marjaerwin

“I bow before the authority of [specialists] because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give-such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.”

–Mikhail Bakunin

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/bakunin/godandstate/godandstate_ch1.html

If epidemiologists say social distancing will buy time and save lives, why shouldn’t I trust them?

I see people dismiss social distancing as “meekly following orders”– but if meekly following expert advice, during this emergency, regardless of orders, will save other people’s lives, why not?

Pdf was developed as a format for printing. And the same features which make it good for printing also make it usable for scanning archived books. But it is widely used for other articles and other ebooks. And it isn't suitable and creates a number of accessibility challenges.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a pdf-only book about accessibility. It wasn't very accessible, and it didn't address some of my accessibility needs.

Because it's designed to display page by page, it can't easily reflow. Instead users are supposed to move about within each page. On older e-readers, that's incredibly slow. On newer ones, zooming, panning, etc. can trigger migraines. Because most publishers are fond of large pages with 2 columns, that requires a lot of extra movement.

Because it's designed as a final format before printing, it can't always be converted to epub or mobi or other reflowable formats. Text gets lost, or scrambled. Because many publishers are fond of extra images framing each page, it can create a lot of extra clutter.

Because newer pdfs are often incompatible with older devices, it often requires pdf-to-pdf conversion. Willus's k2pdfopt or k2opt is the most powerful tool for that, but it rasterizes everything, so it's better for scanned pdfs. Ghostscript with pdfwriter and a suitable compatibility level's not as powerful, but it doesn't rasterize everything, so it's usually better for pdf-born-pdfs. It sometimes loses text though, and sometimes fails to process images if they're set up as mosaics of small blocks.

Corrupt or garbled text in the original, or after pre-processing with Ghostscript, make pdfs unsearchable, and much harder to navigate. I expect they also make these pdfs incompatible with screen readers. Even the out-of-order text which is so common could make them incompatible with screen readers.

On a map or counter-sheet where exact appearance and size are important, it's probably still the best choice. But for articles, rules, ebooks, etc. please consider alternatives.

I have a partial transcript of the police radio recordings, arc11134, for channel command-5. Here is a transcript at the start of the gassing:

