Chris Burgess
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chris.bur.gs
Chris Burgess
@chris.bur.gs
210 followers 310 following 610 posts
Tech for good, for people, for orgs. Less tech, and slower too. Popping balls through hoops, open source, learning guitar, making prints, building with wood. Ōtepoti, Aotearoa.
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Reposted by Chris Burgess
catandgirl.bsky.social
Those clowns at the ice cream factory
"I love the ice cream factory!" Says Girl, walking out with a towering ice cream cone. "It's REAL - the ice cream - and the people who make the ice cream - and the people who enjoy the ice cream. And management is a thin layer of abstraction working with money and numbers to keep the ice cream factory making ice cream." "Did you hear about the whipped cream factory that merged with the sprinkles warehouse"" asks Cat. Girl frets. "And when a boss works their way up from the factory floor - they know ICE CREAM. But when the boss comes from upper management at a chain go privatized hospitals - they know MANAGEMENT!" "They had to work SUNDAES," says Cat. "And then the management and finance and the numbers that need to go up," continues Girl, "are the REAL important things." "Until the factory was shut down," grimaces Cat. "And the business is a fungible abstraction whose primary purpose is - not to make ice cream - but to move numbers," says Girl. "And the company reconstituted itself as a real estate trust" says Cat as his ice cream melts. "Anyway they all lost their pensions." Girl looks at her melted ice cream. "I thought this tasted like real estate."
November 18, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
jjinandtonic.bsky.social
You’re giving a perfectly good ape anxiety, thats what you’ve done
jayvanbavel.bsky.social Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 1d
Chimpanzees use 22 types of tools in the wild but they are capable of doomscrolling like the rest of us.

This video of Sugriva using Instagram is shocking because it's so similar to how humans use social media--engaging with content that triggers our emotions, like images of our friends and foes.
November 18, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
cathygellis.bsky.social
Meanwhile, back at Cloudflare headquarters...
a bald man in a white shirt and black tie is holding a brush .
Alt: Scene from Airplane! movie where guy in the control tower unplugs the landing lights.
media.tenor.com
November 18, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
bowiesongs.bsky.social
Eno diary, 18 Nov 95: "Sorting out CDs. I have so many, no idea where most came from. It’s so easy to make ‘sonic landscapes’ now..millions of people at it. A whole technology exists for it..by the time a whole technology exists for something it probably isn’t the most interesting thing to be doing.
November 18, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
emiliusdraws.bsky.social
#3157 A helpful tutorial
A digital drawing of one of those drawing tutorials that says 'don't do this, do this.' The drawing is of an almost naked middle-aged man doing a flying kick. The 'Don't do this' one has a bunch of areas circled and a cross under it. The 'Do this' one is exactly the same but without the circles and a tick instead of a cross. The text reads 'Needlessly adding red circles will ruin your art' and a smaller bit of text at the bottom reads 'Bonus tip! Add a tick under all your art so people think you did it right.'
November 17, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
camerondotca.bsky.social
Are any of my Aotearoa followers in Christchurch/Ōtautahi? I'm curious if any of you know my old co-workers from Lincoln Uni, Helen Gilmore or Maurice Ward. I've kind of lost track of them after we moved home to Canada.
November 17, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
whatevermaranda.com
Love this so much. 💜
Meme: a quirky hand-drawn cat beneath the script "AHEM - please don't give billionaires more of your money this holiday season - buy something cool and handmade from some fun weirdo instead & help them eat. Shop small, y'all." Image credit: "Small businesses need your support more than ever 💗 By Sugarhouse Ceramic Co."
November 15, 2025 at 4:17 AM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
in-otter-news.bsky.social
November 17, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
standplaatskrk.pl
living in late-stage capitalism be like: [image of a sign on a pole.] "NOTICE MUST BE CUSTOMER AT ALL TIMES"
November 7, 2024 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
amyhoy.bsky.social
learning to program in the late 90s and early 00s, you’d inevitably run across classic works like Goto Considered Harmful and No Silver Bullet, even if you weren’t particularly bookish, and there was tons of discourse about HCI as well, all grounded in decades of research

i’m afraid that’s all gone
July 22, 2025 at 5:38 PM
chris.bur.gs
got a usb audio interface and messed around with guitars until the sound stopped working, quite fun
November 15, 2025 at 5:26 AM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
kyledchurch.bsky.social
this should immediately have a commentator REMOVED from their roles, instead it’s a strong signal of just how decrepit and servile to power nz media is
November 13, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
caylen.bsky.social
a “Space Force”, if you will
dieworkwear.bsky.social derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 6d
we need a department of kerning
The Department of War's seal hangs on a wall. The kerning appears to be off.
November 13, 2025 at 2:27 PM
chris.bur.gs
Kid picked up this t-shirt at the Disk Den, I can't find record of the band but the shop owner said they were Dunedin local. Appears to be a 90s era print from the fabric.

