what. in the world. is happening here @matt_gray_ @thatroblennon @UpSkillYourLife @zaafirsalam please help me understand

is anyone else suddenly seeing a bunch of “top X ways to Y better” threads from the same style of generic tech/startup influencer dude? did they all just get back from influencer camp? is it vampire rules, is there a head influencer we need to take down okay seriously what’s going on here

unrelated to podcast tweet: I’d like to start considering game streaming more seriously!
1. Are there games you’d be into watching me play? It’s surprising how many I’ve never touched.
2. I think I’m at my best with banter partners! Anyone down to ride shotgun on said streams? I never had a PS2, and last night I PCSX2’d Devil May Cry for the very first time and it’s a trip. Also, I’ve been saving Hades for a special occasion.

i’m glad i don’t claim to be a programmer because it’s a huge self-own to be as angry at TypeScript as i am right now. BUDDY you KNOW WHAT I MEAN stop being WEIRD ABOUT EVERYTHING typescript: you can’t do that
me: why not
typescript: it’s not a string
me: well it’s gonna be
typescript: gonna be?
me: ya when the promise comes back
typescript: you’re sure about that.
me: totally. just trust me
typescript: absolutely not

THREAD: I got access to Midjourney (an image-generating neural network) and I intend to make it Midjourney's problem

cw: uhhh unsure actually but feels like there should be a cw You can apply for beta access on this form:
o9q981dirmk.typeform.com/to/zZtF1mVc

You're given a starter amount of compute credits, at which point you're able to get more with a subscription and/or accepting lower compute priority. (I haven't run out of credits yet—we'll see how far I get.)

So I did a weird thing where I only watched half of JoJo S1 before finishing the series, and now I’m watching the other half. Thoughts:
1. lol Joseph’s still such a putz
2. THE COLISEUM
3. wow Araki really loves Italy huh
4. LISA
5. LISA climbing a greasy phallus so I can go meet the two guys who gave me wedding rings

I’m not saying this is the correct take whatsoever, but I’m legit struggling to understand what I’m hearing in terms other than “Yosemite Sam might buy my favorite coffee shop that Marvin the Martian started, so all the regulars are talking about just making our coffee at home” I am no fan of either Mssrs. Reddit or Ayahuasca McBlockchain, but like, what is actually the plan here, and whatever it is, how can we make sure it doesn’t just wind up hurting us more than it hurts anyone else

THREE TRUTHS from someone who literally gets paid to think about how people use Calendly:

1. no technology is truly neutral
2. the full social impact of technology is constructed
3. construction necessarily involves all participants

Calendly links are no exception. when you send a Calendly link, the response depends on individual interpretation of what that means in the context of that interpersonal social or power dynamic. it may be good, or bad, but it's wholly subjective.
Calendly plays its own part in that. humans do the rest.

"main account" is when you make a tweet. "alt account" is anything you put in the replies to that tweet it's okay no algorithm knows to look here

thread for lazytweeting my slow watch of Witcher S2 Nivellen: have some food! [flintstones meat lands on geralt's head]
Ciri: wow, that's impressive,
Nivellen: but?
Ciri: just like. why does it always have to appear from like, 4 feet up
Nivellen: oh it doesn't
Geralt:
Nivellen: i told you i'm a MoNStER

First time I’ve been in the same game as a legit #BrawlStars play of the week, don’t even care that it wasn’t mine
(caption in comments, also as context for non-players) Video shows a 3 on 3 match of Brawl Ball, a soccer-like game mode in Brawl Stars (a cartoonish arena battle game for mobile). Winner is the first team to two goals, or highest score at the end of the 2.5 minute clock. Overtime if tied. Score is 0-1, favoring the red (enemy) team.

A thread on blood testing for transfeminine HRT, beyond just checking estrogen and testosterone levels, heavily based on my recent personal experiences attempting to validate some long-standing hunches about my medical transition. I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice. It's every individual's right to decide their own best path for accessing the outcomes they desire, and obligation to do so responsibly. If you have corrections, clarifications, or contradicting info, please feel free to share.

In the anime Fate/zero: UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS, the hero’s ultimate magic is creating perfect replicas. His enemy (whose magic is an armory of legendary swords) disses him for this, but he wins in a sword-off because a perfect fake IS simply the real thing. Anyway, this is gender Q: Ada isn’t “sword-off” a weird way to say “swordfight”?
A: no. the armory guy shoots his swords from portals connected to the armory, and the hero is able to counter each one by manifesting perfect fakes and shooting them right back

randomly feeling salty that despite doing undergrad at an incredibly nerdy school AND having a diehard party crew, there was a paucity of enthusiastic volunteers to help me build and playtest “beerpong with D&D classes” to be fair, it usually came up while we were playing regular beerpong, which is for a variety of reasons not the utmost best game design environment

had a dream i asked @jmspool to help me investigate a haunted warehouse. he gave me 30 minutes at his hourly rate, we had a definitive ghost encounter, then the time was up and he calmly requested his project retainer fee to continue. i really respected that notable is that in this dream world he was still a ux guy

Q: What robots are cool? I mean *cool*. AI and androids can count, but they require a good case. To get a sense of standards, @BrooklynVV and I have thus far decided:

Uncool:
- C3PO
- Sonny
- Anyone from Ex Machina
- JARVIS
- Bender
- WALL-E *or* EVE

Cool:
- R2D2
- Johnny Five

I’m sure this either isn’t very good, or it is and has already been done before, but in the last 5 minutes before waking up my brain randomly bestowed upon me (and I am now sleepily attempting to relate) a narrative generation tool I’m calling Tender Chess: 1) Wars are conflicts. Conflicts are perspectives. Perspectives are stories. Every person is a nation. Set up the board to set the story. Each side can have a mix of white and black pieces. (The legend mapping between perspective and chesspiece does not exist yet)

smash missed out on rich possibilities but none so more than

if Siri was a person i'd absolutely be her friend, but mostly to protect her from a world she clearly does not understand me: hey siri can you get the door
siri: um i can google that for you?
me: [balancing packages on one knee] hahah god please never change

you’re in her DMs. i’m in her DMs. we possess mutually distinct qualia, and thus cannot reasonably be said to inhabit a state of philosophical equivalence also attempting to quantify such things by our respective perceived access to a third, independent being is a folly of both the mind and heart, to say nothing of the short shrift given to the inherent gift of personhood, or the bevy of problematic ramifications qua feminism

technology will not rest until the primary survival skill required for life on earth is how well we can anticipate and respond to the mental models of extremely complex algorithms

https://twitter.com/vogon/status/1438255752129310720

I used to think of this purely in the context of economic survival, but realistically “how to not look like a road to a car” and “how to not look like a perp to a bigdog” will eventually be right up there with “stop, drop, and roll” and avoiding anvil-shaped shadows