Edited 2025 to update gender and a few other things.
I'm a software engineer with a degree in Anthropology. I highly recommend the combo.
Most recently I was tech lead for Scaled Human Review at Meta. I worked in the Integrity Foundation (what other companies call "Trust and Safety") on Better Engineering initiatives and #Metaverse integration, with the teams that build human review software for the 30-40K external reviewers. I'd sworn I’d never work at Facebook, but I decided to see if I could make a difference. I couldn’t. And it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But I learned a lot about how the sausages are made and why they have such a hard time with #contentmoderation.
I've been on #socialmedia for four decades (seriously, I saw someone catfished in chat in 1978—this stuff isn't new), and virtually everyone I know I met online somewhere—many I've still never met in person. Needless to say, that's made me pretty passionate about making online communities safe for everyone, and especially marginalized groups.
I'm now a freelance #consultant and semi-retired, working on my own projects (I'll write more on that later), and with my wife's #consulting company (see below). I'm planning to do a lot more writing about #society and #technology (as well some #SFF), and to travel more.
I tend to write long posts (like this one). They may get shorter once my blog is back up. I don't stick to one topic, but I'll try to tag them so you can filter. I post about tech stuff (recent, as well as old geeky #Unix stuff), #social issues, #LGBTQ issues (especially the T), pretty #photos, and random personal anecdotes. When I boost, it's because I think it's something that might be interesting to someone, or some group, that follows me. Those tend to include all the above topics, plus SF&F-related things, and cool science stuff.
I'm #pan, #poly, and #trans. I prefer "they" or "she" for pronouns, but "he" is fine. I spent most of my life thinking I really was a straight cis man who just happened to be a bit quirky and a passionate and tearful ally, so I'm not too picky about how you refer to me. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions about all that, public or private.
I grew up mostly in #Maine and then lived in Massachusetts for a long time, but I now live on sovereign #Swinomish land in #WashingtonState (US), on the edge of the San Juan islands. Despite my first name (that's a story) and current location, I'm not Native American, although I focus a lot on Native American rights. My parents were both active in that area, and that was my introduction to civil rights in general.
I've been a #software engineer at various levels (from programmer to CTO to company founder) for 40+ years. I learned BASIC in high school, taught myself Pascal, FORTRAN and PL/1 in college, learned C as an intern at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, one floor up from the Unix crew), and went on from there. In college, I majored in #Anthropology with a concentration in #Psychology, and that's influenced the way I look at software ever since. Software is designed for people. Software systems build communities (whether intended or not). Anyone who does that damn well better understand how people and #communities work.
I've worked for Bell Labs (psych stats), Sperry Research (window systems, UX design), Apollo/HP (programmable shell, windowing systems, Unix porting, UX design), Bright Ideas (cookbook, educational games), OSF (windowing standards), Alfalfa (multimedia email - SMTP and X.400 :)), Wildfire (phone-based voice assistant), Utopia/USWeb (web and security consulting), Saroca (small boats), Messagefire (anti- #spam software), MessageGate (corporate compliance software), Somewhere (software consulting), ZeeVee (web video aggregation, metadata scraping), TiVo (video content correlation, #metadata pipelines), and Meta. Plus a few others.
I've been with my wife, Dr. Mollie Pepper, for over a decade. She's a #sociologist with a focus on #refugee migration, #gender, and violence; the kind of work that gives you PTSD. She did her dissertation on women's roles in the (now extremely defunct) peace process in #Myanmar (aka #Burma). A few years ago she was at a military base frantically processing thousands of Afghan refugees and managing translators (whom Trump is now deporting). She has a consulting company that specializes in evaluating and designing social service projects. You can find her at https://carlsonpepper.com/. Everything I know about #feminism, #intersectionality, #queer theory, #CRT, and #racism I either learned from her, or she gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand them properly.
I have two grown daughters from my first marriage with Nassim Fotouhi; a kick-ass software engineer/engineering manager who came to the States just before the Iranian revolution.
Shadi Fotouhi is an artist (see my profile background photo, go look up the drug codes and compare them to the mermaids' behavior) turned software engineer; building dynamic room installations will do that to you. She worked in QA at a gaming company, and then at Jibo; a robotics startup. Now she's a senior software engineer at Wayfair--Kubernetes, release configuration, and all that fun stuff.
