Hello.

based on François Boucher's The Wooden Shoes (1768)

Sydenham created a version of laudanum with an important addition: alcohol.

Although laudanum was not found to cure plague, it did notably find success as an intoxicant and numbing agent, which was a welcome ‘aid’ for plague victims…

my brain don’t send help i’m right

where i wanna be

Nala looking concerned about Simba hiding something about his past, a comparison:

Been very frustrated lately by lack of phone call accessibility as someone who lacks speech but needs a lot of resources to stay healthy.

With rise of AI, it's only getting worse and worse.

More places changing their systems to incorporate AI answering machines.

Thing is...

Whenever I hear most people ranting about this change, it's usually about how annoying it is from an abled-person perspective or environmental or ethical impact.

Which are important valid reasons to be upset. I share those sentiments too.

But feel like disability is once again forgotten about within important discussion about change.

AI creates terrible language accessibility issues.

In fact, that's why it so annoying to deal with it.

In the past, if a place didn't have a call center or desk person to answer calls, they use extentions.

That meant you had to press a few numbers to get the right person.

Now with AI, you're expected to have a full conversation with a robot.

Tell them why you're calling, who you need to speak to, verify your info so the humans don't have to later, etc.

These bots can be bad at understanding what able-people are saying, so imagine how they handle these disabled callers:

People who use AAC (speech aids/devices)

People who slur, stutter, have "strange" voice or pronunciation

People with rapid or disorganized speech

People who use poor grammar & who don't speak full words or sentences

People who mix up similar common words

People with "deaf accent"

(i don't know if there is a different preferred term for this. Im sorry if I sound offensive. Please Lmk)

People with non-communicative speech such as vocal tics, echolalia, or babbling

Anyone who uses speech or language in a way that needs a human mind to interpret

Anyone whose voice sounds notably different

Ability to understand what AI is saying can be harder too:

d/Deaf people and other hearing differences

Auditory processing disorder

Receptive language disorder

Developmental disability, especially intellectual and learning disabilities

(AI can't help people who need things explained a certain way. AI unreliable and fails to adapt a lot.)

Anyone who frequently can't make out sounds and/or speech

Anyone who frequently has trouble with meanings in conversation

The problems I often face with AI answering machines (and that I'm sure many other disabled people have faced as well):

AI slightly mishearing me/my device

AI mishearing so badly that it basically makes up a fake conversation

AI not hearing me/my device at all

AI registering tics and stims as answers

AI "explaining" an instruction by repeating the same instruction again word-for-word

AI directing me to the wrong person without trying to confirm what I said

AI sometimes just... hanging up on me right after I speak my first answer...

These are the machines being put in front of

hospitals

doctors offices

mental health centers

pharmacies

transportation and in-home care

health insurance member services

medical supply companies

government resource agencies

non-profit organizations

advocacy groups

justice centers & other legal resources

customer service lines

many other places disabled people often need to access from home

It's another example of some of the most vulnerable being pushed away from the things we need, and we're also being forgotten in these discussions about things that can affect us a lot

Next time someone is ranting about AI job interviewers, please also remember:

the AI pharmacy assistants that make it impossible for someone with a speech disorder to sort out their meds

the AI scheduler that won't allow a D/deaf person to access the right extension of the clinic to set up an appointment

the AI agent that confuses an intellectually disabled person into anger and tears

the AI answerer that hangs up on a mentally ill person seeking help in crisis because they aren't speaking coherently enough

Human beings need to be at the forefront of human resources and issues for disabled people especially. Please remember us. Please fight.

Not Aziraphale and Crowley staring politely at you until you buy your virtual ticket to The Ineffable Con 7:

https://www.theineffablecon.org.uk/tic7/

Little fishy man

I tracked down a copy of this invaluable classic and somehow got my hands on a near pristine copy secondhand from the 4th printing. It’s lost the dustjacket, alas, but that means I got it for like £5 and not the £4200 a first edition printing in fine condition goes for.

(Who’s the author? *looks at smudge on spine* uhhhh Mkkhill Montanann)

It looks right at home in my bookcase 🥰

Under the cut: a look inside at what the book holds:

"...and that," Asa announced in a gravelly voice, causing several children to dissolve into delighted giggles, "is why we never attempt to outsmart dragons before breakfast." A chorus of laughter followed. Anthony couldn't stop staring, because Asa looked beautiful. They always looked beautiful, obviously, but right then there was something particularly devastating about seeing them like this.

for badwolfgirlicouldkissyou over on AO3, to go with their lovely fic,

I lash out if you're in arm's reach

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.

"What did that error message say?" I ask.

"What error message?" asks Client.

I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.

I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.

I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.

---

Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.

She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)

She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.

So, she asked, did they ever do that?

No! Of course not, was the answer.

So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.

The next week

She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"

She said, of course, can they tell her the error?

And the message was: