Leah | hedge scientista arc 🍠
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maplewashed.bsky.social
Leah | hedge scientista arc 🍠
@maplewashed.bsky.social
4.5K followers 1.8K following 1.1K posts
MLIS. Multimodal sensemaking theorist/info designer ideocene.net. Information flows in complex systems. Game design. Editor CJILS + https://bylines.scot/author/leahbrown; @ fediscience.org. Writer. she/they/banshee 🇨🇦

Support: https://ko-fi.com/ideocene
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maplewashed.bsky.social
This is Mohammed's son Badr, begging for help. He asks me to share it with you (IDK who the person is after Badr's message but she appears to know Mohammed and Nesma as well).

If you can donate to help them endure the winter, thank you. If you can't, please consider sharing.

@fairshare.help
December 13, 2025 at 10:19 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
I can't see there being any sort of problem with this.
The law doesn't fine or imprison the person exceeding the waist circumference limit but it does punish employers, "companies" and "local authorities".
December 13, 2025 at 11:44 AM
maplewashed.bsky.social
First of all, 99.9 percent of my diet is pickles
homemade wasabi pickles
December 12, 2025 at 6:32 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
I know you're good people bc you keep company with adorable puppies too, so there's that.

(This is my baby bear)
Me and Emmy
December 11, 2025 at 2:24 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Princess Noor, her brother Hosam, and their family need help to endure the brutal winter in Gaza. If you can, please consider donating. If you can't, please share so that others might see their campaign.

@fairshare.help
Little Noor gives the peace sign in this graphic I created for her 8th birthday.
December 11, 2025 at 1:09 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
"Do not pollute the common well."

AI has done precisely that, polluted the information ecology we all live in and draw from. Think about what YouTube was like just 3 years ago. Think about what search was like 5 years ago.

AI pollution is forced down every throat.

mastodon.green/@Tarnport/11...
Via @tarnport@mastodon.green. The post reads: All the shrieking "If you don't like AI, don't use it, but quit trying to control others who do," is actually an ancient debate. It goes back to Hammurabi's Code and the Commandments of Ma'at: DO NOT POLLUTE THE COMMON WELL. It's the most ancient law we have. You can't pollute the river upstream and call it individual prerogative. Watch how fast you go down.
December 7, 2025 at 7:32 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
🤔
A word cloud of my most used words. A cloud graph of my most-used emojis. A complete circle donut graph that says 100% of my posted images have alt text.
December 5, 2025 at 9:04 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
If you know a food nerd, my poster graphic for 101 Derivatives of French Mother Sauces might make a nice gift for someone this year:

www.redbubble.com/i/poster/101...
A periodic table-style infographic of the variety of sauces that can be made using the French system. Another version of the same infographic in light palette.
December 3, 2025 at 3:32 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
A screenshot from the I Am Devloper that reads: vibe coding, where 2 engineers can now create the tech debt of at least 50 engineers
November 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
1. the Hawthorn Hill tree
2. Syllenhek in her summoner form
3. Chapelhive (Mab's realm)
4. the Woods of Miasma
5. the waters of Oviferi
6. the moon of Còr Telyca
7. Nebel of Halflight
November Worldbuilders prompt by Kira of the Wind
November 29, 2025 at 1:28 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Still on my "nightshade librarian" bullshit
A selfie of me wearing a nightshade purple top, glasses, a crescent moon necklace, and my hair braided. I have nightshade-coloured cat eyeliner on my eyes.
November 25, 2025 at 6:07 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
My bestie, digital ethicist Thor Busch is going to be speaking at the Sustainable Games Alliance next Thursday!

Public talk: Does talking about sustainability connect us or drive us apart?

A deep dive on the theoretical debates around sustainability in games. To register: zoom.us/meeting/regi...
A promotional graphic in neon yellow for the above mentioned event. It takes place on Thursday, the 27th of November at 11 am CET on Zoom.
November 21, 2025 at 3:18 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Libraries, Archives, and Collective Grief

"This volume explores the ways in which grief permeates collections, objects and stories within library settings. Topics range from ecological grief and archival silences to digitization, marginalia and memorialization."

www.linkedin.com/posts/robert...
Death and Culture: Libraries, Archives, and Collective Grief (2026)
November 19, 2025 at 9:08 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
On LinkedIn there's a post flying around that's tempting to embrace, re: Anthropic's supposed experiment re: the malicious potential of AIs.

I'm not against testing the safety of LLMs, to be clear. I'm advocating here for close reading of the claims made on either side of the AI discourse.
LinkedIn post by me in response to claims made on LinkedIn regarding Anthropic's experiment to see if a sample of LLMs would use violence, blackmail, or other harms to save themselves from being shut down. A substack blogger makes several concerning claims but hides the bulk of the report under a subscription. There is no link to the actual experiment design. The post reads: I think before you go sharing the Anthropic AI Substack post, you should be very wary of a couple of things: - Where is the link to the experiment/experiment design? - Does the experiment design reflect the framing of the experiment and its results? - Have you noted that a lot of emerging AI ethicists have problematic backstories (i.e. Do they have a history of being involved in blockchain, crypto, NFTs, metaverse hype, generative AI apps and are now pivoting to evangelizing tech ethics?) Fundamentally, you should read critically the claims of anyone who was recently involved in creating problems that they now want to sell you solutions for.
November 17, 2025 at 11:27 AM
maplewashed.bsky.social
SOLVE for X written in Zohran for Mayor font
November 9, 2025 at 12:54 AM
maplewashed.bsky.social
It's always pancake o'clock, babe 🥞
PANCAKES for Dinner in Zohran for Mayor font
November 8, 2025 at 9:25 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Champagne for my real friends in Zohran for Mayor font
November 8, 2025 at 9:21 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
PERSEPHONE for Underworld Queen in Zohran for Mayor font
November 8, 2025 at 9:20 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Via Vivianne Castillo on LinkedIn:

Not another design conference: The Walkout, Jan 15-16, 2026

#UX #design #uxConference

www.linkedin.com/posts/activi...
A table explaining how The Walkout design conference differs from typical UX conferences, by Vivianne Castillo on LinkedIn.
November 6, 2025 at 1:27 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
This one should definitely be Open Access but the guy is an independent researcher and that stuff is expensive to pay for. Here's the abstract.
ABSTRACT In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased. But When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now‐canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false. The documents reveal that the group actively proselytized well before the prophecy failed and quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward. They also expose serious ethical violations by the researchers, including fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation. One coauthor, Henry Riecken, posed as a spiritual authority and later admitted he had“precipitated” the climactic events of the study. From Debunking "When Prophecy Fails" by Thomas Kelly, 2025
November 6, 2025 at 11:45 AM
maplewashed.bsky.social
My "Lorem Derpsum" bot that generated derped-out Lorem Ipsum placeholder text. For fun I thought I'd run the outputs through Google Translate.
Lorem Derpsum output with translated text. Another output translated by Google. Another output translated by Google Another output translated again by Google.
November 4, 2025 at 7:22 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Throwback to my Twitter bot "Thee Joye of Kytchen Alchemy" that generated a fictional medieval recipe several times a day.
A recipe for "Gelyne Fysh". A recipe for "Sambocade" A recipe for "Poivre Civey" A recipe for "Joutes Tart"
November 4, 2025 at 7:15 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
It's so dark so early now haha. I kinda love the chthonic life, tho.
Me, a lich, posing like a weirdo for a dimly lit selfie.
November 3, 2025 at 11:25 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Someone said it translates roughly to "ocean hunter" but I'll have to ask my friend who lives there if that's accurate. I think it looks really nice to read but still gives it character. In fact, I increased the title size to emphasize the enormity of the monster in the game hehe
Same title card as before, this time with more Umigari (much bigger title font size).
November 2, 2025 at 6:16 PM
maplewashed.bsky.social
Sneak peek; will be up on YouTube this week.
A title card that reads: UMIGARI Demo Gameplay; with comments on worldbuilding for sensemaking in liminal horror from an information scientist and designer. Part One: Finding Yourself Nowhere. How Umigari uses subtle sensory feedback in the environment to guide the player through the unknown The title screen from Chilla's Art game "UMIGARI". It shows a small fishing boat floating on an empty sea that dissolves into grey fog. A screenshot of the first person view the player has. You are holding a harpoon, and gazing out at an endless sea with a sun setting on the horizon.
November 2, 2025 at 5:49 PM