Can you read this? Y/N. Reply via Twitter...
Yes, this is (partly) a hint about what U.S. readers need to schedule doing tomorrow. Having made sure your polling place has NOT actually been changed to somewhere ninety miles from your home, or got that settled if it had been, plan to go where it really is. Some of you may know people who drive minivans or other vehicles with extra seating. This is a great time of year to be a van owner. Plan now to fill every seat.
This is also a poll about legibility. Last week a reader e-mailed to say that he thought this web site looks oldfashioned, which is good, and that he was having trouble reading it on his stupidphone, which is not so good. Although this web site's goal is to remain easy to read on devices as classic as the Original Toshiba and the Sickly Snail (the 1989 and 1991 laptops we keep around because they were good laptops), we don't want to be out of reach for those who can't afford decent computers.
We want to apply pressure to the industry, Gentle Readers. Objects like the Android stupidphone, which I've personally tested and found a detestable, ought-to-be-criminal waste of mineral resources, must NEVER be imagined as replacing real computers. Paw-and-smear "touch screens" may entertain some house pets but they're no substitute for real keyboards. You should insist that your phone, which is for making live voice calls for which you pay, and your computer, which is for visiting web sites where you read and write and get paid, have solid, separate, replaceable, opaque keys on a real keyboard or keypad and their screens (not that a phone needs a screen) are not for touching. Screens are hard enough on our eyes when they're touched only by insects and cleaning cloths. Never touch your screen with your finger.
If you own an Android or similar clunky flat object that claims to be an all-in-one phone, camera, radio, TV, computer, Kindle "book" reader, and Swiss Army knife, or what we in the United States used to call "everything but the kitchen sink," and in practice the only other device for which it can really substitute is the flashlight...well, I have kept mine for use as a flashlight, so I don't recommend the kitchen sink as being the best place to store it. I recommend a dark drawer, where all that little spy camera can see is wood, or maybe the blank black back of a binder, or a plain manila folder. Store it turned off to conserve battery power to use the thing as a flashlight. Demand a real computer with a real keyboard if your job or class requires reading or typing.
If your school or employer demands that you carry around a stupidphone...in the spirit of Shel Silverstein...
"If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop them on the floor,
Maybe they won't ever let you
Dry the dishes any more."
Think kitchen sink. Think moving bus. Think toilet. Those nasties are so brittle, and that slippery surface was just made to slide off things...I only ask that you think of places where stupidphones can be cracked, crushed, and soaked indoors, or on pavement, so that the pieces can be picked up before they damage the environment. Make stupidphone surveillance so expensive that the school or company will have to spring for decent phones and computers.
I make these recommendations primarily as a writer who'd be crippled without a keyboard--I was using typewriter for school when I was seven years old!--but also because you should be aware of the sinister possibilities the stupidphones present for those who want to implement a "social credit" system of 24/7 surveillance. Touch screens are messy and unsightly and hard to read with all those little finger smudges all over them. They're meant to be used not actually for their owners to read web pages, but for spies to track users' fingerprints. Don't touch them. If you use a stupidphone at all, get a stylus to tap on the screen. It's a good idea to add gloves to your sunglasses and COVID mask, and put on all three before taking the stupidphone out of its nice dark drawer.
Though replacing and "recycling" electronics is not a Green thing to do, and those who care about the Earth make it a goal either to own no electronic devices at all or to own one electronic device of its kind for their lifetime, in the case of the flat, slick, clunky-sized "phones" with touch screens there might be some forgiveness for making an exception. Dumping every one of those things on the undoubtedly sprayed and mown lawn in front of the corporate headquarters of the company that inflicted them on the world, and demanding that that company "recycle" them with their own hands and on their own premises, paying for the extensive ecological compensation that will be necessary, would be one way to dispose of them. We certainly do not need them in our lives.
