sara

@sara@xoxo.zone

Coder. Artist. Mystery. I make comics, weird computer things, and stories at large.

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

mathowie, (edited ) to random
@mathowie@xoxo.zone avatar

a hunch I’m too lazy to research for examples/screenshots for a full blog post so I’ll just say it:

from 2005-2015 having a good user experience was a prime feature of products and teams and apps got easier to use but 2015-2025 is all about abandoning UX because it’s a “solved problem” in the past and apps today are continuously getting worse

(see Instagram replacing search with a chat bot)

sara,

@mathowie I’m working on a “thing” and I’m seeing the shift here be about ~2013, but yeah it does check out in several ways, but it’s not just “it’s a solved problem” it’s actually a mixture of a few things I’ve observed/found; a big one being UX being bent away from being pro “user” in practice, and as an arm of control/manipulation at the benefit of the Corp’s motives, execs notions, etc. Another is the shift to flat design, “this is good design, if it’s flat it’s good” narrowing solutions.

sara, to random

Why do we call it coding, and not sourcery?

sara, to random

@stefan Hi! I realize this is a long shot but I tried remixing the glitch creative-bots project to make a little Mastodon bot, but it seems like it doesn’t work anymore and npm starts screaming. Are there any plans to maybe update it at all? (It’s fine if not, it’s free after all, and I’m sure you have more than enough to do!) 💛

sara,

@stefan no need to apologize! (and thankyou!)

sara, to random

If the stance is, “I want my data trained upon so “AI” models will be better”, and then later “we should destroy capitalism”. Consider that “AI” is an instrument of capitalism to increase the power of capitalists and these two statement are in direct conflict.

sara,

Blah blah blah, read some Marx

sara, to random

The open movement and the dream of a shared healthy commons needs to evolve beyond what corporations define it to be; beyond being conceived of as a resource to be exploited, enclosed, and enveloped.

I cannot fathom how, after living through what corporations have done with open source, one can then proclaim “AI” will bolster “open” or commons.

A healthy commons comes from a community. A healthy community has collectively empowered and healthy individuals. “AI” is a counter force to that end.

sara, to random

Currently building a SSG that takes a series of markdown and/or html files and combines them into one long single html page, divided into anchored sections.

This is how I’m going to make documentation for the foreseeable future.

sara, to random

Psh, who says my new coding language needs math operations? That’s what a calculator is for!

Math, in MY coding language? Nonsense!!!

Computers are silly. Oh, what’s that 2+5 isn’t 25? Well Mr. Paper and Pencil will let me write that with no complaint. Numbers are just ideas! It’s all made up! It’s all decisions we keep accepting.

Free yourself! Don’t let the computer win!

sara, to random

I think it’s unfortunate that the term “spider” on the web became affiliated with a bot crawling through links, when spiders do not explore webs, they construct them.

So many names over the decades: Web Designer, Web Developer, Web Architect, Engineer, and so on.

To all those making the web, we should have been calling ourselves spiders the whole time.

But if we’re not going to call ourselves spiders, I think the next best term would be Weavers.

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

Some of the responses to yesterday’s post made a rusty gear start clunking in my brain and oof, understanding aspects of FOSS culture as fandom makes a lot of things make sense.

https://mas.to/@kissane/112288128849621639

sara,

@kissane OMG! I have been circling the imperfect nature of analogies to “religion” in describing these spaces/dynamics, but yep that’s 1000% it. Damn.

sara, to random

Are there other such tooling or technologies (beyond large generative models) that have pushed the “benefits of accessibility” or “benefits to a marginalized group in general”as a shield to justify their greater harms or exploitations?

“I logged down an entire redwood forest, BUT I made several canes!”

I feel like this dynamic should have a parallel in other places to dissect, but the closest I can get to is the dynamic of in-group apologists for out-group harm? That’s imperfect, at best.

sara,

On the Accessibility front I’m used to trying to convince people and places to embrace it because it’s right; but this approach feels like an exploitive embrace of the Accessibility movement to justify greater harms and to sabotage genuine concern?

