#diversity makes tech better

[dragonridingsorceress]

I watched Blade Runner 2049 for the first time tonight, and this scene stood out.

"Being asked personal questions" by someone you've just met, especially someone you've just met who is trying to decide if you're human enough to have rights, is not "invigorating", in my experience. It doesn't make me "feel desired".

But it seems to be the sort of thing (cishet) men think, and maybe what they think women would/should think. And Luv is a replicant, made by (and for) a man. This made a lot of the Blade Runner world building click for me: the "female" replicants' behaviour patterns have been designed by men based on their perceptions/desires of women, not on real women.

The final still really clinches it for me: Luv asks K a personal question, to make him feel desired, even though he's a replicant - because that is the role of "female" replicants, and the behaviour she's been programmed with: to make men feel desired.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[phantomrose96]

Hey not to go all "tumblr is a professional networking site" on you, but how did you get to work for Microsoft??? I'm a recent grad and I'm being eviscerated out here trying to apply for industry jobs & your liveblogging about your job sounds so much less evil than Data Entry IT Job #43461

This place is basically LinkedIn to me.

I'm gonna start by saying I am so so very sorry you're a recent grad in the year 2024... Tech job market is complete ass right now and it is not just you. I started fulltime in 2018, and for 2018-2022 it was completely normal to see a yearly outflow of people hopping to new jobs and a yearly inflow of new hires. Then sometime around late-spring/early-summer of 2022 Wallstreet sneezed the word "recession" and every tech company simultaneously shit themselves.

Tons of layoffs happened, meaning you're competing not just with new grads but with thousands of experienced workers who got shafted by their company. My org squeaked by with a small amount of layoffs (3 people among ~100), but it also means we have not hired anyone new since mid-2022. And where I used to see maybe 4-8 people yearly leave in order to hop to a new job, I think I've seen 1 person do that in the whole last year and a half.

All this to say it's rough and I can't just say "send applications and believe in yourself :)".

I have done interviews though. (I'm not involved in resume screening though, just the interviews of candidates who made it past the screening phase.) So I have at least some relevant advice, as well as second-hand knowledge from other people I know who've had to hop jobs or get hired recently.

If you have friends already in industry who you feel comfortable asking, reach out to them. Most companies have a recommendation process where a current employee fills out a little form that says "yeah I'd recommend such-and-such for this job." These do seem to carry weight, since it's coming from a trusted internal person and isn't just one of the hundreds of cold-call applications they've received.

A lot of tech companies--whether for truly well-intentioned reasons or to just check a checkbox--are on the lookout for increasing employee diversity. If you happen to have anything like, for example, "member of my college Latino society", it's worth including on your resume among your technical skills and technical projects.

I would add "you're probably gonna have to send a lot of applications" as a bullet point but I'm sure you're already doing that. But here it is as a bullet point anyway.

(This is kind of a guess, since it's part of the resume screening) but if you can dedicate some time to getting at least passingly familiar with popular tech/stacks for the positions you're looking into, try doing that in your free time so you can list it on your resume. Even better if you make a project you can point to. Like if you're aiming for webdev, get familiar with React and probably NodeJS. On top of being comfortable in one of the all-purpose languages like C(++) or Java or Python.

If you get to the interview phase - a company that is good to work for WILL care that you're someone who's good to work with. A tech-genius who's a coworker-hating egotistical snob is a nuisance at best and a liability at worst for companies with even a half-decent culture. When I do interviews, "Is this someone who's a good culture fit?" is as important as the technical skills. You'll want to show you'll be a perfectly pleasant, helpful, collaborative coworker. If the company DOESN'T care about that... bullet dodged.

For the technical questions, I care more about the thought process than I do the right answer, especially for entry-level. If you show a capacity for asking good, insightful clarifying questions, an ability to break down the problem, explain your thought process, and backtrack&alter your approach upon realizing something won't work, that's all more important than just being able to spit out a memorized leetcode answer. (I kinda hate leetcode for this reason, and therefore I only ask homebrewed questions, because I don't want the technical portion to hinge at all on whether someone managed to memorize the first 47 pages of leetcode problems). For a new hire, the most important impression you can give me is that you have a technical grasp and that you're capable of learning. Because a new hire isn't going to be an expert in anything, but they're someone who's capable of learning the ropes.

That's everything I have off the top of my head. Good luck anon. I'm very sorry you were born during a specific range of years that made you a new grad in 2024 and I hope it gets better.

[backslashdelta]

Blaine-friendly Kurtbastian Fic Recs

Putting a list together for @fallevs, but I hope this will be useful for anyone who wants to dip their toes into Kurtbastian fanfiction but doesn't want to read anything anti-Blaine! Everything included in this list will either not include Blaine at all, or if he is in the fic, it will be neutral or friendly toward him.

I've tried to include a wide range of words counts as well, so that you can start with something short and sweet or dive into something big, whatever you feel like. If anyone else has some recommendations to add, please feel free to reblog this list and add more!

Europe Is Our Playground by @glitterdammerung - 53,430 words

Summary: Eight years and half the world away from home, a chance encounter in a Paris club leads Kurt and Sebastian - each running from the ghosts of their pasts - into the diversion of chasing each other across Europe.

(Let's give them) Something to talk about by MemeKonGlee - 20,529 words

Summary: “I need you to—” “I heard you the first time,” Kurt interrupts, putting his fork and knife down on his plate and pushing his half-finished pancakes aside. “What I meant was: what the hell?” He points towards the neglected pancakes, trying to stall in the face of Kurt’s reaction. “Are you sure you don’t wanna finish that first?” The look in Kurt's eyes tells him in no uncertain terms that no, he doesn't want to finish his pancakes, Jesus. And so Sebastian has no option but to take a deep breath in, exhale slowly through his mouth and just… get on with it, internally cringing at how unbelievably ridiculous it all sounds when he puts it in words, all out there for the world (and more importantly, Kurt fucking Hummel) to judge. It all boils down to: I fucked up and I'm too proud to deal with it the mature way.

Safe Mode by flipmeforward - 18,118 words

Summary: An AU in which Kurt and Sebastian never met in high school. Instead, they meet at &brave--an up-and-coming online fashion company where Kurt is the new assistant slash blogger (one day he will figure out a better title), and Sebastian is the less than pleasant tech support guy. Kurt does his best to avoid Sebastian and his rude attitude at all possible costs, but it turns out that technology is not his friend. It also turns out that Sebastian might maybe possibly be (okay, probably is) more than just an annoying coworker.

Come On And Mess Me Up by @pouralittlewater - 215,339 words

Summary: “It’s like...When Harry Met Sally,” Santana told him. “No. That was me and Blaine.” “How? You literally got together in months. You and Sebastian have been skirting the issue for years. This whole “will they, won’t they” thing is getting old.” Or, when Sebastian enrolls in McKinley High and joins Glee right before the duet competition. What Kurt thinks could be the start to a great friendship in gay camaraderie quickly explodes in his face as he realizes being around Sebastian makes him want to set the other boy on fire. However, over time, that feeling dissipates. Even without the title of friendship, the two become ingrained in each other's lives in a way neither ever expected to.

Thunderbolts & Lightning by @alphabees-writes - 1,854 words

Summary: Sebastian has a plan. It goes wrong, and then right, and then wrong again.

tension bars by @cryscendo - 824 words

Summary: Prompt by backslashdelta: kurt, sports!au (gymnastics), exes, “sometimes, i sit in bed and wonder what would happen if things were different.”

I Want The World To See You'll Be With Me by @backslashdelta (me!) - 2,405 words

Summary: Kurt and Sebastian attend a Christmas party, and Sebastian has a special surprise for Kurt afterward.

Dessert by @nalasan - 1,175 words

Summary: “Oh my God,” Sebastian says, staring at the plate in front of him. “We have to break up.” Kurt, who has just walked into their living room and is still in his winter coat, raises his eyebrow quizzically; his expression more bemused than worried, “And why is that?” “Just look at that,” Sebastian replies, gesturing at the table in front of him like he is seeing it for the first time: the white tablecloth, the candles in their silver candleholders, the white roses in their vase in the middle of the table, and the dinner Sebastian has been preparing since he came home three hours ago.

And Why Is That? by @20xbetterthanu - 41,321 words

Summary: "I love you, and I hate myself for that." "And why is that?" Love hurts.

Note from me: this fic is definitely not anti-Blaine, however it does heavily involve Blaine and he is Not having a good time, so I maybe wouldn't recommend it if you want to avoid him (and the other boys!) being sad.

A Change In The Weather by cacophonylights - 209,414 words

Summary: The summer before college Kurt is shocked when Sebastian comes to him with a timely offer he can’t refuse.  He’ll get something he needs to realize his dreams, but in return he has to play the role of Sebastian’s boyfriend for the summer.  Neither of them know just how much their worlds are about to change. For a GKM prompt.

Note from me: this fic COULD be considered anti-Blaine, but I don't personally consider it to be; it maybe doesn't paint him in the most positive light, but I think it's still neutral enough to be on this list, and it's essentially required reading at this point! Also, it is famously unfinished, but there are a couple fan sequels: ACITW AU by @lady-divine-writes A Drop In The Ocean by @daftydraw and jwmelmoth The ACITW link above is for livejournal, but you can also find the original fic on AO3 in two parts here and here.

[eelfuneral]

I know that I’ve touched on the harassment that people are getting for posting theories about Tech being alive, but there is another element that I believe we should discuss: the fact that the harassment is being disproportionately lobbed at autistic fans. Now, I’m not trying to imply that all of the people leaving these nasty comments are sitting around thinking about how much they hate autistic people, but whether they realize it or not, the types of posts that they tend to leave nasty comments on tend to be posts made by people displaying what might be autistic traits. In fact, a lot of posts that have these harassing comments are made by people who make it no secret that they are autistic and sometimes even mention it in their bio.

So what do I mean when I say that a lot of these posts may hint at OP being autistic? For starters, autistic brains tend to latch onto things with a great deal of intensity, and sometimes our brains latch onto specific fictional characters. We know logically that these characters are not real and that there are objectively more important things to worry about, but our brains simply do not care. Focused autistic interests are a source of a lot of comfort and stability for us in a world that is often overwhelming, and they are important to us as a result. A lot of the people dogging the Tech posts seem to take issue with how “obsessed” people are with the character and his survival, which in some cases, is due to OP simply being autistic and having a focused interest.

Another trait that can manifest in autistic people is difficulty with emotional regulation, meaning that even “small” things can make us more upset than our peers. The people leaving harassing replies seem to have picked up on the fact that people are “too emotional” over a fictional character and sometimes even make their replies extra graphic (ie. “he’s rotting at the bottom of the chasm”, “he’s flesh paste”) in order to get a rise out of the OP. Obviously, not everyone who makes posts like these or has these challenges is autistic, but I believe that my point still stands that going after people with these traits will cause autistic people to be disproportionately targeted, which is an ableist pattern.

Sometimes, however, the harassment feels more intentionally targeted at autistic fans. A lot of Tech fans really value Tech as autistic representation and feel like killing him off in our current popular culture environment where a fair chunk of autistic portrayals are negative is in poor taste. The “Tech is dead, get over it” harassers blatantly ignore or ridicule these statements, showing zero empathy to the people who feel seen because of this character. I have seen people bulldoze into posts where autistic fans talk about how much they hope he survives because they see themselves in him with comments like “he’s dead, get over it.” In one instance, I saw an allistic fan tell an autistic fan that Tech was “forced diversity” and that if Disney was going to attempt autistic representation, then the character shouldn’t be “boring” like Tech. I don’t think I really need to explain why this is inappropriate.

It’s fine to disagree with a popular fan theory or debate about it in good faith with someone who is up to it, but what I am seeing goes well beyond that. Harassment is never, ever okay, and you should know better than to leave replies like the ones in these screenshots below when you see a fan theory that you don’t agree with.

[neurodivergent-tech-week]

Neurodivergent Tech Week 2024 Prompts and Rules

July 21 (Sunday)- Cadet Batch

July 22 (Monday)- Comfort Person

July 23 (Tuesday)- Stimming

July 24 (Wednesday) a “Do you not trust me?" "Absolutely not. Next question."

July 25 (Thursday) - “Better late than dead.”

July 26 (Friday)- Special Interest

July 27 (Saturday) - I've been thinking." "I sure hope so, it would be worrisome if you didn't."/"I should not have said that" (For this one, you can choose one prompt or combine both)

The event rules are below the cut:

Event Rules

All fanworks must be about Tech being neurodivergent in some way. That is, after all, the theme of this event :).

Tag all entries with #NDTech2024 so that I can find them and reblog them here.

Only submit your own creations. Do not steal or repost other people’s work and attempt to pass it off as your own.

If you want to submit an 18+ work for our “After Dark” sub-event, then please make sure to give it a community label so that it cannot be viewed by younger (under 18) participants.

Tag anything that may be triggering to some viewers so that people can effectively curate their experience. Remember, it is better to over-tag than under-tag. You can never be too cautious.

No gatekeeping. Neurodivergence is a massive and varied umbrella of identities. No one person is the sole arbiter of what “counts”.

Leave your fandom wank at the door. This is an event meant to celebrate our diverse fandom’s neurodivergent Tech headcannons. Don’t derail with shipping discourse or harassment.

On a similar note, no bullying, harassment, or name-calling of any kind will be tolerated. This is a safe space. In the immortal words of Bill and Ted, “be excellent to each other”.

Be respectful in your portrayal of Tech. Make sure to research any neurodiverse conditions that you yourself do not have before featuring them in your works. Also, keep in mind that Tech is a clone of a guy based on Temuera Morrison, who is of Māori descent. Avoid whitewashing.

Feel free to include shipping in your works. All ships are welcome so long as everyone is a consenting adult. :)

[shotguncreep]

stupid little bitch and whine but it’s weird that in this super diverse community whenever I make a post I feel obliged to make it about computers and tech… it’s such a smart part of my objectophilias and I’m much more attracted to firearms and barbed wire and guitars and saw traps but my embarrassment gets the better of me. I feel like if my objectophilia isn’t a computer or a plushie or a household object or ‘popular’ objectophilia then I’m not connecting with the community as much and people can’t relate to me

On the other hand I just wanna ignore that feeling and be horny about chainsaws lol

[sunshinesmebdy]

Venus in Aries Messages for the Rising Signs: Business & Finance

Aries Rising: Embrace your boldness and take the lead in business ventures. Start new projects fearlessly, but remember to strategize too. On the financial front, invest in yourself — your energy, skills, and personal brand. Be proactive in seeking opportunities, but avoid impulsive spending; channel that fiery energy into calculated risks.

Taurus Rising: Taurus Rising, balance your steady nature with Aries’ drive. Build a solid foundation for your business, but don’t shy away from innovation. Financially, patience pays off. Invest in stable assets, but allocate a portion for high-risk ventures. Trust your instincts when making financial decisions.

Gemini Rising: Your adaptability shines. Network, communicate, and explore diverse business opportunities. Be the bridge between ideas and action. Financially, diversify your income streams. Stay informed about market trends, and avoid impulsivity — research thoroughly before making financial moves.

Cancer Rising: Nurture your business ventures like you do your loved ones. Use Aries’ courage to step out of your comfort zone. Financially, create a secure base. Invest in real estate or family-oriented businesses. Balance risk-taking with emotional stability.

Leo Rising: Let your charisma shine in business. Lead with passion, inspire others, and embrace creative ventures fearlessly. Financially, invest in projects that reflect your identity. Be generous but avoid overspending. Leverage your personal brand for financial gains.

Virgo Rising: Pay attention to details while taking bold steps. Financially, organize your finances meticulously. Invest in health-related businesses or innovative tech. Avoid overthinking; trust your gut.

