@grimalkina holy shit, Cat

Thank you

@grimalkina I will re-iterate what I have typed before: Dr. Hicks, you are one hell of a writer. And it's clear to me from following you here that you're a helluva human being, as well.

I'm subscribing now, and I wish you and your wife every possible good thing.

Thank you. I feel very fortunate indeed to share a corner of the Web with you.

@grimalkina yay for hard conversations about rehumanization in tech.

I had already decided I would need to read this again in the morning when I have fresh mind, when I got to this 😄 “I know this essay is a hard read so far and I want you to take a breather if you need it so let’s do it in this paragraph together.”

@grimalkina

Yes!

> not only do the structurally empowered eighty-to-ninety-percent-men of technical organizations (100% in a great deal of the research about software topics) get to choose emotions over efficacy, they get to do so while also maintaining the notion that they never have emotions in the first place.

I say this a lot. *men* do this, or "skeptics" or whoever really wants to feel objective and therefore is far more subjective than those who know they are emotional too

@grimalkina
I just read it, absorbing it, which feels a bit like reading poetry.

(I am glad I have kept US big tech at a safe distance. Not that the smaller scale tech I have experienced is idyllic but the problems are perhaps less magnified.)

(My profile here has the tech, the flowers and the poetry. And that's perhaps a lot more radical to some than I already thought)

@grimalkina Signed up! Wish I could do the paid option. Looking forward to more of this.

How do you find time for your research, the podcast, and now a newsletter! Appreciating all the stuff that you are putting out.

@grimalkina
Lovely article!

Dunno if you agree but I think that an interesting example on how the "Technical" (culture?) finds ways to unsee humanity its own humanity is to hear how we discuss stuff like "best practices".

There's lots of incredibly interesting stuff to think about there. Practices that work do it AFAIK because of how person-to-person interactions work (or fail to work) across space/teams/time/etc. Instead of observing that we are just happy with the list protips.

@grimalkina Thank you, this is a wonderful essay. I think it's interesting to contemplate how much of this could be said about either patriarchy *or* white supremacy:

> However the very fact that you are Technical means that this fight cannot be won by you. I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but if my belonging in tech is fundamentally unacceptable yours is uncertain. If you as a Technical person seek to stretch the Technical label it will dissolve in your hands like a wet piece of paper because what you are doing is breaking down the fundamental units that create this label in the first place. To preserve its integrity, a Technical system will reject you sooner than it will accept me. This is why you can’t fight it. You are it. The moment you win that argument you get shoved out the airlock to join me out here in the dark.

@grimalkina Oh. I think I finally got why I always had difficulties getting told I was Technical, why I couln't feel it for anything but almost an insult, and that even if I'm French with not exactly the same crazy level of inequalities as the USA and not the same cultural reference. Or because I'm French and our Grandes Ecoles decides who is Technical and worthy since a couple centuries.

I recognize some background. The same kind of poor family. The idea that people - all of them - matters. My wife being a childcare provider.
And perhaps why I always preferred to take to 5 o'clock train with the hidden workers when I was part of a Technical company, before I created one more fitting to my world views.

So, well, it seems I couldn't give you that Technical medallion even if I wanted, because it didn't even got a chance to dissolve it.

Still. I see you. I see your spectacular competence and efficiency at what you do. I'm glad you chose to do it for a greater good, and to share it with us. Even more glad, given the cost.

And I'm happy to take that bit of ride with you. I hope I will be able to read other nice research and even, perhaps, give other at least a bit interesting feedback.

Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Please, let me take a bit if your shadows while I share my ghosts.

@grimalkina I get a "Fortinet Secure DNS Service Portal" error "Web Page Blocked! You have tried to access a web page which belongs to a category that is blocked."

is this just me? it started with FF telling me there was no certificate I think