#geek accessibility

[shannoneichorn]

Has... has this woman never watched one presentation that was signed?

On a related note, I went to a concert at a scifi convention a couple months ago where comedy singer Bonnie Gordon had an interpretor on stage with her who almost stole the show. She sang a parody of Aerosmith's "Dream On" about being Klingon. For a brief time, everyone in the room learned the sign for Klingon.

what's the most confidently and wrongly a grown adult has ever argued with you - I'll start.

at a work dinner - for scientists - a woman there was convinced that all of sign language was just spelling out words letter-by-letter. she was saying that what we consider sign language is just people spelling out full English words, and she said "it's amazing because it's the only universally-understood language." cue silence from the table.

she fully believed that deaf people in China were spelling out English words letter by letter in ASL to communicate, and that distinct words did not exist. we kept trying to correct her. she replied that it's one of her special interests and she's done extensive research on the subject.

[thatonegeekygirl]

in regards to the "*ca-ca-ca-ca* OH SHIT" moment in the first ep of ghost files s3, i must say that if i found myself in possesion of a allegedly haunted house frequented by jumpy paranormal investigators, i would 100% plant hidden speakers in random spots programmed to play xenomorph noises at opportune times.

[thatjayjustice]

A candid 📸Geek Girl Con snagged of me right before I went back onstage to announce the winners of the costume contest ✨I had an absolute blast hosting the event & I want to thank @geekgirlcon for having a great mask & vaccine policy to make it safer so we could all have a good time, as well as having a wheelchair accessible stage, wheelchair accessible vendor hall and panel rooms, and ASL translators for the event! 💖

[mechawolfie]

if swtor let u click a destination & ur character automatically walks to it & auto interacts I would b unstoppable

[originalleftist]

Sean Astin?

We've got Wonder Woman, Starfleet, and Samwise the Brave on our side. We cannot lose.

I'm hosting Geeks and Nerds for Harris tomorrow night from 8 to 11 pm ET.

Mark Hamill, LeVar Burton, Sean Astin, Gail Simone, cast from Supernatural, Star Trek, and many other friends will be there. Will you?

RSVP for free at our website!

We'll have live ASL interpretation and Accessibility Services provided by Angela Johnson.

[puzzlenation]

The RPG and Board Game Community Reaches Out!

One of the best parts of being a puzzle and board game guy is the amazing community of fellow players, puzzlers, and game designers that surrounds you. Yes, puzzles and games are a business, obviously, but every week I see examples of creators and companies giving back, doing charitable acts, and participating in fundraisers for good causes. Today, I’d like to highlight a few and hopefully bring…

[berri-yaps]

ᡣ𐭩 • ｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅ berri : she/her : 19 ⋅｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅• ᡣ𐭩

₊✩‧₊˚ taken ツ : yearning 24/7 : main acc. ˚₊✩‧₊

[wendiruby]

Love me to my bones

🎵 Myles Smith - Stargazing https://youtu.be/tKml80alH3Y?si=PTMG41syGlyVYGVh

♛ #SL #Secondlife #SLFashion #SecondlifeFashion #RawrSL #ACCESSEvent #JustBecauseSL #GeekStore

HQ & Credits: https://linktr.ee/wendirubybloggingsl https://rubyswheretofindit.weebly.com/home/love-me-to-my-bones

[carlocarrasco]

Over 550,000 voter reactivation applications processed by COMELEC

More than five hundred fifty thousand voter applications for reactivation were processed by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), according to a Philippine News Agency (PNA) news article. To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the PNA news article. Some parts in boldface… The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Monday it has processed more than half a million…

[mspi]

Think you're good rapping?

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A post shared by Sign Language 🙌 (@sign_language_igcorner)

Try translating it to sign language. As much as physical therapists believed sign language could help me out when I'd lose my speech sometimes and trip over my own attempts at speaking, they forget to factor in that I have MS.

