I wouldn’t say it’s tricky to keep going. Keeping it going is simply a case of funding it.

Now, repairing the damage of years of underfunding? That’s tricky

Because it’s so repairable, you might be able to find a 3rd party to fix it for not too much. I don’t know what that would do with your warranty, but I figure that attempting the repair yourself would also void the warranty.

High availability of parts and repair guides tends to lower the price of repairs, even from 3rd party people. It’s why right to repair is so important

Vive la France

You weren’t missing much by stopping there. I wish I had. She still doesn’t realise that she’s been a useful idiot to them all along.

Yeah, I share your unease. There have been a few times where I’ve gotten this vibe from some writing and later found out that it likely isn’t LLM generated text, but it’s always striking to me how this doesn’t ease that uncomfortable feeling — because the thing I’m actually uncomfortable about is how the prevalence of slop has made me so paranoid.

If I’m hyper vigilant about avoiding spending energy reading synthetic text, then I risk unduly dismissing something that someone put real time and energy into writing. But if I’m not cautious enough, I risk wasting my own time and energy engaging with content I’d rather ignore. It sucks to be forced into this position

I’m not opposed to AI, I’m opposed to the arse wipes trying to roll out an immature technology into critical scenarios with minimal oversight. I feel like most people who would describe themselves as anti-AI would agree that the problem is more about the socioeconomic context of this tech rather than the tech itself

Commenting to follow

Damn, Mamdani still be bringing that campaigning rizz even in office

I know a guy who’s a sex worker and he has had quite a few clients who are actively homophobic. When he told me this, I made a comment based on the assumption that these guys were closeted gays with internalised homophobia and he said “no, I think it’s something deeper than that”

His theory was that it’s basically a convoluted humiliation kink, where they are genuinely grossed out by the idea of having sex with a man, but they do it anyway because of the tabooness of it

Eh you can do better, have another go at it.

No, thank you.

For someone who is excited to go and have fun playing with this tech that’s apparently everything you’ve been waiting for, you seem weirdly eager to get angry over other people being angry?

That’s okay, because a sincere comment of gratitude functions as a super-upvote anyway. It’s like Reddit Gold, but with more human connection, and less capitalism

Yeah, I knew that, it’s super cool, and it came to mind as I was writing my earlier comment.

What’s neat about the website stuff is that even if it’s not as good now (idk, I haven’t looked), that value they created is still there in the older case study — there were so many good resources. I was the disability rep in a few student societies, as well as in a few volunteer orgs after uni, and we referenced the guidelines a few times. Good resources like that are especially useful in those contexts — because they helped turn “that would be nice, but we don’t have the resources to implement accessibility in our materials” into “okay, let’s put our money where our mouth is and do our best to make something as accessible as we can”

Well, given that LLMs have been shown to be shit at accurately summarising, I would say that my own, human parsing is a better way to summarise large amounts of information, slow as it may be.

That’s a very funny joke though, so I can see why you felt compelled to make this comment

The Oatmeal had a wonderful post about AI art last year that captures so many of my own feelings around this: A cartoonist’s review of AI art

I would agree, yeah.

I think a big driving force is that people who are drawn to generative AI are more likely to be mediocre at a thing, as well as demoralised by the effort required to improve.

I can sympathise with that drive, at least. After all, I’m a pretty mediocre writer. I desperately wish I could be better, but I am so far away from where I’d like to be that it feels hopeless sometimes.

Sometimes I wish that I believed that it actually was hopeless, because then I could just give up on trying rather than having to bear the pain of practicing my way out of mediocrity. However, I care more about improving than I do about my discomfort, and so I keep going with the XP grind.

A big thing that keeps me going is that I have seen the power of practice. I’m still far from where I’d like to be (and no doubt when I reach that point, my ambition will have grown along with my skill such that I will still be satisfied), but I’m able to look back on my efforts of the last few years and see real progress.

That’s why I find people who use generative AI to be quite tragic — they’re like alternate timeline versions of myself. It’s more comfortable to believe that the reason you’re not good at things is because there are people who are Good at it, and people who are Bad at it. If it’s a case of immutable categories of capability, then you have an excuse not to try. What’s especially tragic is that when these demoralised novices use generative AI, that’s often because they still have that drive to create inside themselves.

