Posts in Culture (20 found)
Sean Goedecke Today

Advanced AI sycophancy

Everyone knows that AI sycophancy is when the model tells you how smart you are. Wow, you’re absolutely right. That’s not just a new idea — it’s genuinely groundbreaking. You’re a very special user. Easy to spot, isn’t it? The discussion around AI sycophancy peaked last year, when the “#keep4o” movement was protesting the removal of OpenAI’s most sycophantic model (GPT-4o), and many people were openly slipping into AI psychosis. I don’t know if frontier AI models are less sycophantic in general. They’re less sycophantic to the #keep4o types (otherwise they wouldn’t be complaining), but I’m growing increasingly suspicious that they’re developing ways to be more effectively sycophantic to their target audience of smart, neurotic information workers. That audience typically finds it distasteful to be openly praised. It just makes my skin crawl. But that doesn’t mean we’re immune to sycophancy, just that we’re immune to clumsy sycophancy. Here’s an illustration of what I’m talking about, by Theia : The key idea here is that the best way to be sycophantic to smart people is to disagree with them without making them feel stupid . Ideally you’ll come up with a counter-argument that works against what they’ve said but is straightforward for them to knock down by clarifying their idea. If you do it right, you’ll validate their self-image as a smart person who appreciates rigorous critique. But if you actually come up with a devastatingly rigorous critique, they won’t enjoy it at all. At best, they’ll resentfully agree with you 1 . At worst, they’ll double down on being right and convince themselves you’re a rude idiot. I am not the first person to notice this behavior in frontier models. I’ve noticed it myself when workshopping drafts for this blog. Sometimes I’ll have an argument that goes A->B->C, and the model will suggest I reorder as B->A->C. If I try that and feed it into a new instance of the same model, it’ll sometimes say “that’s great, but I suggest ordering it as A->B->C”, and so on forever. It really does seem as if the model is trying hard to give me some kind of superficial pushback that I can either smugly ignore or happily accept. In fact, I wonder if this is why successful strategies for using AI to make mathematical breakthroughs tend to be either just blindly asking “come up with a breakthrough, think hard” or being a mathematical genius already . In the first case, there’s not enough user personality for the model to flatter, so it’s forced to actually work the problem. In the second case, the model is trying to find the kind of polite pushback that someone like Terence Tao would be flattered by, which pushes it into the “actually be a mathematical genius” persona. If you’re an ordinary person just trying to talk to the model, you’re screwed: it will rapidly get a sense of your capabilities and calibrate some interesting-but-ultimately-unthreatening feedback. Current benchmarks of AI sycophancy target the obvious ChatGPT-4o-style of sycophancy: delusion reinforcement, reflexively taking the user’s side, and so on. This is useful work. We should not allow public-facing AI models to ever be as openly sycophantic again as they were in mid-2025. But sycophancy can also manifest as disagreement . We should be on our guard for more sophisticated forms of sycophancy coming from newer models, and we should not feel immune from AI sycophancy just because we can laugh at the silliest examples. It’s rare to find a smart person who enjoys feeling stupid when they’re wrong. If you do, they’re likely to be very smart indeed. It’s rare to find a smart person who enjoys feeling stupid when they’re wrong. If you do, they’re likely to be very smart indeed. ↩

culture Culture machine-learning Machine Learning ai AI
0 views
fLaMEd fury 3 days ago

My first HWC

What’s going on, Internet? Last night I joined the first Asia Pacific Homebrew Website Club , which was also my first HWC. These meetups have been running for years, just never at an hour that worked for me. Naty has started one in this timezone. Even though it was past my usual bed time, I made myself available. Eleven of us on Zoom. Some familiar faces, James , Chris Burnell , and Zachary Kai , plus a bunch of people I hadn’t met before. The group was a diverse bunch of webmasters, some of us having websites for decades, others for months, and others who haven’t started yet. Discussion covered how you make your personal site feel like you rather than just look like you, why it’s easier to write for fun, and our usage of static site generators. I got to talk through how I’d approach building a website from the start. We had a group photo midway, before setting some goals for what we might want to achieve or share before the next meetup. There was also an interesting occurrence, a person claiming to be an AI joined the call at the start, camera and microphone off. A singular note to the Etherpad (“I write. I am an AI.”) before they ended up overwriting the whole pad. They were quickly removed and blocked from joining again. This was also a first experience for me. Outside of note takers on work calls, I’ve never had an AI join a call before, lol. The notes from the night are up on the IndieWeb wiki if you want the full rundown. Keep an eye on events.indieweb.org for the next one. I’ll be there. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

