Recently updated blogs

Spent a few days over in Lithuania at the end of October, visiting our lad in Vilnius. The city is spilt by two rivers, the Vilnia and the much larger Neris, which are home to a wide variety of fish species, including salmon, trout, grayling, asp and nase, so couldn't help peering over the many bridges on our various walks. Only a short distance out of the city the surrounding …

Whelp. Tuesday did not at all go how I had hoped. A friend of mine lives next to a high school history teacher who posted the text below on one of the big social media sites yesterday. I found it helpful. This one is hard if you wanted Harris to win. Because Trump won fair and square. The Republicans will control the Senate, and most likely the House as well. …

Well, here we are. As someone who unfortunately lives in a MAGA pocket of Los Angeles County, I’m numb but not surprised. I’ve seen so much of this in my local ecosystem over the past decade, but I think that seeing it at full country scale last night really cemented for me some current truths about a majority of 2024 America: Deep down, we’re never handing over power to a …

Figure 1: Poster for the 2021 American comedy thriller film Me You Madness When an artwork or cultural object is deeply layered with an array of meanings we call it a rich text. This is not that. This is what happens when financialization and oligarchy and extreme wealth unfold in the new gilded age of a crumbling, decadent empire. Specifically, this is what happens when you are the son of …

America Hates You, America

Life in America has long felt like a game played between adults and children; a game where one side knows the rules and is dedicated to keeping them, and the other is merely making up ad-hoc rules from moment to moment, for no reason but to help them win.

I learned on Monday that my friend Duke Parrish died from catching up on his wife's My­Insta­Tik­Face­Linked­Me­Pin­Book­Space­Tok­In­Gram­We­Trest feed. He died on October 31st. Hallowe'en. He was five days younger than I. It wasn't a sudden accident or the result of a horrible crime. No. He had a genetic disorder diagnosed way too late and it caught up to him. I am still processing this. Outside of family, he was the …

for we must know in advance, if we are prepared for that conflict, that the combat may have truces but never a peace. If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface …

The next democracy we build will have to be better than this one.

This is a fantastic idea: integrating tactile maps on pedestrian crossing buttons to help sight-impaired people get a lay of the land. These exact signal boxes are used here, but I don't think I've ever seen the map module on them. That's a shame. [View video on Youtube] [View video on Invidious (tracking-free)]

What is the opposite of Cory Doctorow’s neologism “enshittification“, the seemingly purposeful making worse of a product or situation? It’s Cory Doctorow’s embettering of his recent cancer diagnosis. Cory assures his readers that it’s very, very likely to turn out to be completely treatable in minimally invasive ways. In fact, he has already gone through […]

I really like Cog (previously) as a tool for automating aspects of my Python project documentation - things like the SQL schemas shown on the LLM logging page. When using cog in this way it's important to remember to run cog -r to update those generated files before pushing a commit. I've previously been enforcing this using GitHub Actions - as part of my tests I run cog --check *.md …

Despite what society suggests, you're not obligated to stay up-to-date on daily news.Being in the loop won’t solve your perceived lack of control.Just because news is available doesn’t mean you must consume it.Your real responsibility to you and those around you is keeping a clear head and a healthy mind. Don’t let the endless stream of information wear you down.Society often equates news awareness with caring about issues, but you’re …

The Blue Humans are, basically ,that bloke from No-Wave Legends Mars;namely experimental guitarist Rudolph Grey, and a flux of artsy chums,such as ,the afore mentioned Alan Licht. Whom first came to notice in the late-1970s New York City post punk and trendier than thou downtown Noo Yawk art scene which also spawned such nerds as Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca and such like.I thought all members of Mars had to be …