A smattering of links
Hello and welcome to my first experiment in linkblogging; I’m still deciding on a format for these, but this first one is going to be a bit of a roundup.
To those of you who are monitoring my feeds or otherwise reading my site, thank you for the feedback on linkblogging! I am pleased that several of you reached out and I’m flattered to even have readers, let alone readers who will respond to questions! 💜
How to Ban Conversion Therapy by Philosophy Tube
Abi delivers a scathing takedown of the trans medical system in the UK in particular, and how it wrests control from patients in the name of continuing to hold power over them. She further provides a pathway to ending these practices decisively. None of us are free until all of us are.
also on YouTube
Why craft-lovers are losing their craft by Hong Minhee
The tension between craft and efficiency doesn’t disappear if you remove capitalism from the picture. LLM coding assistants produce faster results whether anyone is being paid or not, and any community, however it’s organized, will eventually have to reckon with what to do with that speed difference. Capitalism gives the harshest possible answer to that question: the slower worker loses their livelihood. But the question itself would survive capitalism. Other forms of social organization might answer it more gently, but they’d still have to answer it.
I’m not sure I fully agree with the assertion that LLM use is inevitable even free of capitalism’s influence, but the story here resonates with me. The tensions and contradictions of worker power in the tech industry continue to escalate.
I also believe that the speed increase is an illusion; there are many reasons to distrust the output which turn the accelerated speed into a slowdown. I think there’s a blog post in this from me to come; stay tuned.
h/t to James Healy for sharing
Voyager - Across the Unknown Explores Darker, Colder Space by Dia Lacina
[…] on my 9th run of Voyager: Across the Unknown […] it’s finally settling in just how ambitious this game […] is. […] It’s safe to say this narrative survival adaptation of a major television property is quite the scope-up in terms of project size and complexity. Voyager: Across the Unknown is ambitious. It’s not quite the ambition equivalent of launching a new network with a woman at the helm of a non-Enterprise Star Trek series in the mid-late 90s, but it comes close.
Great piece about one of the most interesting games I’ve played recently. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. It’s both a loving ode to the series and a wonderful game exploring all the negative space around the canonical narraive of Voyager.
Ageless Linux & the Ageless Device
Every device carries a printed label:
AGELESS LINUX
General Purpose Computing Device
OS: Debian Linux (RISC-V) · Provider: FFwF Robotics LLC
AB 1043 STATUS: NONCOMPLIANT
This device does not collect, store, or transmit the age of its user.
This is intentional. · § 1798.500(g) · § 1798.501(a)(1-3)
A thought-provoking form of protest of the wave of age-verification laws, and subsequent debate within the Linux community over compliance. Obviously much of Linux is contributed to by corporate interests, so I cannot truly begrudge the efforts to comply even if I disagree with the laws that are pushing for this. Anyway I want one. Or maybe fifty.
via jwz.org
Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture
Meta spent a record $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025, deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states, and covertly funded a group called the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) to advocate for the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA). But the operation extends beyond Meta.
Meta, a company who stands poised to have a strategic advantage over competitors due to their platforms already collecting age information, have been lobbying to the tune of tens of millions of US dollars, to make age verification a requirement.
That they are doing this on the sly is really rather telling. Push back against these measures in your jurisdiction.
China to help Cuba with solar energy amid US oil blockade and total power outage
China is offering solar energy to Cuba, an old ally left without power amid the US oil embargo, in a show of strength for Chinese renewable-energy credentials and a sign of Beijing’s economic footprint in Latin America.
An unequivocally good move here. Cuba is being strangled by the cronies in charge of the US. Frankly, Canada should be making similar moves in solidarity with other targeted nations in our region. No more wars in our names. Fossil fuels are an international security problem.
The very serious part-time unofficial hobby of videogame fan-translation by Hilltop
In my recent romhacking video I used a thumbnail with the simplest, most direct translation I could find in the script, specifically so that nobody could complain. The line was:
友枝小学校の４年生
I’m a 4th-grader at Tomoeda Elementary.
[…] someone showed up in the replies and tried to argue that the order of the words should be 100% preserved through translation and that it should be the perfectly SOVLfully accurate:
At Tomoeda Elementary I am a 4th grader.
Amazing. No notes. So yeah, I don’t talk about localization.
A great writeup about the thankless job of video game translation, and the ways in which people have pushed against the very things that make a good translation, and the infection of the community with latter-day LLM-based machine translation.
I’m still a bit heartbroken over Segagaga.
Wikipedia has prohibited use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content
Text generated by large language models (LLMs) often violates several of Wikipedia’s core content policies. For this reason, the use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited, save for the exceptions given below.
A 44-2 decision is a strong signal. Shoutout to Wikipedia editors for fighting the good fight here!
This is the beginning of me approaching blogging with an eye to making the ephemeral stories I read feel more a part of an ongoing record. Please feel free to contact me with any feedback or comments.