no longer on hiatus

Crystal red shrimps

These photos were taken around one year apart.  One year.

Can you imagine living your life without teeth?

https://www.gofundme.com/toothless-and-desperate

Have a brief example of what you’d experience:

- Unable to eat properly, your health and physical well-being suffers significantly and this shortens your life over time.  If you’re like me and have weak jaws, you’ll likely not be able to chew well; you’re going to be swallowing lumps of things, which is uncomfortable, gross, and unhealthy.

-Eating can be very painful, to the point you’re going to be eating soup, mashed potatoes, or cream of wheat for at least a few meals.

-Self-confidence tanks, and so can your mental health; this has really f*cked me up, leaving me intensely depressed to the point where I’ve pretty much cried for entire days, not to mention trying to adjust to this nightmare that has become my life.

- Dentures generally need to be pasted into your mouth (the paste doesn’t usually last that well, and isn’t a fix-all.  It also tastes pretty foul.) and tend to cause anything from mild discomfort to bad pain.

- You don’t get to eat anything sticky, chewy, etc.; no more toffee, gum, unprocessed meat, salad (yes, even things like lettuce and spinach are VERY difficult to eat.  And, forget fresh fruit and veggies.  Too firm,

- No biting with your front teeth.  

- There is no real ‘resting place’ for your lower jaw - it’s uncomfortable and even painful to have your gums pressed together, and letting your lower jaw relax and ‘hang’ is almost as bad.

- Have you heard someone speak without teeth?  You’re liable to repeat things A LOT and feel self-conscious and stupid.

-People will shun you, or give you repulsed looks.

-Try looking for work when you look like I do, all gums and no teeth.  No way you’re getting an interview or a call back.

https://www.gofundme.com/toothless-and-desperate

Not to mention that your JAWS SHRINK and make it even more difficult to eat/speak and are prone to FRACTURING.

That’s why I am on my knees, begging and praying for the donations I so desperately need to replace my teeth with implants.

Implants act like REAL TEETH and I could eat/speak as before and my jaws would stop shrinking.  But, I live in poverty and am disabled.  I can’t afford it alone.  I’m scared this is going to be the end of me.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a specialist problem gambling financial counsellor. This means that I’m specially trained, qualified and experienced in aiding the rehabilitation of people struggling with problem gambling, and working with people who are affected by others’ problem gambling protect themselves and rebuild their lives. I spend 30% of the hours of my day job working with these people. 

I’m going to make a very bold statement: micro-transactions with a ‘chance’ element are gambling. They are what is called an ‘embedded gambling element’ in a game. They may be a ‘softer’ form of gambling than sitting at a poker machine, but they are gambling. They normalise gambling to children (which has been shown to lead to problem gambling). They groom future problem gamblers, and they exploit people who have neurochemical imbalances (ie, depression). There is a very, very strong link between gambling and mental illness.  People who gamble in games are more likely to susceptible to current and future gambling problems.

I’m going to focus on lootboxes in Overwatch, because it’s the game I know the most about. I also know a lot about how poker machines are psychologically designed to be highly addictive, specifically exploiting known psychological triggers to reel people in and keep them spending. 

Poker machines ‘tease’ you with near wins which provide you with the same adrenaline and dopamine release as an actual win. 

Overwatch lootboxes do the same - you know that feel of seeing a purple/gold coin flipping in the air??? OMG! Is it going to be THAT THING YOU REALLY!!!!-oh. 

Bright colours, exciting lights, the visceral feel of pushing the button/spinning the wheel is important to addiction. Blizzard has does the same with lootboxes - by vibrating your controller. By shaking the camera. By having the lootbox rATTLE AND EXPLODE!!!! with your reward. The sounds and specially engineered to build excitement and tensions and remind you of wealth. The ‘coin’ system of the lootbox reminds you of wealth. This is all super deliberate - it’s not a mistake. Using subconscious cues like exploding money boxes!!! the sound of money, the shape of money - that’s likening the process to a lottery. 

