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ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

the durable version of this thread is now available at https://irenes.space/leaves/2026-10-07-purity

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
ello@void.ello.tech ("gemma lynn") wrote:

think of her the next time you call yourself a software engineer

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
uglyreykjavik.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Ugly Reykjavik") wrote:

The carpentry workshop with two door handles also had this awesome wooden dumpster.

#Iceland #photography #streetphotography #door #concrete

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
Eggfreckles@mastodon.mit.edu ("Thomas Brand") wrote:

We lost a legend. https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

Rest in peace, you legend!

"We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers."

-- Margaret Hamilton

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
rgarner ("Russell Garner") wrote:

Oh no, RIP Margaret Hamilton

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
petrabrandstrom@mastodon.art ("Petra Brandström") wrote:

October drawing challenge day 7: Cookies!

Tomorrow: Cinnamon.

Boosted by focusaurus@recurse.social ("Peter Lyons (he)"):
cmconseils ("Laura :bongoCat:") wrote:

"Snorkeling" Wood Sculpture,Hsu Tung Han,2017

#art

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

"I tried generated recipes, but AI don't know nothin' about cookies!"

-- @bashbunni

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
stefan@front-end.social ("Stefan Judis") wrote:

Here's the best website you'll open today.

You're welcome! 🫣

https://destroy.spritefusion.com/

Attachments:

• video: Preview of destroy.spritefusion.com which loads a page. There's an avatar that destroys the website.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

but if you have one take-away, let it be this

you can refuse to let a thing control you, without denying its existence. this does not mean you have to compromise on what you believe or who you are.

it does not mean you have to admit the thing is good if it isn't. some things are just bad, that's real!

it simply means you have to practice certain emotional tools

and those tools are quite powerful ones, that can really improve your life, if you let them.

please let them. 💜

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

we're repeating ourselves, so that tells us it's time to wrap this up. like we said - we're not good at explaining this. that's due to lack of practice; spiritual beliefs are a private thing, and we don't talk about it very much.

there's a whole side thread, about how this relates to queerness, which we didn't go down because we don't know how to weave it into our core point today. you'll have to imagine that for yourselves, if you want it

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

you have to feel things, or else you they keep accumulating. no matter how successfully you push them away, the absence of those feelings becomes part of you, part of your structure, and it's a structural weakness.

the way to deal with this sort of thing is to feel it, first, and then once you've fully indulged it, ask yourself what you want to do about it.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

we're not suggesting that any use of purity narratives leads to dissociative memory issues; that would be ridiculous. it's just a thing that can happen, when the stakes are high enough, when it's done consistently over a long enough period of time, when the underlying neurology is predisposed to it, when there's enough pain involved. that's our personal history, probably not yours.

but building that wall isn't a good thing, even if its harms wind up being less than that for you.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

we don't need to deny that the feelings exist. that would be counterproductive. it's important that, whatever process we use, that process involves actually feeling things. otherwise we get a backlog of pent-up feelings that we can only deal with by building that wall higher and higher, and on a scale of decades that wall becomes an entire partitioned-off emotional state, the other side of the wall becomes an entire other person. don't do that to yourselves.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

we can't dismiss that fear, because it's well-founded

but there's something else we can do with it. we can tell the fear: we hear you. your goal is to deliver a warning, to tell us what we care about, to tell us what we have to lose. we have received it. we take it seriously, our strategy treats that danger as a priority, we don't know if we'll win but we know we're doing the best we can.

we can thank it, and let it go.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

notice that it's not the application of the technology that scares us. it's fucking useless shit, frankly, and anyone who can't see that is too deep in it. sorry :/

it's the fact that everyone we know is fighting everyone else over it. that is a lasting, serious harm. the way we make each other feel is real, possibly the most real thing there is.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

the anger is the easy part, though, we know how to turn anger into a sustaining force. we're activists, and what that means is that when we see injustice, we do not accept it, we dedicate our lives to fighting it. so the anger is fine

the hard part is the fear. we're afraid that Nazis will kill everyone we love and that this technology, by spreading conflict through every community at once, will help to do that

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

we refuse to be defined by these things, we refuse the idea that our life from now on is supposed to be about getting angry at them.

we do have a lot of anger about them, about what they're doing to the artistic discipline we love and have spent our life on, but we also understand that they can never take who we are away from us, no matter what happens, and so we are able to move past those feelings.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

it's this

we do not reject large language models. we have no interest in large language models.

we do not use them, we have not used them voluntarily and there is no future in which we will. we'll fucking go to trade school for four years and learn to be a machinist instead of a programmer if that's the only way to avoid the fucking things. we don't think it'll come to that, but that's the choice we've made.

but importantly, we refuse to give the idea any power over us.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

but there is a particular conflict that's playing out this year which made us feel that now is the time to share these thoughts

it's a crossroads that a lot of people are facing right now, not just us, and we just think... whatever choices everyone makes, you deserve to have this perspective available in making them

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

this thread is about a lot of things, and we don't want y'all to understand it as narrow in focus. our thoughts on imperfection affect everything in our life. they could affect everything in your life, if you choose to let them, but that's up to you.

it's risky, then, to mention any single inspiration. it could reduce the whole topic in your mind, as a reader, to just that one thing. that would be a mistake

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

stories that tell us to try to be separate are doomed from the outset. reality contradicts them, and therefore that structural weakness will always come to the fore, sooner or later, if you go that route.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

humans are not separate from each other. the idea that we are is an illusion. even when we express these thoughts solely to ourselves, in the privacy of our mind, we do so using language, humanity's oldest and grandest invention, the product of billions of individual choices by billions of humans before us over, according to the latest anthropological research, possibly as much as a million years.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

and yet it tries to do everything, it tries to insert itself into every topic, every moment of uncertainty, every decision, every conflict

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

you know the old joke, "a vice-grip is the wrong tool for every job"?

purity is the wrong emotional tool for every emotional task. there is nothing it does well.

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

because WOW does this world, and this social venue, encourage us very strongly to use purity as the sole tool for everything

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

so we particularly feel it's important to know what it means to move past purity narratives - again, not to push them away, but to understand them, fully feel them, and then choose to do something else

ireneista@irenes.space ("Irenes (many)") wrote:

the structure of online communication platforms, especially anything with a "reshare" feature, tends to heavily prioritize certain forms of human interaction over others. in particular, every major conflict ends up taking the shape of a reactivity storm, even if some other form would be better for everyone. that SUCKS.

brennan@social.lol ("Brennan Kenneth Brown 👻 BOO!") wrote:

Wintering: On Hiatus, Bill C-22, and Why I Don't Block People

https://brennan.day/wintering-on-hiatus-bill-c-22-and-why-i-dont-block-people/

#privacy #policy #community #selfhosting #webdev #fediverse