Book 35 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Favorites this issue were “When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente, “The Garden” by Emma Törzs, and “Whalesong” by Daniel H. Wilson.
Michael Hanscom
Worldcon Schedule Update
I’ve had to drop one of the panels I was on, but am still a panelist on one, presenting on my own for another, and have added DJing the Wednesday night dance! Here are the current details (now with links, since we’ve posted the full schedule):
Wednesday Night Dance with DJ Wüdi
Events; Dance/Movement
Sheraton: Metropolitan Ballroom, –<time 2025-08-14T02:00-07:00″>2 a.m.
From dance clubs in Alaska in the ’90s to being a recent regular DJ at Norwescon, DJ Wüdi spins an eclectic mix of dance tracks from across the decades. Pop, electronica/dance, wave, disco, goth/EBM/industrial, convention classics, mashups… (almost) anything goes! Already know there’s something that’ll get you out on the floor? Send in your requests ahead of time!
DJ Wüdi
Digital Accessibility Basics for Conventions
Conrunning/Fandom
Room 327, –
Conventions are getting more used to considering the physical accessibility of their hotels and convention centers, but how are we doing with digital accessibility? Ensuring that website and web applications, email marketing, and distributed documents are set up to be compatible with assistive technology keeps our members with disabilities included throughout the year. Learn about the basics of document accessibility and get a grounding of what your publications and marketing volunteers should be aware of in order to make sure your convention’s materials are accessible to everyone.
Michael Hanscom (M)
Norwescon: Local but Not Little
Conrunning/Fandom; Local Flavor
Room 343-344, –
Founded in 1978, Norwescon (NWC) draws thousands of Pacific Northwest SFF creators and fans each spring. But did you know that NWC grew out of a desire to bring Worldcon back to Seattle? Well, we’ve finally done it, so come hear how we got here… and what’s next!
Wm Salt Hale (M), Michael Hanscom, Taylor Tomblin, Tim Bennett
An Alt Text Experiment
I’m the website administrator for Seattle Worldcon 2025, and I decided to run a bit of an experiment with the site, playing with an idea I’d been toying with for next year’s Norwescon website.
As I’ve been learning more about accessibility over the past few years, I’ve been working on transferring what I learn over to both the Norwescon and Worldcon websites as I’ve been working on them. Since alt text on images is one of the baseline requirements for good accessibility, I’ve been making sure that we have decent alt text for any images added to either site.
Of course, when working with other people’s art and images, there’s always a little question of whether the alt text I come up with would be satisfactory for the artist creating the image. So, I figured, why not see if I could more directly involve them?
When we were collecting signups for the fan tables, art show, and dealers’ room, as I was building the registration forms, whenever we asked for a logo or image to be uploaded, I added an optional field to allow the user to include alt text for the image they were uploading. I didn’t expect everyone using the form would take advantage of this — not everyone is familiar with alt text, some might not entirely understand what the field was for, and some might just find the extra field confusing — but I figured it would be worth a shot to see what happened.
![Screenshot of a section of a website form. On the left is an option to upload a logo image, on the right is a text box asking for alt text. The prompt reads, 'A brief description of the image to support our Blind and low vision members. If no alt text is provided, '[display name] logo' will be used.' The field is limited to 1000 characters.](https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-01-at-9.13.55PM.png "Screenshot 2025-07-01 at 9.13.55 PM.png")
Without showing how many of each type of application Worldcon received (because I don’t know if our Exhibits department would want that publicized beyond the “more than we have spots for” for each category that they’ve already said), here’s a breakdown of the percentages of each application type that included a logo image, and how many of those included alt text.
| Area | Submitted Logo | Submitted Alt Text for Logo |
|---|---|---|
| Fan Tables | 77.55% | 63.16% |
| Dealers’ Room | 99.60% | 72.98% |
| Art Show | 79.89% | 87.05% |
As far as this goes, I’d say it was a pretty successful experiment, with between 63% and 87% of submitted images including alt text that we could then copy and paste into the website backend and code as we built the pages that used them, both saving us time and effort and ensuring that the alt text was what the people filling out the form would want it to be. Not bad at all!
