Paco Hope #BLM @paco@mastodon.org.uk

I wish I could somehow convey to tech companies that I literally NEVER want their opinion on what I would like. I don’t want recommendations for products, apps, services, whether personalised or not. Aren’t personalised recommendations better than impersonal ones? Maybe. But that’s like asking whether I’d like cigar smoke instead of cigarette smoke. It kinda implies I’m inhaling some smoke and not smoking is really what I would prefer.

If you've ever ordered sweetened iced tea in the South, you know it should just be called diabete-teas.

My first ever #mastocats contribution on #caturday proper. 3 short videos of Arty, my new cat. So named because of his Raccoon Tail (RT). The first clearly shows the tail in motion: his most prominent feature. The second let’s you hear his chirpy voice. The third he’s just head down in my water glass having a drink.

Got my new #cat yesterday. Forgot to post a photo. He has a raccoon tail, so I named him Arty (“RT”). He’s settling in really well. #mastocats

Just spent an hour teaching my 16yo about relational databases. He has already taught himself credible amounts of python, C, C++, bash, and Go. Now I’m trying to get him to think about communicating with stuff outside his own process. Like API calls and databases

This young #puppy displays more scientific method in 60 seconds than the average anti-vaxxer/anti-masker does in an entire YouTube rant.

https://mamot.fr/@Air/108319512066959777

T minus 24 hours until my new cat comes home!

The authors appear to be two men and one woman. There are like 4 photos that appear to have a veterinarian in them. Of course the vet codes as white, but the vet is also a man with a beard in the one photo where the face is visible. In other photos it's just a (white) arm and there aren't any gender indicators on an arm. 3/

There are like 2 photos where I think it might be a light-skinned Latinx or a light-skinned Asian person. But there are no dark-skinned people in the ENTIRE book. No East Asians or South Asians. No people of colour. And this is how people of colour fail to see themselves. Cats can be pets for anybody, so it makes no sense to have only white people in the book.

On to gender. The authors clearly thought about it. They talk about 'he' and 'she' cats pretty equally. 2/

Here's a fascinating thread about subtle racism. I bought a book about #cat adoption. You wouldn't expect that adopting cats has anything to do with #race or #gender. And yet, there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of photos of people interacting with cats. Sometimes you see a whole person. Sometimes it's just a face, or a hand, or a finger. In this book, if you see skin, that skin codes as white. 1/