@brainwane@social.coop
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

brainwane

@brainwane@social.coop

Indian-American gal who likes to make people laugh. #OpenSource entrepreneur, programmer, tech writer and encourager, stand-up comedian, advocate for transparency in government software and data.

New York City #NYC, Changeset Consulting, #RecurseCenter, #WisCon, #MetaFilter, #Python packaging, Geek Feminism, #Dreamwidth, harihareswara.net.

Hope you're having the best possible day.

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brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

If you are coming in person to in Pittsburgh this weekend, and are comfortable playing the guitar in public, let me know? I may be preparing a surprise for the 20th anniversary of Beautiful Soup https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2024/celebrate-beautiful-soups-20th-anniversary/ .

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

a New York City-specific "what if you could send someone back in time to change history" scenario that I talked about with @leonardr the other day:

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Robert Moses

(Leonard has actually read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro so he's a good person to play this out with)

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

For reference:

"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" is an alternate history scifi novel by Orson Scott Card that asks: what could time travelers have done to prevent the colonization of the Americas? and .... it's like the letters Julia Sand wrote to Chester A. Arthur, getting him to live up to who he could be. Sort of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastwatch:_The_Redemption_of_Christopher_Columbus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Sand

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

(It's Card, so, you know, I'm not offering an unqualified recommendation here! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Homosexuality for example.)

jmduke, to random
@jmduke@hachyderm.io avatar

Life update: having a kid in October. 🥰

(Let the record reflect that including Telemachus in this photo was not my idea, but he's quite excited too.)

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@jmduke CONGRATS and I hope all goes as smoothly as possible!

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@rbellinger AMAZING

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@rbellinger Sorry! Maybe a response to a post you made and then deleted?

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Several of the major social media platforms - Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter - have effectively declared war on linking to things and I absolutely hate it

"Link in my bio" / "Link in thread" / "Link in first comment"... or increasingly no link at all, just an unsourced screenshot of a page

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@JeffGrigg Wow! Could you say more about those "no links allowed" policies? (Or even link to one?) Is that a setting they enable on the platform or a human-enforced moderation rule? If the latter, do they ever defend it with a principle or reason?

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@unpretty I just read https://unpretty.space/post/749936623491416064/is-there-anything-stopping-a-very-rich-person-from and I am going to ask my spouse, who used to be head of digital lending at the New York Public Library, to opine

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@unpretty Wayne could create an Overdrive account for his privately owned library

but publishers might not want to sell ebook licenses to his library (depending on whether it is geographically exclusive), depending on how many books we are talking about

He might want to negotiate directly with the publishers for the rights to a specific enumerated list of titles

@leonardr also briefly started considering Wayne's plans for offering app and/or web reader access to said books

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@unpretty

The closest model to what Wayne would be doing is Open eBooks

https://www.openebooks.org/about

given that Wayne is doing this toward a public policy goal

Some more on digital lending at libraries: https://www.crummy.com/writing/speaking/2015-RESTFest/

gvwilson, to random
@gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

Tan et al 2024: "How to Gain Commit Rights in Modern Top Open Source Communities?" https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01803

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@gvwilson Oooh, thanks, I'll need to settle in and read this one closely!

wjt, to random
@wjt@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Bloke next to me on the tube is listening to a podcast episode titled "Are we in a masculinity crisis?" and it has taken considerable strength not to lean over, say "no" and save him 45 minutes.

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@wjt Ha! But also, real question, you don't think we are? I feel like several people I know are grappling with it, not just on a personal level but also more broadly

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@wjt I am not about to instruct you that it's horribly unfair to judge the podcast ep by its title without listening!

In case you want to think about it a bit more and enjoy some folks' perspectives on navigating modern masculinity, https://maryannemohanraj.com/navigating-masculinity-a-roundtable/ has a lot of great lines, including "Maleness strikes me as a lovely little fandom, as long as folks don’t get all rigid about how to do it right or who’s allowed to join up." by @ben_rosenbaum .

But "crisis" is a strong word.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

I was just bragging to a pal about this: a few years ago @leonardr wrote a series of interesting blog posts about the titles of video games and what they do and how.

https://www.crummy.com/2009/01/31/0 is the first post & links to the rest.

