Thoughts on Elementary, the 2012 US TV series very loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, of which I have watched 3 seasons as I attempt to fight off a virus. I started it on a whim from a throwaway tweet by @charlesarthur, who said it was good. It is, and it's free on Prime. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B00FZGWU2K/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s1 🧵
The tech in #Elementary is delightful. Photo scanners! Tiny flip phones, later little iPhones! Endless custom UIs. The AI episode is great fun S3E4 Bella. Windows mobile! Wired headphones! Papyrus font on the messaging UI!
You know what #Elementary reminds of most of all? 1960's Batman. It’s so charming and silly, but absolutely rooted in its own world. The characters map almost perfectly. In the future some AI will be able to regenerate a version of Elementary set in Bruce Wayne hall, with Jonny Lee Miller flipping the head on a statue, and calling Commissioner Gordon, while Ms Hudson looks on in a butler’s outfit.
Delightful trope 1: Let’s go back and see the character we were introduced to two scenes ago. My god! They’re dead! Every time. As sure as Lucy Liu’s hair flick to camera. #Elementary
Trope 2: Watson/Holmes look around the room while a witness speaks. We cut to a POV shot of what they’re looking at. It always appears later as a clue. See also: picture frames behind seemingly innocent witnesses, bit-part characters with only a couple of lines of dialogue who enter a scene for no good reason with another witness. #Elementary
Trope 3: The writing often refers to expensive things we never see. It has the effect of making the budget feel bigger than it is. A shipping tanker or helicopter is mentioned, a plan is hatched to stop it, and the next scene is in the interrogation room with the bad guy. All killer, no filler. #Elementary
Every time there's a scene outside, the dialogue recording has horrible noise gating and reduction applied to it. It sounds awful. It's remarkable how much better this stuff has got in the last few years. Dubbing mixers who badly remove all the background noise between words, only to overlay more background FX to cover it up are fooling nobody #Elementary
Rhys Ifans lifts every episode he appears in as Mycroft. Sometimes if you squint, it looks like a British show with a couple of US actors. Worzel Gummidge's' son is pretty good too #Elementary
Sherlock saying "faucet" instead of tap in a British accent is a crime against humanity. So much US drama revolves around the idea that “my work is my whole life”. #Elementary
Been putting this off for a few days, but here goes nothing. #intro#introduction
My name is Kaylie, though many just call me Fox. I’m a 36 going on 13 year old trans girl originally from the desert now residing in the Midwest with my girlfriend Wednesday and our three cats, Mia, Nala and Harley.
This account is my alt, with my main being found at @LavenderPawprints. Expect some cross posting between the two, with longer posts coming from this one thanks to the much larger character limitations. Also expect this one to be somewhat more personal at times.
I’m #autistic,, #VisuallyImpaired, hard of hearing, struggle with mental health and a bunch of other little things, but I prefer not to have my worth weighed out by the extensiveness of my disability and challenge list. To me, life is life and we all godda make the best of what we got.
So what are my interests?
Well, I’m a #musician who writes and records my own #music. I play mostly #guitars, #synths and #keyboards, but can hold my own with other things like percussions and the like. I can’t really play any wind instruments though. I done smoked too much in my time. :P
I also love reading and writing, mostly fantacy and science-fiction, but will read just about anything if it’s something that sounds good.
Academically, I study generative #AI as well as #Elementary#education. I’m a strong supporter of #YouthRights and #YouthLiberation and believe with all my heart that kids are an oppressed minority who deserve to be able to show us all that they are capable of much more than just being those tag-alongs that so many parents treat them as. #Unschooling is a very valid form of education that doesn’t oppress youths but gives them the freedom to choose their own path and inform themselves through self-directed learning and play. Trust me, I can wax poetic about this stuff for hours. 😊
Though I don’t have kids myself, something that causes a lot of emotional distress to me, I’m still a supporter of #GentleParenting and live the #youthLiberationist ethics in practice. Kids, to me are as equal as anyone else. The only thing that separates us is lived experience and age.
I’m also a casual #PC#gamer who has considered streaming on and off for a while but has never actually done so. I play with a lot of emulators too and love reliving the old days. #retro
I do make some #AIArt from time-to-time using Stable Diffusion, though admittedly I haven’t been as active on that front lately due to mental health burnout.
Also love #anime, #cartoons, #TV when I actually have the money to pay for streaming services, and #movies are fun too when the #ADHD allows me to sit still long enough to get through one.
Other things that matter to me are making and keeping real #friendships. I’d rather have a few really solid people to call family than have a bunch of people who aren’t as in it for good as me.
I’m also a #stoner and am very pro #420, like my #Vodka and #RedBulls from time-to-time, and I’m a recovering addict who has over six years clean from most things that nearly claimed my life. I fully appreciate the struggles of #DrugAddiction, and will always listen to anyone who may be struggling or who needs someone who understands. #YourNotAlone
I judge absolutely no one for anything beyond observable behavior. I mean that too. I don’t judge anyone anything.
Am a #tea drinker and #coffee lover, I love #cooking, and I’m always doing experimental mad scientist things in the kitchen.
I also identify as a long-time #furry, though the community has grown stagnant, too commercialized and for public consumption in recent years. Some would probably say that my whiskers are grey, for all the time I’ve been around in one form or another. That’s to say, I’ve seen a lot in the furry fandom, and where it’s at now just makes me sad because it’s not like it used to be.
Otherwise, anything you may wish to know is always a DM away. I’m very approachable, or at least I try to be. The only dumb questions are the ones you don’t ask. As such, I invite your curiosity.
I might have to stop watching #Elementary at s4 e18. It can only go downhill from an ep wherein Sherlock rants about:
rich preppers and
ableists.
The episode concludes with him telling an autistic woman she’s worth extra effort, and she replies, face and voice neutral, with "we should have sex now." I have done extremely similar.
I think Betty Gilpin only has one more episode. But if I stop watching now then Fiona and Sherlock are earnest and horny forever.
So, #Elementary OS. Tried it. No, it's not blind friendly. Alt + Tab doesn't speak with Orca most of the time. In setup, the full name, username, password fields aren't labeled, so tabbing with Orca says nothing. After setup, the welcome screen is full of "GTK button checkbox" and other mislabeled stuff. It's not ready for blind people to use.
Helping out the only way I know how. New issue on Elementary OS website: Activating the Download button pops up options at the bottom of the page, but nothing is communicated to the screen reader about this #3378
Thinking AI will "solve" accessibility is a bad frame stemming from a technoableist mindset.
The industry seems to me hoping for a magic, binary solution that is somehow derived from a corpus of largely inaccessible code. We should be interrogating why we got into this situation in the first place, and what we can do about it.
Personally, I'd look to the social model of disability for guidance here: what exactly are we looking to "fix" and why?
@eric Like, this is a perfect example. #Elementary OS released a new version where, in the installer, there is a message telling the user how to start Orca, the Linux screen reader. So, I press the command, and I hear something like...
Screen reader on. Elementary installer frame. English.
Now, I've installed Linux before. I know what's going on. But would someone who has never installed another OS know? I don't think so. Basically, we're at the language picker. But do we press Enter? Tabbing goes to the next language and Control + Tab exits the list and moves to the "select" button. What does that do? Open another selection list? Or do they mean "next"? And once on the next screen, I hear "English US". Nothing about the prompt of the screen, what I'm supposed to be selecting, and so on. And the sad part is, that's how it is for almost every GUI Linux installer. Granted, I was using a VM, because I'm not about to install Linux, how it is right now, on any bare metal. So maybe, just maybe, in some sweet dream, the installer is more accessible on bare metal cause I know someone's gonna suggest that. Anyway, this is Linux, right now. And I'm not mad at the Elementary staff. I'm not even upset. I barely feel anything at all but a kind of "I told you so" feeling of meh. Because there is so, so much work to do. I don't think any one developer knows how much needs to be done in Linux to make it even as nice to use for a blind techie person as a sighted non-techie person. And then, that needs to be maintained. Even more work. And that'd quickly take the "fun" out of FOSS, so the project would lose contributers. And no one wants that, to lose some freedom in exchange for helping someone that isn't in your group. Writing Alt-text is one thing. But I don't think people are ready for anything more. And who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. But I'll believe it when I've been running Linux for a year or two and still enjoying it.
Best Linux Distro Privacy/Usability for a mid level user
What do you think is the best linux distro for a user who wants to migrate from windows in terms of privacy, usability and respect for the FOSS spirit?
#Elementary has a very opinionated design and includes some defaults that would be desireable for pretty much absolutely nobody - the most prominent of them being that it only lists apps from its own store, which is almost empty, and then gives warnings to users to try and discourage them from going to a place like FlatHub for the software that they will no doubt need. There is a tone about the OS in its design and especially its language in dialogs that may make people feel like they are the ones who are "wrong" if they do not wish to stick with these defaults - I think that's what really rubs so many people the wrong way, and a brand-new user that doesn't know much about Linux would just be completely lost.
It also has no direct upgrade paths for major new versions, and they do their own apps and DE which is great, but they are also under-resourced and so the experience can be a bit glitchy sometimes.
You mention being a mid-level user though, so I think you'd be fine with it, if you like the look of it. In terms of privacy, usability and respect for the FOSS spirit, I think Elementary and its Pantheon desktop environment is fantastic, and I believe it's actually worth trying to adapt to its way of doing things. I use it and love it.
For someone brand new to Linux that just wants to get up and running quickly and get work done, I'd highly recommend #ZorinOS instead. It's very much a counter-point in philosophy to Elementary OS and gives a vibe of: "You do things however you're used to, I just want to make it as easy for you as possible."
GNOME in my Arch install has something broken that is making it core dump when I trigger the global search/app switcher. Doesn't happen right after log in, only after I've opened a few apps and I've been using it for a while. It will crash with a "Oops, something went wrong" screen and can only fix by logging out despite everything else still running. I can see the apps by opening the app switcher, but can't use any of them until I log out.
I already disabled extensions and removed old ones
You know how I would probably get found in contempt of court, is that I am incapable of promising to tell (1) the truth, (2) the whole truth, and (3) nothing but the truth.
I can absolutely swear to tell (1) the truth. Easy! That's my default anyway.
I can swear to tell (3) nothing but the truth, but they're not going to like how it plays out. I'm just going to end up saying "I don't know" a lot when they try to badger me to be definitive, and then I'm going to have to raise my own objection: I swore to tell "nothing but the truth" and a guess is not the truth. So per the oath, "I don't know" will have to be an acceptable answer.
I cannot swear to tell (2) the whole truth. That's impossible. It is literally impossible, and everyone in the courtroom would get exasperated if I tried.
Hopefully they would at least let me explain the problem.