@octothorpe yeah but the opportunity to become a highly compensated useful idiot for foreign adversaries makes it all worthwhile
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I see we have arrived in the Yelling In Yellow era of YouTube thumbnails. -
I see we have arrived in the Yelling In Yellow era of YouTube thumbnails.@octothorpe live by the algorithm, die by the algorithm
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I see we have arrived in the Yelling In Yellow era of YouTube thumbnails.I see we have arrived in the Yelling In Yellow era of YouTube thumbnails. Seems like over 1/3 of thumbnails now have BOLD yellow text screaming some clickbait headline. It's now so much of a thing that I'm already seeing variations, like different shades of yellow, or black text on a yellow background. Truly, we live in times of wonder. Like, I wonder why this is suddenly a thing.
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She thought it would taste funny@mattly
DUNG!
(sorry, but I never outgrew Monty Python) -
How do we fix the internet's social layer so it's not 100% tuned for neurotypical cognition and actively hostile to many (most?) neurodivergent people? This new "attention economy" has created a public space (the internet) that is the worst parts of NT...How do we fix the internet's social layer so it's not 100% tuned for neurotypical cognition and actively hostile to many (most?) neurodivergent people? This new "attention economy" has created a public space (the internet) that is the worst parts of NT society turned up to 11, and a lot of ND people can't function there.
What's the problem? Well, it's the constant attention grabs, the distracting background music, the intrusive ads, the information-free clickbait headlines, the pervasive gamification that assumes default NT neurological risk-reward mechanisms and social motivations, the take-no-prisoners mode of personal destruction for even tiny misundertsandings, how everything is a popularity contest we can't compete in let alone ever win, how facts matter less than feelings about them, how a cute smile is more convincing than a rational argument, how no one will listen to what you have to say if you don't say it in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. And that's just for starters.
I assume that capitalism and market forces have brought us to this point. NTs are, by far, the biggest market segment. All it takes is a feedback loop and a little time to evolve any product to where it's close to ideal for NTs but effectively excludes ND folk. How do we even fight that?
A simple example: A company sells a product that needs a lot of documentation to understand how to use it. That company creates a video with all the information, and makes the video fun and engaging by adding music, animations, and a little game so you can tell when you have learned everything. That approach might work great for NT folk who need some help to stay focused on learning and retaining new information, but it can be an insurmountable barrier to Autistic or ADHD folk who don't process video information well and can't easily filter out the distracting music and animations, or who learn best by reading a written document that lets them jump around and absorb information in a non-linear fashion.
In the USA, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requires public facilities to accommodate disabled people by making their facilities accessible, like with wheelchair ramps. I think we need some new law that does something similar for websites, apps, and other computer-based systems. Public facilities have to be accessible to everyone, and if apps or websites serve the public, they must be made accessible to ND folk as well. I don't know what a ND-accessible internet would look like, but I know it will get built by including ND folk in every stage of design and implementation of it.
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I just found a wonderful dont-blink-or-youll-miss-it easter egg in #StevenUniverse s3e1, "Steven's Birthday". Note that Garnet is voiced by Estelle.I just found a wonderful dont-blink-or-youll-miss-it easter egg in #StevenUniverse s3e1, "Steven's Birthday". Note that Garnet is voiced by Estelle.
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OK, here's a very #ActuallyAutistic thing.OK, here's a very #ActuallyAutistic thing. A lot of us are clumsy, or even have dyspraxia. I once heard a phrase "poor motor planning" to describe that, which was enough to get me thinking about how to compensate for that. Now when I can't do something that takes coordination, like tossing some trash in the bin, I take a moment to visualize doing it, and let my brain practice on it in simulation. Then actually doing it goes much better. Finally, one weird trick that really works.
I guess it's just another kind of rehearsal, like I have done for conversations all my life. Give the old brain a chance to activate and warm up those pathways so you don't have to do it cold. Does that work for anyone else? Is this something everyone knows and I finally figured it out myself?
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Is anyone working on fixing this YouTube preview bug where we don't see video previews in #Mastodon now? Is there a hashtag for Mastodon development I should use here? -
Is anyone working on fixing this YouTube preview bug where we don't see video previews in #Mastodon now? Is there a hashtag for Mastodon development I should use here?Is anyone working on fixing this YouTube preview bug where we don't see video previews in #Mastodon now? Is there a hashtag for Mastodon development I should use here?
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people sharing this “is my blue your blue” thing not realizing that color categorization isa) a social constructb) quite literally, a spectrum@mattly I remember watching a video a few decades ago that showed an experiment in a local jail where they held male prisoners in two different cells, one painted baby-boy blue, the other painted baby-girl pink. There was a correlation of calmer prisoners in the pink cell, more anxious in the blue cell. (Why do all these psychology experiments sound so janky?)
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Cannot wait@GottaLaff Along the lines of the first point, I'd love to see her take Mary Trump's advice and drop a reference to the legendary mashed potato story.
https://www.marytrump.org/p/the-legendary-mashed-potato-story -
We simply should not let people become so rich that their personal issues become society's problems.We simply should not let people become so rich that their personal issues become society's problems.