Libra Rising: Balance diplomacy with assertiveness in business. Collaborate, negotiate, and create win-win situations. Financially, invest in partnerships or joint ventures. Seek beauty-related businesses. Avoid indecisiveness; act swiftly when opportunities arise.

Scorpio Rising: Dive deep into research, transform challenges into opportunities, and fearlessly pursue your goals. Financially, invest in hidden gems — cryptocurrencies, and research-based ventures. Avoid secrecy; transparency builds trust.

Sagittarius Rising: Think big and act globally. Financially, invest in travel, education, or publishing. Avoid over-optimism; balance risk-taking with practicality.

Capricorn Rising: Be disciplined and persistent. Financially, invest in long-term stability — real estate, and established businesses. Avoid impatience; slow and steady wins the race.

Aquarius Rising: Combine Aries’ independence with your vision for a better world. Financially, invest in cutting-edge tech, social impact projects. Avoid detachment; engage actively in financial decisions.

Pisces Rising: Blend intuition with action in business. Embrace creativity and empathy. Financially, invest in arts, healing, or spiritual ventures. Avoid escapism; stay grounded in financial matters.

[leohttbriar]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: would love to give you the excuse to talk about voyager. (or if that's too easy, something you like about your least favorite star trek series??)

i love voyager. so so much. i tried to think if i love another star trek series i've seen any less than voyager, but i can't honestly say that i do? i love ds9, tos, discovery, and, yes, even snw. i am in the embarrassing position of admitting that i really just love star trek, in a mostly uncomplicated way.

of the things i love about voyager, the premise is probably the biggest one. i have rambled about this a lot already but: i think it confronts for the first time in star trek the inherent sadness associated with us studying the stars--and therefore the sadness that science-fiction writers mostly imagine their way out of, often as a way to speculate a time when this reality may be less real: the fact that space is big. it is too big. the fastest human beings have ever traveled, with their own bodies along for the ride, still isn't fast enough to get us to the moon in less than three days. light--the speed limit of the universe--needs a full eight minutes to get from the sun to us--a relatively close planet. space is enormous. we measure things that are "close" in light-years. everything is so spread out and that's just from the perspective of being inside a galaxy, which is actually crowded when compared to intergalactic space. everything is so far away and so long away and it feels impossible to think of getting anywhere in a time meaningful to us and our lifespans. which is in its own way heartbreaking.

and while in voyager they are clearly not alone in the way we feel we could be (and in practice are until we get the smallest sign that even non-intelligent life exists off our very own special rock) with all the aliens they meet and the fact that they are on a ship that can go faster than light, they are stranded and they are on their way back home and it will still take them a life-time. that's the reality of the story: that they will spend the rest of their lives trying to get back. and though i know they do get back much quicker than that, where i'm at in the beginning of season 3 that is still the reality of it. and this makes literally everything that happens in the show so fascinating--even if it's a plot or an idea that not only happened in another series but was done technically better in that series. every plot in voyager is colored by the tension between what the star trek ethos is as a whole--exploration and diversity and learning and humanity--all in an optimistic light--and what voyager is about--getting back home. it makes me think of the tension in the actual "voyagers," somewhere now in interstellar space, and the golden record with a map of earth's position etched onto it: spacecraft meant to never be returned but contained on them is a deep, deep hope that in some way they will be. this tension, to me, affects everything on the show.

but that's maybe too big an idea without specific examples from the series--i might ramble about that at another point lol

in the spirit of your question, i will say there is one star trek property that i don't particularly care for on the whole and that's the 2009 movie (and sequels). but i will also say what that movie did right and what i do love about it even if i don't love the movie as a whole is how it portrayed the high-tech poetics of star trek in a much more immediately understandable way than even the 90s shows could for a 21st century audience. the "apple-store" aesthetic is really an argument about how this is the future and it's sleek and stylish and humans have advanced in their engineering and scientific abilities. and among this high-tech argument is uhura front and center: she's very loudly and explicitly a linguist and she fits in this silicon-valley look despite the fact that nowadays things like linguistics are considered "soft sciences" in a general way and treated like that very specifically by the tech-industry now (the attitude being "there's an app for that"). but uhura makes a central discovery in one of her labs at the beginning of the movie which gives her and kirk a leg up on understanding the Movie Threat. the 2009 movie significantly raised her importance as a character, to the point that the "main trio" in those movies is, arguably, more kirk/spock/uhura than it is kirk/spock/mccoy---especially if you're going by the movie posters.

also they gave her this line:

UHURA: And did I not, on multiple occasions, demonstrate an exceptional aural sensitivity, and I quote, "an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmissions tests?"

which is excellent world-building about communications-officers, if you care for that sort of thing. and it provides a starting point for an argument about how listening to a universe (famed quiet due to the lack of material through which sound can travel) is essential to understanding it---an idea that can be further extrapolated via sci-fi regarding things like: listening to gravitational waves if we record them right; or working on the idea that all matter is but a vibration in a quantum field; or, from a more cultural concern, the implication that it is absurd to think you can travel to an alien world and not bring someone with an "exceptional aural sensitivity" who can facilitate an exchange of language and, thereby, meaning.

[herbologyprofessor]

my collected thoughts on the magic system of harry potter and what I would change to make it better.

i think that the harry potter magic system sucks!!

i mean, im sure this isnt a hot take but like...how is it that students at hogwarts school of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY graduate knowing how to use maybe a handfull of spells in combat? and they're the same spells that all the aurors and all the older members of the order and all the death eaters and even voldemort use?

and im especially talking about how weak it makes people who are supposed to be really powerful and dangerous seem. including the titular character Harry Potter himself. Harry uses spells in a unique way, dont get me wrong, but to me its all just so boring.

and im not saying it doesnt have to work like other fantasy stories, but if the main mechanism behind magic in harry potter is that you are either born with it or not, you dont need a wand but its exponentially more challenging without one (unless you have a unique skillset or education), intention matters, and there are spells that can grant magical abilities to objects. there is so much more possibility than just expelliarmus and expecto patronum. There has to be, or else why tf would hogwarts take 7 years of schooling to graduate from?

so here are some of my headcanons:

families have bloodline abilities

so, in the case of wizarding britan, there are families that want to stay pure such as the sacred 28 (or is it 27 i cant remember), and pure as in their blood and bloodline must stay pure (going so far as to marry your cousins, e.g. Orion and Walburga Black). If this is the case, and they wan't to preserve their magical bloodline so bad, they'd have to have something more than just "magic" to preserve.

I feel like its almost there in canon but falls short of being fully realized. I think of it kinda like how it works in naruto. Theres those who have a bloodline ability and then those that dont. You dont have to have one to be powerful, if you have one it dosent mean you will be powerful automatically.

The black family seems to carry the gene for metamorphmagus, but i wouldnt consder this a bloodline ability and think of it more like a random mutation passed on to teddy, which could occur in any magical person, (theres also the possibility that this was a more common ability in the black family but because of the lack of genetic diversity and inbreeding it was lost until Andromeda had Remadora with Ted, who was not pureblood. I think abilities have to do with the energy of magic that is either created or inherited, not so much genetics. Therefore, families dont pass on the same exact ability but something that is novel or slightly different from person to person.

The Lupins, for example, could be Beast Speakers. Maybe, a long time ago in the Lupin familiy, they kept wolves or something (explaining the surname which would have had something to do with occupation) and they learned from them how to speak with animals?Lyall, who canonically worked in the Department for the Control and Regulation of Dark Creatures, can speak to dark creatures, even werewolves who are transformed. Remus can speak to domesticated animals like cats and dogs, fancy mice, toads, etc. Remus is like Hogwarts' unofficial vet tech, and if you like atyd Remus, this fits in nicely as he specialized in Care of Magical Creatures.