Does anyone recall Ronnie Raygun and the Destroyers? Or is it fiction?
T-shirt print of RONNIE RAYGUN AND THE DESTROYERS, Reagan's face on a comic plane shooting cannons, it's possible the artist had only NZAF Skyhawks to refer to.
November 12, 2025 at 7:12 PM
chris.bur.gs
My Lines of Flight 2025 t-shirt is already experiencing bit rot and I'm here for it
November 10, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
drcuriosity.bsky.social
An awful, awful example of what happens when you use AI scribe systems in healthcare without any meaningful form of redress for their erroneous output.

Setting a "compliance" policy that doesn't allow clinical staff to change AI generated fields without intervention is definitely a money decision.
cait.bsky.social cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 9d
a few months ago I said "having generative AI handle absolutely anything with regards to healthcare is a nightmare and should be banned" and a bunch of people made fun of me and called me stupid. anyways,
r/ExpectationVsReality u/Additional-Simple858 • 3d Join Al 'doctor' said my back pain is depression, not a slipped disc. Now physical therapy won't get approved. Al Expectation We are reviewing claim #& submitted on 09/28/2025. Our records indicate the claim was filed under diagnosis code F32.9 (Depressive disorder, unspecified), while the corresponding prescription and referral history list treatment for lumbar disc herniation (back pain). Re: Incorrect Diagnosis in Record Hi Thank you for reaching out. We have reviewed your visit documentation and can confirm that the notes in question were generated using our Al scribe system. It appears the Al tool assigned diagnosis code F32.9 (Depressive disorder, unspecified), while your visit notes and treatment plan reference lumbar disc herniation (back pain). Per compliance policy, certain Al-generated fields cannot be manually updated by clinic staff and require vendor correction. We have escalated this to our vendor support team and opened ticket # . We'll notify you once we receive confirmation or correction from the vendor.
November 10, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
meshedlight.bsky.social
Ōtepoti: Palestine solidarity

Rally for Palestine

Saturday 15th November

2-4pm

Upper Octagon

image: same info, illustrated with Palestinian flag at the bottom & a background photo of a person holding up a sign "Stop the genocide", amongst a crowd of people
Rally for Palestine Nov 15th 2-4pm Upper Octagon illustrated with Palestinian flag at the bottom and a background photo of a person holding up a sign "Stop the genocide", amongst a crowd of people
November 10, 2025 at 7:32 AM
chris.bur.gs
Got this pot back from a blackened mess of burned rhubarb. Thanks grapefruit spoon, top tier decarboniser.
A pot is positioned in a dish rack so we see inside it. The pot looks clean. What we can't see is how called with burned rhubarb it was last night. In front of the pot is a steel grapefruit spoon which was used to decarbonize (?) the surface.
November 8, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
marceldirsus.com
AI could end scarcity, end humanity - or boost trend growth by 0.2 percentage points
November 7, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
maetl.bsky.social
Landing the plane is the future of plane-landing. We’re laser focused on landing the plane.
November 6, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
cristianvlad.bsky.social
Wonder why this scene looks so familiar...
#WildlifeWednesday 🐦🐕
November 5, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
stinkyjim.bsky.social
Teenage Engineering's EP 40 Riddim 'n' Ting is now available & will be getting it's first full worldwide launch tomorrow at Music Works, Dominion Road, 6-8PM. I'll be joining Dylan Wood, Lachlan Powell & Nick De Friez to kick it off & preach the dub & the TE 1/2

teenage.engineering/store/riddim...
riddim n' ting
*limited launch offer - free ting fx mic EP–40 riddim is a powerful sampler, sequencer and composer built for expressive live performance, featuring tightly synced MIDI sequences, grid-synced loops, ...
teenage.engineering
November 5, 2025 at 1:00 AM
chris.bur.gs
I am happy!

About six weeks ago I made my knee angry playing netball. I think I bumped knees with another player, or I was getting too excited on the jumping and turning.

It's taken AGES of sore knee but I got back on the court tonight, we played a good game and won, I wasn't as fast as I like
November 4, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by Chris Burgess
acgeddis.bsky.social
If this were a bunch of Pakeha farmers having to go back to court to relitigate an award of water rights because the government had changed allocation rules the media, business and legal establishments would be united in decrying it as the death of the rule of law.
Foreshore and seabed: ‘Exhausted’ Sth Isl group sent back to court after customary rights win
The Government says MACA changes were not a decision made lightly.
www.nzherald.co.nz
November 2, 2025 at 6:05 PM
chris.bur.gs
can't believe you can just midi from the browser (webmidi)

* some provisions apply
November 2, 2025 at 6:02 AM