It seeks to move the conversation FROM:

“stop building on exploitation and using gains in the ends to gloss over the means”

TO:

“So, you want to deprive those in need from all the gains utterly! We’re HELPING people, so whatever we do is GOOD.”

sara,

It feels like green washing or philanthropy in the spirit of how it’s operating, but even those still feel like imperfect analogies.

sara, to random

I often wonder how certain words as labels seem to wedge open a subject to be explored when used, and others tend to shut down a line of thought as they clamp around the concept.

I wonder if this has to do with whether the word is defined as inherently actionable vs categorical?

Or if it has more to do with the meaning density of the term. How much is it flattening/generalizing vs. how much is it expanding considerations?

EX: “enshittification” used as a clamp, “intersectionality” as a wedge.

sara, to random

Since laborers who willingly choose to incorporate “AI” into their work are essentially the same power dynamic as scabs in a strike (undermining worker power, redirecting power to corps); and scabby the rat is a symbol of strikes and union power; AND “AI” has now provided the legal advice that businesses can serve “rat cheese”—there’s a real opportunity here for some universe level metaphorical symbolism.

sara, to random

I think it’s fair to accept that language evolves, the meanings of words evolve. It’s a byproduct of culture and human behavior.

But I do think it’s also important to be aware of who is changing the meaning of a word and to what end? Because it is here we must make a judgment call to pushback or embrace the change. It is not neutral that this change occurred nor is it universally natural.

Words matter, their meanings matter. Otherwise propaganda & marketing wouldn’t put so much effort in.

sara, to random

Don’t let anyone tell you you need to be good at math to do coding. Just go ahead and do it anyway. You can do a lot and get really far with basic stuff.

But be warned. One day, maybe years down the line…

Math will find you.

sara, to random

Update: I’m now building this. 🛰

https://xoxo.zone/@sara/112165594769899601

sara, to random

Sometimes I imagine the creation of a deep space probe, a Voyager of the internet, that moves ever slowly, deeper and deeper into the web reporting back its findings from the strange worlds it encounters.

The distance is so great in space that the actual Voyager moves slowly, reporting back things we slowly sift through. A built in value of journey, no destination, discoveries crawling back to us bit by bit.

So much of the web is fast and intense and heavy, imagine this small slow wonder.

sara, to random

I continue to carve away at my piece/series/oh-no-is-this-becoming-a-book? on “AI”, The Commons, Art, Labor, Humanity, Messes, Copyright, Culture, the Internet, and Faith(as in confident belief). It strikes me that the angles of frame are so hard to grasp because of how varied the intersecting points are.

Maybe when I finally finish I can stand back and nod and see that I’ve sorted out something cohesive and clear to point at—a place to find answers to a question I’m still defining?

sara, to random

In professional Art making the majority of the power is in the hands of the corporation or industry you’re working with. A union, if you’re lucky enough to have one, is a means to address the power imbalance.

A union strike is a way to withhold work, to demonstrate the power of labor. A scab, while still a laborer, undermines the strike and worker power, directing power back to the corp/industry.

A professional Artist using “AI” operates like a scab normalizing the erosion of worker power.

sara,

Current major “AI” models concentrate ever more power in a handful of corporations and industries. They don’t give power to individuals, the more their use is normalized the more the power of the individual worker is eroded. A union 300 strong becomes 100, then 30, then 5 as “AI” creeps in as “just another tool” to speed things up. To save money—for the corp/industry.

Savings the workers don’t see. The benefit and the power is drained away from the individual little by little.

sara,

Exploitive systems perpetuate because they enclose and then compel everyone to participate—the best time to stop that is early, before it’s normalized as “just the way it’s done”—when it is still largely an individual choice and not a requirement.

Spotify and fam have utterly eroded the power of the individual musician in significant ways, but it’s so powerful and normalized it’s difficult to avoid, the time to address its exploitation was early, when musicians and listeners could have chosen.

sara, to random

Sometimes, I—an engineer, have conversations with people who are not engineers or tech people in any capacity and they tell me how great [technology] is going to fix the world and I kindly disagree and they say “well mainstream journalism, blog, tv host said it’s great!” and when I note that none of those people are engineers—that their basic facts are just incorrect—it has zero effect?

Oh wait…am I a climate scientist?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • love
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • DreamBathrooms
  • ngwrru68w68
  • provamag3
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • normalnudes
  • tacticalgear
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • anitta
  • Leos
  • tester
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •