iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I'm not sure how to break an organization out of that mindset, but it disappoints me when I see IT support willfully living up to it.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 15/12/2025

Reposted by Morgan Foust

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

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Reposted by Morgan Foust

sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

ever since I learned about three-cueing I've developed infinitely more patience for replies on social media. mfers literally do not know how to read. people are walking around conjuring random meanings into words they don't know, and they don't know a lot of words. it's crazy

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Mild hot take: IT shouldn't pressure employees to put in helpdesk tickets. The ticketing system is for IT's benefit. It isn't the user's problem. If the user didn't put in a ticket, or couldn't, or just plain doesn't want to, then the IT staffer helping that user should fill out the ticket.

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

*waking up in the morning* Oh, what a lovely day! I sure hope that I get a bunch of texts from unknown numbers with pictures of random Democrats in them!

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

This is why I'm skeptical whenever anybody says that LLMs make them more efficient at work. Did they save you time, or did they just let you transfer your workload to somebody else?

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

"Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. ... [W]orkslop uniquely uses machines to offload cognitive work to another human being." - Harvard Business Review. hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...

hbr.org

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

I got there via Ed Zitron, but I'm guessing you already know about him.

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

I have recently discovered Nikhil Suresh's blog, ludic.mataroa.blog. Professionally he's a data scientist and software developer, but its his writings on the absurdity of corporate culture that resonate with me. Office humor is as old as the Chancery, but today's insanity invites a sharper tongue.

ludic.mataroa.blog

Ludicity

<blockquote> "While I'm deeply sympathetic, the author should be discussing their issues with a therapist rather than spreading this on the internet." </blockquote> I finally rage-quit and started a...

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Meanwhile, Windows Server (y'know, the OS corporations use for, uh, servers) by default comes with Xbox Game Bar and Xbox Live services installed. (Turned off, to be fair, but still installed.)

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Samuel Beckett wrote a play about that.

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Also, state and local minimum wage hikes of the last several years have buoyed household income in the lowest two quintiles. But if you're working poor in a place that didn't get one - say, Pennsylvania - then your real income has declined. That also doesn't show up in natl averages.

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Even if inflation has stabilized, it's stabilized with high housing/medical/education costs (and food, whose prices hit an inflection point in 2020). Households of limited means are justified in feeling like the economy sucks even if the stats show otherwise.

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Think of CPI as an average - some prices in the bundle rise faster than inflation (housing, medical care, education) and some slower or even get cheaper (electronics, travel). The stuff that rises faster tend to be needs and the stuff that doesn't tend to be wants.

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

@greybunny.bsky.social okay your profile pic - I understand that reference ❤️

If there's one famous chef who secretly has a stand

Alton Brown, Cutthroat-era, smiling wickedly with a JoJo "menacing" aura.

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Some of the biggest drivers of wage growth at the lowest income quintile have been state and local minimum wage hikes. If you live in a state that didn't get a recent min wage increase (say, PA) you then your experience isn't captured in natl averages.

People absorb growing housing costs, especially renters, by moving further away from their jobs, further away from their communities, and accepting smaller apartments. You don't see these compromises on CPI.

Housing and medical care cost growth have outpaced CPI for decades. They're offset by slower growth / price reductions in manufactured goods, entertainment, and travel. The numbers might average out but the former cause more anxiety than the latter.

Looking strictly at CPI is also, as always, examining cost of living through a mirror darkly. It's making multiple errors of composition in that 1) it doesn't affect everybody equally and 2) it doesn't affect all foods equally.

Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Shower thought: planting lots of native pollinator friendly plants around your house as a defense against weeping angels. Good luck moving when there are countless moths and bees fluttering around, suckers!

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

So Trump's HHS tapped Alex Byrne to write a report on gender-affirming care? This is like Janice Raymond's 1981 Medicare brief all over again. "Let's ask a nonclinician who published an anti-trans book to advise us on gender-affirming care."

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Morgan Foust @morganfoust.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

And heavily motivated by sexism and racism because how could it be possible that midwives (who didn't do autopsied and washed their hands) could have lower fatalities rates than white male doctors?

Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Reposted by Morgan Foust

The story of LGBT rights is a story of advances followed by setbacks followed by media with no skin in the game saying, "It's because you were too loud/asked for too much/moved too fast/got too big for your britches/didn't make your case." That never changes--but happily it's never the last word.

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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think

Around 40% of working-age adults in OECD countries are functionally computer illiterate. If you're reading this, you are probably in the top 10% of population of the "developed" world for computer literacy. www.nngroup.com/articles/com...

nngroup.com

Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.

Infosec is pretty bad everywhere, at almost all institutions, globally. I liken it to infectious diseases before municipal sanitation and widespread hand washing. We haven't had our Broad Street Pump moment for infosec yet, let alone our Ignaz Semmelweis. (IYKYK, if not, Google 'em.)

When a country implements policies to facilitate voting across the whole population (early voting, automatic registration, mandated time off to vote, more polling locations), it narrows the gap between youth turnout and voter turnout.

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Just adding on: Youth are one of the groups disproportionately affected by voter suppression efforts (alongside the poor, elderly, immigrants, and people of color). It's easy to think of low youth turnout as mostly due to low personal motivation, but systemic suppression is also a contributor.

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There are two types of information security professional: those who actually know things and do useful work and those who know nothing and exist just to fill out virtual paperwork. The latter vastly outnumber the former.

Most companies and institutions have atrocious information security practices, because most executives don't see it as important enough to spend any time or money on.

You don't need to change your passwords periodically, and forcing people to change their passwords frequently is a dumb practice.

Most password breaches have nothing to do with user behavior and everything to do with how a website/online service stores passwords in their own database.

It is possible for a compromised but legitimate website (say, a local pizza place) to install ransomware on your computer, without your knowledge, just by visiting it.