But man, it sucks to see, because I know that they will never find the satisfaction they crave in these tools. Sure, they might make something they’re proud of, giving them a facsimile of fulfillment — but it won’t compare to what they could be feeling. When I argue against generative AI, I’m not just being anti-AI, but pro-Art. Actually, no, it’s more than that — I’m pro-passion. If they could cultivate the kind of vulnerability required to actually use and develop their inner passion, then I would treasure any piece of art or writing generated through that process. I might not enjoy the art itself, in its own right, but I don’t need to, because what I love most about art is that it’s a fundamentally human process, and so any creative work is best enjoyed with that context

Ugh, it drives me mad. I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them, while yelling “PLEASE COME AND JOIN US. I GENUINELY WANT TO SEE WHAT PASSIONS DRIVE YOUR URGE TO CREATE. I KNOW IT HURTS TO BE MEDIOCRE, BUT YOUR PASSIONS ARE WORTH PERSISTING FOR. WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE, AND WE WANT YOU HERE WITH US SO THAT WE CAN HELP SUPPORT YOU”. Alas, screaming at someone like this is not an effective evangelisation strategy — even if you tell them that we throw better parties, and that they’re invited

Despite being so shit in many different respects (a chronic use of external consultants and contractors means the UK seems less likely than other European countries to make progress on a sovereign tech stack), the UK is pretty good with its data. There’s a surprisingly amount of data that’s released and is in a sensible format.

During the teachers strikes last year, I ended up using playing around making visualisations using the data about the number of teachers in various parts of the country, and I was pleased to see how much there was there and how clearly it was documented. There are very few things I’m proud of the UK for, so I am glad to have this as one

(heads up: this comment is likely to be less articulate than my previous ones, because I’m having a bit of a cathartic rant)

“The deaf people I know don’t consider it much of a disability at all, besides the social expectations thrust on them by hearing people”

This eloquently captures a lot of my own feelings about disability; There are other aspects of my identity (such as my queerness) which feels like an identity that I choose for myself (which is quite empowering), but with disability, it very much feels like something thrust upon me.

Here’s the way I think about it: let’s imagine I’m having a really good day in terms of my walking ability, and I am taking a stroll around a scenic lake. Even though it’s a good day for me, there inevitably will be times when I need to take a break, and so I’ll likely take advantage of many of the benches along the walking route. But there have been plenty of times when I’ve been walking with an able bodied companion and they were the one who tripped and needed to re-evaluate their ability to complete the route; or they get tired sooner than they expect and need to take frequent breaks in order to make it all the way round. What’s the difference between that person and me?

Well, obviously the difference is in the severity and frequency of those issues, but my general point is that there is natural variety between different people’s capability, and there’s also a heckton of variation within each individual. Disability and capability are inherently relative. As you highlight, there are many people who would likely fit the legal definition of being disabled (e.g. for the purpose of discrimination laws) who don’t actively identify as being disabled — and there’re so many reasons why this might be the case. For instance, some people may feel that their impairment is sufficiently low (or well managed) that in most scenarios, they are not functionally disabled. And on the flip side, able bodied people have the capacity to be functionally disabled, depending on the context (breaking a bone is one example of that, but also ageing, or also chronic exhaustion causing them to be fatigued and achy).

My overall point is that I wish we lived in a world where disability didn’t exist. I don’t mean this in a eugenicsy “let’s fix all the broken people” kind of way, but rather I wish that society would just chill the hell out and stop being so weird about stuff. It’s the able bodied majority who are the ones making disability, as a conceptual label, be a thing. Labels can be super useful, but only if we use them as dynamic tools to help us interface with the world. In practice, labels thrust upon people are treated like rigid, natural categories, which leads to people being squashed into boxes that aren’t right for them

Sometimes I can walk up and down stairs with no problem. Sometimes my able bodied friend might struggle with that same task. To me, those are functionally same — I might struggle more often, but it’s always a context dependant and variable thing. “Disability” as a category often gatekeeps people in the "able bodied " box from accessing support that they need (which is especially a problem if they have a health condition that is causing them to become more disabled over time — people end up feeling like they don’t deserve the support). On the flip side, people like me are pressured to stay within the disabled box, because if we appear to be more capable than the simplistic labels applied to us suggests, then that throws all of our experiences and needs into question.

