Hey PJ, I just subscribed to incognito mode! I had been meaning to for a while and finally pulled the trigger.
On another note, the large screenshot of text you included is great to get some insight, but it is inaccessible to people who need to use assistive tech like screen readers or people who have low vision and would need to zoom in to see it (images of text get blurry when zoomed in, unlike programmed text). You did link the article that it's from—in normal circumstances I think that would honestly cover everything and I wouldn't have said anything! But when I tried to find the actual text in the linked article, it turns out I needed to pay or start a trial to the author to see that information.
A potential solution for this could be to type of all that text out in the email instead of posting a picture of it. You could also add it all as alt text, though that is not a perfect solution. Or maybe just mention that in order to see the full text, you'll have to go to the linked site and subscribe to the author's post (or whatever it was I had to do).
Anyway, this isn't meant to rag on you. I'm an accessibility professional who also happens to love search engine, and I figured I'd share my thoughts :)
Ooh, I am such a knucklehead for not putting in alt text. I’m walking into a meeting now but I will add it afterwards. Thanks for the nudge. Will be there this evening.
Alt text didn't like the size of the block so I just deleted the screengrab and replaced with a block quote. Should be good to go. Thanks for the note.
That's awesome, PJ! Yeah maybe substack has a character limit for alt text, I'm not sure. But in general alt text is supposed to not be crazy long, so I think the block quote was the best move. Thanks again!
Regarding the Iglesias piece: "He strikes me as a genuinely well-meaning person." I don't think that being well-meaning and aligning with Trump are compatible.
It took me time to dive into this, and when I finally did...oof. It brought me right back to Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, in which she tackles how the progressive left so often unintentionally, unstrategically exiles would-be allies to the right. She writes:
"On the democratic socialist left, we favor social policies that are inclusive and caring—universal public health care, well-funded public schools, decarceration, and rights for migrants. But left movements often behave in ways that are neither inclusive nor caring. And...in practice most of us (even many who claim to be staunchly anti-police) spend a lot of time policing our movements’ borders, turning on people who see themselves as on our side, making our ranks smaller, not larger.
"When we have differences, we tend to focus on them obsessively, finding as many opportunities as possible to break apart. Important dis-agreements need to be hashed out, and many conflicts that arise in progressive spaces are over behaviors that, when unchallenged, make those spaces unwelcoming or dangerous for the people they target. But it’s not a great secret that plenty of people routinely go too far, turning minor language infractions into major crimes, while adopting a discourse that is so complex and jargon-laden that people outside university settings often find it off-putting—or straight-up absurd."
This episode made me see Zuckerberg as yet another example of this; it's hard not to feel a bit bleak about it. But in the moments of overwhelm "at-scale" (e.g. Facebook) I come back to the small (e.g. 1:1 human connection). At least we have that. At least we have Search Engine--and you, PJ. Thanks for all this, even when it's hard.
Thanks, PJ for a great Search Engine episode. Well, for me in incognito mode because I’m fancy like that. So glad that they’re still content like this out in the podcast world. I saw that Zuckerberg was on Joe Rogan and then I saw your podcast and it did not disappoint! Thanks for the nuance to take on this very polarizing figure. It would be fascinating to do a deep dive on more of this.
This was good. I learned a lot, and while I don't think about Zuck much, seeing him in all the photos at the inauguration piqued my interest. I heard somewhere that this "tech dude" reaching out to Trump may have started with Tim Cook at Apple. If this were true, then it would be interesting to know more.
Hey PJ, I just subscribed to incognito mode! I had been meaning to for a while and finally pulled the trigger.
On another note, the large screenshot of text you included is great to get some insight, but it is inaccessible to people who need to use assistive tech like screen readers or people who have low vision and would need to zoom in to see it (images of text get blurry when zoomed in, unlike programmed text). You did link the article that it's from—in normal circumstances I think that would honestly cover everything and I wouldn't have said anything! But when I tried to find the actual text in the linked article, it turns out I needed to pay or start a trial to the author to see that information.
A potential solution for this could be to type of all that text out in the email instead of posting a picture of it. You could also add it all as alt text, though that is not a perfect solution. Or maybe just mention that in order to see the full text, you'll have to go to the linked site and subscribe to the author's post (or whatever it was I had to do).
Anyway, this isn't meant to rag on you. I'm an accessibility professional who also happens to love search engine, and I figured I'd share my thoughts :)
Ooh, I am such a knucklehead for not putting in alt text. I’m walking into a meeting now but I will add it afterwards. Thanks for the nudge. Will be there this evening.
Thanks, PJ!
Alt text didn't like the size of the block so I just deleted the screengrab and replaced with a block quote. Should be good to go. Thanks for the note.
That's awesome, PJ! Yeah maybe substack has a character limit for alt text, I'm not sure. But in general alt text is supposed to not be crazy long, so I think the block quote was the best move. Thanks again!
Regarding the Iglesias piece: "He strikes me as a genuinely well-meaning person." I don't think that being well-meaning and aligning with Trump are compatible.
It took me time to dive into this, and when I finally did...oof. It brought me right back to Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, in which she tackles how the progressive left so often unintentionally, unstrategically exiles would-be allies to the right. She writes:
"On the democratic socialist left, we favor social policies that are inclusive and caring—universal public health care, well-funded public schools, decarceration, and rights for migrants. But left movements often behave in ways that are neither inclusive nor caring. And...in practice most of us (even many who claim to be staunchly anti-police) spend a lot of time policing our movements’ borders, turning on people who see themselves as on our side, making our ranks smaller, not larger.
"When we have differences, we tend to focus on them obsessively, finding as many opportunities as possible to break apart. Important dis-agreements need to be hashed out, and many conflicts that arise in progressive spaces are over behaviors that, when unchallenged, make those spaces unwelcoming or dangerous for the people they target. But it’s not a great secret that plenty of people routinely go too far, turning minor language infractions into major crimes, while adopting a discourse that is so complex and jargon-laden that people outside university settings often find it off-putting—or straight-up absurd."
This episode made me see Zuckerberg as yet another example of this; it's hard not to feel a bit bleak about it. But in the moments of overwhelm "at-scale" (e.g. Facebook) I come back to the small (e.g. 1:1 human connection). At least we have that. At least we have Search Engine--and you, PJ. Thanks for all this, even when it's hard.
Thanks, PJ for a great Search Engine episode. Well, for me in incognito mode because I’m fancy like that. So glad that they’re still content like this out in the podcast world. I saw that Zuckerberg was on Joe Rogan and then I saw your podcast and it did not disappoint! Thanks for the nuance to take on this very polarizing figure. It would be fascinating to do a deep dive on more of this.
Great ep great production all around 5 stars. Extra points to Armen for the very Burial esque outro music.
This was good. I learned a lot, and while I don't think about Zuck much, seeing him in all the photos at the inauguration piqued my interest. I heard somewhere that this "tech dude" reaching out to Trump may have started with Tim Cook at Apple. If this were true, then it would be interesting to know more.