Notices by Erin Kissane (kissane@mas.to), page 3

One of the real delights of raising a kid is getting to share favorite (and new, specifically sought-out) music/books/movies at just the right moment. "Personal librarian to curious child" turns out to be my absolute dream job.

I take it back I take it back Mastodon does like music don’t eat me

That Jackie West debut album that just dropped is very beautiful.

One reviewer mentioned the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Sessions and I was like o shit you shot me in my magical glowing weak spot

anyway I know Mastodon largely doesn't care about music but it's great

https://www.popmatters.com/jackie-west-close-to-mystery

Hey it’s that time again.

The contention that using high-filtration masks to prevent transmission of respiratory disease is “unscientific” and “lacking evidence” when we have *reams* of aerosol and transmission studies is a display of either unawareness/scientific illiteracy (super fixable! non-shameful!) or of an intentional disregard of the evidence for emotional or ideological reasons (common but troubling).

Delighted and totally honored to be at XOXO this year, look at these absolute badasses who will be speaking, lordy, no pressure or anything 😬

https://2024.xoxofest.com/

I'm just going to leave this here and get back to work

https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana

@leapingwoman I just need something to point to every time a dozen people elect to lecture me about how Jack Dorsey runs Bluesky and I'm a bootlicker for not acknowledging it etc etc

US folks, we have an e. coli recall on organic walnuts sold in bulk bins or repackaged in-store (plastic clamshells, etc.)—recs are to throw them out and wash containers and contacted surfaces:

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/s0430-ecoli-walnuts.html

(Hat tip to the manager of our local co-op.)

Labor in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproduction

I think part of what Benjamin argues is that it’s good to drain art of its ritual power by endlessly reproducing it because then it can no longer act as a trad bulwark against radical materialist equality.

I think the money behind GenAI hopes to run pretty much the same power-draining process on labor (as in work but especially as in the movement) itself, to ends that are pretty much the opposite of Benjamin’s desired state.

I said this a few weeks ago but I’m so intensely sad right now that literary Twitter got smashed to pieces and that it isn’t here.

Janet Reid, a literary agent who blessed a generation of baby writers with Query Shark and who was also extremely kind to me the only time I met her, has died. We won't see her like again, I don't think, and the world is worse for it.

A few weeks back I encountered a FOSS guy here explaining that when he sees open source devs ask for money, he blocks them and then stops using their code because they're morally wrong and he only wants to work with tools made by people who are doing the work for the right reasons. (I'm paraphrasing to avoid indexing the post.)

I've resisted writing about it because I'm slammed, but the question I can't shake is: Who benefits from the ideology of "pure" volunteerism?

Happy book launch day to @kjhealy and @marionfourcade whose The Ordinal Society has been keeping me up late reading and rereading and following references:

https://theordinalsociety.com

If you have feelings about how financialization and omnipresent networks affect humans and societies, I can't rec this highly enough—look at this TOC!

https://theordinalsociety.com/images/tos_sample.pdf

It's also so tightly and cleanly argued—the authors make that look easy and it's not. A real joy.

#bookstodon

service cancellations are all now negotiations with truculent demons

- crap discount offer
- I banish you
- meaningless price change
- I banish you
- major discount offer
- I BANISH YOU
- true form appears, snarling, breaks the contract, disappears in clouds of chatbot

There’s this perfect vocalization Kevin Free does narrating esp the most recent Murderbot when Murderbot says “ugh” and that is the noise I am making: AAUNNNGGHH

Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software is so good I keep yelling as I read it, it should be considered foundational for so many people interested in tech—and it’s such a tightly written, info-dense, pacey read.

@NaClKnight @LLS Yeah, I imagine it's doable but would be met with intense hostility.

@LLS I think this should technically be possible for the subset of servers that expose their blocks? It’s an interesting question. Would totally be fraught, but what isn’t.