We all know that feeling, we think our image descriptions are not good enough. We think they’re too short and insignificant. We wonder if it’s worth it posting one at all, but it’s always worth it. And here is why:
Even if an image description doesn’t mention everything in the image, it tells you a million things which aren’t in the image.
If your description is [ID: Reaction image of a nodding woman. /end ID] it tells you one million things. Such as: The image is not a tweet adding further information or context, it’s not a screenshot of a Snopes article debunking the post, it’s not someone disagreeing.
Those six little words, that nodding woman, it might not seem like a lot. It might seem like you can skip right over it, like it’s not worth mentioning - but it is.
An image could always be a wall of text explaining why OP is wrong, and simply knowing that’s not the case is super useful. Knowing that it’s just a reaction image, just a meme, just a photograph, is super useful.
Adding a bit of context for people who don’t know what image descriptions are for: Blind and visually impaired people (among others) use software called screen readers when using a computer/smart phone. It reads the text on the screen aloud and makes digital content accessible to them. Images can’t be read aloud, so they need an image description (often abbreviated as ID) to know what’s in the image.
By adding an ID, you’re helping me and many other disabled people.
Some general info on screen readers and accessibility:
Accessible censoring of words (Please don't use * and $)
IDs in the main body vs alt text
using both alt text and main body IDs (with examples)
Common accessibility issues for screen readers, large text + some ID tips
Start ID/ End ID tags explained
I love my screen reader
An ask about emoji and capitalization (spoiler: emoji are fine)
Accessibility of formatting and Purpose of Plain Text (spoiler: bold and italics are fine)
Using colored text in image descriptions
How tags are read
Inaccessibility of gradient text
Zalgo text is inaccessible
My #accessibility review tag
Posts aimed at screen reader users:
How to open a link in a new tab using VoiceOver
Some general info on what a screen reader is
Burning Eyes on AO3 (An introduction to VoiceOver through a fictional story, starring Zuko and Toph from atla)
Posts about writing:
The abled saviour trope
Writing Sokka from atla as disabled
I occasionally update this list, but I have a bunch more posts on my blog, so feel free to browse or use the search function.
My asks are always open (including anon), so feel free to ask, but I am very slow at responding so it might be easier and faster to look up accessibility related questions online.
There’s widely recognized accessibility standards and guidelines (like WCAG) which cover most situations, unless it’s very niche or tumblr specific.
The misuse of the "insult to life itself" quote from Miyazaki on AI burns my yams so bad bc the original context is being disgusted with how a characters movements are dehumanizing to disabled people specifically bc of his empathy for a disabled friend and it's such a sadly rare sentiment, this cognizance of how we casually inflict indignity upon disabled people and how he finds it disgusting, I hate seeing it obfuscated
In the video he sees character animation where the presenter comments on how the AI can be used to model "grotesque movements humans can't even imagine." And Miyazaki immediately mentions that he thought of his physically disabled friend, who struggles with movement, with the implication being that what's "insulting to life itself" is the degradation of people like him to grotesque monsters. Regardless of my feelings about AI art I don't think it's worth obscuring this humane thought process to have a rhetorical weapon
evil tumblr user: been seeing a lot of cultural Christianity lately such as the insistence for vacations to be on Sunday and dates using the Gregorian calendar
evil tumblr user: we need to correctly discuss globalization caused by anglophone imperialist dominated internet infrastructure in which depending on the subject country's economy, language and demographics, anglophone cultural exports can interact with the existing local culture in a variety of ways
A couple of years ago we were all terribly concerned about the fact that a lot of American high schools are assigning such crushing homework loads that some kids literally don't have enough time to eat or sleep (and all this in spite of the fact that there's no good evidence that assigning homework actually improves academic outcomes at the pre-university level), but now we're hearing stories about those same schools struggling to stop kids from using ChatGPT to write their essays and suddenly It's The Children Who Are Wrong. Like, do you think maybe there's a certain level of cause and effect in play here?
"Okay, but what if both are bad" see, I don't think any framing that implicitly puts the school administration that thinks it's reasonable to assign thirty hours of homework per week and the student who has to choose between writing an essay the old-fashioned way and getting more than two hours of sleep tonight on equal ethical footing is productive.
what are your thoughts on the validity of the concept of "cognitive offloading"? i like ai for the most part but i do worry that it might make me dumber at remembering things or doing hard cognitive work.
instead of answering this ask, here's an unrelated excerpt from phaedrus:
[275a] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
My partner and I were ordering from a new takeaway joint via doordash recently and she wanted tuna sushi.