My goodness, I was working in corporate and I remember losing strength in half my face. Yep it wasn't fun. Then I continued to pray as I know that things come and go with the disease. Got my arm control back. Not good enough to type or write... I'm usually able to feed myself though.

-- dnagirl

08.09.2024

[star-anise]

Disclaimer: I like Anita Sarkeesian.

But also, I just saw a writeup of a Youtuber whose content has come a long way from his Gamergate days, and to explain that, the wiki says, "Anita Sarkeesian is a radical feminist who created a webseries about sexist tropes in video games"

AHAHAHAHAHA ANITA SARKEESIAN, RADICAL FEMINIST

HOO HEE EXCUSE ME THAT'S A GOOD ONE

Radical feminist. Feminist extremist. Anita Sarkeesian.

Anita Sarkeesian did her Master's Thesis in Social and Political Thought in 2010 on the trope of the "Strong Woman" in fantasy and science fiction TV shows, and produced Tropes vs Women, a series of online videos breaking down her work in a way that was accessible to a lay audience. She found a ready audience in geek feminist circles, since this was exactly the kind of thing we wanted and needed right then.

Tropes vs Women was extremely bog-standard cultural critique, what you'd find expressed in discussion between scholars of literary theory or media analysis anywhere, and exactly what 99% of feminists were saying at the time. It certainly talked about patriarchy as the complex system of sexism fused into our cultural matrix, so it's not like it wasn't radical feminism from that viewpoint, but it wasn't "radical" by way of being especially militant. Sarkeesian frequently pointed out how individual occurrences of a trope weren't harmful in themselves, but that a media landscape completely saturated with only that trope and nothing but that trope is, in the aggregate, a big feminist issue.

And the internet

HAAAAAAAATED

her for it.

Like, geek feminists got flak a lot anyway, especially when we wanted things like properly enforced policies against sexual harassment at science fiction conventions. And yeah, there totally were toxic keyboard warriors who said stuff about all men being scum - but Sarkeesian wasn't one of them.

It's probably because of her succinct, matter-of-fact, "this is not a debated issue, feminists have decades of theory and research to back this point up, sources abound if you google for thirty seconds so I won't stop to baby you through all the fundamental concepts" approach that she got such a big reach. She was calm, concise, coherent, and rational, everything feminists are told we need to be.

Unfortunately that just made her seem... attackable, I think. A good target, not actually scary or impassioned, unlikely to respond to violence with violence. The perfect kind of person to play five seconds of, and then spend the next five minutes yelling into your mic because IF ANITA IS RIGHT ABOUT VIDEO GAME SEXIST YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAY THAT EVERYTHING IS SEXIST AND SEXISM IS SYSTEMIC AND ENDEMIC TO ALL OF WESTERN CULTURE AND OTHER CULTURES TOO, WHICH IS CLEARLY RIDICULOUS, ANITA LADY BAD.

She literally spent five solid years as Enemy #1 in online geek spaces. It was completely insane. I am so sorry she had to take the brunt of it, and yet grateful that she did. She held the line and took the shit and kept doing good decent feminist work for years after, though she did admit to burnout and closed up shop on her nonprofit org Feminist Frequency in 2023. I hope to hell she's having a good day.

But even now, more than a decade later, dudes talk about her as though she were Geek Feminist Godzilla, the biggest baddest woman in the universe, off to lay waste to downtown Video Games and cut everybody's balls off.

When people (mostly dudes, but not all) talk like this, it's just very funny and unintentionally revealing because of the absolute averageness of her third-wave, trans-inclusive, western-centric, intersectional feminism. It makes them look absolutely pathetic.

Because it just makes it clear that she is probably the first and last self-described feminist the speaker has ever paid attention to.

[zerobounce1]

Mark Robbins of the Email Markup Consortium and Parcel talks to ZeroBounce about email accessibility – and how to make your emails pop.

[midnitetech]

Home & Hobbies Aspiration Pack

Hey everyone, I finally have a new mod for you - a pack of aspirations!

This pack adds an entirely new aspiration category to your game: Home & Hobbies, designed for Sims who find purpose and joy in the simple, creative, and comforting parts of life. Whether they’re chasing coding side projects, writing sweeping epics, or just enjoying a cup of tea in peace — these Sims thrive where comfort meets creativity.

I really wanted to create aspirations that focus less on career, money, or romance and are more laid-back while still offering plenty of activities, so here are some of the features:

🧸 New Aspiration Category: Home & Hobbies

Includes a custom trait — Comfort-Oriented — granting unique moodlets and a love for calm, cozy living. These Sims are happiest, and do their best work when they're at home!

✨ 4 Fully-Fleshed Aspirations:

🔸 Home & Hearth

This Sim wants to balance family, friendships, and flawless homemaking.

Features:

Custom gift-giving by mail

New family-focused social interactions

Reward Trait: Heart of the Home

🔸 Fiction Fanatic

This Sim lives for storytelling — from world-building to wild plot twists.

Features:

New Historical Fiction book genre

Creative-focused social interactions

Reward Trait: Master Storyteller (reward unlocks writing Historical Fiction)

🔸 Cozy Introvert

This Sim thrives on quiet comforts, soft routines, and peaceful self-expression.

Features:

Custom blogging and journaling interactions (with a new journal object!)

Peaceful walk interaction

Reward Trait: Inner Calm

🔸 Tech Hobbyist

This Sim loves to build, tinker, and code for the sheer fun of it.

Features:

Side project coding gigs

Unlock custom websites, special gigs, and awards!

Reward Trait: Digital Architect

🧩 Every aspiration includes:

Fully custom goals

Exclusive interactions and social options

Unique reward traits

Base Game Compatible—no packs required!

📦 Whether your Sim wants to curl up with a good book, delve into coding, or pour their passion into a personal blog, this pack opens up new ways to play — all grounded in the simple joys of staying home and geeking out. I worked on this for over a month, ensuring that I'd covered every detail, so I really hope you love it.

So, let your Sims get cozy, get creative, and feel right at home. 💻📖🕯️

⚠️REQUIRED⚠️ 🌐Lot 51's Core Library 📁midnitetech_modlibrary 🎮DLC: None/Base Game Compatible mod

📋Optional: 📖Write Books Overhaul for publishing the new genre (no need to redownload that mod if you already have it—I included the tuning in its last update)

PATREON (early access until 25th June 2025)

[dduane]

A homebrew Iliad project

I've been fiddling with this for a long time.

Backstory: I've been dabbling in various depths of the great wine-dark sea of the ancient Greek classics since I was about seven or eight. (Might have been earlier, but I have no data to confirm that.)

I know Greek mythology like the back of my hand. (...Insert here the inevitable sound of Scotty whacking his head into an Enterprise bulkhead.) I know... a lot. And—leaving all the other stuff I know about that no one here is gonna care about one way or the other—I've read the Iliad and Odyssey probably about twice a year for the last fifty years or so. Or maybe more.

To my grief, I don't have enough classical Greek (or good enough Greek of any kind) to do any kind of respectable new translation of the work. That's far beyond my scope, or my level of scholarship. But I can sure as hell do... a retelling? A restatement? I have a number of favorite translations to use as guides, and the Perseus digital library... and, you know, dictionaries. And I'm not afraid to use them. :)

...And I'm a storyteller, and have no shame about the possibilities inherent in going where lots of others of my tribe have gone before—in restatement or in fiction. So let's just call this "a homebrew version of a work that hasn't been out of 'print' for thirty-five hundred years" and leave it there. (Is this ὕβρις? Yeah, seems likely enough. Whether this is going to be a manifestation of the downfall of the Greeks, or of the Geeks, remains to be seen.)

