Two recent comments on my online content made me laugh out loud and then feel a little sad about the state of the world. After that I shrugged and moved on my with my life, though I did want to document these comments here so I could have a little chuckle about them in the future as well.

Undo the woke-ness!

A little over a year ago I published a video on YouTube in which I urged people to stop using the Times New Roman typeface and, instead, use a serif typeface that was designed to work well on modern, high-resolution screens.

Screenshot of a YouTube video titled, ‘Stop using Times New Roman’.

This video performed well, receiving over 4,000 views on YouTube, and it got lots of good comments too.

But a couple of days ago a user named @DoodiePunk posted this comment under that video:

Replacing Times New Roman with Calibri was the biggest fail and I’m glad the U.S. government reverted its decision.

Screenshot of a comment under a YouTube video from a user named DoodiePunk that reads, “Replacing Times New Roman with Calibri was the biggest fail and I’m glad the U.S. government reverted its decision.”

This confused me because, at no point in my video had I talked about Calibri as an alternative to Times New Roman and I certainly hadn’t mentioned the United States Government.

It was only later, when I caught up on the day’s news, that I understood what this comment was referencing:

Screenshot from the ABC News Australia website with the headline, “Marco Rubio orders US State Department to revert to Times New Roman font, calling Calibri adoption ‘wasteful’”.

The ABC summarised this news article as follows:

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says his predecessor’s switch to Calibri for official documents had been “another wasteful DEIA program” and the font was too informal.
In 2023, the State Department said Calibri was a more accessible font for people with disabilities.
The Trump administration has been eradicating federal programs promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

I’m not sure how @DoodiePunk got to my video about Times New Roman. Most likely they:

saw some other YouTube video about this news item and then got recommended my video at the end of it,
saw that my video was titled ‘Stop using Times New Roman’,
didn’t watch my video, but assumed I was supportive of the current US administration’s anti-DEI initiatives, and
felt the need to share their thoughts with me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which came first?

About a month ago I published a post about an aggressive business development person from Monotype who tried to get my employer to purchase font licences we didn’t actually need to buy.

This post was featured on the front page of Hacker News and, as a result, has received over 10,000 views so far.

One of the comments on Hacker News from a user named @liquidise really cracked me up:

I’m not typically sensitive to AI-sounding text but those image captions leave me understanding others’ issues with it.

Screenshot of a comment from user liquidise that reads, “I’m not typically sensitive to AI-sounding text but those image captions leave me understanding others’ issues with it.” A reply to this comment from user hibbelig reads, “It sounded like something a screen reader would say to help visually impaired visitors. But I don’t actually have a clue what screen readers do say.”

I found this comment really funny because @liquidise has it completely the other way around: large language models learned how to write from people who describe things well!

After I stopped chuckling, I found that I was quite chuffed about what @liquidise had said. Without realising it, they’d basically said I wrote good, neutral, descriptive captions for all the images I’d included in my blog post. Yay!

Sad about the state of the world

While I was briefly saddened by the polarisation and lack of knowledge inadvertently expressed by @DoodiePunk and @liquidise, I’m happier to just focus on the humour of the situation and move on my with my life. Which is what I’ll do now.

But if you want more…

Two quick things before I go, though.

How to write good image descriptions

Here’s an excellent infographic on how to write good alt text for all your digital images. This was created by the UK digital agency Puzzle for its 2022 #AccessAlt campaign.

An infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara in a pool of water with a yellow-coloured yuzu balanced on top of its head. Parts of alt text are divided by color: identify who, expression, description, colour, and interesting features. The finished image description reads, “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu fruits are floating in the water, and one is balanced on the top of the capybara’s head.”

This infographic has made its way around Mastodon several times, but it was originally referenced and archived by Veronica Lewis on her website.

Not understanding formal writing or how large language models work

Author and photographer Marcus Olang’ wrote an excellent edition of his newsletter titled, ‘I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.’

It was reading Marcus’s piece that prompted me to write this post today.

If you are not clear about why generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT (that are trained using large language models) generate text the way they do, you should read this article.

Recently I’ve seen people in various online platforms insist that what Israel has been doing in Palestine isn’t apartheid and that what they’re doing now isn’t genocide.

My initial reaction was to think, “how fortunate you are that you can discuss semantics like this from a distance”.

But mostly it reminded me of when the American media refused to name domestic terrorism as ‘terrorism’. Or when they called terrorism that happened in their country ‘terror’ instead.

What they were really saying, of course, is that terrorism is what non-white people do in foreign countries. Stuff like that isn’t done by white people, and it’s certainly not done in our country.

It also reminded me of when people say things like, “Oh he can’t be the one who committed the sexually assault. He’s a victim of sexual assault; he would never do that to anyone else.”

They’re clinging so hard to their beliefs that they have to fall back to semantics to defend their positions.

At no time can they see the reality that:

Some white people can and do commit terrorism.
There is terrorism in countries with predominantly white populations.
Some sexual assault survivors can and do commit sexual assault.
Some Jews can and do commit genocide.

But why?

The reason they dig their heels in is pretty obvious. It’s the same reason people insist on sayings things like “not all men”.

Because if they acknowledge that, yes, all men do benefit from patriarchal set-ups, then they might actually have to do something about it.

Or, more likely, they’ll lose the moral wiggle room to do nothing (or the bare minimum) about it. When they’re one of the good guys – one of the #NotAllMen – then they don’t have to do anything more, right?

Similarly, if these people are forced to acknowledge that Israel is an apartheid state that currently is committing genocide against the Palestinians, then they lose the ability to say things like, “what Israel is doing is horrible, of course, but they do have the right to defend themselves.”

Because right now what they’re really saying is, “I can excuse the mass casualties of civilians, but I draw the line at genocide.”

Two-frame screen grab from the television show ‘Community’ in which a white female character says, “I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty.” To which a black female character replies, “You can excuse racism?!”

An aside about a theory

Which then reminds me of one of the theories about why Hamas attacked Israel in the way that they did.

You know when a child keeps needling their sibling till the sibling overreacts? And how parents often shout at the sibling for the overreaction and not at the first child for the initial provocation? That’s possibly one of the reasons Hamas carried out their most recent attacks.

The theory is that they wanted Israel to overreact to such an extent that the world had no choice but to acknowledge Israel’s ongoing, escalating war crimes (along with their continued crimes against humanity).

Of course Hamas did this without the consent of the people of Gaza and at the cost of thousands of Palestinian civilians, many of them children…but that’s a whole other issue.

On a lighter note…

To leave on a lighter note, because I live on the internet, when I see someone digging their heels in about not using the words ‘apartheid’ or ‘genocide’, this meme is the first thing that comes to mind :)

It’s only apartheid if it’s from the Apartheid region of South Africa, otherwise it’s sparkling institutionalised (racial) segregation.
It’s only genocide if it’s from the Genocide region of Poland, otherwise it’s sparkling intentional destruction of a people (in whole or in part).