#twitter bootstrap

[agportfolio2]

As Platform Manager at IA Ventures, I created a website to house important frameworks for early-stage technology executives and their investors. 

[cherryblossomshadow]

Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@/QasimRashid):

Class warfare is when there’s a limit to what poor & disabled people can earn before losing their benefits, but no limit to what billionaires can hoard while avoiding taxes.

We must reject the twisted idea that money incentivizes the rich but poverty incentivizes the poor.

[videogamepoc]

November 21, 2024 -- By Scott Tong and James Perkins Mastromarino

Spray paint and roller skates are instruments of protest in an upcoming video game set in the Middle East. Pro-Palestinian and overtly activist, a downloadable prototype for “Palestine Skating Game” has players roll around the occupied West Bank, blasting globs of paint at tanks and a massive separation wall. “We have about two kilometers of the Israeli separation wall, along with like two kilometers of graffiti that is actually on the separation wall or has been on the separation wall,” says Justin, the main developer of the game. He spoke on the condition of using only his first name as his political views have sparked severe online harassment. More than 50 mostly-volunteer developers have contributed to “Palestine Skating Game” since its bootstrapped beginnings three years ago. The project grew from Justin’s love of Arabic electronic music and a 2018 visit to the region. “If absolutely nothing else, we will be recreating a lot of things that Palestinians are seeing and what they experience in an actual 3D space,” says Justin, “like the harassment at a checkpoint or an encounter with a gang of settlers.” Should it reach crowdfunding goals, the team plans to build levels based on the past, present and future of the West Bank and Gaza to both preserve a place that’s been destroyed and to imagine possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “What would a good future for Palestine look like?” asks Justin. “What would any kind of just a peace settlement look like — could they truly get along in any way, especially at this hour?” Meanwhile, the game’s community has taken real-world action. Its fans donated thousands of dollars to help a developer who worked on the game flee Gaza earlier this year. Justin traveled to Cairo to pay a travel service $7,500 to facilitate the coder and her sister’s escape to Egypt. Ultimately, Justin believes that “Palestine Skating Game” could bridge an empathy gap. “I really do hope that we reach American youth and people who play video games — it would be wonderful to target young white men who voted for [President-elect Donald] Trump with leftist video games generally,” says Justin. “To introduce them to a side of the Arab world that they never knew about — it's a vibrant, diverse and artistically brilliant place.”

Donate to the developers here!

And follow them on Twitter and Instagram to say up to date!

[freshthoughts2020]

Convenient Money!

Convenient Money!

July 25, 2024

Kamala Harris' Presidential Run

This is not the source to get your political news, but just in case you’ve been under Patrick’s rock, current Vice President Kamala Harris is now officially running for President of the United States after Biden’s sudden departure from the race. Since running, Kamala has raised $81M in 24 hours, which are record-setting numbers. When I saw that, I couldn’t help but think the same thought every time this happens: “Where is this money for the less fortunate?”

Money for Crisis, But Not for the Poor

Ukraine gets money, we had money for the stimulus during COVID, and every time this gets brought up, somebody wants to put their economics knowledge to use and explain inflation. I simply don’t think that is an excuse. Being able to raise that much money for one person could literally be done for some urban areas in America. It could supply monthly stipends, provide decent housing for the homeless, not just shelters that are barely hospitable. It could help provide food that isn’t canned and doomed to hell but actual quality foods. Why is it so hard for people to care about the less fortunate and those affected by unlucky economic situations?

Personal Responsibility and Wealth

When I become wealthy, I want y'all to hold me to the fire and make me remember the promises I made to help those who came from similar situations as me. I didn’t grow up the worst, but like most people born in urban communities, I experienced some setbacks. I know what instability feels and looks like. I know what it’s like not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, living check to check, being carless, taking two steps forward and one step back. I just know how it feels to have life give me its ass to kiss despite working EXTREMELY hard to subvert those circumstances.

