SC 2.4.4 logo

SC 2.4.4

Subscribe
Archives
July 9, 2025

[SC 2.4.4] Waist deep in footnotes

I've been waist deep in footnotes this week. They're surprisingly tricky!


toward a new aesthetic
"Platform aesthetic is ephemeral. We all know the experience of going to show someone a post, only to find the feed has refreshed and the meme has vanished, and you’re never going to find it again."

Astronaut snaps giant red 'jellyfish' sprite over North America during upward-shooting lightning event
Second impact sighted.

Some Thoughts on Techno-Fascism From Socialism 2025
"This is the endgame of our isolation. Rather than throwing up barriers that make it harder to seek companionship and support in each other, we are being offered an artificial replacement for other people’s humanity, and for our own thoughts."

The Grand Opening of an American Concentration Camp
I hope I live to see this concentration camp torn down and its enablers tried in The Hague.

Two Days Talking to People Looking for Jobs at ICE
"This is a disgusting country, I thought, irredeemable visually, psychically, morally, and ethically, and whatever is likable about our people’s warm patter does not in any way forgive what we have done to the world."

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes
Might be a good idea to go back to consulting in a few years.

The radical 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet – and left thousands of children unable to spell
peepl wur tat this

'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers
Uh oh.

These tiny lasers are completely edible
I wish to eat the edible sensor.

Against Self-Optimization
"Optimization promises to cure headaches, but then it gives them."

Was my IAAP Certification worth it?
As someone who helps to organize ID24, it was really nice to read that we provided CAEC time in a way that does not involve product shilling.

Why Did the New York Times Collaborate With a Eugenicist?
The second best time to divest from the New York Times is now.

King Solomons Baby
Sale begins in ~15 hours!

Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup/AI catchphrases
Damn.

How I Deploy This Site
This one Weird Trick™.

Miniature golf vs. Putt-Putt
I ws this many days old when I learned there's a difference!

Bots are overwhelming websites with their hunger for AI data
In hindsight, the verbal promise to honor robots.txt was very much naïve.

These Japanese trucks are slow and small. People can’t get enough of them
Kei trucks, kei trucks, kei trucks.

LLMs have no world model, which makes them less intelligent than text adventures written in the 1980s
"One of the mind-blowing things about LLMs is that they are in fact less “conscious” of how things work than a 1980s text adventure, or a chess program."

A convenience for some; necessary for others
A good reminder of what I try to do, as I continue to otherwise sour on contemporary tech.

14 logic-driven UI design tips to improve any interface
And speaking of what I do, it was very heartening to see WCAG-related concerns presented as good design.

New Foods for 2025
New Minnesota State Fair foods just dropped.

What Will It Take To Get You Off Twitter
I miss a lot of what I had on Twitter. Bluesky ain't it. Mastodon ain't it, either. It sure as shit isn't Threads or—horror of horrors—LinkedIn, either. That said, I can't go back and I hope you can leave it too.

Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to SC 2.4.4:
Powered by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.