@jessamyn@glammr.us
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

jessamyn

@jessamyn@glammr.us

Rural tech geek. Researcher. Librarian resistance. Moss collector. Postcard enjoyer. I own MetaFilter. ✉️ box 345 05060 ✉️ (she/her)

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jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I am getting somewhat emotional reading about all the parts of S.220, An act relating to Vermont’s public libraries, which was signed by Vermont's governor today.

  • empowers the Department of Libraries to develop model selection and retention policies for public libraries (PL)
  • requires the DOL to provide Continuing Ed for public library staff (they do this already)
  • extends enhanced penalties for criminal threatening in all PL
  • lowers the age of patron confidentiality in PL from 16 to 12
waldoj, to random
@waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

I just went to the Virginia DMV to renew my driver’s license and my vehicle registration. That could not have been an easier or more efficient process. I think every interaction I have ever had with the local DMV office has been easy, friendly, and successful.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@waldoj @StephanieMoore Same in Vermont. I registered my truck and got custom plates (ordered) all within a very short not-wasting-my-time window. The woman who helped me was friendly and efficient. I did have to drive to the state capital (there are like five DMVs in this state) but that was a small price to pay.

markwyner, to Wikipedia
@markwyner@mas.to avatar

The people of Wikipedia are on that shit.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@markwyner JeffSpaceman (who made that edit) is the hero we deserve today.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@markwyner Turns out I was misreading Wikipedia edits and my apologies to ImYourTurboLover (which is possibly an even better username) who actually made that edit.

clive, to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

Whoa

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@clive Between this and the news about the IRS and Direct File being available in all 50 states it's been a not-entirely-terrible-to-be-American day.

digiphile, to random
@digiphile@mastodon.social avatar

In a HUGE win for digital government in the USA, US Treasury says Direct File will be a permanent, free tax filing option! https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2385

NB: A USGSA survey of 11,000+ filers found 90% ranked the UX as “Excellent” or “Above Average,” after a successful pilot with 140,000 Americans that saved an estimated $5.6M in costs.

Next steps: invest more to pre-populate returns, test, iterate, & scale.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@digiphile I am stupidly excited about this.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@joeo10 @digiphile ID.me is definitely a stumbling block. I've had people in the public library who needed to do a video chat just to verify their identity and... that won't scale (and yes, also privacy issues). I hope they have some creative solutions.

annaleen, to Engineering
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

I'm writing an article that deals in part with the career of MIT civil engineering prof John B. "Bud" Wilbur, class of '26. Did you or any of your mentors/elders know him? Please get in touch! #mit #engineering

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@annaleen I very much wish I did but my grandfather would have gone to college with him!

emilymbender, to random
@emilymbender@dair-community.social avatar

A shout out to librarians, libraries and library science -- and the practices of care, community and service which make up their democratizing force.

https://buttondown.email/maiht3k/archive/information-access-as-a-public-good/

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@emilymbender Oh gosh Emily, and this is so timely since Seattle Public is dealing with a ransomware attack this week, on top of all the other attacks on libraries. Thanks for writing it.

jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I do some work that involves one-time emailing people from my domain about a service they applied for. I use a lot of form letters. I am continually battling with my email hosting provider about the content of these emails, they reject them to b/c they look too spammy.

I get that spam is a scourge and I sympathize, but it's wild how much of a dark art spam fighting is. So far I've had to remove my "hello" greeting and add a fake unsub link (they're not subscribed) just to send outgoing emails.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I have DKIM and SPF set up. My domain is not on any blacklists. There is a black box of machine learning between me and being able to do this simple volunteer job which sometimes goes fine and sometimes winds up with dozens of emails returned in my inbox.

The support page for my email host has a huge page of "things to look out for" that I have bookmarked and read often but also states "content guidelines for spam are always changing, much like our world." :ohno:

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

More to the point--and I swear I am not being a grumpy "I hate change and learning technology" person, I love a challenge--all the time I take trying to learn the shifting spam rules and testing new variants of my email, is time being taken away from my work helping folks.

So either the volunteer work takes more of my time, or I have less overall time available for helping people. As I've said in the past, economies of scale for corporations easily become "economies of hassle" for individuals.

kjhealy, to random
@kjhealy@mastodon.social avatar

The horror twist of course is that it turns out the skeleton is also me

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@kjhealy Me and Ask MetaFilter, exactly.

Dianora, to mastodon
@Dianora@ottawa.place avatar

I had given up on pleading for more alt-text but I'll try again!

Please add alt-text to your photos/pictures it only takes a minute and does not have to be fancy. My policy is not to boost images without alt-text and I am not the only one.

This is one of the cultural things I like about Mastodon, the inclusiveness. Please don't ruin it.

-Text

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@SuitedUpDev @Dianora I've found this page from Perkins School for the Blind has some good basic tips. The graphic at the bottom lives rent free in my head.

https://www.perkins.org/resource/how-write-alt-text-and-image-descriptions-visually-impaired/

jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

A dispiriting drop-in time today.

