Twitter does have that problem. It’s had that problem for years. That’s why I’m not on Twitter. That doesn’t cancel out the craziness on here though.

I have not. If this is a joke it went over my head.

But I AM a miserable person, and I want to be LESS miserable by coming on here and having fun, but every blessed thread on here has the word “capitalist” somewhere in it. Guys I don’t even necessarily disagree with y’all I just don’t want to talk about the evils of corporate America in this thread that’s nominally about Super Mario.

Honestly this. Everyone is always “on”. Everything HAS to be about politics, and if one syllable you utter isn’t cursing Donald Trump and his descendants unto the thousandth generation you’re labelled a fascist. I mean for heaven’s sake I don’t like him, I didn’t vote for him, and I’m counting the days until his term is over, but no that’s apparently not enough.

Like, please, guys, I’m begging, just let me look at funny pictures of cats and talk about old video games.

The fediverse can be a confusing concept. It certainly was to me, and I’m in IT. The idea that Lemmy and other federated platforms aren’t a single monolithic site but a group of sites that share content took a bit for me to grasp. I thought it had something to do with single sign on, like you made an account on one instance and any other instance federated to yours could verify your identity with your home instance so you could post on the other instance without making a native account.

People who join the fediverse are also by and large self selecting. That is they’re making a conscious decision to reject the corporate-run social media platforms that the fediverse seeks to replace, so merely having an account on here is making an ideological statement, and I’m including myself here. Anyway, that gives the discourse on the fediverse a more politically charged feel that may turn some people off. When you go to a community like mildlyinteresting expecting to see pics of three-chambered peanuts and yellow stop signs but get things like “French President explains the political consequences of AI” it can be kind of exhausting.

It can be hard. I have yet to see an elegant way to navigate threaded chains of comments. It’s like “UltimateGamer386 <tab> <tab> <tab> <tab> <tab> [actual content]”. On Reddit, at least Old Reddit, the upvote and downvote controles were the only buttons and were located immediately before the actual comment, so you could go from button to button, then press down arrow to read the comment.

I have enough vision to navigate to some degree, at least on a desktop. For laptop or phone it has to be a screen reader. I really should be reading braille more.

I was just thinking the other day that a dedicated semantic tag for user replies like <comment> or <reply> or <post> would be nice, and they could be nested.

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.

Es mucho más fácil escribir que hablar.

Tengo una licentiatura en español pero no lo he hablado en años entonces no soy fluido.

I actually didn’t know you could block users on Lemmy until now. I’ve been blocking all the big communities so my main page isn’t clogged with stuff I’m not interested in.

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.

I was born blind.

It’s an unfortunate dilemma. To sustain an active niche you need a huge user base like Reddit. But if you have a huge user base costs start piling up and the temptation to lessen the experience to pay the bills (or appease shareholders) grows.

The issue with the fediverse is that its members are highly self-selecting. If you’re an average Joe looking to join an online community, it’s going to be Reddit, not Lemmy, Twitter, not Mastodon, or Facebook, not whatever the fedi equivalent is. So the likelihood of amassing enough average Joes who just want to look at funny pictures of orangutans or talk about video games with anyone regardless where they fall on the political spectrum is small.

And I always thought that was the point of these little niches. Alice the gun nut likes vintage 80s computers, and Bob who wants to seize the means of production also likes vintage 80s computers, so Alice and Bob have fun together talking about vintage 80s computers despite their differences. The problems arise when Alice goes into the vintage 80s computers community and tries to make everything about guns.

I admin an instructional data center at a community college.

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.

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.

Sí

I hate those sayings that nobody ever finishes. “Speak of the devil” didn’t make sense until I learned the rest “…and he shall appear.” “Better the devil you know…” is another one. There are more I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Trump is sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Biden was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Obama was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Dubya was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Clinton was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Bush 1 was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Reagan was sending us to Hell in a hand basket.

Forgive me if I’m a little numb to it all.

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.