Notices by Catherine Berry (isomeme@mastodon.sdf.org)

@meena @AnarchoCatgirlism @inthehands

I saw an interview with a biologist that completely reoriented my thinking on this topic. Her specialty is studying the human microbiome -- the countless gut bacteria, skin mites, and so forth with which we are symbiotic. We are constantly exchanging these with our environment in ways which are not well understood. Talking about the challenges of replicating this in a space colony, she said "We're not *from* Earth. We're *part of* Earth."

WHAM.

@AnarchoCatgirlism @inthehands

People wildly underestimate how much every part of the universe outside a thin film on Earth's surface is longing to murder us.

Remember the Posse Comitatus Act? I miss that thing.

#USLaw #USPolitics

https://gothamist.com/news/hochul-deploys-national-guard-state-police-to-do-mandatory-bag-checks-in-nyc-subway

@inthehands @ajsadauskas

It's not even an ML-specific problem. The oldest axiom of computer programming is "Garbage in, garbage out".

Next Sunday is the Superbowl in the US, the closest thing we have to a national religious festival. I have no interest in the game itself, but the ritual aspects of it are fascinating.

For example, the name "Superbowl" is trademarked, so while ordinary people call it that, businesses call it "The Big Game" to avoid getting sued. This seems eerily similar to the way substitute names are used when there is a religious taboo against speaking a holy name aloud.

#CulturalAnthropology

@daedalus

In my corner of big tech, us ordinary software engineers are mostly rolling our eyes and becoming increasingly frustrated as VPs and Directors pour resources into spicy autocomplete while starving useful projects.

I get really frustrated and annoyed by images without alt text. It's such a small community-oriented act of kindness to supply alt text, yet so many people don't bother. I make it a fairly rigid policy not to interact with such posts, but it would be even better for my blood pressure if I could block/hide such posts entirely. Does any current client have this feature? Any reasons why it would be a bad idea?

#AltText

It struck me earlier today that we use the word "server" both for "computer fulfilling remote requests" and "person handling orders in a restaurant". Then it occurred to me that they have many similarities:

* Unpredictable delay between request and response.
* Sometimes fail to work for no clear reason.
* Other jobs often interfere with availability.
* Memory issues can make service unusable.
* Poor prioritization strategies result in client starvation.

#SoftwareEngineering #Humor

I used Google Search to look up the frequency of the high-pitched whine that CRT monitors produced back in the day. The results started with an AI-generated summary, which included this brilliant advice. There may be something to this whole AI business after all. 🙂

#AI #CRT #Humor

Sometimes I can't help but wonder whether some large fraction of product designers actively hate people with low vision. For example, I just had to take a photo and use zoom and image enhancement to determine that this Keurig pod is decaffeinated.

If I were Empress of Earth, I would allow only vision-impaired people to work as product or UX designers.

#A11y #ProductDesign #LowVision

@sundogplanets

After how many cycles of disaster do we rebrand "The Tragedy of the Commons" to "The Utterly Predictable Consequences of Wrecking the Commons, You Morons"?

I am so, so tired of hearing people say that we will face a climate crisis unless we reduce carbon emissions immediately. The opportunity to avert a crisis ended around 2000. Since then, we've had the opportunity to make the crisis less devastating, with the minimum possible level of horror and misery increasing with each year we fail to act. What's more, even if we halted all carbon emissions tomorrow, global warming would continue for decades.

We are in the crisis RIGHT NOW.

#ClimateChange

@ct_bergstrom , I am definitely not beta testing a techbro billionaire's Venus colony.

My big question about the Venus cloud city concept is: Why? Once you're drifting around in the upper atmosphere of Venus, what do you do, other than extremely careful maintenance? There's nothing to mine, so you can't build more living space. There's nowhere to go that isn't just more sky above clouds. Why would anyone want to pay for or live in such a useless place?

@goatsarah

Also, boost early, boost often. Boosts drive others' discovery.