thedorismith

[thedorismith]

Not as if I have any followers who are likely to ask, though.

reblog this if you want people to send you random asks to get to know you better

[thedorismith]

[thedorismith]

[thedorismith]

I have an entire rant that I can deliver at the drop of the hat about the Zen concept of "Beginner's Mind" and why most people who teach STEM suck at it so badly. Especially book authors.

[thedorismith]

When I was a kid, the "Oh my god, you got so big!" comment from grown-ups used to really annoy me, because it felt broadly infantilising. But now, as an adult myself, I realise it had very little to do with me, and almost everything to do with said grown-up feeling suddenly attacked by the passage of time, yet not wanting to blurt out "shit, fuck, I just pissed away like four years of my life without noticing, then, huh?" in front of an 8-year-old.

[thedorismith]

Join MEEEEEE!

@thedorismith@mastodon.social

A certain percentage of the Twitter exodus were always bound to return. This is perfectly normal: new services always experience “scalloped” growth. That’s where an outside event — a positive narrative about the new service, or a catastrophe affecting the old one — drives a surge of new users.

Some of those users try the new service, decide it’s not worth it, and leave — but not all of them. Each event triggers a high tide of new signups, but the low tide that follows is still higher than the old level. Surge after surge, the number of users steadily builds, despite the normal ebb and flow.

Despite the completely predictable dropoff in users after the initial Twitter surge, journalists have published (equally predictable and decidedly premature) obituaries for Mastodon and the Fediverse with titles like “The Mastodon Bump Is Now a Slump” and “Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon — but many aren’t sticking around.”

As Mike Masnick points out, these stories aren’t just lazy, they are actively misleading, omitting the fact that the users who stayed on Mastodon’s shores after the tide went out are incredibly active:

[A]ctual usage of the fediverse continues to increase month by month, including through January, meaning that while some people signed up and never used it, those who are using it, are using it more and more.

Of Course Mastodon Lost Users: Scalloped growth is not evidence of a platform in decline.

[thedorismith]

Go Marvel go!

Or, not?

Tumblr’s Worse Fandom Awards!

Over the years we’ve had some god awful fandom moments. Discourse, infighting, death threats. It’s time we vote on which fandom is/was the worse of the worse. The finals will be a 1v1v1

Before you ask yes I stole this from twitter but I’m adding more fandoms to it.

Polls for Round 1 will be sent out February 9th. Masterpost will be linked below after they are all sent out.

ROUND 1: Masterpost [Feb 9th to Feb 10th]

ROUND 2: Masterpost [TBA]

ROUND 3: Masterpost [TBA]

ROUND 4: Masterpost [TBA]

[thedorismith]

If you did please say in the tags where and how it happened

[thedorismith]

Finally hit one of my crafting business goals: got a review from a buyer I don't already know. Five stars, even!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SmallShinyStudio

[thedorismith]

Tonight I witnessed the first sign of Spring 2023: the cat horked up a hairball.

[thedorismith]

I once had a talk in my repertoire titled "Web Acessibility: Who Needs It?". I think I gave it twice, IIRC.

Maybe a year after one of those talks, a guy came up to me at a conference and told me that hearing that session had completely changed his career path. He'd heard me talk about how (and why!) to sell accessibility as a required feature to clients, and that's what he was now doing full-time.

I did some cool shit back in the day. I should remember that more often.

Watched a great talk today about web/technology accessibility, and the speaker pointed out that yes, accessibility is important for people with permanent disabilities, and we should definitely care about that. But also accessibility helps EVERYBODY, because everybody will, at some point in their lives, find themselves in situations that accessible technology can help with. Here are permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities that accessible technology can help with:

Remember that whether something is disabling or not depends on the situation, the environment, the technology, etc. We’re ALL disabled at some point. It is important to support permanently disabled people, but it is also important to remember that accessibility helps us all!

[thedorismith]

Blatant MCU erasure.

[thedorismith]

I love everything Sci writes, but these are my two fave characters for her to write. And when she puts them in the same scene… I know at some point my heart is going to break, and then be remade again.

