Notices by Ryan for a permanent ceasefire (ryanrandall@hcommons.social)

We're not living "in the age of AI". We're living in a moment of unproven AI-related claims.

These are profoundly different scenarios.

And it's disturbing how many folks in education are eagerly, uncritically amplifying the first framing.

@jonny Furthermore, this particular campus was designed as a series of chokepoints in the wake of 1960s student uprisings.

Its campus design highlights how much of the last 60+ years of American built space is a physical apparatus for the police state & social control.

Regarding @/AltTextHealthCheck@mastodon.social results at any given time:

I'm all for calling each other in and/or out in order to increase accessibility.

But you know what?

Not only have I worked with a lot of professors who don't know the basics of alt text or textual equivalents, but I've also worked with a lot of academic librarians who treat it as somehow highly specialized arcane magick and also somehow beneath them.

These are people with advanced degrees. Knowledge workers, some of whom are also specifically information workers whose library degree almost certainly involved direct instruction about this at some point.

Clown on specific instances if you think it'll be productive.

But we all can do better when it comes to alt text and other simple steps toward #accessibility, both online and off.

And if the point is to get people to do better, let's share practices, not just expect that "name & shame" will be sufficient.

Here's one of the most approachable guides to #altText I've encountered, written by someone who uses both screen readers and magnification: https://axesslab.com/alt-texts/

@aral "rage.love" is indeed a very odd way to spell "boot.lick"

That thing where you must create & sustain momentum on complicated projects that require deep attention

WHILE ALSO

other people are expressly encouraged to launch projectiles directly into the spokes of your… uh… mind bicycle.

(Yes, that analogy screeched to a halt just like my mental momentum.)

@aral That bites—your work definitely deserves support.

Speaking of which, there's a typo in that URL ("-is" when it's almost certainly "-us").

@aral No, you don't understand. Now that I've been eaten by the leopard, I can finally change it from the inside.

Earnest but still solidifying #pkm take:

The ever-rising popularity of personal knowledge management tools indexes the need for liberal arts approaches. Particularly, but not exclusively, in STEM education.

When people widely reinvent the concept/practice of commonplace books without building on centuries of prior knowledge (currently institutionalized in fields like library & information studies, English, rhetoric & composition, or media & communication studies), that's not "innovation."

Instead, we're seeing some unfortunate combination of lost knowledge, missed opportunities, and capitalism selectively forgetting in order to manufacture a market.