Of course, simply having alt text is only part of the equation. The next question is how good is the submitted alt text?
Not surprisingly, it’s a bit all over the place. Some were very simple and straightforward, with just a business name, or the name with “logo” appended. Some described the logo in varying levels of detail. And some went far beyond just describing the logo, occasionally including information better suited other fields on the form that asked for a promotional description of the business, organization, or artist. That said, there were very few instances where I considered the submitted text to be unusable for its intended purpose.
Later on when I have more time, I might dive a bit more into the submissions to do a more detailed analysis of the quality of the submitted alt text. But for now, I’m quite satisfied with how this worked out. I fully intend on doing this for Norwescon’s website next year and onward, and would recommend that other conventions (and other organizations or businesses) that accept user image uploads to also allow users to provide their own alt text.
In the meantime, feel free to check out the final results of this experiment on Worldcon’s Art Show, Dealers’ Room, and Fan Table pages…and if any of this inspires you to come to Worldcon (if you’re not already planning to), stop by my presentation on digital accessibility for conventions (currently scheduled for )!
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
Book 34 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This one didn’t grab me as much as others in the series have so far. Not bad at all, and certainly has its amusing moments, but more of a “sure, this was fine” than a “I can see why so many people are so into this series” entry.
Weekly Notes: June 23–29, 2025
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♿️ Summer quarter has begun, so work has slowed down a little bit, but that means it’s time to get caught up on the stuff that got pushed back during the run-up to commencement. Should be able to get a fair amount of progress on various projects over the coming weeks.
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🚀 I got my draft schedule for Worldcon this week. I’ll be giving a presentation on digital accessibility for conventions, plus participating on two panels; one on the future of education technology, and one on the history of Norwescon. Looking forward to all of them!
🔗 Linking
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Christopher Bonanos in Curbed: Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Logo Looked Nothing Like a Campaign Logo: “Nobody would credit Zohran Mamdani’s campaign graphics for his win, but they were, as was his campaign, like nothing else in politics. […] What a Mamdani graphic doesn’t look like, particularly, is a standard campaign logo.”
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Louie Mantia: Rose-Gold-Tinted Liquid Glasses: “In a way, one could say Liquid Glass is like a new version of Aqua. It has reflective properties reminiscent of that. One could also say it’s an evolution of whatever iOS 7 was, leaning into the frosted panels and bright accent colors. But whatever Liquid Glass seems to be, it isn’t what many of us were hoping for.”
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Emma Roth at The Verge: The BBC is launching a paywall in the US: “The BBC wants to make people in the US pay for its content. The public broadcaster announced on Thursday that it will start offering US-based users an $8.99 per month (or $49.99 per year) subscription for “unlimited” access to news stories, feature reports, and the BBC News channel livestream.”
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Luke Winkie at Slate: Zohran Mamdani Cracked a Code That’s Long Baffled Democrats: “The Democratic nominee for NYC mayor displayed a rare combination of his own moral clarity and a willingness to engage with a specific strain of internet leftism.”
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Carsten Frauenheim at IFixIt: Torx Plus: The High-Tech Screw Hiding in Our Gadgets: “It’s hard to keep track of all the different types of screws, fasteners, bolts, bits, and bobs that hold our lives together, from our fridges and phones to cars and planes. If you’ve ever poked around inside a gadget, you’ve probably come face-to-face with a 6-lobed, star-shaped screw. ¶ That’s Torx. It and its new, high-tech cousin, Torx Plus, are the current kings of the screw hill. But what are they, and what makes them so special?”
My (Draft) Worldcon Schedule
I have my (draft) paneling schedule for Worldcon! While there’s always the possibility that things may shift a bit between now and August, at the moment, I’m giving one solo presentation and will be a panelist on two panels.