arc11134-2B Track 4/10
(man's voice): Car-2-1.
(woman's voice): Car-2-1?
8:30
(man's voice): What's the status report at 6th and University right now, as far as volume?
(woman's voice): 6th and University, your status?
(man's voice): Um, 5-Adam, we can give the status at 6th and Union.
(woman's voice): 6th and Union can do that, Car-21.
(man's voice): I don't know who's at 6th and University. Anyone there, heads up?
(man's voice): Demo Desk, last we have is WSP car team at 6th and University. It's the only unit I have there.
8:31
(woman's voice): Seattle to, uh, WSP, car team?
(man's voice): Sergeant Meehan, has a WSP Lieutenant with me, but we're on foot, and I'd have to (unintelligible).
(woman's voice): We're trying to check the status at 6th and University.
(man's voice): Guardian-1, what does it look like at 6th and University?
(man's voice): Uh, Guardian-1, we're checking.
(woman's voice): HNT-1?
(woman's voice): (unintelligible)-1?
(woman's voice): 4 and Pike, the crowd in the intersection here is starting to cause property damage to paper boxes, etc.
8:32
(woman's voice): Received, and Radio to Car-21?
(man's voice): Car-2-1 advise?
(woman's voice): Information from 1-Henry and his squad are at 3 and Pine. They're masking up. Animal rights are back at McDonalds, (Southeast corner of 3rd & Pine)
(man's voice): What's activity at McDonalds?
(woman's voice): Standby, we'll check.
(man's voice): Whoseever asking for WSP SWAT, they are on Command-4, not Command-5.
(woman's voice): Okay, we were looking for the D --
(man's voice): The Demo Desk?
8:33
(man's voice): We're WSP. We're holding at 6th and University and the crowd's throwing, however.
(woman's voice): HNT-1?
(woman's voice): HNT-1.
(woman's voice): can you advise what direction the P.D. is trying to move the crowd from 4 and Pike?
8:34
(woman's voice): That's actually being handled on Command-4.
(man's voice): Car-2-1, uh, Guardian-1 is about 10 blocks to the north. If they could give me a status of 6th and University, please.
(man's voice): Guardian-1, you've got crowds and there it appears to be mostly contained in the --
arc11134-2B Track 5/10
(man's voice): -- inters, uh, you've now got a group of people, uh, walking up, I think it's University, uh, going westbound onto, into the crowds. Your line's holding, on the west side, uh, nobody's crossed it yet.
8:35
(woman's voice): King County Radio to Command-30 on Sec-10?
(man's voice): Command-30, go ahead.
(woman's voice): Command-30? Team-32 is stationary at, uh Pine and 8 per Seattle's request.
(man's voice): 10-4.
(man's voice): Car-2-1, can I have a comm unit, uh, at 7 and Pike, I need, uh, someone with me, with their command, at all times.
(man's voice): 2-3-2, it's Comm-5 on the air, whatever else is. Traffic car on 8th and Pine, if you could move it please?
8:36
[Note: November's recording was erased before December's copying. Officer Lawson reads out the times, over the hiss of the erased section. According the the SPD AAR, they did not even stage Chemical Agent Response teams before 9:00. According to earlier sections, they were deploying these before 8:00 and according to the following section they were firing chemical grenades before 9:00.]
arc11134-2B Track 6/10
8:40
(man's voice): 9-Adam to 2-3-2, be advised we have a second wave coming to 8th and Pine, and they are currently at 9th and Pine, look like they are poised to possibly come this way.
8:41
(firing)
(man's voice, muffled): Car-21, there was a report from Command-3. Some troopers were having trouble at 6th and University, 6th and Seneca, and status, please.
(firing)
(man's voice): Now.
(woman's voice): Radio to Demo Desk?
(firing)
(man's voice): Demo Desk.
(woman's voice): Can you check the status of those troopers at 6th and Seneca?
(man's voice, muffled): (unintelligible) okay.
(static)
(firing)
(man's voice): Hey, Guardian-1, do you pos- (unintelligible)? The crowd that was moving towards the Paramount is milling around there. They haven't decided which way they're gonna go. They tried to continue to southbound and were stopped, so they're now just milling by the buses.
8:42
(firing)
(firing)
(man's voice): Demo Desk Radios? We're supposed to have an SPD element at 6th and Seneca. See if you check.
(firing)
(firing)
(woman's voice): Is there a unit at 6th and Seneca?
(firing)
(man's voice): Unit 900.
(woman's voice): 900?
(man's voice): We've got a group in front of the Sheraton. We have a whole group of the black-clad kids that we've been following are throwing debris and so forth out here. [Note: Building barricades?] Is there any, er, are they gonna be moving a hard squad, uh, down this way?
8:43
(woman's voice): Car-2-1?
(man's voice, muffled): Car-2-1, uh, first, of course, Sheraton should be on lockdown, and Joe, if you could deal with some of those people it would be appreciated. Where do you start to hold the line up here? If you need assistance, we will send a squad.
(firing)
(man's voice): Okay, well, we're not, actually we don't have enough people or we're not really equipped to move in, but if we, if there's a danger to be, injury, then we'll, well, grab 'em.
(firing)
(firing)
(man's voice): Demo Desk Radio, 6th and Seneca, status, if you could determine that?
(man's voice): And 9-Adam to 2-3-2, we have about an additional 600 that are responding to 8 and Pine from 9th. Be advised. [Note: 600 is a call sign, not an estimate.]
(burst firing)
8:44
(man's voice): 8-Adam 2-3-2, do you copy?
(man's voice): Give us a status report. What you need?

Note that this is earlier than reported by the Accountability Review Committee or many scholarly works.

Some elements don’t scroll with the rest of the page. Other elements jump on mouseover. Others rely on modals. And there is no exit button for certain site-disabling modals.

Some text on certain pages, such as principle 4, “Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone,” is out of place and blocks other text, probably because some of their design choices are incompatible with some of my safety/accessibility fixes.

The pdf is not entirely accessible either.

It's a pdf. So users can't choose readable fonts, contrast, font sizes, etc. Some parts use faint gray text. All of it uses 2-column format.

Lately I've been thinking about American politics in terms of a 3-way fight: the left, the ruling class, and the right.

At the height of the counter-globalization movement, this was a clash between (a) the left and (b) the ruling class, while the issues divided the right.

The war led to a clash between (a) the left with a small part of the right and (b) the ruling class with the larger part of the right.

And the rise of the immigrant rights movement required a clash between (a) the left with a small part of the ruling class and (b) the right with the larger part of the ruling class.

