Laura Kalbag @laura@mastodon.laurakalbag.com

Fairytale

Love being part of this A Book Apart love letter to the editors. (They’re the greatest.) 💌
https://abookapart.com/blogs/press/love-letter-to-editors

Got pissed on champagne because my mother would’ve been 60 today and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hayfever can do one.

“Eco-fascist rhetoric works to obscure the responsibility of white colonialism and its long history of destruction, as well as imperialist presences in predominantly black and brown countries”

https://gal-dem.com/humans-are-not-the-virus-dont-be-an-eco-fascist/

Check out my sexy HTML.

My website is naked of CSS for the day (for the first time in YEARS.) Inspired this year by Eric Meyer.

https://laurakalbag.com/css-naked-day-2020/

Had a lovely time last week chatting to @drewm about privacy and our responsibilities as developers and designers.

You can listen to the podcast, get the shownotes and read the full transcript on the Smashing Magazine site:

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/smashing-podcast-episode-13/

“Rather than simply accepting tracking with open arms, Americans should be wary of geeks bearing gifts. Today’s startups could do more than squander venture capital dollars—their misguided COVID-19 surveillance measures may cost lives and undermine our democracy.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90486342/tracking-everyones-whereabouts-wont-stop-covid-19

What you don’t cope with pandemic anxiety by building a complicated system to derive colour palettes with accessible colour contrasts?

I’ve written a basic intro on how to read RSS in 2020, with some recommendations for feed readers.

(I started writing this a few weeks ago, but now might just be a great time to curate the news you want, and filter out the needlessly overwhelming stuff.)

https://laurakalbag.com/how-to-read-rss-in-2020/

“You should be aware that, depending on the software your company uses and the policies it has in place, there may be some privacy concerns.”

https://onezero.medium.com/slack-zoom-google-hangouts-are-your-remote-work-apps-spying-on-you-cf1e33809cf7

What’s your favourite RSS feed reader?

I’ve got a few options to recommend for the web and macOS/iOS but not many browser extensions, or feed readers for Windows or Linux.

It took til nearly 2pm for me to clock why I’m being terrible and irrational today.

Unless your company is emailing me to tell me how you’re paying your employees and contractors during this time, I do not care for your coronavirus marketing email one bit.

“The diseases that are most successful in the coming century will, as always, be the diseases that exploit our major failure modes and popular delusions.”

https://www.wired.com/story/what-coronavirus-pandemic-says-about-society/

“COVID-19 could easily be used as an excuse to spread mass surveillance… This is not intended to be alarmist, but it’s important to keep an eye on mission creep in this space.”

https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/06/ai-weekly-coronavirus-facial-recognition-and-the-future-of-privacy/

I just can’t with Google. I do not understand why the web community (mostly) views Facebook as questionable but treats Google as socially acceptable. Lines drawn at their own convenience.