Susan Hefuna

feb26

Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.

I wanted to talk to a human right now about as much as I wanted to lose a couple of limbs and have a conversation about my feelings.

More people would go to the cinema if the cinema looked like this.

“Each organization should be treated as sui generis —requiring ethnographic sensitivity rather than prescriptive frameworks.”

2nd class. I was told to leave my ego at the door, which I did, and it worked. I have small hands which I’m having to take into account when large-handed people show me what works for them.

Markets & vintage : flowers, stationery, books www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2...

Museums! So many to pick from. Mexico City has 150+ of them www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2...

Our Mexico City stories serve as a guide if you are visiting soon. www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2... Galleries.

When you visit Berlin with a teenager, where do you go: museums? Galleries? Nope, Hunger Games locations.

Thank God for music.

Painting by Leah Giberson ‘Camper Van at Night.’ 2012. Size 12 x16 Inches. www.leahgiberson.com/paintings/pa...

ICE CREAM (hello to my cardiologist)

FISH AND CHIPS

I have deleted over half of my files stored in the cloud and I feel at least 5kgs lighter.

Last semester Art History students put together an (awesome!) exhibit on the history of McCabe Library and with @shannonmattern.bsky.social here this afternoon I thought it fitting to take one last lunch in this Original Library Chair (TM)

I disagree with a lot of the work I produced ten years ago. Some of it I realise is me giving the client what they want — that stuff is particularly cringey.

The best example of gaslighting I’ve experienced was the local council insisting they’d removed a street tree when I was standing right beside it. The scary part was I started to believe them.

The illusory truth effect is in hyperdrive.

Reminder: the best way to get out of a straightjacket is to stop fighting it, breathe slowly, and make your body smaller.

I have shared this before. And I will keep sharing it. https://medium.com/@jamievaron/to-anyone-who-thinks-they-re-falling-behind-f194afde9148

Brazilia Marcel Gautherot

Workers “were designed to be competent but limited, active but docile, intelligent but ignorant…incapable of having a horizon beyond that of their task. In short, they were designed to be specialists.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/designed-to-be-specialists

Get over yourself: www.whiteowl.net.au/blog/2020/3/...

Matthias Heiderich

I can feel the emergency podcasts being recorded en masse.

See Japan.

They sprinkle some of us in like chocolate chips to perform ethics washing for the people they really wanted to platform. I don't recommend it. But you can watch Ghosts in the Machine Instead. notaidoc.com

I am deleting a lot of ancient files. Reading them is entertaining. “Access to Facebook and MySpace will be blocked as of Monday”. “The Blackberries have arrived and handsets will be provided to all users on Thursday”. Oh, and “branded stationery will now be stored in locked cupboards”.

A Japanese bookstore selling ten-year diaries is an example of material culture being a great revealer.

I’m not convinced I graduated fully from the parallel play (work) developmental stage.

I don’t see chalk drawn hopscotch footpaths anymore. I barely see children, other than when they’re coming back and forth from school, but that’s because I live near a school.

How do rockets avoid all the space junk?

Harold Feinstein, Watching The Gyro, Coney Island, 1949.

WHEN you study shapes your learning as much as WHAT you study (I completed a medical anthropology unit in 2020). “Being human with the non-human” is an anthropology unit I’m tempted to revisit.

Instead of "the left isn't paying enough attention to these machine gods" they're claiming to build, perhaps we should write an article about how effective altruists brand themselves "left", ask who is writing these articles, and trace their cults and sources of funding.

Morning.

No, I don’t want to attend, but I do want to be invited.

Maquettes

Popped up to Cambridge yesterday for lunch with an excellent friend Arrived early to allow myself a #streetphotography expedition

“Divorce is a death with no ceremony to mark it," Anahid Nersessian writes. "It is a beginning as well as an ending—just one with a mysterious and indeterminate conclusion.”

Today’s selection of office reflections at #CanaryWharc at lunchtime, armed only with an #iPhone15pro. #abstract

it is not enough to disable the feature that produces an AI summary of my emails at the top of my emails in gmail, I need a button that delivers an electrical shock to the person who thought it was a good idea

Clay

Accidental still life.

“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.” (Musil, The Man without Qualities)

▫️ other worlds ▫️

Dorianne Laux

I wrote about this corner of my office for my 18th Magnetic North in the 18th edition of Science & Magic, the Violette mag. Lots of great stuff from other writers and artists, you can read it here: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-...