Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

Two different approaches to debugging a software problem:

The Sudoku approach: stare at the limited set of clues you have, and think harder and harder about them until you find a way to deduce something useful.

The Minesweeper approach: don't even try to figure out the solution from only the clues you have right now. Instead, focus on finding a way to acquire another clue, and then using that to get another, and so on. Eventually you've collected so many clues that the answer is obvious.

Sometimes the Sudoku approach is necessary, because you've got all the clues you're ever going to get. But I think my new motto is "Never Sudoku a problem when you can Minesweeper it."

"play is only play if it's self directed" has just set off a lot of lightbulbs about my school's mandatory sports program 🤔

#PyConUS

Trans Happily Ever After: The Forgotten Folktales of Trans Joy

“While people have been reading themselves into these stories since time began, there have also been deliberate attempts to remove queerness from folktales, which is why so many of us might have thought that queer and Trans+ stories don’t exist in fairy tales.”

#lgbtq #trans #transgender #queer
https://www.wearequeeraf.com/trans-happily-ever-after-the-forgotten-folktales-of-trans-joy/

“false dichotomies around the artificial polarization of complex issues into two opposed camps. You’re either focused on immediate relief or systemic change. You’re either practical or idealistic. You’re either working within the system or fighting against it.”

“What if the emotional resonance of specific, concrete actions is precisely what builds the coalition necessary for systemic change?”

#paradox

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/utah-school-lunch-debt-relief-free-student-meals_n_681258fbe4b03207b5ba49fa

I’m not spiritual but the old religions had it right when they worshipped trans women

Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI

It's becoming increasingly apparent that one of the reasons why tech companies are so enthusiastic about shoving AI into every product and service is that they fundamentally do not understand why people dislike AI. I will elaborate. I was recently made aware of the Jetbrains developer ecosystem survey, which included a lot of questions about AI. After I answered some of them negatively (and possibly…

http://soatok.blog/2025/05/04/tech-companies-apparently-do-not-understand-why-we-dislike-ai/

I think a lot of people that don't really understand what they're doing obsess over LLMs for the same reason that they might have obsessed over visual programming or plain-English-programming a generation ago.

In their mind, programming works like this:

1) A clever person designs the system/app/website/game in their mind.

2) The person uses whatever tools available to wrangle the computer into reproducing that vision.

(1/...)

Redditor accidentally reinvents discarded ’90s tool to escape today’s age gates
The '90s called. They want their flawed age verification methods back.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/redditor-accidentally-reinvents-discarded-90s-tool-to-escape-todays-age-gates/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Last few days, people I follow rehashed a common theme in our spheres: the idea trans women's experiences with "male socialization" shapes them.

Dog whistle alert: nowadays, you're more likely to hear this expression from bigots than from trans people.

Open to hear the zeitgeist opinion in my queer transfeminist corner of the Fediverse. Don't hesitate to share your own perspective or to link to things you wrote in the replies! 🧵👇
[1/6]

fediverse tip: a post of yours popped off? start kinkposting immediately. the followers who stick around after you post your most unhinged thoughts are the ones who deserve to stick around. eliminate the unfit

Dec 29 / 2019

If you have had to put off trauma for decades just to survive in a kind of perpetual crisis mode, you may find that when you stop doing that it suddenly feels like pain is coming from nowhere. You were just kicking it down the road.

This is what I am pretty sure is up with transitioning and then realizing how incredibly awful it feels to be treated like something you're not: you probably didn't have a point of contrast before with which to compare your everyday experience.

In other words your lungs started to hurt when you stopped running from the truth, but the pain is from the decades of running.

I was talking to my sister today about the trauma that often comes of the first few years of transitioning. So much of it is really reckoning with and facing a lifetime of being taught that what you are - a trans person - is a terrible thing to be.

Trans girls who have been out for not long spend a lot of time obsessing over perceived "failures" that are really just differences between us and cis women. That's painful because we were never taught that there were other ways to be a woman, just "failure."

But when we start spending time around each other this beautiful thing happens. The realization dawns, sooner or later, that the women you're spending time with are truly and incredibly beautiful.

As you get used to the company of your kind, you start to understand in your heart that you are a kind. It's a LOT like "the ugly duckling."

It goes against some of the most conventional and bad advice about love out there, that love begins with loving yourself. It doesn't, it begins with loving others and then accepting that you deserve that love too.

Once you get there, REALLY get there, looking back is hard sometimes because you remember what it felt like to constantly compare yourself unfavorably to both cis men AND cis women. And bc you remember only being able to see cis beauty as beautiful.

You don't know HOW to appreciate a swan even if you're starting to suspect that you are one. No one taught that to you socially or otherwise, and it feels awkward to be learning it so late. It can feel unfamiliar and strange to look at other trans women and SEE our beauty.

There are so many fears: am I becoming deluded? Why didn't I see this before? What does it say about me? Am I a chaser now?! (You're not, please let that worry go ASAP.)

What's happening is that your mind is broadening, to put it simply. Raised in a sexist and misogynist world, we're taught that seeing beauty in women outside of a very narrow bandwidth is shameful, wrong, even suspicious.

You're not going to stop seeing the differences between you and cis women. But if you let yourself, you can START to see the beauty in your own kind. And that has the potential to be one of the most powerful and beautiful revelations in your life.

But don't let anyone tell you that you have to accept the hand you were dealt and love it forever, and that means never changing. You can trade in one or two of your cards and still love yourself, other trans women, and cis women too.

People grow and change, and trans people can grow and change even more. There's nothing wrong with you for knowing that you want full breasts, or a thick ass, or admitting that you want your crotch to be different.

Think of it as customization.

And those women are beautiful too. Those women who you might be a little afraid of becoming. Cis girls go through this earlier and differently but they go through it too. Because of course you're afraid of becoming a woman in a world that hates women.

Practically every memoir of girls' teen years gets into those feelings. What does it mean to look at a mature sexual woman and know that's what you're becoming? It's rarely emotionally simple or straightforward.

We get that later, and with a ton of social pressure to not change. Cis women will talk to you sometimes and you'll realize this woman isn't talking about my relationship to my breast size, she's giving a voice to her own self-doubts and insecurity.

Anyway, it's very early. Love your sisters, all of us, and all of them. It will pay you dividends in love for yourself and in understanding that you're something special in this world.

-Mira Fucking Bellwether

@saraislet I was on sick leave for burnout because I was doing the work of three people. When I got back I asked my boss what she was going to do about my work load situation. ”I can’t do anything about that” was her answer, so I quit.

Later I learned that they didn’t hire a replacement for me, so my work load landed on my boss, who burned out from it, and just like me ended up quitting.

I missed this terrific piece on burnout from @grimalkina
"It's alarming to write something really simple like, people deserve to have environments that don't destroy them and have it resonate with a lot of people."

This resonates hard. I say similar things every week to my reports, to colleagues, and to folks across the tech industry — and it's routinely far more unusual and impactful than it should be.

Every manager should say things like this (and, more importantly, *back it up with actions*). It should be an indictment of the industry that not only does this not happen, but rather burnout remains a perennial issue that continues to get worse, chasing women and Black folks out of the industry.
https://www.drcathicks.com/post/burnout-us