katherine morayati
LightNews LightNews
morayati.bsky.social
katherine morayati
@morayati.bsky.social
290 followers 170 following 310 posts
coder, music writer, game maker

katherinemorayati.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
morayati.bsky.social
zohran slogan generator featuring limp bizkit's i did it all for the nookie
November 9, 2025 at 5:05 AM
morayati.bsky.social
@klayjamesenos.bsky.social and I have a series -- his paintings, my code -- in "about, not by; for, not from," a virtual exhibition by Unrequited Leisure, featuring work where "artists probe the cultural gravity of algorithms without surrendering authorship to them."

newart.city/show/about-n...
Algorithmic Field is a tool for generating aleatoric constraints for plein air paintings in New York City. The project reflects on the ways in which algorithmic logic and quantified thinking shape our interaction with and perception of reality, as well as the aesthetic and expressive qualities of painting itself. The tool can generate a near-limitless number of possible combinations of constraints.
November 3, 2025 at 1:35 PM
morayati.bsky.social
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only
Merey LaRoc, I mean she stole a gargoyle from Notre Dame, she can't be counted out here
October 20, 2025 at 2:26 AM
morayati.bsky.social
a lot of tech-press AI coverage, from both boosters and skeptics, is extremely US-centric compared to the adoption of AI elsewhere in the world - which by most measures outpaces the US, by some measures wildly. good to see some reporting that isn't www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...
Excerpt from Technology Review article on how AI and machine translation are affecting endangered languages: Abdulkadir Abdulkadir, a 26-year-old agricultural planner who spoke with me over a crackling phone call from a busy roadside in northern Nigeria, said that he spends three hours every day fiddling with entries in his native Fulfulde, a language used mainly by pastoralists and farmers across the Sahel. “But the work is too much,” he said. Abdulkadir sees an urgent need for the Fulfulde Wikipedia to work properly. He has been suggesting it as one of the few online resources for farmers in remote villages, potentially offering information on which seeds or crops might work best for their fields in a language they can understand. If you give them a machine-translated article, Abdulkadir told me, then it could “easily harm them,” as the information will probably not be translated correctly into Fulfulde. Google Translate, for instance, says the Fulfulde word for January means June, while ChatGPT says it’s August or September. The programs also suggest the Fulfulde word for “harvest” means “fever” or “well-being,” among other possibilities. Abdulkadir said he had recently been forced to correct an article about cowpeas, a foundational cash crop across much of Africa, after discovering that it was largely illegible.
September 30, 2025 at 1:37 PM
morayati.bsky.social
me and my book at the chappell show!
me, with my Chappell Roan book, at the Chappell Roan show
September 24, 2025 at 11:32 PM
morayati.bsky.social
to commemorate my chappell roan book (out now!), I present to you a pink pony club-themed circle
four square photos arranged to create a circular - or oval in this case - shape in the middle: top left: greenwich village, new york, a store window with a decal of a chess knight - a pony, get it? - made up of multicolored neon triangles top right: hell's kitchen, steeples of a church building at night, lit up in violet bottom left: greenwich village, a courtyard with purple flowers and iridescent circular orb-like decorations bottom right: greenwich village, the overhead foliage of trees, lit up in bright pink and deep purple, against a brick building
September 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
morayati.bsky.social
those on cohost may remember the "circling the square" photography posts; in an attempt to touch grass more, I'm still doing those. up to several dozen now, here are some of my favorites

warning: photography not guaranteed professional

tilde.town/~katherine/c...
top left quadrant, taken in greenwich village: brown circles on a green painted wood construction barrier, in front of two white and brown brick apartments top right quadrant: in Woodside, Queens, a circular illuminated ad on the sidewalk for the computer repair shop Doctor PC, showing a man with a head mirror, stethoscope, and white lab coat bottom left quadrant: in Woodside, underneath the 7 train platform, a soccer-related advertisement with a drawing of a man kicking a soccer ball, alongside various flyers in English and Chinese bottom right quadrant: in Tribeca, two lace fringe decorations in the window of a cafe at night, with warm colored lights in view top left quadrant: on the Upper West Side, a mesh barrier with circular holes cut out of it, and a danger warning sign top right quadrant: in the East Village, the outside of a building with moldings and tiles in various colors and patterns outside, with a circular pile of scrap metal outside it bottom left quadrant: in Soho, a wall painted off-white, with the paint chipped off in a circular pattern to reveal painted white bricks underneath bottom right quadrant: in the East Village, a green mesh barrier by a construction site, with a large metal chain painted green attached top left quadrant: in Soho, a pile of blankets and insulation foam in orange, red, and brown on the sidewalk top right quadrant: in Soho, several brown paper bags containing fuzzy pink, white, and green flowers bottom left quadrant: in the East Village, a wall with the remnants of white, black, and brown paint and old flyers, chipped away and fraying bottom right quadrant: in the East Village, a close-up of a mural, with teal and green crabs top left quadrant: in Prospect Park, the arched awning of a wooden underpass, with bright green foliage visible through one of the arches top right quadrant: in the Upper West Side, a black circular fan sitting on the sidewalk by a barred-off apartment yard, lit so that the fan appears purple and the yard appears bright yellow bottom left quadrant: in the Upper West Side, the corner of a yellow lighting fixture with a tiled circular pattern, seen in a shop window reflecting light green bottom right quadrant: in Chelsea, a close-up of a mural, with the night sky painted dark blue alongside green painted blades of grass, a black stylized seagull, and the corner of a bright pink planet
August 30, 2025 at 12:24 AM
morayati.bsky.social
networking bird
stress balls vaguely shaped like the old twitter blue bird logo but instead called Networking Bird
July 22, 2025 at 1:20 AM
morayati.bsky.social
a train arrival display in a new york city subway station, which reads Testing Ram
June 26, 2025 at 11:39 PM
morayati.bsky.social
my gut feeling is that it is not -- too many typographical errors for someone not specifically requesting them, and no ponderously fake-confident focus on symbolism

