The difference between “today’s task” and “accretive work”
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:
One thing I've learned about paradoxes: often the answer to the riddle of "how can this one thing have such a contradictory set of features and effects?" is "it's not one thing, it's two things*."
That's the idea that set me on the path to writing about "reverse centaurs" and AI. I was hearing from experienced programmers whom I knew to be reliable narrators of their own experience who described how AI was letting them write the best code of their lives; and from equally experienced and reliable coders who described a nightmare of tech debt: "I work in aviation, and I just don't think anyone should ever fly again, those things are now unsafe at any altitude, thanks to the code I had to sign off on":
For so long as I thought of both of these groups as doing the same thing and getting wildly different outcomes, this was a paradox. But as soon as I realized that the former group were "centaurs" (workers who get to decide and direct their adoption of automation) and the latter were reverse centaurs (workers who were conscripted to serve as peripherals for automation systems), it all snapped into place. It only looked like they were doing the same thing – they were actually engaged in fundamentally different activities, which is why they were having such different experiences.
The same goes for vibe coding. Plenty of people I knew had gotten real value out of vibe coding personal utilities that made things better for them in a way that I instantly recognized from a life spent around people who'd been able to adapt and customize the systems they used to make their lives better:
Vibe coding can be seen as part of a lineage that includes shell scripting, Applescript, Hypercard and Visual Basic: ways for technical novices to directly create personal software, without having to ask a programmer to interpret their needs (and without having to pay every time they wanted to do something new with their computers):
AI's pitch to bosses is that they can fire most of their workers in order to terrorize the remainder into tolerating a working life wherein they are made to mark the AI's homework, at superhuman speed, and to assume the blame when it goes wrong. This is obviously a terrible way to write code:
So is vibe code a way of empowering people to have the personal, vernacular tools that they design and adapt as they see fit? Or is it a way to shovel technological asbestos into the walls at scale, filling up our high-tech society with ghastly, lethal technical debt we'll be digging our way out of for generations?
Again: the paradox falls away once you realize that personal software you write for yourself is fundamentally different from "production code" that other people have to use, maintain and improve.
In an essay inspired by some thoughts on AI and mathematical theorem proving, Kellan Elliott-McCrea crystallizes this distinction in a really sharp way, bringing in Alex Kontorovich's idea of mathematical "canonization":
By canonization, I mean the process of taking a local, one-off formalization and turning it into library mathematics: general, reusable, coherent, efficient, and compatible with the rest… Canonization often changes the picture itself: the definitions, the abstractions, the API, and sometimes even the statement…
Elliott-McCrea posits that making code that is "socially constructed in a way that leaves the team prepared to operate on it, iterate it, and improve it" is the difference between "I got it working" and "something the future can build on."
He's not claiming that "I got it working" is worthless. There's plenty of space for "disposable and single use software." Sure, to a trained software engineer, this might be "bad code" but doing today's task has value, even if the code that performs that task isn't "accretive."
Canonization is accretive. To canonize code is to make it "legible to systems of humans and non-humans operating on it." Free/open source software is the backbone of the canon: "decades of…intelligible, build-on-able work, sitting in public repos."
My "reverse centaurs" thesis isn't just a way to understand how programmers who seem to be doing the same thing can have such different effects. It's also about how the way that the capital was raised for AI requires that it produce as many reverse centaurs as possible, because the only way to recoup the farcical sums associated with AI production is to fire millions of workers and replace them with defective chatbots backstopped by the jobspocalypse's terrorized survivors, who can be made to endlessly toil away at marking the AI's homework because there are so many other workers who'll take their jobs if they refuse.
The point being that while centaurs are good and reverse centaurs are bad, the AI bubble requires the production of reverse centaurs, to the exclusion of centaurs.
In a similar vein, Elliott-McCrea describes how the imperatives of the AI industry are devouring its seed-corn – consuming the canon without putting anything new back in it. In the same way that AI can do endless theorem-proving but is essentially useless for creating "library mathematics: general, reusable, coherent, efficient, and compatible with the rest," AI can write a lot of running code, but the AI industry is further devaluing the already undervalued work of cleanup and canonization. As Elliott-McCrea writes, "the social production of knowledge [is] the seed corn."
