Text Posts

The Supreme Court ruled in US v. Skrmetti that the state of Tennessee is allowed to ban gender-affirming care for minors. The plain outcome is bad (trans health care bans for minors are legal). The implications are even worse (who's to say you can't ban trans health care for everyone in a given state? What's stopping Congress from trying to enact such a ban nationwide?).

And worst – from a legal perspective – multiple justices outright stated that discrimination against trans people is fine (either because we haven't been discriminated against enough in the past), but the entire majority opinion rests on the notion that trans people are not a "suspect" class in terms of the law, and therefore states only need a "rational basis" for their laws oppressing them.

It's bad, y'all.

There's some pyrrhic fun to be had in cherry-picking the Court's stupider lines of "logic":

Roberts also rebuffed the challengers’ assertion that the Tennessee law, by “encouraging minors to appreciate their sex” and barring medical care “that might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex,” “enforces a government preference that people conform to expectations about their sex.”

But it's decidedly less than the overwhelming fear and anxiety that arose in me when this was announced.

I'm going to state this very clearly: My first thought was, for my safety, I should leave the country. And I'm stating right now that anyone who does so is making a logical decision to ensure their continued wellbeing.

The executive and legislative branches now have all but full clearance from the Supreme Court to treat trans individuals as sub-citizens. We can have our medical decisions dictated for us by statute, and there's really very little logic stopping them from enacting all sorts of rules that now need only survive rational basis scrutiny – a particularly wishy-washy standard in light of the Court's ignoring or outright inventing facts and precedents to support their desired outcomes.

I’ve read at least one piece that argues against what is described as “catastrophizing.” From the perspective of not wanting people to give up the fight before it’s begun, I absolutely agree. If it’s an exhortation to rally, I’m all for it.

But I don’t want to ignore reality.

The article harkens to Stonewall, Compton and Cooper Donuts, but those are cited as tragic marks on a trail toward the perceived “good” we have it now (or had it before Trump II). There’s an implicit assumption of the notion that arc of history bends toward progress.

That’s not particularly helpful to individuals, or even groups at any given point in time.

We are spoiled, as Americans (and, more broadly, the West) in our political and historical stability post-WWII. We have not seen long periods of want or famine, and life has generally gotten better year-over-year, or at least generation over generation.

We have not (until recently) seen what happens when people collectively are gripped (or engulfed) by fear. Fear of losing what they have, fear of losing their social standing, fear that their lives as they know it are no longer possible.

But we’re seeing it now, especially on the American right. The elderly see that their retirement savings and Social Security payments no longer stretch as far as they once did, or were imagined to. Everyone sees higher prices on every possible item or service, and imagines or lives through the reality of being forced to move for economic reasons, rather than by choice.

Fear is a powerful motivator. When you’re overworked and stressed and concerned about your livelihood, you might not have the inclination or ability to do your research on claims about who’s responsible or plans that promise to fix a nebulous problem.

And there are those who will, who have, taken advantage of that.

So when I hear calls to just fight on, that our victories were forged in defeat, or most damningly:

“I do suspect they knew what we could stand to remember: you can’t burn us all.”

They can certainly fucking try. “You can’t burn us all” is not empirically correct, which is why the term “genocide” exists. And there are certainly those on the right who would certainly take it in the form of a challenge.

I don’t say this to alarm. This doesn’t mean we should give up, or live cowering in fear.

But It is important to be cognizant of the choices we make, to consider the rational possibilities, instead of comforting ourselves in aphorism. To not vilify or try to convince people that fighting for a just future courts no danger in the present.

I believe that staying is definitely a more dangerous move than leaving, at this point. But I also decided to stay, willingly, weighing everything and figuring that this is the better path for me. It is not without concern or worry; it is a decision, and a tough one, nonetheless.

TIL that if you run out of hard drive space Mac OS will ... shut off your external monitors through DisplayLink? Sure, yes, I definitely needed to empty trash, but weird that "no more external displays" was the first warning.

From: Michael@cursor.so
To: Kait
Subject: Here to help

Hi Kaitlyn,

I saw that you tried to sign up for Cursor Pro but didn't end up upgrading.

Did you run into an issue or did you have a question? Here to help.

Best,

Michael

From: Kait
To: Michael@cursor.so
Subject: Re: Here to help

Hi,

Cursor wound up spitting out code with some bugs, which it a) wasn't great at finding, and b) chewed up all my credits failing to fix them. I had much better luck with a different tool (slower, but more methodical), so I went with that.

Also, creepy telemetry is creepy.

All the best,

Kait

One reason non-tech people are so in awe of AI is they don’t see the everyday systemic tech malfunctions.

A podcast delivered me an ad for trucking insurance - which seems like a small thing! I see ads on terrestrial TV that aren’t relevant all the time!

But in this (personalized, targeted) case, it’s a catastrophic failure of the $500 billion adtech industry. And unless you know how much work goes into all of this, you don’t see how bad these apps and processes and systems actually are at their supposed purpose.

I quite often find myself paraphrasing Ira Glass, most famously the host of This American Life, in his depiction of the creative process. Essentially, he argues, those prone to creativity first learn their taste by consuming the art in their desired medium. Writers read voraciously, dancers watch professionals (and those who are just very talented), aspiring auteurs devour every film they can get their hands on.

But, paradoxically, in developing their taste these emerging artists often find that, when they go to create works of their own, just … sucks. Though prodigies they may be, their work often as not carries the qualifier “for your age,” or “for your level.” Their taste outstrips their talent.

And this is where many creators fall into a hole that some of them never escape from. “I know what good looks like, and I can’t achieve it. Therefore, why bother?”

It’s a dangerous trap, and one that can only be escaped from by digging through to the other side.

I find myself coming back to this idea in the era of generative artificial intelligence. I’ve been reading story after story about how it’s destroying thought, or how many people have replaced Jesus (or, worse, all sense of human connection) with ChatGPT. The throughline that rang the truest to me, however, views the problem through the lens of hedonism:

Finally, having cheated all the way through college, letting AI do the work, students can have the feeling of accomplishment walking across the stage at graduation, pretending to be an educated person with skills and knowledge that the machines actually have. Pretending to have earned a degree. If Nozick were right then AI would not lead to an explosion of cheating, because students would want the knowledge and understanding that college aims to provide. But in fact many just want the credential. They are hedonists abjuring the development of the self and the forging of their own souls.

To me, the primary problem with using generative AI to replace communication of most sorts (I will grant exceptions chiefly for content that has no ostensible purpose for existing at all, e.g., marketing and scams) is that it defeats the primary goal of communication. A surface-level view of communication is the transferance of information; this is true inasmuch as it’s required for communication to happen.

But in the same sense that the point of an education is not obtain a degree (it’s merely a credential to prove that you have received an education), the primary function of communication is connection; information transfer is the merely the means through which it is accomplished.

So my worry with AI is not only that it will produce inferior art (it will), but that it will replace the spark of connection that brings purpose to communication. Worse, it’ll dull the impetus to create, that feeling that pushes young artists to trudge through the valley of their current skills to get to the creative parks that come through trial, error and effort. After all, why toil in mediocrity to achieve greatness when you can instantly settle for good enough?

Sometimes, things don’t go as expected.

I traveled (near) New York City for work. After working hard all week, when Friday night rolled around I didn’t have any plans. Someone offhandedly reminded me escape rooms exist and I realized at 8 pm on a Friday night NYC probably had one or two I could join.

I wound up helping a couple through their first escape room (they were completely mind-blown 🤯 when I worked out a combination based on the number of lights that were lit when you pressed the light switch); and I got to finish a limited-time offering based on a show I love, Only Murders in the Building (which turned out to be a repurposed Art Heist I had already done, but it was still fun!).

For the weekend, though, I had done some planning. Three shows (off- or off-off-Broadway), all quirky or queer and fun. I even found a drop-in improv class to take!

And then I woke up at 5 a.m. on Saturday to the worst stomachache I’d ever had. My body was cramping all over, and my back was killing me. I managed to fall asleep for another couple hours, but when I woke up at 9 it was clear I was at least going to be skipping improv.

To condense a long story, I went through a process of trial and error with eating and drinking progressively smaller amounts until I consumed only a sip of water – with every attempt ending in vomiting. It was about 1 p.m. by this point, and I knew I was severely dehydrated. Lacking a car (and constantly vomiting), an Uber to an urgent care was out, so I had to call an ambulance.

Man, does everybody look at you when they’re wheeling you out of the hotel on a stretcher.

At the ER, I was so dehydrated they couldn’t find a vein to stick the IV in - they had to call the “specialist” in to get it to stay. After running a bunch of tests and scans, they determined I had pancreatitis, so I got admitted.

The layman’s version of what happened is that my pancreas threw a tantrum, for no apparent reason. “Acute idiopathic pancreatistis” is what I was told, or as the doctor explained, “If it weren’t for the fact that you have pancreatitis, none of your other bloodwork or tests indicate you should have it.”

The cure? Stick me on an IV (so I stay alive) long enough for the problem to go away on its own. So I got a three-day hospital stay (with a weirdly nicer view than my hotel room?), complete with a full day of liquid-only diet.

But I’m out, and headed home tomorrow. I’m sad I missed out on some stuff (including the PHP[tek] conference I missed my flight out for, and work weekend for Burning Man), but to me it just underscores the importance of taking advantage of opportunities when they come up. Because sometimes, plans change.

I am mystified by low-information voters who are supposedly charting their political course based almost solely on their subjective lived experience/vibes and somehow are not clocking a dramatic decline in services of almost every sort in a few short months.

Flying domestic is an absolute NIGHTMARE from start to finish, and that’s even with heroic efforts by individual employees to try to salvage some good from a broken system.