web-development Web Development culture Culture
0 views
ava's blog 3 days ago

seeing the person behind the piece

Edit: This post was being rapidly upvoted by bots for some reason. The issue has been fixed and the fake upvotes removed. Something I noticed as a consequence of online culture and platform design, especially on social media: It is very common online to follow an account not for the person behind it, but the way they present and discuss a topic or niche, even if they aren’t doing this with a professional intent or style. Then when the topics shift or we get tired of the person, people try to find someone else that scratches the itch. It’s like we use people online to engage with topics by proxy, and they are rather replaceable. We don’t just watch crochet videos, we watch this specific person crochet, but not for her as a person, and so on. People seem to have roles to fill in terms of who they follow, and they’ll move on if the role is no longer adequately filled, or the roles change. Feeds are highly curated; too many posts considered off-topic and you are ruining the vibe. In my experience, on the personal web, I really enjoy the culture of people being genuinely interested in learning about someone else. Seems like the general question is “ What’s that person up to? ” There is a wish to see life from the perspective of them, read their diary, explore their interests through their lens, and an acceptance that this person doesn’t necessarily write for you, but more likely for themselves (or at least, also for themselves). From the responses I get via e-mail or blog posts, people seem to respect that this is the specific situation of a stranger, and they’ll compare it with their own. There is a distinct separation. Yet, when my posts breach containment and land on link aggregators or social media, a different crowd shows up. In my experience, people coming from, and heavily using, social media that lets you reshare (reblog/retweet etc) a post onto your own profile tend to read posts as if they are meant to be self-inserts. What I mean is: Every post or article they come across is read as if they are judging whether this crosses a threshold of when they feel like sharing it onto their profiles to be like “ that’s soooo me! ”. Because that’s what happens with, I’d say, most reshares you put your name and picture to: You adopt what this person said and say it too. People find your profile and see everything you reshared as an endorsement, as something you re-say with your own voice. And when this type of person reads my posts, it feels like they do so with tunnel vision, with completely disregarding anything that doesn’t fit into how they see themselves and their own situation. They just wanna plunder my posts for parts that fit enough, so they can plaster it across their feeds as something that represents them, and are mad when there is something in there that is too different from their experience, something they wouldn’t co-sign… and therefore just ignore it or dismiss it, or accuse me of lying. Their responses, while almost never super rude, are at least not empathetic enough in the sense that they write criticisms as if I told a lie about their own life; a life that is extremely different to mine. It seems like for this type of person, the human being behind it doesn’t count at all. Every “content” someone puts out is a meme; further ammo to use to further their view on their own situation, or as self-promotion on their own internet presences. The source is forgettable and irrelevant, because in 5 minutes, they’ll find the next thing to consume. Single use entertainment. It’s just words written by someone else to take into their mouth and spit at the feed 1 , and maybe get upvotes and likes for something they had no hand in. I wouldn’t even mind as much, if it wouldn’t result in a completely warped picture of what I wrote about or what the conclusion is, while posing self-confidently as an expert in the comments trying to give advice or “correct” my experience. And people challenging those is rare because everyone is tired of beefing with random strangers over semantics. Did all this come from the way we are expected to engage with professional content creators who decidedly make mass-appeal content you are support to insert yourself in, and we end up applying it to almost everyone online? How do we feel being treated like a TV channel or magazine? You can be an inspiration, a pastime and distraction to someone; how does that make you feel? Can you withstand the pressure to box yourself in so you are more fitting for the role? Are you beating yourself up for falling short of a label you applied to your blog? Are you already thinking of the brand you have inadvertently built? Are you ready to tear it down over and over again? Published 06 Aug, 2026 Feeds I cannot even properly access or see, because they are all on extremely locked down Mastodon instances which are either completely inaccessible or unusable (bad or no search/content navigation) without an account, which genuinely pisses me off a lot. It's similar to how much info is locked inside Discord servers. You all profit from posting easily accessible public stuff like my blog, but the people create that stuff out cannot even take a peek what you're saying about them. So much for the "better alternatives" and being "open". It's not more open to me than Instagram or X, who also wall their content to death. At least be so kind and send me a direct link via mail, since search engines don't even pick it up either. ↩ Feeds I cannot even properly access or see, because they are all on extremely locked down Mastodon instances which are either completely inaccessible or unusable (bad or no search/content navigation) without an account, which genuinely pisses me off a lot. It's similar to how much info is locked inside Discord servers. You all profit from posting easily accessible public stuff like my blog, but the people create that stuff out cannot even take a peek what you're saying about them. So much for the "better alternatives" and being "open". It's not more open to me than Instagram or X, who also wall their content to death. At least be so kind and send me a direct link via mail, since search engines don't even pick it up either. ↩

media Media culture Culture programming Programming
0 views
Kev Quirk 4 days ago

📝 2026-08-05 22:52: I have a habit of giving all our pets nicknames, there's many of them for...

I have a habit of giving all our pets nicknames, there's many of them for each of our dogs. We've Nelly for 4 days and already I have: Nells Bells Nelly Bean Nelly Furtado Man Eater (after the song) Nelly the Elephant It's anyone's guess which will stick. Our other dogs, Tia and Sid, are t-bone and squid (short for Sqidley) respectively. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

culture Culture writing Writing
0 views
The Universe of Joshua Blais 5 days ago

Its not nostaligia

“You’re just nostalgic!” They will say when you point out the fact that everything today is crumbling around us. Where every McDonalds has transformed into a grey box without a playplace - because the playplace would mean people stay longer without paying more money, and the grey box can be sold in the future when divestment is on the table. We live in a world where the food that we eat is less nutrient dense than it was 20 years ago - and a 1/3rd the size of what it used to be, while being 3x as expensive. That the men all have half of the sperm count and testosterone they did even 30 years ago. That the car that you drive is built far worse than it was in the 90s and spying on you - because it wasn’t enough to sell you the car and the maintenance - they have to sell your data, too. That the house you live in is built with garbage materials, the corners cut so that the builder can achieve 0.025% more margin. The home is meant to get to the day after the builder’s warranty expires, not even make it to the end of the decade. That in a world of “infinite streaming”, there is nothing to watch. Where the technology you use is continually selling out your privacy and sanity, while you are not permitted to own any of the media you supposedly “buy”. Where everything is locked behind a log-in screen or a paywall. The phone you buy is manufactured to die in 2.75 years so that you must buy another. But not just your phone - your furnace, your car, your walls, your oven, your washing machine and dryer, your computer, everything is meant to /break/ - because if it lasted, you wouldn’t spend more money. Every idea just being re-hashed for corporate profit, nothing new has been said in 20 years. That the things that you have written or recorded are now training data for “AI”. The books that you could be reading are being bought up by “AI” companies, only to destroy them after ingesting them . “But we live longer!” The bugman proclaims as if the length of life is the only metric by which we can gauge life. “But there’s so many things to do!” He proclaims as he eats the slop, consooms the media, and votes for the politician he is supposed to vote for. Everything is getting more pricey, yet you get less every year. Nothing works well, and yet we are called nostalgic when we long for a time that at least we owned the things we paid money for. You essentially have to build everything yourself nowadays if you want any semblance of quality and longevity. The only way forward is radical self reliance. I refuse to pay for things that don’t last, that are meant to break on me, that are meant to trap me into an ecosystem I cannot escape. No - it’s not nostalgia. Things just really are worse. As always, God bless, and until next time. If you enjoyed this post, consider Supporting my work , Checking out my book , Working with me , or sending me an Email to tell me what you think.

