What would happen if we stopped asking, “How can this grow?” and started asking, “What is this thing’s natural size?” What if we evaluated projects not by their potential for expansion but their depth of impact within their chosen bounds?
Choosing to stay small, focused, and finite can be a radical act. It’s a declaration that some things are valuable precisely because they resist the illogic of endless growth.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/you-dont-have-to-monetize-the-things-you-love/
Encryption shifts the economics of attack.
Plaintext can be slurped up by dragnet surveillance and analyzed at the attacker's convenience.
Transport-layer encryption makes passive attacks ineffective, forcing governments to attack the servers to spy on everyone.
End-to-end encryption like Signal forces governments to choose their targets and expend resources on attacking each one, proactively.
The more people that use E2EE for traffic the governments aren't interested in, the more goddamn haystack there is to sift through in search of needles.
The economies of scale go away if the E2EE makes popping servers useless to the governments. This is why I insist the centralization of Signal is a red herring.
https://mayeclair.itch.io/museum-of-all-things Wikipedia can now be navigated as a continuously generated 3D environment, so of course I want it to have multiplayer and spatially localized voice chat, so I can arrange a clandestine meeting with someone anywhere in the world by telling them "meet me at the page for Jabberjaw (1976)".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberjaw
Just to be clear, because a bunch of assholes have hijacked public perception and lifted up some of the worst people on Earth as exemplars of what the “tech world” is supposed to be:
I’ve been in the software world for decades, surrounded by thoughftul, creative, and humane people with whom I’ve formed many wonderful friendships and done meaningful work. That’s possible. It’s normal, even.
You don’t have to become a sociopath to make it in the tech world. Or a malignant narcissist. Or a Nazi.
Your instincts to be a decent person are good instincts. Don’t let anyone talk you into being an antisocial monster. You don’t have to be.
“What radicalized you? Nothing. Not wanting people to starve and suffer is not radical, it’s normal. Stop saying it’s radical to be base level empathetic, and start asking what made people into sadists. Call out sick behavior, because I’m tired of people thinking kindness shouldn’t be the default.”
—credit Tara Belle Enoch
@mcc Sufficiently advanced JavaScript stacks are indistinguishable from DLL hell
Stained glass progress pride flag from glassmaker Rachel @raythewren.bsky.social. Too good not to share.
https://bsky.app/profile/raythewren.bsky.social/post/3liruh4us7c2f
Tesla had to close their Seattle location due to protests this weekend, more planned next weekend, per Electrek.
https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/tesla-protests-gain-momentu-while-the-hate-is-spreading-tesla-owners/
@antifaintl
I would also challenge them to name one instance of a trans person assaulting someone in a bathroom. If they can't, ask why they're so obsessed with imagining that sort of scenario. Seems like a creepy thing to fantasize about.
Trans woman, bisexual, someone's fiancée, forever a programmer, poly, and former total mess