read
· · to read
The total collapse of Jewish and Israeli PR by SHMULEY BOTEACH
From the beginning of my rabbinic career, I focused mightily on public relations and disseminating the Jewish message to the world. I was accused of being publicity-hungry and of shallowness. But I knew that the one area where we Jews have so significantly failed was in public relations. And this has been true throughout the centuries.

I don’t know Rabbi, did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason so many have accused you of being publicity-hungry and shallow is because you’ve spent the last 40 years or so co-opting the worst excesses of the self-help genre to do your bit to strip Judaism down to its cheapest parts so you could make it a pop culture sensation?

read
· · to read
Security Alert – May 15, 2021 by U.S. Embassy in Kabul
The Embassy reminds U.S. citizens that on April 27, 2021, the Department of State ordered the departure from U.S. Embassy Kabul of U.S. government employees whose functions can be performed elsewhere due to increasing violence and threat reports in Kabul. The Travel Advisory for Afghanistan remains Level 4-Do Not Travel due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, armed conflict, and COVID-19. Commercial flight options from Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) remain available and the U.S. Embassy strongly suggests that U.S. citizens make plans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the Embassy’s ability to assist U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited.
reply
· · to read

Well, for starters, if we’re going to have to put up with antisemites, we’d rather the ones who don’t try to use Israel as a get-out-of-jail-free card for their own antisemitism. American Jews, whether Democrat or Republican, are Americans. Not some outsider guest living in your precious country.

reply
· · to read

No really, I promise, we’re not just “stirred by thought leaders”. I can state with complete confidence that neither Karl Groves nor Adrian Roselli have gotten in touch with me in any manner to offer beers in exchange for negative comments about AccessiBe. 😛 And really, that’s all it would take, that is, if we must mix in some stirring by thought leaders.

I could be this easily bribed to slam AccessiBe because the product doesn’t solve even half the problems it claims to solve, hell will freeze over before they manage to make the entire web accessible, and Ekerling, at least, is a lying liar who lies.

There. I said it. Publicly. The AccessiBe hashtag on Twitter is overflowing with examples of websites that don’t work, complete with videos of users experiencing them not working. Ekerling knows this. So we’re well past ignorance and well into lying territory.

read
· · to read
Facebook is pretending it cares how its platform affects the world by Siva Vaidhyanathan
The reality is that Trump used Facebook most effectively as an organizing and fundraising tool, not as a platform for ‘posting’

My only response to this is: “Well of course he did.” He was handed an incredibly powerful set of tools coupled with an incredibly easy way to use them. What did people expect would happen?

State College

45 °F Partly cloudy

note
· · to read

Update on #AccessiBe’s insistence that its screen reader mode alert is no longer on by default.

As of Friday 30 April 2021 at 09:25 Eastern, it is in fact still there and still as annoying as ever. I’m logged into Namecheap on a computer accessing a network that doesn’t have AccessiBe’s domains blocked.

So if this hasn’t been added already, add another outright AccessiBe lie to the list. Man, you guys are really racking these up.

note
· · to read

I think I’ve officially gotten to the point where, if a podcast doesn’t have a transcript, I’m skipping it.

First, because actual accessibility. Second, because it’s a whole lot easier for me to quickly scroll through a transcript to find the thing I was interested in.