Notices by Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)

@kims "Aliens and human cops/military all agree on their hate of cyclists" #BikeTooter #CarCentrism

A new Montana majority defangs the far right

"Instead of accepting bystander status, however, the nine moderates opened a dialogue with their Democratic colleagues."

https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-new-montana-majority-defangs-the-far-right/ #GoodNews #USpol #Montana

@skinnylatte In the US, I think it would be cheese, BBQ, and sour cream & onion.

Those are the old school potato chip flavors I grew up with on the West Coast, anyway.

@Andres4NY @skinnylatte And now we live in this wondrous era of pesto chips, buffalo wing chips, crunchy frog chips...

@skinnylatte Salt & vinegar is a relatively recent addition to US chip choices (probably came in around 2000, 2010?). I actually think of it as more British.

Roundup to help Californians know what Gov Haircut has been up to.

https://laist.com/news/politics/these-are-the-2024-california-bills-gavin-newsom-has-signed-into-law-and-the-ones-he-has-vetoed #CApol

This isn't good. Even if you want cars to go away, this isn't good.

"Now, critics say Californians’ ability to recoup their money after buying a clunker could become more difficult, due to a hastily passed bill that lobbyists representing U.S. auto manufacturers and powerful attorneys groups drafted in secret.

Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t signed or vetoed Assembly Bill 1755."

https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/09/lemon-law-california-consumer-rights/ #CApol

There are quite a few people who say "everyone has trauma", "everyone is disabled in some way" and then go on to use that as a reason why the status quo is fine.

If those statements are *really* true, it's all the more reason the status quo of abuse and inaccessibility are NOT fine. #Ableism #Accessibility

This is an instructive montage of still photos and video. It shows how there were clear skies in the morning and within hours things changed to an evacuation situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Gt9EAQRsk

The silent auction to raise funds for @BikeEastBay is live now! 🚲

https://bikeeastbay.org/biketopia/ #BikeTooter #Oakland #Cycling

Wow, Weekly Skews' producer got tapped to do rural outreach strategy for Kamala Harris' campaign! #USpol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wj2N7Agfdk

The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is likely raising their fees for the long-term visitors area (LTVA) ~300%. There's an online information session at 6pm today Pacific Time and more later (info/links in article).

A lot of disabled and/or old people have to live in their vehicles because Social Security hasn't kept pace with housing costs for decades. They rely on LTVAs.

https://www.rvtravel.com/blm-wants-to-raise-ltva-fees-up-to-5-times-current-rate-9n-r1/ #Vanlife #Camping #Homelessness #Housing

At least as I've experienced getting older, the older I get, the larger % of my birthday greetings come from automated medical office emails. #Geezerdom

I'm liking this podcast so far. It's not as radical as I like, but it is interesting and an opportunity for these world class athletes to talk about what parasports are like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_xkj6tbh18 #Paralympics #Sports #Disability #Football #Soccer

And another one with an upbringing where their abled family just kinda ignored their access needs, which they view as a positive thing.

I'm sure it does have some positives as far as preparing them for systemic ableism. However, it occurs to me how fortunate they are that disability activists don't have the same attitude that it's all about toughening up... if they did, they wouldn't have ADA, wouldn't have some of the accessibility in public that they've got...

Having listened now to 3 of these podcast episodes, with comments by 4 Paralympians, I do find it interesting how often the message is "anything is possible" when talking about the efforts disabled people can make to achieve athletic excellence, but the message is "Welp, what can you do?" when it comes to systemic change.

It's weird to me that they see so much possibility in the struggle of individuals and seem not to see that much hope in popular struggle to dismantle #ableism. #Paralympics

There's just something so weird to me about the enormous resources (of all types) that people put into games, when they quit before they start when it comes to the effort required to make things accessible and dismantle ableism.

It possibly speaks of priorities (nationalism, individual glory over social justice) or possibly speaks to what they feel is more easily achievable...in any case, it really feels foreign to my way of thinking. And that's even with knowing how hard social change is!

Yet more on this... one of the athletes in another episode talked about the great effort and expense they and their program went to to train, because they'd only gotten 4th in Tokyo 2020, not a medal.

And while I can understand being disappointed, the mountains they moved just to make their training environment more like that of hot countries just made me wonder what their society would be like if they'd put that money and effort into accessibility projects.

It occurred to me the other day how much the natural inclination of humans to play has been perverted as well as harnessed for ill by capitalism.

Instead of a healthy mixture of work and learning and play, we've got sedentary inaccessible school, sedentary inaccessible work, and inaccessible playspaces (and playtime relegated to very little time per day and often made work-like e.g. Crossfit).

Ppl instead supposed to identify with billionaire-owned sports teams. Gamification of so much else.

I don't know if this is satire, but even if hypothetical, it's a good example of why it's not a great idea to automate alt text/image description.

Lovingly crafting text for abled ppl then automating it when it comes to describing images tells on yourself.

Automating alt text makes for deeply inaccurate, even disinfo alt text/image description:

https://mastodon.social/@philipncohen/113080493757208395