Notices by Mallory's Musings & Mischief (malcircuit@thingy.social), page 4

This reminds me of a book I heard about way back when reading books was a thing I did regularly. Play Anything by Ian Bogost. I put it on my reading list but never got around to it. It's about the power of play and how boredom can be leveraged. Maybe I should actually read that book. Seems like it would be relevant to this line of thinking.

[Update: seems like that book has mediocre reviews, so that might have been why I skipped over it. There might be other books that cover the topic better.]

I suppose a big part is to accept one's own ignorance and uncertainty. Curiosity evaporates when one assumes they understand a thing. Why explore when it's obvious what the outcome will be?

How does one restore a curiosity that's atrophied?

A common meme is that a CPU is sand that can think, but something I hadn't considered until just now is that a camera sensor is sand that can see.

Here's a pic of the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946) I captured recently.

#astrophotography

I need to do hair transplants, voice feminization, and bottom surgery. These three things would dramatically improve my self image and decrease dysphoria, but I keep avoiding them because I'm a dumbass who apparently likes quietly and pointlessly suffering.

People need to stop referring to "the economy" when they actually just mean "having a good job that pays the bills" or simply "having a good life where I am thriving."

Because when politicians and pundits refer to "the economy" they are talking about the stock market or GDP.

For too long we've accepted the lie that those things are correlated, but they aren't.

Talking about "the economy" is just gaslighting. Be explicit about what you want from the people in power.

@thomasfuchs Seems counterproductive to the goal of making your brain work good

⚠️⚠️ AURORA NOTICE ⚠️⚠️

Might be some aurora visible tomorrow night, July 29 into July 30, in northern latitudes. Currently forecast for up to G3 intensity (for reference, the May geomagnetic storm was G5)

Theoretically, anyway. The weather will probably be too crap around my neck of the woods to see anything.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/3-day-geomagnetic-forecast

#aurora #astronomy #astrophotography

The more you are ignorant of those design choices in a system, the easier it is for those in power to launder justifications for their actions with those systems.

Suddenly it's the system's "fault" for why something happened the way it did. You hear people say things like, "I'm sorry, the computer won't let me do that," as if what's possible is defined by the limitations of the system, not the choices of the designer(s).

A machine cannot be held accountable, only people.

It's important to have a good understanding of how technology works.

Not because getting a STEM job is valuable, or because technical knowledge is somehow more important than other types of knowledge.

It's because the powerful will use your ignorance of technology against you.

Systems are designed — out of necessity and intentionally — to constrain your choices. It's important to understand which constraints are technically necessary, and which are just there to exploit or control you.

⚠️ SCAM PSA ⚠️

My sister was just telling my mom and I about a scam she just narrowly missed. Super devious. I'm not sure I would have seen through it in time.

She got a few texts that looked like those automated fraud alert texts you get from the bank when there's a transaction that they flagged as possibly unauthorized.

You know, the ones that ask you to respond YES/NO on whether it was you? She responded NO, and got another text saying a "representative" would contact her shortly...

/1

The best experience I've had with a technical interview was being supplied a list of technical questions a week before the interview and asked to make a simple presentation that described my solutions and process. I did the presentation and the interviewers asked probing questions to interrogate how much I actually understood about the problem. More importantly, they asked *what I did when I ran into issues*.

I don't care how much you know if you just give up the moment things go off track.

It's just dumb because in undergrad my engineering professors constantly reinforced that the most important thing is knowing *how* to find a solution, not knowing the solution by rote memorization, and yet so many engineering roles give you a textbook-level technical problem to solve in isolation like I should perfectly remember every single thing I learned in school.

You bitches want me to solve problems or to be fucking ChatGPT? Because you're interviewing like you want the latter.

The ability to troubleshoot is an extremely valuable skill, and almost no one evaluates that in a technical interview.

Like, if you have a technical career, when was the last time you designed, made, or programmed something that worked perfectly the first time? Probably never, am I right? Most of your time is probably spent trying to figure out why the fuck some thing doesn't work correctly, right?

Design your interviews around that, not coding on a fucking whiteboard.

To anyone who is involved with the hiring process for a technical position: dear god, don't ask the candidate to solve a problem on the spot. You're shooting yourself in the foot and missing out on the best people.

Simulate the actual skills you need in the role. You want people who can think carefully and solve real problems, not a chatbot that can write code as fast as possible.

SCOTUS wants the President to be king? Fine, Biden should go full Climate Stalin.

- Ban fossil fuels, by force with the military (official act)
- Nationalize the railroads, by force
- Nationalize Tesla's Battery division, by force
- Etc...

SCOTUS doesn't agree that these are "official acts"? Seal Team 6 them and see if they change their minds.

Fuck it. If we're gonna have an authoritarian government, might as well do something useful with it.

And the thing is that Biden doesn't even need to do any of that. He can just threaten to, and the conservatives will fall over themselves to undo the nonsense they started with the Supreme Court.

As the 4th of July approaches, I suggest we spend tomorrow celebrating this great nation by burning down SCOTUS and starting over

I love how the country I live in is in the midst of a constitutional crisis caused by a judicial coup and on the tipping point of a fascist takeover, and I'm just supposed to go to work and pay my bills and shit like it's a normal day.