hey i'm winston. i read a lot for fun and to help me better understand and interrogate our world. this web-blog is where i chronicle some of my learning. i work as a product manager for Honeycomb.
Recent posts
Working, Humanely
The US system of wage labor and corporate person-hood means that work is bullshit and impermanent, but this week a few events made me reflect on how much possibility for other ways of working are still available.
If Only
it's nice to know that the dream exists, you know? i sure would love if it were reality, but i'm a realist, I've learned not to hope too much, to assume that imagination can become reality. so i just dream about it, as a distraction. i will still do whatever is necessary to buy food. that's how it works right?
Surrounded by Growth
Houseplants, growth, and the joy of living with other beings.
Metaphors for Machine Learning
Interacting with ML tools can feel like magic. People with no illustration skills can suddenly have a computer generate images they want just by describing them. Writing large amounts of content is as simple as providing a sentence or two of instructions. But I can't stop wrestling with the question: how will individuals make sense of these new tools, which are powerful in science-fiction ways, but inaccurate in very confusing ways?
Recently Read
How Infrastructure Works
Copyright 2023, Riverhead Books
Climate Change, Cultural Analysis
The World We Used to Live In
Copyright 2006, Fulcrum Publishing
Indigenous Issues
Those Who Saw the Sun
Copyright 2023, Levine Querido
Race, Cultural Analysis
Doppelganger
Copyright 2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Cultural Analysis
Rehearsals for Living
Copyright 2022, Haymarket Books
Climate Change, Race, Indigenous Issues, Cultural Analysis
An Immense World
Copyright 2022, Random House
Climate Change, Cultural Analysis
Boy Friends
Copyright 2022, Faber & Faber
Cultural Analysis
Bicycle Diaries
Copyright 2009, Penguin Books
Cultural Analysis
Links of Note
Articles, papers, and other things that don't make it on to my reading page.
The World is Toxic. Welcome to the Metabolic Era
The Stones Shall Cry out: Consciousness, Rocks, and Indians
On Nonscalability: The Living World is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales
Feminists write the Anthropocene: three tales of possibility in Late Capitalism
Decolonization is not a Metaphor
Disability, Bias, and AI