Elizabeth Tai

Author: Elizabeth Tai

  • Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification

    Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. Cory Doctorow in https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

  • Chinese New Year eve

    Chinese New Year is a thing for my family. Since we are descended from Chinese Peranakans, our food preparation is like a military operation which can take days – without the order or strategy. And for some reason, Chinese New Year eve lunch feels like a bigger deal for my family. It usually takes Mum…

  • The enshittification of social media

    Cory Doctorow, in his article, Social Quitting, highlights how social media have life cycles. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, every­one you knew was using them and you had to sign up to stay in touch. Then, just as quickly, they imploded, turning into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten…

  • From self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com

    Thanks to the dominance of SEO optimised posts about WordPress from all manner of companies, any blog posts about wordpress.com is very, very difficult to find. Especially those about moving from self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com. Here are some I discovered and kept for posterity: “…was surprised that they offer WordPress.org hosting. I always thought that…

  • For the love of economy rice

    Nothing is more typically Malaysian than the “economy rice” store. These places sell “chap fun” (a Cantonese word for “mixed rice”), vegetable & meat dishes which you eat with your rice. Chap fun stalls are usually found in restaurant corner, often run by an uncle or aunty who calculates the price of your meal in…

  • Twitter misleads

    How Twitter misleads us about how many people have left — and what to do about it Social feeds are engines for distorting social understanding. Here’s how to push back against the algorithm. https://natematias.medium.com/how-twitter-misleads-us-about-how-many-people-have-left-and-what-to-do-about-it-bba484b6fed6

  • Algorithms and creativity

    “In the absence of an algorithm there is only your own creative compass.” In the #Fediverse I discovered people like @ewen who understood the impacts algorithms had on creativity. I felt the same sense of suffocation as a writer. In other spaces besides #Mastodon such as #Twitter nobody really understood my angst against it and…

  • Solarpunk fiction

    Learned about a new science fiction genre today – Solar Punk “Solarpunk stories take place in futures where humanity, technology, and nature live in harmony rather than in conflict.” TBH, it sounds a lot like Star Trek which makes me think I will love this genre! Who are the authors in this genre?

  • ChatGPT and tech writers

    Are tech writers going to lose their jobs? How can they adapt? https://passo.uno/openai-tech-writing-howto/

  • Disconnecting from the electric grid

    “On May 22, 2022, I began an experiment. I unplugged everything in my apartment, with the goal of drawing zero power from the electric grid for one month. I had no idea how I would make it past a few days… As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/i-disconnected-from-the-electric-grid-for-8-months-in-manhattan/