#but in the context i think my coinage makes sense

[littleobelia]

long fucking sentence:

Watching Harry; her scented hands now adorned with gold and silver, her unwashed face softened with sleep, slouching in such a louche manner against the couch with the baby snoozing belly-down like a little tree-frog on Harry’s chest; it was a Geddesian display designed to tug at the heartstrings.

geddesian = like an anne geddes photograph. does that make sense?

[noshitshakespeare]

How did Shakespeare's audience react to all his made up words? Did they understand their meaning?

Unless someone is willing to gift me a time machine, I can’t tell you how the audience reacted exactly (if any of my generous followers has a time machine please send it my way! I would risk the plague to go back in time). But I have every reason to believe that Shakespeare’s neologisms wouldn’t have been much of a problem.

The flexibility of language in Early Modern England (such as spelling and, therefore, homophones) would have been conducive to the creation of new words. But we don’t know that Shakespeare did make up all the words attributed to him. What we have is first recorded use. This means that it’s the first stable evidence we have of the word being written down. It may well be that the same word appears in earlier manuscripts which haven’t yet been edited or scrutinised for word use. Also, the fact that Shakespeare was consulted so much during the early years of the creation of the dictionary accounts for the fact that a lot of the recorded usage examples come from Shakespeare. And if Shakespeare’s really is the first use of a term in written English, it’s still possible that those words were not actually coined by him, but were already in use colloquially. After all, it’s more likely that Shakespeare is recording the way English was spoken rather than inventing a new language.

The second point is that many of the Shakespeare’s creative words are derived from existing words, so you can easily guess their meaning. The word ‘elbow’ is frequently attributed to Shakespeare, for instance, and it’s often erroneously taken to mean that he coined the word for that body part. The coinage attributed to Shakespeare is not the noun but the verb, as in ‘to elbow someone out of the way’: a humorous variation on the existing noun.

If the meaning of the neologisms (if so they were) are not as obvious as in the case of ‘elbow’, it’s still likely that the audience could guess the meaning from the context and roots of the words. In a culture where not everyone was literate, people were more used to comprehending complex senses aurally. They were used to hearing sermons that could last about 2 hours, for example, and which would have contained complex words and meanings. It’s telling that they sometimes said they were going to ‘hear a play’, rather than ‘see a play’. This is an informed guess, but if the audience could hear meanings, then it’s not too far-fetched to assume that they could guess meanings based on what they heard.

I think the more important thing about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language is not that he made up words, but that he uses words so well, and that his use of words popularised their usage in the English language as a direct result of the popularity of his plays. There are many words that might not have survived were it not for the fact that Shakespeare used them and people continued to read his plays.

[extemporaneousmusings]

There’s this page from a manuscript that’s in LACMA’s collections I’ve been thinking about for a good year. I discovered it when watching a GettyTalks livestream last summer by the GoT costume designer. I kind of forget the context in which she discussed it, but it totally captivated me and isn’t really relevant to the rest of her talk, as she moved on to discuss the more psychological and emotional underpinnings of costuming, rather than original source materials. I was so intrigued that I messaged the Getty tumblr that day to ask for the citation when I couldn’t find the image myself, and it’s just been floating around on my computer for the past year.

15th century Islamic manuscripts are worlds away from my wheelhouse, obviously, but there was something here that clung to the edges of an already fringe concept I had been toying with, that over the past year has become more and more relevant and pervasive.

The idea is hinged upon two major foci. The first is the development of the attribute through time, which is much more central to what I do...The basic synopsis of what I’d like to ultimately accomplish with my PhD is to try and connect grounded, known archaeological assemblages to contextualize and examine them within a more robust and experimental theoretical framework. The discussion of images is often divorced from their context, especially when it comes to more ephemeral objects like vases. (Note, this is the first time I’ve ever really used the word ephemeral in connection with vases, I need to think about this more!) The second is of the extended lifespan of Alexander the Great, both in images and texts, which persisted for thousands of years after his death, and was incorporated into many different cultural narratives.

An attribute, within iconography (which is at its very simplest, the study/interpretation of images and symbols) is an object or a shorthand that gives further information linked to the central character. Dionysos is one of the most attribute-laden lads in Greek art. To name a few, he has a kantharos, which is a specific type of drinking cup, leaves, wine, satyrs, maenads, which all in and of themselves, have nested attributes. 

Attic black-figure vase depicting Dionysos and a few of his typical attributes. (Musée de Louvre, MNE 938)

Athena has her owl, and gorgon head on her shield. Zeus has thunderbolts. All of these are small visually represented objects, yet convey a great amount of culturally loaded information. I’m just speaking from the Greek tradition at the moment, but iconography and attributes exist across time and space. Thor has his hammer, which is an extremely potent symbol that conveys a lot more than just his favorite accessory. The Statue of Liberty has a torch and books. You get the point.

Attributes have not remained the same, in terms of what they represent or how they are interpreted, throughout history. Narrowing back down to the Greek world, the Hellenistic period brought about enormous cultural shifts in nearly every arena, and art was one of them. It hasn’t really been explored through such a lens yet, to my knowledge, but the very power and intent behind attributes shifted dramatically. I am super intrigued in trying to find a way to trace the development of the attribute, and see how and when its use began to change.

Here we get to the point of contact between the two ideas. The Hellenistic period is a broad, uneven, inelegant term to discuss a period of time directly impacted by the death of Alexander the Great and the aftermath of his political and military campaigns, but before the Roman Empire became the main cultural and political power. This is, of course, impossible to define, but in reductive academic short-hand refers to the years 323 BC- 31 AD. The Hellenistic period also considers a much broader geographic scope than is usually incorporated into classical scholarship in earlier periods, because Alexander conquered so much land, and Greek ideas were then transmitted in very different ways to a broader swath of people and cultures.

I’ve now reached the point where this gets beyond me, for the moment. I’m not an Hellenistic historian, and the political and military narrative of history during these years is a fucking quagmire. The art produced during this time-period in many ways reflects this time of upheaval and constant change, because it’s experimental, bizarre, and all over the place.

Alexander was a brilliant commander and political thinker. He curated his image and controlled its dissemination. The dude had a whole host of personally commissioned artists at his command who produced sculptures/coins/jewels depicting him that were somehow regulated and presented a unified front, despite the geographical breadth across which they worked and he travelled. (This is precisely why you can always identify sculptures of him, even hundreds of years after his death, because they were all produced using cookie-cutter templates.) He used attributes and his own image to influence politics in a way that hadn’t been done before, and this continues long after his death.* This is picked up and totally incorporated into Roman imperial politics and art further down the road. 

At the moment, this is my (utterly unsubstantiated) half-baked axis: I think that the attribute had been developing and shifting in use somewhat, but that Alexander radicalized what it was, and how it was used. THEREFORE, not only can one continue to trace how the attribute continues through and beyond Alexander in Greek&Roman art, but Alexander himself through time and cultures makes a fascinating case study of the attribute. (Maybe??? Or maybe this is just two separate things just barely linked??? I’m gonna try to explain the second branch more.)

Alexander was, obviously, a big fucking deal. He went a bunch of places and did a bunch of shit. As such, he was remembered and mythologized broadly, for many different reasons, in many different ways. His actions were incorporated into the narrative fabric of many cultures and societies. Before I watched this Getty talk I had NO IDEA that Alexander appears in the Quran. Fascinating!!

He appears in the Quran as Dhul-Qarnayn which means “The Two-Horned One” in English. Scholars don’t know exactly why, but have tentatively suggested that perhaps it is because Alexander was sometimes depicted on coins as having curling rams horns. This is super dope, and I totally wanna buy it and argue for it BECAUSE, his use of the rams horns on coinage was a direct attempt to assimilate himself within a blended Eastern/Egyptian mythology. The rams horns were an attribute of Ammon, an Egyptian deity who is often considered alongside/culturally synonymous to Zeus. So, it is possible that his name in the Quran and further Islamic tradition is a direct reference to the way he, and then his followers, manipulated attributes to accomplish political goals.

