phoenixcatch7

[phoenixcatch7]

I think the solution to kids on the Internet is to have specific, kid friendly spaces on the Internet. Kids wouldn't come across "adult content" on YouTube if barbie dot com still had flash games and this is a hill I will die on.

[phoenixcatch7]

[phoenixcatch7]

Saw this on Pinterest but wanted to share bc actually I have had a physio recommend this to me and it’s been amazing!

Walking backwards strengths the muscles around your knee (esp the quadriceps, which you will definitely feel if you do this) but doesn’t put the same strain on the joint as forward walking or running. It’s very good for your balance, coordination and patellar tracking, all important to reduce knee pain, support your knees and can help rehab knee injuries.

I do it on a gym treadmill, usually at 1.2 km/h (but I’ve seen anywhere from 0.8-1.6 km/h recommended, which is like 0.5-1.0 mph for the Americans). You can start with a very slight incline and then slowly increase it 5% as you get more comfortable, and to help engage the muscles. I usually do this for 5 to 10 minutes, 3-4 times a week. My understanding is that you can also do it outside, either on flat or sloped ground, because just walking backwards itself is useful as hell (the incline is just useful to engage muscles more as you get more used to it)

If you have even a spare 20 minutes a week, this is seriously useful to support your knees, because there is nothing worse than injuring one

[phoenixcatch7]

god i never told you guys but a couple weeks ago at work i heard a guy say, and i closely paraphrase, "So I was out with my partner--republicans hate it when i say that. My heterosexual partner Jessica--" and i was straight up crying before he finished his sentence. fully diegetic convergent linguistic evolution live in the workplace

[phoenixcatch7]

the death of dvds is so fucked. what about bonus features

[phoenixcatch7]

[phoenixcatch7]

You could try and not be owned by @dickbong69

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay I [went on a little rant] earlier about people who write image descriptions of meme jokes that don't actually explain the joke at all.

And the more I think about it, the more I notice that a lot of the bad image descriptions are making the same mistake. They focus too much on extraneous visual details, and not nearly enough on the *story* the image is trying to tell.

For example, take this meme image:

Good Image Description Example:

"Distracted boyfriend" meme edit. Image is a stock photo of a guy turning his head to ogle a woman walking past him on the sidewalk, while his girlfriend, who is standing right next to him and holding his hand, witnesses his behavior and gives him a deeply offended look. Text labels in all caps have been added to each person. The guy is labeled: me. The offended girlfriend is labeled: sleeping. The woman the guy is ogling is labeled: staying up till 5 A.M.

Bad Image Description Example:

Image of three people standing on a busy sidewalk. On the far left is a slightly out of focus, smiling white woman wearing a bright red dress with a scoop neck and no sleeves. She has long medium brown hair. The words, "STAYING UP TILL 5 AM" are pasted over her in bold white text. Behind her and to the right is a white man wearing a mostly blue plaid flannel short sleeved shirt and black pants. He has short, medium brown hair and closely trimmed facial hair. His is turning to look at the woman in the red dress. His lips are pursed and his eyebrows are arched. The word, "ME" is pasted over him bold white text. Standing directly next to the man is another white woman. She is wearing a pale blue sleeveless top and blue jeans. She has shoulder-length brown hair. She is turned towards the man with her mouth open. The word, "SLEEPING" is pasted over her in bold white text.

I think a lot of sighted people carry an unconscious bias towards the blind.

It's like, in their heads, they're thinking, "I wish those poor, unfortunate blind people could experience the meme the way a sighted person does. I know! I'll help them visualize it. I describe every last visual detail, so blind people can 'see' the image for themselves!"

And so, the overzealous ally proceeds to explain everything about the image except what's actually happening in it.

Stop this!

Blind people don't need you to "re-create the experience of being able to see" for them. Your image description doesn't need to "paint a picture."

The only thing your image description needs to do is answer the question: "What's so funny about this meme?"

Stop going on and on about what color the girl's shirt is, or how the guy grooms his facial hair. Stop worrying about all these irrelevant visual details you think blind people are "missing out on" because they can't see.

Just explain the meme the same way you would explain it to a sighted person who doesn't currently have wifi access to look the meme up for themselves.