While it’s quite unlikely someone could actually spend ENORMOUS amounts of money chasing that ‘jackpot’ (the skin they really want for their character, for example), it is possible. HOWEVER, it’s much more likely that the person will have this sort of reward system normalised, will find the element of chance ‘exciting’ (because, dude, we’re psychologically engineered to be more interested in ‘chance’ events than certain/impossible events), and seek out and enjoy other similar passtimes. Like actual gambling with real money. 

Every time you gamble, you change the structure of your brain. I’m not exaggerating. Every time you take a chance on that lootbox, you flood your brain with adrenaline and dopamine. The presence of those two neurochemicals changes the density of the receptors of them minutely. After a few boxes, it’s unlikely you’ll become addicted. However, if you keep doing it, your receptors change density so that you need more adrenaline and more dopamine to get the same excitement and pleasure from the hit. 

Worse, this rush of adrenaline and dopamine is much, much more addictive to people with mental illness (or a susceptibility to mental illness), as the presence of these chemicals is a very unhealthy (but unfortunately effective, at least in the extremely short term) way of medicating mental illness. Unfortunately, because of the escalating changes in receptor density, it eventually makes mental illness much worse in the long run. There is a strong link between gambling and suicide. 

Compare your first lootbox with the lootboxes you get now. Are you getting the same enjoyment? Nope. 

Think how many times you bought 11 lootboxes…. only to buy another 11 and another 11 and another 11. It becomes mechanical, pressing that button, opening another lootbox. Kind of like sitting at a poker machine. 

Think about how normal the lootbox system seems now. 

Chance-based gambling reward systems in games are dangerous, and should be replaced either by work-and-reward systems (you get 10 credits per level, and you can spend these on rewards of your choice), combined with micro-transaction-based currency for people who do not have the time to commit to leveling 300 times for that epic Christmas skin. 

Oh it’s no problem! It’s not rude at all. Thank you for the question!

So yes, we do. We use software called “Screen readers,” which essentially allow a person to do everything using the keyboard and they verbally speak what is on the screen as we navigate. Most computers already have a lot of keyboard commands and shortcuts that can allow anybody to do a lot of navigation using just the keyboard, and screen readers make use of this and build onto it to allow absolutely everything to be done with just the keyboard with no mouse or finger pad.

All Apple products come with a completely free robust screen reader software that can be turned on and used right out of the box (iPhones and iPads included), most android phones and tablets now come with totally free pretty decent screen reader software that can be turned on in settings as well, and there are a variety of downloadable options for PC computers. Most PCs also do have some pretty basic low bar screen reader software pre-programmed and freely available as well, though most people prefer JAWS or NVDA instead.

As mentioned above, computer screen readers allow the user to navigate entirely by keyboard commands and functions, but touchscreen mobile devices have screen readers that change the way you interact with the touchscreen. Here is a post on how tablet and smart phone screen readers work: https://actuallyblind.tumblr.com/post/167909070806/go-setyoursoulonfire-asked-hey-so-i-just-found

However, when it comes to pictures, things get a little bit tricky. When building pages and websites, it is actually possible to add in sort of embedded descriptions so that when a screen reader comes across a photo, it will read the description that was put in.

Unfortunately, not very many people or organizations tend to add descriptions, and when that happens, the screen reader will only be able to read whatever was programmed and cannot interpret an image, so sometimes you will just hear the word “image,“ or maybe a long series of numbers and letters, or maybe a URL depending on how the image was done.

And that is why image descriptions are so important. As mentioned, a screen reader cannot “look“ at a picture and interpret what is going on in it. That’s up to the humans to tell it, either through embedded descriptions on websites or added descriptions below the picture on social media websites like here on Tumblr.com. Image descriptions are super, super, super important, and if you can add them to your own photo posts, it will greatly, immensely help any potential blind followers or followers of followers that may come across the post.

Hope this answers your question!

Translated by Binbou Scanlation 

you musn’t let your womanly emotions consume you