Maybe I’m crazy for this, but I don’t like the term politics, I feel like it hides what people are actually talking about. Think about the difference between the statements:
“I’m not interested in understanding politics, it’s too crazy”
“I’m not interested in understanding who gets to decide what my rights are, it’s too crazy”
Or maybe:
“It’s annoying seeing politics in my feed all the time”
“It’s annoying seeing people discussing the implementation of mass surveillance in my feed all the time”
In both cases, do you see how the first one feels like a pretty standard perspective, but the second one feels insane?
I don’t know if you realize this, but when people say things like “I don’t talk about politics” that’s just a short form of what they really mean, which is often:
I don’t want to talk about politics here.
I don’t want to talk about politics with you.
I don’t want to talk about politics right now.
I don’t want to talk about politics like that.
Surely you have to have seen the changes over the past 10-15 years in online discourse that has resulted in politics invading every available space. It used to be quite easy to avoid political conversations online. And still, a lot of people don’t come online for that and that’s okay.
They aren’t insane. They’re trying to tell you to calm down. Please take a hint and change the topic when someone says something like that.
Imma pull a classic middle of the road …thingy. Sometimes people use “I don’t talk politics” to mean “I’m personally happy with how this part of the system is working so stop complaining” which is kinda shitty when they’re not the one on the ass end of it. It’s also cool to just have some crochet groups where the biggest drama is that I hold the hook like a knitter. Gotta decompress sometimes. Have the strength to do both and all.
When someone says “I don’t like or follow politics” my reply is something alomg the lines of “well, that’s your choice, but you know who does take an interest in politics? Your boss, their boss, your bank, your landlord… So go ahead and choose not to care about politics, just shut the fuck up with your whinging about the state of the world you’ve just told me you opt out of having a say in.”
Or something
It would be great if my existence and the existence of my friends and family weren’t considered “political.”
But here we are. Sorry that our not going quietly into the camps inconveniences you.
You know you’re in a discussion with a blind person, and you included an image without alternative text.
Please learn what alternative text is.
They did not say what you’re implying them saying. There is a world between not caring about people getting arrested by ICE, and not wanting every other post being about Trump’s antics or US politics.
Plus, if they are blind, I guess it’s harder for them to decide “at a glance” what they’d want to check or not. It doesn’t suffice to see someone’s face to decide to skip, they have to read what the post is about.
Did you miss that OP mentioned they’re blind?
Here is that image you posted, but with manually-written alt text added.
(I don’t usually do this when adding alt tags but in this case I also added the same text as a title/tooltip to make it also easy to read for users without a screen reader. Apologies to screen reader users that this probably causes you to hear the description twice.)
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that being blind is much worse than any of that extremely common stuff you want to feel oppressed about
Nobody is sending anyone to camps bro.
Might help if your talking points were delusional conspiracy nonsense.
The Trump administration literally sold merch at the front gate of one such camp in Florida. Old prisons are being reopened and new ones are being built to hold all the new ICE detainees, and they throw them all together in a cell with deportation papers in the middle of the room hoping they’ll give up and sign to be willingly deported. ICE now has massive deportation quotas that they’re being pushed to meet.
The above doesn’t even scrape the iceberg of everything that’s been happening. Your confident ignorance betrays your stupidity.
How do you pick up your dog’s poop?
Guide dogs have bathroom breaks at set times, and in my experience if their diet is healthy they’ll drop a duce at the same time each day. In any case, the dog is kept on a leash and given a command to relieve itself. It’ll usually sniff around, then stop to do the deed. Straight back means pee and arched back means poop. The posture can be seen if the handler has sufficient vision or felt with a hand if not. If poop is indicated, you find the dog’s south end and use your foot to mark ground zero. When the dog is done it’s a simple matter of bagging it using your foot as the landmark.
Dogs are amazing.
Sounds like poopy shoes but I guess it’s all about practice…
Just stomp on it barefoot.
Interesting! As a seeing person who used to walk the family dog, I can attest to the technique of using your foot as a landmark - it was invaluable in order to not lose track of the pile among similarly-colored fallen leaves while I was getting the bag ready.
Wait… You’re blind?
👋
Sí
What’s your favorite screenreader?
Probably NVDA for Windows. Microsoft has tried to flesh out Narrator but it’s still the MS Edge of screen readers IMO, you use it just to download another screen reader. The fact that VS Code is built around NVDA and not Narrator should show how MS feels about it.
I definitely agree that NVDA is the best on Windows. Narrator is eh (you described it well) and JAWS is somehow both costly and shit? I’ll give it to Apple too, VoiceOver is one of the best I’ve used.
What are your thoughts on AI powered screen readers?
Personally, despite being rabidly anti-AI, it seems like one of the few positive uses for AI since it can fill in the gaps where web a11y fails. I’m honestly curious about its development, but worried about the technology being tainted by capitalism (as is tradition)
Disclaimer: I’m not fully blind (though I do have my own complex eye disability), but I’ve done a TON of work on web a11y and appreciate the responses
What are your thoughts on AI powered screen readers?
One of my biggest gripes with AI is that it requires a cloud connection most of the time, and I’m all about my PC being my personal computer.
In terms of usefulness I can see it maybe for image description.
Easier said than done, it seems.
I appreciate that you used a tilde. “Si” is an entirely different word.
Tengo una licentiatura en español pero no lo he hablado en años entonces no soy fluido.
