nicole @nicole@myna.social

“Vote NO on Woman Suffrage” 🙄

Not ancient #history, but just a century ago.

Source: State Archives of North Carolina

Mitchell Baker from Mozilla tells the German news agency that we shouldn't "leave AI development to the tech-giants", that somehow "the training data should be controlled by users".

And that does on a surface level sound nice. User control and criticizing tech giants. Great. But it accepts the tech-giants' narrative: That "AI" is inevitable and that all data *has to* be dumped into these systems, that unfairness is a tech issue to solve with more data. That is not true.

We can also decide not to build these huge and wasteful statistical systems.

Criterion Channel has at least four different horror film slates running for October this year.

Between 90’s Horror, Hopping Hong Kong Vampires, Art-House Horror, and Pre-Code Horror, I’m paralyzed with indecision as to what to watch.

What can I say about Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser?

Let’s find out, shall we? ☺️

If I cannot compartmentalize my identities with your social app, I cannot truly protect my privacy.

Allowing multiple accounts for social apps is an important feature.

#Privacy 🔒

Last night was Sylvan Esso at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. I actually bought the tickets for the opener, Indigo de Souza, but she had to cancel for a family emergency. Still a good show! Programming the lights must have been a lot of fun!!

Just wrapped up Dragon Inn (1967).

I’ve been slowly rolling through King Hu’s oeuvre ever since being tipped off about Touch of Zen (1971) last year (on Mastodon, no less). I’ve enjoyed them all so far, and this one was no exception.

(I will admit that, for this trans-person, the final scene’s obsession with eunuch-taunting probably didn’t land quite as intended ☺️ Thank goodness for all that anthropology training).

Software is ephemeral. Always capture and archive screen recordings of your experience—especially during development.

I deeply regret not capturing a screen recording of the UX for a chat-based multiplayer RPG I wrote years ago.

There were a few interactions I want to demo to others purely for purposes of inspiration, including the multi-modal message send button and the way that transcript history collapsed into cards as quests were completed.

It would be a pain to stand it all up again.

More fun from the archives: article tiling algorithm for a digital magazine layout engine on the first gen iPad.

The content feed was backed by RSS. Google Reader during development, if memory serves.

Aesthetically pleasing layout required conceding that publication date was only one factor in sequencing, but how heavily this factor was weighted depended on the average frequency of publication (the more temporal distance between units, the more important that sequencing be preserved).

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/note-taking-apps-ai-chat-distractions-notion-roam-mem-obsidian

“[T]hinking takes place in your brain. * * * It’s here here that the connections are made and the insights are formed. And it is a process that stubbornly resists automation.”

Up until this statement, I was growing concerned that Casey was attempting to outsource the intellectual sine qua non of knowledge. It’s along the edges of the graph where insights live. If you outsource that to a machine, you’ve substituted its thinking for your own. (Contra, a Zettelkasten)

Soothing trees to soothe you and to soothe me.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension was released 39 years ago today.
Time for a rewatch!

You can now open and use SQLite files in Emacs 😎 https://xenodium.com/emacs-29s-sqlite-mode/