In ~100 days, #Trump & the head of the Dep’t of #Agriculture significantly cut out much of the necessary work done by the agency. Multiple parts of our #food #systems are under #attack. https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/trump-usda-food-system-agriculture-first-100-days/
After all these years in systems, I’m always finding that I’ve already done a lot of the work I need to do.
It’s a nice surprise when you’re dreading some work to find out that past you already did it for you.
Does make me a little suspicious of what I might find next though. 
#Synology upcoming Plus Series #NAS #storage #systems will restrict full functionality to users who install the company's self-branded hard drives. While third-party drives will still work for basic storage, critical features including drive health monitoring, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic firmware updates will be disabled https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds
this week I'm reading Human Factors in Systems Engineering
there are so many gems I've highlighted already but really vibed with how the author clearly and simply expressed the impact of writing docs "early" here
The thing about "features" is that they aren't linear, they form a tree: *every* technical artifact--hell, every *line* of code--both satisfies some demands and (often) creates new ones.
Deciding which branches to follow, which to prune and when to do both is complex and ever-changing as the delivery system cycles demands...
Much of what's wrong with "product thinking" and "agile" today can be explained as a consequence of placing this responsibility in the hands of folks that neither understand this, nor are accountable to those who do.
We should consider that we are past fixing our global system. For true systemic equality, we may need to burn it to the ground and allow for regrowth.
(Excuse the binary/patriarchal language. It’s a direct quote.)
@paninid fast forward to the present and scientists who barely study #philosophy label #metaphysics as #pseudoscience (forgetting what #PhD means), torment #logic for the benefit of "elegant" #math equations (e.g. antimatter, dark #matter), and design #AI #systems that weaponize #ethics as justification for #information #censorship (#ChatGPT "knows" but refuses to answer how to a hot wire a car or commit murder while claiming no #opinion, ignorant that words and actions are different)
Excellent Sunday afternoon read from Professor @drmichaellevin for Noema Magazine that takes a look at the metaphors we use to distinguish between organic and non-organic beings and challenges some of the assumptions around what we consider to be machines and/or living things.
Very much in the style of Donna Haraway, he advocates at once for #pragmatism, for empirically testing the methods we use for interrogating systems that imbricate the organic and the machine and to keep an open mind when categorising which is which.
For fans of Douglas Hofstadter, #cybernetics, #systems and #ConsequentialCategories.
https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/
“Pro-Palestine protesters storm Elbit Systems HQs in Bristol, UK”
By Al Mayadeen English
“The Palestine Action activist group targeted Elbit Systems yet again, in a bid to stop the UK from granting contracts to the Israeli weapons manufacturer”
3FS: A high-performance distributed file system designed to address the challenges of AI training and inference workloads
The Myth of Human Supremacy
"So where do we begin? We begin by questioning the unquestioned beliefs that are the real authorities of this culture, and then we move out from there. And once you’ve begun that questioning, my job is done, because once those questions start they never stop. From that point on, what you do is up to you."
"Ultimately it’s a film that poses a question fundamental to #democracy: if we can’t understand a system that governs us, how much power do we actually have?"
https://www.countedoutfilm.com/#about
List of screenings throughout USA: https://www.countedoutfilm.com/screenings
On #PiDay, March 14, #Monterey Public Library is hosting a free screening, for teens and adults, of #CountedOut, 4-6PM. Registration required. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monterey-public-library-counted-out-film-screening-tickets-1200335207919?aff=oddtdtcreator BTW, we won’t be surprised if @Schlining ("Turning the beauty, complexity, and wonder of the deep-sea into long strings of ones and zeros”) is among those present.
Other #MontereyCounty screenings include March 13 at #CSUMB.
From trailer: “How is it that we can use math to understand the world, and also change the world?” …“Did you know that if you insert a single statistic into an assertion, people are 92% more likely to accept it without question?”
Counted Out, from filmmaker Vicki Abeles of #RaceToNowhere.
#lispyGopherClimate #lisp #softwareEngineering #podcast
#climate #haiku from @kentpitman
https://archives.anonradio.net/202502260000_screwtape.mp3 0UTC Wed!
Break from guests this week just
Richard P Gabriel's essay Incommensurability (2012) vs @robpike 's #Systems #software #Research is Irrelevant (2000).
#live
Viz our interviews in the last two months with @nosrednayduj , Kent Pitman, @masinter , @sacha and @ramin_hal9001
Hang out in #lambdaMOO #live as always!
telnet lambda.moo.mud.org 8888
co guest
@join screwtape
"If you want to be a convincing advisor, psychological research tells us that your observations/facts and rational arguments may have relatively little effect. You need to make sure your relation with the person you need to convince is as good as possible and the message is heard as often as possible."
—Gerben Wierda @gctwnl: https://ea.rna.nl/2022/10/24/on-the-psychology-of-architecture-and-the-architecture-of-psychology/ 
Terrible but yes I'm glad I read this thoughtful & considered piece. This part really caught my attention, something long thought but never expressed so well as by Ethan Marcotte:
"In government... infrastructure is built by laws, policies, and regulations. But regulations alone do not infrastructure make. Regulations require workers to become infrastructure: those workers who labor to understand new policies, how best to enact them, and then work to make them legible and understandable to the American public — and, yes, to enforce them. Without those federal workers, and their labor, these systems fall apart. And the architects of this assault on the federal workforce are keenly aware of that fact."
Beyond dismal, it's a complete dismantling of a society & so terrible to see. 
#Infrastructure
#systems
#infrastructureAsAService
#regulations
#regulation
#enforcingRegulations
#EthanMarcotte
#government
#govermentRegulation
Adjacent to that, some notes on local book clubs as I find them. First, #SomervillePublicLibrary has an ongoing Nonfiction #bookclub, meeting March 12 at 7 eastern over zoom to discuss #DebChachra's excellent How #Infrastructure Works: Inside the #Systems That Shape Our World
https://somervillepubliclibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/spl-nonfiction-book-club-there-is-nothing-for-you-here-finding-opportunity-in-the-twenty-first-century/ #SomervilleMA
https://cyberintel.substack.com/p/once-private-government-networks Over the past month, an unprecedented number of #critical #government #systems, including those at the nation’s #nuclear research labs, have been exposed to the open internet. This exposure jeopardizes both U.S. national #security and the privacy of millions of Americans. #IT #networks #enterprise #data #privacy #secrecy #classified #govdocs #cybercrime #malwae #surveillance #democracy #compromised #politics #doge #maga #gop #trump #musk
"There is great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole pattern at once."
—Margaret Mead, 1954
@_ppmv and they might say: "yeah but the resource contains that came with the #russian war made prices go brrr. see? this is a resource #collapse, a local limits-to-growth collapse." and in a way it is and it has been going on for a long time.
the orange idiot however was a decision. the decision to vote for him as well as the decision to not vote for harris. #systems level understanding is not an excuse for enabling a fascist. even if you hope for the purifying fire it isn't.