The Need for Opportunity and Assistance

After all that hard work and strapping up them damn bootstraps, people simply need opportunity and assistance, a financial head start similar to what children of the wealthy are provided with. I also wonder, when stories like these surface, do the people donating ever think, “Man, we gave our money pretty easily to this. Maybe we can actually help a community out.”

Challenges of Implementing Change

Then, when people actually commit to making actual change, the people they are helping get engulfed with jealousy, which is triggered by perpetual lack. They don’t even know how to handle someone from a similar background acting as a benevolent figure. In other words, people are haters, and it's messed up out here.

Deserving a Decent Life

Nonetheless, everyone on Earth still deserves to live a decent, humane life. Not everyone has to be in Range Rovers or wear vintage Chanel that CoCo never even had; people just deserve to experience some of the wealth that many of the elites hoard. Sure, you worked hard for your money; it’s your choice to do whatever you want with it. However, at certain moments, the government and institutions alike should let morality kick in and do what it takes to save people from desolate poverty, no matter the cost.

Visit gettothecorner.com

Follow on twitter @onlyonejaevonn

[fcble]

let's start a new thing! what is the moral alignment for your ocs? <3

I've chosen to interpret good/evil as other people/self and lawful/chaotic as the usual society/freedom in addition to personal consistency. Otherwise it'd be kind of boring because I don't think anyone except Haksu would ever commit murder or otherwise embrace villainy.

LAWFUL GOOD

JAESEOP has what I've always referred to in my notes as the protagonist build. He has plot armor. He has a strong sense of justice. He helps old ladies cross the street. He's the type to save the world and his friends and get the girl. You get the picture. He's also very consistent with these traits, even if they're not necessarily the law.

BYEONGHWI is more of a textbook lawful good. He's into tradition and honor and filial piety and the patriarchy. He has that Confucianism in him. It kind of defines his entire life and he doesn't mind. That's where his personal morals come from.

NEUTRAL GOOD

ANDREW is very willing to bend the rules. He's way more into the spirit of the law than the letter of it, but mostly if it will benefit more people than just himself. He's very altruistic and doesn't expect much in return. The best example I can think of for this is when he snuck Byeonghwi into his work-subsidized housing back when they were trainees.

KIYOUNG has the same general spirit of the law viewpoint as Andrew. While he was in college and before he became an idol, he worked for an environmental nonprofit. If not for his friendship with Intak, he would have stayed there and probably trended closer to chaotic good. For now, he spends a lot of time in Jaeseop's company.

LAWFUL NEUTRAL

INTAK has bootlicker and doormat tendencies and for those reasons he's lawful and neutral. In a lot of situations, he could really go either way to the more selfish or more altruistic option. But above all of that, he also leans towards filial piety and respecting authority.

Similar to Intak, EUNSU has most definitely defended billionaires on Twitter before. He's like well just get good at the stock market and you too can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. His neutrality, on the other hand, comes from making some major selfish decisions (becoming an idol) and some major selfless decisions (leaving Fable to inherit his father's priesthood).

NEUTRAL EVIL

One of MINGEUN'S defining character traits has always been his selfishness. He could also be true neutral because he survives no matter what and adapts, improvises, and overcomes, but that implies he also considers the greater good from time to time. I don't really think he does that. He has little respect for authority but he's also fairly consistent to his own morals.

CHAOTIC EVIL

HAKSU has the CEO build. In ten years he could be running a company with 247582 labor violations. On a smaller scale, he's extremely hypocritical. He's very "rules for thee but not for me." And the "I'd sell you to Satan for one corn chip" troubled bird. Also he got his job by stalking Taein and thought very little of it.

[roomeight]

Today I realized that Dave Rowntree blocked me on my public twt account. I made maybe 2 or 3 tweets @ ing him back in Nov 2022 that were ignored, so this block is fairly recent - probably the last few months ~when Blur started touring.

I find this upsetting because I wasn't incessantly tagging Dave. I rarely use that acct. Rather, him blocking me blocks those tweets showing up with his name, Blur's name, or Eleven Management's name in twitter search. What that infers is that the band knows and are actively trying to hide mentions of the Graham Coxon allegations during Blur touring.

Please stop supporting Blur.

They are not feminists. They do not care that women came forward with allegations of abuse from Graham Coxon. Dave actively avoided allegations questions on reddit AMA and is blocking these tweets. His partner emailed minors to tell them Essy was a jilted lover. Eleven Management still, ignores everything to celebrate selling records and have "women employee spotlights." I ask myself if this is the same band I loved and supported for years and I am shocked by their actual behavior/ignoring very serious allegations. Dave's partner cares more about having a parasocial relationship with the super fans than actually listening to the ones sounding an alarm.

I went through my Blur shirts tonight and I'm selling them off. I'm done. I'm so disappointed. I'm embarrassed. Even setting aside that this whole record was bootstrapped by Damon and monetized by the band it's really...idk. These are people you are giving money to, people who find abuse allegations about a fellow band member worth suppressing. Remember that.

[darkmaga-returns]

1/14 ASTROLABE LINKS:

DAILY SLOP VIDEO

TOP 5 FUNNIEST THEO VON MOMENTS

UPDATE ON THE "MEN'S DESIRE FOR QUESTS" VIDEO

SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS & OUTLAYS, US GOVT, DEC 2024

CBS REPORTER FAILS MISERABLY TRYING TO GET JAMIE DIMON TO SMEAR TRUMP

HOW CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO DESTROY THE U.S. INSURANCE MARKET

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER & TUCKER ON THE RELIGION OF LIB CALIFORNIA

TUCKER: CALIFORNIA WILL GET THEIR OWN BUKELE

MATT GAETZ ON ANDREW TATE

PETE HEGSETH WAS IN HELL

TIM SHEEHY QUESTIONING HEGSETH

HEGSETH'S PROMISE TO SERVICE MEMBERS BOOTED FOR REFUSING COVID VAX

HAARETZ ARTICLE ON STEVE WITKOFF STEAMROLLING NETANYAHU

GROK BREAKDOWN OF GAZA PEACE DEAL

FLASHBACK: TRUMP SAYS "FUCK HIM" RE: NETANYAHU

THE VIDEO TRUMP SHARED OF JEFFREY SACHS BLASTING BIBI

TRUMP HANDSHAKE MOGGING BIBI

BIBI'S MOUTHPIECE COMPLAINING ABOUT TRUMP FORCING THEM INTO A DEAL THEY DON'T WANT

ISRAELI MEDIA SAYING TRUMP'S PRESSURE MADE BIBI FOLD

NETANYAHU CANCELS TRIP TO TRUMP'S INAUGURATION

IRAN & RUSSIA SIGNING 20-YEAR STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

INTERMISSION VIDEO: RESTORATION OF MODEL CAR

DUDLEY NEWRIGHT: YOU MUST BE ABLE TO HOLD TWO IDEAS AT THE SAME TIME

SEMIOGOGUE ON CONTAINMENT, PARTIAL ACCOMMODATION, AND PARTIAL SUCCESS

FARMERS REDDIT POAST

CLIP OF UKRAINIAN MAN ESCAPING CONSCRIPTION SQUADS

TUCKER CLIP #1: "I DON'T WORSHIP CAPITALISM"

TUCKER CLIP #2: "I'M NOT A SLAVE TO YOUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM"

RUFO TWEETS THREAD

RUFO TWEET

ZERO HP LOVECRAFT ON THE BOOTSTRAPS DISCOURSE

RAW EGG NATIONALIST ON THE BOOTSTRAPS DISCOURSE

PATRICK CASEY ON THE BOOTSTRAPS DISCOURSE

LOMEZ ON THE BOOTSTRAPS DISCOURSE

ISAIAH TAYLOR "VALAR ATOMICS" INTERVIEW

MOTHER JONES ON THE GUNDO BOYS AND THEOBROS

FANDUEL AMERICANS

[badolmen]

I was sent the anonymous message by the second person and o have 0 platform on tumblr who in their right mind in a terrible situation be doing that, when tiktok and Twitter can get you better results

Are you speaking from your vast experience as a person from the global south in the middle of a genocide when you say tiktok and Twitter get better results? Tiktok, which was reorganized to have repressive censors after it was ‘saved’ by Trump? Twitter, now known as X, under control of a right-wing fascist antisemite? Whereas these platforms are actively hostile to mentions Palestine and Palestinians, tumblr is too poorly moderated and understaffed to meaningfully suppress these discussions and campaigns.

“who in their right mind would be doing that in a terrible situation.” Imagine yourself in a living hell. You cannot meaningfully work because your place of business was destroyed. You cannot eat or feed your family because a single chicken costs $150 USD. You are lucky enough to have an eSim and connection to the internet. What else is there to do but send as many messages asking for help as you possible can? You sound like those fools who say stuff like, “why is that homeless man begging instead of pulling himself up by the bootstraps and getting a real job?” You have no knowledge of those person’s material needs or daily reality, and yet you deem their actions inadequate because obviously if you were in such a terrible situation, your pride would have you starve to death in a tent instead of trying every possible avenue of generating enough money to stay alive.

I hate to break it to you but this is tumblr. If you think only popular and well known bloggers should reach out for help, you have attached human worth and dignity to popularity. That’s kinda fucked up not gonna lie my friend. They have a right to ask for help as much as any person here, regardless of how long they’ve been here and how much following they have. You can think it’s bad etiquette, but bad etiquette isn’t a crime.

This screenshot proves nothing more than that, like you, others are calling this user a scammer. Repeated messages is not proof of a scam. It may be appropriately called spam, but that does not make the campaign any more illegitimate than the Democratic Party sending out hundreds of thousands of emails begging for campaign donations. The second post makes a very grave accusation but fails to provide any evidence of their claims (screenshots of DMs, bank transaction history, a named victim of this supposed fraud) in addition to being an outright Zionist and calling the user a terrorist - again, without any evidence of this claim.

Please provide primary sources (such as evidence directly linking this user to financial fraud) if you want me to genuinely reconsider my position.

You’re welcome to block users who you do not want to receive asks from - that’s what the block button is for! You’re welcome to spend your money how you like, and ignore donation requests! No judgement here. But you cannot make these kind of accusations without any proof beyond ‘other people said it’s true’ and expect to be taken seriously or in good faith.

[reshiram]

coding c🌟mms

slots taken: 2/3

helloooo so i've had an itch to code some stuff lately (and build my portfolio), but i don't want to work on my personal site, so i'm offering my coding skills to the general public!!! ^__^ i can code neocities pages, tumblr themes (a bit rusty) + pages, toyhouse/bootstrap stuff in general, etc...!!! i can also just offer code help/tips/polishing.

i'm crossposting this from twitter, so some of my slots are taken already, but please don't let that discourage you!! ;w; i will update this with current slots and such. right now things are open!

here are some examples of pages i have coded.

if interested, please send me an ask or dm me!!! i will discuss further details with you. i am very flexible budget wise, let's come up with something together!!

i hope to work with you, thank you for looking!!!

ps - a live version of my own site is here, if you want to look around!!!

[so-much-for-subtlety]

Despite how stupid I think the Friend AI chat necklace is I feel so sorry for this guy because he's really getting trashed on twitter.

He was only 17 in 2020 when he got sort of famous in tech circles for creating the first covid case data aggregator (it was an impressive project!) and since then he's done work with such good intentions like a project to help match Ukraine refugees with host families in neighboring countries.

Getting involved in the Silicone Vally VC reality distortion bubble is really going to mess him up.

The crazy thing is that even when this AI product is a flop and the company goes bankrupt it will actually not be bad for him, a little bootstrapped/self financed startup flopping is an embarrassment, but raising $2.5M and launching an AI hardware startup that then flops is actually (in SV) a huge success and will probably open up great opportunities for him.

I don't hate him (don't know him, but he's probably a cool guy) but I HATE the system.

[skinsort]

Look, you don't have to do everything in code from scratch. It's fine to use generators to make your grid layout, or use scss to css converters to keep your stylesheets neater. As long as people have put a tool out there for the public to use, take free and full advantage. Most of the ethos in actual coding circles is in favor of open source- we none of us are doing anything truly original, unless we're writing a new language or framework from the ground up, which VERY few do. Even then, people want their tools to be used, and that's why they include examples, working sites, documentation, sometimes whole startup tools that will get you running a page in two commands. What matters on all sites it the actual CONTENT you put on a webpage, which is why all the most successful companies in the internet age rest on the foundation of what other people populate their sites with. netflix is nothing without creative film and television output, youtube is nothing without content creators, twitter, tiktok, facebook. even amazon doesn't mean anything if manufacturers don't sell their products there. All these sites are just wireframes for what YOU put on there. Do not shake in your boots about using freely disseminated code on the internet- stack overflow, open source repositories, design frameworks like bootstrap, material ui, free font packs, tutorials on code education websites, etc. Go, use it. People share these things with the intent of it all acting as a shortcut, usually without expectation of credit. They know that other people can figure this stuff out on their own eventually, their intent is to HELP. If a resource is open source, if a tool is available to the public, if a stranger answers a question on a coding help forum, I promise you. You can use it. There is no glory in making coding harder for yourself. Stand on the shoulders of coders who came before you. They wouldn't have put themselves there if they didn't want you to.

[white-collar-cannibal]

so much potential in the reading of hetch as controlled to some extent by showfall. literally he's someone who doesn't view himself as a cast member but as a temporarily embarassed founder. he's an allegory for the individualist ideal of the personal carbon footprint. he's a blue checkmark twitter user. he's a working class pinkerton. he's trying so so hard to pull himself up by his own bootstraps into the higher echelons of showfall but he'll always be just another tool for them. in the same way that gl!ranboo was given just enough free will to be culpable for their actions and crushed by guilt for it, hetch is given just enough freedom from the script to believe that showfall will actually let him go if he does what they say. showfall knows how to give someone just enough of what they want that they'll be on showfall's hook forever.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

!!! This is about fundraising online generally not about anything specific !!!

Like I get becoming cynical because you're in crisis but there's a lot of reasons people don't reblog individual fundraisers and there's a lot of reasons a fundraiser can stagnate and to be honest the main one is because people who fundraise on Tumblr are begging a bunch of broke people to give them 10$. Like the sheer number of "please help me I'm being evicted" posts on here before October was staggering and I do think that a lot of them were bots but I'm certain many of them were legitimate. If I had a bot and I was going to put out an e begging scam onto a website I would beg on Twitter. That tells you something about the class makeup of this website compared to others. I'm not saying don't fundraise on Tumblr. Tumblr users are a lot more conscious of social justice than Twitter or Instagram users and are less likely to tell you to bootstraps. But you have to understand that's sometimes it's not because you didn't have enough click bait in your post, sometimes its just because people have already reblogged a bunch of other fundraisers today and they don't have any money to give you

[someratidk]

AND THATS THAT FOR THIS YEAR LETS FUCKING GOOOO >> probably gonna like solely focus on my own ocs from now on, or for the near or distant future for whenever i post art. Got a lot of Ostea shit in the works I need finished but i cant like pull myself up by my bootstraps just yet (im lazy.) >> Fanart is definitely gonna take a massive back seat, im prioritizing my own ocs from now on so womp womp have yourself a bit of a cry. Might feed you once in a while idk (All my ocs and their world nonsense will be on my stupid little toyhouse too so if youre interested in seeing what im yapping abt then WAAH) ARTFIGHT days 16-31 (i DIDN'T MAKE IT TO MY ATTACK GOAL, BUT I GOT BETTER AT PAINTING??? AND AT THE STUPID SCENE/BACKGROUND WORK?? HEELLOO???? TURNS OUT PRACTICE ACTUALLY DOES SOMETHING???)