Tetradrachm of Lysimachus depicting Alexander with the horns of Ammon. British Museum 1919,0820.1

Along with being incorporated into the textual history of these diffuse cultures, he is also depicted visually in a whole host of new and evolving forms. I haven’t looked into the artistic depictions of Alexander once he becomes Dhul-Qarnayn, or Iskander (his Persian name), but I think that’s probably what I should do next. By the time it gets to the way-aforementioned manuscript page he is completely transformed iconographically speaking. In this illumination Alexander/Iskander is depicted (the solo figure on the right) as an official from the Chinese court, visiting the Kaaba. He is, therefore, culturally reborn, depicted as someone from China, interacting with one of the most sacred monuments of Islam. This is so far removed from his original context, and yet one can trace the path of his transmission through time and media to this point.

Iskander at the Kaaba. LACMA M.73.5.462

As I’ve said. I’m not sure how these two concepts (the attribute and ~Alexander through time~) necessarily link up, or if they even productively can. It’s possible they should both be pursued as separate, though theoretically related trains of thought. I was hoping, through the course of writing this, try and figure out some more/gain further clarity, but unfortunately I don’t think any of the resources I’ll need to really dig down on this are readily available online, as I have discovered a rather scanty digital trail, even about Alexander in his extended legendary life.

*27/4/19 this is pretty bold and I'm not sure I'm currently equipped to defend the statement against a critical attack but it still feels right. 

If you read all of this, hey thanks! This was an attempt to try and mitigate the fact that I’ve just been crawling up the walls of my own mind and it’s been getting pretty bad the past couple of days. Injuries are really difficult for everyone, but coming directly from a summer of mobility and hiking and freedom in the place I love most, despite the fact that I wasn’t even in the field very much, and being utterly and completely grounded has been a devastating and crippling (pun intended) adjustment. Sitting in one place has never been something I’ve been good at, and I am really only just coming back into my own mind as I ease off the pain meds. SO, this was an attempt, inspired muchly by @post--grad’s fucking brilliant and captivating newsletter to just try and muse and think without any pressure or connected to anything that has any current relevance to my scholarly production. 

Let me know what you think, really! Even if you’re someone for whom this is all totally new, bc let’s be real, most people don’t spend their lives thinking about objects and images and The Past. I wanna know what you think! Does it make sense? Is it weird? What was the most interesting thing about this, if at all?

[anycontentposter]

Use Composition to Enhance Your Candid Photos

Composition does not make an honest, however a great structure can improve it. It can magnify what you feel about the subject or conjure up a response all by itself. Today I’’ m going to show you 5 ideas on structure to improve your candids.

.# 1. Utilize a Dutch Angle.

The Dutch angle, likewise called the Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle, is when the vertical or horizontal lines of an image are slanted. In movie theater, it is typically utilized to communicate stress and anxiety, stress, or things gone awry, however including a Dutch angle into your honest photography you can provide the audience a sense that it was recorded in the spur of the minute.

The Dutch angle is a reliable tool for boosting the honest feel of a minute however ought to be utilized moderately. Specifically in a collection of images in which its strength depends on it being an outlier, not a standard.

Fun reality: The Dutch angle coinage does not describe Holland. It is truth a recommendation to early German, or rather ““ Deutch ” expressionist filmmakers. I require to get clearness on how it was misattributed.

.# 2. Shoot Through things to Frame Your Subject.

When it concerns photographic structure, framing is frequently utilized to draw your eye in towards your topic. When shooting through things it has the additional impact of communicating a shot was made in the spur of the minute or that the professional photographer was rather gotten rid of from the minute like a fly on the wall.

Using a guideline of thirds structure, an over the shoulder shot frames your topic by drawing your eye in however likewise includes context, notifying the audience that the honest minute they are observing becomes part of an interaction.

