Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 12:04:29 JST clarity flowers

   sitting with the AI apologist take of "you may like the craft of traditional japanese hand woodworking but it's not what will make a profit anymore, so save that for your hobby"… the thing is, old-school joinery produces higher-quality products and homes and uses less & more sustainable materials. The reason it's "not profitable" is that the labor is more specialized and expensive. So what they're saying is "I want to get paid less to make worse software".

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 12:07:13 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     it's perfectly reasonable for capitalists to be arguing for AI-driven software. "reducing labor costs" is the thing capitalists do. but being an AI stan as a worker is some serious class traitor shit. this isn't gonna advance your career, buddy.

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 12:10:04 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     all I want is to master a craft & use that craft to make something that helps people. turns out I went into the wrong industry.

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 14:02:19 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • JP

     @jplebreton yeah fr!

   • Embed this notice
     JP (jplebreton@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 14:02:20 JST JP

     in reply to

     @clarity and yeah sometimes they say "not profitable" but mean "profitable but doesn't scale up infinitely, which you must always and unwaveringly feel compelled to do"

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 15:26:32 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • HellPie (HellPride)

     @hellpie feeling really hype about the asbestos of software engineering rn

   • Embed this notice
     HellPie (HellPride) (hellpie@raru.re)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 15:26:33 JST HellPie (HellPride)

     in reply to

     @clarity I read that blog post and when I got to that sentence the first thing I thought of was how those old crafts turned out to be the only sustainable ways to make things.

     Mass manufacturing? Only works if it uses slavery. Plastics? Planetary cancer. Poultry and pig farms? Pandemic incubators. Greenhouse farms? Thousands of liters of posions to get veggies that taste bland. And so on and so forth for every industry.

     I would really like if AI turned out to be as good as they sell it, it would be an insanely powerful tool, but the reality is that it's being sold by the same kind of people that sold us tech equivalents of forever chemicals over and over and this isn't just resentment against "big corpo", the number of CVEs, flubs, leaks and failures that AI has introduced into projects old and new in its very short lifespan are an objective way to measure whether they lied to us and this is yet another new software PFAS or not.

     clarity flowers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Saturday, 07-Jun-2025 15:31:35 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     also worth noting that many people veru much do still do oldschool timberframing in japan, because people want their homes to be something made with love and craft and they’ll pay for it when they can afford it

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jun-2025 01:58:44 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • m_on_stair

     @m no I think everyone should be writing erlang

   • Embed this notice
     m_on_stair (m@miruku.cafe)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jun-2025 01:58:45 JST m_on_stair

     in reply to

     @clarity@xoxo.zone
     
     im more on the anti side but your counterargument is akin to "everyone should be writing assembly"

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jun-2025 02:01:33 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • m_on_stair

     @m but also: AI is not power tools. AI isn’t even heavy machinery. AI is prefabs made from unsustainably harvested materials and glued together by poorly paid workers with caulk guns

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jun-2025 02:33:49 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     Anyone who thinks AI is to programming languages as digital photography is to film (or whatever other equivalent metaphor) is a mark. Begging people to have enough of a power analysis to know the difference between open source software and closed subscription services powered by proprietary models

   • Embed this notice
     deech (deech@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 08-Jun-2025 04:44:20 JST deech

     in reply to

     @clarity for me the question "what part of my ecosystem can I do without" has been a decent way to take an accounting of who am I beholden to.

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 01:53:24 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • m_on_stair
     • Jan Peterka

     @janpet @m need to repeat forever: if it’s running proprietary software on someone else’s computer and charging you a subscription, it’s not a tool. it’s -infrastructure-, and as such warrants a power analysis. any comparison to tools is disingenuous.

   • Embed this notice
     Jan Peterka (janpet@ruby.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 01:53:25 JST Jan Peterka

     in reply to

     • m_on_stair

     @m @clarity I think that it would be equivalent to suggesting only using wooden tools. It's okay to use bone, bronze, even iron and steel tools! But when you start using plastics, you get micro plastics in your output.So maybe don't do that.

   • Embed this notice
     clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:55:32 JST clarity flowers

     in reply to

     • m_on_stair

     @m yeah, agree with all of this

   • Embed this notice
     m_on_stair (m@miruku.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:55:33 JST m_on_stair

     in reply to

     @clarity@xoxo.zone
     read this, its a good read
     
     https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html