  • a non-stop talker (asked a question, I started to answer, she interrupted, repeat)
  • a person who was probably drunk
  • An improbable ipad problem described but not shown to me (HOW)
  • a couple who brought in three badly broken pieces of tech, called their daughter to ask about one of the things, all I heard was screaming on the speakerphone ("Everyone ok there?" "Yeah, sure"). Like... look at this.

There was a cookie party downstairs which I missed.

But!

4 second video of an iphone screen which is blinking and showing a bunch of flickering items moving on a screen which should not be moving. Also there are 9500 unread emails.

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I got to help a woman install Merlin on her phone which was simpler than she thought it was going to be.

And my license plates came in. 😍

upol, to ai
@upol@hci.social avatar

Compiling a reading list for grad students and need your input: what are the best readings on
(1) methods to identify and
(2) measure AI harms?

Self-plugs are always welcomed. Bonus points if papers include ways to "quantify" said harms.

#AI #academia #academicchatter

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@upol I always seem to go back to Agre. This is an article that doesn't seem like it's about AI per se, but at its core it really is.

Article: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/research.html
Analysis which makes the connections: https://theluddite.org/#!post/ai-hype

lzg, to random
@lzg@mastodon.social avatar

run-on sentences are my favorite sentences and i don’t care if english doesn’t like them

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

@lzg It's a joke with me and my so who reads all my writing and is a great editor; he is always telling me to add more commas and make teenier sentences and I am always telling him that the heart wants what it wants.

jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I serve an aging population who use technology but want it to do a few specific things:

  • Big slow email - make it simple to do basic tasks (read, compose, attach, file) without clicking any tiny targets. Don't hide features.
  • Simple home page. A great site called Internet Buttons used to help you do this.
    http://web.archive.org/web/20171212223232/http://www.internetbuttons.org/page/gallery/
  • Streaming (only) networks. Many people I work with ditch cable but want to watch network TV/news. It's harder than it should be! They'd pay more for fewer options.
jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I wrote an opinion piece about Vermont's Data Privacy Act which is sitting on the Governor's desk while the big tech lobby pressures him not to sign it. Threaded here so people can read it and I don't just give you an image with a huge alt text wall.

I support Vermont Data Privacy Act a bill which has passed the House and Senate and is on its way to the Governor's desk. Vermonters deserve to be able to understand and control how their personal information is collected and used online [1/7]

jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

Happy seventh birthday MLTSHP, the goofy little image-sharing site that I help run. Now, with stickers.

Thanks always to Amber and Andre, who did it first.

https://mltshp.com/p/1Q1UG

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

I should mention, we moved over from Twitter a while ago but it took us some time to get our "Best Of MLTSHP" bot going but it's running now. Thanks to the kind folks from MeFi Social for offering a nice spot for it.

https://mefi.social/

jessamyn, to Wikipedia
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

New Year new #Wikipedia list. Reebee Garofalo was one of the original people who put together Rock Against Racism Massachusetts but you may know him as the snare player for the Good Trouble Brass Band playing in the HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands. He was cited in a ton of other Wikipedia articles and made that Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music chart you may have seen in an Edward Tufte book. A good guy to get to know, deserves a longer article but this is good for now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reebee_Garofalo

A man in a red beret with a white beard looks into the camera. He is standingbehind a podium that has an apple laptop on it. He is wearing many strands of multicolored beads and a red HONK t-shirt

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

Was reading a talk about the 200th anniversary of Braille (thanks @JonathanMosen) and he noted the passing of David Holladay who wrote early Braille translator software to help support his wife, Caryn Navy, a blind math professor when they were students at MIT.

He had a newsletter (about accessible computing) which was also published on cassette.

He continued to write and work on Braille software for his entire life, now with Wikipedia page!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Holladay

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

My usual rule of thumb is only articles about under-represented folks on Wikipedia but I made an exception for Bill Harris without actually knowing he was a gay journalist so Happy Pride Month and please enjoy the wide array of things this man did in his journalism career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Harris_(journalist)

Bill harris screenshot. He is a middle-aged white man with a large mustache and glasses. Over his shoulder is an inset picture showing "A women's Look at Men's BUNS" calendar from 1985 with a picture of someone's butt in blue briefs

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

This guy's name is Bum Farto and the categories on his Wikipedia article are: 1919 births, Missing people, People declared dead in absentia, 20th-century American criminals, and Firefighters. I don't think I have anything more to add except amazement no one had written this article before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bum_Farto

jessamyn, to random
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

Book 1: System Collapse. I'd been eagerly awaiting this book. I enjoyed it but it wasn't quite the Murderbot book I was expecting. May have been a me problem, it was a long time since I'd read the last one and I had to re-learn who the characters were and this novel seemed short on "get to know the characters" stuff. A lot of Murderbot's inner mind, some of their relationship with ART, the usual clusterfuck on a remote planet. Last year's reading list https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/111666401754992583

jessamyn,
@jessamyn@glammr.us avatar

Book 52: You hit a certain age, you've read a lot of books and you can be like "Another book in the luxury space hotel mystery genre." Turns out I like that genre a good deal and this was a good example of it. People wind up on the floating hotel because they're escaping life circumstances in a dystopia where there's been one Emperor for 500 years and you're not allowed to even mention aliens. But... someone's speaking truth to power. And are they in the floating hotel? And how do you find them?

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