Good metaphor for content warnings?
We're used to seeing food labels with major allergens, an ingredient list, and basic nutrition info. This is so you can decide at whatever level you need whether this is something to pick up off the shelf and eat. Pretty reasonable, right?
Content warnings are like this for your mental health, and precisely as valuable.
Minor WorldAnvil UX annoyances.
What WorldAnvil says: "Use the Images & Files feature to upload images and files!"
What WA means: "Files? Only if they're JPEG, GIF, or PNG. Which are images anyhow, but we like to call them files also. Cover all the bases, why not?"
What WA says: "Upload files up to 1.0MB in size!"
What WA means: "Upload files up to 1,000,000 bytes in size! You know, not like a megabyte like everyone actually uses the term, but like hard drive manufacturers do. That's okay, right?"
The filesize limit would have been less of an issue if I could just upload this PDF. sigh
Watching https://www.twitch.tv/theblacktastic play an SotN rando with a seed named "eat up hungy boi". Is fun!
What makes a good translation? (discussion about but not including slurs)
What counts as a good English translation of a Japanese-only game from two and a half decades ago... when the original game has some problematic dialogue? (Yes, I'm keeping it vague for now. There's a whole bucket of discourse here, but for now I want to explore the issue as far from specifics as possible.)
The translator in this case chose a word they understood to be a "mild slur" intending to keep the meaning and tone of the original work.
Some folks noted that the chosen word is widely considered a slur even worse than the original text, but it could and should be easily changed to something less incendiary as the context itself would be plenty to preserve the insensitivity of the original writers.
The translator then penned an open letter about how they didn't know it was that bad, they didn't want to hurt anyone, and that they were just trying to keep the original derogatory tone.
My argument is that translation exists to open up a work to a new audience. Just because the original work had a bad concept doesn't mean it's acceptable to compound the problem with a translation that's worse. If the goal is "accuracy" there's still no excuse; the translation is from mid-1990's Japanese to 2020's English, so there's no reason to use deprecated terminology anyhow.
I can get to more details later, but first: What're folks' thoughts on this? Does anyone have favorite examples of translations that illustrate the issue?
Inapplicable Mastodon error message?
A-buh?
Via an account on a different server, I saw a post I wanted to boost from this account, so I plopped the post URL – https://hellsite.site/@luna/103574248916750398 – into the search bar like I've done before, but got this response: "Searching toots by their content is not enabled on this Mastodon server."
But... it's not by content, it's by URL. What causes this?
ToeJam & Earl, implied lewd?
Lately I've been having a good time with this classic and rogue-lite Genesis game featuring funky aliens and fantastic music.
On semi-rare occasion, Big Earl's pants will fall down to reveal his boxers, and he'll blush and take a moment to pull them back up.
There's an elevator that takes players from one level to the next.
The doors opened, and there he was with pants down for just long enough that he then blushed.
. . . yeah, that's Big Earl for you.
Medical system automation gripes.
Kaiser Permanente has this really nifty system going that enables folks to review notes on recent visits, schedule appointments, manage prescriptions, and stuff like that. It's pretty good! Still, I do have a couple suggestions.
• Whatever interface is shown to doctors, pharmacists, and anyone else who needs to access my info... could almost certainly be tweaked to show pronouns nice and clearly alongside the patient's name.
• Furthermore, let me use the website to enter the name used to refer to me ("nickname" if you must) and my pronouns.
• Feel free to pre-fill the pronoun fields, but make them text fields. Radio buttons are right out, even if there's a text field labelled "Other". I am not an other. I am a whole-ass person and I'll know what to type there, thanks.
• If this integrated system can keep track of all my prescriptions, auto-refill the ones prescribed in-house, and send me automated texts and voice messages about them being ready for pick-up... why not extend that to letting me know when the refills have run out on something I've obviously been taking regularly? Better yet, just call the prescriber to ask if it needs continuing. (One of the meds is obviously for an attention disorder; that kinda guarantees I'll forget to handle this myself. Frequently.)
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