Here’s the lineup:
The future of education technology
to
Adaptive online learning, AI assisted classrooms, virtual reality schools … Things that used to be just science fiction are now science fact. How is education changing and what does it mean for the students?
Corey Frazier (M), Frank Catalano, Lia Holland, Mason A. Porter, Michael Hanscom
Well, as it turns out, I had a conflict come up, so I’ve had to drop this panel. This was a draft schedule, after all!
Digital Accessibility Basics for Conventions
to
Conventions are getting more used to considering the physical accessibility of their hotels and convention centers, but how are we doing with digital accessibility? Ensuring that website and web applications, email marketing, and distributed documents are set up to be compatible with assistive technology keeps our disabled membership included throughout the year. Learn about the basics of document accessibility and get a grounding of what your publications and marketing volunteers should be aware of in order to make sure your convention’s materials are accessible to everyone.
Michael Hanscom (M)
Norwescon: local but not little
to
Founded in 1978, Norwescon draws thousands of PNW SF/F creators and fans each Spring. But did you know… NWC grew out of a desire to bring Worldcon back to Seattle? Well we’ve finally done it, so come hear how we got here… and what’s next!
Wm Salt Hale (M), Michael Hanscom, Taylor Tomblin, Tim Bennett
Weekly Notes: June 16–22, 2025
This is actually a week-plus-one-day, because…
- 🚗 …we spent most of this past week traveling to visit family. We drove down to Portland and visited our respective families in the area, my wife with her mom and sister and niblings, and me, joined by my brother who flew out from the east coast, visiting with our mom. Had some good and necessary discussions with mom, and it was nice to be able to have both of us there visiting her at the same time. And since we drove back home today, it didn’t really make sense to back-date this post by a day just to keep it as a Sunday evening thing.
📸 Photos
📚 Reading
Finished a Star Trek novel, Dafydd ab Hugh’s Balance of Power, and started Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel Pyramids.
🔗 Linking
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Scott O’Hara: How do you figure?: About the proper use of the
figureandfigcaptionHTML elements. -
Sara Soueidan: Accessible notifications with ARIA Live Regions: Learning more about ARIA live regions.
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John Voorhees at MacStories: Hands-On: How Apple’s New Speech APIs Outpace Whisper for Lightning-Fast Transcription: “By harnessing SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber on-device, the command line tool tore through the 7GB video file a full 2.2× faster than MacWhisper’s Large V3 Turbo model, with no noticeable difference in transcription quality.”
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Tim Chambers: The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix): “So, confession time: I was recently helping a new client get set up on the Fediverse—guiding them through their first steps into our glorious decentralized galaxy. And seeing it all again through fresh eyes? ¶ Reader, it was brutal.”
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Federico Viticci at MacStories: Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence: If you haven’t read this post-WWDC interview yet, now’s the time.
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Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz at Adobe’s research group: Project Indigo – a computational photography camera app: “As Adobe explores ways to evolve mobile photography…we have developed a camera app we call Project Indigo. Today, we are releasing this for iPhone as a free mobile app from Adobe Labs, available in the Apple App Store – to share our progress and get feedback from the community. The app offers full manual controls, a more natural (“SLR-like”) look, and the highest image quality that computational photography can provide – in both JPEG and raw formats. It also introduces some new photographic experiences not available in other camera apps.”
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Phoenix Tso and Elizabeth Chou at Los Angeles Public Press: Federal agents thought they could stay at LA-area hotels. Communities are trying to make sure they can’t: “People now frequently turn out in the evenings at hotels where ICE agents are believed to be staying, to bang on pots and pans and play sounds on bullhorns to prevent the agents from having a good night’s sleep. They also hope that the disruption will put pressure on hotel management to turn immigration officials away.”
