napalmskye

[napalmskye]

Oh I'm sorry C: you've only got 6GB free? Only six fucking gig? We used to boot the OS off fucking floppy drives but I'm so so sorry that six entire gigabytes of free space isn't enough for you you poor starving thing. You've been experiencing worse and worse memory issues for months and now you're freezing and crashing every few minutes because why, you just can't make 6 gig work? Grow the fuck up.

[napalmskye]

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

[napalmskye]

[napalmskye]

Listen, folks, I also hate generative AI and do not think it is an effective accomodation, but if your argument against it is "Oh, you think [task] is hard? What a stupid idiot baby!" then I'm sorry to say that is Literally Just Ableism. Please think about what you are saying. The point should be that it doesn't actually work to solve the problems that people are struggling with, not that they're wrong for struggling in the first place.

[napalmskye]

The "frustration tolerance" post has generated a lot of reactions and I wish I could keep up and read all of them, but it got me going into a lot of introspection and how I got over the "inaction due to perfectionism" issue.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm autistic but I don't have ADHD. It came as a surprise to me that several people were new to the phrase "frustration tolerance" and it is worth mentioning that this is a concept I learned during my time as a clinician in occupational therapy when working with kids on the spectrum, which yes, absolutely involves autism and ADHD, and you should know it's not your fault, but this should also give you a clue that this is something that can be worked on.

Tough self-talk (tough, not derogatory mind you) may not work for some of you, but it does for me, and the next lines might be unpleasant to hear. Also a disclaimer that this is all very specific to me and my experiences so take it with a grain of salt.

I found that the root cause of the "inaction due to perfectionism" is ego. I think about myself too fucking much. Drawing is just another problem that can be solved with a logical series of steps (practice, study, repetition). Deep down you know this. The problem is that this logic breaks down if you think of yourself as an exception to the rule for whatever reason, for instance if you were like me and was told at a young age that I was naturally gifted at drawing and didn't need further studies (I didn't start actually studying until I was 21-22). Well! Tough shit. But also I'm a grown-ass man who gives a fuck what my high school teachers said about me. The faster you get your head out of your ass about the gifted kid bullshit and just think of yourself as just another average schmuck the faster and more efficiently you can put in mileage and get things going.

An extension of point number 1: Did I really think I was the only person on earth who gives a shit about perfectionism? Of course not. Every other person who put out a creative piece of work is just as concerned as me and just as bummed out about the mediocrity of the results. The only difference is that they tried and they got something out of it. If the idea is really just that good just fucking go back to it later. Again and again, better this time. It's not a big deal.

I promise so much of this is just rooted to tempering down your ego and it genuinely is nuts how low self-esteem and being full of yourself are concepts that just feed into one another but I believe that once you're aware of this you can find some balance. Not everyday, some days are just bad. It happens. But just keep that in mind. OK!

[napalmskye]

The "frustration tolerance" post has generated a lot of reactions and I wish I could keep up and read all of them, but it got me going into a lot of introspection and how I got over the "inaction due to perfectionism" issue.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm autistic but I don't have ADHD. It came as a surprise to me that several people were new to the phrase "frustration tolerance" and it is worth mentioning that this is a concept I learned during my time as a clinician in occupational therapy when working with kids on the spectrum, which yes, absolutely involves autism and ADHD, and you should know it's not your fault, but this should also give you a clue that this is something that can be worked on.

Tough self-talk (tough, not derogatory mind you) may not work for some of you, but it does for me, and the next lines might be unpleasant to hear. Also a disclaimer that this is all very specific to me and my experiences so take it with a grain of salt.

I found that the root cause of the "inaction due to perfectionism" is ego. I think about myself too fucking much. Drawing is just another problem that can be solved with a logical series of steps (practice, study, repetition). Deep down you know this. The problem is that this logic breaks down if you think of yourself as an exception to the rule for whatever reason, for instance if you were like me and was told at a young age that I was naturally gifted at drawing and didn't need further studies (I didn't start actually studying until I was 21-22). Well! Tough shit. But also I'm a grown-ass man who gives a fuck what my high school teachers said about me. The faster you get your head out of your ass about the gifted kid bullshit and just think of yourself as just another average schmuck the faster and more efficiently you can put in mileage and get things going.

An extension of point number 1: Did I really think I was the only person on earth who gives a shit about perfectionism? Of course not. Every other person who put out a creative piece of work is just as concerned as me and just as bummed out about the mediocrity of the results. The only difference is that they tried and they got something out of it. If the idea is really just that good just fucking go back to it later. Again and again, better this time. It's not a big deal.

I promise so much of this is just rooted to tempering down your ego and it genuinely is nuts how low self-esteem and being full of yourself are concepts that just feed into one another but I believe that once you're aware of this you can find some balance. Not everyday, some days are just bad. It happens. But just keep that in mind. OK!

[napalmskye]

One legitimately weird thing about Tumblr is that we literally can’t code for shit, many people quit working at Tumblr due to a hostile work environment, and we can’t seem to program a simple blogging website to not flood your RAM.

