ruby’s rants & randomness
If you’re not outraged, you’re not reading my blog.
Monica Roberts, the original TransGriot, just passed away. She was an absolute titan. In the early blogging days I heard about her pioneering work, telling stories of people that hardly anyone was even thinking about at the time, especially online. She received a lifetime achievement award at the Creating Change conference that I attended in …
Continue reading "Rest in power, Monica Roberts"
Here is a personal statement and an update on the Graham 9 – the group arrested at a Never Again Alamance protest last November. On our first trial date, one member (who was charged with “masking” if you can believe it) received a Prayer for Judgement. The rest of us are charged with failure to …
Continue reading "Graham 9 Update"
Given Trump’s on-going incitement of white supremacists to intimidate voters at the polls, is anyone still wondering why they should vote by mail? I put my ballot in the mail on Monday without even leaving my house. It was picked up by a mail carrier (working so late that they were wearing a headlamp). Today, …
Continue reading "Vote by mail now, while you still can"
Ten months ago, I joined hundreds of Jews, immigrants, and our friends in Graham, North Carolina to say “no more” to the the cruel, racist, and unnecessary practices of ICE and to call out Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson‘s enthusiastic enforcement of their white supremacist agenda. I was arrested at that demonstration, along with nine …
Continue reading "Challenging racism and saving souls in Alamance County"
by elin o’Hara slavick, August 2020
This is not the time for poetry.
Words deny me.
I deny words.
The world does not need fragments.
It is screaming to be whole.
Many Drupal developers consider site builders to be one of the most important types of users they are building for. The project lead regularly talks about how to “Improve the site builder experience” in his state-of-Drupal keynotes. But how well do developers really understand site builders and what we do? I put together this presentation to help people understand the realities and constraints of being a site builder.
Continue reading "Five things that Drupal site builders need developers to know"I’m sure this only scratches the surface because it only tracks incidents of police violence that are reported on Twitter but I really appreciate folks (including Durham lawyer Greg Doucette) for putting this together. See also The Guardian‘s site The Counted, which they created to track police killings in 2015 because no-one else was even …
Continue reading "Mapping police brutality"In 2017, I stopped talking about the parallels to 1930s Germany (when fascists were gradually coming into power) because people tuned me out and acted like I was hysterical. Now here we are. It sucks being right when no-one listens.
Continue reading "I hate being right"
I cannot understand people’s insistence on believing that Republicans are failing because they are incompetent. They are extremely strategic, they just don’t have any intrinsic morality. They will grab all the money and power within reach, and they’ll believe it was right if they don’t get caught. Even in the areas where they simply lack …
Continue reading "It’s not incompetence"
After screaming into the void for weeks on Twitter about the desperate need for massive testing and rapid social isolation, we are now living that quarantine life. Like many parents I am trying not to terrify my child (and myself), but unlike many parents I will not sugarcoat things. Especially after spending decades talking about …
Continue reading "Quarantine for kids"