Danny Ockilson - he/him @danny@justweb.dev

Update: moved this to my new writing site so there’s a new URL.

Every hashtag on every post on every platform should ALWAYS be pascal case. I wrote this to illustrate how screenreaders read hashtags based on their case.

It’s a small thing that all of us can do to build a more inclusive, accessible internet for all. Please take the time to use pascal case.

Read more:
https://markwrites.io/hashtag-accessibility-by-everyone-for-everyone

#Accessibility #WebAccessibility #Usability #Readability #Hashtags #SocialNetworking #Blogging #UX

oh my god we white white progressives are the absolute fucking worst. we talk about dismantling white supremacy but we cling OH HOW WE DESPERATELY CLING to ways of doing things that replicate systems of oppression. THE FEAR we have when we even CONSIDER something new or different. we are SO AFRAID of LOSING POWER and that fear comes with deep-down knowing how GARBAGE our people have been. and I know so many white progressives who don't recognize that's where the fear comes from. FUCKING HELL.

Just a warning, I am immediately blocking, and sometimes server blocking on, "stop posting about politics if you're a insert profession here" takes. Technology is politics. Education is politics. Security is politics. The people who work in these fields, and more, are intimately impacted by politics. Some peoples' lives, families, and livelihoods are in danger. It's all politics, stop content and tone policing if you're one of the few people who's currently insanely fortunate to be relatively unimpacted. It's asinine.

Now this is all 3 card monte, and everyone knows that its bullshit. But Wall St gets to feel smart for demanding Facebook to be lean, while Facebook is also functionally bribing them with a stock buy back. Win-win for Facebook leadership and Wall St.

Where do workers and wage suppression come into the analysis? They don't. Nobody cares about the workers.

I studied capitalism in college because it was a particular interest of mine. I hated it. I also wanted to understand it, so that I could know why it rubbed me the wrong way and live intentionally to push against it.

There was this moment when I was in a grad course and the professor was talking about self-optimizing markets. That's when it hit me. I literally stood up in the class, interrupted everything and went like "wait, the math isn't optimizing for income inequality". It was kind of funny watching more than 100 little economists in training suddenly start tearing apart the equation at once. You could literally hear the sound of frantic spreadsheeting and charting.

In the end, the professor himself said that it was true, you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people. Made me think.

How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

If an economy is fully "optimized" but everyone is sick, sad, and angry - is it actually optimal?

A mathematical model can make sense without being sensible. This is why I have an implicit distrust of algorithms and other systems of optimization. It's also why I'm a socialist.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

precisely me

Dunking on laid off tech workers is exactly the kind of wage serf on wage serf verbal violence oligarchs love to see.

Some came from underprivileged backgrounds too & won’t as easily get new jobs.

But people shouldn’t need to have that in common to be compassionate to each other.

I never understand people happy to see others fail at something like keeping a job in a wave of layoffs.

We’re numbed as a society to our humanity because there’s a false scarcity mentality created by oligarchs holding all the strings.

I want to see the oligarchs fail to numb us.

Layoffs:
- don't save money
- don't improve company performance
- don't increase stock pricess
- destroy trust
- have huge impacts on health, well-being, and income of employees

So why do layoffs? It's a network effect: execs lay people off because other companies are doing it

Stanford Biz School article: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

Harvard Biz Review:
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs

Reminder, it's always a good day to join your union.

I have entered the anger/rage phase of grief over #Google's #layoffs. Fucking disgusting that a company with $14B in annual profit and $100B of cash in the bank "had to" lay off 12,000 staff.

Why couldn't the top 100 exec earners take the pay cuts instead? No reason. Why couldn't they just eat the stock losses from the investors being unhappy about headcount? No reason.

Peak fucking capitalism at work. Fucking disgusting.

People are complaining about #PinkFloyd going woke for, er, changing their profile pic to celebrate the 50th anniversary of #DarkSideOfTheMoon
https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1616274690938638338?t=zX7TOiqPdSduWeckZejyUw&s=19

The Press could easily re-claim the social distribution of their content by simply spinning up their own instances.

And if they were just *slightly* more ambitious, they would build their own social media software that integrates ActivityPub—customized for the needs of journalists.

Instead, they piss away their future by doubling down on Big Social.

Fatal miscalculation by central government in assuming there is a single soul in Scotland who hates trans people more than they hate the English.