Anyway: my plan is to start publishing books (i.e., chapters) of this homebrew Iliad in the Fic Foundry writing website that will be opening up at last sometime over the next couple of months. The first few books will be open-access: after that they'll go subscription. They'll come out at irregular intervals (because there'll be paying work going on as well. [resigned sigh: So what else is new.])

When starting a project like this it seems like it might be wise to, in a general way, set out the goals.

Ease of accessibility. Lots of people have never read this story, or have experienced it only in one kind or another of paraphrase. (Yeah, well, here comes another one.) For maximum accessibility, I think this means what I want to do is a prose retelling. Nor am I going to get too hung up on anachronisms in the prose style. I'm reaching for the around-the-campfire sound, a little; or the story told after dinner, in episodes (and let's not throw the beef bones at the bard, she's doing the best she can).

Fidelity to the source material. This is an old, old story that both ascends to surprising heights of feeling and amazing depths of cruelty. There are things in it that some modern readers are not going to like at all: particularly the graphic gore and violence of what is repeatedly described as "the world's greatest war story". But these aspects of the Iliad, and the frequently callous, cruel and misogynistic understructure of its story, come with the territory of the original. I will in appropriate ficcer's style add trigger warnings where I think they're needed.

Completeness of the story. The temptation is always going to lurk for an adapter to decide what's important and what can be thrown out. I'm hardly immune. But it's my intention to leave the structure as intact as possible. Some people will disagree with my choices. (shrug) People have been disagreeing about ways to handle this work for centuries. What'll a few more be, among friends?

...So that's the plan. When this material starts to be ready to appear online, I'll let people here know where they need to go to access it. And after that... we'll see how things go.

I'll start this story as its first tellers did, and ask the Goddesses of epic storytelling to stand by me and lend a hand telling this one. At the end of the day, it all comes down to one angry young man: Achilles, only son of King Peleus. Achilles was completely possessed by a bitter rage that brought a whole host of troubles down on the great army of the Greeks. That unquenchable fury sent many a strong man’s soul to the Underworld, and left their bodies feeding the dogs and the vultures, while Heaven’s intentions moved inexorably on toward the Gods’ final goal...

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

Since MXTX said HuaLian live until the modern times, have some random headcanons:

Hua Cheng keeps being an interior decorating king so of course his and Xie Lian's home is tastefully decorated for every season and holiday. However, that doesn't stop Xie Lian from occasionally adding the fugliest item ever because he got emotionally attached to it in the store. "It was all by itself, San Lang, nobody wanted it... i know what that feels like better than anyone..." and now they're both sniffling holding an ugly styrofoam pumpkin in the middle of the fall decor isle of Ikea.

The stray animals food budget is off the charts but it's nobody's fault all strays are immediately drawn to Xie Lian and he has to feed them cause he "knows what it's like to be hungry". This does not just include cats and dogs but also rats, raccoons, several bird species and at least one coyote.

Speaking of budgets, the financial control authorities are lowkey on Hua Cheng's case because he is still stinking rich but nobody knows where the cash is coming from. They think Ghost City is the name of some shady mafia establishment and are trying to find dirt on Hua Cheng but there is literally nothing there and it eats the government alive.

Xie Lian occasionally dumpster dives in places where he knows they throw perfectly salvageable things. Hua Cheng cries every time it happens but he stands watch so the police doesn't arrest his husband for it.

In the same vein, Xie Lian insists on recycling literally everything. They have those different colored trash bins and everything, and every time Hua Cheng places an item in the wrong bin, Xie Lian gives him a disapproving look that has the ghost king crumble.

They have so many house plants. It's like a little jungle in their living room but the air is so crisp.

They keep several scrapbooks of paintings, pictures, letters etc from all the people they met to remember them even hundreds or thousands of years after those people have passed away. Even if they now have access to phones and other media for storage, they keep up the tradition of using scrapbooks and notebooks anyway.