compare the hounds of love blurb for instance to this almost definitely llm-generated blurb
slop not worth copypasting but a lot of exemplifying, showcasing, structure, etc
June 18, 2025 at 10:13 PM
morayati.bsky.social
interactable adventure game doors:
A pair of white wooden doors, slightly ajar, with a isolated patch of pink lighting highlighting the entrance.
June 15, 2025 at 7:09 PM
morayati.bsky.social
the nyc subway fandom:
the LED timetable display at the union square subway station in new york city, with a message cut off so it reads, Please stan
June 3, 2025 at 2:19 AM
morayati.bsky.social
there should be fanfiction of these two
the mascot for the ticket app dice the mascot for the karaoke company sunfly
May 31, 2025 at 2:17 AM
morayati.bsky.social
meanwhile, if you're wondering what's happening to the editorial vinylmeplease used to run, it's now... this
May 27, 2025 at 2:51 AM
morayati.bsky.social
perhaps tellingly, the passage that the study uses to demonstrate a proficient reader’s running monologue does not contain any legal terminology or direct references to law (besides the overarching metaphor, which the student doesn’t mention here, probably because they haven’t gotten there yet)
A student who is a proficient reader quoted in their detailed and correct close reading of a passage from Bleak House that is primarily about pedestrians walking through mud.
May 15, 2025 at 4:57 PM
morayati.bsky.social
fwiw, the actual study is here; it relies heavily on interpreting sentences out loud, in real time, with a time limit (which includes any research of unfamiliar concepts).

given those constraints, I don’t think this is an alarming first impression by a US reader.

muse.jhu.edu/article/9223...
Passage from the original study about students reading Dickens claiming none of the students comprehended or looked up any legal language, or correctly identified the references to the British court system. As evidence it quotes a student guessing that Lord Chancellor was some kind of position of authority, initially thinking Lincoln’s Inn Hall was a hotel, changing their mind after looking up a word on their phone, and deciding to “skip that” after 16 seconds.
May 15, 2025 at 4:35 PM
morayati.bsky.social
the average American has three friends
The masked bandit gang from Slay the Spire
May 2, 2025 at 1:27 AM
morayati.bsky.social
I have had multiple conversations with multiple people, in multiple industries, about this part of this post lindseyadler.substack.com/p/ten-years-...
From the post Ten Years in a Crumbling Industry by Lindsey Adler: I worry often about what this feeling of fleeing from the quicksand has done to me. To live in constant fear of losing my safety net — and realizing that a safety net in the media industry is rarely, if ever, tied to ability and merit — can not have been good for my well-being. I am feeling the emotional effects of that fear and the turbulence that comes from crashing right into the net-less abyss. But also, I wonder what the anxiety has done to my body, my thinking patterns, my beliefs about myself and my abilities and the experience of trying to create individual protections against systemic issues. Clearly, it eventually fried me to my core.
May 1, 2025 at 5:33 PM
morayati.bsky.social
advice to essay writers: don’t use a word unless you are absolutely certain what it means
Screenshot with an excerpt of an essay on The Cut: Were they glazing me (as they would put it), telling me what I wanted to hear?
April 13, 2025 at 3:14 PM
morayati.bsky.social
A doctored image of the Trump administration's Signal chat "Houthi PC small group," with JD Vance's message to Pete Hegseth edited to appear to read "Are you in the right headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt you?"
March 24, 2025 at 10:36 PM
morayati.bsky.social
my most strongly held pointless opinion is that this should always be activated by default
Screenshot of Google Sheets' word wrap feature, with the wrap icon selected to wrap words in a cell, as God intended
February 25, 2025 at 9:07 PM
morayati.bsky.social
good news to whoever made this wish: it is one of the few wishes in this exhibit (yoko ono’s “wish tree”) I am in a position to grant
A slip of paper on one of the fir trees from Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree exhibit in New York, reading “I’m wishing for my character to be added to a game,” with a drawing of a person in a dress with three plumes of spiky hair and a defiant smile.
February 17, 2025 at 6:24 PM
morayati.bsky.social
(for those less fluent in code, this is kind of like locking your door by putting a No Trespassing sign over it)
meme: That sign can't stop me because I can't read!
January 24, 2025 at 8:12 AM
morayati.bsky.social
oof lindseyadler.substack.com/p/ten-years-...
"I worry often about what this feeling of fleeing from the quicksand has done to me. To live in constant fear of losing my safety net — and realizing that a safety net in the media industry is rarely, if ever, tied to ability and merit — can not have been good for my well-being. I am feeling the emotional effects of that fear and the turbulence that comes from crashing right into the net-less abyss. But also, I wonder what the anxiety has done to my body, my thinking patterns, my beliefs about myself and my abilities and the experience of trying to create individual protections against systemic issues."
January 24, 2025 at 2:13 AM
morayati.bsky.social
"you'll be visited by three spirits"

the three spirits:
the V Magazine cover with Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira, and Grimes (yeah...)
December 24, 2024 at 11:44 PM