The Potters, canonically, are linked to the Peverell family. The invisibility cloak has been passed down through generations and is still being passed down to Harry's children. I think a common headcanon, and one that i truly love, is that they use Death Magic. But, thats assuming the potters are the exact same family as the Peverells, which they are not. I think, in going along with the Peverell brothers creating the deathly hallows (using advanced death magic), the potters have a Sorcerer's Craft ability. What was the Potter family's source of new money? Fleamont's invention, Sleekeazey's. I know its a "potion", but what if its just like...coconut oil imbued with magical enchantments that make your hair perfect. James could have played a major hand in the creation of the Marauder's Map, an Extremely powerful magical object made to do the impossible task of mapping Hogwarts. And he did this in school. at like 14-15. Harry doesn't do anything that has to do with magic item creation, that I can remember (i haven't read the books in years), however he also had no connection to his family and likely wouldn't be able to learn without another Potter teaching him. BUT! Harry Potter is the master of death, meaning he can use all 3 of the deathly hallows without being corrupted, maybe this could be a side effect of how his Sorcerer's Craft manifests itself.

side tangent, but the reason I think this is an ability even though others have been known to make magical objects, is because the potters are able to do it very creatively, and early on in their lives. They are involved in every aspect of item creation, and they can enchant things in a way no other wizard could replicate, meaning their objects could not be mass produced without their explicit involvement. Maybe Sleekeasy's stops working so well once Fleamont dies, hence why Hermione says its too much hassle to use every day.

The Blacks, you might think, would be something to do with offensive, powerful, and deadly magic. While, yes, this is something that some members of the black family are gifted in, it is not their bloodline ability. I think that the Blacks are Seers. It's no coincidence their families long standing tradition of astrological names are prophetical for their lives. Walburga Black, for example, has the power of Augery. She asks the universe questions and receives omens as answers. She saw a black dog when asking the universe to tell her about her newborn son, hence the name Sirius. For Regulus, well, she saw water. Not knowing what to make of it, she refused to let Regulus near it for his entire childhood. Regulus, as an empath, has the ability of psychometry. The ability to gain information from an object by touching it, including humans ( he cant read minds, but can tell what someone has experienced in their life). This comes in great handiness when he goes to destroy the locket. Sirius, I believe, would have a mastery over tarot cards or oracle cards. He can glean deadly accurate readings, and has a keen ability to interpret meanings unknown to even the most practiced tarot readers. He has a special deck, one that his uncle Alphard gave to him when he found out Sirius could read tarot from Walburga (who, at the time, was very pleased with her Heir's ability). This comes with an emotional expense to Sirius, though, and at times, gives him answers he doesnt want to hear. The girls loved it though, and asked him to teach them. He tried but couldn't explain how he did it, since it's innate to his bloodline. Of course, you could obviously imagine this adding to the piles of angst surrounding the war, as Sirius had to have seen signs that his loved ones would die, making him think he could outsmart fate by changing the secret keeper...

I think this is getting too long, but I'm already thinking about part 2 because I have alot of thoughts about this...especially things that anyone could learn not just inheritied abilities.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stellantis wants to make scabbing woke

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

I know, I know, it's weird when the worst people you know are right, even when they're right for the wrong reasons: like, the "Intelligence Community" is genuinely terrible, pharma companies are murderous crooks, and Big Tech really does have a dangerous grip on public debate. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, is what I'm saying:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

When conspiratorialists and reactionaries holler about how the FBI are dirty-tricking creeps who are framing Trump, it's tempting to say, "well, if Trumpists hate the FBI, then I will love the FBI. Who cares about COINTELPRO and what they did to Martin Luther King?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

It's a process called "schizmogenesis": forming new group identity beliefs based on saying the opposite of what your enemies say, and as tempting as that is, it's extraordinarily foolish and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

It means that canny reactionaries like Steve Bannon can trick you into taking any position merely by taking the opposite one. Bannon's followers are even more easily led, so it's easy for him to convince them that we have always been at war with Oceania. The right has created an entire mirror world of "I know you are but what am I?" politics.

Anti-vax co-opts "bodily autonomy." Climate denial becomes environmentalism ("wind turbines kill birds"). Transphobia becomes feminism ("keep women-only spaces for real women"). Support for strongmen becomes anti-imperialism ("don't feed the war machine in Ukraine"). These are the doppelgangers Naomi Klein warns us against:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

The far right has even managed to co-opt anti-corporate rhetoric. Culture warriors rail against "woke capitalism," insisting that when big businesses take socially progressive positions, it's just empty "virtue signalling." And you know what? They've got a point. Partially.

As with all mirror-world politics, the anti-woke-capitalism shuck is designed to convince low-information right-wing pismires into buying "anti-woke pillows" and demanding the right to pay junk fees to "own the libs":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

But woke capitalism is bullshit. Corporations – profit-maximizing immortal transhuman colony organisms that view workers and customers as inconvenient gut-flora – do not care about social justice. They don't care about anything, except for minimizing compensation for workers while maximizing the risk those workers bear; and locking in and gouging customers for products that are as low-quality as can be profitably sold.

Take DEI, a favored target of the right. It's undoubtably true that diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives have made some inroads on correcting bias in hiring decisions, with the result that companies get better employees who would have been excluded without this explicit corrective.

However, corporations don't value DEI because they abhor their history of hiring bias. Instead, DEI is how corporate management demonstrates to workers that their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways – and not by forming a union.

Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, corporations would create fake "Company Unions" whose leadership were beholden to the company executives. These were decoy unions: they looked and sounded like unions, but when they negotiated with management, they were actually working for the bosses, not the workers.

This is more mirror-world tactics. They're the labor equivalent of the "crisis pregnancy centers" that masquerade as abortion clinics in order to fool pregnant people and trap them with endless delays until it's too late to terminate their pregnancies. Company unions get workers to trust in negotiators who are secretly working for the bosses, who emerge from the bargaining table with one-sided, abusive contracts and insist that this is the best deal workers can hope for.

Company unions were outlawed 90 years ago, and for decades, labor had a seat at the table, with wages tracking productivity gains and workers getting protection for discrimination, unsafe labor conditions, and wage-theft. Then came the neoliberal turn, and 40 years of wage stagnation, increased inequality, and corporate rule.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Finally, finally, we have reached a turning point in labor, with public approval for unions at levels not seen since the Carter administration and thousands of strikes and protests breaking out across the country:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

It's not just the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, either. For the first time in history, the UAW is striking against all the major automakers, and they are winning:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/striking-uaw-workers-win-key-battery-plant-concession-from-general-motors/

The automakers are getting desperate. Stellantis – Chrysler's latest alias, reflecting the company's absorbtion into corporate-human-centipede of global carmakers – has mobilized its DEI programs, trying to get marginalized people to believe that scabbing is a liberatory activity:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/

Stellantis calls each of its DEI silos a "Business Resource Group" (BRG): there's a "Working Parents Network," an "African Ancestry Network," "Asians Connected Together," a "DiverseAbilities Network," a "Gay & Lesbian Alliance" and more:

https://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com/2021/07/20/business-resource-groups-drive-inclusion-and-diversity/

The corporate managers who lead these BRGs have established a scab rotation for each subgroup, calling on members to cross a UAW picket-line at a Michigan Parts Distribution Center run by Stellantis subsidiary Mopar:

Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team. Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on! Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!"

Now, these BRGs weren't invented by marginalized workers facing discrimination in the workplace. They come from literal union-busting playbooks produced by giant "union avoidance" firms that charge bosses millions for advice on skirting – or breaking – the law to keep workplace democracy at bay. All the biggest anti-union consultancies love BRGs, from Littler Mendelson to Jackson Lewis. IRI Strategies touts BRGs as a way to "union-proof" a business by absorbing workers' grievances in a decoy committee that will let them feel listened to.

BRGs, in other words, are the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of workplace discrimination. They're a Big Store Con, a company union dressed up as corporate social responsibility.