Sometimes shooting things work tools in improving an honest minute. They should not constantly frame.

.# 3. Utilize a Tilt Shot to Shoot from Extreme High and Low Angles.

Shooting from low or high angles not just use diverse viewpoints however likewise communicate various significance.

Images made from listed below communicate significance, prominence, power. Images made from above tend to stimulate opposite sensations about the subject such as powerlessness, downtrodden, weak point.

Carefully think about how you utilize these angles. Yes, they can be utilized to simply provide something various, however when utilized efficiently they can magnify the sensations currently communicated in the subject.

Sometimes I’’ ll rest on my skateboard in hectic locations and go undetected. I specifically delight in making candids that appear like they might have been positioned.

.# 4. Don’’ t Be So Clinical with Your Composition.

Rules of structure are outstanding tools for developing visual interest and drawing audiences into your topic. Often when numerous guidelines of structure are made use of at as soon as, your structures can feel a bit too on the nose. This feels medical and has the prospective to feel lifeless or contrived.

I advise try out shooting a bit looser. Attempt sticking to less guidelines, or ensure the guidelines you do follow are less apparent.

You can argue that well balanced visual components underpin the structure of a strong structure. In a structure utilizing the guideline of thirds, the subject matter inhabiting one-third of the frame is stabilized out by the two-thirds of less crucial genuine estate.

Balanced components must not be puzzled with proportion: if, for instance, you have a things of a particular size on one side of the frame you mustn’’ t have one on the other. We are not searching for similarly sized items or like colors to attain balance. Rather, we are taking a look at the total visual weight of things. Particular colors and tones will draw your eye in various methods. Something little however of more value such as an individual can be cancelled by something much bigger however lesser.

.# 5. Be Unconventional. Break the Rules.

There are standard methods to frame official pictures whether honest or not. These customs remain in part formed by sticking to particular guidelines of structure such as the guideline of thirds. Beyond guidelines of structure, we are utilized to a visual language established by over a century of image-making.

Experiment with breaking these standards. Attempt uncommon cropping or use of guidelines. Rather of having leading lines lead towards your topic, have them lead away. Topics tend to look inward in a frame. Attempt having them look beyond the frame and see how it makes you feel.

P.S. If you enjoyed this video and post, you can assist support my material by ending up being a Patreon advocate .

About the author: Mik Milman is an occasion professional photographer who focuses on recording genuine minutes and interactions. The viewpoints revealed in this short article are exclusively those of the author. Milman has actually been operating in Los Angeles for over ten years. You can discover more of his deal with his site , Instagram , Facebook , and YouTube .

.

Read more about this at petapixel.com

https://coolarticlespinner.com/use-composition-to-enhance-your-candid-photos/

[derkastellan]

Observations: Dungeon Crawl Classics #1

Talking about DCC is tricky for me... You see, I was in love with DCC. I am in an on-and-off relationship with DCC. I think it’s fun and rather unique. I think it often happens to be a good game. And yet...

It just sucks to be a perfectionist.

So is it just me or do I have some legitimate gripes about DCC? To which I would say “It depends.”...

I’m not so much criticizing the game engine itself. It’s more like the whole cloud of what is considered to be DCC, its shape, its gestalt, its ambiance. DCC is more than a set of rules. For many, it’s a rehashed version of the world of Aereth. It’s the world described in the modules, even if indirectly. It’s also the absolutely minimalist campaign-planning advice given in the book, the blurb on the back.

In order to force myself to stay on-topic I shall try to focus on one topic per post. I have my personal list of gripes with the rough edges of DCC that are of course purely my own petty nitpickings. So let’s start with...

Goodmanonomics: Wherefore money?

