Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es
Joined Aug 2018
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she (in a binary way) / any (in an I want people to be absolute goblins about it way)
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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.
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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
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This is why I believe we're going to need better tools for reading and exploring codebases
"Writing code is easy. Once you have a solution in mind, and have mastered the syntax of your favorite programming language, writing code is easy. Having an LLM write entire functions for you? Even easier. But the hard part isn’t the writing. It’s the reading. It’s the time it takes to load the mental model of the system into your head. That’s where all the cost really is."
https://idiallo.com/blog/writing-code-is-easy-reading-is-hard
actionable threat to gender-affirming care in US
If you have the time and energy, the FTC is launching a clearly political "investigation" into gender-affirming care, for which public comments are open. There's a portal you can use to submit them without giving identifying information: https://transequality.org/ftc-hands-off-gac
I left a comment this morning. I know it won't dissuade them, but it makes it harder to use the comments against us.
I generally avoid commenting on shitty "famous" people I've never heard of whom everyone is suddenly talking about.
Esme Povirk
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"Pay Your Respects" by Mattie Lubchansky
https://thenib.com/pay-your-respects/
Esme Povirk
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(asking the important questions here, boost for science)
Consider the following:
- made in Japan: check
- appears in manga or anime: check
- transformation sequence: check
- female: check
So, w that in mind… Does Samus Aran (from the Metroid franchise) qualify as a magical girl?
Esme Povirk
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hate crimes are for losers do love crimes
Esme Povirk
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For those of us with ADHD, if you are thinking about a task every second you’re not doing it and desperately want to do the task more than anything else and are devastated that you can’t do it so much that you use all your energy just on trying to make yourself do the thing that you want to do but can’t, that is NOT procrastination. That is executive dysfunction. It only seems like procrastination to people who have never experienced executive dysfunction and those who have only ever experienced executive dysfunction.
Procrastination is when you fully have the ability to do something and choose not to do it but to do the thing you prefer doing instead. I hadn’t experienced this until very recently, after a lot of therapy and medication.
lewd, silly
Tracking major game releases by the uptick in furry porn on e621.
"So what made you decide to start speedrunning this game?"
"I was debugging a random crash, so I'd have to play for a few minutes at a time to make the crash happen. I couldn't save, so I'd try to go fast to see as much of it as possible."
re: cognitohazard? cognitoopportunity?
There's this feeling of mental "fog" that I haven't been experiencing lately, and I attribute that to working on this and keeping up with it.
Esme Povirk
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Processing the "titles without name" section (the "sir/ma'am" question) and it always makes me question my past survey choices, because it's always:
USA: I wish we had a good gender-neutral alternative to sir/ma'am!!!!!
Everywhere else: NO ONE says sir/ma'am, why is this question even on the survey
I am wondering how long I can do this before just making a formal statement that I'm removing the question and the USA need to just get over sir/ma'am on their own??
Esme Povirk
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I hope the Next Big Thing in technology is naps, so that we just start shoving naps into everything, absolutely everything.
Esme Povirk
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We wrote about Magical Literacy and Ai Psychosis last week. We've been thinking a lot more about the subject recently for no particular reason, decided to do a followup.
cognitohazard? cognitoopportunity?
Addendum: for me it can also be different forms of tiredness. Or the "brain residue" that making decisions seems to leave. And those require rest of a sort, but the rest can be made more efficient by directing it to the specific condition. Which isn't always equally easy and may take more time.
cognitohazard? cognitoopportunity?
This implies that executive dysfunction is a trance, and it is possible to find it and adjust it. At least for me. I don't know if the cause is the same for everyone, and it took a lot of work to learn how to do that.
cognitohazard? cognitoopportunity?
This is seriously OP. If I take the time and do it calmly, I can gently shift from executive dysfunction to actually doing things, seemingly without any long-term consequence.
After years of learning meditation/hypnosis, healing trauma, realizing I'm plural, becoming a singlet, becoming plural again, mastering systemhood, learning to rest efficiently based on need, reconnecting with my singlet self while still being a system, and learning to break trances I hadn't even known were trances: experiments indicate I can sustainably work ~7 hours per day, if I accept not doing much else with my day.
How does anyone work full time without burning out?
Esme Povirk
boosted
I think many people misunderstand the purpose of code review. The purpose of code review is not for the reviewer to find bugs, and certainly not for them to ensure that the code is bug-free. Anyone who depends on code review to find bugs is living in a fool's paradise. As everyone should know by now, it is not in general possible to find bugs by examining the code.
The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be _hard to maintain_. The reviewer looks at the code and tries to understand what it is doing and how. If they can't, that means it will be hard to maintain in the future, and should be fixed now, while the original author is still familiar with it.
plurality?
I think we should be other people.
plurality update re: cognitohazard? cognitoopportunity?
TwinRoot (basically, who we were for 2 days when the entire system merged and became a singlet) was brought out by our attempt to practice this. Yesterday they hosted, but they've decided to just be a steadying hand for the rest of us. Apparently they enjoy being other people more than themself?
Joined Aug 2018