I don't know if this is a common thing in other places but what she meant by 'tuna sushi' was 'cooked tuna handroll', and I understood this immediately cos thats what it is called around here. 'Tuna Sushi' to me means this thing:
But we read the desciption under the 'tuna sushi' entry in the menu and it said:
"Temaki - fresh tuna accompanied by cucumber, wrapped in seaweed and rolled into a cone"
And I checked with her if that would be a suitable substitute and she was like "Oh no, that isn't what I want", and started trying to find something else.
Then I noticed a review with a picture of tuna sushi (cooked tuna handroll like she wanted) attached to it and read it to see what it was called so we could order it.
The reviewer said that they had ordered the "tuna sushi" but what they were delivered was not temaki, did not contain cucumber, and on top of that, they are allergic to avocado so couldn't even eat it.
So I went back and checked the discription and saw "Description generated by DoorDash using AI" written underneath.
AI generated food descriptions aren't just useless they are *dangerous*. Like OP said, worse than no info at all.
While I was being silly in my original post, this is a massive problem with DoorDash AI. It constantly generates ingredient lists on massive assumptions without any approval from the actual restaurant. Of course, DoorDash won't tell you that's how it works. It doesn't even say the description is AI generated until you click on the actual item to pull up the ordering information, and even then they don't bother with a half-hearted "AI generated descriptions may be inaccurate" disclaimer. Just that it's AI generated with zero further information.
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
[ID: tags. #i sadly feel like this only works woth s9me leases since companies will just tell ypu to fuck off or the lease is set by corporate #or what the fuck ever /end ID]
Hannah Montana is fucked up because its entire POINT as a show is that children should be protected from fame and exploitation, but it stars a REAL little girl that's being exploited. Nearly every episode carries the looming threat of Miley being outed as Hannah and losing her peaceful teenage life to the ravages of fame. Her father in the show (played by her own father in real life) wisely protected her from the trauma of fame by making her wear a disguise and live a rather quiet, interview-free life. Meanwhile the REAL Billy Ray Cyrus sold his daughter to Disney Channel when she was 11 and forced her to read dialogue about how terrible it would be to face the public eye. Like... Jesus, dude. The fictional Robby Ray is 10x the father, and it's not even close. (It's also IMMENSELY funny that her dad doesn't use his real name in the show, while she does. Almost like he wanted a bit of a disconnect between his identity and his character. Something Miley didn't get.)
sorry if i weirded you out with my messages earlier (remembers im trying to be more self confident) but actually it was normal of me to do so (becomes nervous im acting superior) because i am a human like everybody else and not better than anyone (remembers i am better than some people) except for really bad people (notices the ideological can of worms opened by previous clause) but anyone can work towards self improvement (remembers im trying to be more self confident) like meeee :)
How do you think fail states, specifically dying and reloading a save, affect the narrative of a video game? Because in a lot of games they feel like a pretty detrimental compromise to me, it always feels like I'm not actually supposed to use that mechanic. I haven't really found a way yet to interpret a lot of them in a way that doesn't just make the game worse.
hmm i mean
like, i think there's a lot of ways a ''fail state'' can inform a game's narrative, right? like...
there's the way you're talking about here, right, where the fail state is something you're not 'supposed' to experience, it exists as a structuring element guiding you away from or towards certain actions, right? like... in subnautica, it's pretty rare to actually die. and it can be a frustrating and unfun experience when you do and you were carrying a bunch of stuff and you're like oh great gotta farm all that shit up. but the threat of dying is really really important to building the game's tension, putting some actual real-world weight (even if it's just in terms of threatening a purely digital object that represents a time commitment) into the idea of a reaper leviathan eating you. if there was no 'consequence' for getting Gotten by the Scary Getter, it would suck a lot of tension out of trying to avoid them, right?
this is a recurring thing in horror game design, right, if you make the chase sections too hard they stop being scary because knowing that all that happens is a scary cutscene + the impact of it being diminished by seeing it over and over again turns the Scary Getter into a nuisance that you groan at rather than something scary. so i think there can be a lot of value to parts of a game that you're not really ''supposed'' to experience but that need to exist to structure how you experience the parts you are...