Balance of Power by Dafydd Ab Hugh
Book 33 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️
This is the third book I’ve read by Ab Hugh, and the third to get two stars. It’s obviously supposed to be comedic, but isn’t funny (the conceit of a Ferengi who speaks entirely like it’s “talk like a pirate day” may be hilarious to some; to me, it was increasingly annoying), there are numerous typos and inconsistencies, and it was just a slog. Not looking forward to when I get to more by this author (though I’ll read them, because I’m a stubborn Trek completist).
Weekly Notes: June 9–15, 2025
- 🎓 This week was commencement week for Highline College! This year, for the first time, we held commencement at the Emerald Downs horse racing facility, and while there were the occasional minor hiccups you might expect with any first-time venue experience, overall, I think it went really well. Hopefully the post-commencement feedback we get is generally in agreement, because I liked this much better than using the local stadium. (Still not as nice as on-campus, but that presents its own set of logistical headaches.)
- 🇺🇸 Saturday was the No Kings protest, and from my perspective and all the reports I’ve seen since, it went really well, both locally and nationally. Upwards of 70,000 participants in the Seattle Capitol Hill rally and march to the Seattle Center that we went to, with no agitators, no property damage, and virtually nonexistent police presence (I didn’t see any until just before the march reached the Seattle Center, when there were four in regular day wear casually chatting with people walking by, and just as we were leaving, we did see a group of 10 or so bike cops staged in a side street). It felt good. And we need to keep doing this.
📸 Photos
📚 Reading
Read Clarkesworld Issue 225 and the first issue of Heavy Metal magazine’s relaunch.
🔗 Linking
- Sheena Goodyear at CBC Radio: Every year, folks travel from far and wide watch this giant pencil get sharpened: “Once a year, the massive piece of pop art becomes an interactive community art installation. Hundreds — or sometimes even thousands — of people make their way to Higgins’ house in Minneapolis to watch the giant pencil get sharpened with a giant pencil sharpener.”
- Jack Tamisiea at Science: Cockatoos have learned to operate drinking fountains in Australia: “Every cockatoo exhibited slight variations in its plan of attack. But the general strategy was the same: Each placed one or both of its feet on the fountain’s twist handle, then lowered its weight to twist the handle clockwise and prevent it from springing back up. As the parrots slurped water from the bubbling spout, their sharp beaks often left behind chew marks on the fountain’s rubber top.”
- RSSRSSRSSRSS: Combine multiple RSS feeds into one unified feed.
- Nikki Mccann Ramirez, Naomi Lachance, Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez, and Stephen Rodrick at Rolling Stone: Trump’s Military Birthday Parade Was A Gross Failure: “An aerial parade of historic military aircraft flew above the National Mall, traversing a course from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Memorial that — despite clear anticipation of crowds by event organizers — was more empty field and food truck line than crowd.”
- Doug Landry on X (but this is a ThreadReader link): I just got back from the Trump parade and I have to say it was legitimately the worst executed mass attendance event I’ve ever seen. The full thread is worth reading for some seriously good schadenfreude.
- Nataliya Kosmyna, Eugene Hauptmann, Ye Tong Yuan, Jessica Situ, Xian-Hao Liao, Ashly Vivian Beresnitzky, Iris Braunstein, Pattie Maes at Cornell University: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task: “While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.”
Heavy Metal 001
Book 32 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
If you know much of anything about Heavy Metal, you know what to expect with this relaunch of the long-running comic anthology series. Sci-fi/fantasy/horror comics and art (often of the “muscle bound men and women wearing a whole lot of not very much no matter how impractical that might be” variety, of course). As the relaunch issue, this also has several short essays about the history of the magazine and some of the artists who have been involved, particularly Greg Hildebrandt, who died between painting the cover (of the edition I have) and when it was published. Though I was never a subscriber, I’d found the occasional issue, and certainly saw the movie (and have had it in my collection for years, even if it’s not a regular watch), and it’s good to know that the magazine is still going, and that it’s still exactly what your inner ’80s adolescent has been looking for.