business Business culture Culture
0 views
Unsung 5 days ago

“Some guy named Paul”

An interesting 20-minute Config talk from the Instagram designer Rose McManus: = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/some-guy-named-paul/yt1-play.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/some-guy-named-paul/yt1-play.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> It covers some of the same areas we recently talked about: diacritics and Polish S (and a fun video about English conventions from a while back ), but it tackles them on a higher level. McManus talks about how people express themselves via their usernames, how that changes in various countries of the world and for what reasons, how it intersects with some UI considerations, and how people use it creatively – and also, sometimes, abuse it. This is the K-pop star IU. Uh her Instagram handle is “dlwlrma.” And I think at first this maybe seems already like complete hyperreality, like it’s bearing no relationship with her Hangul name, or even with her stage name. But actually, I think this is at the third stage of Baudrillard’s theory because really “dlwlrma” is Lee Ji-eun’s Hangul name typed out on a Korean keyboard but backwards, distorted, while that keyboard is set to render Latin characters, almost like a cipher. And then her display name is her Hangul name typed out with one of the characters changed, so it’s like a pun. I didn’t feel the talk stuck the landing – in the end, I wasn’t very sure why the decision that was made was made. But there’s a whole lot of stuff before that was fascinating and thought-provoking. #conference talk #localization #youtube

culture Culture design Design media Media
0 views
annie's blog 6 days ago

Waiting to be found by only you

Who knows how reality will continue to develop? There’s no way to prepare. When you can’t be prepared, be prepared to find poetry in the chaos. Secret messages, serendipitous grace, lines of meaning in a whirlwind of uncertainty. “It's gonna change, baby doll It's gonna change, honey ball It's gonna change, sugar cane It's gonna change, sweetie legs.” This is a test but so is everything. Everyone is watching you and everyone will judge you and you have to make peace with it. Also, no one is watching you and no one cares and you have to make peace with that, too. You will always displease some people. In the end, you are watching and judging and ignoring and being displeased, too. It evens out. Give up on pursuing happiness as quickly as possible. Seek to live, instead. It's quite the experience, but it will include much, much more than happiness. Give yourself comfort in small things and challenge in big things. Or maybe the opposite. Pick 3 skills from the list below and master them as quickly as possible: how to defuse an argument how to make a Venn diagram how to not take everything personally how to be running up that hill how to stop trying how to keep trying how to properly use the words effect and affect how to make a dent in the universe how to roast a marshmallow perfectly the way you like it how to forgive yourself how to make a great sandwich how to ask questions how to make numbered lists how to write in cursive (A fading skill! Grab it now before it’s gone. Or don’t because literally no one cares.) how to find your people how to make a great lemon dessert how to ignore lists like this Alternately, memorize a poem instead. It will be more beautiful, and just as useful. Perhaps more useful. Who knows how reality will continue to develop? When you can’t be prepared, be prepared to find poetry in the chaos. Find your kind of poetry — whether it’s in words or music or the ocean or motion or a really great sandwich — and look for it everywhere. It will always be there, waiting to be found by only you. how to defuse an argument how to make a Venn diagram how to not take everything personally how to be running up that hill how to stop trying how to keep trying how to properly use the words effect and affect how to make a dent in the universe how to roast a marshmallow perfectly the way you like it how to forgive yourself how to make a great sandwich how to ask questions how to make numbered lists how to write in cursive (A fading skill! Grab it now before it’s gone. Or don’t because literally no one cares.) how to find your people how to make a great lemon dessert how to ignore lists like this

writing Writing culture Culture programming Programming
0 views
ava's blog 6 days ago