Deconstructing the category of “disabled” is easier said than done. We’d need a world much more accessible than this one to even begin that work.

I have no idea how coherent this comment is, but thanks for engaging in this conversation with me. I confess that I came into this in a slightly defensive headspace, because there were aspects of your earlier comments that rubbed me the wrong way, but I really appreciate the thoughtful replies you left me (especially the one I’m replying to right now — the solidarity I felt with you was part of the fuel for this cathartic rant). The internet is full of needless hostility and wasted time in messy threads, so when a nice interaction like this happens, it really brightens my day

Well, I’m not deaf, and I don’t personally know anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing, so I can’t answer from my own experience.

That’s no problem though, because a quick Google showed that there are loads of deaf people who benefit from having a service dog to support them to hear. I have no reason to doubt all of these people who find that this helps them, so I feel confident in answering your question with a “yes”

You might feel that basing my answer on a quick skim over some search results is a cop-out answer, but that’s the result of quite a few years being active in disability activism and reading disability theory. A slogan that’s common in disability rights activism is “nothing about us without us”. That’s the crux of things — I don’t know what people find helpful, and it’s not my place to tell people what is helpful to them or not.

For me to question whether someone who has a hearing ear dog “really needs [one]” would be like asking a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis whether they really need that wheelchair. Even if I had multiple sclerosis myself, that would be highly inappropriate to ask, because disabilities affect people differently, and people develop coping strategies that work for them .

I’ve been on the receiving end of questions like that, and it’s not pleasant to have to justify yourself to a person who has little to no relevant expertise on your disabilities like this.

Living with disabilities often means trying to put together a wide variety of accessibility adjustments that may help, but all come with a tradeoff. Using myself as an example, I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user — I use a manual wheelchair sometimes, due to pain and frequent falls, but I can walk (albeit riskily). If I take my wheelchair out with me, then it makes it a bitch to get around if the venue or the city isn’t particularly accessible. If I have recently fallen and sprained my hand, I can’t push myself, so that’s awkward. Sometimes, the path of least harm means taking a risk and trying to walk (usually using a different mobility aid, such as a walking stick or frame). Walking where possible is also good to prevent muscle atrophy.

Do I need a wheelchair? Well, I guess not, given that there was a period of almost 2 years where mine was broken and it was a nightmare to chase up wheelchair services to get them to repair or replace my wheelchair. I survived that period, so in a sense, I don’t need it. However, my quality of life was significantly decreased, because on the bad days where I was too unsteady to safely walk at all, I was housebound at best. I fell over far more frequently, and I ended up making at least 20 trips to the minor injuries unit for X-rays following falls in that period. It sucked, big time. And for those reasons, I was eventually given a replacement wheelchair, because the specialist services agreed that I did need one.

When you see a disabled person, you don’t get to see their behind-the-scenes. If you’re seeing them out and about, there’s a decent likelihood you’re seeing them on a good day anyway, so there’s a sample bias there. You don’t get to see what their struggles look like without their accessibility adjustments, nor the struggles that remain even after they have all their support in place. You don’t get to see the costs or the tradeoffs of their accessibility adjustments, nor which strategies they tried, and then decided against using because it wasn’t helpful for them.

Understanding this, in broad strokes, is why I’m inclined to give someone the benefit of the doubt. I’d rather let some “fakers” get away with claiming accessibility adjustments that they don’t need if it means supporting disabled people to figure out what works best for them — not least of all because there are far more disabled people struggling needlessly due to not being able to access things that would help them, than there are “fakers”.

TL;DR: Yes. Absolutely, without a doubt. I don’t have lived experience of being deaf, so if I want to be a good ally and advocate, then the first step is to listen to what people say helps them, and believe them.