skiles

@skiles@carhenge.club

Software developer at 18F
(Previously: Cornell, Unite Us)

Oakland, California
(Previously: Oakland, Nebraska)

Find my writing at Wikipedia, The Washington Post, and queer zines

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molly0xfff, to web
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

If you've ever found yourself missing the "good old days" of the , what is it that you miss? (Interpret "it" broadly: specific websites? types of activities? feelings? etc.) And approximately when were those good old days?

No wrong answers — I'm working on an article and wanted to get some outside thoughts.

skiles,

@molly0xfff
I miss when the internet was not trying to destroy democracy

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

There's much to be horrified about with the now re-animated zombie Arizona abortion law that effectively prohibits abortion under almost all circumstances.

But I'm curious about why this law came about when it did. It was passed in 1864, at the height of the civil war. Arizona was claimed by, and fought for, the Confederacy. Did the legislature suddenly think, "hey, we're about to lose slavery, let's pass a law to make things worse for women to make up for it"?

skiles,

@mattblaze
Yes, this is in fact what happened.

https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans

The Confederacy was ending and doctors feared competition from newly-freed women midwives, so they banned abortion to put the competition out of business

skiles,

@mattblaze
So I think it was like:
Say I'm a barber, cutting mostly men's hair. I fear competition from hair salons, and I want to capture their clients, who are mostly women. So I outlaw manicures, a service I don't offer, to put the salons out of business by attacking something they do offer.

Here too the doctors attack a service they don't offer so they can capture the other half of a sex-segregated market

skiles, to random

Spotify, don't do this to me before I've had my coffee

It suggests Joe Rogan when I search for "morning jazz." Spotify's is proceeding rapidly

Catvalente, to random
@Catvalente@wandering.shop avatar

I just had a realization.

It was (and is) always so confusing when The Bad Straights claimed “gay people getting married will ruin the institution for everyone.”

But I think they always meant that if two men or two women can get married, then marriage must not be defined by a man obtaining a woman as servant/property & securing exclusive rights to her labor, identity, & body.

And without that, they can’t even imagine what purpose marriage could ever serve.

skiles,

@Catvalente
Yip, this is what they actually mean by "traditional marriage." The traditions are misogyny and obedience.

simevidas, to random
@simevidas@mastodon.social avatar

The HTML version of Gmail died in the past few hours. I will miss it.

skiles,

@simevidas wow, that's kind of a big deal to go nearly unremarked on in the tech media

elrohir, to random Galician
@elrohir@mastodon.gal avatar

I just saw a toot explaining a useful "youtube fixer" firefox add on that removes "for you..." and "people also search..." from search results.

This made me realize how far we have come the wrong way: we are now in THE AGE OF ADVERSARIAL FEATURE DESIGN. Product creators introduce anti-features to attempt to divert user attention AWAY from what they want. Users are captive to the ecosystem because the software USED TO BE useful, and they actively have to block against new features to keep it so.

skiles,

@elrohir
Yup! @pluralistic has written a lot about how a big platform like youtube "can't resist the temptation to show you the things it wants you to see, rather than what you want to see."

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

Once they have saturated their market, they can't grow anymore by honest means. So the only way they can expand is by squeezing more money out of the existing market. Which means they become worse at software.

skiles,

@elrohir @pluralistic

Oh, looking at your feed I see you're already familiar with Doctorow's work. Forgive me for telling your something you already know!

Bonus content, I really like both of these essays which touch on the same topic:

skiles, to random

"Enshittification as Overproduction" expanded my thinking about why the internet feels worse now than it used to.

https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/enshittification-as-overproduction-in-software-part-1-seeing-overproduction-7f175bca7724

Many tech companies have left the (apparent) exponential growth phase and are failing to see it, failing to adjust to the maintenance phase. My emotional posture has also changed, because I depend on the internet now in a way I didn't during the exciting growth phase.

Credit:

  • blog posts by my coworker @elizayer
  • based upon pluralistic@mamot.fr
skiles,

@SynAck @elizayer

Totally! Maintenance takes engineers, UX researchers, etc., just like the growth phase does. Lots of mature companies underinvest in that maintenance, allocating resources instead to counterproductive, doomed growth attempts.

skiles, to random

The top story in is (yet again) Evangelical Christianity giving itself advice on how to reverse its decline.

The author writes from Lincoln, . My hometown, where the big news is that the son of the head pastor of a major conservative church (Christ Lincoln) posed as a teenager (he is 26) so he could attend highschool and have access to underage girls. He falsified a birth certificate and medical records to enroll.

1/3

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/

thegibson, to random

test

skiles,

@thegibson are you having this problem with images because of the recent mastodon upgrades?

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/25776

skiles,

@thegibson may I ask what OS and ImageMagick versions you're on?

skiles,

@thegibson this might be something you've already tried, but, a server reboot after my masto version upgrade seemed to knock something into place for me

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