STANCE was a huge success

Comments

Oh man I am so overjoyed with how our choir shows went! Holy fuck, joining this choir was probably the best decision I’ve made in a long time. Every show we’ve done has been wonderful and the people are so great and I love spending time with everyone. It’s great being surrounded by fellow ADHD transgender/nonbinary weirdos who all have music in common but so many disparate experiences and ideas and just like, oh god so much talent from everyone.

We’re between seasons now and it’ll feel weird not having rehearsals every Wednesday evening for the next couple months, but there’s a lot of talk about doing plenty of social gatherings in the interim and I’m very much looking forward to that.

Read more…

“In this new era of AI”

Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion about a puff piece by Marc Andreessen (formerly of Netscape fame, now of being-yet-another-also-ran-tech-billionaire-who-is-into-the-self-aggrandizing-fad-of-the-moment fame) talking about how AI will save the world.

I am not going to link to it (it’s easy enough to find anyway) but I just bothered to read it and oh my god the privilege and blinders are so obvious.

Read more…

The new Apple AR goggles

Comments

My impressions on the hardware, for what it’s worth:

  • Really cool tech
  • Kind of a solution in search of a problem
  • I look forward to seeing what people do with it
  • I look forward to it becoming affordable and usable for a lot more than just running fancy versions of iOS apps
  • I will be way more interested if they let you apply filters to the external screen; why show a video feed of your boring human eyes when you can be your fursona or a protogen?

Read more…

💬 Re: Internal blogging tools Notes

Comments

In reply to: Re: Internal blogging tools

Ben Werdmuller posed a question:

If your company gives its employees a space to blog or journal internally, what platform do you use? What do you think of it?

eg: Confluence has blogs; at Medium they have a whole internal version of the site called Hatch; etc.

Back in the day, Amazon had an internal Movable Type site for internal blogging purposes, although it went mostly unused. When I returned for a couple years in 2012 it was still there although even more completely unused. I posted a couple more entries on it that nobody saw as far as I know.

Nowhere else I’ve worked has had formalized internal blogging (although a couple places had public blogging platforms that were mostly used by marketing folks), although a lot of people certainly would treat Slack as their personal blog.

An open letter to the Washington State Employment Security Department

Comments

Back in June of 2022 I was let go from a job in a way where I was eligible for unemployment benefits. I immediately filed an unemployment claim, but the response that it was “pending adjudication” due to a wrinkle in how I was let go. I was told that I needed to continue to submit claims weekly if I was to receive any benefits.

However, I was unable to submit those claims. The website would not allow me to submit a claim because it was “pending adjudication,” and all contacts to the ESD resulted in a message that I should call a phone number. I called that number, and I’d be put on hold for two hours, told that nobody was available to help me, and that I should use the website for my unemployment claims needs.

One week ago the adjudication finally found in my favor, but at this point my benefit period has almost ended and I will still be unable to receive my unemployment benefits. And I am told that I should have been submitting my claims every week during this whole period — which I was unable to do, for the reasons stated.

How is any of this fair? This is a frustrating bureaucratic nightmare that needs to be completely overhauled. Sometimes it feels like the cruelty is the point, and that this system is not in place to benefit the people who need it.

Thank you for your consideration.

(Also sent to my state representatives Emily Alvarado and Joe Fitzgibbon, and senator Joe Nguyen.)

❝ This moment isn’t about decentralization Notes

Comments

Quoted: This moment isn’t about decentralization

The core need being expressed by millions of users isn’t “get me a decentralized protocol that nobody owns where I can have my choice of algorithms and apps”. It’s “get me a platform that works consistently, with less abuse”. Sometimes it’s also appended with, “where I can build a following for me / my brand / my employer and measure my progress.”

[…]

Many of us have been wanting decentralized social networking for a long time — I’ve been a part of these conversations for around twenty years. It’s tempting to feel like people finally get it. But that’s a trap and a mistake. As always, quite rightly, most people want something that works for them.

Reminder that Usenet has been around since the 80s and was a toxic hellhole even then. Decentralization isn’t the answer to social media problems, it’s just an implementation detail.

Or, as I keep on saying: The problem with Twitter isn’t that it’s centralized, but that it’s Twitter.