Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es
Joined Aug 2018
Pinned post
Finally starting that "bookmarks" site I talked about a while back. Decided to just edit HTML straight up, rather than come up with some system to build the site for me.
My thinking is that whenever I go to look something up, I'll leave the tab open until I've added it to this system.
Already finding that providing context for these links is encouragement to write in more detail.
Pinned post
Hey if any friends are on other socials more (been hearing about bluesky a lot), I would like to follow you there. I have feed-merger to conveniently pull everything together, although I need to update it with bsky api (rss feed has some annoying limitations), and it doesn't work with Twitter because Twitter charges unreasonably for API access.
Probably will still only post here though, as much as I do at all.
Esme Povirk
boosted
"carbon footprint" was bs made by oil companies to get you to blame yourself instead of them The oil is going to be made whether or not you buy it.
Stopping production is the only solution, and we don't need another decade of their protection to know the state is not our ally on this.
Anyway, none of this is general advice, I don't have everything figured out, other people will be in different situations, value different things, enjoy different things, and have different strategies and that's fine. I'm approaching this from a relatively privileged place. Just putting all that out there in case it helps someone make better use of the resources they have in accordance with their values.
Maybe part of what makes me feel I need less is inner work? I don't need "distraction" because actually my mind is a very pleasant place to be now, and I don't need to be distracted from it. I'm sufficiently in touch with my feelings that I can query them and get a pretty good answer about whether something is worth it.
I've started seriously asking myself: will this (purchase) make my life noticeably better? I find that I have too much stuff, and I will be looking to give much of it away to someone who will enjoy it more. I don't really enjoy food, so I can go for cheaper options without being less happy. It's not even a question of whether I "need" the things I'm supposed to consume, I don't really want them that much. I'm full, thanks.
It makes me question "saving for retirement". Granted, I'm also questioning how long any assets I have now are likely to hold value in the future, but also: what is that money doing now? Maybe I should donate more to worthy causes. Or friends who need it.
And maybe for what I do invest I should prioritize positive impact over individual return. I think that needs to be much broader than "do I think this company is ethical?" (it almost certainly isn't). It should make money by doing good.
It does lead me to a strong anti-advertising, especially adtech, stance. It represents small and unfairly distributed income to publishers. It does a lot of processing, on everyone's devices, wasting energy and making the web slower and worse. It invades privacy. It leeches attention, taking away individual agency over it. It helps people who have money make more money. It enables scams and malware to find their victims.
So: I block ads, pay to avoid them, and support creative people directly.
This doesn't lead me to slow down my own paid work because I believe the work I do creates a net benefit. I would probably be doing something similar if I didn't get paid.
I've started to reframe my living strategy around: how can I make myself as useless to capital as possible while still working within that system towards our collective well-being? (Where I think of "capital" as systems that exploit available resources for someone's benefit, even when doing so is a net negative to society.)
Friends, if you boost requests for financial aid, consider including a note so that I know you know them. It helps.
You know, I didn't really get the term "deadname" until last night when I thought "yeah, whoever that was really did die".
I think what obscured it for me was that "transition" was only a part of the process. There have been so many changes over such a long time that I didn't notice.
Esme Povirk
boosted
re: autism; half-joking response?
@quinn it's important to understand that "neurotypical" people have different needs and require being treated with great patience so that they don't become distressed. by and large, "neurotypicals" have an underdeveloped sense of equity and fairness, as well as difficulty navigating social situations in which they don't intuitively understand their place in some imagined hierarchy, and thus struggle to reconcile their belief that they are "normal" with the experiences and expectations of others
Esme Povirk
boosted
Every time conditions worsen, someone starts pushing the idea of a general strike. Shut it all down! Starve the system! And yeah, it sounds powerful—but here’s what they don’t tell you:
It’s a honeypot.
And no shade with this subpost, but:
If you're suggesting one? It tells me how theoretical and abstract your current relationship to our times is: your post probably isn't going to start a general strike - even though a prosecutor would have no trouble arguing that.
You see...
Under U.S. law, organizing a general strike—especially across industries—is straight-up illegal. The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) makes it a felony to advocate for a mass strike across sectors. Courts ruled long ago that calls for general strikes count as criminal conspiracy—which is why labor leaders, radicals, and workers have been crushed every time they tried to organize one.
Think about that: The state doesn’t just want you working, it wants you to believe striking is an option—so they can catch you the second you push too far. They let the words circulate, they let people dream about it, but they’ve ensured that the mechanisms for a general strike are dead on arrival.
So what do we do?
Instead of fighting on their terms, we need to cultivate the material conditions of a general strike without setting ourselves up for repression. The goal isn’t a moment of resistance; it’s a slow, grinding attrition against capital’s demands.
This is something workers and business owners in China have long understood. Within an economy that monitors, tracks, and punishes direct defiance, workers and small business owners have built an entire ecosystem of passive, small-scale disruption:
躺平 (Tangping) – “Lying flat”: Refusing to overwork, avoiding excessive consumption, cutting down on participation in capitalist growth.
摸鱼 (Moyu) – “Touching fish”: Finding ways to slack off at work, do personal tasks on company time, and subtly resist productivity expectations.
Small business "slowdowns": Deliberately taking longer to fulfill orders, delaying processes, and subtly reducing efficiency to limit corporate extraction.
All of these are done within the boundaries of legality, while still achieving the material slowdown that a strike would bring.
Instead of calling for a general strike and waiting for someone to deliver it, start cultivating these practices. The goal isn’t just to “not work”—it’s to starve capital without painting a target on your back. If millions engage in passive disruption, undercut overconsumption, and prioritize resource-sharing over waged survival, we create the material slowdown that capital dreads.
They’ve made a general strike impossible. So we don’t give them one. We give them something worse: an economy that bleeds out, quietly, without a single illegal call to action.
AI rant
Guys, the new magic language generating machine is producing a grammatical, well-formed, but factually incorrect English response to an arbitrary question I asked it, also in English. And it's a question my complex biological brain that evolved for language processing could have correctly answered after a mere 4 years of training. I have no idea how the machine works, nor does anyone really, but I expected perfect accuracy and am shocked that it does not work better.
Resolves to never make an official build outside of a CI process again
Esme Povirk
boosted
@mcc Whenever I am coaching new engineers who are trying to figure out what to do now that they built something and it doesn't work, I tell them this;
"Verify that everything you think is true, actually *is* true. For anything that isn't or is unexpected, find out *why*."
At the end of that exercise they will nearly always know what the problem is.
What I lack in sleep quality I make up in sleep quantity.
stream announcement
Streaming random pattern mode in HyperRogue. https://twitch.tv/madewokherd
Nice! I use plex for my music. I like making playlists of categories.
After a year of working on this, I have made a new release branch and new release of Mono.
Joined Aug 2018