FROM FIRST/TOP TO BOTTOM, i GUESS?? 1-4) (Misc) Twitter: Tenk_oo 5) 'Valdis Artreberry', Artfight: 9692 // Toyhouse: dogpoo 6) 'Noah', Tumblr: @snailmanisreal 7) 'Decius', IG: Miminsart 8) 'Mystique', IG/Twitter/Toyhouse: MylesOfAsgard // Tumblr: @Prismuffin 9) 'Crescent', Tumblr: @topaztimes // Twitter: topicaltopaz // Toyhouse: DragoMel 10) 'Daisy', IG: fishy_flopps 11) 'Hina', Toyhouse/IG/Cara: kelzynx 12) 'Leif', Tumblr: @locurset 13) 'Cain Beau', Twitter: starIucky // Tumblr: @pato-ki // IG: pato_ki // Toyhouse: Patoki 14) 'Callen', Twitter: rinto190 15) 'Giancarlo', Twitter: vasabishii 16) 'Tharellus 'Hare' Decurrent', Toyhouse: CannedPeaches // Tumblr: @mapleglazedpeaches 17) 'Lena', IG: lcdtwn // Twitter: mrtoothyman 18) 'Lucia', IG iced_vaneella 19) 'Salem', Tumblr: @randomarty 20) 'Ardian Fischer', IG: faernily // Tumblr: @faernily

[richardsondavis]

Why is the "learn to code" meme considered so offensive?

It’s classist. It’s the modern version of “let them eat cake” aimed at large swaths of people who have been left unable to economically provide for themselves due to technology in a country that provides next to nothing by the way of any real social safety net after 40+ years of sustained neoliberal attacks and increasingly punitive means-testing on what remains of the miserly, inadequate Great Society safety nets for the jobless/unemployable poor we very briefly had from 1968 to 1980.

It’s ableist. Not only does it dismiss the fact that most older poor and working class people who didn’t grow up with any exposure and access to this technology CAN’T just “learn to code” (as if it’s just so easy), at least not without a LOT of help and obtuse learning support, and dismissive of well enough to be able to get any of the entry level coding jobs which overwhelmingly go to rich young computer wiz kids who are autodidacts that seemingly grew up learning coding by osmosis, it’s extremely insulting to anyone with a learning disability when they need to be able to economically survive today and while they try to sort out their lives. Which wo just can’t do it and never will be able to no matter how hard they try. It’s being deliberately erected and maintained by the opportunity-hoarding upper-middle class to keep as many poor underprivileged people out of tech (and other professional white-collar middle class jobs) as possible so that they (and their kids) don’t have to compete against poor people for any of the good jobs that remain in post-Welfare Reform and post-NAFTA America.

It deliberately ignores real barriers to entry to tech jobs that women, minorities, older workers, the disabled, and the poor continue to face - despite all the lip service and empty promises about “diversity” and “inclusion.” Barriers, I might add, that were and are deliberately erected and maintained by the opportunity-hoarding upper-middle class to keep as many poor underprivileged people out of tech (and other professional white-collar middle class jobs) as possible so that they (and their kids) don’t have to compete against poor people for any of the good jobs that remain in post-Welfare Reform and post-NAFTA America.

“Learn to code” is survivorship bias at its worst

Saying “learn to code” also promotes survivorship bias with the same callousness exhibited by Paul Graham (founder of Y-Combinator) whose recent faux pas on Twitter caused an uproar. Graham said that anyone can bootstrap a startup and succeed economically, pointing to Airbnb as an example - which was NOT founded by three poor underprivileged youths unable to pay their rent as Graham claimed, but three upper-middle class white male Ivy League college graduates who were struggling to pay rent in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of San Francisco, which is the most expensive, gentrified coastal city in North America. Huge difference.

Learning to code is VERY hard and near-impossible for older people aged 50+ who grew up on the losing side of the Digital Divide that didn’t have the opportunity to learn any computer skills while young and who weren’t exposed to computers or even Nintendo and Atari video games (remember Pong?) unless if they were from households in the upper-middle class - the top 10–20% - and could afford those expensive toys, because there were no affordable personal home computers or Internet access available to them when they were young.

