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Is there a name for this philosophy around projects (of any kind)?

"Never discourage someone (or yourself) from attempting a project based on whether you think it is achievable, but you do have a moral obligation to discourage someone from attempting a project if it would be unethical for them to do so."

this is your irregular reminder to

* be gay
* do crime
* post about being gay
* not post about doing crime

Edit: wow, my best performing post ever. guess what: it's #SettlerSaturday, so your job is now to find an Indigenous person's #MutualAid post and throw them $2/$5/$20/$100.

if you boosted this post and you're white this is not optional! if you truly have no money to give then you can credit yourself 50c for every #IndigenousMutualAid post you boost, until you reach one of those thresholds (take your pick).

have money but no spoons to read through a hashtag? here's one for ya: Evel needs accessories for xens new wheelchair. throne.com/evel/collections/wh

or you can give money to xens indie studio co-op here: ko-fi.com/aldercone/

Choose your phone!

Your options are:
- company that seeks rent on every transaction that happens through the phone
- company that tracks your location, habits and usage to build detailed profiles on you to inform advertising
- custom ROMs that can’t run your banking app

a lot of processes in the industry i work in now rely on spreadsheets

like really janky ones with hours of people's lives burned away by copy/paste weekly or daily and pointing and clicking, following a checklist

so i think "aha! i can help!" and i replace the spreadsheet with an automated process

and hours per week are saved and i am a hero and it feels great

but then they need to make a little change and they can't, they have to go through me, i have effectively taken their power away

@nota thinking about this more, i'm a little reminded of a discussion i read a while ago (on tumblr i think?) about "handmade" clothing, in which several people who were very into sewing absolutely lost their mind at people believing there's any sort of cheap clothing that's "not handmade" — it's just that it gets done in places that aren't usually thought about much (unless one wants to insist that "handmade clothing" prohibits the use of a sewing machine ig)

like it's the same kind of assumption that "mass-produced elsewhere" might as well mean "it just kinda materialised" (and credit is given to whoever designed it, not whoever made it)

It just feels like the sort of contrived seeming line you'd make someone say in a novel after the chapter that details the oppression of the people making the widgets, in order to set up the class conflict the book centers around.

And yeah, tech media at large does really just act like if these devices just appeared on shelves out of the æther and that explains a lot, I never thought about that.

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I boredly clicked a MKBHD video a while back where he unboxes a sealed original iphone. I keep thinking about it, because he talks up how it was "never gazed upon nor touched by human hands".

What do you mean Marques, "no human" 🧐

Of course if he'd have thought about it for a second he'd have realized that it had been through dozens of hands and seen by hundreds of people. But he didn't, they just left it in. It's so mundane in it's detachment from reality and somehow that really tickles me.

Every time I hear the “novelty and creativity is rare” line I get so angry I have to stand up and pace to calm down

Language, art, and media are massively combinatorial. We’ve barely been able to scratch the surface of what’s possible because we’re locked in economic systems built on uniformity and in industries that always choose the broken and bland to boost short term profits

The absence of novelty is down to economics and your mindsets. The media themselves are as unexplored as the galaxy

I wish music festivals didn't allow national flags.

Remember when we were all at awe at how we can access all the information we want like 10 years ago with the internet and phones

Well looks like the party is over with all the algorithmic intelligence poisoning SEO crap

Remember when Wikipedia was considered an unreliable source

@aud right??? like nobody's saying it's easy, but if it's an important problem, we have to start by assuming we're going to succeed. that reduces it to the task of figuring out HOW.

is this a large effect? well, it depends on the subject matter

is this the only thing that's needed to bring about change? almost never

is it a big deal that helps a lot? yes, definitely

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the world is just a collection of people who talk to each other. we all, including ourselves, tend to default to mirroring the attitudes we see around us back at others unless we've specifically taken the time to self-reflect and choose otherwise.

therefore, the way we talk about problems affects the people around us, which affects the world.

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please remember, always: the future is not written, and we all have the power to change it.

it is not inevitable that something will keep happening just because it has been happening.

when we talk about large-scale problems in public, it's probably a good idea to talk in ways that remind everyone of our own ability to choose, of the options we have, that express hope.

The way software development's shifted from people wanting to do it better to people wanting to get rich reminds me of how contemporary music schools shifted from people wanting to get better at making music to people wanting to get famous.

There's a real X Factor feel to the common discourse, with lots of folks obsessing over levels of commercial success they're never going to experience - too busy preparing for hypothetical stadium tours to learn scales.

Religion, IRC 

IRC fans talking about "emoji reactions" remind me of evangelical Christians who say atheists "just want to sin."

IRC Evangelist: IRC has literally all capabilities of other "modern" messaging systems,
except emoji reactions. Literately the only reasons anyone would ever choose any other message system over IRC is for the emoji.

Me: If somemany sends me a message when I'm offline, I want to be able to read it when I get back online. That's a significant feature IRC lacks that other messaging systems (including SMS, XMPP, Matrix, email, ActivityPub, and all proprietary messaging systems) have.

IRC Evangelist: Oh, you said the "M"-word? You use that trash? You must have chosen Matrix for the emoji reactions!

Me: No, I didn't. I use Matrix to chat with people in other time zones, and I want to be able to read messages they send when I'm offline. It's all about chat history, not emoji.

IRC Evangelist: You're lying! Nobody cares about viewing "history" in an instant messager: that's what public forums are for! You must have chosen Matrix for the emoji reactions.

Me: No, I do not want all my messages to be on public forums. I talk with my parents using SMS, including some personal info that I don't want to be scrapable on a forum. But I do want to be able to read a message they sent me when I'm in a zone without reception.

IRC Evangelist: Well why don't you use IRC to talk to your parents instead? It's not like you need emoji reactions?

Me: Because IRC lacks chat histo--

IRC Evangelist: OH NO! My evil employer is forcing me to use Discord for work! Why not IRC? It's not like anyone needs emoji reactions for work! And emoji reactions are literally the only capability Discord has that IRC doesn't.

IRC Evangelist's Evil Employer: Um, if an employee is out sick we want them to be able to read messages that were sent while they were out. Also, maybe sometimes you'll need to look at a message from last week, which IRC makes difficult.

IRC Evangelist: But I can work without Emoji! All that other stuff you said is totally irrelevant!

Signal user: We use signal for end-to-end encryption.

IRC Evangelist: No you don't: you must have chosen Signal for emoji reactions. You can set up OTR+TLS for IRC encryption. Clearly security can't be the reason you chose signal.

Signal user: Um, I don't think OTR is as secure as Signal. Also setting it up is not as beginner friendly.

IRC Evangelist: Beginner friendly? That's just a euphemism for emoji reactions! I knew you really just chose Signal for the emoji!

Me: Hey,
look what I found. It's a draft specification for adding chat history to IRC. This is great! If it gets completed and widely adopted, then I'll be able to move some of my existing group chats to IRC.

IRC Evangelist: Nooooooooo! You must not add any new features to IRC: you'll ruin it with emoji reactions.


#IRC #SMS #XMPP #Matrix #Email #Discord #Signal #Emoji #ChatHistory #IRCv3

once again subtooting a tweet I glanced at like 4 years ago that said something like

everyday billions of us wake up and remake the world exactly how it was but we could be creating something else, none of this is mandatory

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