EgoEimi's recent activity
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Comment on Democracy is the solution to vetocracy in ~humanities
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Comment on I want to learn programming in ~comp
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Comment on Confused, uncool, and nowhere to scroll: The internet has become hostile for millennials like me in ~tech
EgoEimi Link ParentIt's very much my dream to find a niche I'm interested in, build a quality app, tend it like a garden and grow as my users grow, and earn a very excellent living for myself and my collaborators —...It's very much my dream to find a niche I'm interested in, build a quality app, tend it like a garden and grow as my users grow, and earn a very excellent living for myself and my collaborators — but not succumb to the demands of endless growth to appease investors and kick off the cycle of enshittification.
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Comment on The Digital Transportation Archive in ~design
EgoEimi LinkGosh, these are so beautiful, dreamy, and fantastical! And so... impressionist in the sense they are more than photographs, they convey a sense and a promise of a place. I find that modern travel...Gosh, these are so beautiful, dreamy, and fantastical! And so... impressionist in the sense they are more than photographs, they convey a sense and a promise of a place.
I find that modern travel photos are all too similar, perfect, and, well, literal.
Related: the joke anti-romantic travel posters in Jacques Tati's film Playtime that lampooned the internationalist/modernist style in vogue at the time.
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Comment on Where did all the tween fashion go? in ~design
EgoEimi (edited )LinkOh! This reminds me of a fantastic interview with HCI researcher and thought leader—which I use without irony because she was a huge influence to me when I was in university—Judith Donath on...- Exemplary
Oh! This reminds me of a fantastic interview with HCI researcher and thought leader—which I use without irony because she was a huge influence to me when I was in university—Judith Donath on Signaling, Design, and the Social Machine.
Here's the relevant segment on fashion and signaling:
Judith Donath: Yeah. And I think this notion of hip and fashion, which we tend to think of as very frivolous, is actually a lot more important in our culture than we recognize. Because we really do live in a world in which access to information is one of the key markers of status. I mean, wealth is certainly a very important one; but the whole notion of how do you get access to information, how good are you at assessing information, is a huge amount of how we display who we are. And that's really what fashion ultimately is: It's a signal of how good, how much access to information do you have and how good are you from parsing the good information from the bad information. And it's not just in the world of clothing. I mean, that's the very obvious one, where we think of fashion. But there's fashions in management styles. There's fashions in academic topics. There's fashions in all kinds of things. Slang is a fashion. One way of thinking about Twitter is that it's using news almost as fashion.
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Judith Donath: No, I don't think that's my point. I think the urge to divide the world into in-group and out-group and the urge to be in the in-group is pretty fundamentally part of what it means to be human. That's something you can sort of look into neuroscience research and how our brain reacts to those we perceive as in or out. There's a lot of plasticity about how we define in-group and out-group. It's quite plastic. But, we do that constantly. And so an enormous amount of signaling is about claims of affiliation, of being part of a particular group, whether it's a particular class or social group or the set of people who are interested in x or are Trump supporters or hate Trump or whatever. So I guess what my point with fashion is, is that since the development of fashion about 500 years ago, it increasingly isn't important whether you like it or not--that's a different thing--but it's an important marker of in-group and out-group membership in a world where access to knowledge is part of what marks those distinctions.
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Judith Donath: But the interesting thing, getting back to your tie, this is one of the things I find very interesting about fashion, and I certainly see this a lot with my 16-year-old, is this notion called 'countersignaling,' where if you have this tie and right now it's very out of style--in my case, my old jeans--my 16-year-old will wear them. And she's walking around in a pair of jeans from the 1980s. And her shoe goals for this year are a pair of sandals that Rihanna is promoting that look exactly like old lady bedroom slippers. And it's either that or Birkenstocks, all of which on somebody who was not in many other ways signaling, 'I am the height of fashion,' would mark you as extremely out of fashion. And it's a very interesting way to signal that you are so fashionable you do not have to worry about being mistaken for unfashionable. And it cannot be copied. That's one of the things, since the earliest theories of fashion, are that, like, the most fashionable, have a new fashion, and then the next below copy them; and make the top ones have to change. And countersignaling is the uncopyable fashion, because if you are not at the height of fashion, you can't copy it. Because people just look at--
Anyway, in short, everyone engages in fashion. People who say they're opting out of fashion, are doing fashion! (Male) senior software engineers who wear sweaters and slacks are doing fashion. Why would a male SWE wear sweaters and slacks as opposed to... a dress? A suit? Designer jeans and a Supreme hoodie?
