblog button"
tired: legolas took gimli to valinor with him because they were bffs/in love/etc.
wired: legolas took gimli to valinor to prove the world was flat after arguing with him about it for decades
Sorry it’s what to elves
So, in Tolkein lore, the world was originally flat, with most of the land in the middle (hence Middle Earth). But the Numenorians (men who were rewarded with their own Atlantis-equivalent island for service in the first big war against Melkor, but eventually Power Corrupts etc) tried to invade the uttermost west which was basically Elf Heaven. To put an end to that sort of thing, the creator of the world Bent The World and made it a sphere…but left elves able to treat it like a flat disk. So elves can sail west and reach Elf Heaven, but a man or dwarf or hobbit who sails west will eventually wrap around to the east coast of Middle Earth.
This is why Legolas can see for such great, almost impossible distances. The Earth does not curve for him.
some of the shit thats being demanded of an archive run by volunteers is more than a little ridiculous. Putting the onus on, amongst other things, not having a timeline for when emails will be responded to- and not seeing that a quintupling of their usual attendance in a discord meeting would cause things to get a little crazy- does little more than reduce the feeling of seriousness for the rest of your cause. Cmon now
i mean, i do hear you on things like responding to emails. what was frustrating in that board meeting was that they didn’t have a good process for taking questions and made it incredibly confusing to know how to do it, and then, when people would ask for a better process/clarification, board members would simply say, “then use our contact us form!” despite people knowing that they don’t have time and energy to respond to those promptly - or, possibly, to even read them. so it felt like they were trying to just push us off either way.
i disagree with you on preparation for the meeting, though. there was just no way they couldn’t have expected a much bigger meeting than usual, because the issues that have come up in the past couple months have covered such a range of issues - from racism to AI stuff to mistreatment of volunteers - that there was bound to be interest. the board had been receiving tons of messages via that contact us form. their own volunteers warned them that it would be a big meeting. @end-otw-racism was publicly encouraging people to attend and even shared what kinds of questions people could ask about racism! there was no reason not to be better prepared.
i also want to emphasize that there otw does not have to be a scrappy, incompetent organization. they have over a thousand volunteers and more than a $2.5 million budget surplus. meaning that money is not needed for their next six months of operating expenses, nor has it been dedicated to anything else (at least publicly). they have so little idea what to do with that money that in 2022 they only earned ~$90 in interest income, meaning that money has not even been invested prudently. it’s ludicrous. and it’s not unreasonable to expect that an organization use its resources properly. i know tons of nonprofits that would be thrilled to have $2.5 million (which is five years of otw’s operating expenses - an absurd amount to have in reserve!) that are far smaller and scrappier.
back to this meeting - there were lots of very simple things they could have done differently. they could have appointed other otw volunteers to moderate the channels so that the board members could focus on actually answering questions. they could have frozen messages in the main channel earlier when it was already looking chaotic (they did not do so until halfway through the meeting), but simultaneously had a separate channel for questions so that those were not lost. they could have made a policy of only one question per attendee so that some folks were not hogging the conversation. all of these things could have been done in the moment when they realized how much of a shitshow the meeting was becoming.
when an organization that people are supporting and donating to cannot adequately respond to constructive questions and feedback, that is pretty unacceptable. and so many of us are coming in with a lot of distrust because otw has failed and delayed on so many of their commitments to fans of color in the past. i’m not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt - they have to earn people’s trust back. this meeting was not a step in that direction.
also is the question asker gonna send another message to otw, saying the onus of getting the entire ao3 back up and running for no pay is a little ridiculous? Why the scrutiny towards eotwr and not. the otw who has the resources to actually hire people?
Just wanting to emphasize one of Deepa’s points above: they have ~$2.5 MILLION in reserves. This number had to be figured out because they’re not honest about how much they have every year in their annual reports.
And yet they rely heavily on volunteers that wind up abused and exploited, and often overworked. At this rate, they need to start paying people for the bullshit they’ve been subjected to while volunteering for OTW.
The volunteers deserve what they are owed, and at this rate it’s financial compensation and therapy. The OTW Board needs to be held accountable for what they’ve put their volunteers through.
Again: $2.5 million.
You don’t need to donate to the Board. None of the people actually doing this backbreaking work will see a penny of it.
First, I think it’s very reasonable to hire a bigger permanent staff, esp. with making Equity/Diversity/Inclusion a focus and keeping folks from harm. I certainly don’t want volunteers to be harassed or burned out or made to feel exploited or overlooked.
Second, I have no idea about how much money the OTW truly does or does not have.
However, while $2.5 million sounds like a lot, (if it is actually how much they have) - if they get sued protecting their right to exist, protecting fan works, I think that money looks a jar of pennies next to companies with endless resources.
I think the work they do is huge, vital, and largely invisible - that doesn’t mean it’s deliberately opaque, it’s just that so much more work goes into it than we know.
The archive is incredibly personally important to me. I think it’s worth, at minimum, the annual membership fee, and/or kicking in at funding drives. And of course you can read everything with no donations at all!
Fandom is an engine that runs on love - love of canon, love of community, love of sharing our work. Love of reading, writing, vidding, of a thousand kinds of art.
But for that work we’ve done to have an anchor, a museum, a library, a home where we can find it again in ten years, in twenty, to preserve it takes money, and money held in reserve to face any crisis that may arise.
My people, do or do not donate, but when it comes to funding, I will assume the OTW is doing everything in good faith and with best practices with the funding that they have.
@manogirl and i have previously posted our evidence for otw’s $2.5 million surplus on twitter; we are working on a tumblr post now as well since people without twitter accounts can’t see that, but some short answers based on what we know:
$2.5 million is worth five years’ of operating expenses for otw, which is MASSIVELY greater than what most nonprofits expect to keep (most do 3-6 months of cash reserves, some could do up to two years, but five years is absurd)
it is hard to expect good faith and best practices when we are reading over and over and over about the dysfunction within the organization and the way they treat their volunteers; when we see how imprudently they manage their money (they haven’t even invested that $2.5 million. they only earned $90 of interest income on it last year. ninety dollars); when they delay on commitments like a diversity consultant for years; when they refuse to be transparent about any of this
the narrative of otw as this scrappy organization run on love is just not a realistic one anymore - and, frankly, is often one that is used to obstruct change. ao3 has been in “beta” for almost fifteen years. otw has a massive impact and massive resources. we have to be able to hold them accountable to their promises, especially when we’re donating to them.
i mean if the 2.5 mil are earmarked for sth to necessitate them to be liquid they can just spell that out? fiscal transparency is not too much to ask for in return for donations
Transcript: It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographic “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “Black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc… id. the Black and [Latine] and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” - I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on. So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards… it’s just being poor- but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something.“ -comment left on the Racialious blog post “Sustainable Food and Privilege: Why is Green always White (and Male and Upper-Class) (via meggannn). END TS
the same thing when you look at the ~tiny house movement~ versus, say, people living in trailers, or even just renting in apartments or sublet housing
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missionlameturtle Said:
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