Since this web site does not recommend that anyone own or use a stupidphone, this web site is not about to change its format to fit the stupidphone screen. We like it the way it is. We particularly like that, although the font display has always been hard to control (Blogger offers a selection of fonts; the HTML code tells Blogger to display this site in Times Roman; Blogger displays this site on most of the computers I've used in Georgia--that is, the font called Georgia), at least this site uses serif fonts. We hate sans-serif fonts. They may look more like the way a six-year-old prints letters, when magnified to that size, and thus be "easier to read" for those who originally learned to read languages that did not use our kind of alphabet, but sans-serif fonts are hard to read at a normal size; all the i's and l's and I's and 1's and t's and f's and also 7's and even 3's look alike. We like the way you see sans-serif fonts, at this web site, only in graphics.
Google does, however, positively encourage bloggers to set up multiple blogs. We want this site to be accessible to everyone. We offered taped versions until read-out-loud software became common. We still offer printed versions for those who don't own electronic devices. We could offer a new-format shadow blog with phone accessibility...after all, which audience most needs to be warned to keep the espionage device disguised as a phone out of their lives?
Another concern the reader mentioned was with being able to see or use the comment section. We've heard about this before, from someone we trust and respect (the writer known as Andrei Codrescu). We installed Disqus. At the time readers did not rush to interact on Disqus, although hundreds of people find Disqus easy to use. We found that more of our readers found it easier to use Google's in-house commenting system. Has this changed? Do you use Disqus? Would you want to use Disqus here?
Some web sites, probably the ones that do all of their own HTML and security rather than relying on free hosting, do manage to install double-track commenting. At S.A.R.K.'s blog, for instance, you have a choice of commenting via Facebook or (iirc) Wordpress. We thought it would be nice to give readers a choice of posting comments via Google or Disqus, here. Unfortunately Blogspot doesn't offer that feature. We have to choose one system or the other. If Disqus appears Google comments disappear, and vice versa.
A related question might as well be addressed here too...We are aware of some blogs that are real multimedia productions, often more collages of pictures and videos than original words. The Unsatisfactory Toshiba is able to read those blogs, but that's not the way this web site has chosen to be. We want to keep the words accessible to older devices where the pictures and videos display as blank squares. We use small simple pictures, mostly in animal-related posts, and links to music videos. At an alternative site we might be able to post stacks of music videos that would play right on the page, as Priscilla Bird, Rob Kistner, Melissa's Mochas, Michelle's Mirror, and several other bloggers now do. Google would do that at this web site, and the Unsatisfactory Toshiba would do it. This web site has a commitment not to do it here, because some of our readers may be using devices like the Sickly Snail. We just give you the links, as Small Dead Animals does, so that those whose devices can handle them may enjoy them, and those whose devices would crash may ignore them.
Are you trying to read this web site on your phone? Is it hard to read? Would you prefer to see this content on a newer-style web site?
Do you have trouble seeing or using the comments?
Do you prefer Disqus?
Are you Wordpress partisans who'd prefer to read and interact within the Wordpress system?
The complaining reader offered to redesign the whole site (to something hosted and maintained by associates of his, for a fee, no doubt). Actually I could probably redesign it myself by switching to one of the other formats Google offers, but I'm not going to do that, because I chose this simple format for reasons that are still valid. I could design an alternative site for you readers all by myself, too, in either Google's Blogger or Wordpress formats recommended for newer devices, but I wouldn't know how well that worked for you. People I know in real life use computers much older than the Unsatisfactory Toshiba.
Here's what you can do toward building the alternative site you require, if more than one of you readers do require an alternative site. Open blogger.com in your own browser. Set up a blog (you don't have to use it regularly or maintain it; if you don't want to be a blogger, deleting your blog after it's served its purpose is encouraged). Choose a format that works for you to post something. Post the Gettysburg Address if you have nothing else to say, just to test the formatting. Share a link to this post to show me what works for you. If I can read it, too, that will be the way our alternative site will look.
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