Flutterby™! From 2022-09-01 to 2022-09-30

I was wrong. We don't need flex posts. We need bulb outs. Or K-rail. Also, today's concept for understanding the need for systemic change is Jevons Paradox. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[ related topics: Trains ]

I was wrong. We don't need flex posts. We need bulb outs. Or K-rail. Also, today's concept for understanding the need for systemic change is Jevons Paradox. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox.

[ related topics: Photography Trains ]

The Verge: The Humiliating History of the TSA

[ related topics: Aviation Theater & Plays ]

Huh. Called "left wing" because I was advocating for fiscal responsibility and removing subsidies. Guess that pretty much covers the state of politics these days.

[ related topics: Politics ]

OH: "Voice of sanity on Nextdoor. That's a low bar."

My congressperson just sent an email with the subject "Helping Californians with Wildfires", and I'm... not sure how to parse the ambiguity in that.

Although as a friend points out, given the century of burn debt, there isn't really ambiguity there.

Are there any projects out there for a distributed web, like IPFS, but that stayed on task and didn't get derailed into cryptocurrency bullshit? I'm more and more reminded that we need a post-web more stable and archived future, but don't see it happening.

The Hard Drive: Frugal Gamer Waits Until Next American National Tragedy to Pick Up 1,000 Itch.io Games for Five Bucks

To be fair, though, they're never gonna get around to playing any of the other games they bought.

[ related topics: Games ]

Only a few months until my blog is too old to date Leonardo DiCaprio.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Neighborhood pot luck this afternoon. Heat wave. Time to Burning Man this place up with misters and shade cloth.

[ related topics: Burning Man ]

Neighborhood pot luck this afternoon. Heat wave. Time to Burning Man this place up with misters and shade cloth. Now with picture.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography ]

Petaluma, kinda like Burning Man, but less playa dust, and slightly less nudity.

Though this week I suspect we'll have a lot of people tracking playa dust home.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Sexual Culture Nudity ]

Big lady is watching you

[ related topics: Photography ]

We can see that automobole subsidies don't actually generate a lot of value, because demand is so elastic: https://www.bloomberg.com/opin...-gasoline-let-s-keep-it-that-way

Journal of Safety Research: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedalcyclist injury severity

Passenger cars were the striking vehicle in most fatal pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, though they were underrepresented relative to the proportion of all crashes in which they were involved. Though pickup trucks were the striking vehicle in just 5.6% of pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, they were involved in 12.6% of fatalities. SUVs were similarly overrepresented in fatalities relative to the proportion of their involvement in all crashes. SUVs struck 14.7% of the pedestrians and pedalcyclists investigated here, but were involved in 25.4% of the fatalities.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2022.06.005

[ related topics: Machinery Model Building ]

As I think about neighborhood safety, and what it means for a city to grow and change and evolve, I'm liking the framing of distinguishing those who live in a place from those who just reside there.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays ]

Neighbor knocked on the door. I had to figure out how to get out of the house while releasing the least hot air. Still mostly comfy inside, but...

[ related topics: Photography Real Estate ]

If you ever feel like your life's work.has no purpose or impact.on the world, just remember there's someone making "work zone: speed limit will be enforced" signs.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment ]

LinkedIn sent me a message suggesting that I "Enjoy my free trial", and that sounds something that a satirical perversion of the justice system might say.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Imagine complaining about fare evasion when all of those motor vehicle moving violations and that bike lane parking are out there as easy pickings.

[ related topics: Bicycling ]

Everybody's talking about a queen dying, but *the* Queen died November 24, 1991, and all others are insignificant in light of that.

Yowzas, the Mac is a really really crappy Inkscape platform.

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

lacey @byelacey

"normalize--" NO. normalize nothing. everything you do is weird now. you're free

I've got a little end-of-life Acer C740 Chromebook running Linux, and I'm thinking about trying to get the other developer on SquareDesk to drop back to straight C, because the C++17 compile speed is abysmal.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Sports ]

Had a wonderful day, which included a stop at #SturgeonsMill, a cool operating steam powered sawmill, with a neat community that keeps it running http://www.sturgeonsmill.com/

[ related topics: Sports Community ]

A steam donkey at #SturgeonsMill

[ related topics: Photography ]

And I really want this planer at #SturgeonsMill

[ related topics: Photography ]

Probably should have removed the fruit pulp from this plum wine two weeks ago, but I'm getting to it now, and it smells amazing.

[ related topics: Photography Wines and Spirits ]

This is really freakin' cool: The Follower — Using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram photo is taken.

