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

If you can't eat 'em, tax 'em.

Let's play a game: #NameThatWikiHow

I'm going to share an image from a WikiHow article, and in the next post I'll put up a poll with the titles of four real WH articles. You have to guess where it's from. (No cheating, please, and consider boosting these two posts)

1/2: The image

Job-seekers With Nonbinary Gender Pronouns on Their Resumes Are Less Likely To Be Contacted by Employers

From the article - "Today, approximately 1.2 million LGBTQ+ adults in the United States identify as nonbinary in terms of gender. Most of these individuals are under 30 years old, which means many are embarking on their professional careers. Among all LGBTQ+ professionals, workplace discrimination and bias are well-documented, but what about nonbinary people in particular?"

#PrideAllYearLong #Pride2023 #Pride #LGBTQ #LGBTQPride #LGBTQNews ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

https://www.business.com/hiring/nonbinary-discrimination-job-market-report/

“You ship your org chart” resonates for me across time and space

“Please don’t play the wizard game from the lady who doesn’t respect my humanity.”

“Please don’t buy chicken from the people that want to exterminate people like me.”

"Please don't shop at the hobby store that funds conversion therapy."

This seem like such a low bar for people who are supposedly allies to clear - yet here folks are.

The fediverse has come this far despite being very capital-constrained.

What if that constraint were lifted?

If you have a project or idea (for- or non-profit) that helps build or grow the fediverse and would benefit from funding, I hope you'll apply here. Thank you!
https://bit.ly/fediverse-funding

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