Notices by Iris (iris_meredith@mastodon.social)

Sean Goedecke has just written a deeply smug and condescending hit-piece on me, and I'm honestly about to boil over

@skinnylatte @CStamp @kristinHenry

Like, I honestly think that from a climate/animal welfare perspective, one of the single biggest things we could do is something along the lines of setting up a system of vegan milk bars. Like, if you can get a meal for three or four dollars and you *don't have to cook it*, a lot of people would probably go for it

@skinnylatte @CStamp @kristinHenry

Yes! Poland has a culture of the so-called "milk bars", which were originally state-subsidised canteen-type-things that existed under communism where people could get a very cheap meal during their lunch break. Some of them were awful, they were a bit of a meme and a lot of them have closed, but a bunch of them are still around and they're actually pretty popular.

I wish we did more things like that

@skinnylatte @CStamp @kristinHenry
This is also the Polish one, happily enough. I suspect it's two things: the anglosphere in general has unusually low expectations for food, both in terms of quality and in terms of cost, and the anglosphere tends to regulate in such a way as to artificially inflate food prices

New article: this time, we use Heidegger to explain why the "it's just a tool" line that often comes up in tech is so very silly:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/no-such-thing-as-just-a-tool

One of the more disconcerting parts of our current situation is interacting with people who are considered, these days, to be good and respectable and having to work very hard not to say "in thirty years people will speak of you as though you're the most reviled of criminals"

@skinnylatte

*blinks*
What metric are we even using here? Guangzhou and Chongqing are going to have very different ideas about what "good Chinese food" is.

New article time! This time, I've talked about writing C is so much more enjoyable than a number of other things, and tech's regrettable tendency towards shallowness:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/tech-aint-deep

Some good (if terrifying for me) news: Arca is now in early access. That's right: now you can buy access to my notes on statistics and engineering fundamentals, exercises and access to a community of fellow students where you can ask questions, comment on others' questions and get them answered by me. It's a great opportunity to learn something that will make you better at basically everything you do from someone cool. Take a look!

https://deadsimpletech.com/arca

@skinnylatte @CStamp
I thought SF would have been 5 million at a minimum

@skinnylatte @CStamp
Wait, SF is only 800k? That's like, Greater Wellington

@skinnylatte
Ah, good to know! My knowledge of sinitic languages is... not the best

@skinnylatte Do I also espy some hongshaorou?

@skinnylatte
Yeah. Like, Poland isn't very good about queer things, but... there are consistently people around who get *really upset* about civil liberties violations. New Zealand is nominally better about this shit, but the general population also has much less backbone around these things. I have no idea if that makes any sense

@skinnylatte
Ah, that perplexing thing. Officially bigoted as hell, but somehow practically more supportive than states that are officially more open-minded.

@skinnylatte
I know this absolutely isn't the case, but sometimes I feel like everywhere between Berlin and Guangzhou has more in common with each other culturally than they do with the regions to either side

@skinnylatte

If I were to guess, it's a similar complex to the ones Polish parents have, only with the Japanese occupation rather than the German/Russian one. Several entire generations of Chinese people have serious PTSD and on some level they think that being horrible is necessary for survival. But I could be talking shit here

Another thought: a large part of why LLMs have been having so much of an effect is that in tech, *most of the work we're currently doing involves exploiting assets that were largely built decades ago*. We aren't really developing new core technologies so much as we're trying to squeeze extra value out of what we already have.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/116842685091898161

Of course, it's also easy to overcorrect here and say that we don't need to teach actual material and should focus on creativity and critical thinking skills. All very important and good, but they require material to work on. It's very difficult to think critically without anything to think critically about.

An new post: this week I have written about the shortest, darkest days of the year and the ways in which we feel rather as though we're in a midwinter of tech:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/midwinter