@jmac@masto.nyc
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

jmac

@jmac@masto.nyc

I live in New York. I get paid to write about databases. I don’t get paid to write about other stuff, but I do it anyway.

Tech writer at Google; Co-founder of IFTF, an interactive-fiction nonprofit; Liker of coffee, cats, open web technologies, et cetera. Co-admin of https://masto.nyc.

All views I express in my personal posts are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Five Borough Fedi Project.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jmac, to random
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Sometimes I think about the fact that I will never, ever open a shell terminal and see ”Heads up! Here's what's new! Take a tour!! [Skip]" https://digipres.club/@misty/112481913811666838

jmac, to random
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A discussion about the unusual cover design for the Traveller RPG—still striking in its tone and its minimalism, decades later—led me to recall and share this timeless banger from @avram.

And only then did I get the joke: Oh, because the ship on the original cover is named “Beowulf”!! OK.

https://wandering.shop/@avram/109809275612064222

jmac, to random
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I saw a person talk about the desire to see "a meeting in a smoke-filled room" happen, which seems like an oddly outdated metaphor... but these things do tend to have legs, don't they.

I wonder how many people know perfectly well what a "smoke-filled room" is, but don't know why it's called that. Like, maybe they think it means that since it's addressing an urgent issue, like a fire, that metaphorical fire is filling the room with smoke?

jmac, to random
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I think of this every time I wake my MacBook up from a furious sleep, its fans blasting full-speed to render Apple's default screen saver of a fully animated drone flight over Californian vineyards, in order to get back to my screenful of tiled xterms.

https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/112464257491011844

jmac, (edited ) to random
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I just bought Indika and I can't wait to play it. Sunday morning drowsiness is probably not the right headspace for it, from what little I know of it.

The cover art alone sold me on it!

jmac, to random
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“This is how Google’s search result sausage is made: Real people like me make it.” Toni Allen, secretary of the Alphabet Workers , writes about working as a contracted “rater” for Google. https://fortune.com/2024/05/03/google-search-raters-wages-benefits-contractors-tech-ai-employment/

Toni is among many laborers who perform high-speed, human-powered fact checking on AI-generated search results—and, thanks to recent legal maneuvering on the part of our mutual bosses, now receives an hourly rate that is less than California minimum wage.

jmac, to random
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Speaking of Discords and puzzle games, I had reason to dig up this circa-2010 parody of both Braid and then-contemporary game streamers. I remembered it for "reverse tiiiime" but I had no memory of the time-loop microfiction that unfolds in the "chat window", so that was a fun discovery! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI

jmac, to random
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Is the best thing about the completely unironic “hug” emote, and the habit of quickplay mutual-randos to deploy it before disconnecting after a successful mission?

jmac, (edited ) to random
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Good mail day: Got my copy of "The Paradox" by @elainemwill

jmac, to random
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Really one of the standout lines from the whole dang enterprise. Right up there with the “What is grief" one.
https://dementedandsadbut.social/@genehack/112374808756068264

jmac, to random
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I find these photos of a GWB-era mass protest at Columbia fascinating for one subtle reason: None of these protesters are wearing masks or otherwise obscuring their identities in any way.

This change in the way that protests are conducted in the U.S. feels like the least foreseeable side effect of the COVID pandemic.
https://mastodon.art/@jennylam/112373961712380437

jmac, to random
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Oh no, my old NCR-flag T-shirt just changed from a somewhat in-jokey game reference to an extremely non-obscure TV reference, didn’t it. Boo

jmac, (edited ) to random
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An impressive doozy of an unwinnable situation, if I don't say so myself.

• Yes, that's the final boss with three HP left, and my ship's cannon lined up with its weak point.
• Yes, that's me holding 10 identical non-attack cards, each of which adds a copy of itself to your hand when you play it.
• Yes, each such card has the "This stays in your hand if not played" modification on it.
• Yes, there is a 10-card hand limit.

jmac, to nyc
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I lived in Newport, RI for a few years in the 2010s. A small city with a lot of residential wealth, it has a gorgeous and very well funded public library. I would visit it several times every week, and especially enjoyed browsing its wide shelves of new and recommended fiction and nonfiction, regularly rotated by a staff with excellent and diverse tastes.