Remember, the bottom 80% of Americans - which is the overwhelming majority of the US population - weren’t even able to afford a bottom end clearance-sale special PC until 20 years after the home computer was invented and the Internet was launched. Many economically ravaged regions between the coasts still do not have high-speed Internet access today in 2019 because the infrastructure for it was never installed in those places by the telecom companies.

In areas that have been economically devastated like Erie, PA where I live - which is 100 miles away from the nearest tech meetup groups - those who could finally manage to scrape together the money to afford a bottom-end computer only had access to dial-up Internet until 2008 after Verizon DSL and Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum) cable Internet infrastructures were finally installed. But many outlying regions of Erie County still lack it and are still on dial-up and landline phones. (Yes, really!)

Even though some older people without any prior computer skills or college educations have managed to overcome tremendous obstacles in order to learn how to code in their middle-aged/older years, ageism, ableism and classism runs as rampant (if not more so) than sexism and racism in the tech industry. Older job applicants, especially women and the disabled, who are heavily discriminated against for tech jobs despite tech’s phony “diversity and inclusion” initiatives, don’t get hired in these high-paying software developer jobs after having struggled to learn basic programming skills because tech is and always has been a young rich kids’ field where older people are not wanted.

Women, older workers, the disabled, displaced homemakers/caregivers, and other traditionally marginalized people never got hired after re-training in their middle-aged years, many using up what was left of their entire life savings to pay anywhere from $13K - $30K for dev bootcamp tuition, because the overwhelmingly young affluent tech employers deemed them as “not a good culture fit” - which is really nothing more than backdoor discrimination that the tech industry has not shown any proven commitment to eliminating. Just look at the biased algorithms driving AI, which is used in everything from targeted job ads on social media sites to companies’ human resource hiring decisions to product and services sales - all of which selectively discriminate against women, the disabled, older people, long-term unemployed/chronically poor people, and non-whites for access to jobs, goods and services. This issue has not even begun to be addressed by the tech industry, despite many people raising awareness about it over the past several years.

“Learn to code”/ “anyone can learn to code” is malicious, social Darwinist, and privilege-blind

You have to have a certain degree of cognitive ability and natural-born intellectual capacity to be able to learn how to code. The average IQ among Americans in the US is 98[1]. To be able to learn how to code, it’s been estimated that you need to have a minimum IQ of 125 - which is well above average (mine is 126, but I’m also dyslexic so I really struggled with learning to code as a much older lady and never was able to get a job). Someone with a low to average IQ who struggles with basic math is not going to be successful at learning to code. And there’s not a damn thing they, or anyone else, can do about it.

Saying that “anyone can learn to code - even pre-schoolers are doing it” is not only false, it’s victim-blamey. It’s dismissive of those who can’t, and never will be able to, learn to code and who can’t be realistically expected to compete against intellectually gifted, non-learning-disabled MIT and Stanford computer science graduates for coding jobs - especially since the more technically advanced and difficult coding jobs are in AI and neuro-learning networks and those are starting to outnumber the more basic and “easier” software developer jobs.

People for whom college was never an option who struggled with learning difficulties since birth, suffered a lot of trauma during their K-12 school years as children. They were punished, riciduled, mocked and bullied by teachers, classmates, and (sadly) even family members because they couldn’t succeed in school as children - no matter how many times they sacrificed recess to get extra help with their homework from the teacher and no matter how hard they tried, only to fail again and again. They’re certainly not going to be able to succeed at learning to code and break into tech jobs as older adults. It’s too difficult and traumatizing for them, and you can’t just “positive-think” your way out of a learning disability or a low-average IQ. That’s not how reality works.

You can’t punish people out of having learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities. It’s dangerous fairy dust thinking to insist that the very real limitations posed by learning disabilities and low-average IQs will magically disappear if the learning-disabled person would just have the “right attitude” instead of “using their learning disability as a crutch”, or if they “stop making excuses” for being “lazy” and “not trying hard enough” to learn to code when they know they can’t do it. If they were really able to do it, they wouldn’t have been held back twice in elemtary school and thrown into special ed for “slow learners” the minute they couldn’t grasp algebra in 7th grade.

