Jessica Friedmann

It’s charming!

Screen cap from a weather app showing a maximum temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

Train announcement a London station: ‘During this hot weather, please carry a bottle of water with you, and contact station management if you feel unwell.’

The weather in question?

First impressions of London: it is teeny-tiny, and full of bricks.

I realized a while ago that I don't know how to set alt-text for an art piece.
Now I realize the advice I've seen revolves around web design, either SEO optimization or accessibility for tables in e-books/the like.

What do people who need it want out of alt-text on art?
#disability #accesibility

Does anyone know if any substantial work has been done on the way in which people approach writing alt text…? I’m so curious as to how it contributes to the body of art criticism based on writing the image.

#arthistory #literature #linguistics

Certify Human Authorship:
'In reprints and new publications verify on the title page that your book was created by a human, not generated by AI.' (NZSA)

Protect your works:
'Add a “NO AI TRAINING” notice on the copyright page of your works. For online work, you can update your website’s robots.txt file to block AI bots. Ask for a clause in your publishing contracts that your publisher will not knowingly allow AI scraping of books.' (NZSA)
then ...

Send the ASA or NZSA a list of your stolen books:
NZSA
authors.org.nz/new-zealand-...
ASA
docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS....
then ...

Authors published in Aus and NZ who have found their work stolen to train generative AI, here are some practical actions, with great advice from the Australian Society of Authors and NZ Society of Authors:
Look up your book to see if it has been stolen:
www.theatlantic.com/.../search-l...
then ...

This scholarship looks incredible! It pays about twice the rate of an ordinary PhD, and is attached to a meaningful project around recuperating othered writing. Indigenous Creative Writing Phd-wanters, get on it!

Headlines: 'World leaders express outrage': they need to do far more than 'express outrage'. At the very least, sanctions. BDS now (yesterday, years ago).

Looking forward to all the concerned tech billionaires looking at online purges and investing their wealth in print 😎

Thanks, George.

Fuck me... I don't think I am going to be able to access the PhD stipend for travel in April after all, and don't have enough in my savings for a plane ticket right now.

Does anyone have any work going that might get me to a symposium in London...? Writing, proofing, editing all on offer!

Do iiitttt

All advice pertaining to inexpensive #cornwall accomodation and site-seeing will be considered.

The most soothingly stressful thing I’ve ever seen.

Will you be painting the spots green?

Going deep into the planning-to-visit-Cornwall rabbit hole. There are just so many ROCKS!

Oooh, thank you!

Art friends -- what are the best little weird galleries and bookshops and ARIs in London?

My husband and I always joke that my aesthetic is ‘bog wife’ and you know what?

(It is.)

In yoga, during shavasana meditation, I always laugh when the teacher suggests that we imagine ourselves being filled with ‘light and ease’, because I inevitably feel as though my arms and legs and heart-space and hips and ribs are turning into clay. Nice boggy Golem clay right from the local swamp.

Is the satisfaction of knowing worth the pain of finding out?

Not only was I not longlisted, a bird came through the doorway and shat on the rug.

(This is about 90% a gag – it’s genuinely thrilling that anyone gets recognition in this shithole of an industry.)

To understand American fascism, you have to understand their obsession with veneers.

Lovely.

Pre-processing the disappointment of (presumably) not being on tonight’s Stella longlist so that I can congratulate the nominees with an open heart.

It all comes together! 🙏🏻