Mitch Effendi (ميتش أفندي)

I like coffee, Philly, Pittsburgh, Arabic language, anything on two wheels, music, linux, theology, cats, computers, pacifism, art, unity, equity, etymology, the power of words, and getting high off airplane glue. Will use Adobe Illustrator for food.

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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2025

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  • a lot of people aren’t old enough to remember that when the digg exodus happened, reddit didn’t even have subreddits yet. it was just links on one page, and we built our little subculture in the comments of each thread. that’s why there is such a culture of commenting before reading the article (if at all) — it used to be a big, disorganized blob of chatty nonsense, much like Fark or MetaFilter were at the time too.

    reddit is a lovely example of how tech companies from 1995 to 2020 fell into success and figured out what their product does later down the line. to quote homer simpson when asked what his tech company does, “we’re a website that sells computers… or… a computer that sells websites, I haven’t decided yet.”


  • i actually knew one of these powerusers in the early 2010s. he had leukemia, and i signed up to be a match to donate spinal marrow for him. i visited him in the hospital a bunch. he hasn’t acknowledged me since. that was a real bummer, but, i tend to see friends where they don’t exist so that might be on me.

    i am a little bummed that i got permabanned just because i was so close to all of the reddit founders and early employees. i personally prevented alexis from getting arrested for trying to openly smoke weed on the street in pittsburgh when it was still the kind of thing that got you put in prison for a few years if your skin is darker than popcorn.

    steve huffman in particular is a shitter and always has been. think of that kid you knew growing up who would make up that his dad worked at SEGA and that Goku was going to be in the next Sonic game — that’s spez, still, to this day. he is “mr. namedropper.” steve, genuinely, i do not care that you saw Beyoncé at the airport.

    ETA: since people are being weird about phrasing, i signed up to be a match. his alias back then was Dacvac. i literally sat in bars and watched him mod /r/pics on an iPad. believe me or don’t, i’m just some schmoe online after all.








  • i think that these tools will probably be foundational to discovering more about the human mind and how words or images are received, stored, and assembled in the brain, but people like sam altman and elon musk are convinced that there is nothing else to a ‘person’ beyond that.

    ‘humanity’ is an emergent phenomenon, and that is what makes it special. a few other animals have the beginning of it, but none have all of it like we do. you don’t need a god or any kind of religion to understand this. as far as we know, we might be one of the least likely things to ever happen in the universe, ever.


  • Congressperson: “Okay, so, let me get this straight. Your company has spent over 20 billion dollars in pursuit of a fully autonomous digital intelligence, and so far, your peak accuracy rate for basic addition and subtraction is… what was it, again?”

    Sam Altman: leans into microphone “About 60%, sir.”

    [Congress erupts in a sea of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, as Sam Altman is carried away on top of the cheering crowd of Congresspeople wearing a crown of roses and a sash reading, “BEST INVESTMENT”]


  • I will echo the other poster and say that all anyone has gotta do is CTRL+R in their minds, and replace gendered general addresses (“bro, guy, my man, me mate, girlfriend, mama, baby, girlie, gurl, woman, miss, ma’am, mister, etc, etc, etc”) with the word “friend.”

    Easy, simple, quick, uses pathways in your brain that already exist, and it’s just something that makes people feel good and included. Sure, maybe it’s a generic greeting at first, but I think eventually people will actually start softening their hearts and making more random friends that way. 🤷 Nothing wrong with a little more sunshine in a world where fucking everybody feels like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit.