Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 12hI have a feeling that photography used to be art, before it was advertising. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 10/10/2026Now that the internet's shredding the social fabric it's easy to forget about the last technology to have shredded the social fabric. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 10/10/2026What are you, trying to sneak out of paying the honest bribe? Sounds pretty underhanded if you ask me ... 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 30/09/2026not artificial intelligence but "patience for reading the manual too cheap to meter" 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 20/09/2026It feels like a lot of discourse is going towards: "technology is a form of nature so we have to let nature take its course." 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 07/09/2026writing is describing process at one level of detail coding is describing process at a higher level of detail speaking to an audience is describing process at the lowest level of detail (but high leverage) (?) 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 31/08/2026'Sycophant' would be a funny title to put on a business card. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 31/08/2026What I've found changes things is that old categories break, and new categories form. Those result in names changing. When you decide to change a name, you can update all your links [with sufficient diligence] but you're powerless to update others' links. 110
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 31/08/2026Great thread. As a repairman I am always thinking about how modern devices are not designed to be repaired. Lots of people are tackling repairs with the help of chatbots that they never would have otherwise. 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 23/08/2026only two species of cults, sex cults and death cults 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 22/08/2026the computer is the everything information place. it needs an immune system. it needs a deletion system, that happens on a rhythm. the archive must remain small. all libraries eventually burn. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 22/08/2026Let me just ask this of myself. What "computation" do I actually do? -search documents using Ctrl F -search large file trees for a file I vaguely remember exists by name, date, file type -make spreadsheets very rarely, have them calculate things even more rarely 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 10/08/2026everyone knows the Optimal Persona has rugged features 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 10/08/2026"Does anyone have a good workflow for X?" "No but here is my bad workflow that is functional." 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 31/05/2026Design for the gerontocrats you want to see in the world. Stop changing the menus. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 23/05/2026The year was 2026. The fad in the cities was to take reptilian compounds, purchased from overseas on the black market. The drugs made people thin and sluggish, which was seen as quite desirable. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 19/05/2026Interesting thread, worth pondering. Who gets to define "efficiency?" 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 14/05/2026I love seeing a thread like this like “Everyone hates modernity ESPECIALLY the people whose jobs are on the frontlines of creating it.” news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4810...news.ycombinator.comScreenshots of Old Desktop OSes | Hacker News 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 11/05/2026are you a propagandist, an unwitting propagandist, an element of the propagation *medium,* or a secret forth thing (raised by wolves) 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 01/05/2026Related, I've been working on an idea that the weird, contradictory essence of a *gadget* is to be simultaneously empowering and disempowering. 110
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 21/04/2026Here's another one of these guys. He'll make things like a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a fan-blade propeller from scrap. youtube.com/watch?v=u3Fq...youtube.comThe Last WheelbarrowYouTube video by Jaimie Stuff 110
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 10/04/2026That's a winning phrase right there. I'd like to see code take more cues from the legal system, it at least aspires to justice. 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Will Claude 8.2 mourn the obsolescence of Claude 7.6.2.1? If not he, then who? 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 30/03/2026The general pattern is: the thing doesn't need to perform its original function. It needs to look like something that does, long enough to sell. 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 27/03/2026"Information economy without information hygeine equals scam economy." transfer pricing 220
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 26/03/2026Simultaneous learned helplessness and megalomania ... now there's a signature. 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 18/03/2026"a glut of technical riches never properly absorbed" What makes them riches if they can't be absorbed? 110
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 15/02/2026Nice thread about the skill I call "Technical Purchasing" 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 09/02/2026Seems to me like there are two classes of common "bad outcome scenarios" where people will fail to attribute the bad outcome to the bad information. I guess they're sort of already named. 1. "cascading failures" 2. "swiss cheese model" 110
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 09/02/2026I thought the animated show Undone was a pretty compelling depiction of the inner experience of a psychotic episode. First season, at least. 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 06/02/2026"I'm a repairman, my job security comes from entropy itself." 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 20/01/2026"I find that most moral codes are elevated expressions of economic necessity." 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 05/12/2025If Clippy makes the perfect scapegoat, what does it's ritual sacrifice look like? 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 20/11/2025Very valuable thread that goes into a bit more technical detail than I generally parse, as a mediocre arborist: 100
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 20/11/2025I did not know this, nice bit of idiom backstory. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 18/11/2025lol, cursed venn diagram. Maybe a perfect example of Venkat's "Zemblanity," the anti-serentipity? 010
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 17/11/2025The market can turn anything into a product, even the utopian imaginary. 000
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 18/10/2025lol. same thing happens with objects. we're pretty good at making them, but we can't keep track of them, and we refuse to throw away ones we can't tell are broken. 131
Rusty Swarf @hobo-elite.bsky.social · 26/09/2025Wait, Larry Ellison's buying TiikTok? Like, all of it? Or just some sham American subsidiary? 000