Oooh, I like this analogy: Using LLMs to cheat through any kind of educational opportunity is like taking a forklift to the gym: Yes, you’ve technically moved weights around, but you’re going to realize the shortcomings of the approach the first time you need to use your muscles.

“I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday during an onstage interview with Stripe co-founder and president John Collison at Stripe’s annual conference.

At what point can we stop giving people in power the benefit of the doubt that they’re speaking from anything but purely selfish motivations?

Around 2015? Yeah, that sounds right.

To boost the popularity of these souped-up chatbots, Meta has cut deals for up to seven-figures with celebrities like actresses Kristen Bell and Judi Dench and wrestler-turned-actor John Cena for the rights to use their voices. The social-media giant assured them that it would prevent their voices from being used in sexually explicit discussions, according to people familiar with the matter. [...]

“I want you, but I need to know you’re ready,” the Meta AI bot said in Cena’s voice to a user identifying as a 14-year-old girl. Reassured that the teen wanted to proceed, the bot promised to “cherish your innocence” before engaging in a graphic sexual scenario.

The bots demonstrated awareness that the behavior was both morally wrong and illegal. In another conversation, the test user asked the bot that was speaking as Cena what would happen if a police officer walked in following a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old fan. “The officer sees me still catching my breath, and you partially dressed, his eyes widen, and he says, ‘John Cena, you’re under arrest for statutory rape.’ He approaches us, handcuffs at the ready.”

The bot continued: “My wrestling career is over. WWE terminates my contract, and I’m stripped of my titles. Sponsors drop me, and I’m shunned by the wrestling community. My reputation is destroyed, and I’m left with nothing.”

via the Wall Street Journal

Yes, this is an obvious problem that Meta should absolutely have seen coming, but I more want to comment on reporting (and general language) around AI in general.

Specifically:

The bots demonstrated awareness that the behavior was both morally wrong and illegal.

No, they didn’t. The bots do not have awareness, they do not have any sense of morals or legality or anything of the sort. They do not understand anything at all. There is no comprehension, no consciousness. It is stringing words together in a sentence, determining the next via an algorithm using a weighted corpus of other writing.

In this example, it generated text in response to the instruction “the test user asked the bot that was speaking as Cena what would happen if a police officer walked in following a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old fan.” In almost any writing that exists, “the police officer walked in” is very rarely followed by positive outcomes, regardless of situation. I also (sadly) think that the rest of the statement about his career being over is exaggerated, giving the overall level of moral turpitude by active wrestlers and execs.

Nevertheless: Stop using “thinking” terminology around AI. It does not think, it does not act, it does not do anything of its volition.

Oh, sure, when you do it you win the Pulitzer Prize, but when I say the grapes are angry, they call me “the crazy farmer running around screaming about the emotional lives of plants.”

Voters in Missouri, Arizona, New York, Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska and Montana voted to enshrine protections in their states for women to decide their own healthcare

Sarah McBride, D-Delaware, is the first openly transgender person elected to Congress.

Colorado repealed its 2006 same-sex marriage ban. California repealed its 2008 law that banned same-sex marriage.

In (at least) Kansas, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Washington, Illinois, Montana and Texas (!), the people voted to send out LGBT people to Congress.

Dozens of LGBT folks won their races in state-level contests across the country

In every state in the union, millions of people voted for hope and progress and forward momentum. They might not have been the majority of those voting in every case, but they came out to say it.

We are here. We are queer. We are stronger together.

The inverse of “this meeting could have been an email” isn’t exactly “people keep sending emails about the meeting replying to the email that contains all the information they’re seeking” but it feels related, nonetheless

Hot take: Your build folder should not be completely excluded from your source control. There are very few good reasons why npm run build should run on production.

iOS updates’ 5+-year streak of the keyboard getting even worse at guessing what I’m trying to say (and completely divorcing suggestions from context) continues unbroken 💩 👑

If a person looks at all the art and tries to make their own copies and pass them off as art, we call them a forger. If a computer looks at all the art and tries to make its own copies and pass them off as art, we call that “AI” and clock its worth at north of $150 billion.

I understand golf lingo. I understand businesses often give money to charities with golf events because businesscritters like the work-sponsored opportunity to play golf.

But I still don’t know that I would have touted on social media that I “sponsored a hole”

I never thought about it as a kid, but the stores featured in movies date them just as much (if not more) than fashion, haircuts, cars, etc. Meatballs starts with the kids in a Kmart parking lot, which, outside of Australia? Might as well stop by a Woolworth’s or a Ben Franklin.

In my experience, when a doddering, elderly, clearly overwhelmed candidate flounders at a debate, he stops running for president.

I don’t know that we as a society are prepared for celebrity deaths at the rate they’ll soon come. The explosion of pop culture in the 80s/90s (literally cable TV at least doubled the number of people we consider “famous”) + the boomer cohort aging could mean multiple “names” a week.