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Divergent effects of native deer and alien wild pigs on forest understoreys
Large herbivores are becoming more common in forests, but their impacts are not always what we expect.
Using nationwide forest inventories and camera-trap data across the eastern United States, researchers compared the effects of native white-tailed deer and alien wild pigs on forest understories.
They found that deer generally reduce native seedlings and promote invasive plants, although these effects weaken in warmer, wetter, or steeper landscapes. In contrast, wild pigs often suppress invasive plants and have mixed, context-dependent effects on native seedlings.
These results show that herbivore impacts depend on species identity, functional traits and environmental context, with important implications for forest management under global change.
A good example of how different herbivores affect their environment in different ways. Makes you wonder how many ecological interactions we've lost since the Pleistocene extinctions
In advance of the DR Congo - England match later, here's a post about someone you will have seen in the stands: Michel Kuka Mboladinga, or 'Lumumba Vea'.
Michel Kuka Mboladinga, nicknamed 'Lumumba Vea', stands silent and motionless through DR Congo football matches in tribute to Patrice Lumumba (1925 - 1961), revolutionary, independence leader and first Prime Minister of the First Congolese Republic (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), who was crucial in transforming DR Congo from a Belgian colony into an independent state. Lumumba believed strongly in both national and pan-African unity, in full decolonisation and in freeing his country's resources, politics and economy from foreign ownership, interference and domination. He was kidnapped, tortured and murdered only seven months after election by Katangan seperatists and Belgian mercenaries, with US, UK and UN involvement. His body was dissolved in acid, and it took until 2022 - and a court ruling - for all that remained of Patrice Lumumba, a single tooth, to be returned to his family.
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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:
"Carcinization" is a curious biological phenomenon: given enough time, across many environments, many species will evolve into crabs. The body-type of a crab, with its low center of gravity, sideways gait (useful for evading predators), ease of concealment and protected organs is suitable to many different environments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
Lately, I've watched the American Big Tech platforms as they underwent their own form of technocarcinization, which is when every tech company turns into Facebook.
For a long time, it seemed to me that you could make sense of the tech platforms by placing them into one of four quadrants on a 2×2 grid, in which one axis denoted "control freakishness" and the other, "surveillance."
Each quadrant had its own canonical company. The most surveillant/least controlling company (top left) was Google. They would let you roam the whole wide internet and exert no control over your conduct, but would spy on you wherever you went. The least surveillant/most controlling company was Apple, who imprisoned you in its manicured walled garden, but promised never to spy on you. The non-spying/non-controlling option is free/open source tech (of course), which doesn't care what you do, and doesn't watch you do it. And the most spying, most controlling company was Facebook, a company whose products did everything they could to imprison you within their virtual walls, from which vantage they could effect maximal surveillance.
I've used this comparison many times over the years. I included in my 2023 book The Internet Con, along with the joke that Tiktok's position on the grid was so far up and to the right (maximum surveillance and control) that we'd had to put its logo on the back cover. Enough people took this joke seriously and wrote in to complain that they'd gotten a misprint without the logo that we added it to the paperback:
The grid was useful, until technocarcinization started to push all the tech companies into that top right quadrant. Apple is no longer the company that protects you from surveillance – they're the company that spies on you, having secretly added a total surveillance system to the iPhone to target ads to you:
Apple can't even claim to protect you from third-party surveillance. Sure, they block Facebook from spying on you, but they have barred ICE Block, an app that tells you if there are ICE chuds hunting in your neighborhood, looking to kidnap you and send you to a concentration camp. Apple declared ICE mercenaries to be a "protected class":
And thanks to Apple's control-freakery – which prevents you from overriding Apple's decisions about your own devices – once Apple decides to spy on you or sell you out to fascist goons, there's nothing you can do about it:
Then there's Google, the company that ran a free-range livestock operation in which you could roam wherever you liked, because they could always find you when it was time for the slaughter. For years now, Google has been moving inexorably to the kind of control-freak nonsense that you used to only find in one of Apple's crystal prisons.
For example, every year or two, Google floats a proposal to use secure hardware in your device to rat you out if you've got an ad-blocker, privacy blocker, or other aftermarket add-on that lets you choose how you experience the digital world:
Google used to pride itself in its ability to send you to the open web, viewing search as a conduit to other peoples' resources. Now, with AI search summaries, Google is harvesting the open web and then eating the seed corn, keeping searchers inside of Google's walled garden:
Google also took the idea of a free/open browser and ran with it, rehabilitating some discarded Apple code and turning it into Chrome, the internet's most dominant browser – by far. Now, Google is nerfing that browser's plug-in architecture in a way that blocks all kids of user-tunable options, including and especially ad-blocking:
And Google has also announced that they're going to turn Android into an iPhone, making it both technically challenging and radioactively illegal for you to install software of your choosing on your own property:
Google is adopting every one of Apple's worst practices, and Apple is adopting all of Google's worst practices, and so they're both turning into Facebook: technocarcinization!
What's driving this technocarcinization? Well, the obvious answer is that the more Facebooklike a company becomes, the more ways there are for it to rip you off. Surveillance can be monetized by selling your data, by ad targeting, and by surveillance-based pricing and wage-suppression:
Control lets platforms block competing products, extract massive junk fees to the businesses they connect you to, and control repair and end-of-life, forcing you to replace hardware by blocking parts and independent service:
It turns out that "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product" is only half-right. The other half is, "even if you pay for the product, you're the product." Pay, don't pay: companies will productize anyone they can. And thanks to our enshittogenic policy environment – where the worst ideas of the worst people make the most money – you can always be productized:
This is independent of the kind of person running the company. Facebook is run by Mark Zuckerberg, a cringe halfwit whose only successful idea was to offer Harvard bros a way of nonconsensually rating the fuckability of female undergrads. Everything he's done since was an acquisition (Whatsapp, Insta) or a flop (metaverse, Libra), or both (Oculus). Zuck owns the majority of the voting stock in the company, which means he has total control over its actions. He can ignore or fire his board members at will. He is the move fast/break things guy, whose every foolish whim can become policy that impacts billions of people.
By contrast, Google and Apple are no longer run by their flamboyant founders, who were every bit as prone to folly as Zuck. They were constrained by their shareholders, which meant that the blast-radius of Steve Jobs's worst ideas (like treating his otherwise curable cancer with green juice) were confined to his own person.
Today, Apple and Google are run by bloodless business sociopaths who go to enormous lengths to project an air of sober adulthood. And yet, these people – who would never be caught dead bow-hunting their own livestock or climbing into an MMA cage – have steered their companies into Facebook's quadrant on our enshittification 2×2.
I think this shows just how much the enshittification of tech is a matter of the policy environment, not the personalities of the people involved. Sure, the worst people imaginable run these companies, but the reason they're able to yield to their most venal impulses and succeed is because the world has been re-arranged to make sociopathy and greed into fitness factors. We get technocarcinization because the most fit organism for a landscape without consequences is a zuckerbergian techno-crab:
And in the meantime, there is one inhabitant of the 2×2 that hasn't drifted up and to the right: free and open source software. It's still snugly nestled in the low-surveillance/low-control box, and if you live in that box, your life will be much, much better for it.
There's no better time to make the switch: with RAM and storage prices through the ceiling and OSes growing ever-more bloated with AI and spyware (but I repeat myself), this is the moment to rehabilitate that old computer with Linux:
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Sometimes, time seems to move in a vicious cycle, repeating itself in a painfully astonishing manner, as if mocking humanity's ability to learn from its mistakes. Two images are separated by 79 years, yet they appear as though no time has passed, as if the gap between them is merely a few fleeting moments.
The first image: A Palestinian elder holding the keys to his home, from which he was forcibly displaced after the Nakba of 1948. An image filled with pain, with tears that dried on faces, and hearts that collapsed under the weight of loss. Yet, hope for return still filled those hearts.
The second image: A recent photo that tells the same story, but this time, the protagonist is my young sister, Maryam, holding the keys to our home from which we were displaced and demolished after the Nakba of 2023.
There is no difference between the two stories, except that this time, the story is even harsher and more painful.
4 times that Dooku was there to help get things out of Qui-Gon’s Hair + One Time He Wasn’t
inspired by this absolutely amazing tumblr post by @purple-ant! It immediatly made me start working on this and I'm so glad to have it done <3 (Thanks so much to @charmwasjess for beta'ing and thanks to @purple-ant for making the original post and being very effusive with her praise <3 <3)
warnings: short mention of insects (lice), sheev palpatine
1.
