Ingrid Burrington @ingrid@everything.happens.horse

almost earnest-posted on twitter about this but thought better of it:

had a call with the RIP Corp team today and just thinking about how I'm so glad to have a project in my life that's a team effort with such smart and talented people.

in my experience when people who don't do map stuff learn that the industry standard source for coordinate reference systems still used today was made by a professional association of oil geologists they think it's weird. (the Esri monopoly is less weird; Adobe or Maya tend to be the analogies that come up which makes sense I guess)

disappointed that this mostly got favs without recommendations, seems like a bad sign/fuck do I have to write a history of EPSG codes

I tried looking in media studies literature for stuff that might get into this and there's some OK stuff on the weird culture rift between "real" GIS and web mapping stuff (which, in 2023, lol) but feels weird the discipline known for having all the Marxists doesn't seem to have a framework for talking about map tech relative to markets!

generally "critical GIS" scholarship seems to fall into these camps:

- what is a point, really
- military industrial complex exist
- respect newbies, open source good

all perfectly interesting and valid observations, but also you're telling me nobody has tried to write a history of EPSG codes

been trying to find "critical GIS" writing that actually gets into the political economy and history of the technology--like more than repeating Esri's own hagiography and more than a generalized gesture at "maps are tools of empire" and not sure if this is a me problem or what

just found out the physics professor I took a machine learning class with last year is on a NASA committee to study UFOs??? god she's so cool

sometimes I think about how when Proudhon wrote a book titled "The Philosophy of Poverty" Karl Marx wrote a book in response titled "The Poverty of Philosophy", RIP Marx you would have loved shitposting

a "fun" part of grad school is auditing undergrad classes that start at...8:40 in the morning? at least it's online

I am regrettably good enough to do data science now but no one hires that freelance I think so I'm safe

I started to read the lemons blog post and once again feel good about the fact I have deliberately remained a competent enough web developer for personal projects but never actually became good enough to be a professional because wow this all sounds really dumb

https://buttondown.email/perfectsentences/archive/perfect-sentences-06/ this week in perfect sentences: recursive zk-SNARKs, a map after the fact, Kate Berlant, sedentary nudists, Pothole Blasting for Wildlife, magic tricks, Port Authority

Hey I made a little zine for Valentine's Day of various dedication pages from books and you can buy it here: https://buy.stripe.com/eVacP2bUj7l25dS5ky

it really fucks me up that Salinger dedicated The Catcher in the Rye to his mom, feels passive aggressive