“One goal of this work is to maintain verisimilitude in terms of the campaign world feeling like a feudal, medieval setting. In a medieval setting where most peasants survive on farming or trades, with an economy based primarily on barter, hard coinage is rare. This feudal environment is the essential starting point for most fantasy campaign settings.” (DCC pg 393)

This statement sets up a certain framework of thought that it builds on. Unfortunately, within the context of the rest of the book, it doesn’t seem right.

Historically speaking, the barter economy is mostly true for the early medieval, often known as “the dark ages.” Should we logically conclude that the game is set there? This could very well be if the game wasn’t so full of classical D&D high-tech anachronisms! Plate armor and crossbows are late medieval tech, one developed to protect armored cavalry in battle, the other one to increase the punch of ranged weapons to defeat such armor. This is no dark ages tech. In fact, medieval times saw quite some technological progress, and while many ancient manuscripts were lost and knowledge was not widespread, the middle ages breach the technological gap between ancient and modern times, bringing us the windmill and watermill (and hence early mechanics), plate armor, cross bows, evolved farming schemes and so forth.

The case in point is this: In history no advanced metallurgic society existed without coinage. There is a gap between the end of the Roman empire and the middle-middle ages where society fell back into barter and a loose organization, but even when regions like early medieval Germany were lacking in economic development, German emperors derived massive tax income from northern Italian holdings where the economy recovered sooner and trade recovered much earlier from the dark ages. 

If we look at the middle ages we see complex long-distance trade. In the end of the middle ages the Hansa traded good all over the Baltic and North seas. Venice and Genoa had built merchant republics on Mediterranean trade. Goods were moved all over Europe. Vikings had sailed far and wide, crossing all over Russia to get the goodies. Byzantium never stopped being an evolved economy to begin with. On a simple farmstead in Scandinavia archaeologists as obscure items as a carved Buddha... In other words, our picture of the middle ages is rather flawed, simplistic, and highly inaccurate.

If you look at the occupation list, you will notice a halfling moneylender. You will, in fact, see a complex society in terms of the division of labor. The book pays lip service to an early medieval society but uses the tech and occupation tables of a highly diversified late medieval society. So, the place you live in is probably not a farming hamlet. Most of these occupations suggest a moderate-sized town or even city. And out of the window goes your barter economy!

Towns and cities quickly drove the need to have a coinage to exchange goods and thrive. I live in Ulm, and I can tell you that cathedrals are not built without taxes. Serfdom became less common during the middle ages and was replaced by a sort of money taxation.

Similarly, a plate armor is not put together by a single blacksmith out of the blue. It is the end product of division of labor and a technological evolution. Crossbows are not individually made by somebody playing with the concept. They were mass-made to outfit armies. And so on.

These armies were often paid in coinage. How early? William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 with an army that derived its numbers from mercenaries, people that had to leave their home. The Norman conquerors then proceeded to build a metal-forging industry in south England that destroyed quite a lot of countryside. We’re talking 11th century here.

So, even the 11th century is anachronistic to the claims made in the book. And it uses 14th century tech. In fact, the game mixes technology and “history” as happily as did the authors of late medieval, early modern, or romantic times when they wrote novels about King Arthur or Knights Templar envisioning them in shining plate armor. That’s our image of the noble knight.

What I’m saying here: The economy to generate and to absorb a 1,000 gold coin dragon hoard is there. (Not to mention the overabundance of “gold coinage” in D&D-like games would essentially mean that gold takes the role of silver coinage, anyway, and hence has less buying power.) Unless you envision the whole setting to be a dark ages collection of post-downfall hamlets far far away from any bigger civilized area then it makes no sense. Even during the darkest of the dark ages there were soaring civilizations in the middle east and India, so even if you describe a valley of backwards oafs somewhere there must be more to the world than this.

There is some nice reasoning in the book why things are as they are, but I see no reason to say money has so little use and the economy can not even absorb it. It may be a petty gripe, but after seeing this actually bring up contradiction after contradiction in my games, I dropped it altogether. I apply this logic only in moderate doses to small farming hamlets, but since there is trade and adventuring parties travel a lot, it’s not super-applicable.

