No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
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@lea @adafruit Saw elsewhere that there was extensive drama with one of their top brass making a bunch of accounts to harass a trans woman on. If you're keen on looking into it go ahead, however I don't feel like digging through pig shit to find the posts and they've incriminated themselves as to which gang they're in enough here than now I don't really have to.
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@adafruit this is as wrongheaded a post as i can imagine, not least because the author seems to be unaware of decades of feminist critique of how commercial tools aimed at women homemakers in the 20th century were often marketed in exploitative ways and did not end up fulfilling their promise of efficiency. critique of AI has always been rooted in feminist thought, and many prominent AI critics are women, some of whom have lost jobs and faced harassment for publicly discussing the harms of AI
@adafruit i have been an adafruit fan for many many years and regularly recommend adafruit boards to students and colleagues. but this post (which honestly reads like something you'd find on the heritage foundation's web page), combined with the knowledge that adafruit is now regularly using unreliable technical tools for their boards and firmware(!!), has finally flipped my mental switch from "these are good folks" to "don't order from them"
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit hows that boot taste
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@paulywill @adafruit we aren't fucking with @ladyada, we're fucking with the creepy stalker harasser guy who is alleged to have written this article
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@marymessall will try to reply to some of the replyguys and more today... for this specifically, we publish everything as open source, document it, and share it under open licenses. you will not see this from all other companies that do what we do. you can ask them if they use any tools like autorouter, or CUDA, or OpenCV, or if they use any LLM... they will not say. totally up to the customer to choose. we are showing all our work in the open, and guys piling on is part of the experience for us
@marymessall @adafruit You conflated criticism of AI with misogyny. Of course you're gonna get piled on - that was, at best, an obviously stupid thing to say, trivialising actual misogyny. Although most of the "guys piling on" seem to be women, going by the replies I see here
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Not every tool is good
One of my heatguns was recalled for fire risk
I sent it in
It was a bad tool
LLMs, Gemini included, are also bad toolsIf I had to double check my cake mix for poison every single time I used it I wouldn't use that cake mix
Or eat a cake made from itYou're failing to recognize WHY people are rejecting LLMs and things made with it
They're bad tools
If a robot vacuum cleaner does a good job but has a 1% chance of eating my cat it's not allowed in my house
@Ananas @adafruit I would go as far as saying it's a gun-type tool. AI/LLMs aren't even like heatguns. They're like rifles : made to harm. In this case to harm workers, freedom, knowledge and democracy, as well as resources and life. It happens that you can use LLMs to help, just like you could hammer nails with the butt of a rifle, but their main goal and effect remain the same.
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@paulywill @adafruit @ladyada why would I learn to use the hammer that usually doesn’t work and is known to regularly cause psychosis in users?
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@FuturisticRobert ehh... Adafruit is an important creator of our community's toys. Many of us cannot afford to order from them (in my case because they insist on using UPS), and we instead order the same parts from AliExpress cheaper with free shipping. We are able to do that because adafruit open sources their designs, knowing full well that this will happen.
Mainly, Phil The Failed Goth needs to be removed from all public-facing operations of the company, and they might pull through this.
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit
it costs zero dollars to not be like this -
No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
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@adafruit Fedi is just AI-phobic and sometimes hateful a la Twitter... I really doubt this is sexism.
@golemwire @adafruit fuck yeah I’m afraid of getting AI induced psychosis, aren’t you?
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@FuturisticRobert ehh... Adafruit is an important creator of our community's toys. Many of us cannot afford to order from them (in my case because they insist on using UPS), and we instead order the same parts from AliExpress cheaper with free shipping. We are able to do that because adafruit open sources their designs, knowing full well that this will happen.
Mainly, Phil The Failed Goth needs to be removed from all public-facing operations of the company, and they might pull through this.
You're not wrong at all. I agree with you. Adafruit has very good street creds, it's just sad to see this happen. Limor Fried is an amazing person and has done so much for the DiY open-hardware community. Her heart is in the right place, that was never in question, its just her embrace of AI in this way is jarring.
For many of us, including myself, Mastodon feels like a last refuge on an internet that is increasingly hostile to authentic human communication. This is why I mute or block blatant brand advertisements and "influencer tactics." I hope Phil reads these words, maybe they need to understand that we, mastodon, are not the internet they think we are and maybe pull that stick out of wherever it is stuck and genuinely enage with us instead of hiding behind a bully pulpit.
Edit: I had unfollowed adafruit yesterday, I just refollowed because I still want to like Adafruit. To you, Adafruit specifically, do right by Mastodon, we are your allies in more ways that one.
To the real "reply-guys" out there on mastodon, go outside and touch grass. lol.
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@adafruit@fosstodon.org are we deadass comparing people being upset about AI slop to discrimination now
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit maybe the problem is setting the world on fire and boiling our oceans in the process of designing the PCB due to AI usage?
No?
Yeah sure, must be discrimination then.
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@adafruit Fedi is just AI-phobic and sometimes hateful a la Twitter... I really doubt this is sexism.
@golemwire LMAO "AI-Phobic"?? AI is the biggest waste of resources and is a theft tool used by the inept to "make" things they could never muster the effort nor the talent to make themselves. Plant a tree next time you spout nonsense to replace the oxygen you have wasted.
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@adafruit Do you and Mozilla use the same Denny's placemat PR firm?
@theorangetheme @adafruit Hahaha holy shit
Brb calling the burn unit
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit Mastodon: famous for our love of CEOs and male founders
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@adafruit Mastodon: famous for our love of CEOs and male founders
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@paulywill Know much about the Luddites? What they fought for?
You think Luddites were against technology
That seems to be the story the capitalist bros want to sell you.
Could do well with a bit reeducation. They were not against technology. They were against technology being used to oppress labor.
Being critical of big tech's grip on us is not a bad thing. Not falling for a "tool" based on theft and absurd resource usage, that doesn't even have a functioning business model because it is too dang expensive to maintain, is not equal to learning to use a hammer.
We could all learn a thing or two from the Luddites.
And claiming that being skeptical to using AI is "anti-woman" is an insult to all the woman in tech that battle real sexism every day.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit@fosstodon.org You think that we don't know that you have used AI for your blog and doxxed someone's location on Bluesky.
You deserve the hate
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Yes, it also disappoints me at times, because I see lots of effort over trying to figure out how to engage AP developers better — with minimal results, and meanwhile the Bluesky people are just seemingly having a ball over there riding on inertia.
In addition to work I'm doing trying to improve interop between threadiverse apps, I do try to help by providing DevOps style support for those looking to integrate AP.
Perhaps there's more I can do, I just don't know what it is.