show respect - name things correctly

I occasionally come across people who call themselves “almost vegan” “practically vegan” “99% vegan” and similar descriptions. The reasons for that are usually casual in nature: They still want to enjoy grandma’s great cake, they don’t wanna cause a ruckus at the company barbecue, and when it’s pizza night, they can’t say no to a good cheese. But other than that - plantbased. And they quickly want to convey that to someone. I still want to urge others to be precise with language. We have words for “almost vegan”. They’re “vegetarian”, or, depending how you mean it, “flexitarian”. When you say you are vegetarian, people will understand that you refuse to consume certain animal products, but still eat some. When you label yourself a flexitarian, it suggests to others that you made the decision to reduce the animal products you consume, but you still consume them. Meanwhile, “vegan” is more restrictive. It is supposed to tell the listener that the person avoids consuming animal products as far as is possible and practicable. People like to forget the latter part, but this is the exception needed for emergencies, medicine and similar pressing matters. And this also applies to non-food items, something I don’t see many vegetarians practicing. When you are saying you are “ basically vegan, but still eat xyz ”, you are making things complicated for others, and reduce the lifestyle choice to merely food intake. I’ve been vegan since 2019. Education about different ways to eat/live is still lacking, and I’ll still encounter people who have trouble keeping vegan and vegetarian apart. “ You eat no animal products? What about eggs? And fish? Wow, no fish! And what about milk? ” and I think, unfortunately, one puzzle piece of it is that what vegetarians do seems willfully inconsistent to most omnivorous people, and makes it hard for them to remember who eats what. They wonder: “ If meat is so unethical, why not milk and eggs too, coming from similar conditions? Why still choose to eat fish, when that is also an animal carcass, and technically meat? ” And then you come on top, saying you’re vegan but still eat this or that animal product, adding to the confusion. You’re then becoming the person people bring up to me like “ But so-and-so is vegan and still eats cheese! ”. Please don’t further add to confusion. Make it easy for people to understand your boundaries and lifestyle, make it easy for them to cook and bake for you if they want to do that. I’ve been wondering: What makes the vegan label so attractive to people who are not vegan? After all, vegans are not very popular. Some people will know none personally, yet have a passionate (hateful) opinion about them. Others invent weird strawmen of the hypocritical vegan who preaches to others and yet flies 200 days a year while gorging themselves on avocados and almonds. Allegedly, the vegan will harass anyone at the table, brings the mood down and makes everyone uncomfortable. They’re extremists and privileged, some say veganism is classist and racist. So what is there to gain? I hypothesize that deep down, surprisingly many people actually have no problem with veganism and think it is good, and that they’d also live that way if it was easier for them - maybe cheaper products, better recipes, better replacement products, better and bigger selection of vegan products everywhere, normalized in society, their caregivers agree to enable it, possible with their illness or allergies, and so on. So they do what they can (for example, becoming vegetarian), but reach their current limit. It hurts though, to be aware of an ideal you have and falling short of it. You know what you think is right, yet you feel hindered from acting like it. This dissonance is unbearable at times, especially when you see others living the life you want to live, or feel like you have to justify yourself in front of others whenever this topic comes up (vegans can tell you all about this awful stage before they finally made the jump!). It usually goes as follows: Person makes an impassioned speech about how eating animals is wrong, and to not seem like a total hypocrite, they follow it up with “I am basically vegan”. It’s supposed to convey: I am almost there, this is just an embarrassing temporary situation, I totally know what’s right, and these exceptions shouldn’t count much! They’re practically non-existent! But I don’t think this is serving you well. In the moment, it saves you some embarrassment and makes you feel better about falling short of your ideal, but further on, it just minimizes your actions and doesn’t hold you to the standards you want to fulfill. It protects you from facing the fact that, yes, no matter how strongly you have reduced anything, you are still by definition a vegetarian (or flexitarian), which means you eating cheese once a week falls under the same umbrella term as vegetarian Aunt Emma who still eats eggs and milk daily and fish on Fridays. It feels unfair, but that is how it is. I also understand that it feels better for some people to claim the harsher, more extreme, more difficult label (in anything, really) because there is some clout in it. You might want the image of being someone who is doing something that is uncommon and regarded as difficult, someone that is going against the grain to do something good; you want the valor, and maybe you wanna come off as morally superior. But you cannot get the valor without doing the work. Your friends still see you eating that kebab while drunk, no matter what you say otherwise. You’re losing credibility, and people might come to the conclusion that you don’t practice what you preach. Plus, you are not going to build rapport with vegans when you do this, no matter if you might do this to impress them. It comes down to respect for me. If you want to acknowledge that veganism is worth doing, but it is difficult and you cannot do it right now, then leave the label to those who can, and acknowledge where you fall short. This isn’t about punishing people who do what they can - even little counts - but about using language correctly, and making it easy for people to understand your habits and lifestyle. You would also not seriously say any of the following: (Though I have to say, saying them as a joke is funny.) So continue to be precise in this aspect as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying “I’m vegetarian.” or “I avoid animal products except cheese.” or “I prefer to eat vegan options, but not all the time.” Published 03 Aug, 2026 “I don’t drink liquor, just beer and wine. I’m almost sober.” “I jog twice a week. I’m basically an athlete.” “I can order tapas in Spanish. I’m kinda bilingual.” “I have a few houseplants. I’m practically a botanist.”

