Reminder: early registration for #SIGDIAL2023 + #INLG2023 is available until 18 August, with discounted room rates for the executive rooms at the hotel available until then as well: https://inlg2023.github.io/

Note that event registration takes place through Eventbright and you will need to click 'print tickets' to download the PDF of the tickets to get info for the hotel discount.

If you can talk to your 5 year old kids about why their school needs 'active shooter drills', then you can talk to them about gender neutral toilets.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights #Trans #Pride

The #Caturday game on BS is pretty good, but I know we can fill the #fedi with a #megathread of #cats if we want to. I'll start!

Let's see if we can beat their so-called hellthreads with more than 65536 cat posts in a single thread.

Please help if you're in the mood for silly nonsense and feel free to ignore if you are not 💛

#PleaseBoost

Friendly reminder that submissions to #INLG2023 (premiere conference for work in natural language generation, in my yet to be humble opinion) are due by 22 May: https://inlg2023.github.io/calls.html

#NaturalLanguageGeneration #NLG #NLProc #TextGeneration #CFP

1990s web experience

- Open site in browser
- Watch framework of site gradually appear
- Start reading site text
- View images once they load
- Click a hyperlink to more information on the thing you're looking for

2020s web experience

- Open site in browser
- Wait for Cloudflare to verify you aren't a bot
- Wait for background movie to load
- Dismiss cookie popup
- Decline to subscribe to their mailing list
- Decline to speak to a chatbot that promises it's a human
- Scroll infinitely looking for the information you want that's probably not there since it's all generated text intended for other robots to read anyway

I can be both Catholic and queer. I can be imperfect and still belong. My queerness is not an imperfection, and my chosen avenue for pursuing a relationship with God does not make me less queer. I like men, I like women, I like enbies. Not all of my relationships will meet with the Church's seal of approval, but that does not mean that God isn't calling me to those people or acting through us to reach each other in love and compassion. Belonging to an institution does not mean that I approve of and promote everything it has ever done or is doing in the world today.

I wish the Church served and included the queer community actively so that I would not have to repeat these things to myself so often. I know there's resistance to subdividing the flock (i.e. talking about queer Catholics or American Catholics or other adjective Catholics), but then we need to be explicitly more inclusive and not teach that some of God's children are less-than because of who they love.