From the Philosophy of the Open to the Ideology of the User-Friendly.
(…) what concerns me is that ‘user-friendly’ now takes the shape of keeping users steadfastly unaware and uninformed about how their computers, their reading/writing interfaces, work let alone how they shape and determine their access to knowledge and their ability to produce knowledge. As Wendy Chun points out, the user-friendly system is one in which users are, on the one hand, given the ability to “map, to zoom in and out, to manipulate, and to act” but the result is a “seemingly sovereign individual” who is mostly a devoted consumer of ready-made software and ready-made information whose framing and underlying mechanisms we are not privy to.
Don’t be Google.
Von wegen Automatisierung: Wie Googles KI mit prekärer, menschlicher Arbeit gebaut wird.
Jedes Mal, wenn Sie in der Lage sind, automatische Closed Captions für ein YouTube-Video einzuschalten, oder während einer Google Meet-Telefonkonferenz, den Ton des Gesprochenen in Echtzeit nahtlos in Text umwandeln können, wobei die sogenannte künstliche Intelligenz zum Einsatz kommt, hoffe ich, dass Sie an die Menschen denken, die für weit unter einem existenzsichernden Lohn gearbeitet haben, um diese Technologie möglich zu machen.
Utopia – Fluid responsive design (via www.smashingmagazine.com).
The gender of dementia.
I once saw a man who scored 3 out of 30 on his cognitive screening test, with a wife and daughter who initially denied that there were any problems with his memory. This man spent his days walking his dog around his local streets (or perhaps the dog was walking him); his wife did everything else for him. His role in the family was to be served by women, so the family had simply continued to serve him. I see whole families who have rearranged their lives around a man with advanced dementia, ensuring that he’s constantly supported, helping him wash and eat, without ever seeking a formal diagnosis.
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“I photoshop Paddington into another movie every day until I forget.” (Via beritmiriam.substack.com.)
@ayanaeliza's framework for figuring out what you should do about the climate crisis:
— allwecansave (@allwecansave) March 19, 2021
Make a Venn diagram and notice what's at the center:
1. What brings you joy?
2. What is the work that needs doing?
3. What are you good at?
(from this week's @how2saveaplanet) t.co pic.twitter.com/L0oM0i45Vk
Man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
In Defense of Doing Nothing.
The lifestyle of the chronic worker, the influencer-freelancer-hustler, whose every feeling and experience of joy and peace is commodified, is sold on this same idea of freedom: not freedom from work, but freedom from the temptation ever to stop working. In this context, the slacker figure takes on a new significance, and the question of what leisure truly is or can be is the most important one; and perhaps we have the same moral and spiritual obligation to pursue leisure—with all its unreal hopes—as God and government claim we have to pursue work.
What Happens to a Society Who Can’t Punish Those Who Want to Undo It?
America’s Fascism Problem Isn’t Going Away.
So the ugly old social norm — “Ah, you’re a racist? A fascist? I don’t like it, but I guess that’s OK, because it’s permitted in our society” — still exists. And the power structures built on that norm — law firms, lobbyists, pressure groups, and so on, have not changed one iota.
(…)
The fascists are being allowed to get away with it. What do you think that teaches them? Says to them? Tells them? That the rest of us are weak, laughable, and pathetic enough that we can be had.