Miranda Osthoff

@tinyconstruct

Minneapolis computer witch Indie TTRPG goblin, books, dog person Naysayer and hatchetwoman in the fight against violence Tired 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🖕🧊

253 Folgt380 Follower2.411 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir tinyconstruct.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jun 24

-Also...Midwest parents may not like it, but: maybe look at research about how developmentally appropriate/wise it is to have your young kids around alcohol all the time 🫠 -Maps and websites are great, but the real unsung AuDHD hero:

An image of the "popular times" widget from Google maps (the implication being that going when places are less busy is much less stressful)

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· May 24

Exhibit A: A blurb from Wired speculating about whether anyone can program computers now. Exhibit B: The masthead of Wired’s website floating in the middle of an article, hiding shit I’m trying to look at.

Said blurb from Wired:

“You Can't Code
I'm amazed by how many writers perpetuate the idea that anyone can code now. For one thing, they almost certainly haven't coded anything themselves. For another, they'd never agree with the statement that anyone can write now-even though there's no obvious difference between using Al to generate a novel and using it to generate a code base.
The fact is, not just anyone can code now.
Randos here and there may have used Claude to, I don't know, conjure up some Photoshop knockoff or email-sorting tool, but this is novelty, curiosity-like the time you tried VR or built a website or bought an NFT. I promise you it won't stick, and the people using Al to code for real are ... the people who were coding already! Techies.
Early adopters. Computer people. There isn't some new generation of citizen coder rising up to take back software.”

The masthead of Wired’s website floating in the middle of an article, hiding shit I’m trying to look at.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· May 15

In fairness, I honestly think she will happily continue talking like a sociopath

“At Harvard, Hajjar was a member of The Harvard Crimson's editorial board. Frustrated by ideological homogeneity on campus, she penned a column for the Crimson called "Always at Odds." Hajjar shared her experience as a conservative student at Harvard and became a vocal advocate for free speech and ideological diversity, co-founding the Harvard Institute of Politics' Conservative Coalition.
She spent the summer of 2020 as an editorial intern at National Review writing about foreign policy and national security. She has also been published in the Daily Signal and CapX.
In 2019, Hajjar was a Capitol Hill intern for Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. She worked with the defense team, reporting on Armed Service hearings and researching national security affairs. She also worked as a research assistant for the Adam Smith Institute in London and
attended an American Enterprise Institute Summer Honors Program seminar on Middle Eastern affairs.”

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Apr 27

🙃🫠

A photo of Jensen Huang with a caption that says:

“If we discourage people from being software engineers, we're going to run out of software engineers... Some of the doomers were telling people... don't be a radiologist. Guess what we're short of? Radiologists."
- Jensen Huang, CEO Nvidia
Dwarkesh Podcast April 15, 2026

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Apr 26

lol

Tom’s Hardware article headline:

“Jensen Huang says kids shouldn't learn to code — they should leave it up to Al”
By Mark Tyson published February 25, 2024

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Apr 23

Like…I need everyone to understand how bad of an idea this is, and if you want to make things without having any idea how they work: learn. If you strongly oppose that, I take it all back, please very go do this. Do it all day, every day. Let me know when you plug it into your house. Film it.

Wired article:

“They Built the 'Cursor for Hardware? Now, Anthropic
Wants In
Schematik is a program that aims to help people vibe code for physical devices. Hopefully, it won't blow anything up.”

“SAMUEL BEEK KNEW he had a problem when he blew every fuse in his house.
The culprit was an electric door opener he had built himself, guided by instructions for wiring and piecing together a device drummed up by ChatGPT. Turns out, the chatbot wasn't so great at distinguishing between wet and dry connections, so the device he had built sent out a surge of misallocated power that zapped everything else. Oops.
Beek, based in Amsterdam, admits he is not a hardware guy. But he had that itch and now really just wanted to make something that wouldn't explode.”

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Apr 19

It sure would be confusing if she had a history of asking the world to pull her into war with Iran

Al Jazeera headline from 2024: Kamala Harris says Iran is
'greatest adversary' of US
Democratic presidential candidate says preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is one of her top priorities.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Apr 13

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Mar 27

Hey real talk this is someone who should not be able to comfortably enter public spaces, let alone hold office.

From the above article:

Charges of fifth-degree domestic assault were filed after Steve Drazkowski, 41, allegedly grabbed his daughter by the shirt below her neck and lifted her heels off the ground while yelling in her face, court records say.
Documents say a Wabasha police officer arrived at Wabasha/Kellogg High School on Oct. 13 to find an emotionally distraught girl with two red marks on her upper chest. She complained that she was afraid of her father and didn't want to return to her home.
The girl told authorities that the assault was not an isolated incident and that verbal fights occur on a daily basis. She said Drazkowski had slapped her one time in December 2004 when "she could not hold a cold dog dish while he filled it."

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Mar 27

This Steve Drazkowski? The one with a history of thinking fifth-degree assault is fine if his child doesn’t do something the way he wants it? Hrm. www.postbulletin.com/news/state-s...

from the linked article:
Charges of fifth-degree domestic assault were filed after Steve Drazkowski, 41, allegedly grabbed his daughter by the shirt below her neck and lifted her heels off the ground while yelling in her face, court records say.
Documents say a Wabasha police officer arrived at Wabasha/Kellogg High School on Oct. 13 to find an emotionally distraught girl with two red marks on her upper chest. She complained that she was afraid of her father and didn't want to return to her home.
The girl told authorities that the assault was not an isolated incident and that verbal fights occur on a daily

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Mar 2

Like. I’m no fancy big city lawyer, but the AG of Texas (in saying they cannot discuss gender with clients who are minors) just ruled that therapists are healthcare providers. In what world are TX insurance companies not about to be sued into oblivion over mental health benefits, etc?

Texas AG opinion from here https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/opinion-files/opinion/2026/kp-0518.pdf
“Subsection 161.701(2) broadly defines a "[h]ealth care provider" as "a person other than a physician who is licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized by this state's laws to provide or render health care or to dispense or prescribe a prescription drug in the ordinary course of business or practice of a profession." Tex. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE § 161.701(2); see also id. § 161.701(4) (defining "[p]hysician" as "a person licensed to practice medicine in this state"). The phrase
"health care" is commonly understood to mean "efforts made to maintain or restore health ... by trained and licensed professionals." MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY 574 (11th ed. 2020); see also, e.g., NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY 801 (3d ed. 2010) (referring to
"the maintenance and improvement of physical and mental health," including "through the provision of medical services"). Further, the attributive noun "health" ordinarily refers to "physical and mental well-being; freedom from disease, pain, or defect; normalcy of physical and mental functions; [or] soundness." WEBSTER'S NEW WORLD COLLEGE DICTIONARY 669 (5th ed. 2016); see also, e.g., MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARy 574 (11th ed. 2020) (emphasizing
"the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit"); MOsBY's DICTIONARY OF MEDICINE, NURSING & HEALTH PROFESSIONS 809 (10th ed. 2017) (emphasizing "a condition of physical, mental, and social well-being and the absence of disease or other abnormal condition"). This makes clear that a health care provider engages in licensed efforts to maintain or restore health, whether in body or mind, and belies any perceived ambiguity in subsection 161.701(2).”

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Feb 19

Blame politicians. Hospital systems are faced with either stopping gender care for minors, or closing down entirely, possibly also having all their MDs and maybe other staff barred from ever being hired at public hospitals. Any politician that doesn’t mention this is dodging responsibility.

From the article:
NYU Langone is closing its program as the Trump administration threatens to pull federal funding from hospitals that provide treatments such as hormones or puberty blockers to minors. The Trump administration in December proposed new rules that would prohibit Medicare or Medicaid funding from flowing to hospitals that provide such gender-affirming treatments to patients under 18. Hospitals rely heavily on these massive public insurance programs for revenue.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Feb 3

Children’s has fought against this longer than most. This is very upsetting news for a lot of kids, it will absolutely hurt the mental health of them and their families, and I expect every MN politician to either fight fed transphobia or find a new job. www.childrensmn.org/services/car...

A post from Children’s Minnesota about pausing medical interventions for minors in their gender care program:

As one of the leading pediatric providers of gender-affirming care in the region, we have recently experienced an increase in federal
actions directed at health systems
Like ours that provide this care.
These actions jeopardize the stability of Minnesota's only comprehensive pediatric health care system, and they threaten our clinicians' ability to practice medicine now and in the future. If conditions remain the same, we
plan to temporarily pause prescribing puberty-suppressing medications and pubertal hormones (estrogen and testosterone) for patients under age 18 in our Gender Health program, effective Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 31

We should be allowed to hunt British people. Not all, but most. It should probably be a lottery based tag system, but only to maintain sporting populations.

Telegraph headline:
Sophia Money-Coutts
Being posh should be a protected characteristic
If we're going to outlaw class discrimination in the interests of fairness, no one should be exempt

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 29

Getting warmer here!

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 27

Imagine working for a tobacco company and being like “Well I love working here, and sure I knew we’d kill people, I just didn’t think they’d be white or live here.”

A wired headline/lede:
Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti
BY MAKENA KELLY
"In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this," one worker wrote on Slack.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 27

Nothing but respect for my paper of record.

Racket headline:
Report: Bye Bye, Baby Bitch Bovino

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 26

I mean everyone is congratulating The Atlantic on their Minneapolis story (which is fair, the war correspondent who wrote it had a good perspective), and here’s them one blink ago

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 26

I swear to god if the government kills me and you boost an Atlantic article about it, I will haunt you.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 26

Like yes, there are even people on the right that can’t stand this; but many people saw this coming and put work in. And The Atlantic hates that kind of people for being “absolutist.”

Atlantic article:

HOW LIBERAL AMERICA CAME TO ITS SENSES
The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump.
By Jonathan Chait

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 25

These are the pre-election discussions he was having. He said what he’d do, the people he’d do it to (everyone he called a “leftist”), he is now doing it. If you or anyone didn’t think that, you’re not only naive, you weren’t listening

"This is how autocrats cement their
permanent grip on power, Rassin told NPR.
All of these threats raise a question: if Trump won reelection, could he tell the Justice Department to go after all of these people?
Bassin says the answer is, essentially, yes.
"There are not really legal restrictions or even structural restrictions that would stop the president from simply directing them to go and investigate his perceived opponents,"
Bassin said.
Some of Trump's allies have promised to undo the decades-long custom that the White House stays out of the Justice Department's decision-making.
"The Department of Justice is not an independent agency," said former Trump administration official Russell Vought at a conference last year. "If anyone brings it up in a policy meeting in the White House, I want them out of the meeting."”

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 25

This is absolutely bullshit.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 25

Their website is apparently down, hopefully for good reasons. Worth noting that during the George Floyd uprising he and his family stayed overnight in the store out of fear it may be burned down like Uncle Hugo’s. He is still out here and gets it. #minneapolis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamHa...

A photo of DreamHaven Books boarded up during the George Floyd Uprising, “with great power comes great responsibility” is sprayed across the boards, also with a depiction of Spider Man’s face and “MPLS strong”

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 25

Sorry to do this but like, circumstances. I cannot overemphasize how badly even the worst fucking people in Minnesota hate this.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 22

Haha I do not love my town being mentioned with these other things

Wired headline:
We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a
Superpower
With Donald Trump's actions in Greenland, Minneapolis, and Venezuela, a foreign enemy could not invent a better chain of events to wreck the standing of the United States.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 13

@newyorker.com in this piece: -There were only small protests after Good was murdered -No Kings marches are just about making each other feel good -The George Floyd uprising and Arab Spring were “revolutions-that-weren’t” -ICE will inevitably deploy to more cities en masse Incredible dipshittery.

Screenshot of a New Yorker article titled:

WHAT COMES AFTER THE PROTESTS

The killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis will continue to bring people to the streets. Can it bring change?

By Jay Caspian Kang

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 7

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 3

The post continues in the next slide:

I made a decision years ago to not opt out of the world, and with that decision and the commitment to stick to that decision, I made a choice to live a certain way, where my survival was tied to care for others, principled community-building, not hoarding resources (even/especially if the resource is my own time! which it often is!) not closing myself off to connection, or the making of new friends, or the trying of new things.
Trying to be as welcoming in real life as 1 am on the page as I am on the stage as I am when joking around online. In short: not drifting through the world like it and everyone in it owes me something just because I decided to stick around.

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Jan 3

Cringe to cross-post, but I felt this one. www.instagram.com/p/DS8Jeu2kby...

From Hanif Abdurraqib’s Instagram post:

I don't know. You're maybe going to have to give your close attention to other people in a world that increasingly devalues close attention. You're probably going to have to think about the way you talk to others in a world that increasingly encourages people to say the first bullshit that pops into their head, regardless of how harmful it may be. You are possibly going to have to create things that you are proud of, and then share them with a world that is increasingly ill-equipped to engage with those things, but it'll find the people it needs to find. You are almost certainly going to have to be patient in the name of loving others well, and loving yourself well. I guess I'm mostly saying this to myself, but you also may have to do these things, and more. I hope you remain up for that challenge. Our time here isn't infinite, and it can't only be miserable

Miranda Osthoff@tinyconstruct· Dec 28

Hey when it’s not factual reporting, how does the Washington Post feel about AI? Oh.