Remote

ginger coons

@ossington@mastodon.xyz

mastodon 4.5.19

Researcher/social science/art-type. Heart still in F/LOSS design. Tries to be funny but isn't. Will parse sociotechnical issues for food

368 Followers

313 Following

10 Posts

Joined April 04, 2017

pronouns:

she/her

location:

Rotterdam

writing:

https://not-so-obvious.net/

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 2mo ago

Replying to

So, with these aggressively made-up bridges on the Euro notes, what does some brilliant asshole of a Dutch architect go and do? Yes, design a bunch of tiny bridges in a suburb of Rotterdam that look like the imaginary bridges on the Euro notes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobridges_Spijkenisse ). [3/4]

en.wikipedia.org

Spijkenisse Eurobridges - Wikipedia

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 2mo ago

Replying to

As it happens, I went out there recently to see the bridges for myself, and they're delightful. So, while voting for new designs, please spare a moment to think of these poor bridges, which will soon be real bridges designed to mimic imaginary bridges that used to be on money. [4/4]

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 2mo ago

Replying to

In the originally proposed designs, the bridges looked too much like real bridges that were used by the designer, as reference. There's a really great episode of 99% Invisible about this ( https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/458-real-fake-bridges/ ), but the long and short of it is that the bridges we see now on the notes are even more made-up, in response to the critique that the original bridges looked too real. [2/4]

99% Invisible

Real Fake Bridges - 99% Invisible

In the early 1990s, a block of European countries embarked on a pretty wild experiment. They decided to get rid of all their money and to replace it with a single common currency. Today, the Euro is something we take for granted. But thirty years ago, it was an extraordinary and risky idea. Twelve different

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 5mo ago

Replying to

More insights from @GIMP@floss.social @zemarmot@fosstodon.org : Being a decent human is the first priority, everything else is secondary #lgm2026 #LibreGraphicsMeeting

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 5mo ago

This is very good, thorough, and sobering. "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane." https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/

That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 5mo ago

Favourite things at #LibreGraphicsMeeting are always the wild passion projects. To that end, @pippin@mastodon.xyz is talking right now about doing vector graphics on very tiny, low-powered computers #lgm2026

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@GIMP @lgm You can read all the issues here 😉 https://libregraphicsmag.com/

libregraphicsmag.com

Libre Graphics magazine

ginger coons @ossington@mastodon.xyz

· 5mo ago

Today, I was expecting to write a "Reading" post on Langdon Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Instead, thanks to two things in the last couple days that have made me very irritable, I seem to be writing a very irritable post about how "AI" discourse is sucking all the air out of the room (and the room is the world). Fun!