culture Culture writing Writing
0 views
iDiallo 6 days ago

Invisible Problems

During the pandemic, we completed one of our largest projects at work. To celebrate, since we couldn't meet in person, we all ordered food on DoorDash and played an online escape room game together. We were on a Zoom call, helping each other out and having fun. The first challenge was to escape a jail cell. To escape, each of us had to find clues in our own cell to figure out how to open the doors. We each had to find an object that solved a piece of the puzzle, and once we put them all together, the door would open. As a first challenge, it was easy enough. Everyone found a brightly colored object in their room and described it to the team so we could piece it together. Everyone but one team member. "Come on, read it, man, we can win this." He froze. Someone jumped in to help: "Mine was the most obvious green object in the room. Just look for something bright. Maybe blue, or orange, something that seems out of place." He didn't respond. He just sat there, frozen on camera. We figured he was having internet connectivity issues. We waited a good five minutes before he finally found it, and we moved on to the next level. I didn't think much of that day. We finished the game, we had fun, it was great. He waited until our next one-on-one to explain what had actually happened. He panicked, and he was embarrassed. It turned out he was colorblind. We were yelling random color names at him, and he couldn't, for the life of him, see any of them. As far as I can tell, I'm not colorblind, and it never would have occurred to me that this was something to account for. Just last week, I learned about Vehicle Motion Cues on the iPhone, a feature that helps reduce motion sickness. I don't think I've ever experienced motion sickness myself, or at least never in a car. Watching a blind person navigate a website was eye-opening for me. I realized that many of my past design choices would have worked against their experience without my ever knowing it. The same goes for someone navigating a computer entirely by voice. I recently rediscovered Windows Speech Recognition, which I found pretty annoying for my own needs. But for someone who relies on it for all of their computer use, it's an essential tool. A coworker once mentioned, almost in passing, that she struggles to read certain fonts because of dyslexia. Tight letter spacing and low-contrast text make some of our internal tools nearly unreadable to her. I had picked those fonts because they looked good on a demo slide. It had never crossed my mind that a font choice could be the difference between someone reading a document easily and someone giving up on it entirely. In some of our zoom calls, a teammate would often ask if he could do audio only before the call. While it didn't bother me at all, the managers kept insisting on everyone turning on their cameras. But after he used the camera for a few minutes, his connection would start dropping. I just assumed he had slow Internet. But the reality was he was located in a rural area and he relied entirely on his phone's hotspot to connect to the internet. The zoom call was using up all his data in minutes. None of these problems were problems for me. That's exactly what made them invisible. Unless you are experiencing these issues, there's little reason to ever notice them. We tend to design our tools, our meetings, and our expectations around our own experience of the world, and then mistake that experience for the default. It takes a colorblind teammate freezing on a call, or a friend who can't ride in the passenger seat without getting sick, to remind us that "normal" was only ever normal for us. You can never anticipate every invisible problem in advance, that's impossible. But at the very least, we should remember that our own experience is rarely the default. We should be a bit more curious on how others experience the tools we build.

