dylan baker (@dylnbkr) — Bluesky Profile

2 days ago

Said it last year when this article came out, this is why "just brainstorming" is still impactful bsky.app/profile/dyln...

See: gizmodo.com/chatgpts-pol...

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2 days ago

can't roll my eyes enough at the QuitGPT initiative telling people to switch to Anthropic as the "more ethical" option. we gotta raise our standards for the alternatives we imagine for ourselves y'all

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3 days ago

OFLAIN I the anti-tracking Faraday bag blocks WLAN, GPS, WIFI, RFID Digital detox to go: Put your cell phone in the bag and all signals such as mobile networks, WiFi, GPS, RFID and Bluetooth are blocked. Online compartment included! Now you decide when to be available...

Plus, things like this very chic Faraday phone bag *are* effective.

(You don't need to spend $100 on one though. You can make one with tin foil and an envelope.)

urban-privacy.com/products/ofl...

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3 days ago

Now, plenty of improvements in surveillance tech (e.g. gait detection) would render most anti-surveillance fashion ineffective in many scenarios (would LOVE to see robust testing on this). But I think even making a fashion statement of "evading surveillance is cool" is meaningful.

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3 days ago

A person against a white backdrop wearing bright yellow sneakers, black pants, and a very colorful sweater. The sweater looks somewhat like blurred, abstract figures of people, in blobs of pink, blue, white, green, red, and black. There are two bounding boxes superimposed over the sweater, both significantly offset from the figure, which read "PERSON CONFIDENCE: 70%" and "PERSON CONFIDENCE: 50%".

A picture of a person's torso wearing a shirt. The shirt looks like a poorly AI-generated image of an endless crowd of white people in what appear to be hippie costumes, as if in an endless uncanny valley music festival. Colorful swirls emerge around the top of the crowd. The shirt looks very strange and unsettling.

And there are still people in the "trick object detection with this shirt" game! The vibe still ranges from "eccentric but wearable" to "rather upsetting to perceive"

Sources: www.capable.design and antiai.biz

(if anyone wants to buy me a $600 Capable Design sweater... dms are open 👀)

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4 days ago

Lauren Bowker on Instagram: "Ever seen Anti surveillance makeup work? I used spectra reflective eye colour to try to glitch a facial recognition software. Test one passed. Leaning on CV Dazzle Tech... 566K likes, 3,920 comments - theunseenalchemist on September 3, 2025: "Ever seen Anti surveillance makeup work? I used spectra reflective eye colour to try to glitch a facial recognition software. T...

I think this facial-recognition-spoofing reflective makeup from The Unseen is really cool:

www.instagram.com/reels/DOJfKy...

Facial recognition has come a long way in the 16(!) years since CV dazzle— it's cool to see makeup advancing too (although I still wouldn't bank on it).

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4 days ago

If you still want to spend several $$$ on tacky sunglasses, consider instead: www.reflectacles.com

(This whole fiasco did inspire me to go see what people in anti-surveillance fashion have been up to lately and it is kinda fun ⬇️)

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1 week ago

Very much builds on the weird notion that coding (or STEM) is somehow the hardest and most complex discipline, a true aptitude for which little boys are granted at age 12 and the rest of us can only ever hope to emulate

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1 week ago

@dylantdoyle.bsky.social

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1 week ago

NOT DROPOUT 😭 NOOOO

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2 weeks ago

A screenshot from the r/xteinkereader subreddit, posted 16d ago by reddit user Wheel_Extra, titled Xteink X4 + Muji A7 Compact Notebook. It is captioned "Talk about the perfect duo ;)". The picture is of a light-skinned hand holding a green notebook the size of a palm with an e-ink reader of roughly the same size mounted on it. On the reader is a display showing two disembodied hands floating in the middle of a glowing aura.

A screenshot from the r/xteinkereader subreddit, posted 6d ago by reddit user cacheofthought, titled "Reading Quran on Way to Umrah on Xteink. Love this thing Read More Quran this Ramadan than I ever did." The picture is taken in the interior of a vehicle, where a light-skinned hand holds a small e-ink reader with Arabic writing on it.

A screenshot from the r/xteinkereader subreddit, posted 2d ago by reddit user trendli, titled "How the X4 fits on a iPhon 17 Pro Max with MagSafe". The picture is of a salmon-colored iphone with a small e-ink reader mounted squarely on the back of the phone.

I'd rather call my social media timelines "targeted" so I am reminded that I'm not *actually* the one doing any deciding

and let whatever bizarre and delightful hacking is going on over at r/xteinkreader be "personalization".

(seriously, it's such a delight to see what people are up to over there)

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2 weeks ago

Like, I want less "personalized" like "algorithmically tuned optimizer based on our hyper-surveilled behavior"

& more "personalized" like "that which we ourselves make personal"— personalization that implies agency.

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2 weeks ago

The Xteink X4 Is The Cheap, Hackable eReader That's Just Enough It has no touchscreen, no light, and it's under-powered. But the Xteink X4 has a devoted community that wants to make it sing.

"I have seen the word “flawed” used to describe it. As shipped and on a basic technical level this is true, but spiritually it is not."

Honestly, I want to reclaim the idea of "personalized" tech to refer to stuff like this.

aftermath.site/xteink-x4-ch...

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2 weeks ago

like it's not that LLM-assisted coding in the hands of an experienced developer is useless. but there are so many (usually very human) problems it can't address or actively makes harder, which severely limit in how far vibe coding will get you.

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2 weeks ago

This whole thread is 🎯

If you've written software with a team, you know that most of the time, most of the work is having meetings sorting out minutiae. & even in the coding, SO much work is in the testing, maintaining, documenting— where "vibes" won't cut it.

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2 weeks ago

god a total aside but if the longtermists are sooo preoccupied with the hypothetical lives of billions of people in the distant future, why can't they be obsessed with like, ending single-use plastic production 😭

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3 weeks ago

Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage. PLUS: 10,000 drivers call on Uber to repay stolen wages, a man is arrested at a public hearing about a data center and more.

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

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3 weeks ago

A meme image of three spidermans pointing at each other.

anyways if you've ever met me and found me to be remotely unique, I urge you to find a queer zine fair because I assure you you will find 1000 of me there

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3 weeks ago

A picture of beaming Dylan, a white transmasculine person with dark hair, sitting behind a table at the Olympia zine fest. They are wearing a grey patterned button-down, a nametag reading "DYLAN!", and pronoun pins that read "he/him" and "they/them". In front of them are a bucket of multicolored laser-cut pronoun pins, a pile of pink mini-zines, a stack of white zines with a black-and-white collage in the center, and a pile of art books with a laser-cut cover with leaves printed on it, reading "one I never thought to ask."

this zine fair reminded me that tboys really do love to go through our first year of T and make a twee little zine about it huh, there were so many 😭💕

(pictured: me in 2018 at the Olympia Zine Fest, tabling with *my* twee little transition zines)

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3 weeks ago

Anyways, zines delight me, analog media delights me, queer and trans people delight me, and I just thought I'd share.

Now, for the Dylan lore...

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3 weeks ago

A small black-and-white art book. The cover is entirely black, except the title which reads "MULCH" in white, with the outline of dirt around it.

A top-down view of the book, showing that it has only 4 pages.

The final page of the book. On it are two drawings of cupped hands. The first hands are holding mulch, and there is text above it reading "when he came back the next day". The second hands show a dashed outline where the mulch was in the preceding picture. The text below it reads "we told him he was a ghost".

4. Mulch, by Eliza Harris (elizaharris.com)

I like its simplicity. It's small— 4.5"x5.5"— and only 4 pages long. It tells one poignant childhood story with just 53 words and small diagrams of mulch; a boy eats a flower, gets sick, goes home, and the other kids hold a fake funeral.