He later gave a presentation about it at Penguicon 2017 - slides at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wpRXVx73Zl3LlW4ZLkIALb68Wi5TflwpMCDzYa5pNmE/present include some insights from titles he imagined while writing "Constellation Games".

Also, his investigative journalism regarding "Spacewar!" https://www.crummy.com/2013/02/02/0

ditiro, to random
@ditiro@mastodon.social avatar

I just watched your @pycon video on YouTube!😂 😂 Its awesome, I just wish I could get my visa and attend @brainwane

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@ditiro Thanks for the kind words and I hope the online experience is also good!

@pycon

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Music recommendation:

https://music.metafilter.com/6838/Everyone-I-Know

still a great earworm of melancholy synth

jacob, to random
@jacob@jacobian.org avatar

Holy shit this is incredibly good news https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@jacob "The Commission also finds that instead of using noncompetes to lock in workers, employers that wish to retain employees can compete on the merits for the worker’s labor services by improving wages and working conditions." Oh I bet that felt good to write

jacob, to random
@jacob@jacobian.org avatar

This probably doesn’t mean anything but if it means something it means something HUGE (via r/dropout)

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@jacob I made an undignified noise in my throat upon seeing this

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

12+ years ago I wrote "What Does A Volunteer Development Coordinator Do?" https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2012/what-does-a-volunteer-development-coordinator-do/ listing off specific activities I did to facilitate open source volunteers' work within Wikimedia.

I'd be curious to read something like that from someone in 2024 who has a similar role (likely called "developer relations lead" or "community manager" or "head of open" or something) at an open stuff org. I wonder what's substantially the same and what's shifted.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@unpretty I saw https://unpretty.space/post/743319759762948096/jane-moon-transition-and-recovery-funds-organized and saw the Google Doc link had been taken down - any chance you held on to a copy?

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Really happy to share https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/ !

Back in 2020, during grant-funded work on the next-generation pip resolver, @sprblm did fascinating user experience research & design work. https://pyfound.blogspot.com/search/label/pip

They wrote several useful documents that took a while to get merged, but now live in pip's documentation! Like:

how to design a survey https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/guidance/#designing-surveys

how users think pip should react to dependency conflicts https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/research-results/override-conflicting-dependencies/

security practices https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/research-results/users-and-security/

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Turned this thread into a blog post:

The pip work and how you can learn from it

Questions you can answer

Join forces

More resources

https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2024/model-ux-research-design-docs-for-command-line-open-source/

sargent, to random
@sargent@wandering.shop avatar

My story is live at @StrangeHorizons! “The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday ” is about authenticity, purpose, existential dread, and being resurrected by far future aliens to work your shitty fast food job. http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-jaxicans-authentic-reconstruction-of-taco-tuesday-37/

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@sargent

I just read your story and had a great time. Thanks for writing and sharing it. I appreciated the reminder of how funding institutions and fast food franchises alike try to bed-of-Procrustes human endeavors and needs, and how wildness finds a way.

@StrangeHorizons

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

I would never, ever, ever bother to try to get into contributing on this stuff in the topics of my expertise. So maybe look inward guys.

https://wikimedia.social/@wikimediafoundation/112122065590727479

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@grimalkina FYI I didn't forget about this, and finally decided to ask for help https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force/Media_and_research#c-Sumanah-20240423000200-request_for_recent_research_summary

brainwane, to fantasy
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Today, again, I reread the very short story my spouse @leonardr wrote https://www.crummy.com/2022/12/16/0 after I asked him to write a sweet story about a robot oven.

https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-94b-when-there-is-sugar-by-leonard-richardson/ “When There is Sugar” has a decommissioned military meet a human baker who misses his son.

The ending always makes me tear up.

More of Leonard's writing: https://www.crummy.com/writing/

brainwane,
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Today I read a news story and watched a 1-minute video about the new world record for the longest baguette

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68962680

that gave me an idea for a sequel to Leonard's short story "When There Is Sugar", because both stories involve mobile ovens of kind of the same shape

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