I'd love to visit #NYC public #libraries more. Is there a branch you know of that offers something like this?

jmac, to Steamdeck
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Invited to play some Left 4 Dead with friends last night. Complex nostalgia: I was back in Boston the last time I played it. That was on Xbox 360, and I’m unsurprised to see that it plays great on today.

It’s as fun as ever, with very minor mechanical nits. The aspects that felt most dated were philosophical.

First, the easiest skill level is called "Easy”, and beyond it being Rather Hard Actually, a modern game would pick a less dismissive description for it. 🧵

jmac, to random
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Literally nobody in a 3,000-person work chat liked my story about how walking past a nearby burger bar when its window is shuttered makes me say "We're closed now!!" in a weird voice because I'm remembering a 1983 TV ad for the video game Burgertime, so I'm telling you instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjJ0Tl3WENQ

jmac, to random
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In the 1970s and 80s, the Yellow Pages phone directory in the U.S. had this logo and I had no idea what in the world it was supposed to be. It looks like a weird goblin with a huge head, stubby arms, and no knees lurching its flattop hairdo over to the left, yeah?

jmac, to nyc
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It didn't hit me until just this year that almost all of the subway stations in the parts of I have lived and worked in have no escalators. Just lots of metal or concrete staircases. How different from the nearly ubiquitous escalators of Boston's T!

I am old enough to wonder how much longer I'll be able to bounce up and down the stairs as freely as I do today.
https://urbanists.social/@joelepstein/112304889208363524

jmac, (edited ) to Steamdeck
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I played one of this game’s endless march of pre-release versions last year on . It provided some of the finest hours of gaming I’ve ever experienced, stopped dead by one of the absolute worst single moments.

I hope they’ve tuned that balance a little better! (Though honestly that mostly means “make non-permadeath the first option on the new-game screen, and rename the options to suggest it’s the best starting place”)
https://mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux/112280874814360993

jmac, to random
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Sent off a tax-exemption application tonight for a new nonprofit. I ain’t gonna tell you what it is yet, but I will ask for your good vibes and wishes for a swift rubber-stamping anyway. The news will follow soon after!

jmac, (edited ) to random
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My throat is sore like I’ve been having a conversation in a loud bar but actually I’ve just spent a few hours shouting over the wind and into the faces of comics artists about how much I love their work which I had discovered only five minutes earlier, and then buying bunches of it. I am an absurd drive-by patron riding the :dtrain: train home with a bag bulging with crazy comics that I’ve barely glanced at and this makes me very happy.

jmac, to random
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With kindness and sincerity, this video made me feel great empathy towards my nation's food service workers, and also gave me a rising sense of anxiety edging into the threshold of an outright terror of a flavor I have never tasted before. "Easy.”
https://mastodon.social/@hotdogsladies/112254463591200744

jmac, to comics
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Learned about today’s Brooklyn Independent Comics Showcase in Industry City only this morning, but I have reason to wanna be out of the house for a few hours today, so hey why not. https://industrycity.com/event/brooklyn-independent-comics-showcase/

This webpage implies it's indoors but a friend tells me it's outdoors. I don't know! Let's find out!!

jmac, to random
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Please please please consider this if you're a bilingual American who is fond of democracy.

I worked the polls in 2020 in a neighborhood with a large Spanish-speaking population, and we had only one fluent Spanish speaker among the volunteers. I can assure you that any polling station would be better with your help.
https://wandering.shop/@maco/112255084478364348

jmac, to random
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Like everyone, I took a moment on Monday to marvel that our sun and moon are just the right relative size for the magic to happen the way it does. And then for the first time I wondered if that coincidence was necessary for human-level consciousness to arise, that uncannily perfect shadow strobing over the surface of the earth on a billion-year scale gradually making animal brains bend into themselves, a missing letter in the Drake equation.

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