New:
http://em-dash-appreciation.org/
The Em Dash Appreciation Society
for Humans.
by @elysdir .
Jed Hartman
Editor, writer, reader, generalist, logophile, paronomasiac, ludophile. Bi, poly. Pronouns: he/him. I don’t speak for my employer.
Jed Hartman boosted:
Jed Hartman boosted:
Have you ever wished the browser would look at a background color and pick black or white for the text — whichever one provides more contrast? Now, the `contrast-color()` function in CSS does just that.
Jed Hartman boosted:
Of all of the dystopian sci-fi robot takeover fantasies, I’m not sure I’ve read one where computers destroy the world simply by making stuff up:
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A friend told me the other day that something I'd said had come across as pressure/persuasion; I hadn't intended it that way. When we talked about it, they reflected that their pre-existing brain tendencies played a big part in that. Lessons learned from family, and from society more broadly, plus mental health issues, led them to hear me sharing information about an option and feed it into an existing, well-oiled stimulus-response dynamic.
This sort of thing happens frequently! Unnoticed! 1/n
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https://www.standupstandup.tech/
A fundraising drive for the US Election Protection Hotline.
Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You can donate!
Then watch 8 minutes of nerd jokes about open source software and how programming skews your brain, and none about politics.
@brainwane @jmac Further thoughts:
I agree with the description of the situation here. But I’m inclined to feel like the cause is kind of the opposite: I think a lot of audiences treat fictional murder casually in part because they haven’t encountered murder in real life, and because fiction rarely portrays the real effects of it on the survivors.
See also my 2020 post about casual use of the word “murder”: https://web.archive.org/web/20240412142345/https://www.kith.org/words/2020/03/07/a-recent-usage-of-the-word-murder/
@brainwane @jmac Just saw this, will read soon. Sounds relevant to my interests—thanks for the link!
Jed Hartman boosted:
News:
📝 Apply for the 2024 Otherwise Fellowships by Dec. 15th
🎉 Welcome our new Motherboard member, Julia Rios @omgjulia
🐦 Follow our new social media accounts
📅 Submit recommendations (for the Otherwise jury to consider) by Nov. 15th
https://otherwiseaward.org/2024/10/apply-for-otherwise-fellowships-and-other-news
Jed Hartman boosted:
Writers With Drinks is BACK this Tuesday at 7 PM at Strut (470 Castro St) for #bannedbooksweek.
Readings by Maia Kobabe, Jaime Cortez, Susan Stryker, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Tara Sim and Annalee Newitz. FREE, donations to Strut encouraged. Masks required. Book sales by Fabulosa Books 😍
SEE YOU TUESDAY!
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Locus Mag, a non-profit org, has been an integral part of the California Bay Area SFF scene since 1973. We rely on readers, writers, and fellow science fiction fans to keep us going. And we have a Patreon for monthly support - check it out!
patreon.com/locus?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Donate-Subscribe
I think a lot also depends on who’s creating the docs and who the audience is.
For example, I adore the tone and flavor of Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, but the comics in that don’t have useful alt text, and I suspect that translating the book into other languages would be very hard.
So for a big company (like Google) that’s creating docs for a worldwide audience with many different accessibility and language needs, I do think that including less whimsy is a good idea.
There’s also a deeper issue here: the question of how to handle humor in docs.
Until a few years ago, this page:
https://developers.google.com/style/translation#be-inclusive
used to say “Avoid culturally specific humor.” But the other editors involved in the style guide felt that that wasn’t a strong enough statement, so we changed it to “Avoid humor. Most humor is difficult to translate, and much humor is culturally specific.”
I can see their point, but I do like including some fun stuff in documentation.
On the one hand, I agree that those examples are fun.
On the other hand, these days I also think it’s useful for a style guide to focus primarily on examples that are directly relevant to the kinds of writing that it’s about.
So in this style guide, I think that silly developer-docs examples would probably have been a better choice.
(I also wrote these examples: https://developers.google.com/style/tone#examples)
@brainwane @jmac Heh. I don’t remember for sure, and I can no longer check, but I *think* I wrote almost everything on that page, including (long ago, before the style guide was public) the silly examples. Glad you like them!
Some further musings follow.
Jed Hartman boosted:
Not sure how many who follow me here are receptive to this message but: covid is surging rn across the US. If you haven’t been wearing a mask, please start. It’ll help break transmission chains & make it less likely your actions disable or kill someone. It’ll also protect you, of course. 3M Auras are an N95 you can get at most Home Depots. They’re very effective. If you prefer black they also sell BNX N95s in black. I’m not a fan of Home Depot but it’s ubiquitous so I’m using it as an example.
Jed Hartman boosted:
Laughing but crying.
@DavidLHarper wins Xitter this week.
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SLF Diversity Grants Submissions Open https://locusmag.com/2024/06/slf-diversity-grants-submissions-open/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-RSS
Today is Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day.
“Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day is about checking with yourself, and ending the commitments you need to end – maybe by taking a break, or by rotating it on to someone else, or by sunsetting a project.”
“The conservative media company Salem Media Group has apologized to a Georgia man who was falsely depicted as having committed election fraud in the film ‘2,000 Mules,’ which Salem co-produced and released in 2022.”
The apology is presumably because the man has sued Salem.
Salem also “said […] that it had taken ‘2,000 Mules’ off its platforms and that it would no longer distribute the film and the book.”
Ijeoma Oluo on writing and business and art and experimenting and being scared.
(Post from March.)
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