Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

Software folks

Wired is running a short survey asking about whether you ever use AI in your coding

if you're interested, give 'em your feedback: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxqxzbjQvfD9xIcrub3d2n1yDWreJJL5PxGYpfjaw9fgnDuA/viewform

One of the most important things I've learned in therapy is that talking to yourself (verbally or silently) in the ways that you would talk to a scared child that you would offer reassurance, support, and encouragement to basically *works*

And it's a skill you can develop to have enough awareness to know when to do that: when you're feeling powerless, when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're lost in all-or-nothing rigid thinking

I just recently discovered that it's especially useful when I wake up in the middle of the night, wanting to think about things, to be able to remind myself that each of those things are things I'll think of again the next day, and which can be dealt with during daytime

It's kind of fucked up that so many of us are taught from a young age that "talking to yourself is crazy", so we ignore an entire tool. Or at least, I did

this thing happens really often, but the latest one that happened to me this week was with desktop icons. after an update, the selection rectangle around them looks weird and different, and the icons are the wrong size, they're clipped so you can't see the icon fully or read the label. haven't attempted to fix it, will probably take at least an hour. it makes me feel like the computer isn't really mine. it belongs to a bunch of nerds who keep making weird mistakes. a kind of clumsy nerd cabal

Hello, little PSA and maybe wisdom from someone who works in the social justice mines:

1. Just knowing about something isn't the same as activism. Knowing about bad stuff happening without having a plan to tackle it results in feelings of overwhelm, helplessness and cynicism, which are often barriers to actually taking action. Anger and outrage burn brightly and can jumpstart you but they are usually short-lived emotions that are hard to sustain over a long period of time (and even if so, are extremely exhausting). I'm not saying you need to stick your head in the sand, but there is some stuff where the broad idea is enough and you absolutely do not need to read the details or daily updates about it.

2. You do not and will not have the energy to take action on every single thing, it is not possible. Therefore be really strategic about where you spend your energy - where will your voice/action have the most impact because of your influence, power, privilege, position etc. Best actions are low effort + high impact, worst actions are high effort + low impact. What is effortful and impactful is going to look very different for different people, so there will be some actions and causes that maybe isn't a great idea for you to pursue.

3. Social justice has always been and will always be a long-term project. I really disagree with posts being like "how can you lead a regular life while this is happening". In fact it is essential to lead a regular life and have joy, community, connection, art - this is also what you're fighting for everyone to have! You depriving yourself from the good things in life doesn't actually help anyone.

You also cannot pour from an empty cup, and so you must refill your cup regularly. The sum of a lifetime of sustained actions will be a lot greater than a couple of years of intense activity then intense burnout/sickness because you simply cannot keep going. Burnout and unprocessed trauma can also wreak havoc in groups and networks too, so by ensuring you take care of yourself you're not inadvertently passing some of this to other people.

4. Check your ego at the door. This is not about you and being the best ally, a morally perfect person, a martyr or saviour or anything like that. We are all cleaning a giant pile of shit together while the shit machine generates more shit, and the hope is maybe one day everything won't be covered in shit, but in the meantime removing some of it is still worthwhile, even if we can't remove all of it. You're doing cleaning work - essential, important, but definitely not glamorous.

It's 2026 and you wonder what your friends are up to. You tell the app on your phone to go and get everyone's most recent news. Jim's phone takes a sec to load because his wifi is crap in the garden, and Alex's phone takes a sec to load because their wifi is crap in the workshop, but nobody times out.

You don't worry when your friends time out. You're not one of those Worrying People who panic when they open the app and their friend's phone fails to respond to the ping, you figure they're just, y'know, in the garden or going through a tunnel or something.

Jim is of course posting hole. You comment "Nice hole Jim," and that comment goes straight from your phone to Jim's. Your phone saves a copy as well because it deliberately doesn't know the difference between a four-paragraph furnace repair guide and "Nice hole Jim" and it makes a local backup of anything you type, in case Jim drops his phone down the hole and doesn't notice until he's planted a tree on top of it. Everyone still teases him about that, and he jokes along with them because it was pretty funny. The tree has its own account now.

