Dr. Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh

#cymraes 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
#coder & #markup geek
#linguist & language learner
#crafter & very amateur #artist
#audhd & #autoimmune stuff

(Avatar shows a middle-aged woman wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "Madame est Insolente").

Homepage: https://linguacelta.com/

Last Notes

2026-02-15 23:19:08 UTC

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I'm sorry if I've misread. But here's what I saw in your piece:
a) a kind of "both sides are bad" intro about how current discussion is toxic;
b) a willingness to consider the technical merits of Claude, as though it is desirable (and not, in itself, unethical) to take a theoretical position on "AI" use and to engage with LLM-generated content;
c) a conclusion that promises to discuss whether using "AI" is a dick move", as though there is any meaningful debate left to be had.

2026-02-15 22:58:06 UTC

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There is no "dick-move-or-not" discussion, Tim, and I'm wildly disappointed to see you implying that there is.

2025-12-31 13:57:51 UTC

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Ooooh! These are spectacular.

2025-12-29 18:55:19 UTC

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Sounds as though they've reinvented district nursing, to some extent.

2025-12-10 11:27:42 UTC

Human rights are inalienable; they belong to you because you are human. Nobody has the right to decide that some individual or group can be deprived of some or all of these rights. If a state violates any person's human rights, the state is in the wrong. There is no legal force in the world that can make it okay to violate any of these rights. End of story.

2025-12-03 16:07:10 UTC

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Thanks. I'm absurdly lucky - my husband has very flexible work, so can take me back and forth to hospital (or spend a day in A&E with me). I don't have to work while we sort out my rebellious neurology! We have great family support. But it shouldn't require that kind of privilege to be able to access appropriate healthcare, should it? It should be quick and simple to see a GP for treatment or referral, which would take quite some pressure off emergency departments.

2025-12-03 13:56:26 UTC

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Even those with an illness which merits hospitalisation may not be able to sit in A&E for days at a time in hopes of being seen. There's that calculation - maybe this is serious. But if I'm not admitted, can I justify to my employer that I sat here for twenty-six hours? If it turns out not to be an emergency, can I justify my kids not being at school because there's nobody to take them? Or justify my partner missing work to take care of the baby?

2025-12-03 13:50:06 UTC

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When I had a neurological crisis, I tried my GP. The receptionist refused to give me an emergency appointment since, in their opinion, the doctor wouldn't be interested. I sat in A&E for five hours *before* full triage since nurses were too busy. I had to leave after 11 hours because I needed medication, which was at home, and the wait time was at least another ten hours. When I finally saw a neurologist, he wanted to admit me immediately. There were no beds.

2025-12-03 13:46:23 UTC

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Every medical person I've seen at that hospital (and there have been many, since we're still trying to work out what's wrong with me!) has been dedicated, kind, and committed to their work. It's a disgrace that they have to work in these conditions, where they are prevented from providing necessary care by chronic lack of resources.

2025-12-03 13:44:45 UTC

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I have never been so scared in a medical context as I was in that first A&E visit. I had partial loss of sensation down one side of my body, my vision was compromised, and I was genuinely scared I might be sustaining some kind of irreversible neurological damage. And nobody seemed to have the time or resources to help. The nurses were so busy I wasn't even triaged for many hours.

2025-12-03 13:39:03 UTC

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I left A&E after eleven hours, having been told there would be at least another ten hours to wait, because I needed to get home and take various medications. GP the next day sent me straight to hospital for urgent assessment. Neurologist wanted to admit me, but finally gave up as I'd have to go back through A&E and wait ~48 hours (you can't leave, or the clock resets). So he called in favours and worked out an emergency outpatient treatment plan to deal with the immediate crisis.

2025-12-03 11:17:13 UTC

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And, added to that, the poor are condemned as less moral because of behaviours that are made unavoidable, or hard to avoid, because of poverty and deprivation themselves. Is it a surprise if starving people beg or steal? If people who can't afford the water bill are dirty and wear scruffy clothes? If people without homes have to urinate in public spaces? If people working two or three jobs aren't always able to spend time reading with their children or help with homework?
2/2

2025-12-03 11:07:27 UTC

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Some of it is circular reasoning, of course. If you define "upper-class" behaviour as inherently more moral in some way (more "civilised", more "cultured", more "polite"), then it becomes difficult for other social groups to challenge their apparent moral supremacy. If you're not brought up behaving in the socially-constructed "right" way, you're always at a disadvantage.
1/2

2025-12-02 11:40:36 UTC

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I suspect there's also some amount of classism going on. Britain has a long tradition of attitudes towards the "lower" classes which assume them to have inherently less intelligence and a natural tendency towards immorality.
Even without necessarily feeling that they themselves would cheat in the same position, the upper middle classes assume that "the poor" are naturally vicious and will never choose to behave morally.

2025-11-30 16:19:06 UTC

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So it's never okay to use the big commercial LLMs and other "AI" models, because they are inherently unethical.
But even if you used an ethically created and ethically maintained LLM, it's still not okay to shunt off your accessibility work to a machine, unless and until that machine can do as good a job as a human can. Accessibility is an essential part of the work of content creation, not an optional extra.

2025-11-30 16:15:31 UTC

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Disabled people don't deserve to be treated as an afterthought.
Human input is essential for genuinely accessible content. Alt-text isn't just about describing everything that's visible in an image; it's about explaining what rhe meaning of the image is in context. LLMs can't do that reliably or well. And you don't need an LLM for generating captions, but you do need a human to check they're correct.

2025-09-26 14:16:13 UTC

I've finally decided to switch from Spotify, and I've chosen Qobuz instead - it does CD-quality streaming which is sooo much better.
Transferring my playlists has been a bit sad, though. Most of them have been replicated fairly well on Qobuz - between 80% and 90% of the tracks found. But not my Welsh-language playlist - only 10 of 31 tracks found on Qobuz 😟 I'm also missing some of my favourite folk music and indie music, perhaps unsurprisingly.