One final note: The DCC modules are set in the world of Aereth, as defined by Goodman Games long before DCC as a standalone game was ever released. The D&D3.5 and D&D4 compatible material about Aereth assumes entirely different economics, I would say. The country Castle Whiterock is in supposedly has no less than 300,000 inhabitants. This is quite a lot of people! At the latest since Journey to the Center of Aereth the setting world is finally and utterly canon. Either everything about this world has been retconned since the publication of DCC as a separate RPG or things add up even less.

So, I say: Give us some sensible basic economy. The middle medieval or late medieval still perfectly mix with other elements of DCC. But if this is a dark ages, or even bronze age or iron age RPG, things would have to be changed around quite significantly. Throw out the crossbows and plate armors. The game would be even better for it. It would become more Conan and more Sword & Sorcery even.

All of this being said, I have high hopes of the DCC Lankhmar boxed set to remedy this. After all, its main center of action is the City of the Black Toga, together with an economy and everything. I really really look forward to this product and gladly support it on Kickstarter right now.

[infiniteundo]

Software-As-Narrative 13/n: Continuous Storytelling

So software development isn't a structural undertaking. Instead I regard software as a post-structural medium. Structural metaphors fail when applied to modern distributed software running on the Web.

Structuralism vs. Tentacularity

"Tentacularity" as defined by Donna Haraway means something like what has been hinted at in the past by neologisms like "interwingled" as a way of describing how internet content crosses between contexts and "hive mind" as a euphemism for "everyone who is participating in a very specific online discussion thread(s)."

Tentacularity is a coinage much like "Hive Mind" because both words get at the sublimated nature of Web systems. There are swarm-like behaviors that we (humans and machines both) participate in and the science of self-organizing systems has recognized this to some extent already. I only wish to take the observation to a logical if extreme conclusion.

Software as a medium does not have structure. Saying it does is analogous to saying that some square meters of canvas have a structure like a tent. It may be true at some given moment (it may even be true right now) but when the conversation is about canvas we understand the "structuralness" is impermanent and that cloth itself has no "structure" in the vernacular sense (that is: not in the way a board or a hat pin has structural value; cloth is structureless or I would prefer to say: post-structural).

The more popular metaphor is that software is like mud. This is fine with me as it still gets at the poststructural nature of the medium. You can make "patterns" with it but they are made of mud and as mud they shall run down to the lowest place and stay there, as it says in the Tao Teh Ching which by the way is the only "business book" you actually need to read.

Operationalized tentacularity in the post-information age

It has already been suggested by Cockburn and others that software as a medium might best be considered as a non-zero-sum game or "collaborative game." That software is much like a game of Dungeons & Dragons in that each participant (machines and humans both) affects the outcome to the extent that the participants and outcome cannot be meaningfully explained in isolation -- both are necessary but only jointly sufficient.

Software is a shared narrative.

That is my message to you. That is my "secret sauce" my "how I made Etsy's CI awesome in 90 days."

> Give engineers a utopian dream or they won't follow you at all. > > -- Gerry MacKenzie 2010

A CI system is, as Erik Kastner observed "a water cooler, a place where people can come together." In this respect I am reminded very much of the joke about bartenders: you don't actually need bartenders because a machine can mix a drink. But we have human bartenders anyway and we always will.

You don't technically need CI to run tests and deploy code, in the same way you don't technically need a bartender to mix you a drink. But as with bartenders, it turns out that there's just something… optimal about having CI around.

> "These are my friends. I made them." -- Blade Runner

CI is a dream machine. It is the hollow tree in Empire Strikes Back, it is the Danger Room of the X-Men. CI is our door to the place that the Samurai called the mountain self: the thing that is within that must be overcome in order to move on externally. This is CI.

The proud engineer needs her laughing shadow behind her or one day she may find that without her shadow she has lost something of herself. Or some or all of her users. That should be the essential good that comes of CI.