Telling middle-aged displaced homemakers and blue-collar workers who struggled to make it to high school - many whom were deeply traumatized in the process and dropped out - that they should just “learn to code”, and then pick up and relocate (on no money and no car) to some expensive big city on the coast where all these fantastic jobs are, is like telling someone who spent their entire life from being raised as a feral child in the hinterlands of some remote forest to “just” become a nuclear physicist so they can get a job at NASA.

Remember whom this “learn to code” meme and its variants (i.e. “just go to college”, etc.) were being aimed at. They are verbal grenades that have been lobbed by upper-middle class professionals at discarded blue-collar workers and the very poor, in real life and on online forums, starting in the 1990s. We’re talking about a much older population who had been the primary targets of these cruel elitist attacks for decades - NOT the 20-somethings that IT companies and other tech startups seek.

IT skills and coding are hard enough to learn as an older person with a STEM degree and an above-average IQ and mathematical abilities if they didn’t grow up with this technology and have any opportunities to learn it while still young enough to be desired as an employee - like the Millenials and the younger generations coming up after them.

For people of ANY age who don’t have a solid grasp on math and symbolic logic, and the mechanical ability to visualize a running machine in their head, learning to code and succeeding in tech is impossible. People like this do NOT intuitively grasp how to “see” things like this on their own - it’s too abstract. They have to be shown. And the current standard fare of coding education materials does not demonstrate to such people how to “see it.” That makes learning to code impossible for large segments of the population.

But these people vote and they vote angry. And there’s only two candidates running for president in the 2020 election who called it right: Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. Of those two, only one has thoroughly analyzed the problem and presented a solution (a guaranteed basic income) that can be implemented immediately to relieve deep poverty and suffering in post-Welfare Reform America: Andrew Yang.

As much as I distrust Yang because he’s a Libertarian-leaning technocrat, and dislike his Neoliberal version of a UBI plan - because $1,000/mo is not enough for a permanently unemployable poor older/disabled unmarried person to live on, and because of how Yang wants to finance his version of the UBI instead of going with a more progressive UBI plan - I cannot disagree with any part of his analysis of the problem that got us here in the first place, or the spirit of a UBI.

Over a decade ago I wrote and self-published a book titled Classism For Dimwits (“Dummies” is a registered trademark, so couldn’t use it). It’s still available as print-on-demand and offered in paperback and hardcopy version from Barnes & Noble, and as an e-book on Kindle through Amazon. In that book, I extensively discussed the hidden injuries of class, the War on the Poor, and how utterly shitty and classist it was for well-off upper-middle class people to tell all the poor single mothers being thrown off of welfare with Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act without the guarantee of a living wage job and health benefits, and all the poor displaced blue-collar workers who’ve been surplussed, losing everything in their middle-aged years at an increasing pace since the 1990’s, that if they weren’t “smart enough” to “just go to college” and become whatever they deserved to suffer in poverty and should “stop whining” and “stop blaming society for their failures.”

Nobody cared when any of these shitbombs were hurled at America’s poorest and most vulnerable women and at poor discarded blue-collar workers whom the privileged middle and upper-middle classes never had a shred of sympathy for. Only now that it’s being aimed at bright, well-educated middle class journalists is it starting to matter.

[shinyasahalo]

GH thoughts

The trafficking storyline with Felicia and Carly was such white feminist saviorism. In the end Felicia and Carly get all the credit for the rescue instead of the person deciding to rescue themselves.

The writers really believe that once a person get asylum, there's a happily ever after S/ because in the US everyone can totally pull themselves by their bootstraps, particularly if they don't have job experience, and therapy and housing is totally easy to get.

Anyway follow Sabra Boyd in Twitter, I learned a lot about trafficking from her.

Decriminalize sex work! Legalization only benefits capitalism.