[napalmskye]

Silly Game Time: Let's play "Me, An Intellectual"! First, think of a sentence (it can be a quote, a saying, a song lyric, a joke, a meme--anything, as the game is literally named after a meme format). Second, smarten it up with needlessly verbose synonyms!

For example, "Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg!" becomes "Existence is comparable to a typhoon within this fowl municipality!"

"I've got a big bag of crabs here! I'm gonna put them in my mouth, oh yes!"

"I have a frankly ludicrously expansive canvas sack full of decapod crustaceans of the sub-order Brachyura in my possession! I am going to open my oral cavity and fill it with said crustaceans, verily and immediately!"

[napalmskye]

Cats getting caught doing crimes

[napalmskye]

[napalmskye]

Girls practice chinese lion dance

[napalmskye]

Girls practice chinese lion dance

[napalmskye]

Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

[napalmskye]

New IRS Campaign Fucking Dares You To Take Deduction For Home Office

[napalmskye]

[napalmskye]

Tesla accused of hacking odometers to weasel out of warranty repairs

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

A lawsuit filed in February accuses Tesla of remotely altering odometer values on failure-prone cars, in a bid to push these lemons beyond the 50,000 mile warranty limit:

https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/tesla-accused-of-using-sneaky-tactic-to-dodge-car-repairs

The suit was filed by a California driver who bought a used Tesla with 36,772 miles on it. The car's suspension kept failing, necessitating multiple servicings, and that was when the plaintiff noticed that the odometer readings for his identical daily drive were going up by ever-larger increments. This wasn't exactly subtle: he was driving 20 miles per day, but the odometer was clocking 72.35 miles/day. Still, how many of us monitor our daily odometer readings?

In short order, his car's odometer had rolled over the 50k mark and Tesla informed him that they would no longer perform warranty service on his lemon. Right after this happened, the new mileage clocked by his odometer returned to normal. This isn't the only Tesla owner who's noticed this behavior: Tesla subreddits are full of similar complaints:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/1ca92nk/is_tesla_inflating_odometer_to_show_more_range/

This isn't Tesla's first dieselgate scandal. In the summer of 2023, the company was caught lying to drivers about its cars' range:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Drivers noticed that they were getting far fewer miles out of their batteries than Tesla had advertised. Naturally, they contacted the company for service on their faulty cars. Tesla then set up an entire fake service operation in Nevada that these calls would be diverted to, called the "diversion team." Drivers with range complaints were put through to the "diverters" who would claim to run "remote diagnostics" on their cars and then assure them the cars were fine. They even installed a special xylophone in the diversion team office that diverters would ring every time they successfully deceived a driver.

These customers were then put in an invisible Tesla service jail. Their Tesla apps were silently altered so that they could no longer book service for their cars for any reason – instead, they'd have to leave a message and wait several days for a callback. The diversion center racked up 2,000 calls/week and diverters were under strict instructions to keep calls under five minutes. Eventually, these diverters were told that they should stop actually performing remote diagnostics on the cars of callers – instead, they'd just pretend to have run the diagnostics and claim no problems were found (so if your car had a potentially dangerous fault, they would falsely claim that it was safe to drive).

Most modern cars have some kind of internet connection, but Tesla goes much further. By design, its cars receive "over-the-air" updates, including updates that are adverse to drivers' interests. For example, if you stop paying the monthly subscription fee that entitles you to use your battery's whole charge, Tesla will send a wireless internet command to your car to restrict your driving to only half of your battery's charge.

This means that your Tesla is designed to follow instructions that you don't want it to follow, and, by design, those instructions can fundamentally alter your car's operating characteristics. For example, if you miss a payment on your Tesla, it can lock its doors and immobilize itself, then, when the repo man arrives, it will honk its horn, flash its lights, back out of its parking spot, and unlock itself so that it can be driven away:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Some of the ways that your Tesla can be wirelessly downgraded (like disabling your battery) are disclosed at the time of purchase. Others (like locking you out and summoning a repo man) are secret. But whether disclosed or secret, both kinds of downgrade depend on the genuinely bizarre idea that a computer that you own, that is in your possession, can be relied upon to follow orders from the internet even when you don't want it to. This is weird enough when we're talking about a set-top box that won't let you record a TV show – but when we're talking about a computer that you put your body into and race down the road at 80mph inside of, it's frankly terrifying.

Obviously, most people would prefer to have the final say over how their computers work. I mean, maybe you trust the manufacturer's instructions and give your computer blanket permission to obey them, but if the manufacturer (or a hacker pretending to be the manufacturer, or a government who is issuing orders to the manufacturer) starts to do things that are harmful to you (or just piss you off), you want to be able to say to your computer, "OK, from now on, you take orders from me, not them."

In a state of nature, this is how computers work. To make a computer ignore its owner in favor of internet randos, the manufacturer has to build in a bunch of software countermeasures to stop you from reconfiguring or installing software of your choosing on it. And sure, that software might be able to withstand the attempts of normies like you and me to bypass it, but given that we'd all rather have the final say over how our computers work, someone is gonna figure out how to get around that software. I mean, show me a 10-foot fence and I'll show you an 11-foot ladder, right?