That explains the rough break-ups of 2007-2008. The right complains that anarchists turned globalist-- most of us already were!-- while we complain that so many self-described libertarians turned *Nazi*-- some of them probably already were.

The ruling class obviously has the most killing power, followed by the right.

The ruling class retreated from the Washington Consensus during classes with the left in the post-Seattle era. Each side had very different strengths, but overall, they didn't have an overwhelming advantage. They are allying with the right and enabling fascist coups in the Gwot era. e.g. Bolivia, with the massacres now.

The right can't get anywhere without the ruling class. In a shooting war, they tend to have the advantage over the left, but in ideological and culture wars they have been losing ground for centuries. Nationalism was their last big thing, and it's been losing ground since the First World War.

The left-- we're obviously at a disadvantage compared to the ruling class + right combination. In shooting wars, we're still at a massive disadvantage, not least because we don't want to see people die and the world burn. In culture wars, our worst defeats are at each other's hands.

e.g. prohibition, including drug prohibition.

When someone’s playing electronic music, and you don’t have your ear protection handy, so you start hallucinating with everything changing color from orange to green to blue and back…

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1152251008594173952.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1152069239139790848.html

I am a bashing survivor, so I don’t have much of a choice. A lot of us are in groups Nazis want to exterminate, so we don’t have much choice. Our continued survival becomes “domestic terrorism.” She's not too worried, but I think this is dangerous rhetoric from Cruz and co.

But we should always oppose Nazi violence, and the wave of Nazi murders.

Where is all this knowledge?

support.mozilla.org keeps flashing on Firefox as pages load.

I am photosensitive and have not been able to protect myself from Firefox’s default settings, or from many web sites. I would really like to be able to protect myself.

support.mozilla.org’s main accessibility article does not address my accessibility and safety needs, though it does address some others:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/accessibility-features-firefox-make-firefox-and-we

Searching for “photosensitive”

“We couldn’t find any results for photosensitive in English. Maybe one of these articles will be helpful?”

I worked out a partial list of fixes here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540174

and here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/a46slw/i_have_a_seizure_disorder_and_i_need_to_learn_how/ebc3z9s/

I mostly use both Waterfox and Firefox with numerous accessibility fixes, but still get very sick when hit with certain types of animation.

A lot of politics is about whom people include in or exclude from their moral universes.

Sometimes people substitute "empathy," but that isn't the same as moral inclusion, and it becomes a basis for moral exclusion.

Sometimes people have a principle of trying to include everyone. Sometimes people have a principle of excluding “those people.” Sometimes people have a principle of accepting what they can’t change, which tends to narrow their moral universe, especially in authoritarian regimes, and makes it harder to make things change. Sometimes people have a drive, that is "empathy," to include people, but that often weakens with distance.

Sometimes people make a habit of inclusion or exclusion, making it easier to include or to exclude.

Now empathy has become another reason to exclude people: If we’re autistic and other people can’t understand us, then we “lack empathy.” If we’re autistic and we don’t understand other people, then we “lack empathy.” If someone is sociopathic then they also “lack empathy,” in another sense… true some do hurt other people… But the people who connect with their friends and families and neighbors while supporting war or closing the borders to refugees or the like, they “have empathy,” and what do they do with it?

I had to go by the DMV to renew my identification. Because it’s intended for drivers, it doesn’t do accessibility for those of us who can *never* drive. But it’s the only place to provide state identification.

A lot of major and minor problems:

* The entry line was narrow, probably too narrow for most wheelchairs, and it turned around every 2 meters or so, which may be more impractical with wheelchairs and was dizzying walking to the back of the actual line.

* There were flashing painscreens/televisions in this area, and flashing lights on vending machines in this area. At one point these were roughly opposite each other, so looking away from one made it hard to look away from the other.

* way too noisy.

* perfume.

* There were ceiling fans under the lights in the actual waiting area, so if I looked in the wrong direction, everything flashed about 30 hits per second. I had an eye patch, but still fell down at one point, and people with greater sensitivity and/or no eye patch could easily have seizures due to this.

* noise again.

* It was impossible to make anything out, like calls for specific numbers, over the noise. No, removing my ear protection did not help.

* There were painscreens/televisions listing the current numbers, but they were hard to read, they had scrolling pain-text along the bottom, and they periodically flashed.

* The cameras kept flashing in the same room, powerful enough to hurt at the far end of the waiting room.

* The cameras themselves had a green strobe light, and I nearly fell down.

* And of course the flash hurt.