You know how at the end of these newsletters I write feel free to reply, it goes straight to my inbox ^-^? Well, turns out that… wasn’t true.
At 2 a.m. last Wednesday, I realized I couldn’t get into this Substack account. I’d gotten logged out because I signed up for a newsletter with my newsletters@ alias (the address associated with this account is kat@).
I tried to log back in. By default, Substack sends you a login link. No guests arrived at my inbox. Okay, let’s try a password. The contents of my password manager have never heard of Substack — maybe she goes to a different school. Weird. Do I have any messages from Substack for this account? Does this email address even work?
Narrator voice: It did not.
When I signed up for this account, I had hastily created an email forward from kat@ → hello@ (my main email; yeah I also have trouble keeping track) in Porkbun, my domain registrar. At 3 a.m. on Wednesday, I penned a confused message to Porkbun support and bashed the login sequence a bunch more times.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
I also shitposted on Twitter in mild incredulity (at the flimsiness, absurdity, and sprawl of my digital infrastructure) and disappointment (at not being able to write to y’all and to continue my not-impressive-by-any-reasonable-standards-but-impressive-to-me, 2-week streak).
After a night’s rest, I remembered that I should’ve set kat@ up as a GSuite alias, since hello@ uses GSuite. Porkbun’s support representatives concurred. Cool.
I tested that I now could indeed send and receive emails using kat@. But nothing from Substack would come through. Linus, my go-to person for complaining about Susbtack, suspected that Substack was caching the old DNS records for kat@. Thus began the wait.
Mid-day on Thursday (can you tell I have a warped sense of time?) I discovered, in my ~fifth visit to Substack’s FAQ, that Substack indeed has a support email. I dispatched a message. Days passed and I grew antsier, so I followed up with a haiku.
My lack of patience is a bit embarrassing and only dubiously justified — it seemed like Substack’s support email was rather tucked away, so I was unsure what response times, if any, to expect. But they seemed to appreciate the humor, and I’m back now.
All this to say, if you’ve replied to a previous issue of paratexting and I didn’t reply, it’s because my email wasn’t working so I never saw it. Oof! If you said stuff you still feel like saying, feel free to send it again, here or elsewhere where we chat.
The above story was an f. I have more f’s for thought prepared today:
Friction/Focus
I read most of Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle during all my downtime last last Friday. One line that jumped out to me was:
If we feel “addicted to our phones,” it is not a personal weakness. We are exhibiting a predictable response to a perfectly executed design.
So much of design is dedicated to minimizing friction — make things streamlined, intuitive, effortless. It seems like a noble enough ideal, but it’s far from neutral. Things don’t inherently have to be this way.
I constantly check social media. Even site blockers, not having the native apps, and setting usage limits don’t add enough friction. I occasionally ask a trusted friend to withhold my password from me for prespecified amounts of time. I’ve found that to be the most surefire method.
Once we become aware of friction (or absence thereof) and how much it shapes our technology and life, we can ask: Where might we want more friction? Where is friction being designed out of sight?
Forms
Speaking of invisible designs in the frameworks where we do things…
Last week I was drafting an article about forms (paperwork). The trouble with the draft was that it read like a series of vaguely connected observations. There was no point. I’ve since come up with some compelling proto-points about forms.
Forms can encode biases and enforce binaries (e.g. gender; yes/no questions). Forms reflect as well as shape how you view subjects. They can make you think that subjects inherently have these traits you’re gathering data about and that the traits are organized the way the form organizes them. (Possibly relevant: How Not to Know Ourselves)
From Linus: The act of gathering information is almost always motivated by some hypothesis being (dis/)proven — or at least some question, which has assumptions about the world baked into it.
The Wikipedia page about forms cites this evocative quote (emphasis mine):
“Blank forms, such as time cards, graph paper, account books, diaries, bank checks, scorecards, address books, report forms, order forms and the like, which are designed for recording information and do not in themselves convey information [are not subject to copyright]”
— Code of Federal Regulations § 202.1(c) (2006)
Failing
I’ve had a failure resume on my website for probably 2+ years now. Despite being in a perpetual state of I-want-to-fix-this-up, it garners positive-sentiment comments every so often. I think the concept of a failure resume raises some interesting questions that I’ve recently had mental space to wonder about.
What constitutes a failure? As my friend Rona mentioned, if the purpose of your failure resume was to help people feel better, should you consider the potential effects of impressive-sounding “failures”? Some people have commented, “Damn, I don’t even have a failure resume, I gotta get started.”
I’ve seen some people say they seek “failure-driven growth” or are “optimizing for failure.” While failures can indicate that we’re striving and putting ourselves out there, this metric isn’t immune to being gamed. You could just apply for a bunch of irrelevant things or ditch your existing commitments. Personally, I don’t find this metric motivating, but it can be helpful!
Flash Fiction
I wrote half a flash fiction (<=1,618 words) story, inspired by a flash fiction contest some classmates organized. Unfortunately, I was not inspired enough to finish it before the deadline. It’s about a social media influencer promoting a product whose selling point is to make home feel more like home. In the process, she realizes that amid her hyper-online life, she’s done zilch to make her outwardly glamorous physical house feel like a home.
Apparently it reads like the start of a Black Mirror episode?
(For consistency / easier skimming / acknowledgement of the original purpose of this newsletter, I think I’m going to continue linking to my actual writing updates — rare content lol — as buttons.)
Updates: I’ve been dragging out the website for Chroma, MIT’s student-run science and humanities magazine, for too long, and it’s finally up! Check it out at chroma.mit.edu. (Fun fact: This subdomain used to belong to some lab’s printer, so Chroma rented a starter home at mitchroma.ink.)
Last week I decided that I’ll participate in a Recurse Center retreat in January! RC is a programming retreat that emphasizes self-directed learning and sharing. It’s ~full-time and “batches” last 1, 6, or 12 weeks. If you’re curious about RC and have perused their plentiful website, I and many other Recursers are happy to chat about the application process and experience.
I’ve noticed a lot of parallels between MIT’s and RC’s suites of homegrown software. To my surprise, these parallels were made explicit when I noticed that the implementation of @alum.recurse.com is modeled after that of @alum.mit.edu. Just as I claimed katmh@alum.mit.edu before starting my freshman year of college, I’ve already snagged katmh@alum.recurse.com. I hope the email forwarding works.
Wishing everyone a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving/break/regular week!