Things I’m reading

Stop using HTML as the dumping ground for your build process du jour. We can do better.

“Students and families just feel like they’ve been with a wrecking ball when it comes to college,” Senator Ron Wyden admitted to a group of Oregon high schoolers in January 2016. The Democrat

Moral asymmetries, strategic ignorance, and preference falsification are all indicators that history will judge us harshly for our mistreatment of animals.

Eyetracking studies show that users sometimes look at only a single result on a search-results page because that result is good enough for their needs.

As we celebrate the International Day of Democracy, here are seven ways to mobilize citizens across differences as partisans for democracy.

A complete guide to mixing and applying wheatpaste to put up posters. Make the walls speak!

I had been experimenting with biocompatible polymers for around a year in 2020. I was interested in both short-term temporary body modification using injectables and longer term. See, there is not alot of information out there on this even though we know of sooo many biocompatible polymers because pharma companies want to charge $500 for 1cc/mL of some custom compound. People are willing to pay anything to like the way they look. Me, I was just willing to try anything. Usually, I would make a new recipe, inject a little under the skin in my forearm and monitor it for a few days and then try a larger volume. Really, my main goal in doing this stuff was to subvert the cosmetic medical enhancement industry. What if I could figure out how to have breasts for 48 hours. Or maybe something more permanent. Someone could completely change their appearance and then it would go away. That would be pretty cool. There are countries where injectables for breast enhancement are common and even some cosmetic doctors in the US do saline breast injections that go away in a day. I already tried the saline though. It lasts much less than a day and requires serious volumes. It was interesting but not interesting enough. This time I planned to try polyethylene glycol. I'ma be honest, my curiosity got the best of me and so that day I decided to skip the forearm test and just inject a small amount of a highly concentrated solution straight into my chest. After 30 minutes I could swear it felt like something strange was going on. Was my chest getting bigger? Another, 30 minutes pass and fuck, my chest was definitely getting bigger. It kept growing and growing and growing. From what I could surmise, the polyethylene glycol was so concentrated that it started to absorb water and expand. It was funny and cute. I couldn't help but laugh that I now had size C breasts and had no idea for how long. (It went away in 12 hours or so) How am I supposed to explain this to my partner? Another crazy biohacker experiment I guess? The thing is it wasn't just that. I was doing these experiments for more than just some sense of greater good. I was doing it for myself, I wanted breasts. I figured it was time I stopped hiding that, I really couldn't at that point. Ya' know the boobs and all. So I came out to my then partner. It was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life.

Coding at the push of a button. That's the dream isn't it? But what if the way we achieve that dream is through theft and exploitation?

I wrote the “Handbook for a Post-Roe America.” It’s time to put it into practice.

Lawmakers and activists fear that if the decision is overturned, states that adopt tough abortion restrictions could use location data to track down those who obtain or perform abortions.

The most powerful argument for abortion rights is to highlight the sex-based nature of these restrictions and argue that they violate equal rights. To succeed in arguing that sex equality requires the right to abortion, we need to be able to talk about how sex shapes access to abortion and how anti-abortion legislators target women with devastating consequences. The elimination of sex-based language in abortion politics makes this argument impossible, and reinforces the long-term right-wing strategy of suppressing information about sex-based disparities.

In our lives and as part of movements and organizations, many of us play different roles in pursuit of equity, shared liberation, inclusion, and justice. And yet, we often get lost and confused, or we are newcomers to ongoing social change efforts and don’t know where to start, or we are catalyzed into action in […]

Alex Schmidt argues that in a world full of security breaches, snooping, and third-party data aggregators, you should know where your users’ data goes. In this article, she explains why it’s time w…

Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are an absolute disaster for so many more reasons than the ecological.

Kellogg Co said on Tuesday a majority of its U.S. cereal plant workers have voted against a new five-year contract, forcing it to hire permanent replacements as employees extend a strike that started more than two months ago.

It was the first day in my last year of tech high school. The new programming teacher arrived and...

I can see a lot of connections to my grading philosophy in this - I allow resubmissions on all assignments and generally don’t penalize late work. It’s really challenging me to think about the role of “quality” in a creative grade, though, and what the expectation of labor is in a creative assignment where a simple concept is the most effective solve.

Sean Gilroy, head of cognitive design at BBC CAPE, believes the only solution is to scrap prescriptive, hierarchical views on remote working altogether. “...It’s really about managers dismissing this parental view towards workplace culture. Whenever you choose one way of working over another and remove people’s choice, that’s when you start to exclude people.”

Practical and opinionated pairing tips explained with snakes wearing hats.

One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.

The country’s leaders have set aside some misgivings and cooperated with gang leaders to reach their communities.

A heightened sense of awareness, common among all people of color during any activity, is particularly important to foragers of color.

The film and TV industry has been abusing its workers for decades with relentless schedules, stolen wages, grinding culture, unequal opportunity, and other hazardous conditions.

"The inspiration for the concept #CarefreeBlackGirl was the fact that, at that moment, I wasn’t feeling very carefree."

Facebook knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws but hasn’t fixed them. That’s a key finding of a Journal series that launched this week, based on an array of internal company documents. Read all the stories here.

A big 2018 algorithm change was designed to encourage positive interaction with friends and family. Company documents show how it had the opposite effect, rewarding outrage and sensationalism. CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted proposed fixes if it meant harming the business.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.