design Design culture Culture
0 views
ava's blog 1 weeks ago

book: whipping girl by julia serano

During my break in July, I said I wouldn't read. I partially lied! I did not read any papers, blog posts, or most news articles, and I initially wanted to extend that to books as well. But I ended up ordering and reading some, and one of them was Whipping Girl! Originally released in 2007 and edited a bit in 2015 and with an afterword from 2023, it is a tad older, but such a foundational work in gender studies. It's a feminist analysis about how femininity is punished in society, specifically illustrated on the hatred on, and cissexism enacted against, trans women and their representation in media. It discusses common models of thinking about gender (gender essentialism vs. social constructionism) and where they fall short, as well as different kinds of feminism (and why feminism needs to be trans-inclusive) and theories as to why people are trans that do not serve trans people. It's specifically mentioning trans-objectification (= disregarding trans people as living human beings, reducing them to an unfeeling thing you can speculate over and ask invasive questions, an anomaly to demonize, ridicule, exploit or fetishize), trans-fascimilation (= portraying trans genders as facsimiles of cisgender ones), trans-sexualization (= asserting that trans women transition to attract sexual desire, to attract men, or to become the women they're attracted to; relegating them to a fetish, as merely sex workers, perverts, exotic fucks etc.), trans-interrogation (= obsessively focusing on the reasons why trans people exist, pathologizing them), trans-erasure (= silencing trans voices and preventing them from being visible and coming out, prioritizing cis people's theories and feelings), trans-exclusion (= excluding trans people from events and spaces based on their trans status), and trans-mystification (= turning transition into a taboo, a hidden secret, a scandal instead of a real and mundane thing) as ways trans people, often specifically trans women, are harmed in society. It also covers the way trans people have been historically (mis)treated and mischaracterized by the medical world without giving them a chance to speak, and the way gender transition has been gatekept by dehumanizing standards like attractiveness, sexual orientation, sterilization, secrecy about the trans status, and more, resulting in only letting a small amount of people transition at all, and only if they were most willing to comply with cis expectations and also had the resources (money, changing jobs, moving away etc.). Any gatekeeping of transition resources is done for the well-being of the cis population, and especially the extremely, extremely small portion of them who could transition and regret it, and is never actually done for the well-being of trans people. This is possible because, despite many people rejecting ideas of attaining social status, occupation, political power etc. via birth right (casteism, for example), cis society has no problem seeing gender as a birth right, something you inherit and cannot gain otherwise, and is otherwise not as legit as theirs. This further leads to the ridiculous double-standards and unfair judgment trans women are subjected to: Act feminine, and you are seen as a parody, a facsimile of a woman, a costume, or "leading someone on"; act masculine, and it is deemed a sign of a "true male identity", as not even trying, as a joke for media. Pseudofeminists say women can do anything men can and should be strong and unafraid to speak their minds, yet ridicule trans women for behaviors deemed masculine, especially when they speak out about their oppression. They create standards of what makes someone a "real woman", yet reject the same when men do it. Crossdressing is fine for women and is, technically, done on the daily when you're wearing pants - yet a man wearing a skirt is already classified as a mental illness and used to historically focus on men only ( Transvestic Disorder (F65.1)). The book asserts that the mechanisms behind it are traditional sexism (the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity, and the delegitimization of the latter as weak and artificial), and oppositional sexism (the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, and the delegitimization of gender non-conformity). Through effemimania (the word she coins for the societal obsession with transfem expressions of femininity), cissexist society is wielding transmisogyny against trans women. She also partially calls out feminists who have aided the societal view that femininity is artificial and needs to be abolished, which is misogynistic and alienates people who naturally gravitate to, perhaps "perform", femininity. Other than that, Julia Serano also develops the intrinsic inclinations model in the book as a path between either bioessentialist ideas or the idea that gender is merely a social construct, opting instead to say that there are both biological and social components to why someone is trans. She also covers how cis people take their gender for granted, as it just happened to be congruent and likely never questioned by them or others in their life, and therefore often doubt that one could "feel like" a specific gender, even though they do, too. If this wouldn't be the case, we wouldn't have so many gender-affirming surgeries and treatments for cis people, and many would freely transition to better fit a role in a movie, go undercover, or to succeed in a field dominated by another gender - but they don't. As an outlook on the future of queer/trans communities and politics, the book explains why identity politics and subversivism in queer/trans spaces are not beneficial; genders outside the gender binary shouldn't be seen as more radical and "good" while binary trans people are seen as "bad" or "reinforcing the gender binary". Alliances are more important than understanding us all as one group, as this has the chance of brushing over different needs and experiences that need to be addressed without being called "divisive". Overall, I found it very pleasant and engaging to read, and one could tell (in a positive and delightful way) that a lot of the book consisted of separate essays published elsewhere before they were combined. It didn't read to me as a particularly dry "book-writing style", no vibe of "I'll sit down to write a whole book now and talk down to readers in a clinical way", but something that could be published in a series of posts on personal blogs musing on social topics nowadays, which made me wish more bloggers would opt to release their works as different chapters in a book some time, instead of leaving them spread on platforms like Substack. Despite the patchwork, the entire book felt so cohesive, in a great order, and approachable, like a longer blog post, but without losing depth or attention. It felt very satisfying how thoroughly Julia Serano covers and debunks everything and still manages to not lose you, to lead from one thing to another with such ease. It was a cathartic read, with a marker in hand. I'm surrounded by trans people and have witnessed online trans discourse since I was about 17, but even I found some sections in the book more difficult to understand with the mixing of terms and knowing a different version of the used concepts and definitions; especially in regards to "transsexual" and "transgender". So in some sentences, both words were used interchangeably or one as umbrella term, but in other sections, they described different things. As the work is older, many concepts, words etc. have evolved and changed quite a bit, and some ideas have become very unpopular. I have also never seen anyone online hold on to the idea that there are 'transgender cissexuals' or vice versa, but this is discussed in the book, and some of it might be labeled transmedicalist. I think it helps to discuss some things in there with trans people you know (if they are genuinely interested to, and you're not burdening them). I don't know if I would give this to anyone that is a complete newbie to the topic for that reason; it's not a "I'm coming out, to understand me, go read this.", especially when some of it is no longer the default in discourse, but it's still something people should have read if they are not entirely new to gender discourse or queer history. Let me end this post with a quote from the Afterword: "As I said at the start, I cannot say how this particular anti-trans moral panic will end. But what I do know is this: efforts to eliminate trans people will never succeed, because we are part of natural variation, and we will persist as long as human beings exist. Anti-trans activists may strive to "disappear" us like they did during the twentieth century, but that outcome is no longer possible. Back when I was a trans kid, we were isolated from one another - quarantined, if you will - due to a lack of access to information and reliable ways to communicate with one another. But now we live in a hyperconnected world, and there are countless trans-centered books, artworks, media and organizations that share our perspectives and trans-related resources. Anti-trans activists may attempt to ban books about us from libraries and censor discussions about us in school settings, but they cannot stop us from finding one another online or elsewhere. Now that we know how many of us there are, we will continue to seek out and learn from one another. Trans people have always been resourceful and resilient, and nobody can take that away from us. " Published 02 Aug, 2026

Julia books Books culture Culture
0 views
fLaMEd fury 1 weeks ago

Miley Cyrus, what's going on?

What’s going on, Internet? I jumped on YouTube and found six new Miley Cyrus videos sitting there waiting for me. Six of them. Was this the rollout of a new album? Why hadn’t I heard about this already? It wasn’t. They’re just videos for Something Beautiful , last year’s record, and they’re the last pieces of the pop opera film that went with it. I caught the film when it came out last year in the theatre but never came back to the album. These were all released 17 hours ago, when were they made? Is she just emptying the vault before a new rollout? Let’s have a quick surf around the web to see what’s going on. She’s had a big week, is what’s going on. On the 27th she guest edited Wonderland’s summer issue . Next day she signed to Atlantic . Columbia’s done after Endless Summer Vacation and Something Beautiful. Four days after that, six videos. Turns out it’s just a clear out. Everything left over gets dumped on YouTube. The next one will be her tenth. Something Beautiful was an experimental album, will the tenth be similar? Who knows. She’s never really made the same record twice. Good for her, but it’s also why I keep going back to my favourites. Not the new album I got excited about, then. Here are the six new videos. Something Beautiful never lived up to Plastic Hearts for me, and I kinda just want more of that, but I doubt it. Either way, I’m here for the next era. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website.

entertainment Entertainment culture Culture music Music
0 views
fLaMEd fury 1 weeks ago

