I wish I had the money to take the PACE trial people to court. From changing the criteria part way through the study, to gaslighting patients, they have caused irreparable harm to millions of people with #MECFS and now #LongCovid.

They should be made publicly accountable for the damage they have done. Their so-called reputations should be destroyed, and what they did should be taught as an example on how NOT to run a study.

#MECFS #LongCovid #PaceTrial

Every few months, I find myself recommending basically everyone read this one article about the protactile deafblind language. But particularly relevant to mastodon users (AND people working on automated image captioning) is its great discussion of what makes good alt text.

There is such a thing as excess detail! It may make you look like a True Ally, but you're not helping blind people. #screenreaders #accessibility

https://audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/against_access.html

think of the CW of a content wrapper in addition to a content warning

yeah, it can and should be used for triggering things (trauma, phobias, other things)

but also, for super long posts/the beginning of a thread, for spoilers, for things that may be difficult for screen readers, for jokes, for whatever you want

they didn't start trying to destroy public schools until the public schools were integrated

they didn't start slashing funding to state colleges until the state colleges were integrated

they didn't start yelling about "gov't overreach" until the gov't told them they had to serve Black ppl

Trump didn't "make" the GOP racist

they were racist already

Hey, a reminder! If you're well off, January is probably the worst month for artists and creators or other people who depend on other people spending money to support them.

So if you can afford to? Browse and buy some art, subscribe or donate to some new people, go go go.

Even small donations go a long way!

One thing I'm finding I increasingly like doing in TTRPGs is using a deck of cards in place of dice. Why?

Well, dice are truly random. They can feel awfully unfair sometimes if you get a run of bad luck because randomness isn't fair except on very long timescales.

Cards work like people expect random numbers to work. Once you've drawn a 4 card, there's one fewer 4 in the deck and so you're less likely to get a 4 next time. If you get a whole load of low numbers at once, you've got a new load of big ones still to come.

PAST:
Abolitionist believing that slavery was wrong and should be abolished is one thing

Abolitionist believing slaves were their EQUAL is quite another

PRESENT:

“Good white folx” believing that Black folx are treated unfairly is one thing

“Good white folx” believing that they benefit and perpetuate that unfair treatment is quite another

Hey, I'm a disabled queer person, I'm not able to work as much as I'd like (I'm trying to work through that with professional help) and I'm almost out of money to pay for food and bills.

If there's some emoji, emote, icon or vector art you'd like to get from me, I have commissions available (the latter two you'll have to DM me to enquire, I don't have pages for those yet):

https://dzuk.zone/commissions

If there's nothing you'd like in particular and you do have the money to spare and have appreciated the work I've done through Mutant Standard or something else, you can donate here:

https://ko-fi.com/dzuk_

Thanks 💚