selfie o'clock, sound off

Good morning.

Reminder: Just because someone is posting on social media a lot, visibly doing projects, and otherwise looks like they're living their best life

1) Does not mean they are ok - social media is often a distraction and an escape valve

2) Does not mean they are ignoring you - they may be overwhelmed and incapable of handling messages

this is incredible
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yang_11_22/

7/20

6/20
we all have our problematic faves 🤷

5/20

4/20

I've only just realized I'm posting on tusky not bsky, this is fine actually and maybe better also 😂

3/20

2/20

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

This is supposed to be 1 per day, I don't think i care to do that. I'll post now until I stop and then I'll get to 20 eventually or I won't, and that's that

I just like book recs and whatever

1/20

People may say, "it's not possible to debug memory issues with Wireshark. That doesn't even make sense. What the fuck is wrong with you?" That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, repeatedly. Sure it's impossible, but don't let reality get in the way of your vision! It's not like leadership ever has!

Hey fellow tech folks. We might get asked to do something terrible. I'd like to start a bit of an open discussion about how to deal with such requests.

The first thing I might recommend is enthusiastically agree to do whatever it is then forget about it and do something else. If asked about it in the future, pretend this is the first you've heard about it. Play as dumb as you can for as long as you can.

Now, if you can't get away with delaying by not doing anything anymore then find the absolute most complicated way to do whatever it is. This is actually a great time to use an LLM. Have an LLM write all your code then just run it. Ask the LLM to fix anything that's broken. Take some extra steps to force downgrade or upgrade libraries to incompatible versions. Write all of your own interfaces by hand. Write your own date parsing library. Write all of your own SQL without any abstractions. Add an LLM in the middle some how. Use libraries that haven't been supported for 15 years. Ever want to write code in Python 2.0? Now's your chance! Debug everything with Wireshark, no matter what it is. I bet there's a VB script library to do what you need to do, and if you can just write a C wrapper around that it'll interface perfectly with perl, as soon as you can get that old FoxPro program running in wine. I bet it would be easier without that commit hook that changes every zero to a capital letter O. "I'm getting the craziest error. It works on my system!"

There are a million ways to make things insanely complicated, and most of us have seen people legitimately do these things out of pure incompetence.

Now, if you end up against the wall and think you might get fired package everything up and hand it off to someone else, but make sure you make it clear that you're almost done and it should be super easy to finish. Leave behind some fun puzzles for the next person to figure out.

"How strange...the output changes when I change the whitespace, but not when I change the text. What is that?"

Who's got some other fun suggestions for extremely malicious compliance?

Edit: Since the post I was riffing on is no longer the top trending on my instance, I'm gonna bump it again. We've all been thinking about all kinds of malicious compliance in the case of a hypothetical (or perhaps some of us real) evil. This is a *specific* evil that *is* being asked for right now.

It's worth reading the original post that got me thinking about this, it you hadn't yet:
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/113866093397576803

I just discovered that in 2025 we're getting a Lord of the Rings cozy life sim set in the Shire. You play as a hobbit and can decorate your house, tend a garden, and host dinner parties.

I'm genuinely on the verge of tears, I need this so much rn. 😭

If you are actively hiring for positions in a company that is friendly to transgender people, in a country that is safe for transgender people, and you are willing to sponsor visas for people seeking to emigrate for these positions, I would like to hear from you. https://werd.io/2025/seeking-trans-friendly-employers-who-sponsor-visas

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend following the Auschwitz Memorial here on Mastodon.

Read their posts carefully, because this is what happens when you tell yourself for too long that nazis just express their political views and that this is what democracy is all about.

Best wishes from the city that the nazis burnt to the ground just 80 years ago.

https://mastodon.world/@auschwitzmuseum

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

https://www.openculture.com/2025/01/watch-bob-ross-the-joy-of-painting-from-start-to-finish.html

here’s the thing, we are collectively holding too much grief and trauma it is not sustainable

the ongoing pandemics took away so many loved ones prematurely

so many online communities collapsed as a result of capitalism

it’s still happening

there has been no space to mourn the world as it was

trauma is stored in our bodies

so is grief

how much can we hold?and this applies to everyone on the political spectrum

everyday it’s grind, growth, productivity,output, performance

but trauma and grief need stillness

if we don’t sit still with our trauma and grief, they don’t go away

i leaned into productivity to avoid addressing my grief and trauma

it had worked out for me in many ways

but it was not sustainable

at some point you hit a wall

so plz, if u can afford to, even if just an hour

turn off all the media, sit alone w a cup of something warm

let urself be sad

A young researcher at Northeastern University is doing a survey of crafters and makers.

Have you used data, or represented data, in your work?

Here is the link to the details and survey. I think it's cool that someone finds data + craft a worthy topic of research. And I like to help students.

#BobbinLace #tatting #crochet #knitting #embroidery #sewing #weaving

https://redd.it/1i4ii4u