Yvonne Lam

@yvonnezlam

I play with books, cats, food, yarn, and dirt, not all at the same time. Software engineer. Society of People Interested in Boring Things. She/her, cis.

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Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 12

My theory about "raising awareness" is that it makes people feel like they are doing something without needing to attend to whether what they are doing works. Which, since I'm still thinking about Spinoza at one remove, is exactly what often makes people nervous about systems thinkers.

The default goal, of course, is raising awareness. Raising awareness is the donor-facing euphemism for freaking out as many people as possible without affecting material conditions. Raising awareness can be good for raising money in the short term, often at the expense of meaningful longer-term progress. We’ll look at fundraising strategy another day.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 10

Look what I saw on the Seattle Public Library summer book bingo shelf @linneaharts.bsky.social!

A library copy of The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker. It has a bookmark with the word "historical" on it.

A book bingo form for adult summer reading. The squares are

row 1: water, time travel, suggested by a library worker, soothing, hard-to-love protagonist
row 2: Seattle Arts & Lectures speaker, diaspora, FIFA World Cup country, eye-opening, PNW Black, Indigenous, or POC author
row 3: myth and legend, unplug, free square, outer space, under 150 papers
row 4: HEA/HFN, queer/trans voices, suggested by an independent bookseller, historical, buddy read
row 5: honorable mention, horror, women's sports, own choice, animal

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 10

❤️❤️❤️

As for the album's title, that reflects Kaye's love of local music: "Music happens in the local and then sometimes the world discovers it. And I love that pattern and evolution of how music happens totally at the grassroots, one-on-one, and then perhaps gets figured out."

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 9

Peppers have been pickled. Now they sit around until they are cool enough to put in the fridge.

An open glass jar filled with red Thai chile peppers in an apple cider brine. A green wide mouth canning funnel is in the top of the jar.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 9

Whether the sheriff's department actually needs a dedicated crime-fighting robot is another question. As far as we can tell, the most recent hostage situation in Forsyth County came in May of 2023, were a man allegedly held his significant other against their will after assaulting police.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 8

Sharing this with everyone I know:

From John Cutler on linkedin:

One reason some neurodivergent people (hello!) are good at strategy is that we are willing to push harder on incoherence than other people. We can push until a pattern falls out.

Of course this same skill/superpower gets you so deep that everyone else has left the room by the time the pattern finally appears.

The "bias to action" person may interpret the behavior as:

"You're uncomfortable with ambiguity, so you keep asking questions."

But the internal experience might be closer to:

"No, I'm very comfortable in ambiguity. I'm swimming in it. What I'm uncomfortable with is everyone pretending we are no longer in it."

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 6

From an interview with Alice Hattrick, about her book on May Morris. It reminds me of Jenny Odell's Saving Time. observer.co.uk/culture/book...

But the value of sewing is really how long it takes. That’s why you would never be able to sell something that you had embroidered, really, for an amount of money that would equate to the amount of time that it had taken you to make it. It would be extortionately expensive, so it’s the kind of thing you only ever do for yourself or as a gift. That’s where I have found stitching really beneficial to my life: it is time away from thinking about work as something to be traded. Embroidery is a form of resistance because you’re making in resistance to indentured labour or commodified time.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 4

Spinoza is one of George Eliot's influences (she translated his work into English), so I've been thinking in terms of Middlemarch:

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 3

Post a random picture or everything else will go bad in July.

Back view of Marianne, a black and brown bullseye tabby cat, hanging by her claws in a screen door. She was chasing a bug.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jul 2

An old entry of @economeager.bsky.social's newsletter, on trying to rewrite the past. rottenandgood.substack.com/p/you-love-a...

The reason this text is so foundational in and for America is because that is your collective situation, and what Gatsby does is what your country itself is doing. This nation, founded on a mistake, wants to erase its error from its history and it can’t. But because you are, for now, the richest, the most powerful nation on earth, you think you can. Your own wealth is a consecration to you. You think you can do anything.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 22

Felix is being fussy. Some of the food is the kittens' but he disapproves of absolutely all of it.

A gray and white piebald tabby stares disapprovingly at the four bowls of food in front of him.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 17

I love Dorothy Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, but it's never a good sign when something reminds me of Lord Peter talking about the difference between "made with" pears and "made from" pears.

“Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread, but you can't make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously, “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words 'with' and 'from.' Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or, not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say 'Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,' then it's got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made 'from pears,' without the 'only,' the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, 'made with pears,' you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you—such are the niceties of our English tongue.”

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 15

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 14

The ferocious desert beasts think it is going to be hot, and it isn't yet noon.

black and brown tabby cat sitting upright with her eyes closed in a catio

black and brown bullseye tabby cat with white cravat and paws reclining on a platform in a catio

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 12

I don't think posting cute pictures of the kittens is political praxis, but at least it's not "this is awful, here, you try some":

Two black and brown tabby kittens with incredible smoky eyes snuggle with each other in a rectangular wicker basket. The kittens' tails are intertwined. The kittens are Marianne (left) and Elinor (right).

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 8

I've been thinking about this from @biancawylie.com since I saw it a couple of days ago. It's originally about AI, but imo applies more broadly. (screenshotted because it's a good and useful thing I want to remember)

post from bianca wylie

training, literacy, adoption. All efforts to shift more power to the supply-side of the product equation.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· Jun 5

In case anyone is looking for a vision of masculinity, may I suggest Anthony Stewart Head as Dr. Frank-N-Furter?

A white man in femme makeup, a pink corset, black stockings, and heels, with a feather boa. (Anthony Stewart Head as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from a stage production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· May 31

Latria Graham, on what is lost when arts criticism doesn't exist any more www.talkscratch.com/the-job-i-wa...

From the beginning, I've understood that engaging with art is not a passive act. My perception is shaped by social, political, and economic pressures pressing down on my body, shaping my present, and my past. Over the years of practicing this way of seeing, I've come to understand more profoundly the role that deep inquiry has in shaping public tastes.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· May 30

two black and brown bullseye tabby cats, one with white tummy and paws and one with buff tummy and paws, lie head to head, gazing at you with half-closed eyes

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· May 28

A The Life of Sharks comic, by Christian Talbot and illustrated by Sophie Hodge. A black and white line drawing of a shark standing on its tail and skimming a book titled "Eat Prey Love".

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· May 24

Seen and snuggled at Sea Wolf.

A black, tan and white corgi smiles politely at you.

Yvonne Lam@yvonnezlam· May 24

I needed to sit down and breathe into a paper bag when I read this part. A man "'more likely to break code' if asked by a colleague to fix it" is collecting and storing people's PII in a vibe coded application.