Kate Haskell

Politics

On Half Measures

One of the worst parts of this COVID-19 pandemic to me is that we’re seeing in real-time what happens in a capitalist economy when constant consumption and needless production just stop. It’s ugly. I’ve been trying to explain this to people for a few years now, but

Fighting Against Structure

So that last post [https://www.bactroid.net/dont-cross-the-streams-of-consciousness/] was really something right? Lots of poetic language there at the end. Really felt like I might be saying something profound, right? Never forget that I'm full of shit, and like all writers, I make mundane things sound so

Don’t Cross the Streams of Consciousness

I sometimes struggle to write in this blog. I have been threatening for months to turn this web site into something other than a blog. Blogs have structure. I don’t fit into structures well. I never have. I consider this a personal virtue. I write every day. My writing

I Am Not Simply An Introvert

When people start talking about how they handle social situations—especially in my social circles—the word “introvert” tends to surface. This makes sense. I work in a very introvert-friendly trade. IT work and web development provide lots of jobs where you can excel while needing some measure of solitude

Politics

On the Tyranny of the Herd

This morning, while writing in my journal, I found myself wondering if pencil sharpeners are allowed on airplanes. This is precisely the sort of question that the human mind can only ponder because the rules for what one can take onto airplanes are arbitrary and subject to change at any

Nature

The Little Things

Back in April, after several months of allowing our garden to grow out with native Florida plants and wildflowers for pollinators and other wildlife, we got a notice from our city code enforcement telling us that we either had to mow it all down or face fines. This happened right

“Nerd.”

Gambit thinks I've done quite enough category theory for one day.

Programming

Monoids as a Way To Keep Code DRY

We have a maxim in programming circles: Don’t repeat yourself, commonly abbreviated as “DRY.” It’s not uncommon to see a comment on your PR asking you pull something out into a repeatable function in order to “keep your code DRY.” function getFileContents(system) { return readFilePromise('logs/'

On Neurodiversity, Category Theory, and The Discourse

I have recently discovered something important about me and how my mind works that feels like precisely the sort of thing that I should note. Maybe some day it will even be helpful to someone else in understanding me, someone they care for, or even their own self. It is

Religion/Spirituality

On Religion, Righteous Anger, and Smashing Structures

I don’t write about religion and my religious beliefs as much these days because, after my year and a day of study and reflection, I feel like I’ve answered most of the big structural questions in a way that works for me. I know quite well what the

Politics

On Social Media As Inoculation

> This is not to say people shouldn’t seek comfort in art, in TV, in movies. It’s the only way to not go mad! But, in our view, do it knowing what you’re doing is fun and aesthetic, not militant and subversive—it’s never going to

Not Exactly Seeing Eye-To-Eye

I feel awkward writing about autism. In an article from the past year [https://www.bactroid.net/the-intersection-of-exploitation-and-privilege/], I summed it up nicely with the following footnote: > Because I’ve never been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, I usually feel awkward taking on that mantle. I first

Politics

Can I Talk To A Manager?

“Speaking to the manager” is a sort of tyrannical helplessness; it is the haughty demand for intercession on one’s behalf by an array of greater forces you assume are servile. It is worded like a demand, but it is in fact a plea. It relies on a deeply held

Politics

Nothing to Syndicate

It should be clear what all these changes in the nature of work mean for syndicalism: It is difficult to organize the workplace if there is no workplace. It is even harder if there are no workers. Of course, there still are workplaces, and we are (mostly) still workers, and

Religion/Spirituality

Mythologizing Me Like I Do You

Until I got my turntable last year, I had forgotten how satisfying it is to slide a record out of a paper sleeve, put the needle down, and listen to a whole album from start to finish. There’s an element of ritual that feels not unlike the start of a prayer or a religious observance.

Programming

On Composition as the Guiding Principle of Functional Programming

One of the most important concepts in functional programming is composition. If you’ve ever used Unix command line activities to pipe commands together, you have used a form of composition.

Insert Pithy Quote Here

When an author litters their text with quotes from others, it always reads to me as very amateur writing. It feels like a kid writing a term paper who needs just x more pages to meet the minimum set by their teacher. Am I supposed to be impressed that you

Politics

Slacking Off as a Revolutionary Act

> The worker becomes a revolutionary not by becoming more of a worker but by undoing his “workerness.” And in this he is not alone; the same applies to the farmer, the student, the clerk, the soldier, the bureaucrat, the professional — and the Marxist. The worker is no less a

Politics

On Silent Pogroms

> If a Jew and a Gentile happened to be arrested on the same charge, it was certain that the Gentile would go free while the Jew would be sent to prison and sometimes even shot. They were all the time exposed to insult and indignities, not to mention the

Politics

On the Commodification of Everything Beautiful

After my first medical appointments of the day, I find myself hanging out at a Panera and dreaming of a world there were public spaces I could sit on a democratically controlled Internet, spaces truly open to all that didn’t require you to have the money to pay for

Politics

What “The Economy” Means

> …“the economy,” which was a short-hand term for corporate profit… (A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn) This is a very useful thought technology. We should all implement a substitution in our heads for these two phrases. s/the economy/corporate profits/

Politics

On Meritocracy and the Role of Capitalist Inoculation

> Undoubtedly, ordinary people benefited to some extent from these changes. The system was rich, productive, complex; it could give enough of a share of its riches to enough of the working class to create a protective shield between the bottom and the top of society. A study of immigrants

Programming

What I Like About Haskell: Data Structures As Control Flow

When you first encounter Haskell-inspired structures like Maybe, Either, or Reader, they might seem needlessly complicated. I myself was guilty of thinking that these abstractions only served to obfuscate control flow that would be much more apparent and readable using if/else, try/catch or even ternary operators. Now, I

Politics

On Revolution, Reform, and Capitalism’s Terrifying Escape Room

> The problem of democracy in the post-Revolutionary society was not, however, the Constitutional limitations on voting. It lay deeper, beyond the Constitution, in the division of society into rich and poor. For if some people had great wealth and great influence; if they had the land, the money, the

Politics

On Ineffectiveness

When I walked into Starbucks this morning, I ran into a guy with a shirt not unlike this one. Maybe he hasn't been keeping up with his daily pledges?