Now, let's not pretend that unions have a sterling record on race and gender issues. Giant labor organizations like the AFL had to be dragged into racial integration, and trade unions have sometimes been on the wrong side of anti-immigration panics:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

But unions have also been the most reliable way for people of color and women to win better workplace treatment. The struggle for racial and gender justice was fought through labor organizing. Remember that MLK's "I've Been To the Mountaintop" speech was given in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Black organizers have always been militant labor organizers. Labor Day commemorates the victory of the long, hard-fought Pullman strike, where Black workers brought one of the most powerful companies in America to its knees:

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

And women have always fought for gender justice through the labor movement: the New York shirtwaist strike is the Ur-example, when women-led unions fought thugs and scabs on icy New York streets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909

It's no surprise that labor activism, anti-racism and feminism go together. Since the earliest days, the labor justice struggle was also a social justice struggle. To learn more check out Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

The most exploited, underpaid, and abused workers in America are also the most marginalized (duh).

From nurses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kaiser-healthcare-union-says-week-long-strike-possible-early-next-month-2023-10-09/

To teachers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-18/l-a-teachers-win-21-wage-increase-in-new-lausd-contract

To Amazon warehouse workers:

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

To publishing assistants:

https://apnews.com/article/harpercollins-union-strike-ends-0a94238718879066d9b21af6266be526

To baristas:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/business/starbucks-union-wages/index.html

To fast-food workers:

https://www.ufcw.org/about/

The vanguard of today's labor surge is Black, brown, female and queer. Without a union, workers who face discrimination are on their own, hoping that their bosses will voluntarily do something about it. Black workers in Tesla's rabidly anti-union shops face vicious racism, from slurs to threats to violence. Without a union, they have to rely on the shifting whims of an Apartheid emerald mine space-Karen for relief, or hope for help from the NLRB or a class-action lawyer:

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-racism-black-lawsuit-class-action-21c88bddf60eca702560be58429495de

The far right isn't wrong when they holler that woke capitalism is bullshit. As with so many of their mirror-world causes, they've got a point, but only a limited one. The problem with woke capitalism is that it's no substitute for a union. The problem with relying on Business Resource Groups to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is that these struggles are all class struggles, and a BRG is never going to fight against the company that created it.

To understand how bankrupt woke capitalism is, conside this: Stellantis is calling on its "Working Parents Network" to scab this Friday. Stellantis is also being sanctioned by the Department Of Labor for discriminating against nursing mothers – the same "working parents" that the BRG is meant to protect:

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/02/08/investigation-finds-stellantis-violated-rights-of-nursing-mothers-at-sterling-heights-plant/

Woke capitalism is just another kind of "predatory inclusion," like Intuit's campaign defending its "Free File" tax-prep scam, where they're claiming that ending this ripoff is racist because it denies Black families the right to be tricked into paying for something they are entitled to get for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

When I learned about Intuit's wokewashing, I thought I'd found woke capitalism's rock bottom, but I was wrong. Stellantis's call for woke scabbing is a new low.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#inclusive-scabbing

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[kp777]

By Keara Sosa

OtherWords

Sept. 14, 2024

While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.

The past 20 years have been critical in the fight for bold and sustainable climate solutions. The next five years will be even more vital—and young people like me are fighting hard to make sure our leaders get it right.

Research shows we have about five years left to avert global warming beyond 1.5°C, the tipping point when even more severe climate disruptions could exacerbate hunger, conflict, and drought worldwide.

Climate change—long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil—impacts our livelihoods and our lives. It harms our health and well-being and threatens our access to vital resources, from water to food to housing.

We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got.

Communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are already paying the price for inadequate climate action. Pacific islands like Tuvalu are already sinking and expected to be completely submerged in coming years. Meanwhile, scientists predict that rising sea levels will leave 60% of Miami-Dade County under water by 2060.

While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.

The global youth-led climate movement has a long history of standing up to corporate giants and their political allies who exacerbate climate change. Despite failed attempts by some politicians to patronize, belittle, or discredit the teenagers and 20-somethings leading protests and driving policy demands, young climate activists are fueling hope—and winning change.

In June 2023, youth climate activists won a landmark lawsuit, Held v. Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional. Similar suits are underway in many other states.

Universities also have a prime role to play in encouraging students to practice sustainability and foster social change. At my university, Virginia Tech, students can participate in a Climate Action Living Laboratory (CALL), where they work with faculty and staff on sustainability projects and research, using our campus and surrounding community networks to work towards the university’s climate action goals.

In my Virginia Tech coursework, I got to harvest food for our dining facilities at our campus farm, compost on an Indigenous farm, visit a local community garden, and tour a food sorting facility—all while working closely with campus partners I wouldn’t have met otherwise.

Across the country, institutions like Colorado State, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell, Dickinson College, Furman, and the University of Vermont have implemented living learning labs of their own. In addition to advancing sustainability initiatives, these labs combine disciplines and skills—and unite diverse groups of people—to incubate innovative climate solutions.

You can help us grow the movement, too. Consider supporting domestic climate activist youth movements in your local community and organizations like Sunrise D.C., a local branch of the youth climate organization where activists in the nation’s capital get involved at both the local and national level.

We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got. Join us.

[woodsfae]

Babylon 5 S03E20 And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place previous episode - table of contents

It's kinda wild how much b5 is exactly to my tastes. Take this (and many other!) episode titles for example. Pretentious? Maybe. Poetic? Certainly. Full of allusion? Definitely. Makes me get shivers? Absolutely.  They even give me things to complain about. I'm well settled into complaining loudly about Londo bullshit.

Last episode's beverage (for data point purposes) was straight tequila with pepsi chaser. The hangover was vile and I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep for three hours. Today's beverage - Bitterroot Brewing Co "Dirt Church" ipa. It's alright for an IPA.

"Z MINUS 14 DAYS"

I see we've moved several letters on from "t."

Yeah!! It's another Susan Ivanova personal log episode. The telepaths they've recruited are being dispersed. Sheridan is tired, and Franklin is still pacing the halls. 

All the telepaths are being accompanied by a single Narn bodyguard. Fingers crossed for some of those bodyguards to start developing some telepathy of their own after spending a long time in close quarters with a telepath!!

Londo thinks it's time to "take care of" G'Kar?? FUCK OFF.  He wants G'Kar tricked back to Narn and executed. Thanks to the previous flashbacks, I am well aware that this plot won't play out with G'Kar's actual death. But I still want to strangle Londo. Can I isekai into B5 just long enough to goddamn murder that man?? 

Religious Theo of the religious group whatevever is being highlighted this episode. In theory I appreciate how diverse B5 is, religiously speaking. In practice....ehhh. At least when it comes to people quoting the KJV and referring to "the lord" every other sentence. 

Sheridan does look rough. And there's Delenn!!! Pretty in pink. 

"[Ivanova] said you were carrying on cranky. I looked up cranky, it said grouchy. I looked up grouchy, it said crochetly. No wonder you have such an eccentric culture. None of your words have their own meaning!" 

LOL!! Delenn is so cute. Also, very seriously, I apologize to every person who needs to learn English as an adult. It's a mess. 

Once I saw a gif of Delenn propping herself up on a elbow in bed with Sheridan and I have been FERAL to see that scene ever since. Maybe today will be the episode? Delenn climbs in bed with Sheridan to make him sleep??

Na'Toth might be alive. Or her name might simply be a trap for G'Kar. I don't think Londo's plan is going to work out. If he didn't go back to Narn for literally every other Narnuan, I'm not sure he'd go back for his aide who is probably dead. Also I 100% have more faith in Vir than this. Idk where he got them, but he has a surprisingly well-developed set of morals and empathy. 

Vir: "I won't. I won't go. I won't do it."

VIR BABY. Just say you'll do it, then go and collude and G'Kar. Londo is unhinged, threatening to have Vir's family stripped naked and whipped through the streets of Centaur's capital. What a fuck. He ought to be directing his energies towards getting back Lord Whatshisface who killed Adira on behalf of the Shadows. Refa. The show reminds me in a timely manner. 

Speaking of Refa, he's giving very desperate vibes. Trying too hard to suck up, and that puts blood in the water for the sharks to scent!!

Well. Hopefully even if Vir gives into Londo's threat and tries to trick G'Kar, his obvious nerves give away that something's wrong. 

Back to Londo and the Centauri court shenanigans. Londo is, undeniably, good at putting on the type of political front that works well on Centaur. 

