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The Cambrian Mammal

@naraoia.bsky.social

680 followers 300 following 17K posts

Use #AltText. Spoilery! ( #TheWheelOfTime, #StarWars, Cosmere etc) Nerd by nature, biologist by training, corporate cog by necessity. Martial art student, weekend Viking, tinkerer with worlds. #WotSkies founding member Pfp @bymemo.bsky.social

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · Feb 21

New pinned with alt text for my pfp and banner

A cute but kind of fierce chibi version of me (pale brunette with greenish grey eyes) as a badass Brown Aes Sedai. I've got my hair in a long braid far more magnificent than my real hair could manage, and I'm wearing a blue dress with divided skirts because I like to dress practically! I have a book under one arm (of course), and I'm throwing fire with my other hand. Someone must have tried to hurt one of my friends. Or insulted Kaladin Stormblessed in my hearing.

Twitter banner with a loose, flowy knotwork design in dark green, gold and a warm reddish brown on a yellow and white background, with motifs from my various fandoms woven into it.

At the centre is the glyph for the order of Truthwatchers from the Stormlight Archive, a loose, symmetrical bundle of brush strokes diverging towards the top. Strands of the knotwork flow from the ends of its lines.

On either side, twisting around those strands, is a serpent arranged in a figure of eight, biting its own tail, for the Wheel of Time.

In the corners, some of the strands end in the "wings" of two symbols from the Star Wars universe: the winged starburst of the Jedi order at the bottom, and the starbird of the Rebel Alliance at the top.

Above the Truthwatcher glyph, a line of Elvish script from The Lord of the Rings (the first line of Galadriel's lament to be precise) is partially obscured by the knotwork.

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 5h

Scotland needs to start treating her the same way it treats Donald Trump 🤮

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 5h

That's quite handy! (And I love that it only scores alt text usage for the last 90 days. I have a feeling my total percentage would still be fucked because of migrating my old Twitter posts otherwise!)

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 6h

Heck yeah, come stroke my ego, nice labeller bot!

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 6h

*shudders*

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 7h

Do I or don't I go for the... low-hanging fruit tonight? 🤭

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

This thread escalated quickly 🤣 Hopefully it should quiet down now!

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

On the one hand, if you leave the original and, say, quote it in the post with the accessible version, you get to keep all your old likes. On the other, I should probably ask someone who *needs* the alt if they have a preference. @aielcakes.bsky.social?

(Credit is appreciated but not necessary 🙂 )

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

#AltText attempts

Pieces of a miniature diorama. There's a bit of rocky terrain including a cliff, sitting in a glass jar. There's also a box full of conical trees, various bags of dust and fluff in shades of green and brown, and a giant stone hand holding a crystal sphere, surrounded by scaffolding, currently lying loose beside the box and jar.

A light-skinned hand holding up the giant hand (actually baby hand-sized) with its crystal sphere.

The cliff from the in-progress diorama on its own, sitting on top of the jar that contains the round base. It has an irregular shape and all kinds of exciting texture, cracks and strata tilted various ways, and a few bits of yellow or green fluff representing vegetation growing on ledges.

The scaffolding that would go around the giant hand in the diorama. It's reddish brown, obviously meant to be made of sturdy wooden beams. The hand with its crystal sphere lies in the background.

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

#AltText attempts

An in-progress miniature diorama of a giant hand holding an equally big crystal sphere, sticking up out of the ground beside a rugged cliff dotted with the odd patch of vegetation. There's scaffolding around the base of the hand.

The diorama from the previous photo in a glass jar. Coniferous-looking trees have been added to the top of the cliff and the foreground in front of the giant hand.

The same diorama, seen from above. This view shows that the cliff occupies about half the area, with the hand and its giant crystal sphere near the middle of the circular diorama.

Side view of the same diorama through the wall of the jar, focusing on the hand and the crystal sphere and better showing the brown scaffolding. The sphere reflects the whole thing upside down, which looks kinda cool.

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

#AltText attempt:

Painting of a river running down a bed of grey rocks through lush forest, all rendered in a soft impressionistic style. An unseen sun shines on the tops of the trees, creating vivid yellow-green highlights against the shadowed greenery. The water is the bright turquoise of a crystal clear mountain river. It runs from top left to bottom right, where a woman wearing a thin shift floats downstream, head towards the bottom right corner. Sparks of light surround her. Her long dark braid snakes under the surface, and her arms are raised in a loose, relaxed position beside her head. She's looking at the sky.

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

(I should probably apologise for falling on OP like a breathless enthusiasm bomb to shout about alt text 😅)

(I *really* liked that art, OK?)

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

Oof.

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

(I'm willing to promise the rest of WoTtober, but I don't want to overcommit because, also autistic, also often low on creative energies. The feed @aielcakes.bsky.social mentioned is always there, though!)

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 21h

Up to you if you want to keep the original post, but you're right, there's no way to edit it.

I'm feeling unusually energetic tonight, so lemme go through your back catalogue and see how many I can get before I run out of mana 🙂

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

D'oh, I should've started with that! I was just so deep in WoT mode that I was like, we need a WoT nerd for these 😆

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

Damn! (Also, wow, that's disturbing.)

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

I hope you have the time and resources to recover 🫂

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

Not a dumb question! This might not work as well for abstract art, but there is a non-genAI alt text generator that is IIRC not too bad for general use here: bsky.app/profile/luke...

(You'd have to ask someone else about generative AI-based tools because I have *many* objections to those, lol)

Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · Jan 15

Alt generator is back! There may still be some wildfire related outages, but this link here - not necessarily the one it directs you to - will always work. SAVE THIS ONE:

assisted.space/alt

I have changed the model; see comment

alt text 3.0

Accessible, ethical, actually useful AI.

assisted.space

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

I'll delete this if you don't like it, but here's what I came up with for this drawing. Use, delete, nuke from orbit as you please 🙂

Drawing of Rand weaving rain in the Aiel Waste, seen from above. Rand is a tiny red-headed figure at the centre of a powerful whirlpool of tainted saidin. Bright red and yellow threads of the One Power weave through corruption like thick black smoke. White raindrops fall down the whirlpool towards Rand. This is all against an abstract backdrop of desert beiges.

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

Oh boy, yeah, burnout SUCKS.

Maybe half a shortcut is to keep it short? If you can manage one sentence, that's better than nothing.

And again, if you can't, don't be afraid to ask in the post, and we'll try to come up with something! (For WoTtober, you have my permission to tag me)

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

Cue me forgetting this conversation and being very confused when Chekov's glitter cannon explodes all over my DMs 🤣

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

No need to apologise 💙

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

I mean, if that's an option, I could help you with it? (I know some people who struggle with alt text don't like others writing it for them, but the offer is there)

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

So in future, could you please describe your pics?🥺 Alt text is one of those small things we can do that make the world better for a lot of people🥰

I have a quick how-to in case you don't know what I'm talking about, any questions, just ask! 2/2

bsky.app/profile/nara...

The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · Oct 21

Been seeing some #starwars accounts I recognise flocking here, & I think we as a fandom need to talk about accessibility.

Whenever you post an image/gif without a description, you're excluding a whole bunch of blind or otherwise disabled people from the conversation. You don't want that, right?🧵 1/

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The Cambrian Mammal @naraoia.bsky.social · 22h

OK, I'm gonna unleash the alt text spiel on you because I love this so much & was about to repost it when I was like "wait a sec, no alt?😭"

(I have blind followers, I can't in good conscience repost images without a description.) 1/2

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