This article has been living in my head for months now, often preventing me from focusing on anything else.

I'm so glad I got this out finally.

Did I just write almost 5000 words about why generative "AI" should be resisted, going through every single one of my reasons?

Yes. Because I need this article to exist so I can point people to it.

Enjoy and share widely.

https://estherweidauer.com/articles/why-resist-generative-ai.html

A lot of cis people still think that HRT medication is something that trans people do for fun, like it's recreational drugs or something.

Instead you should really think about it like insulin for people with diabetes or L-thyroxine for people with thyroid deficiency.

Fuck. A community center for trans people in Berlin was raided by the cops.

Don't ever tell me history isn't repeating itself.

https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2026/10/razzia-berlin-trans-zentrum.html

We'll have to do "AI" rehab for folks once this hype is over. I'm not even kidding.

RE: https://wandering.shop/@aesthr/117350791845637030

Feedback on this is very welcome btw.

It's been a lot of work to write this and I would like to know, if it hits a spot for those interested, especially since a lot of people said they'd like articles about statistics concepts.

But I can only know if it works, if you tell me :)

I wrote the first of those articles I teased at, introducing a foundational statistics concept.

Starting with: the binomial distribution

https://estherweidauer.com/articles/binomial-distribution.html

#statistics

At least I will not repeat the mistake of getting roped into an election discussion tomorrow.

Avoid the office kitchen around lunch at all costs.

Seems like everyone in the industry now wants to be either literally Oppenheimer or some kind of elite soldier.

Sounds great, yeah. Nothing to worry about there.

Kind of scary how easily and without resistance a militaristic new tech terminology, like the "Forward Deployed Engineer" (FDE), enters the common industry vernacular.

This is not a new role. On-site developers have been a thing ever since software has been on any site. Sometimes it's just nice to have someone there to be with the client and fix issues right away (and also bill all the hours for them being there). I've done this back in 2010. We called this "auf Baustelle sein" (German company)

Really disheartened by the Debian news but I also don't have the capacity right now to migrate to something else. Not to mention: what would that somewhere else even be?

(Please no suggestions at this time. This is me coping, not solution-finding)

Hehe, I forgot to shutdown my second ThinkPad (T480S) a week ago and it was still on in suspend mode.

I'm not used to battery life like this anymore.

Come on, a 200€ laptop that might be totally fine? That would be amazing

RE: https://wandering.shop/@aesthr/117088002952048045

Ok, I'm taking a bit of a risk by getting an even older model, a T480s. But it was really cheap and it's the last series that's really repairable.

I'm excited to try this.

ThinkPad T14s (1st Gen, from 2020) as a Linux (Debian) machine ... opinions?

Should work fine, right?

Really that should be a free text field with autocomplete suggestions.

There's no reason to restrict what people put there in the context of our work.

Huh, our system for client files has no way to enter "Palestinian" as someone's nationality.

That'll be a fun support ticket.

Please, an enlightened American needs to explain to me, an uneducated European peasant woman from 1572, how an AC unit works outdoors.

Imagine putting "ChatGPT" or "Claude" on a CV as skills

Serious question for Windows knowers:

Does Windows 11 have anything meaningful that Windows 7 couldn't do?

I'm not talking about having a weather widget here, I mean actual OS features.