“Qui-Gon,” His padawan’s name hissed through Dooku’s teeth as he, once again, gently tilted the boy’s head from side to side. As if another look would somehow change what he already knew: the situation was unsalvageable.
The sap from the Lanoali flower has been used as industrial strength glue all throughout the galaxy and thus far it was living up to its reputation. It withstood water, heat, and Dooku had vetoed any attempt at trying industrial debinding agents.
“It’s alright, Master,” Qui-Gon said. He’d remained magnanimous and stoic about his hair but was still devastated at the harsh reception his friendly overturns had received from the flower, “It’s just hair. It'll grow back!”
Dooku cast a questioning look at the botanist nearby.
They shook their head in return, “That’s…not likely,” they admitted, “We’ve observed in mammals that if the sap gets into the hair follicles then a chemical within the ink creates some kind of chemical reaction with the hormones that signals…hair growth.”
Qui-Gon blinked up at him. His lip quivered once and then twice. “It’s just hair,” he repeated with far less stoicism, “I don’t have to have it.”
Dooku gave him an approving nod and a proud smile even as his mind whirled with possibilities. The truth was that Qui-Gon did appreciate having hair and it would be a harder lesson in humility than Dooku intended him to learn while so young.
“Let us call the Temple Healers,” Dooku declared, “There may be hope for you yet, young Padawan.”
2.
If Dooku were ever granted the role of Supreme Chancellor, and he shuddered at the thought, his first mandate would be to eliminate all lice in the galaxy.
“They are living creatures, Master. Perhaps, we should be kinder,” Qui-Gon said. It seemed that he was under the mistaken belief that Dooku could not see the slight curl of his smile from where he was bent over the stream.
“Bold words,” Dooku intoned, “Perhaps, I shall allow you to keep them then?”
The smile vanished, “No, Master. I appreciate your help.”
“I am glad —,” Dooku dunked the comb into the luke-warm stream. He was glad to watch the parasites wash downstream, “to hear it. It would do me no good to have you be sentimental when it’s your turn to do my hair.”
3.
Dooku ignored the stares as he continued to pick small bundles of dirt and rocks from long brown hair.
Qui-Gon had lasted less than five minutes into the shuttle ride before he’d fallen asleep. He’d insisted that Dooku take the last seat available; a galling notion that was only made tolerable when his padawan had immediately taken the space in front of him. It was not like Qui-Gon to make such requests for affection. Dooku granted them gladly.
“...Is he okay, Mr. Jedi?” A young girl piped up. The woman beside her shushed her but watched Dooku’s hands with an identical pair of concerned brown eyes.
Dooku’s lips twitch. “He’s very tired,” he explained.
“He saved my life. When he did the —” she lifted up her hands and made a low groaning sound. One of the many whom Qui-Gon had saved as he held up the end of a collapsing tunnel where 300 refugees were waiting for rescue.
“I am glad for it,” Dooku told her, “He will be fine when he has been given plenty of time to rest and eat.”
The girl leaned forward, “He said that he wasn’t supposed to be there,” she whispered, eyes growing wider in her small face, “Is he going to get put in time-out?”
Dooku chuckled, “Only until he’s knighted,” he gently shook his knee until an already half-awake Qui-Gon opened his eyes, “which will not be until he’s Master Yoda’s age.”
Qui-Gon merely blinked up at him and went back to sleep.
The pride in Dooku’s chest finally began to thaw the ice-cold fear that had wrapped itself around his heart hours earlier.
4.
“Master,” Qui-Gon said, surprised, as he stepped off the ramp leading to his ship, “I was not expecting you.”
“I heard that you had just arrived back and wished to see you before I depart.” Dooku gestured towards the waiting shuttle that would, in a few minutes time, take him to the waiting freighter.
The slight curve of Qui-Gon’s smile did not waver, “I see,” he said, as he hefted his to-go bag a little higher on his shoulder, “Perhaps another time then.”
Dooku repressed a sigh and idly wondered which of Qui-Gon’s friends had given him notice that Dooku would be leaving so soon. Likely Tahl or, perhaps, Ky Narec. He’d hoped for more time to spend with his once apprentice but it would have to wait until his next visit.
He reached out and plucked a small flowering vine from Qui-Gon’s shoulder and held it up to Qui-Gon’s startled gaze, “I will see you then,” Dooku promised.
He did not return the vine.
+1
Dooku had gone to such great lengths to avoid political parties in his life as a Jedi.
It was strange that, now, he went out of his way to attend them. Somehow he’d not anticipated that taking on the role of Count would involve so much networking. Missing a chance to shake hands with a diplomat from Corellia, Corcuscant, or Naboo might mean the loss of a contract that would benefit his people or would mean their name would be overlooked at the next intergalactic meeting.
It was exhausting.
“You look like you could use a drink,” A familiar voice said as a flute of champagne was placed into Dooku’s hands.
Dooku took a thankful sip, “You know me too well, Sheev.”
“I know these parties too well, you mean,” Sheev corrected him with a smile, “They’re a marathon, not a sprint.”
“They can be a sprint if you’re fast enough.”
Sheev barked a laugh, clasping Dooku’s arm, “Too right, Dooku.”
Dooku hid a smile behind his glass and went to take another sip before freezing.
“What is it?” Sheev asked, immediately turning to follow his eyeline with a raised eyebrow. A look of understanding flashed across his face and he winced, “Oh! I didn’t know that the Jedi were going to be invited to this party?”
“Neither did I,” Dooku said.
Across the room Qui-Gon was quietly speaking with one of the security officers. His young padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was standing beside him and assessing the room while his Master’s back was turned.
A bright flash of silver string, a piece of tinsel fallen from its place, was waving in Qui-Gon’s hair. Dooku’s heart gave a familiar squeeze as he went to step forward.
“Hold on a moment, my friend,” Sheev said, his grip on Dooku’s arm becoming almost tight enough to bruise, “Do you know why they’re here?”
Dooku hesitated, “No.”
“Then it might not be for the best to get involved, Dooku,” Sheev said with a shake of the head. He let go and held up his hands with a frown at Dooku’s incredulous stare, “I do not mean that you are not capable. I only mean that there are many who already find your history with the Jedi to be…” His lips twisted into a sympathetic frown, “A tad eccentric.”
“I know that.” Dooku said, “They have said far worse about it as I’m sure that you are aware.”
Sheev nodded slowly, “They’ll see this and believe that you may still be using your connections with the Jedi.”
Dooku frowned. He easily saw the sense in that, as well as the injustice. If the Jedi were capable of half of what some diplomats and incompetent officials seemed to believe they were then their own jobs would be useless. Still, Dooku had to pick and choose when to fight those prejudices and now was not an appropriate time to do so.
“I am sorry,” Sheev said, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing, “Do you know them?”
“Yes,” Dooku said with a sigh, “That is my Padawan —” He quickly corrected himself at Sheev’s blank look, “My apprentice and that is his own.”
“I see.” Sheev said, eyes lighting up with sudden interest, “Perhaps we should go and speak with them then?”
“No.” Dooku said, shaking his head. Now that the impulse to speak with Qui-Gon had been successfully quelled he could remember why it would be a bad idea. “No. There will be plenty of time to speak with them later.”
Still, he watched as Obi-Wan Kenobi plucked a string of silver out of Qui-Gon’s hair with a bright smile until Sheev steered him away.
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The Prairieland case is Federal case prosecuting 19 people with terrorism after a noise demo at an ICE detention facility in Praireland, Texas in July 2025. Most have been convicted and are currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty on multiple federal charges. Towards the end of the noise demo an Alvarado police officer was grazed in the neck with a bullet. The Prosecutors claim this was a coordinated ambush by an “antifa cell”. In reality its a drag-net prosecution against loosely acquainted people. If the corrupt verdict of this case is not over turned it will set a precedent that participating in black a bloc is terrorism and can land you decades in jail. We support the non-cooperating defendants not because they are victims of a miscarriage of justice, but because we support all who fight back against domination. Punks have historically played an important roll in spreading and sharpening anarchy across the world. This tape aims to continue that legacy. We affirm that I.C.E. Prisons & Police must be destroyed. People, plants and animals must be freed from the claws of colonial civilization. Against the state, Against capitalism, Solidarity with anarchist prisoners now & forever.
Money raised from this compilation will go towards the legal fees of the Prairieland Defendants