You scroll through today's posts, mostly goodmornings and fantastical lies about all the stuff your friends are gonna get done today. All these posts were downloaded from people's phones when you opened the app a minute ago. You reach the end of today's posts (the first one of course was Jenna and her early-bird nonsense) and that's it, nothing more to see, you're up to date on what your friends are up to. You're not ready to go back to Actually Doing Something With Your Life so you move your thumb over the Yesterday button, but before you can tap, a mitherbox pops up to tell you that Alex is posting shaft.

Your thumbs do a happy dance and "Nice shaft Alex" is sent directly from your phone to theirs, without needing the permission of any weird billionaires sitting in between, a connection as direct as a phone call, not that you're thinking about that, you're thinking about Alex's shaft. Apparently they've been polishing their shaft all morning and they're almost ready to give it some lube and stick it in. That car's gonna be Gorgeous when they finally finish it.

Anyway that's it now, you're all caught up. You didn't see any ads (why would you? All this is stored on your friends' phones' SD cards and sent over their wifi, they're the ones paying the 0.0001p to respond to your phone's "What's new" request) and everything was shown in chronological order (there are alternative apps that mess with your timeline ordering but nobody uses those because they're shit) and you've read the whole day and you're done. You put your phone away and start getting dressed.

As your coffee brews you check your friends app again and Jen the birdwatcher wants to show everyone her tits

the longer you spend using software that does not make deliberate efforts to run your inner peace through a wood chipper in order to monetize it

the more jarring it is using something that does

@PatternChaser yay, you got the grand prize Recent studies show a pretty high rate of co-occurence of both conditions, but #AuDHD is still poorly covered by studies.

My understanding is that both conditions help camouflage the other when masking, but don't cancel one another. It's actually the other way around: you have to navigate a narrow "goldilocks zone":

• between having your Autism over-stimulated and your ADHD under-stimulated
• between your need for routines and your need for novelty

I encourage you to search for other AuDHD folks sharing about their lived experiences. Two resources I loved are:

• The Divergent Conversations podcast, especially the earlier episodes
• The Chris and Debbie channel: they have several videos on the differences and interactions of both conditions

Apparently Meta is afraid of Pixelfed. Clearly, @dansup is doing something right. Can't imagine a bigger compliment.

"CONFIRMED: Facebook has *banned* anyone from linking to Pixelfed. #metablockingpixelfed"

h/t @ajsadauskas

Maybe tech media should pick this up. Seems like a good story!

January 12, 2025- “The hygiene hypothesis is being eroded

Infections at a young age correlate with severe infections later in life, few infections in youth correlate with less infections in adulthood

Where was the “strengthening of kids immune system” from infections?” - AJ Leonardi, MBBS, PhD (01/06/25) - https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/early-life-infection-burden-continues-throughout-childhood-new-data

The enshittification of AI has lead to the choice of AI used by VLC to be groaned at. I even saw a post cross my feed of someone looking for a replacement for VLC.

VLC is working on on-device realtime captioning. This has nothing to do with generating images or video using AI. This has nothing to do with LLMs.

This is not generative AI.

While it would be preferred to use human generated captions for better accuracy, this is not always possible. This means a lot of video media is inaccessible to those with hearing impairment.

What VLC is doing is something that will contribute to accessibility in a big way.

AI transcription is still not perfect. It has its problems. But this is one of those things that we should be hoping to advance.

I'm not looking to replace humans in creating captions. I think we're very far from ever being able to do this correctly without humans. But as I said, there's a ton of video content that simply do not have captions available, human generated or not.

So long as they're not trying to manipulate the transcription using GenAI means, this is the wrong one to demonize.

#AI #Transcription #VLC #HearingImpaired #Deaf #Accessibility

"...the rise of singlehood among young people is not a result of women not wanting marriage or children—but rather women finding the bargain on offer not particularly attractive."
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-of-gender-relations/

#Autism #DoubleEmpathy #Masking #Neurotype #Neurodiversity #Neurodivergent #AuDHD #AutisticCommunication #Autistic #ActuallyAutistic

my name is `adduser`
and my brother's `useradd`
one of us is good
and one of us is bad!

which of us is which?
there is no way to know
we change names sometimes
to keep you on your toes!