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3 weeks ago

Another, partially-unfolded view of the book, this time from the front. You can see poetry on the first visible page (which comes from the middle of the book), and some black-and-white images on the subsequent pages. The text on the first page reads:

"Limestone is known commonly for its commercial importance
as a building material for flooring, building facades, monuments, landscaping, something ubiquitous its high fossil content has long fascinating researchers.
When heated to temperatures of 1,700-1,800 degrees C
its component parts are forcefully teased apart in a process called dissociation
the stone is suddenly no longer a geology
but an industry
dissociation occurs largely to extract calcium carbonate which has the ability to neutralize or reduce acids to prevent corrosion, decay a vital ingredient in the production of concrete, plant fertilizer, glass archival paper, official documentation
the ingredients to build an empire and write its history"

The back of the unfolded book. It is all blue cyanotype prints, with the shapes of netting, stones, string printed in white on the vibrant blue background.

The materiality of this book is so thoughtful— it feels like such a fitting medium for a dense and layered rock-poem, from its speckled off-white paper to its cyanotype backing bearing the imprint of rocks, string, netting.

A beautiful piece from start to finish.

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3 weeks ago

A small, square art book. It has a blue cyanotype cover, which looks like a blue background with white outlined prints of different objects (in this case, some string, some netting, and some hard-to-identify shapes). Around the book is a bright orange paper strip that reads "A GEOLOGY BREAKS IN HALF TO GROW/ willa goettling".

The unfolded book, viewed from above. It folds out like an accordion, with a front and back cover and 3 accordion folds in between. In front of the book is the removed orange paper strip that had been holding the book closed.

3. A GEOLOGY BREAKS IN HALF TO GROW by willa goettling (www.willagoettling.com)

Another non-traditional book format, a concertina/accordion book. It is unbound; you unhook the outer paper fastener and the book, like the poem, unfolds.

"what quantifies limestone is its/ high quantity of calcium"

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3 weeks ago

The cover of a fold-out zine/art book. It is square, with blue tape on the left and bottom edges. It has a pattern that looks like black-and-white newsprint, cut up in triangles to resemble a geometric quilt square, or perhaps an unfolded fortune teller. The center is highlighted with a bright pink risograph overlay. In the very middle, slightly off center, is the title, reading "wind up like this?"

An unfolded corner of the book. Printed vertically is a title, "4 Quilts by Rebecca Ann Jordan." Below that are instructions, which read "a suggested reading: BEGIN AT NOON, then continue clockwise until instinct compells you otherwise. there is no wrong way to enter". Printed horizontally next to this text, you can see some of poem titled "How did we wind up like this?", although much of the text is out of frame.

2. wind up like this? by Rebecca Ann Jordan

I am a sucker for non-traditional zine/art book formats, and this is no exception.

Four beautiful risograph quilt-like square panels, taped together with rocket ship-print washi tape, which you unfold to reveal a collection of poems.

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3 weeks ago

A cropped image of one page inside the zine. There is a drawing of a spoon stirring liquid in a peanut butter jar lid on one side. On the other, you can see some instructions, which read "A) using your index finger scoop up some paste (if it sticks to your finger it's good consistency if not then its too watery) and spread it evenly on one side of the cardboard. B) Place the cardboard (paste side down) onto the cloth right on the outline. Press down. C) Turn board over and add paste to edges wrapping cloth over." Below this text is a small hand-drawn diagram depicting these instructions.

1. How To Make a Homemade Canvas Board, by Incarcerated Artist J.C.H. (instagram: jch_convictedart)

This, to me, embodies the core of zine-making. A black-and-white, pen-and-ink, to-the-point, photocopied microzine. It's thorough, it's practical, and it's deeply poetic.

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3 weeks ago

A stand containing a wide variety of zines. In the background you can see the room is crowded, but can't see any faces.

A scrolling break of artistic delight:

I went to a trans art show/zine fair and got some new gems for my zine collection! Wanted to share a few of my favorites 🧵

(and stay for some Dylan lore at the end)

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3 weeks ago

truly! take it from me, an engineer with many lefty engineering friends, there are many of us writing longingly about high-speed rail and building stuff like this www.hackster.io/news/a-porta...

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3 weeks ago

incredible, no notes

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1 month ago

🧵 1/ It’s hard to find hope amidst so much collapse.

But in the wreckage of today’s crises, people are also powering solutions — and The 51st, backed by the community of D.C., is one of them.

Will you help us build a local newsroom that a billionaire can’t break?

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1 month ago

sigh

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