Today in 1992, 31 years ago: The United States officially establishes diplomatic relations with Russia.

#OnThisDay

This is a great story of how Barnes & Noble’s new CEO who was hired in 2019 has turned around the company. Sales are up, it opened 16 stores this year and plans to open more next year.

The secret is the CEO really likes books and readers. So he stopped doing deals with publishers to promote their latest books & NYT best sellers and encouraged individual stores to promote books they found most interesting.

So simple yet…

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

Last boost (linked below) provides excellent examples of the stories we are missing when major papers focus on ”holdouts” or frame caution as more unusual than it actually is, in many places.

There are a lot of exceptionally talented journalists at the NYT and I can’t help imagining a beat that relentlessly humanized and (sorry) normalized communities/families/ individuals who have adapted and worked hard to protect each other and continue to do so.

https://neurodifferent.me/@nicedragon/109586102699624668

This writer spent a year lurking in the FB group she mentions (of which I am a member), never participating until the end when she posted asking for interviews.

She must have seen countless threads sharing scientific articles and members helping each other find reliable information. She must have seen the anguish of parents watching teachers, friends, and family members refusing to mask to protect a child with a life-threatening condition.

She must have seen much discussion about disinformation and the conflict between what scientists say and the CDC guidelines. She must have seen stories of immune-compromised people being forced back to work in order to pay the rent. She must have seen many, many people mention the disabilities and deaths their families have experienced due to COVID. She must have seen many, many comments of people who had been lied to about precautions by family members who insisted on seeing them, sometimes resulting in hospitalizations. She must have seen stories of people whose masks had been ripped off, who had been spit upon, because they were masking.

She must have seen a rich, supportive community trying to help one another through with scientific resources and solidarity while facing injustice and hatred.

But she didn't write about that. She wrote about those worried weirdos who don't know that COVID is over. It seems to me she missed a lot of real stories on her way to write this.

@novid #CovidIsNotOver #COVID

10 Image #CaptionTips from a transcriptionist:

1. Any words are better than nothing.
2. You don't need to say it's "a picture of…" screen readers will already say it's an image.
3. Start with the framing or format (i.e. close up, landscape, meme, text).
4. Think about the reason you're posting the pic and describe that first, add background details if you have time.
5. Pretend you're talking to someone on the phone and want to tell them about this cool thing you're looking at.
6. Transcribe any and all text in the image, even if it's the only thing you do.
7. If you've described the image in your post, you don't need to copy and paste it again in the caption. But again, don't leave it blank, just put something like "as described."
8. You can add small subjective notes, but don't give too much interpretation of the image in your own opinion.
9. Caption jokes are fun, as long as they still describe the image objectively.
10. Use punctuation, and capitalize words properly. A lot of us have interacted with this tech when calling customer service or talking to Siri, so keep in mind that you're writing for a computer to read, and it needs all the help it can get.