Xie Lian is actually up to date with memes and internet slang but has embraced being a cringe Facebook grandpa and is now committed to the persona. Hua Cheng finds this hilarious (he runs a very well maintained beauty channel and a side channel on swords where Xie Lian features in every video and geeks out about their sword collection. They have a golden button and a very large following).

Hua Cheng has a 25 step skincare routine and only uses the fanciest brands of products for literally everything. Xie Lian still swears by 8 in 1 shampoo and somehow has clearer skin. Hua Cheng is both enamored and scandalized about it.

Hua Cheng is a very big fan of acryllics and lets Xie Lian pick the base color every time. Xie Lian takes this task very, very seriously and tries to coordinate it with any activities/events they have planned so Hua Cheng stays being stylish.

Hua Cheng has a portable Dyson Airwrap with him at all times because one time a kid said his hair looks like a wet dog.

Xie Lian is not allowed to get a job because every time he tried to along the decades he became a cautionary tale somehow.

[jaxon-exe]

Dp x dc prompt

So this starts with Danny becoming the ghost king on his 18th birthday and almost immediately every power-hungry ghost in existence starts proposing to him. At first he just ignores it but after the 10th time someone tries to kidnap him to marry him Greek god style, he’s fucking sick of it and goes to Clockwork for help.

He’s not much help. The only way for other people to stop trying to marry him is if he’s already married. What’s more, because he’s the king of the infinite realms, it has to be someone that’s considered a citizen of the Infinite Realms. (Like he can marry someone that’s still alive but they wouldn’t count and people will just keep trying to marry him) CW also warns him that people will try and kill anyone he marries if they can so a living person isn’t really ideal. The only bit of real helpfulness he does provide is a list of non-evil non-power-hungry citizens so he can have an easier time finding someone.

So Danny takes the list and starts crossing of names (like Johnny, even tho the guy won’t abuse the power of being the ghost princess, kitty would kill Danny for good this time) when he comes across the perfect candidate.

Jason Todd (Robin/Red Hood)

He’s been to Gotham before, knows the Robins all do good work and knows the Red Hood is already a good and fair ruler of his criminal underground. Plus the guy could definitely fight off any ghost trying to kill him even without the power boost and some helpful weapons Danny would give him if he agrees. Plus he has the perfect bargaining chip to get the guy to help by offering to fix the corrupted ectoplasm in him (not that he wasn’t gonna do that anyway when he had the time to but Hood didn’t need to know that)

So Danny hops over to Gotham and after quickly getting permission from Lady Gotham (she’s very protective of her Knights) heads over to crime ally and pitches the idea to Red Hood.

Which basically goes like-

Danny: so I give u, the title of prince, access to the Infinite Realms whenever u wish, a sweet private wing in my castle, any of the op ghost weapons in the castles armoury and a fix for ur rage problems and u marry me so I stop getting people trying to propose to me in increasingly more annoying ways :)

Jason, a literature geek with a secret desire to be the protagonist in a shitty YA romance: u had me at Prince

So the two of then jump over to the Infinite Realms to get married thinking it’ll take 30 minutes top only to learn that CW left out that a Royal wedding has to take at minimum a week otherwise no one will consider the Marriage valid. So the two, not backing out at this point, join in on the week of parties and celebrations without putting much more thought into it.

Meanwhile back in Gotham, after not having Red Hood check in after his patrol, Oracle searches CCTV and finds Jason having a conversation with a figure that is glitching out the camera to much to identify them, then the figure seemingly grabs Jason and drags him into a portal and the two of them disappear.

So obviously the Batfam comes to the conclusion that Jason was kidnapped by some sort of magical being and calls in John. He identify the magic as that of the ghost king’s and has been hearing that the king had been looking for a bride so comes to the conclusion that Jason has been kidnapped Persephone style to be be married and is under the (wrong) conclusion that it will mean Jason can’t leave the realm of the death after.

And so the Batfam + Constantine start planing to crash a wedding.