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Sarah Mei Profile picture
Sarah Mei
Software engineer & founder of @RailsBridge and @LivableCode. Engineering at @BackerKit. Black Lives Matter. she/her
Nat Welch Profile picture Jay Peper 🇺🇦 Profile picture Aaron Harpole Profile picture Ragan Profile picture ‾ᷜTͤu̅ͮr̅ͥn̅ᷠer 🐍🕸 Profile picture 12 added to My Authors
Nov 3, 2021 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Would you like to work on a small team with me and other wonderful people building software enabling crowdfunding creators to live their best lives? Then you should check this out: jobs.lever.co/backerkit/1fe2… The crowdfunding space is actually super fascinating right now. It got waaaaay bigger during the pandemic and it is continuing to diversify and grow as we (hopefully? maybe?) start to come out of it.
Jul 12, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
TERFs are the worst. Morally repulsive AND factually wrong. The worst part is that they call their abuse of trans folks “fighting for their rights as women.”

I guess I’ve lived long enough to see my activism co-opted by the baddies. Women are women! Trans women are part of that! As a uterus-haver, I am not bothered by penis-havers being women! Some of them always have been anyway. The whole “sex not gender” thing is just incredibly stupid.
Jul 6, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Whenever I want to feel happy about being in my 40s, r/relationships is where I go. This particular reply comes from a question “my boyfriend doesn’t allow me to read romance novels, what should I do?”

It is AMAZING to be old enough that the answer to that is just obvious🚮
Apr 22, 2021 • 10 tweets • 1 min read
Hello!

Bitcoin is not a currency. Just had to get that off my chest. Please continue with your day.
Apr 13, 2021 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Today, another idiot FSF fan tried to get me fired. This time by tagging in rando Salesforce people not even near my reporting line.

It’s almost like FSF people REALLY don’t like women engineers 🤔 They’re also, on the whole, not too bright when it comes to “canceling” someone 🤔🤔
Feb 24, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
More and more, Bitcoin is reminding me of Qanon:

- mysterious unknown founder

- siphons off emotional and/or actual energy to no useful end

- adherents don’t understand what it’s for or how it works Another defining feature of both Bitcoin and Qanon:
Jan 11, 2021 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Perhaps we’re all tired of dunking on parler, but just in case you’re not, I did some investigation this evening.

tl;dr: technical clown shoes.

🧵 Their CTO is a person named Alexander Blair, whose career (according to his LinkedIn) has been mostly sys admin and DevOps jobs. His job history goes back to 2008. linkedin.com/in/alexander-b…
Jan 10, 2021 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
As a veteran of several hurried rewrite projects, I can say with confidence that if parler is “rebuilding from scratch,” the SOONEST they’ll be back online is July. Oh exactly!
Jan 5, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
My mode of software development is to just start trying things. But I love working with people who need to read all the docs first.

I used to think that was a waste of time & I wanted a whole team like me, but it turns out - my mode isn’t always the right way to go. I also like to use boring, reliable technology. But I love working with people who are into the new hotness.

Because it turns out, boring & reliable isn’t always the right answer, and I need people pushing me to consider the new hotness - because sometimes they’re right.
Nov 23, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
PSA: There is currently no way for web components to be accessible if you use the isolation feature (called “shadow dom”).

Isolate the label from the input field, for example, & you break all the assistive technology - which requires they be tied together with ids. There will eventually be a plan for dealing with accessibility across web component isolation boundaries, but the discussion is in the early stages, and we’re not likely to see consensus for several years.

Until then, isolation via shadow dom is a nonstarter.
Nov 18, 2019 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
More accurate headline:

Entitled Asshole Expects City To Look After Private Property He Leaves On Public Land Part of the problem is that he’s a rich tech executive who is actively contributing to the income inequality that leads to these property crimes, yet instead of addressing that, all he does is demand MORE resources.

Nov 11, 2019 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
We’ve all heard this story before.

Gig workers start off make reasonable money doing something useful on their own schedule.

Then after workers get invested in the platform & the tools, the company drastically cuts pay rates. There’s a slide deck somewhere on some VC’s computer that is the “exploit gig workers handbook” - and it includes this move, because for awhile after you do it you still get higher-level work done for pennies because your workers trusted you & engaged with your platform.
Oct 30, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is a very useful communication hack that it took me over a decade of working to figure out.

Save yourself the time and just read this 😅 When I was younger & often the only woman on a team, I found that the white men in my team could jump straight to “X is terrible” & have it cheerfully explained to them.

I & my PoC male coworkers, on the other hand, often got defensiveness & tone policing when we did that.
Oct 7, 2019 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
I can’t stop thinking about this bit in the Theranos book.

Company executives (Balwani was one) used this functionality to convince people that their machines were working - just slowly - when they were, in fact, not working at all. These demonstrations were used to cement partnerships, wow journalists, and secure company funding - all on false pretenses.

And worse - these non-working machines ACTUALLY INJURED PEOPLE.
Sep 28, 2019 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
Reminders:
1. The @fsf board is still run by Alexandre Oliva, who has more compassion for Stallman than for his harassment victims @fsf 2. The @fsf has not separated itself from its main project - GNU - a project that Richard Stallman continues to run. The FSF provides all of the project's funding and organizational support.
Sep 27, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
If they’re not the same, why are they both listed as URLs for the free software foundation?🤔 Who pays for the gnu.org website? Are there any paid staff on the project?

It sure seems like the @fsf thinks it has found a loophole enabling it to keep funding a serial harasser. #cancelstallman

Sep 26, 2019 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
It’s been more than a week since Stallman resigned from the @FSF. The organization has still not communicated even _vague_ plans for moving forward.

#cancelstallman means not just removing him from power. It means rethinking what the org he created is for - & who it serves. Beyond the 57-word resignation statement, published on September 16th, the @FSF website has zero content about the upheaval.

Since the 16th, though, they’ve published two blog posts and one news item on unrelated free software topics.
Sep 23, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
You are welcome to try. These ones are the funniest replies. "OMG I'M GONNA HOLD YOU TO YOUR PUBLISHED STATEMENTS AND TELL UR EMPLOYER"....like, ok, please do.

Maybe I'll get a bonus :D
Sep 23, 2019 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
[cw: child sexual assault]

Heh, well, as long as we’re going for “technically correct”...

You’re right. “All” Stallman did was defend Marvin Minsky’s rape of a 16-year-old girl.

Said rape was facilitated by Epstein, so in defending it, he indirectly defended Epstein’s actions. Even if you object to drawing the line between defending the rape and defending Epstein, the fact remains that he

defended
Minsky’s
rape
of a 16-year-old girl.
Sep 21, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Fascist apologia sine non qua from @cscobie, the CTO of @chef.

blog.chef.io/2019/09/20/a-p… “What if the IT professionals [...] inside ICE could actually help reduce the number of separated families by having visibility and the information they need to stop raids before they happened?”

THE SEPARATION & THE RAIDS ARE THE POINT

YOU’RE HELPING THEM DO MORE OF THEM
Sep 20, 2019 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Been thinking a lot about what comes after “free software” & “open source.”

Both terms were coined when the tech industry (& the world) was a very different place. I think we’ve outgrown them. Early thoughts: both concepts are too code-centric and too license-oriented.

Many things that we think of as indispensable to modern open source projects are not included in the formal definitions. This is a good sign that we have another, as-yet-unnamed concept in play.