Eso suena bastante fluido para mí! :P
Es mucho más fácil escribir que hablar.
I don’t mind politics. Just wish I, who’s never set foot in the US, could come in here waste my time as usual and not have US News & Politics make its way into my feed every time through some non-US News & Politics community.
Maybe I need to make more use of a skill most USians lack, knowledge of other languages, and find myself more non-US stuff. Not exactly easy, but would pay off easily.
There’s some great stuff in English, but I wouldn’t miss it much if it means no more US news & politics. There ought to be good shit in other languages. I just need to find the good stuff, and where it be
Try a multingual lemmy instance. On sh.itjust.works I get German and French posts in my feed all the time from various communities when I browse Local.
I do get some posts in different languages here and there, but I don’t really know some of these, so not useful lol. If I could, like, idk, filter or something.
I’d be down to getting languages I don’t understand if I could get rid of English. As an experiment, a trial. Or at least a similar amount of every language. Boost other languages.
At this point, I think I’m better taking breaks from Lemmy, or leaving altogether. Not sure it adds all that much to my life
**American politics
This is the important part. I enjoy reading political news and discussions. But in the country I live in, not American politics which forced into each conversation.
Were you born sighted? Or did you go blind over time?
I was born blind.
I’m sorry to hear that. I had a friend in college born without eyes. I talked a lot with him about concepts like shapes and colors. He was able to tell how much battery the electric carts on campus had by the sound of the motor, it’s quite interesting. I guess you might have an easier time than someone that lost their vision. I now have a friend that went blind after a car accident, he gets a lot of help from neighbors. He try’s very hard to do things himself, but often needs help. I hope you have a good support network for the things you need in life.
Yes, politics is here, because Spez pushed a lot of it out, due to Elongated Muskrat.
Well now I gotta now. How do they pick up their dogs poop? Is it the two dogs taking turns and eating it theory?
My favourite part of Lemmybis being able to block communities and users, don’t live in America so it’s not my problem you got a tangerine hitler for a president, we got our own problems.
Like it or not, it’s everybody’s problem. At least he unwittingly caused some positive change, pushing EU countries to break away from US tech/products
Don’t live in Europe
Obviously there has to be a space for politics here as we’re trying to build a global, decentralised alternative to corporate social media, and that has to include every form of discussion and a plurality of voices. However, on traditional web forums based around a shared interest it was always a bad idea to let the politics run free, as you’d get flame wars, and eventually a ruling clique with moderator influence banning posters along political lines and a resultingly toxic McCarthyite culture. I think the answer has to be more tools that allow us control over our feeds, more easily - there is space for all of politics free, ml instances, neutral grounds, etc if we are adults about it.
Agreed. In a way though I should expect this. Most people on the fediverse are here for ideological reasons, including myself. We dislike the corporate platforms that the fediverse seeks to replace. Simply having an account here makes a statement. But what exhausts me is when I go onto a community like mildlyinteresting expecting to see pics of three-chambered peanuts and yellow stop signs but most of it is stuff like “French President explains the political consequences of AI” or “There’s a selection bias baked into US democracy that most people never stop to consider. Owning a car significantly increases the likelihood of voting.” Like I can even attest personally to that last one as I don’t own a car and that makes it hard to get out and vote, but that’s not why I came here.
- Bidet.
- Two dogs, taking turns. One poops, the other eats it. And then licks your face.
considering the state of the world, politics really should be inescapable. everywhere. not just lemmy. not just reddit. not just social media. everywhere.
people trying not to pay attention are allowing evil to go on uncontested. you are showing a lack of empathy and self absorption that is ruining the entire world.
The world has always been this way. You just weren’t being doped on it 24/7 via your phone. There has always been war, corruption, and abuses of power.
It’s a lot easier to think the world isn’t ending when the news is a 30m broadcast once a night, or a news paper each day, vs endlessly consuming algorithmic rage bait calibrated to stimulate your fear response.
theres a difference now though. the rich have amassed more wealth and power than ever before and technology has multiplied that power many times over. In countries like the US, the fascistic and oppressive systems that have been put in place have become nearly unbreakable by any realistic means. A civil war is not realistic without outside support from other countries. And that’s not realistic. Smaller countries can have revolts because they don’t have the systems the US has in place. They aren’t militarized and policed to even a fraction of the amount. The US public only worsens the issue because it has been purposefully de-educated over many decades. We are staring a steel reinforced dystopia in the face and doing nothing because there is nothing we can do.
The world has not been this way before.
Yeah it has. It’s been way worse, actually.
But don’t let history get in the way of your doomer beliefs I guess.
Tell me when and tell me how.
And I’ll just add, you people, who are minimizing how bad things have become are only making things worse by nurturing a culture of complacency.
You mean I’m not a delusional internet revolutionary who thinks using Linux and making internet comments is going to bring about a communist utopia? Yeah, I’m one of ‘those people’.
Only person making your life miserable is you.
2 days later… still waiting.
I’ll be waiting for your explanation of when and how it was worse.
My god… How do blind people pick up their dogs poop?
Dogs do poop in the blind person’s hand.
That is incorrect. Certainly at least not a bare hand. I’ve heard of people catching it midair with a bagged hand but that was when the dog was having an accident IIRC.
Sorry. I forgot add “/s” at the end. Thanks for the clarify.
