Ingrid Burrington @ingrid@everything.happens.horse

I'm pretty sure more than half of those stories don't hold up/weren't even that great when they were published, but it's nice that some people still get something out of them!

every now and then someone will email me out of nowhere to be like "hey I read one of your 2015 Atlantic stories on internet infrastructure and here's my related anecdote gleaned from spending decades working on some niche aspect of industry, take care!" and it is a real treat

it's becoming very apparent to me that this class is largely stuff I already know but I'm kind of fine with that insofar as I just want to keep from getting rusty and I have to focus on my thesis this term so I'd really prefer any other coursework to be relatively rote

Feels about right that it took almost the entirety of this hour-and-fifteen minute class on geospatial data science for my computer to download and install QGIS again

https://www.newinc.org/cooperative-studies NEW INC is offering a track for cooperatives this year!

the barrel of high purity semiconductor grade quartz is still on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/233947436297?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=eA75L3M3SoK&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=s45yvgRWQCy&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

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