Planted pads in spring last yr & actually had a bloom last June. They overwintered very well & currently I've 8 bloom/buds. Not sure how the species varies but last yr's flower had an orange center surrounding the stamens & pistil. I've another plant w/ a partially open bud. Looks like it's going to be yellow w/orange so I even have some color variation 👍.
(06/05/24)
I built possibly the earliest same-tab tool for getting AI image descriptions in Aug 2022, using a then newly updated Microsoft AI API. I listened to Disabled folks about it. I've payed close attention to the subject since.
My criticisms of @mozilla plans for Firefox built in AI alt text generation aren't because of knee-jerk AI hatred or some ignorance. They are because I understand this to a breadth and depth extremely rare and I want acknowledgement of major issues being ignored 🧵…
Seems likely they are more "flighty" in the spring and early summer when the flowers are a bit sparser. But if you're patient you'll eventually come across one feeding calmly.
(06/03/24)
June…and I couldn't help but think that #wearorange will soon be back in the US
A wonderful campaign that I know thanks to @TonyStark
I am writing the poem for this year and ask you all to think of all the far too many people who have lost their lives far too soon because of gun violence
We should all develop an awareness that guns should only be left in the hands of people who have been trained to use them...
Last years poem…until I finish the new one
#AltText The pain of a boy Robbed of the beautiful steps in his life Torn mercilessly from life Lying in his own blood The parents soul broken The future of all here ended For a better world The pain of a sister The Life of her Brother robbed Lying lifeless in his own blood Torn from her heart Pain that never ends Pain that only she can feel This is the pain That those do not feel Who should feel it For the bullet did not hit them And not those they love most The cry of a student Robbed of his future Of life with endless dreams Now the dreams go up in smoke The smoke that escapes From the weapon's vent The cry of a teacher Otherwise imparting knowledge To the growth of a Hopeful generation Seeing their students Lifeless in their own blood This is the cry That those do not hear Who should hear it Shattering the bullet hit life And shattered too many of them #AltText The scream of a woman Hit by an invisible nothing Lying helpless in her own blood Brutally torn from life Begging for her children, who are without her now Begging for her great love, who is without her now The cry of a man Losing his love Who was by his side long Seeing his eternal love Lifeless in her own blood Torn from his side forever Deprived from their children's side This is the cry That those should hear Who bear the guilt But they do not do For the bullet did not hit them The pain; the suffering You do not see That you are supposed to Following an ideology From a past time Looking at other things For much more important to you Than life Is the money that is made And a freedom sung Which is not For freedom does not kill And your compassion Is no longer believed here For if you would feel the pain And hear the never ending cries Then the change Had already been made Now those who are no longer here Deprived of their right to life Speak for their life taken So that it may be understood What we all lost The innocence we should have The future we should see For this world of us Because bullets do not stop They fly on Destroy And kill Far more than we thought.
We take so many of these statements at face value because they seem to make sense in our #patriarchal system, and then before we know it we’ve got terrible, repressive, socially-accepted "knowledge."
After recently voicing my frustration with how much effort it is for me to type in #AltText while mobile and away from my desktop PC, I am wondering whether using #SpeechRecognition with a #Bluetooth headset might be a viable solution.
But I don't have much experience with either. Thus:
What kind of lightweight Bluetooth headset could you recommend which would easily fit into the pocket of my jacket and the like (I like to travel lightly when doing bicycle trips)?
And what kind of speech-to-text app would work well when entering Alt-Text into my Mastodon app (currently using Tusky, but I am willing to change if that's what it takes)? Ideally it should support both English and German.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that including #AltText for images is the norm here on the #Fediverse .
But for me, this also means that I am sharing far less images than I did back on Twitter.
When I am abroad and take some interesting pictures - and I take a lot of pictures - I am usually not in the mood of spending several minutes typing Alt-Text on my tiny smart phone keyboard. Thus, I wait until I am back at my desktop PC - if I haven't forgotten about my intention by then, which is usually the case.
My typing speed on smart phone screens is vastly slower than on proper keyboards, so this is unlikely to change.
EDIT: Thanks for the people who have made suggestions in the comments - keep them coming!
Not the best pic but my first of the Eastern towhee👍
Been hearing them the past two years but not had a chance to photograph. Very cute birds and I ran across it while it was singing its heart out so I got to watch its behavior for a while. Awesome first encounter 🙂
(04/30/24)
Ich finde die Empörie der fehlenden Bildbeschreibungen unter einem Post suboptimal. In der Zeit, in der ich meine Empörung darüber zum Ausdruck bringe, habe ich den #ALTtext selbst verfasst und mich nicht aufgeregt sondern meine Kompetenzen in Bildbeschreibung geübt und möglicherweise verbessert.
For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft have decided to bake essentially an infostealer into base Windows OS and enable by default.
From the Microsoft FAQ: “Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers."
Info is stored locally - but rather than something like Redline stealing your local browser password vault, now they can just steal the last 3 months of everything you’ve typed and viewed in one database.
@GossiTheDog PLEASE use #AltText when posting things like this! Folk with visual impairments are JUST as vulnerable to information theft as the rest of us!
[Image in the post above shows incontrovertibly that Microsoft's new 'recall' feature makes passwords available to hackers]