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

Crime & Justice: Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen

Abstract Beginning in the 1970s, the United States began an experiment in mass imprisonment. Supporters argued that harsh punishments such as imprisonment reduce crime by deterring inmates from reoffending. Skeptics argued that imprisonment may have a criminogenic effect. The skeptics were right. Previous narrative reviews and meta-analyses concluded that the overall effect of imprisonment is null. Based on a much larger meta-analysis of 116 studies, the current analysis shows that custodial sanctions have no effect on reoffending or slightly increase it when compared with the effects of noncustodial sanctions such as probation. This finding is robust regardless of variations in methodological rigor, types of sanctions examined, and sociodemographic characteristics of samples. All sophisticated assessments of the research have independently reached the same conclusion. The null effect of custodial compared with noncustodial sanctions is considered a “criminological fact.” Incarceration cannot be justified on the grounds it affords public safety by decreasing recidivism. Prisons are unlikely to reduce reoffending unless they can be transformed into people-changing institutions on the basis of available evidence on what works organizationally to reform offenders.

Via https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447599536004734980

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Television Model Building ]

Twitter thread on AI generated art, and how artists have been hiring people to make their work for a long time, and the craft can be automated. With examples like Marcel Duchamp, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Martin Creed, Jeff Koons. I'd toss Dale Chihuly solidly in there, and Thomas Kinkade.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

People's Policy Project: Was There a Sharp Drop in Child Poverty?, on how you can cherry-pick metrics and end up with a glowing NYT article.

Via https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1570027146034167808

Five years of data show that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs over the long haul

Backup and cloud storage company Backblaze has published data comparing the long-term reliability of solid-state storage drives and traditional spinning hard drives in its data center. Based on data collected since the company began using SSDs as boot drives in late 2018, Backblaze cloud storage evangelist Andy Klein published a report yesterday showing that the company's SSDs are failing at a much lower rate than its HDDs as the drives age.

[ related topics: Weblogs Shoes ]

Tomato Soup Alchemy Sigil But in Black! Sticker Designed and sold by willothewitch

A fake achemical seal that says tomato soup, for giggles. In the spirit of its creative intent, please feel free to tell your friends is says anything you want to see if they bother to translate or just take your word for it.

Great for trolling your local anti-semitic QAnon spouting conspiracy theorists.

Via https://mobile.twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1570190810997755905

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Conspiracy Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip Government ]

Ugh. I know that somewhere there's a surplus house that would love to sell me one of these displays for five bucks, vs the $1,400 for a replacement remote, but damned if I can find it on DigiKey.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Real Estate ]

RT Zymandia (might be an old friend see pinned) @Zymandia

“don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” bro, the most famous gift horse in history became a huge problem because no one bothered to look inside.

Interesting look at how the big music publishers are subtly changing the standards of intellectual property so that the finance guys can extract even more value from the artists. https://switchedonpop.com/epis...s/invasion-of-the-vibe-snatchers

[ related topics: Music Art & Culture ]

If your town has more wine bars than Starbucks, it might be a tourist town.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wines and Spirits ]

Our Aquasana water filter just cracked and leaked all over the kitchen. What's your favorite water filter that doesn't do that?

Greta does not want to acknowledge that the world exists right now.

Increasingly convinced that Atlassian doesn't use Jira internally, because holy crap that editor...

Effects of Mandatory Sexual Misconduct Training on University Campuses Mala Htun, Francesca R. Jensenius, Melanie Sayuri Dominguez, Justine Tinkler, and Carlos Contreras

Our surprising finding is that training makes women less likely to say that they would report sexual assault. In all three studies, participating in training is associated with a large and highly statistically significant drop in the share of women who affirm that, if they were sexually assaulted by another student, they would be “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to report the experience to the university.

https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221124574

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Education ]

Programming is just repeatedly re-implementing the features of relational databases on top of repeatedly more complexly abstracted underlying stores, until you die.

Today it's a real-time JSON store.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Databases ]

Just a Wednesday night in downtown Petaluma.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I have complained in the past about Perl's TIMTOWTDI, but as I try to figure out how best to set up a TypeScript or JavaScript project, I long for Perl's clarity and simplicity...

[ related topics: Perl Open Source History hubris ]

Posted this on all of the other social medias, so it belongs here: A gripping single episode of a podcast: Nocturne — Manhunt on Bohemian Highway

Monte Rio is a tiny peaceful Northern California town, nestled in a hilly forest of redwoods, beside a river. Who’s starting all the fires?

It's the non-fiction tale of Kari Morrissey and Sara Paul tracking down suspected arsonist Jack Stanley Seprish earlier this year in the Russian River area of Sonoma County, including community funding of 50 trail cameras.

Press Democrat article on the effort

[ related topics: Photography Current Events California Culture Community ]

Outside: What Should Happen to Drivers Who Kill Cyclists?