Susan's blowout is so good every day I have to assume it's part of the high-tech auto-dryer when you step out of the shower...or something. Because there's no way that SUSAN IVANOVA is spending twenty minutes every day achieving the most ideal blowout that has ever been hair-dried into existence. 

OK I like the religious cabal a bit better now that I know they're smuggling up-to-date information about Earth politics into Bably 5. 

GODDANG IT. G'Kar is trying to sneak back onto Narn. Well. At least I know he lives to die another day. 

Vir, I am disappointed in. 

Centaur attack on Vir!! He lives to become Emperor another day as well. Stakes drop considerably when you know certain characters' ultimate fates. 

You know who I'd love to see again? AUNT PROPHETESS! Majel!! 

Lord Refa's eyebrows deserve their own acting credit. 

oooh, Centauri telepathy attack!! 

Poor Vir. If only he had been able to keep his position on Minbar. He looked less stressed-out when he was spending most of his time surrounded by a tranquil environment. 

The Baptist pastor is hanging out with Sheridan, who is struggling to relax enough to fall asleep while also doing paperwork. Maybe. don't do paperwork while getting ready for bed. Which the pastor is also bringing up, more delicately than I would. 

the Pastor: DELEGATE IDIOT.

OK he can stay. He is speaking common sense. 

"When youre worry tank gets full people stop coming to you, because they don't want to add to it." 

Smart. "figure out how to relax or your people will stop reading you in in an attempt to protect you." 

"Z MINUS 13 DAYS"

Zha'ha'dum minus 13 days?? 

G'Kar made it to Narn. There's climate change from the orbital bombardment. Constant wind, particulate coming down from the upper atmosphere, poor air quality. And I doubt they had recovered from the previous Centauri occupation, and possibly not even the Shadows' occupation before that! 

Emperor Cartagia is going to be traveling to B5: that seems like a significant security risk! Maybe he'll get nerfed and we'll see the glorious ascension on Emperor Londo. 

Refa's plot is to capture G'Kar instead of letting Londo do it. Fingers crossed for neither of them getting that glory. 

Delenn says there's no pattern to the Shadows' attacks. The lack of pattern is probably the point - all over the place and unpredictable so the united forces are spread as thin and widely as possible. And the tactical data sorta supports that! They haven't attacked anything in the center of the sector, so refugees are going there. And Sheridan is picking this up now, too. They could nail all the refugees at once. 

"I think this is as much about terror as it is about territory." 

Yeah. 

Hm, Delenn is horrified by Sheridan saying he needs to think like them to beat them. Unless she has a really compelling argument against it, I'm going to have to disagree. How can you counter a tactic unless you understand it? 

Londo just knocked out a Centauri guard with a punch to rescue Vir. He gets no points from me, because he put Vir in that position. 

Unfortunately G'Kar won't get to kill Londo for quite a few years, but maybe he and the resistance will get to kill Refa and his goon squad instead. 

Damn it, Londo was two steps ahead of Refa this whole time. f.ucking annoying. Well. all Centauri warmongering genocidal politics are annoying. Refa being personally in charge of the bombardment of Narn is backfiring on his right now. 

Oh so this means that Vir was an unwitting stooge in the plot all along, and that's extra scummy, considering it resulted in Vir being mindraped and made to believe he'd just given up his mentor and employer. Very very cutthroat politics. No wonder Londo didn't name the embarassment he was planning to remove on behalf of the emperor to prove House Mollari's value. 

Baptist Pastor brought a gospel singer along with him, lol. That's very on brand. And super fucking amusing juxtaposition between her music and Refa being pursued and killed. "There's no hiding place down here." Refa being beaten to death. 

Buuuut as much as I dislike Londo, I am a fan of the person responsible for untold suffering and death getting a tiny fraction of that delivered back to them. So...annoyingly... *sigh* go Londo...

It's so fucking funny that Londo had the ability to slip refa the other half of the two-part poison all along but instead he had him beaten to death for political purposes. 

Vir is angry, but probably not enough to make him break from Londo entirely. 

Delenn has a surprise for Sheridan - "the White Star was never intended to be one of a kind, only the first..." and now there's a whole fleet. 

Hm. As far as first kisses on screen go, that one was pretty dated. I'm happy for them, but the "smear your face against the other person's face" is a style I'm glad has mostly gone away. It doesn't look very pleasant, hahah. 

Mrs Sheridan, I presume?

[trivialbob]

I'm happy over a simple shirt I bought yesterday.

Feeling a need to walk, but tired of being cold, I went to the Mall of America. Some say it's about a mile to walk one loop inside the mall. After I strolled all three main levels my Garmin came up with 2.6 miles. It's a little wonky using the GPS indoors, so I'm not making any guarantees.

People watching is excellent. This has got to be the most diverse place in Minnesota. I heard English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian (?), Japanese, and more. People are in all shapes, sizes, political persuasions, gender identities, colors, attitudes, and manner of dress. The huge mall is next to the airport, and Minnesota doesn't charge sales tax on clothes, so I've heard the place gets plenty of out of state shoppers.

Does your bingo card have an ex football player with purple hair? Wait, is that the ex football player with purple hair in a wheelchair or the ex football player with purple hair shuffling along in a silky track suit? How about a cute young mom with three adorable children? Well, yes, but do you want the one with three girls, or three boys, or two girls and one boy? Because they are all there.

I like that I didn't see any of those silly, virtue signalling signs declaring All Are Welcome Here or We Respect All People. Those signs are not necessary because it just happens. All these different people all got along without placards telling them to.

Sure, I wanted to holler at a parent with a triple stroller (filled with three adorable children, two boys and one girl - BINGO!). She had stopped in the middle of a busy hallway to read her phone, causing chaos like Prius dawdling in the left lane of a busy highway.

But I wiggled around them quietly, as did other walkers and shoppers, and went on my way. Also I really can't complain because 25 years ago I was a parent with a double stroller (reasonably looking dad, two boys), taking winter walks there with my young kids. Surely I had been in someone's way.

At Old Navy I decided to go inside. Prices at my once-beloved LL Bean have exited my comfort zone. I also wasn't pleased with the quality of the last three items I purchased there. Eddie Bauer prices are high too ($85 for jeans? Please!) but EB at least has perennial steep discounts. Though I rarely shop Old Navy, I've always had a good experience there.

This long-sleeve tech shirt was marked at $22 (not bad) and just $11.50 (whoo hoo!) after the always-available Old Navy sale price. It was sort of a two-for-one in that I love how it looks and feels AND I didn't spend much money. I'll be back.

All my other tech shirts are from races. They're comfortable for exercising or sleeping on cold nights, but I'm not a fan of the graphics on some of them. Displaying "2016 Twin Cities Marathon" is okay with me, but I don't care for the word "Finisher" on the shirts. It looks odd to me, no better than "Participant" or "I did this." At least that one didn't have "Finished in 16,422nd Place."

[aprocessionofthoughts]

Exchange Students

ectoberhaunt2023 day 23- magic fandom- Harry Potter crossover TW- none summary- Harry, Hermione, and Ron visit the strangest wizarding school in America

ao3 masterlist

Harry wasn’t sure why they had agreed to this. Sure, it had sounded fun and interesting, but now they were in America and were going to be going to what had to be one of the strangest magic schools in the world. 

Most people would probably consider it normal. And sure, from a  muggle standpoint it was. But that’s what made it so strange for a wizarding school.

It looked like a normal high school. There was even functioning electricity! Harry wondered how they had managed that since magic and tech didn’t work well together.

At the front door they were met by an older woman who Harry assumed was the headmaster.

“Hello, I’m Principle Ishiyama. Welcome to Casper High.”

“Thank you for having us.” Hermoine replied.

“Yeah, thanks.” Ron said.

“If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your home rooms.” They followed her into the building, and yup, htis definitely just looked like a regular high school. “I know this must be very different than Hogwarts, but since Amity is already a magic heavy town it didn’t really make sense to send the kids to a boarding school.”