Fashion signals information about the gender, national culture, ethnic culture, subculture, class, subclass, etc. etc. that we identify with and, more importantly, whose norms we have internalized to the point where it's like air to ourselves: unnoticeable yet all-permeating.
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Comment on The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers in ~life
EgoEimi Link ParentI was a precocious and fiercely curious child, and I wish that I had been given more freedom by my family and teachers in steering my own education. At home, I was coding (since elementary school)...children have their own independent right to learn that shouldn't be ignored..
I was a precocious and fiercely curious child, and I wish that I had been given more freedom by my family and teachers in steering my own education. At home, I was coding (since elementary school) and devouring books on every subject. And school was where I went to sit and be bored and be surrounded by other bored children.
But my mom had great faith in "The System". (ha, ha)
If/when I have kids, I want to try a hybrid school/homeschool approach where they spend 3 or 4 days a week in a traditional school setting, and the remaining days pursuing their own interests and projects — provided that my kids propose self-study plans and are willing to have a guide or tutor check on their self-studies. I guess the challenge lies in finding a school that could support and accommodate such a plan.
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Comment on Where did all the tween fashion go? in ~design
EgoEimi Link ParentYeah, there isn't a single dominant fashion anymore. The mass internet has shattered the cultural monolith, and now there are a bajillion subcultural dimensions flitting through people.I just think the culture-makers being unmoored from a monthly publication schedule + clothes being disposable and dirt cheap now have both combined to accelerate the trend cycles to the point where they aren't cyclical anymore. They're just continuously churning and never getting a chance to really sit and evolve into anything.
Yeah, there isn't a single dominant fashion anymore. The mass internet has shattered the cultural monolith, and now there are a bajillion subcultural dimensions flitting through people.
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Comment on Disney is staring down the barrel of a no good, very bad year in ~movies
EgoEimi LinkI think the last Disney film I saw was Luca. I like Disney, but I feel that they're leaning way too much on rehashing existing IP—Little Mermaid, Pinnochio, Peter Pan, Star Wars—instead of telling...I think the last Disney film I saw was Luca.
I like Disney, but I feel that they're leaning way too much on rehashing existing IP—Little Mermaid, Pinnochio, Peter Pan, Star Wars—instead of telling big new stories. Granted, I don't have children (yet), but if I did, I've probably watched the original Little Mermaid with them by now, and the proposition of seeing the same story but in live action doesn't have much relative appeal.
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Comment on Megathread #10 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkJust to lighten the mood: I'm now the proud owner of GAIagenda.com and there will be GAI shenanigans. 🌈Just to lighten the mood: I'm now the proud owner of GAIagenda.com and there will be GAI shenanigans. 🌈
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Comment on How do you decide if a piece of music is good? in ~music
EgoEimi Link ParentI'm also terrible at singing! I can't reproduce pitch, tone, rhythm, or anything. I want to take lessons sometime. I can't consciously control my larynx; other people's ability to control their...I'm also terrible at singing! I can't reproduce pitch, tone, rhythm, or anything.
I want to take lessons sometime. I can't consciously control my larynx; other people's ability to control their own appears simply as black wizardry to me.
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Comment on How do you decide if a piece of music is good? in ~music
EgoEimi LinkI'm a very visual and spatial person, so I listen to music visually. (I also see programming spatially too.) I envision music videos, people dancing, people singing, cinematic scenes, different...I'm a very visual and spatial person, so I listen to music visually. (I also see programming spatially too.)
I envision music videos, people dancing, people singing, cinematic scenes, different camera angles, audiovisual art installations, timelapsed landscapes and cityscapes, and abstract colors and shapes and lights in motion.
With good music, I can see in my mind's eye these moving images beautifully and with crisp detail. With good music, these images just manifest effortlessly.
With bad music, I struggle to put together scenes. The music appears in my head as mushy, unclear, muddled, dull, lifeless images.
Interestingly, I have a hard time hearing lyrics. To me, vocals are just another instrument to visualize, but I barely ever remember what the singer is saying. I know people who know the lyrics to every song, whereas I can't conjure any lyrics, even those of my favorite songs.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
EgoEimi LinkLearning XState, a state machine management library, and building my pet project around it. I like the visibility and degree it offers. I can see which events trigger which transitions into which...Learning XState, a state machine management library, and building my pet project around it.
I like the visibility and degree it offers. I can see which events trigger which transitions into which states. It's simplifying a lot of things for me.
I dislike how verbose it is. Parts of it are hack-y and ugly, especially around typing. Learning curve is steep. The docs were recently split between two websites, an old one (xstate.js.org) and a new one (stately.ai)—both look very visually similar—and I frequently accidentally end up on the old one via search, which adds to the confusion.
