V O I D
Remote
Anna E. Cook
@annaecook@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Bog hag, platform & systems designer chasing tech that’s actually good for people. Proudly antifascist + neurodivergent 💙
Posts self-destruct.
3653 Followers
98 Following
50 Posts
Joined October 28, 2022
It’s super weird that we’re all applauding the AI researchers quitting because AI is going to go out of control.
Right as the AI CEOs are saying the same thing.
Right as these companies are preparing to IPO.
Right as institutional investors are finally acknowledging the bubble and lack of profit
I’m making art again, it’s been awhile!
TIL I learned about Network States
In essence it’s tech oligarchs wanting to create their own countries that are companies.
It’s hyper capitalistic, deeply eugenicist, and should alarm every single person.
Tech billionaires are a threat to global democracy
Replying to
Tech companies and grifters like to make everyone else feel like they’re not “technical enough”
Thing is, you don’t have to know everything about technology to know if it’s harming or helping you.
What we do need is real tech advocates informing government to protect people from tech harms.
Every time fascism increases my hair is just gonna get more blue and I’m gonna talk more about my queer childless cat lady life and how much it rocks
I don’t think I realized exactly how much of my love of making art was sapped from me with AI.
It’s not like I intentionally made that choice, it just felt like I couldn’t share my work anymore.
I didn’t want it to be fed into AI to train it. So I stopped sharing, but then I stopped making too.
My son likes the pride nails
(He nipped me two seconds after this was taken)
We have some low res home cameras for checking on the cats
Sometimes I think the best pictures are the crappy ones.
Replying to
I’m so sick of misogyny in every political party.
If your version of progressive is misogynistic you’re not a progressive you’re just self interested.
You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to shut up and listen to women for once.
You can tell me all of the amazing things you think AI can do in a product
But it doesn’t change that 9/10 times it’s being used on a problem that literally can be solved with a few lines of code and a moment of thought.
This era is a real over engineered final boss.
Replying to
In my 30s I think “is this it? Working my ass off constantly for the next 30-40 years? That can’t be it.”
But it is, right now it is.
We live in a system that demands constant hyper vigilance to survive. In an extremely wealthy country.
We need to keep working literally to survive.
In my journey to figure out what I’m feeling related to my work lately, I realized I still love design, coding, building
What I don’t like is this era of it. The culture and harm
So I guess I realized I’m mourning
It would be safer not to talk about it but I’ve never been good at hiding feelings
I think I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t super care what people think.
Everyone’s got an opinion about who you should be or how you should be.
None of them are right for you, and all people have agendas.
Figure out your own agenda and focus on what you want ya know?
Every time I see people in tech say “AGI is just around the corner, the singularity is inevitable” I ask myself how deep in the k-hole they are.
Hot diarrhea summer with federally supported murder and deeply corrupt people increasing their excessive wealth is about how I expected things to be going at this point.
Watching men try to justify the SA another man did
while watching a bunch of accessibility work get cut
while dealing with the general fascism that’s just there all of the time
…god I’m tired
AI buttons on every website
(Credit u/Ok_Instruction_9437 on Reddit)
Company: we want you all using AI as much as possible to improve your productivity
Me: hey AI, can you check that meeting and see if I was being annoying
The last 4 years have led to less accessibility and less meaningful systemic support for disabled people.
I’m still figuring out how to feel about it, but one things for sure, I refuse to stop talking about this or making work accessible
To hell to the ableists
skyboxcritics.com/2026/07/28/t...
https://skyboxcritics.com/2026/07/28/the-vanishing-art-of-disability-reporting/
LinkedIn is always offering me this type of content now:
“Over the last few months, I've personally shipped 36 PRs and contributed 43K+ lines of code.“
- designer
The question I would like to ask but won’t ask: Is the code actually any good though?
Otherwise you’re just adding noise and slop
Anytime a special interest rant of mine queues up I look at my partner and I’m like I’m sorry you’re gonna have to sit down for a min.
And my partner sits and listens patiently while I rant.
Today’s rant was about the extreme inaccuracy and racial/gender bias of BMI as a health measurement.
The horrors are too constant and too overwhelming. 🫠
Remember me too? How about the Epstein files?
Remember these before you give some BS argument about Platners innocence and the justice system ever actually helping the victims of SA.
Every day my to do list generates ten more to dos like the heads of hydra
How tf does anyone keep up with anything these days
Replying to
The images are so often caricatures, used as jokes, made light of.
It’s triggered my body dysmorphia.
I’m sure it can also trigger gender dysphoria.
That’s not even touching on the issue of someone sharing our data without our consent.
Hot take but I’m pretty sure a lot AI models are designed to push opinions to the right politically and dismiss valid concerns
Partner: the Seattle light rail is relying on color alone in these lights to indicate its end point which isn’t accessible
Me: ACTUALLY they are paring that with labels so it would pass compliance however I agree that they should maybe have one dashed and another solid to be more clear.
If I took a shot every time I heard the word “AI” every single day I’d be dead by now.
A subcategory of girl dinner for neurodivergent ladies.
It’s a chocolate bar and a protein shake today
Regularly I’ll go out to a nice place, a restaurant or store, and someone will see me with my bright blue hair and tattoos and make a very grumpy face.
It makes me wanna ham it up and be like “boo!”
I’m so scary clearly lol
Companies are using AI to create podcast style summaries of emails and meetings.
All I can think of is a room full of tech bros like “Joe Rogan but for your meetings”
Which makes my soul decays within me
I love accessibility advocacy.
I also wish that when I say I do accessibility advocacy within my design, design systems, and SWE work that people understood that that’s a badass design/eng skill set.
As it is, people assume I’m a compliance checker.
Which is not helping my career tbh.
It only took 4 years for investors to actually pay attention
www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/972119/ai-stock-fall-google-capex
Burnout recovery for me is ongoing work. But I don't think it fully goes away when the system is the problem.
I've seen people take leave and come back to a PIP. Or not at all.
We have no rights to healthcare, housing, or income. We rent them from our employers.
So many of us are in the same boat
A lot of folks at XBOX are impacted by layoffs today, some of whom I know are majorly involved in accessible gaming.
Hire them.
Replying to
Whoever survives gets a plaque “I’m the most richest, powerfulest man who is definitely attractive and not a plague on humanity”
That’s all, we still keep the money.
Replying to
“Before the [big beautiful] bill reached its final, larger form, three physician-researchers published a peer-reviewed analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine projecting what the cuts would do to actual lives. Their mid-range estimate:16,642 additional preventable deaths a year”
An amuse bouche as it were
I wasn’t expecting Lindsey Graham to be the old, southern, establishment republican to die this week.
I know we all know this but watching accessibility work be quietly and steadily defunded in tech and gaming has sucked so damn much.
I have been spinning my wheels for the past few years on actions to take to protect my job/income in this horrible market.
And after years of it I’ve realized we’re all thinking the same thing and no one has an answers
So screw it let’s go outside and find friends make art and write poetry instead
Did you know that Washington has a system to see reported upcoming layoffs?
"Bungie, Inc/Sony Interactive Entertainment" is listed as having "292" laid off starting on the 9th.
It is a handy tool.
esd.wa.gov/employer-req...
https://esd.wa.gov/employer-requirements/layoffs-and-employee-notifications/worker-adjustment-and-retraining-notification-warn-layoff-and-closure-database