“Is it true that squibs go to this school too?” asked Hermione. 

The principal tensed but replied with a smile. “Yes, we welcome all kinds of pupils here. Though I have to ask that you refrain from using that offensive term. All Amity Parkers know about magic and we consider it important to teach them the principles. However, since Casper High caters to a more diverse student group, we also teach all the regular classes. Classes rotate between muggle and magical with students placed into the ones that will help cultivate their talents yet at the same time give them a taste of everything. It’s important to have a well rounded education. Now, about your schedules. We’ve done our best to match you up with classes that you were already taking though I’m afraid you’ll also be required to take some muggle classes as well. However, there was one class for which you’ll have to choose a replacement.”

“Which one, miss?”

“Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“You don’t teach Defense Against the Dark Arts!” Hermione said scandalized.

“We teach similar classes but nothing quite the same. So, I have a few different options you can choose from. First there's a class on blood magic.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Harry asked.

“Not in the states.”

“But–”

The principal sighed. “It’s only if you’re using someone else’s unwillingly given blood. But if that makes you uncomfortable you can take Spiritual Connections.”

“What’s that?” Ron asked.

“Its a study on temporarily imbuing an object with part of your spirit.”

Harry’s cringed, his mind jumping to horcruxes.

“And if neither of those sound appealing, you can also take beginners Necromancy.”

“Ummm…”

The principal sighed again. “I suppose you can take a History of Dark Arts Through the Ages. Though that one isn’t hands on.”

“We’ll do that.” Harry said.

------------

Thankfully today had been a muggle studies day so all their classes were pretty normal. Well, except for Ron who had never taken a math class beyond basic arithmetics.

They were sitting at lunch when three students approached them.

“Hello, I’m Danny and these are Sam and Tucker. We were curious about how things worked at, where is it you attend? Hogwash?”

“Hogwarts.”

The boy, Tucker, snorted. “Sorry, that's just such a silly name.”

“And Casper is any better?” asked Hermione.

“True.” Danny answered.

“Is it true you don’t have any technology?” Tucker asked.

“Tech doesn’t work with magic.” Hermione answered.

Tuckers furrows browed. “Yes it does. My phone works fine. You just have to imbue the object with some of your spirit.”

“But that sounds terrible. Isn’t that like giving up part of your soul?” Harry asked.

“No? It's just like sharing your magic. It's what I study, magic and tech.”

“What about you?” Hermione asked, turning toward Sam.

“Magical biology and runeology. I focus on plants and their properties as well as rune blood magic.”

“But–” Ron started but Harry elbowed him. 

“Look, it's very simple.” Sam took a piece of chalk out of her pocket and drew a circle with a rune inside it on the table. Then she reached into her pocket again, took out a needle and pricked her finger before placing it on the run. It glowed briefly before a flower sprouted up.

“See.”

“But you’re still using blood.”

Sam opened her mouth but Danny interrupted. “Sam, you can’t blame them. That’s just what they’ve been taught.”

She sighed. “I suppose. Their education is controlled by an old white man who wears a bathrobe.”

“But Dumbledore's incredible! He defeated Grindelwald.”

“Maybe, but he refuses to meet with our magical president because he says that Americans are backwards and that we must adhere to his rules before he’ll speak with us. I mean, isn’t your school still illuminated by candlelight? He won’t even let you use electricity.”

“Sam, that's probably enough.” Danny said.

They were all silent for a moment before Harry turned to Danny, “So, what do you study?”

“Necromancy.”

“What!” Hermione squeaked.

“Yeah, I’m naturally inclined since its what my parents studied, and then I was in an accident and I became even closer to the spiritual world. I can temporarily call up ghosts and interact with the ones already present. You've got ghosts at Hogwarts, right?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! I can also separate from my own spirit, like this.”

Danny closed his eyes and a moment later a ghost appeared next to him. He looked like Danny except with white hair and green eyes. Both Danny’s grinned at him.

“I’m not sure how I really feel about all this.” Hermione said.

Danny shrugged. “Welcome to Amity Park.”

[mariacallous]

Jalon Hall thought she was being scammed when a recruiter reached out on LinkedIn about a job moderating YouTube videos in 2020. Months after earning a master’s degree in criminal justice, her only job had been at a law firm investigating discrimination cases. But the offer was real, and Hall, who is Black and Deaf, sailed through the interviews.

She would be part of a new in-house moderation team of about 100 people called Wolverine, trudging daily through freezing weather to offices in suburban Detroit during the early pandemic. When she accepted the job, the recruiter said via email that a sign language interpreter would be provided “and can be fully accommodated :)” That assurance unraveled within days of joining Google—and her experience at the company has proven difficult in the years since.

Hall now works on responsible use of AI at Google and by all available accounts is the company’s first and only Black, Deaf employee. The company has feted her at events and online as representative of a workplace welcoming to all. Google’s LinkedIn account praised her last year for “helping expand opportunities for Black Deaf professionals!” while on Instagram the company thanked her “for making #LifeAtGoogle more inclusive!” Yet behind the rosy marketing, Hall accuses Google of subjecting her to both racism and audism, prejudice against the deaf or hard of hearing. She says the company denied her access to a sign language interpreter and slow-walked upgrades to essential tools.

After filing three HR complaints that she says yielded little change, Hall sued Google in December, alleging discrimination based on her race and disability. The company responded this week, arguing that the case should be thrown out on procedural grounds, including bringing the claims too late, but didn’t deny Hall’s accusations. “Google is using me to make them look inclusive for the Deaf community and the overall Disability community,” she says. “In reality, they need to do better.”

Hall, who is in her thirties, has stayed at Google in hopes of spurring improvements for others. She chose to talk with WIRED despite fearing for her safety and job prospects because she feels the company has ignored her. “I was born to push through hard times,” she says. “It would be selfish to quit Google. I’m standing in the gap for those often pushed aside.” Hall’s experiences, which have not been previously reported, are corroborated by over two dozen internal documents seen by WIRED as well as interviews with four colleagues she confided in and worked alongside.

Employees who are Black or disabled are in tiny minorities at Google, a company of nearly 183,000 people that has long been criticized for an internal culture that heavily favors people who fit tech industry norms. Google’s Deaf and hard-of-hearing employee group has 40 members. And Black women, who make up only about 2.4 percent of Google’s US workforce, leave the company at a disproportionately higher rate than women of other races, company data showed last year.

Several former Black women employees, including AI researcher Timnit Gebru and recruiter April Christina Curley, have publicly alleged they were sidelined by an internal culture that disrespected them. Curley is leading a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Google of systemic bias but has lost initial court battles.

Google spokesperson Emily Hawkins didn’t directly address Hall’s allegations when asked about them by WIRED. “We are committed to building an inclusive workplace and offer a range of accommodations to support the success of our employees, including sign language interpreters and captioning,” Hawkins says.

Figuring out how to accommodate people like Hall could be good business for Google. One in every 10 people by 2050 will have disabling hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization.

Mark Takano, who represents a slice of Southern California in the US House and cochairs the Congressional Deaf Caucus, says that Google has an obligation to lead the way in demonstrating that its technology and employment practices are accommodating. “When Deaf and hard-of-hearing employees are excluded because of the inability to provide an accessible workplace, there is a great pool of talent that is left untapped—and we all lose out,” he says.

Unaccommodated

Hall was born with profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, meaning that even with hearing aids her brain cannot process sounds well. Two separate audiologists in memos to Google said Hall needs an American Sign Language interpreter full-time. She also signs pre- and post-segregation Black ASL, which uses more two-handed signs and incorporates some African American vernacular.

During her childhood in Louisiana, Hall's parents pushed her into speech therapy and conventional schools, where she found that some people doubted she was Deaf because she can speak. She later attended a high school for Deaf students where she became homecoming and prom queen, and realized how much more she could achieve when provided appropriate support.