I'll probably try to contribute to the docs at some point. There's a lot of state management jargon that could be better explained earlier on. It took me a while to realize that "machines" are "interpreted", i.e. instantiated, as "services" which are "actors", but not all "actors" are "services".
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Comment on Comcast introduces NOW TV as a cable alternative in ~tv
EgoEimi Link ParentI wish Steve Jobs (personal flaws aside) were alive to use Apple's insane market power to create some kind of UX-sane market for TV.I wish Steve Jobs (personal flaws aside) were alive to use Apple's insane market power to create some kind of UX-sane market for TV.
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Comment on What are we in the golden age of? in ~talk
EgoEimi Link ParentI find this quite beautiful and true. Watching old media, the predominant US accent in media then was that old-timey transatlantic (white) accent. But now we have a beautiful rainbow of voice and...I find this quite beautiful and true. Watching old media, the predominant US accent in media then was that old-timey transatlantic (white) accent.
But now we have a beautiful rainbow of voice and accents. I myself have an accent that has a mix of influences: Taiwanese, Midwestern American, West Coast American, and more, resulting from a diverse upbringing.
My favorites:
- Shohreh Aghdashloo (she was in The Expanse and Arcane TV series) with her Persian accent that's so gravelly, serious, dignified.
- Danny Pudi with his happy, playful geeky voice
- Michelle Yeoh
- Lizzo, whose voice is so bright and bouncy and smooth
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Comment on Another update to Kagi plans - More searches and unlimited AI interactions for subscribers in ~tech
EgoEimi Link ParentI just realized it'd be nice if companies were to advertise "enoughness" more.Another update to Kagi plans - More searches and enough AI interactions for subscribers
I just realized it'd be nice if companies were to advertise "enoughness" more.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
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Comment on What are we in the golden age of? in ~talk
EgoEimi Link ParentI vaguely remember some satire out there about a hypothetical board game where the point of the game is to learn the rules of the game. 😛 But yeah, as much as I like board games, having to spend...I vaguely remember some satire out there about a hypothetical board game where the point of the game is to learn the rules of the game. 😛
But yeah, as much as I like board games, having to spend 30–90 mins reading the manual, setting up the board according to the manual, reading the rules aloud to everyone, doing a play test, and then reconsulting the rules when we hit the many gray areas is such a slog.
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Comment on Another update to Kagi plans - More searches and unlimited AI interactions for subscribers in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkAn aside: there should be an exact English word for "unlimited within human reason". Is there one?An aside: there should be an exact English word for "unlimited within human reason". Is there one?
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Comment on The best childcare in the world? Maybe so, but new parents in Iceland are holding out for better in ~life
EgoEimi Link ParentI've always found the idea of industrializing childcare to be a bit... well, industrial solution for an industrial society, where care isn't care but a service. But I don't know, I'm young and...I've always found the idea of industrializing childcare to be a bit... well, industrial solution for an industrial society, where care isn't care but a service. But I don't know, I'm young and idealistic and don't have kids yet.
I hope to have kids someday, and my ideal situation would be to live in a co-op with other families where parents in the co-op rotate as daycare providers.
- Cooperative living = slightly lower living costs = less work pressure = maybe opportunity to work part-time-ish?
- Kids can develop long-term relationships with other adults
- Kids can socialize with other kids
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Comment on Megathread #9 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
EgoEimi LinkAI Zombies Lately I've been thinking and anticipating the imminent and inevitable near-future introduction of AI-resurrected "zombies": deceased individuals whose past conversations are used to...AI Zombies
Lately I've been thinking and anticipating the imminent and inevitable near-future introduction of AI-resurrected "zombies": deceased individuals whose past conversations are used to train LLMs and voice models, and their images used to animate new portraits. Just a portrait one can talk with on a screen.
People will use AI Zombies to talk with deceased loved ones. I anticipate that this will explode in popularity: who doesn't want to not just hear their deceased loved one's voice but have an intelligible conversation? Talk to grandma about your garden, ask for a parent for advice, tell your brother about your upcoming travel plans — and hear those words, not just read them.
I'm undecided if this will be socially healthy, however. A critical component of the human experience is accepting that everyone, ourselves included, must leave this mortal plane eventually. But maybe AI Zombies—which I know is a crass term—can become a new step in the human grieving process.
This seems like such a sensible plan: it allows developers to densify an area without displacing residents. I wonder if this approach is attempted much in the US.
I was once headhunted for a tech job in the UK. When I crunched the numbers, I was gobsmacked by how poor the salaries were relative to the US and mainland Europe and how high cost of living was! I then felt that there was something fundamentally inefficient about the UK's economy.