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As a disabled person who uses a screen reader

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

There are a million accessibility tools already out there which do the same thing this app claims it would. And these tools do so without AI and without scrapping the works of non consenting creators.

This person is just using disabled people as an excuse to be an asshole.

Fandom friends, we have won the battle (although we definitely did not win the war).

Yesterday, I wrote this post about lore.fm, an AI scraping app that was being marketed as an accessibility tool. Now, the person that has been promoting this app decided, in the light of plenty of backlash, to backtrack and pull it down, as they "feel uncomfortable" with how authors reacted to it.

Of this video, it's very important to highlight a couple of things:

the video is 3 long minutes of guilt-tripping: she keeps repeating that her (and her team, whose existence wasn't disclosed until yesterday: this app was marketed as being a sole woman's pet project) wanted to do good and create an accessibility tool. This comes with the underlying layer that all the authors who rightfully decided to defend their creations are ableist and in the wrong. It's a manipulation tactic;

there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the app was created by a team that specifically works to create apps that generate AI stories;

there is no explanation as to where the money to fund this app is coming from, and we all know that, when you're not paying for the product, you are the product;

this is backtracking, not genuine conversation: since the other day, the videos promoting this app went viral on r/Ao3, and plenty of people began contacting team@lore.fm to ask for their works to not be included. Then, the news spread on Tumblr too. They originally thought they could get away with "legally" stealing as much material as possible, and had to cut the project short because authors were doing everything in their power to stop them. The decision to take the app off for "reassessment" doesn't come from the goodness of their hearts.

At this point of the conversation, I think it's clear that the entirety of the project was relying on the perceived naïveté of fanfic readers and writers, who are oftentimes seen and stereotyped as being silly teens and not adults with real jobs and real knowledge of the law. When they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of authors contacting them to ask their works to not be featured, some of them threatening legal consequences, they had no other choice but to backtrack.

For now, the issue is closed, but don't think it'll be forever. Know your rights, even if you're "just" a fic author, and defend yourself and your works too from these scummy companies that see us as nothing but machines that churn out material for them to steal and profit off of with no consequences.

i want to hold my tongue and not share the depth of my opinions about the two-headed cow but it upsets me so much every time i see it, i really do hate the narrative of 'rooting for' an animal like this to live despite it being unable (and will be unable, for its entire life) to do the most basic of things life has to offer, even breathing, eating, moving, to prioritize the savior myth that everything can and should be saved, that every living creature should be treated this way as though its not one of the greatest mercies that we as humans have the ability to enact a quick and painless alternative to a slow and miserable life that ends in slow and miserable death on our livestock when they can't advocate for themselves, the ability we have as humans to see the research and make a prognosis and decide that the spectacle is not worth the extended misery, but this life is worth the dignity of a peaceful death we have the capacity to grant

because there is a difference between helping a baby animal in the first legs of life knowing it has a chance to have a quality of life worth fighting for, not a life doomed to be painful that we KNOW is painful knowing all that we know about animals who come with this specific type of physical abnormality, what we see on the surface is only a fraction of much more malformation and deterioration on the inside that we can't just decide is not happening because they 'look' fine, and what we see on the surface is already a life from start to finish without any experience an animal like this should have by virtue of being alive, with no life at all and no understanding of why it is going through this

the assumption that there is no suffering despite eating, breathing, moving never something that this baby will be able to do unassisted, despite knowing the longest a two-headed cow has ever survived was not even a year and a half and that record hasn't been broken in over thirty years, that's not even a quarter, an 8th, a 12th, a 15th of a cow's normal lifespan, and doubtfully much of that was pleasant or comfortable, and even if this cow does get to the point of being able to stand on its own, we can't ever know the full range of agony this animal is going through, all we know is there is and there will be agony, and we need to not see life as inherently successful or painless just because something is going in one end and coming out the other, that isn't what defines an animal's quality of life to me

the two-headed calf poem is beautiful to me because it's a miracle that something so rare (luckily) and so doomed could see one extraordinary thing before passing. the sky ceases to be beautiful when forced to live every day for the sake of social media's voyeurism, it makes me so sad that someone who raises livestock would put public attention over their duty to their animals ☹️

The best order to watch Half Life 2 speed runs is this Dev Commentary fallowed by the AGDQ run with it's beautiful, beautiful commentary.