Hall expected to find a similar environment at Google when she moved to Farmington Hills, Michigan, to become a content moderator. The company contracts ASL interpreters from a vendor called Deaf Services of Palo Alto, or DSPA. But though Hall had been assigned to enforce YouTube’s child safety rules, managers wouldn’t let her interpreters help her review that content. Google worried about exposing contractors to graphic imagery and cited confidentiality concerns, despite the fact interpreters in the US follow a code of conduct that includes confidentiality standards.

Managers transferred Hall into training to screen for videos spreading misinformation about Covid and elections. She developed a workflow that saw her default to using lipreading and automated transcriptions to review videos and turn to her interpreter if she needed further help. The transcriptions on videos used in training were high quality, so she had little trouble.

Her system fell apart late in January 2021, about 20 minutes into one of her first days screening new content. The latest video in her queue was difficult to make sense of using lipreading, and the AI transcriptions in the software YouTube built for moderators were poor quality or even absent for recently uploaded content. She turned to her interpreter’s desk a few feet away—but to her surprise it was empty. “I was going to say, ‘Do you mind coming listening to this?’” she recalls.

Hall rose to ask a manager about the interpreter’s whereabouts. He told her that he and fellow managers had decided that she could no longer have an interpreter in the room because it threatened the confidentiality of the team’s work. She could now talk with her interpreter only during breaks or briefly bring them in to clarify policies with managers. She was told to skip any videos she couldn’t judge through sight alone.

Feeling wronged and confused by the new restrictions, Hall slumped back into her chair. US law requires companies to provide reasonable accommodations to a disabled worker unless it would cause the employer significant difficulty or expense. “This was not a reasonable accommodation,” she says. “I was thinking, What did I get myself into? Do they not believe I’m Deaf? I need my interpreter all day. Why are you robbing me of the chance of doing my job?”

‘Pushed Aside’

Without her interpreter, Hall struggled. She rarely met the quota of 75 videos each moderator was expected to review over an eight-hour day. She often had to watch through a video in its entirety, sometimes more than an hour, before concluding she could not assess it. “I felt humiliated, realizing that I would not grow in my career,” she says.

Throughout that February, Hall spoke to managers across YouTube about the need for better transcriptions in the moderation software. They told her it would take weeks or more to improve them, possibly even years. She asked for a transfer to child safety, since she had heard from a colleague that visuals alone could be used to decide many of those videos. An HR complaint filed that spring led nowhere.

Black and disabled colleagues eventually helped secure Hall a transfer into Google’s Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology division in July 2021. It is run by vice president Marian Croak, Google’s most distinguished Black female technical leader. Hall says Croak supported her and described what she’d been through as unacceptable. But even in the new role, Hall’s interpreter was restricted to non-confidential conversations.

Hall says the discrimination against her has continued under her new manager, who is also Black, leading to her exclusion from projects and meetings. Even when she’s present some coworkers don’t make much effort to include her. “My point of view is often not heard,” Hall says. In 2021, she joined two gatherings of Google’s Equitable AI Research Roundtable, an advisory body, but then wasn’t invited again. “I feel hidden and pushed aside,” she says.

Hall filed an internal complaint against her manager in March 2022, and an HR staffer has joined their one-on-one meetings since October of that year. One of the interpreters who has assisted Hall says the friction Deaf workers encounter is sadly unsurprising. “People truly don’t take the time to learn about their peers,” the interpreter says.

The allegations are notable in part because a civil rights audit Google commissioned found last March that it needs to do more to train managers. “One of the largest areas of opportunity is improving managers’ ability to lead a diverse workforce,” attorneys for WilmerHale wrote. Hawkins, the Google spokesperson, says all employees have access to inclusion training.

Hall says when she has access to an interpreter, they are rotated throughout the week, forcing her to repeatedly explain some technical concepts. “Google is going the cheap route,” Hall claims, saying her interpreters in university were more literate in tech jargon.

Kathy Kaufman, director of coordinating services at DSPA, says it pays above market rates, dedicates a small pool to each company so the vocabulary becomes familiar, hires tech specialists, and trains those who are not. Kaufman also declined to confirm that Google is a client or comment on its policies.

Google’s Hawkins says that the company is trying to make improvements. Google’s accommodations team is currently seeking employees to join a new working group to smooth over policies and procedures related to disabilities.

Beside Hall’s concerns, Deaf workers over the past two years have complained about Google’s plans—shelved, for now—to switch away from DSPA without providing assurances that a new interpreter provider would be better, according to a former Google employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their job prospects. Blind employees have had the human guides they rely on excluded from internal systems due to confidentiality concerns in recent years, and they have long complained that key internal tools, like a widely used assignment tracker, are incompatible with screen readers, according to a second former employee.

Advocates for disabled workers try to hold out hope but are discouraged. “The premise that everyone deserves a shot at every role rests on the company doing whatever it takes to provide accommodations,” says Stephanie Parker, a former senior strategist at YouTube who helped Hall navigate the Google bureaucracy. “From my experience with Google, there is a pretty glaring lack of commitment to accessibility.”

Not Recorded

Hall has been left to watch as colleagues hired alongside her as content moderators got promoted. More than three years after joining Google, she remains a level 2 employee on its internal ranking, defined as someone who receives significant oversight from a manager, making her ineligible for Google peer support and retention programs. Internal data shows that most L2 employees reach L3 within three years.

Last August, Hall started her own community, the Black Googler Network Deaf Alliance, teaching its members sign language and sharing videos and articles about the Black Deaf community. “This is still a hearing world, and the Deaf and hearing have to come together,” she says.

On the responsible AI team, Hall has been compiling research that would help people at Google working on AI services such as virtual assistants understand how to make them accessible to the Black Deaf community. She personally recruited 20 Black Deaf users to discuss their views on the future of technology for about 90 minutes in exchange for up to $100 each; Google, which reported nearly $74 billion in profit last year, would only pay for 13. The project was further derailed by an unexpected flaw in Google Meet, the company’s video chat service.

Hall’s first interview was with someone who is Deaf and Blind. The 90-minute call, which included two interpreters to help her and the subject converse, went well. But when Hall pulled up the recording to begin putting together her report, it was almost entirely blank. Only when Hall’s interpreter spoke did the video include any visuals. The signing between everyone on the call was missing, preventing her from fully transcribing the interview. It turned out that Google Meet doesn’t record video of people who aren’t vocalizing, even when their microphones are unmuted.

“My heart dropped,” Hall told WIRED using the video chat app Sivo, which allows all participants to see each other while a hearing person and sign language interpreter speak by phone. Hall spent the evening trying to soothe her devastation, meditating, praying, and playing with her dog, which she has trained in ASL commands.

Hall filed a support ticket and spoke to a top engineer for Google Meet who said fixing the issue wasn’t a priority. WIRED later found evidence that users had publicly reported similar issues for years. Microsoft Teams generally will record signing, but Hall wasn’t permitted to use it. She ended up hacking together a workflow for documenting her interviews by laboriously editing together Meet recordings and screen-captured video using tools that she paid $46 a month for out of her own pocket.

Company spokesperson Hawkins did not dispute Meet’s limitations but claims support for the Deaf community is a priority at Google, where work underway includes developing computer vision software to translate sign language.

Google leaders have often paid lip service to the importance of including people with diverse experiences in research and development, but Hall has found the reality lacking. Despite her understanding of the Black Deaf community and research into its needs, she says she is yet to be invited to support the sign translation work. In her experience, Google’s conception of diversity can be narrow. “In the AI department, a lot of conversations are around race and gender,” Hall says. “No one emphasizes disability.”

Her research showed Black, Deaf users are concerned about the potential for AI systems to misinterpret signs, generate poor captions, take jobs from interpreters, and disadvantage individuals who opt for manual interpretation. It underscored that companies need to consider whether new tools would make someone who is unable to hear feel closer or further from the people with whom they are communicating.

Hall presented her findings internally last December over a Google Meet call. Twenty-four colleagues joined, including a research director. Hall had been encouraged, including by Croak, to invite a much larger audience from across the company but ultimately stuck with the short list insisted upon by her manager. She didn’t even bother trying to record it.