Notices by chris martens (chrisamaphone@hci.social)

people make fun of mathematicians and abstraction-motivated programmers for single-letter variables and weird concept names, but those habits are *useful* when part of the game is separating your brain from preconceived notions about the subject being represented, so it can look for patterns and similarities to known structures

people often think —understandably, because i have in the past described my work this way — that i work on “domain specific languages” (DSLs) and/or “apply” PL to “domains” (like game dev, generative art, policy design). it’s true that i’m interested in where those disciplines have something to say about each other, but i no longer self apply the DSL term and i think it would serve others who do to self reflect a bit about whether it’s a helpful framing/approach to achieve your research goals

in particular, a question i am always asking when reading about PL applied to a domain is: are these domain specific terms really just more general PL concepts by another name? what do they have *in common* with other kinds of programming and what is the specificity of this domain actually bringing that *distinguishes* the underlying computational model? the impulse to apply metaphors from the domain to otherwise-recognizable concepts can stifle cross-domain connections

em dash stands for emily dashinson

actually the reason for apparently “unnecessary” gendered product marketing is so you can tell which things belong in the toilet. most toilets have signage helpfully explaining that you are not to put in feminine products but it’s hard to know which ones those are unless companies apply the labels

wild how most of tidying up is just picking up items and setting them down in different places. why should that change anything

one could put pictures of their cats on a telephone pole even if the cats are not missing

i'm heading out to the distributed object store; do you need anything?

@dalias nope.

a student interrupted the start of my lecture today to say goodbye bc their visa was revoked and they needed to leave the country immediately. great job we’ve done everyone

one of the struggles I’ve been having with #RheumatoidArthritis is that the first line medication i’m on works really well for managing symptoms, but has *brutal* fatigue (& regular-bad nausea) for me as a side effect. it’s a weekly thing and i have to take it on weekends to avoid missing work. but then i lose my whole damn weekend, and i can really feel the stress accumulating from a lack of true rest

@dalias @pfriedma @0ddj0bb I don’t think what you’re saying conflicts with OP. the point is that no one’s hand is being forced here; this is google (etc) showing us who they really are

@dalias @0ddj0bb @pfriedma it *does* matter in the sense that we should not put up with“they made me do it” as an excuse

some opinions about academic conferences:
- i think talking to each other in person is good and important.
- the ideal of the "inclusive international conference" doesn't exist. one can only make intentional decisions about what kinds of inclusion to prioritize.
- it's a problem that junior folks are expected to attend big international conferences regularly in order to advance their careers, especially when their circumstances are by default *not* prioritized as inclusivity criteria

@samth @adrian @palvaro thank you please keep me in the loop

also considering renaming my grad class to Special Topics in Programming Languages: Intensive Principles of Woke Gender Ideology

noticed someone saying they're learning tech skills as a fallback for their art career. meanwhile i'm leaning harder into art skills in case this computer science thing turns out to be impossible without Complying

i continue to feel that we do academic conferences in a fundamentally broken way that doesn’t change because we’re in a local optimum wrt small perturbations (in terms of things like governance and budgets). but i think of things like fan conventions and burning man-genre festivals and industry events like strange loop… where there is so much more democratic participation in the process, and i wonder if we will ever break out of the golden handcuffs of “professional societies”

:= is pronounced Walrus
::= is pronounced Spider Walrus

“I know, i’ll put my jacket, scarf, and gloves on the coat rack, rather than carrying things around to every talk and coffee break! this is a great idea with no downsides”

*forgets to get things from coat rack after conference*

“it’s fine, i’ll get it tomorrow morning”

*flooding emergency renders area with coat rack inaccessible*
*it’s the part of the venue that got the most water damage*