[phoenixcatch7]

yknow i never noticed the sheer rareness of images having ids or alt text on this website until i started adding alt text to my art (and trying to remember to add it to any images i post in general, especially text screenshots) and that makes me kinda sad

[phoenixcatch7]

More Detail Isn't Always Better

When it comes to imagine descriptions, context is most important. More detail isn't always better (and it can actually make it worse sometimes).

To take an example from a real post that I can't find a link to anymore, imagine someone says, "Shocking how many people don't know that hens lay non-fertilized eggs and think the yolk they're eating is a baby chicken." Someone else reblogs and says, "once tried desperately to make my friend understand that yolks were not, like, a liquified potentiality of a chicken, and she looked at me for a while and then said, "but they're both yellow." Then a third person reblogs this thread and says "Behold, a chicken" with an large PNG of a photo of a whole lemon with a blank transparent background." A fourth person reblogs saying "[image: a lemon.]"

That's okay. Like yes, you could say [image id: a large photo of a whole uncut yellow lemon with a transparent background.]" But that wouldn't add anything to the thread, it wouldn't help further clarify the context. In this case, the actual ID is just as good as, if not better, than the more detailed one.

The same goes for plain text transcriptions. Unless the formatting is conveying meaning, don't include it in your transcription! At best, it's extra info that doesn't add anything; at worst, it actually make your transcription harder to read than the original. For example, let's say you had this original text:

My absolute favorite character in ALL of Steven Universe is PEARL!

Which of these plain text versions is more useful?

[Plain Text Transcription: My absolute favorite character in all of Steven Universe is Pearl!" End Transcription.]

[Plain Text Transcription: My (italics) absolute (end italics) (bold) favorite (end bold) character in (caps) all (end caps) of Steven Universe is (caps) Pearl (end caps)!" End Transcription.]

Probably the first one, right?

[phoenixcatch7]

[phoenixcatch7]

to get a job you have to have 10 years of experience in every possible tool and task that could even tangentially be related to what you'll actually be doing and then you have to prove that you're the smartest person in the world and you're organised and proactive and have great problem solving skills. and then if you beg on your knees like a dog enough and actually get the job, the entire first week will be doing spent reading shit like: 'MANDATORY HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING: if the floor is SLIPPERY or BUMPY, you might TRIP. this is BAD. please take this test to check your knowledge. question 1: is tripping bad? yes/no'

[phoenixcatch7]

California girls we're unaccountable

[phoenixcatch7]

God I love cultural differences. An American made a video about the things American tourists do abroad and one of them was carry around water bottles. He asked “What’s wrong with that? Better then to be constantly dehydrated like Europeans”

Even though he said it in a friendly joking manner it kicked off a very confused conversation in the comments.

I remember listening to a podcast that explained how Americans drink way more water than Europeans because the government worked out it’s the easiest way for Americans to do something healthy for themselves while Europeans were never told to consume large amounts of water just “drink when you’re thirsty” because more focus was put on the quality of our food. It’s a pretty cute way to tell if someone is American. They’ll tell you to stay hydrated.

And just to be clear, Europeans stay hydrated. It’s just not a cultural focus like it is for Americans.

But the video also exposed a difference in bag-use for American and European tourists.

Americans responded that carrying a backpack around just for your water sounds annoying and Europeans asked why they were only using it for water? Did they intend to not buy anything on their vacation? And wouldn’t they prefer to have their hands free? Well, the Americans answered that they did have a hand free because their phone fit in their pocket. And besides, men don’t carry bags or wear backpacks, certainly not after leaving the education system. And in some areas it’s considered suspicious to carry a bag in public because what if it had a weapon in it. They also talked about how the American car based society means bags usually aren’t necessary but I think they misunderstood that the conversation was about tourists. I’m sure Europeans generally carry bags or wear backpacks more often in their home countries too tho because yeah we do walk more and have to carry stuff around so we probably bring that mentality when we vacation in other countries.

I love stumbling across these things because I’ve never seen anyone discuss the difference in bag usage.

[phoenixcatch7]

i hope suzanne collins kills mr beast

[phoenixcatch7]

if you wiped every ICE agent off the face of the earth, a hundred million people would become safer overnight. if you wiped every furry off the face of the earth, the entire internet would collapse for good in a matter of hours. i know where my allegiances lie.

[phoenixcatch7]

tonight i swore a blood oath to the minimum wage workers at my local subway