Music, comics, art, and other stuff, all in one gigantic pile. The web of yesterday, tomorrow!
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.
My impressions on the hardware, for what it’s worth:
This past weekend was Furality, which was a pretty darn good time in general. I found it pretty enjoyable and I’ll definitely be doing it again. I figure I’ll share some random undirected thoughts about it.
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.
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.)
A commonly-desired feature for a VRChat avatar is the ability to switch materials, so as to change color schemes and the like. This requires a nontrivial amount of setup, and with the standard approach it is difficult to maintain cross-platform compatibility. As a result, creators will usually only set it up on PC, leaving Quest users unable to see these customizations.
Here is my approach to setting up material switching in a way that’s easier to support on multiple platforms simultaneously. This particular method is what I developed for my critter avatar.
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.
Hey y'all, the choir I’m in is ramping up for our big Pride show in June. I hope that if you’re able to attend you will do so!
The shows are:
I’d been getting really annoyed with my kinda-fragile website templates and some of the accumulated cruft, as well as a bunch of things that were difficult, UX-wise, so I redesigned my site. How do you like it?
For the last few months I’ve been feeling restless to be doing not-much throughout the day, so I’ve been actively looking for a job. No bites have been occurring. So instead I’ve been working hard on new projects, like the VRChat avatar stuff and also redesigning my website (which I’m close to being able to roll out, incidentally).
But then it turns out that doing work makes my chronic pain flare up again, and now I’m in agony again.
So, I guess I need to find something that makes me feel satisfied with my day (and ideally brings in some amount of income) without being something that my body just absolutely rejects. But what could that possibly be? The stuff I’m good at and the stuff I enjoy doing is stuff that physically hurts to do.
