LET'S SLOP 'EM

btw, idk if this will be seen by any of the countless people who already have seen and reblogged this post, but heres the original guide posted on how to make the chibi-rocky! the OP also has a separate guide for a more accurate rocky, though obviously less simple of a guide than the little thingy shown off

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

Same thing with [mumbles incoherently] and such. Unless the media being captioned is live improvisation, that actor is mumbling something scripted, which means a sheet of paper exists with exactly what they are saying on it.

But I also wanted to give insight into why these errors happen and encourage you to contact the streamers and/or production companies when you notice patterns in the file quality. Sometimes it's laziness, I will admit, but more often it's that we're scrambling to make the best file we can with limited funds and resources. Sometimes, too, these sorts of issues are evidence that a computer worked on the file, not a human - so pushing back on AI will help subtitles and translators stay employed and in turn give you a better viewing experience. It's well known in this industry that AI files are crap, but it's also something that studios don't put a lot of money into and will cut corners on with automation if you, the consumer, don't speak up.

For a bit of background, we work to a spec, which is the client's specifications for what can and cannot be included in the file, how to format different scenarios (phone calls, for instance), and how fast and how long events (each subtitle) can be.

speaks foreign language - I find this irksome too. Quite often this actually isn't included in the scripts (if we even get scripts, more on that later). Rarely do we get the translations, and I've never had them provide a transcript in the foreign language. If you see this frequently, I really urge you to write to the streaming company on which the show is playing.

shortening sentences - There is actually a reason for this, which also has to do with accessibility. We work to a certain reading speed and the files can only accommodate a certain length of the subtitle's event, so when a character speaks very quickly, sometimes paraphrasing is the only way of making it possible to read the event so quickly. Otherwise, you'd have to wind back and pause which would also mess up your viewing experience. A good operator will only drop extraneous phrases, names and such, and make sure the plot relevant sentence remains. Kids shows, especially, have strict limits on how long the event has to be on screen as, obviously, kids generally need a few seconds longer to read something than most adults.

changing what's been said for no reason - this can either relate to the above (sometimes the only way to shorten the sentence is to rephrase it) or reflect a change between a locked version of a script and the final version. It's not uncommon to have to fully transcribe without a provided script, and usually we are given what is called the locked video (a rough draft of sorts that may have different takes put in later or whole scenes removed). The final video follows much later and usually there is a very small window between that and the due date to get the files provided. A missing scene is very easy to catch, but the odd changed line unfortunately can slip through.

censoring swearing in captions - I can almost guarantee this is a spec issue and we aren't allowed to include them. A lot of specs explicitly instruct expletives to be removed. I really encourage you to contact the platform and encourage them to drop their censoring.

mumbles incoherently This isn't always in the script and, as mentioned above, we don't always get one. A good operator will take the time to go back over a sentence fifty times if that's what it takes to work out what the actor said. I've called coworkers over to have a listen to a line to get their advice, had heated debates over two different interpretations of what we think was said. Sometimes, however, the only way to get the file done is to describe exactly what you're hearing - incoherent mumbles - and move on.