The white elephant has a long history as a diplomatic weapon. You give something that cannot be refused, that looks magnificent, and that quietly ruins the recipient – not through malice, but through the simple mathematics of cost.
It’s a remarkably precise image for what happened to transatlantic data governance after 2013.
I was watching an AI read my own book back to me. Three chapters in, it mentioned our cat, Taffy. Taffy wasn’t anywhere in the visible text. He was in the alt text.
Gemini was reading the accessibility tree!
…And that’s when I realized we have a problem.
The examined life has always been threatening to people who benefit from the unexamined one. It was true in 399 BC and it’s true now. The mechanism just got more sophisticated. Instead of hemlock, you get algorithmic distraction, sixty-hour work weeks, and a culture that treats reflection as self-indulgence.
Someone, somewhere, is running the numbers.
They’re weighing costs against benefits, acceptable losses against projected gains, friction against efficiency. They’re deciding what “better” looks like – and more importantly, they’re deciding who gets to count.
This is utilitarianism in practice. Not the philosophy seminar version, but the real one.
I’ve stopped trying to keep track.
There’s too much.
I’ve started describing it to people as “gestures broadly at everything,” and they immediately know what I mean.
We all do.
On Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 4:15pm EDT, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) filed an Interim Final Rule for public inspection (IFR). It was scheduled for official publication on May 11 – the same day the original compliance date was set to take effect.
I want to talk about what’s in that document. Not the deadline. The document.
The UK government is currently consulting on changes to how assistive software is funded through Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). The consultation closes on June 18th, 2026.
You should know about it, because while the consultation identifies some real problems, it’s targeting the wrong cause – and disabled students are likely to absorb the consequences.
Thirty-five years after the Capitol Crawl, people still discover accessibility like it’s breaking news.
“Nobody told me.”
I believe them.
And that’s the problem.