To stop that from happening, Congress passed the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Despite the word "copyright" appearing in the name of the law, it's not really about defending copyright, it's about defending business models. Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, helping someone bypass a software lock is a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense). That's true whether or not any copyright infringement takes place.

So if you want to modify your Tesla – say, to prevent the company from cheating your odometer – you have to get around a software lock, and that's a felony. Indeed, if any manufacturer puts a software lock on its product, then any changes that require disabling or bypassing that lock become illegal. That's why you can't just buy reliable third-party printer ink – reverse-engineering the "is this an original HP ink cartridge?" program is a literal crime, even though using non-HP ink in your printer is absolutely not a copyright violation. Jay Freeman calls this effect "felony contempt of business model."

Thus we arrive at this juncture, where every time you use a product or device or service, it might behave in a way that is totally unlike the last time you used it. This is true whether you own, lease or merely interact with a product. The changes can be obvious, or they can be subtle to the point of invisibility. And while manufacturers can confine their "updates" to things that make the product better (for example, patching security vulnerabilities), there's nothing to stop them from using this uninspectable, non-countermandable veto over your devices' functionality to do things that harm you – like fucking with your odometer.

Or, you know, bricking your car. The defunct EV maker Fisker – who boasted that it made "software-based cars" – went bankrupt last year and bricked the entire fleet of unsold cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

I call this ability to modify the underlying functionality of a product or service for every user, every time they use it, "twiddling," and it's a major contributor to enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Enshittification's observable symptoms follow a predictable pattern: first, a company makes things good for its users, while finding ways to lock them in. Then, once it knows the users can't easily leave, the company makes things worse for end-users in order to deliver value to business customers. Once these businesses are locked in, the company siphons value away from them, too, until the product or service is a pile of shit, that we still can't leave:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#franklinite

Twiddling is key to enshittification: it's the method by which value is shifted from end-users to business customers, and from business customers to the platform. Twiddling is the "switch" in enshittification's series of minute, continuous bait-and-switches. The fact that DMCA 1201 makes it a crime to investigate systems with digital locks makes the modern computerized device a twiddler's playground. Sure, a driver might claim that their odometer is showing bad readings, but they can't dump their car's software and identify the code that is changing the odometer.

This is what I mean by "demon-haunted computers": a computer is "demon-haunted" if it is designed to detect when it is under scrutiny, and, when it senses a hostile observer, it changes its behavior to the innocuous, publicly claimed factory defaults:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/18/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

But as soon as the observer goes away, the computer returns to its nefarious ways. This is exactly what happened with Dieselgate, when VW used software that detected the test-suite run by government emissions inspectors, and changed the engine's characteristics when it was under their observation. But once the car was back on the road, it once again began emitting toxic gas at levels that killed killed dozens of people and sickened thousands more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/upshot/how-many-deaths-did-volkswagens-deception-cause-in-us.html

Cars are among the most demon-haunted products we use on a daily basis. They are designed from the chassis up to do things that are harmful to their owners, from stealing our location data so it can be sold to data-brokers, to immobilizing themselves if you miss a payment, to downgrading themselves if you stop paying for a "subscription," to ratting our your driving habits to your insurer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

These are the "legitimate" ways that cars are computers that ignore their owners' orders in favor of instructions they get from the internet. But once a manufacturer arrogates that power to itself, it is confronted with a tempting smorgasbord of enshittificatory gambits to defraud you, control you, and gaslight you. Now, perhaps you could wield this power wisely, because you are in possession of the normal human ration of moral consideration for others, to say nothing of a sense of shame and a sense of honor.

But while corporations are (legally) people, they are decidedly not human. They are artificial lifeforms, "intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic" (as HG Wells said of the marauding aliens in War of the Worlds):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/14/timmy-share/#a-superior-moral-justification-for-selfishness

These alien invaders are busily xenoforming the planet, rendering it unfit for human habitation. Laws that ban reverse-engineering are a devastating weapon that corporations get to use in their bid to subjugate and devour the human race.

The US isn't the only country with a law like Section 1201 of the DMCA. Over the past 25 years, the US Trade Representative has arm-twisted nearly every country in the world into passing laws that are nearly identical to America's own disastrous DMCA. Why did countries agree to pass these laws? Well, because they had to, or the US would impose tariffs on them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/03/friedmanite/#oil-crisis-two-point-oh

The Trump tariffs change everything, including this thing. There is no reason for America's (former) trading partners to continue to enforce the laws it passed to protect Big Tech's right to twiddle their citizens. That goes double for Tesla: rather than merely complaining about Musk's Nazi salutes, countries targeted by the regime he serves could retaliate against him, in a devastating fashion. By abolishing their anticircuvmention laws, countries around the world would legalize jailbreaking Teslas, allowing mechanics to unlock all the subscription features and software upgrades for every Tesla driver, as well as offering their own software mods. Not only would this tank Tesla stock and force Musk to pay back the loans he collateralized with his shares (loans he used to buy Twitter and the US predidency), it would also abolish sleazy gimmicks like hacking drivers' odometers to get out of paying for warranty service:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/15/musklemons/#more-like-edison-amirite

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[napalmskye]

today we post everett true