Shireen Hinckley is a documentarian, digital image technician, video editor, and co-founder of Somewhere Films (https://www.somewherefilms.com/shireen-hinckley); a womxn's filmmaking collective. She works for #Beyoncé at Parkwood Entertainment, where she's an editor and post-production supervisor for all of their video releases. She worked on "Black is King" and just about every video since then, whether it's for Instagram, Times Square, Tiffany's, the Oscars, or Chloe x Halle.
I'm incredibly honored to have those wonderful women in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
A couple other things that may come up, especially in my photos. My mother is an artist who lives in Maine in a round house she designed, and the family built, when I was in high school. And I'm part owner of a #lighthouse on Cape Cod.
--kee
A great idea. And they have a regular schedule at various vets and clinics.
Would prefer that we weren't here though. :(
❝ common respiratory infections, including COVID-19 and influenza, can awaken dormant breast cancer cells that have spread to the lungs, setting the stage for new metastatic tumors ❞
https://www.genengnews.com/topics/cancer/respiratory-viruses-wake-up-dormant-breast-cancer-cells-in-lungs-setting-stage-for-metastatic-disease/
#NotTheOnion
You don't write HTML parsers with regular expressions, and you don't parse the output of a random number generator to get a result. In both cases, as soon as the underlying format/seed changes, your code is broken.
❝ How could different AI language models break a workflow? It's because each one is trained in a different way, and each includes its own unique output style. Users have developed sets of prompts that produce useful results optimized for each AI model. ❞
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/08/the-gpt-5-rollout-has-been-a-big-mess/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
The obsession with thinness in Europe and American began as a way to differentiate white women from black women's "inferior" bodies. But it has extended to be a class symbol and a method for men to control women. Which is why it becomes an obsession under fascist governments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieyqunul_uQ&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
The funny thing about relationship names is that kids grow up calling you what people around them call you; including what you call yourself around them. You can influence it by asking the adults to use a different name for you, but they have to stick with it. And sometimes one parent's choice dominates
Which is how I ended up calling my parents "Mother" and "Father"; just like their parents had.
But my kids called my ex and I "Mama" and "Baba", despite my desire to continue that tradition, because the Farsi name was too automatic for her.
Two of my niblings call my wife and I "Madam" and "Unkee". Their mom went along with us on that one.
And three of my niblings call their moms "Me Mommy" and "Other Mommy". What started as a clarification question by one mom became their actual names.
They told people they could apply for retirement benefits. But then they refused them all. The cruelty is deliberate.
https://apnews.com/article/air-force-transgender-no-early-retirement-e6a4da806f2cc2bdc05f49438cbd26fd
A friend gave me permission to share this. I think it's an important message, especially for those targeted by this regime.
❝ I think that's part of what is annoying me about these "why aren't the peepul doing this and such" editorials. Like, what is it you are expecting us to do, render ourselves homeless by not going to work so then we can't pay rent? HOW does that help?
It feels like its coming from a place of privilege. Like, seriously, maybe you editorial writer for the Atlantic have the housing and food security to take a week off to feel sorry for yourself, but I do not.
And also there's a measure of, jeebus you threw us working people under the bus over and over and over and now you are whining that we aren't out in the streets restoring your cosy certainties.
The other thing that feels very privileged about all these fucking 'why is no one rising up, where are the peepul in the streets' editorials is that I think its disregarding the very substantial courage it requires to get up in the morning and feed yourself and do your work and pay your bills when you are the actual people this regime is targeting. Rather than just giving up. Every trans person who gets up and goes to work and makes soup and feeds their cat under this regime is a fuckin hero for getting out of bed. Obviously brown people in LA who are still going to work at the auto body shop or the elder care home when they know that ICE could be pulling up any minute, or just going to the damn grocery store. Courage. So stop it, sitting in your San Francisco apartment with your tech exec money in the bank telling them they aren't doing enough to save democracy because they aren't acting like extras out of Les Mis.. ❞
I think it's also a reminder that American workers have no economic or medical safety nets, and very few have personal ones. And that's not an accident. It limits the collective action we see in European countries.
#uspol
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
-Elon Musk, Feb 28, 2025
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
-Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html
Edited 2025 to update gender and a few other things.
I'm a software engineer with a degree in Anthropology. I highly recommend the combo.
Most recently I was tech lead for Scaled Human Review at Meta. I worked in the Integrity Foundation (what other companies call "Trust and Safety") on Better Engineering initiatives and #Metaverse integration, with the teams that build human review software for the 30-40K external reviewers. I'd sworn I’d never work at Facebook, but I decided to see if I could make a difference. I couldn’t. And it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But I learned a lot about how the sausages are made and why they have such a hard time with #contentmoderation.
I've been on #socialmedia for four decades (seriously, I saw someone catfished in chat in 1978—this stuff isn't new), and virtually everyone I know I met online somewhere—many I've still never met in person. Needless to say, that's made me pretty passionate about making online communities safe for everyone, and especially marginalized groups.
I'm now a freelance #consultant and semi-retired, working on my own projects (I'll write more on that later), and with my wife's #consulting company (see below). I'm planning to do a lot more writing about #society and #technology (as well some #SFF), and to travel more.
I tend to write long posts (like this one). They may get shorter once my blog is back up. I don't stick to one topic, but I'll try to tag them so you can filter. I post about tech stuff (recent, as well as old geeky #Unix stuff), #social issues, #LGBTQ issues (especially the T), pretty #photos, and random personal anecdotes. When I boost, it's because I think it's something that might be interesting to someone, or some group, that follows me. Those tend to include all the above topics, plus SF&F-related things, and cool science stuff.
I'm #pan, #poly, and #trans. I prefer "they" or "she" for pronouns, but "he" is fine. I spent most of my life thinking I really was a straight cis man who just happened to be a bit quirky and a passionate and tearful ally, so I'm not too picky about how you refer to me. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions about all that, public or private.
I grew up mostly in #Maine and then lived in Massachusetts for a long time, but I now live on sovereign #Swinomish land in #WashingtonState (US), on the edge of the San Juan islands. Despite my first name (that's a story) and current location, I'm not Native American, although I focus a lot on Native American rights. My parents were both active in that area, and that was my introduction to civil rights in general.
I've been a #software engineer at various levels (from programmer to CTO to company founder) for 40+ years. I learned BASIC in high school, taught myself Pascal, FORTRAN and PL/1 in college, learned C as an intern at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, one floor up from the Unix crew), and went on from there. In college, I majored in #Anthropology with a concentration in #Psychology, and that's influenced the way I look at software ever since. Software is designed for people. Software systems build communities (whether intended or not). Anyone who does that damn well better understand how people and #communities work.
I've worked for Bell Labs (psych stats), Sperry Research (window systems, UX design), Apollo/HP (programmable shell, windowing systems, Unix porting, UX design), Bright Ideas (cookbook, educational games), OSF (windowing standards), Alfalfa (multimedia email - SMTP and X.400 :)), Wildfire (phone-based voice assistant), Utopia/USWeb (web and security consulting), Saroca (small boats), Messagefire (anti- #spam software), MessageGate (corporate compliance software), Somewhere (software consulting), ZeeVee (web video aggregation, metadata scraping), TiVo (video content correlation, #metadata pipelines), and Meta. Plus a few others.
I've been with my wife, Dr. Mollie Pepper, for over a decade. She's a #sociologist with a focus on #refugee migration, #gender, and violence; the kind of work that gives you PTSD. She did her dissertation on women's roles in the (now extremely defunct) peace process in #Myanmar (aka #Burma). A few years ago she was at a military base frantically processing thousands of Afghan refugees and managing translators (whom Trump is now deporting). She has a consulting company that specializes in evaluating and designing social service projects. You can find her at https://carlsonpepper.com/. Everything I know about #feminism, #intersectionality, #queer theory, #CRT, and #racism I either learned from her, or she gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand them properly.
I have two grown daughters from my first marriage with Nassim Fotouhi; a kick-ass software engineer/engineering manager who came to the States just before the Iranian revolution.
Shadi Fotouhi is an artist (see my profile background photo, go look up the drug codes and compare them to the mermaids' behavior) turned software engineer; building dynamic room installations will do that to you. She worked in QA at a gaming company, and then at Jibo; a robotics startup. Now she's a senior software engineer at Wayfair--Kubernetes, release configuration, and all that fun stuff.
Shireen Hinckley is a documentarian, digital image technician, video editor, and co-founder of Somewhere Films (https://www.somewherefilms.com/shireen-hinckley); a womxn's filmmaking collective. She works for #Beyoncé at Parkwood Entertainment, where she's an editor and post-production supervisor for all of their video releases. She worked on "Black is King" and just about every video since then, whether it's for Instagram, Times Square, Tiffany's, the Oscars, or Chloe x Halle.
I'm incredibly honored to have those wonderful women in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
A couple other things that may come up, especially in my photos. My mother is an artist who lives in Maine in a round house she designed, and the family built, when I was in high school. And I'm part owner of a #lighthouse on Cape Cod.
--kee
Kee Hinckley