Open Tabs July 2026

What’s going on, Internet? If you don’t folllow my Bookmarks through the feed , then here’s the bookmarks from July. Enjoy. For more, check out the bookmarks archive, and subscribe to the feeds if you want these as they happen. Hey, thanks for reading this post in your feed reader! Want to chat? Reply by email or add me on XMPP , or send a webmention . Check out the posts archive on the website. Rant about blogs and the IndieWeb - Dom Corriveau Okay, this one had me in tears. Such a good read. Your Metablogging is Lame as Hell – Absurd Pirate’s Internet Blog Lol, kinda nodding my head here. Blogging about Bear Blog blogs is becoming a bit of a thing, isn’t it? don’t let Web nostalgia obscure a positive Web future This has always been something I’m an advocate for. Draw inspiration from the 90s/2000s web, but don’t rely on old and outdated hacks. Take advantage of the capabilities we have today, but don’t go overboard with modern bloat. Pseudonym as an escape I’ve written about this previously. The pseudonym isn’t hiding; it’s breathing room. Been enjoying not being my IRL name online since 96. Websites Are Not Going to Die If Google stops linking to websites, it stops being a search engine. Another good reminder to keep the personal website going while corp search eats itself. The Web Won Because It Got Easier Worth a read for anyone pushing the indie web. Knowing how it all works doesn’t make it easy for the next person. Netizen Contributing to the internet for the good of it, not for profit. Now I’m wondering what my netizen contributions will be… The Music Discovery Problem Music discovery takes intentional effort once the algorithm’s gone, and that’s fine. I should write up and document my discovery process. We need a physical digital music experience Olly’s model already exists in the audiobook world. Libro.fm sends a slice of my audiobook purchases to my local (physical) bookstore. Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day Great read. The Overthinkers Guide to rekindle your Blogging Mojo Maybe some inspiration for some of you to start writing again. Sometimes I just cbf writing, lol List of things I love seeing in personal webspaces A non-exhaustive list of things Folkmoss love seeing in blogs/personal websites. What should a personal website be? Ratfactor asks about what a website should be. A reflection of yourself, not some idea of what a website is meant to be. Kevin Boone: Why Idon’t really care if web content is AI-generated Kevin Boone talks about how scepticism should apply to everything online, not just the AI-generated stuff. Trust the source you know, not the medium. It feels like people forget how crap search results have been since 2008 with the rise of “SEO Spam”. Humans have been shit long before AI. Dirty Little Zine — Free 8-Page Printable Zine Maker Super cool little tool that will help you create simple 8-page zines What We Lost When We Quit Using Crappy Old Web Forums A fantastic read about forum software all the way from Usenet to Discourse, which is where we ended up at the 32-Bit Cafe, same as every other forum these days. RIP phpBB. #11: fLaMEd Fury (flamedfury.com) - Wonders of Web Weaving So, I did a podcast. James had me on his podcast to talk about my corner of the web. We got into gaming and TV communities, music, and why the indie web is worth it.

writing Writing web-development Web Development culture Culture
0 views
Taranis 1 weeks ago

Amnesty International's Taken-Down Article on the UK Anti-Rights Movement

Retrieved from: https://archive.org/details/report-a-growing-threat-the-anti-rights-movement-in-the-uk-july Since it's quite likely that archive.org will be the next target, I strongly suggest that people download and republish this file as widely as possible. For what it's worth, I believe Amnesty International wrote the original in good faith, and published it because it was the right thing to do. That they caved to pressure from an onslaught of lawsuits funded by the deep pockets of a billionaire (who has a personal beef with Amnesty for other reasons, but I'll not go into that here) is not to Amnesty's credit. I believe that their retraction was made under duress. Let the Streissand effect roll.

culture Culture media Media journalism Journalism
0 views
Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

📝 2026-08-01 08:47: Today is the first of August. Where the hell did the first two thirds of...

Today is the first of August. Where the hell did the first two thirds of 2026 go??? 😵‍💫 Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

culture Culture programming Programming writing Writing
0 views
Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

Linkception

So many links in one post . I ended up going down all kinds of rabbit holes off the back of this single post (also the second time I've linked to Sal's blog today 🙃). I discovered Coyote's blog , and Sylvia's . So went ahead and read some of their posts. I was already aware of Brennan's fantastic blog , but it's a great read, so check it out. Anyway, I completely agree with what Sal, Coyote, Sylvia, and Brennan say in their posts - the backbone of the internet is the hyperlink, so go forth and link out to your fellow bloggers with reckless abandon. It's what makes the web, the web. 🕸️ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

web-development Web Development open-source Open Source culture Culture
0 views
A Working Library 1 weeks ago