So now you know my utopian vision, or at least the elevator pitch. Without that dream of an almost-too-good adversary in the agency of CI, everything falls apart.

That there should be an adversarial challenge in CI alarms some people. My answer is that there is strong precedent for a gradual learning curve being essential to an engaging game.

CI provides us with our needed gradient of learning so that we engineers-as-players continue to "level up" our skills as we play. All good games have such a mechanic -- the Paradox Of The Active User requires that games teach their interfaces to users by casual-seeming reinforcement. CI is how it works in the Continuous Deployment Game so to speak.

CI as NPC

What are unit tests but aspirational messages sent into the void of the Known Unknown to be validated by a robot entity? CI is an Oracle in the sense of the way software testers use the word: CI is a source of truth, a way of seeing whether tests are telling you what you think tests are telling you.

I only wish to take the observation to its logical if extreme conclusion.

CI should better be regarded as a participant in the software delivery process. CI is a co-story-teller in the non-zero-sum game of shared narrative that is Web development.

This resonates with the observation that perhaps it is taxonomies that shape our cultures and not the other way around. CI is a de facto taxonomy that all too often is allowed to "drip-by-drip flow down to the lowest place and stay there" as Lao Tze would put it.

People like me exist because configuration matters. Configuration of CI makes all the difference and people who understand what I have said above and can make CI act that way… let's just say they're vanishingly rare and not actually say gauche words like "unicorn" OK?

Software doesn't have to always behave like mud

Software is in its essence mud but CI an example of the kind of poststructural entity or "critter" we should seek to build.

CI does not have to behave like mud, although it is perfectly possible to create situations where CI will not work in your favor. CI has the capability to remove a constraint (the constraint that CI has to act like mud) from itself and that is a very powerful attribute for a tool to have.

CI is at its best a self-healing system.

At its best, and certainly in Etsy's case, CI is a friend. A co-conspirator in the business of defining and deploying well-loved interactive paradigms. CI should be considered the first of an ever-growing milieu of non-player characters or NPCs as gamers call them. CI is co-collaborator and kin. That insight turns out to be the key to the way-of-seeing-how-it-is-possible-to-stay-with-the-trouble in Web systems that I term tentacular devops.

The realm of configuration management is new and strange as it only really has come to prominence now: at the time of the primacy of the "server farm" and the "serverless cloud." What is running when and where has become mission critical live-or-die information and it always will be for the rest of the evolution of the Web.

The intersections of those places on the venn diagram are not flat nor finite as the illustration falsely depicts:

The intersections shown as flat on the diagram are in fact tentacular in their nature. The complexity, shape, nature of the (possibly good) complications and (hopefully good) communications that take place at those intersectional points in software practice are visceral and unformed and troublesome.

> "Bugs cluster at the interfaces." > > -- Laura Beth Denker

The above is true for human-ish interfaces as much as it is true of machine-ish interfaces or interfaces that are "in code."

Ethnography and intervention as a way of staying with the trouble

The role I have in Testing today is a practice of ethnographies and cultural interventions at the intersections of all those disciplines on this or any diagram of functional skills needed to keep a Web system -- a teleonomically living system -- resilient and profitable.

These ethnographies and interventions do not have a name yet but at this point it is fair to say that the software world is aware of and recognizes that "what I do" is a practice widely needed and emergent as a result of the massive scale of Web services in the last 10 years.

I am terming this practice tentacular devops in the hopes that involving Donna Haraway in the naming of the thing will communicate widely the need for and the acknowledgement of radically different ethics-of-business in order to simply survive in the post-information age. Diversity and social equity are integral to the function of an online community so by Conway's Law, we must as Web corporations embody those values in order to build resilient joyful communities -- the kinds of communities and products that delight the user come only from engineers and designers who can themselves find delight in the compromised world in which we find ourselves.

That is tentacular devops. That is how testing works with continuous delivery. That is how software as a shared narrative can be functional allegory that serves the needs we have now as architects of new web systems that must still stay with the trouble of the old, beloved Web as well.