& then of course i think there's a lot of games where you are meant to experience the failure states and they teach you important things about the world and characters. like recently i've been trying out this underrated indie gem called dark souls, you've never heard of it, and within an hour of playing i'd died like five times. and each time the death taught me something iomportawnt about the game: dying to the asylum demon taught me that you don't always have to fight enemies the first time you see them. dying in the middle of a skeleton clusterfuck taught me that you should try to fight enemies 1 on 1 as much as possible. dying when that cunt pushed a boulder onto me taught me to look the fuck out for traps. these fail states are essentially a form of tutorializing, and also help tell the story of dark souls, that you're an insignificant little fuck in a bleak and crushing world.
or, like, take disco elysium -- i think a lot of people who've never played it know you can get a game over screen because you sat in an uncomfortable chair. and yea if your last save was an hour ago i get why that's frustrating. but not only does the whole evrart sequence also serve the tutorializing function that my dark souls deaths did (demonstrating that you should unlearn the traditional CRPG correlation between 'danger' and combat) but it and other potential game overs like it tell you so much about harry du bois: that this is someone whose mind and body ahve been pushed so close to the edge that it's feasible for him to have a fatal heart attack trying to get his tie off the ceiling fan or have a complete mental breakdown because a child called him a faggot or just straight up shoot himself in the head trying to win an argument.
and ofc the fact that people who've never played the game have heard of the chair death speaks to another thing about failure states, which is that they can be fun and memorable. there's a reason why ykow some people demonstarte nostalgia for the king's quest death messages
& then of course there's the ways that 'bad endings' can inform you about the reality of the world of the 'real ending'. crpg ending slides that show you sme horrible fate for the companion that you didn't complete the quest for provide information and context for the quest itself and how it helps them grow and change. & then there's the most literal possible execution of this, zero escape, where due to all kinds of temporal bullshit the events of the 'bad endings' directly causally influence the events of the 'true ending'.
finally, of course, there's games where what would be a 'fail state' elsewhere is just part of a diegetic narrative. pyre is my absolute favorite example of this. if you lose a game of prison basketball then you just lose, and the other guys win, and when the stakes are escaping to the surface that means an npc leaves and you and your friends stay underground. on two occasions, this led me to deliberately throwing matches because i felt the NPCs on the other side deserved the win more than my guys. hades, as much as i hate it for a bunch of other reasons, did pull a really cool maneuver in making the constant death and grinding repitition in-universe features of zagreus' experience and the game's themes. katana zero also goes cool places with this, taking the route of "every failed attempt is the protagonist's precognitive abilities showing him a future where he dies" and exploring what that means for him emotionally and psychologically.
so, yknow! i think there is a huge amount of super worthwhile space for failure states, whether it's by teaching you about the game's world and characters, or helping create a specific experience by pushing you to avoid them, or by simply integrating them directly into the narrative and interrogating them... i think they're pretty neat and a storytelling tool that's unique to games :)
recovering from chronic pain/disability is wild. I was lucky that my severe joint pain was treatable and after several years of treatment I've realised out of the blue that my pain is at a 0 on the pain scale. as a default. it's 0. the amount of pain I am in at any normal moment is 0. it's 0. it's 0. and this is normal. holy shit
all this to say we need to get more passionate about disability and pain treatment and accommodations. 0 pain is life changing. I can DO things again. your life OPENS UP. it's incredible! I'm a happier more patient person, I can focus on things, I can hang out with my friends without calculating how long it will take for my body to hurt too much to continue, I can do so much. so much.
the reason I am able to live my life to the fullest is because I had access to money. specialist appointments. physiotherapy sessions. medication. orthotics. compression sleeves. I am at 0 on the pain scale because I had the privilege to have hundreds of dollars available to throw at this near-life-ruining issue.
being alive without being in pain should not be limited by the amount of money you can spare.
#the reason that lab safety regulations are the way they are is because literally all chemists are like this #as in 100% of them #no exceptions (via @prokopetz)
While reading a textbook of chemistry, I came upon the statement "nitric acid acts upon copper," and I determined to see what this meant. Having located some nitric acid, I had only to learn what the words "act upon" meant. In the interest of knowledge I was even willing to sacrifice one of the few copper cents then in my possession. I put one of them on the table, opened a bottle labeled "nitric acid," poured some of the liquid on the copper, and prepared to make an observation. But what was this wonderful thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed, and it was no small change either. A greenish-blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air becamecolored dark red. How could I stop this? I tried by picking the cent up and throwing it out the window. I learned another fact: nitric acid acts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my fingers across my trousers and discovered nitric acid acts upon trousers. That was the most impressive experiment I have ever performed. I tell of it even now with interest. It was a revelation to me. Plainly the only way to learn about such remarkable kinds of action is to see the results, to experiment, to work in the laboratory.