The family of Lauren Davis desperately sought answers after she was fatally struck by a driver while biking to work in New York City in 2016. At every step, the criminal-justice system let them down, raising the question of what justice should look like for victims of traffic violence.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology Writing Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement California Culture New York Bicycling ]

Twitter thread from Warren Wells on the bike riders he saw in his visit to the Netherlands

[ related topics: Bicycling Woodworking ]

Thread on tools and programming, including RT dorian @doriantaylor

also: emacs can be a spreadsheet but a spreadsheet can't be emacs

seriously though it's super interesting to me how spreadsheets have been adopted as the IDE for muggles for half a century and they really are a sui generis thing but people have no trouble working with them…

[ related topics: Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

New Study Shows Transgender People Who Receive Gender-Affirming Surgery are Significantly Less Likely to Experience Psychological Distress or Suicidal Ideation

JAMA Surgery: Association Between Gender-Affirming Surgeries and Mental Health Outcomes

JAMA Surg. 2021;156(7):611-618. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2021.0952

Via https://twitter.com/chipfoxx/status/1572942217660239872

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Invention and Design Television ]

So Lyft is funding Prop 30, which would be an automatic "no", except that the California Chamber of Commerce and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association are against it, which would be an automatic "yes", and now I'm conflicted.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Saw this on a BMW 528 and flashed on Don Henley's "Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" line, and how much the world has changed for the better.

[ related topics: Photography Automobiles Woodworking ]

Petaluma folks: do not miss the current Petaluma History Museum (Carnegie Library) exhibit on the history of Main Street/Petaluma Boulevard.

[ related topics: Language Books Art & Culture ]

4th St in Petaluma. People are riding on the sidewalk because the street isn't safe. This is supposedly 25mph residential with a stop sign every block.

[ related topics: Bay Area Bicycling ]

And shout out to the guy squealing tires at G and 4th as we cleared the crosswalk. Your message is clear. Asshole.

Sure, Danny MacAskill is great, but has he ever tried to "share the road" on Novato Blvd west of Stafford Lake? Took a mental health day, currently listening to the birds and the breezes at the top of Wilson Hill.

[ related topics: Photography Health Pop Culture Birds ]

Crypto skeptics rebuff industry’s public lobbying push.

“Receiving a grade of F from the crypto lobbying group is a badge of honor,” said [Elizabeth] Warren...

QFT.

[ related topics: Politics Cryptography ]

At Copperfield's to hear Katherine Applegate talk about her book "Odder". To be fair we were sucked in by Charles Santoso's entirely too cute cover illustration, and are definitely not representative of the audience.

[ related topics: Books Photography ]

Visual Studio Code users who also use XCode or Emacs, is there a key binding setup you use to make the transition easier? Trying to decide if I retrain my fingers, or customize my environment...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment ]

I've been doing a bunch of thinking recently about gentrification. Charlene and I settled in Petaluma, a town with pretensions of agricultural roots, nearly 15 years ago, and as we get deeper into community involvement we definitely feel like newcomers. The cries of "I only want opinions from old established Petalumans who agree with me" (even though I live in a new subdivision on the east side, or out in Sonoma County) are strong, especially among the fairgrounds "preservationists" (even as the management of that property has let it slide into $13M of maintenance debt).

In discussions about development, municipal finance, active transportation, and affordable housing, I hear about the town being ruined by tech people bringing money, even as these immigrants buy land and houses at tremendous prices. I always wanted to live in a neighborhood with million dollar fixer-uppers, and as the house across the street goes on the market I realized that all I had to do was sit still. So we are clearly part of a wave of gentrification.

The identity of "butter & eggs" is strong, as dairy farming encroaches on salmon habitat, and despite the town having a name that apparently derives from what the indigenous peoples called it, there's not a whole lot of focus on the involuntarily displaced, or enslaved, Coast Miwok heritage.

So, yeah, we are gentrifiers over colonizers, and some of those colonizers were a Jewish culture that pitted Stalinist Communists against Zionists.

It's a complex place.

And, of course, the San Francisco Bay Area has changed immensely in the time I've lived here.

So I found this Broke Ass Stuart profile/interview with Mistress Midori thought provoking, and it references a Midori Patreon post that further explores her experience of the Bay Area over the past three decades or so.

I want to say that it was better when I was new in town. But I think that may be the case for any one who comes to San Francisco. The reality is that San Francisco, since the colonizers arrived, have been a boom town and constantly changing – a living organism and we’re just living on it.

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Invention and Design Food Bay Area History Theater & Plays Sociology Law Art & Culture California Culture Community Currency Birds Economics Real Estate ]

Okay, that's just pandering

[ related topics: Photography ]

Argh. I would take the time to customize my VS Code environment so that it's not annoying, in many of the same ways that I've customized Emacs, but I don't get the feeling that it+TypeScript will be the current hotness long enough to make that worthwhile. Sigh.

[ related topics: Nature and environment ]