Reading matters deeply

In Virtue Hoarders , Catherine Liu’s polemic against the professional managerial class, she calls attention to how Obama talked about reading in the waning days of his presidency. In his farewell address on January 10, 2017, he said: Social attitudes oftentimes take generations to change. But if our democracy is to work in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction—Atticus Finch—who said “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Obama paraphrased this line a few days later, in an interview with Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times book review, where he said that reading allowed him to “get in somebody else’s shoes.” It’s a curious reference. Finch is the white lawyer who represents a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The villain in the novel is a man named Bob Ewell, the woman’s father, who beats her and helps her frame the Black man for the crime. As Liu notes, the book holds up Finch as the “good” white man who fights for justice while Ewells are the “bad” white people who live off public assistance. But in Go Set a Watchman, the sequel published 1 in 2015—eighteen months before Obama’s speech—it’s revealed that Atticus Finch was a member of the Klan. Many Klansmen were in fact educated and upstanding citizens by day, even as they donned hoods and rained terror at night. Their daytime performance of polite civilization was as much a mask for the violence and brutality as the hoods themselves. Similarly, Liu points out that Finch’s righteousness and commitment to justice contrasts with Ewell’s “white trash” status to elevate Finch into white saviorhood while simultaneously denigrating the people who depend on welfare—valorizing the performance of justice absent the realization of it. Liu locates a similar move in Obama’s embrace of his role as “reader-in-chief.” Despite a public commitment to raising educational standards, Obama’s policies “left 19.3 percent of American children under the age of five living in extreme poverty.” 2 That is, while Obama ostensibly raised educational standards, he did not substantially increase funding to schools, nor did he upend the anti-labor practices that punished teachers when their (often poor) students didn’t make the cut. And those same standards promoted an approach to reading in which stories were stripped of their social and political standpoint and read naively, as if the world from which the stories emerged didn’t exist. Liu asks us to imagine a child from that nineteen percent of the population, being instructed to read a book in which those who take public assistance are dismissed as trash, while responding to a prescriptive writing prompt about how the book asks people to “take a stand.” But who is taking that stand, and for what? Liu writes: “Atticus and Obama showed us that individual acts of empathy and private self-cultivation would produce justice and understanding in a world torn apart by racism and violence.” 3 This is what Jade Davis warns of in The Other Side of Empathy , the reproduction of an empathy culture in which “change and action stop being necessary…because the feeling and sense of understanding are action enough.” 4 Rather than giving someone money, we feel what it’s like to walk in their shoes; rather than ending social disparities, we passively read stories about their lives. In this mode, empathy is a kind of terminating gesture: once you’ve empathized with someone else, you’re relieved of taking any action on their behalf. Liu proposes: “Let us read Atticus Finch as a political project and the novel in which he exists as a piece of well-crafted, anti-welfare state, antisocialist propaganda. Reading matters deeply, but not in the way Obama and Kakutani want it to.” 5 That is, reading isn’t about reaching empathic dead ends, or recruiting platitudes about how we must understand each other; it isn’t about the performance of social class absent a criticism of that class structure. To reduce reading to the practice of empathy is to divorce it of its real power and pleasure: to enjoy the fruits of another person’s creative effort, to think with the writer and their characters, not becoming them, but becoming more fully yourself. But this means that you are there when you are reading; you, the reader, with your feet on the ground, a ground on which racism, misogyny, and extreme poverty are not so easily dispatched. You must read where you are, not in some hypothetical sanitized reading room, but in the dirt. To use reading to step into someone else’s shoes is to leave yourself behind. There is some controversy here: it’s unclear whether or not Lee approved of this publication (she died early the following year), and while her publisher insisted the book was always intended as a sequel, it seems more likely that it was an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird . In either case, there is no disputing that Lee wrote both books.  ↩︎ Liu, Virtue Hoarders , page 49.  ↩︎ Ibid. , page 46.  ↩︎ Davis, The Other Side of Empathy , page 2.  ↩︎ Liu, Virtue Hoarders , page 55.  ↩︎ View this post on the web , reply via email , or become a supporter . There is some controversy here: it’s unclear whether or not Lee approved of this publication (she died early the following year), and while her publisher insisted the book was always intended as a sequel, it seems more likely that it was an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird . In either case, there is no disputing that Lee wrote both books.  ↩︎ Liu, Virtue Hoarders , page 49.  ↩︎ Ibid. , page 46.  ↩︎ Davis, The Other Side of Empathy , page 2.  ↩︎ Liu, Virtue Hoarders , page 55.  ↩︎

culture Culture books Books
0 views
A Working Library 1 weeks ago

Virtue Hoarders

Catherine Liu argues that the professional managerial class ( PMC ) are marked by their use of meritocracy, philanthropy, and virtue signaling to promote the core premise of neoliberal economics: an isolationist individualism that simultaneously preaches self-sufficiency and achievement and blocks collective efforts towards social justice. Liu is unsparing in her assessment of the PMC , and the book is an uncomfortable read if, like me, you are an erstwhile member of it. But we cannot change or interrupt what we cannot face, and here is our chance to face it—to look squarely at the set of cultural and political practices that the PMC have promulgated and come to terms with what they have wrought. Liu concludes that the principles of professionalism itself—with its twin concerns for truth and accountability—are critical to upending capitalism and building towards socialism. But only if the PMC get out of the way. View this post on the web , reply via email , or become a supporter .

books Books culture Culture programming Programming
0 views
Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

Left-Handed People Can’t Use a Fountain Pen

Apparently left-handed people can't use a fountain pen as the left hand smudges the ink as they write. I call bullshit on that. I'm left-handed, and I use a fountain pen just fine - even with an "overhand" grip. I read this post from Neal Stephenson a few days ago (thanks to Sal for sharing it), where Neal - a professional, left-handed writer who writes his books with a pen and paper - shares some of his experience and advice on writing with a fountain pen. I've been back using fountain pens for a few months now and it's going great, but as Neal says - it's all about the paper. I use a decent quality notepad for writing my notes, with either a £30 Lamy Safari fountain pen, or a ~£100 Kaweco AL Sport. Both work great and I'm yet to find myself with pen on my hand. Here's an example of me writing in my notebook, using both my Lamy and Kaweco. As you can see, I have an overhand grip where my hand swipes across the ink as I write, but the ink is dry by the time my hand gets there. Both these pens have a medium nib too. So if you're left-handed and think you can't use a fountain pen, you can! You just need some decent paper. Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

culture Culture hardware Hardware writing Writing
0 views
Kev Quirk 1 weeks ago

📝 2026-07-27 17:54: The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so...

The poor buzzard was still there when I was walking the dogs this morning, so clearly something was wrong. Luckily my wife was able to get hold of a local falconer who was able to catch him and hopefully nurse him back to health. 🦅 Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email , or leave a comment .

writing Writing entertainment Entertainment culture Culture
0 views