Turns out, it's only policy makers who get stressed when students talk about race. None of the 67 students in this highschool study reported increased stress when participating in an anti-racist intervention while many reported growth in awareness of social inequality.

This is the first real data I've seen on this topic and it appears, once again, that the fears of harming students is just a boogeyman in the minds of right-wing politicians.

https://news.ncsu.edu/2024/03/anti-racist-school-program-study/

@academicchatter @edutooters

We worry about providing Universal Basic Income because people might stop working, but here's a thought: maybe, just maybe, with a little financial security, people might actually pursue work they truly choose rather than work to just not die. Imagine that world for a moment.

#shitpost

Last night I watched John Oliver's segment about Boeing and how they turned focus away from making quality products in favor of inflating their own stock price though buybacks and cost-cutting. Wow! It's the same toxic shit at my workplace and at many other orgs out there. Yeah Boeing is being naughty but this is a systemic problem for the tech industry and other industries as well. Business majors are ruining everything. My takeaway wasn't just "Boeing bad", it's that our whole civ is fucked.

TL;DR when EU law references a harmonised standard, that standard MUST be made available to every citizen of the EU. For free. As it is considered to be part of the law. And thus public interest is a given.

I CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW BIG THIS DECISION OF EUCJ IS!

Press release:
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-03/cp240041en.pdf

Decision text:
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?mode=req&pageIndex=0&docid=283443&part=1&doclang=EN&text=&dir=&occ=first&cid=6475952

In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?

Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.

These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.

Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.

Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.

Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.

(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)

By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.

Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.

And for a time, it worked.

But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.

And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.

My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?

Do we really want to search every single website on the web?

Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?

Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?

At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?

And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?

@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM

Car tires are found to be responsible for 78% of microplastics. Plastic pellets contribute 18%, and textiles and personal care products account for 4% combined.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity/rising-microplastics-seas-puts-pressure-tyre-industry-2023-07-17/

A reminder to everyone to stay safe and only use basic text editors this month. Beware the IDEs of March

Imagine if all the collective money spent of “self driving cars” had been spent on public transport.

As in, not cars - which are ultimately bad solutions for most of the world - but punctual and pervasive clean-energy public trams, trains, and buses.

It’d have cost less and been far more useful for far more people. Including non-drivers. And actually be here. Today. Working.

netherlands:

• everyone speaks english.
• “card only” signs everywhere.
• “sorry, we’re forbidden from accepting cash”.
• employees even at big grocery chains visibly confused by cash and struggling to count coins.

germany:

• “was?”
• “cash only” signs everywhere.
• “sorry, card payments from 10eur only”.
• “easy online payments, just provide your online banking login and password to sofort, it’s completely safe and totally does not blatantly violate the terms of agreement you signed with your bank”.

I've noticed a worrying trend in the USAnian fediverse: leftists using #accelerationism to describe voting for Trump to hasten societal collapse. Some think it's a strategy for a new future, but that's not how leftist accelerationism work.
I'm well aware that rightwing accelerationism do exist and I beg you not to give to the alt-right yet another gift. I'm so sick of leftists allowing fascists to appropriate every-fucking-thing.
Leftist accelerationism is about achieving a post-work society by demanding full automation, full welfare and basic income for anyone. Under no circumstances it's about voting for fascists. Only fascists vote for fascists, period.
Please read this book and stop shitting on accelerationism.

wow they named a street after the hashtag #WaterDrinkers #WaterDrinking #DrinkWater

the worst appliance just dropped:

combined oven/microwave

Because famously you never use metal containers in ovens or plastic containers in microwaves

One thing that I notice is that some people think of accessibility as a chore that everybody forces them to do to satisfy a tiny minority of users with severe disabilities or rare conditions.

Nothing more far from truth tbh.

For the most part, accessibility is about making the service/product better for everyone and not *excluding* people with specific needs.

It's saddening how many things on the web and even in public infrastructure are severely lacking when it comes to that…

If you make a commercial product that allows someone to remotely access video, audio, or location data from a device, I am begging you to threat model for domestic abuse BEFORE YOU SHIP YOUR GODDAMN PRODUCT.

please stop presenting using light mode as something worth mocking or a worse experience

very often light mode is an accessibility and readability feature

some people just can't read on dark backgrounds well for example

or need higher contrast in general

or just work in a high-brightness environment where light mode just works better for them

And so it begins. Drie maanden nadat een in meerderheid transfobe Tweede Kamer zitting heeft genomen wordt het eerste schot afgevuurd op de transzorg. Deze motie is aangenomen. Nog voorzichtig geformuleerd... Er moet meer onderzoek gedaan worden, wie kan daar nou tegen zijn? Behalve dat er al heel veel onderzoek /is/ gedaan naar het zogenaamde "Dutch Protocol". Maar hiermee begint het. Twijfel zaaien. Steeds meer barrières opwerpen. De vooruitgang in de transzorg voor minderjarigen wordt door deze motie in één klap stilgezet, klaar om achteruit getrokken te worden. En daarna worden de pijlen gericht op volwassen trans personen. De VS en het VK zijn ons al voor gegaan - kijk daar om te zien waar we hier op af stevenen.

can we stop doing the UX sin of having everything be unlabeled meaningless icons and finally add fucking labels to icons again