Mike Agg has moved @countingquoll@qoto.org

@tante @danmcquillan Out of curiosity, have you asked any blind people about this? I'd like to share my opinion as someone who can only detect light and shadows, and see nothing else.

One of the models that can provide detailed, useful visual descriptions at the moment is GPT4. For me, it has quickly gained a place as one of the most liberating, empowering technological inventions of my lifetime. Never before have I been able to gain an understanding of what an image shows, and ask targeted questions to independently expand that understanding.

I've used it to identify products, in a fraction of the time it would've taken to locate and scan barcodes or labels. It's taught me things about my environment that would be unlikely to come up in conversation, helped me learn about the appearance of friends and family as we share time together, provided guidance about devices and software that I would've otherwise needed help with, and the list goes on. Yes, I've used it to fill in the gaps when people don't write sufficient alt text too.

Putting specific examples aside, there are now fewer occasions on which I need to rely on someone else for their input. You may not think I should feel like a burden in the first place, and that's fine. I have many people in my life who are happy to facilitate support, but focusing on my relationships (or lac thereof) would be missing the point. I now have a choice. If waiting four hours for a friend to finish work is inconvenient for me, if it's the middle of the night, or if I'm just not in the mood for social interaction, I have options. Options that have never existed to this degree in the multiple decades that I've been unable to see.

Sometimes it's wrong. I am always aware of the need to fact check, and not make critical decisions based on, what is conveyed. But here's the thing: part of my professional life involves teaching people to write alt text. It is too hard, and takes too long, to do it right. It represents a dead end to the person reading it, because that's all they get. Frankly, the descriptions people are getting back from these tools blow the majority of alt text written by humans out of the water.

So, by all means use it as a starting point, to create descriptions that can be massaged and improved. Question and ridicule all claims of a completely hands-off, human-free pipeline, which are ableist and unrealistic. Castigate those tools and models which provide useless descriptions, as well as the people who rely on them. But please don't outright dismiss something which is giving some human beings such a sense of joy and freedom as they've never experienced before. And if/when you receive responses from other blind people saying they don't care about these tools for whatever reason, please try to remember that everybody is unique in their circumstances, and that one set doesn't invalidate another. CC @weirdwriter

They should let the person who invented naps invent more stuff.

I thought it'd be fun to go to karaoke with a bunch of famous philosophers but Zeno's just been singing the "whoa, we're halfway there" line from Living On A Prayer for the past eight hours

The wise teenage son of a friend recently quipped: ‘you all find it somehow easier to imagine the end of the world and nature than the end of capitalism’.

Minimalism is a scam invented by big small to sell more less

If you’re thinking about backing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. because he’s a Kennedy, remember that the other Kennedys have openly denounced his candidacy. If you respect the Kennedys, respect their opinions about RFK, Jr.

#PrivateEye

Do you have a baby under one year old who has had both breastmilk and formula? If so, you could contribute to my PhD research exploring mixed feeding.

If you can spare about 25 minutes to tell me about your experience, I would be so grateful. Your contribution will help me with my research, and hopefully help parents in future to feed their babies.
Thank you.
https://swanseachhs.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0SS51c4u8Nle79Y

I don't buy the rebranding of Theresa May as 'elder statewoman'.
-As Home Sec her enthusiasm for populism was clear; demonising students, asylum seekers & muslims
-Showed contempt for the Law by attempted seizure of Crown Prerogative, refusal to accept adverse Judgment, & tacit endorsement of vilification of Judges
-trademark set piece Downing St press confs saying nothing of substance.
-Flipped to become PM
-It is her signature on Article50
Away with you #May to Dustbin of History.

#Tories

If you don’t like what Google is doing, spend a few moments seeing if some non-Google alternatives work for you:

Android —> GrapheneOS, /e/, Droidian, and more
Chrome —> Firefox, Safari, (Lynx :))
Docs —> cryptpad, Nextcloud docs, Collabora online
Drive —> Nextcloud
Gmail —> protonmail, mail from someone like Mythic Beasts
Search —> DuckDuckGo, StartPage

You don’t have to change everything at once, or commit to anything immediately. But it is Google, so you may be forced to move at some point!

#caturday The world's best cat flap set up 👍 #edinburgh

BBC: "Everyone got duped by Sam Bankman-Fried's big gamble"

No, lots of us called crypto out from the very start. I was reading accurate critiques of bitcoin in 2012.

Journalists and financiers and politicians got duped or didn't care about the truth when there was money to be made.

Now you're trying to pretend nobody warned you? Get fucked.

am watching #Gojira (1954). reckoning i have never seen it in it's entirety, and what i've seen was dubbed.

it's amazing this movie was made a mere 9 years after the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. the opening of the movie is so much about reliving that trauma.

Gojira feels way more Japanese than the other #Godzilla movies. i feel as if the monster is the trauma they needed to face but it's not for us to understand the whole struggle. we're just here to bear witness as outsiders.

The urban-rural divide gets started by the fact that agricultural production just doesn't require that many people anymore but gets elevated into this existential conflict over the soul of a nation by people who think there's something pure and special about homogenous white Christian small town bullshit where nothing changes because the best people leave as soon as possible.

This is awesome: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2278631491647

Before this pandemic, I used to be in the vicinity of strangers more, so I would write down dialogue I overheard. Was just looking over some old notes and found "His ex-Nazi ex-meth head ex-wife has got him into goat wrestling and it's wrecked his back." I don't know how I would ever use that in a project so if anybody out there wants it, help yourself. #writing

#novennber

I am already a white male so for Halloween, if I just carry a bible and quote Ayn Rand, I can go as the legit scariest fucking thing in America.