Notices by Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)

It's worth continuing to be relentless in pointing out that science is a HUMAN ENDEAVOR, and every grad student who can't get funded to study anyone who isn't a man is a part of this story too, and every senseless cut of public evidence wealth that's happening here is a loss, thoughtless wanton destruction of processes that take years and years to set up and evidence that we've *already paid for*

Today I've been gutted by this news, which is appropriate as a descriptor because it's a gutting of the kind of scientific initiative that people scream about needing

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-cancels-its-first-and-largest-study-centered-women

Thinking about being a scientist & *almost* being an academic, and grief, and all the people for whom the scientific career loss grief is happening right now. That happened to me for many complex reasons but a main one was, as I've shared openly before, I was stalked and terrorized as a grad student

That piece of writing I was talking about finishing that I was equally proud of and scared to post because I love it? Here it is.

I am starting a new project, it is A Newsletter, and it is About Tech, but it is a very different tech newsletter.

Welcome to Fight for the Human. Sign up to start setting your compass toward rehumanization.

https://www.fightforthehuman.com/why-i-cannot-be-technical/

well, I was recently told that my research findings can't be used for something because the gains that we empirically measure are on the order of 6-10% (IN BEHAVIOR CHANGE, DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD BEHAVIOR CHANGE IS I am super proud of that) and aren't, you know, 60-70% or something something something ROI

Constantly using my Unfair Competitive Advantage which is called Listening to People

Do you think anybody ever emails the stackoverflow survey or the DORA research people and asks them if they have an IRB

It's like logging into a third tier streaming service and finding a really good show idk

I fear saying this but design at The Gap (THE GAP?!??!?) has been excellent lately and it's destroying my mental models a little

I do not buy very many mall clothes because I'm on a one woman journey to cause less suffering to old women in factories (😞😞😞😞😞😞) by sewing my own clothes (THAT'LL FIX IT!!) but I constantly look at mall clothes as a learning activity and wtf, cotton poplin cropped button down with long cuffs and a single red thread buttonhole detail...?!?!

@creachadair completely! I think the centrality of this ingroup and outgroup sorting is why Ashley and I are both very interested in interrogating this on our podcast too

I understand that many engineers will recoil and say mournfully, the techie decisions ARE what's real and what matters, that's my scope and job. You are being had. Those are the things that matter if we exist in a social-structural situation with shared goals.

If we can let go of the techie nonsense for a moment to pay attention to what really matters, not the jargon & tech details, but the values of real experts who do civic tech--it all becomes clearer. Patience, dialogue, intentionality, service, transparent and shared reasoning vs draconian power

A thread about tech power and tech identities that I really believe in, in reference to comments on the DOGE rewrite of SSA, unfolding in dialogue over on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/grimalkina.bsky.social/post/3llh5fy4gx224

I'll copy it here for you friends

It's also helpful to realize the execution of competence is NOT WHAT MATTERS with regard to a lot of tech power; every marginalized person in tech already knew this. It is the performance of speed, performance of genius, performance of renegade. These performances are rather impervious to reality

The exercise of Tech Knowledge and Tech Naivete go hand in hand in a way that I believe is somewhat intentionally paradoxical. If Tech Expertise is both all knowing and forever ignorant, it can play either side maintaining its structural power

Of course, tech incompetence ALSO flows from draconian power ideas of tech, I believe that; I'm just saying we won't undo this by continuing to pray to the Almighty Altar of the Technical.

Additionally I have had a small project on the benefits of hackathons: thinking about it, asking myself "will this work for them and advance their goals" and concluding it genuinely could. this shows the limits of psychology absent context as well. I mean, you can have a vibrant learning culture for a team that's causing utter destruction to everybody else! It will probably work for their outcomes! Things working isn't morality. They are working well at what they're trying to do imo.

I think it's a mistake to think these people don't do storytelling and know they're doing it. Storytelling is a critical piece of what they've been good at doing. They align continually with whatever stories bring them unchecked and sweeping structural power. So, "engineers" was an obvious way in.

Like the problem isn't whether it's a bad or a good hackathon (I know how you all like to fight about whether things are True Tech) the problem is the values are simply not encoded or committed to in tech and that exists outside of, you know, technicalities.