I’m with you Dev’s how is this guy getting shot in the face but not taking any damage? How does he just walk into walls?

Comment section: “Well clearly he's a boat and also a zombie and also doesn't exist,"

Hmm, no, that’s not helpful. But I am intrigued.

Where's your copy of Les Mis by Victor Hugo?

Two sickly, elderly male macaws paired together in the study had scarcely seen another macaw in their lives, yet formed a deep bond—dancing and singing enthusiastically together through the screen and calling “Hi! Come here! Hello!” whenever one or the other moved out of the video frame.

Guys I'm crying, technology brings disabled people AND parrots together. This is so great.

"A few significant findings emerged. The birds engaged in most calls for the maximum allowed time. They formed strong preferences—in the preliminary pilot study, Cunha’s bird Ellie, a Goffin’s cockatoo, became fast friends with a California-based African grey named Cookie. “It’s been over a year and they still talk,” Cunha says.

"According to Kleinberger, the types of vocalizations the birds used suggested they were mirroring the call and response nature they engage in in the wild—“hello, I’m here!” in parrot-speak."

(courtesy wolvendamien at Bluesky)

Update:

My hysterectomy will be laparoscopic. I knew this from the beginning but did not realize until my most recent consultation that this means they will pull the uterus out in small pieces.

So no glass uterus in my future as my surgeon and I agree that, “It’s for art tho” is not a good enough reason to cut a huge whole though my abdominal wall and muscles.

And it’s also not worth the paperwork and hassle to get the shredded remains of my uterus back from the hospital. Although I do have another 3 months to think of something I might do with them.

The heart project was also never going to involve a human heart, btw.

Eventually I'm going to need some hearts and uteri for my glass art. I can't source the organs from dissection kits or anything like that because you don't want to 'cook' formaldehyde or other preservation chemicals. And I had no idea where I could get uteri from. Thanks to that goat bone ask I realized I can source from butchers / farmers in my area. I think my ask is weirder! Super thanks to you and goat bone anon!

This ask is DEFINITELY WEIRDER but congrats on realizing where you can get some fresh organs, weirdo!!!

My sister is A17, maybe A40 (and everyone else in our family has blue eyes) and her husband is T50. I've desperately wanted to know what eye colors their children are likely to have.

Blue seems impossible, or, at least, extremely extremely extremely unlikely. But will the be in the T30-50 range or will my sister's blue lighten them more than that?

How do you get C40, D10, or D20?

Every eye color is so incredibly beautiful.

Natural Eye Color Chart

Reblog if you usually block people who ‘try to divert the conversation away from’ rape and real life crimes.

do you ever read a ‘callout post’ where the summary on top is like ‘they EAT BABIES and RUN A COFFEE SHOP FOR MURDERERS and they HATE GAY PEOPLE’ and then you scroll down and actually read the post and it’s like, they posted about lamb chops once, they work at starbucks and one time someone who killed someone had a coffee at that starbucks, and they made a ‘fruit (derogatory)’ joke once

Hello!

(And hello Vera as well, cool blog)

I was diagnosed with PNES nearly 3 years ago. A lot has changed since then. I was diagnosed with vassalage syncope and dysautonomia. After gaining a better understanding of these cardiac conditions and what it felt like to faint or be about to faint, I stopped having seizures as a reaction to those syncope sensations.

I still have non-epileptic seizures. I’ve come to a point where I can control the shaking enough to walk (with assistance and supervision), talk, and use other gross motor skills. It still hurts, it’s still frustrating, it’s still exhausting. I still have other psychogenic episodes.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

has anyone else ever had a pyschogenic non-epileptic seizure? or any type of stress-induced seizure? i haven’t come across anyone yet and i’m really curious if it’s happened to anyone else on here. 

it’s been….a rough week. a really, really rough week. 

I’ll need this tomorrow I think.

Workout For Daily Life