Or would, if she would just finish the fics (whimper). "Phil Coulson Wasn't Grown in a Lab (He Has a Mom)" was last updated nine years ago, and I NEED it.

There are no words for how much I need more fic of Clint with Shirley. But here's a new little snippet of something, and that makes today amazing.

Clocks installed in interview rooms were a special sort of loud.

Clint wasn’t sure if it was the acoustics of the fake mirror wall, or the lack of anything other than a table and two chairs to absorb the sound, or maybe if the people who bolted clocks to the wall in police interrogation rooms just flipped the switch from ‘normal’ to ‘goddamn that’s annoying,’ but the ticking of an interrogation room clock could drive a man insane.

Of course, he’d been pretty nuts before he’d walked in.

The door opened and he didn’t bother to look in that direction.  He just kept staring straight ahead, watching his own reflection in the mirror.  The sound of the door shutting again somehow slipped in between the tick-tick-tick of the seconds marching past, a strange interruption in the steady march of time.

The world skipping a literal beat, before falling back into place.

“Mr. Roberts?”

He didn’t bother to respond.  Not that the cop was waiting for one.

The man dropped into the seat on the other side of the table, the legs scraping against the floor as he shifted forward.  He dropped a folder on the tabletop.  “George Roberts?”

Clint looked at him. The cop squinted at him, his eyes disappearing under the heavy ridge of his eyebrows.  “You look familiar.”

Clint didn’t bother to respond.  His IDs would hold up to far greater scrutiny than a third rate police force in a fourth rate city could muster.  SHIELD didn’t do things halfway, but their work had its downside.  The fake documents in Clint’s wallet would never be detected as fakes, but the moment they���d been scanned, somewhere in the depths of SHIELD’s systems, an alarm had gone off.

Just a warning at first.  Notifying the right people in the chain of command that he’d been compromised.  That the op was in danger.

The real problem would be when the right people in the wrong places took a good hard look at where Clint was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing.  That’s when all hell was absolutely ging to break loose.

And the sound of the ticking clock was really getting on his nerves for some reason.

The cop was still talking, and Clint absolutely wasn’t listening.  Probably not good.  He probably should be paying attention.  He shifted in his seat, and the handcuffs clattered against the edge of the table.  I”d like to make a phone call.”

The cop stopped, clearly mid-word, his expression going sour.  Clint got the impression that he wasn’t used to being ignored, and he didn’t like it much.  For a moment, his face flexed, and Clint could almost see the thoughts going through his head.  The urge to put Clint in his place fought against his desire to evesdrop on the call.

The need for information won out.  

Five minutes later, a battered phone straight out of the nineties was dropped onto the table in front of him, and the cop dropped back into his seat.  Clint didn’t bother asking for privacy.

He knew the number by heart, thankfully.  As it rang, he let his eyes close, not sure if he wanted it to be picked up or not.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” he said. “It’s me.”  He took a deep breath, and then another.  “Know that dinosaur problem I was having?”

A pause.  “Yes.”

“Right.”  Clint licked his lips.  “It’s a bigger problem than we thought.”  He shifted in his seat.  “And I’ve been arrested.”

“What do you need?” Steady.  Calm.  Unshakeable.  He’d always loved that.

God, he was going to miss it.

He inhaled.  “I need you to outsmart your son.”

There was a moment of silence.  “I’m on my way,” Shirley Coulson said.  

Clint stared at his face in the mirror.  “You don’t have much time.”

“Trust me.  I know.  Where are you?”

[thedorismith]

[thedorismith]

That's… most of my friends. And 100% of the people I know on Tumblr.

[thedorismith]

I did this poll on twitter* a few years ago to continue an argument that Ryn and I had been having (argument in air quotes, more like a Bit at that point), and I just realized I can do it again here!

*I probably have a screenshot of the final results from Twitter somewhere in my files. I may see if I can track it down when this is done.

[thedorismith]

How many of these are also names of fonts?