More snowfall today. ❄️
Thinking about Death and Dying
As I’ve gotten older I’ve been thinking more and more about my mortality. There are some things I’d like to keep but after discussing it with my wife I realized I need to rethink things.
I wanted to keep all of my main domains; fahrni.me, crabapples.net, and hayseed.co. There’s also curmudgeon.cafe, which I’d like to have around for the folks who remain on it. That one I will be able to hand off to someone on the instance. The other three I need to do something else with.
I was talking to Kim about keeping them, but that takes money and time to maintain them. I’m now thinking I can just pull everything into my github account, leave my github credentials with Kim and just let everything else go. Rot off the vine so to speak. I won’t be alive to worry about it any longer, no need to put that stress on someone else.
To that end I think I’m going to stop using Carrd for maintaining fahrni.me, hayseed.co, and all of hayseed.co’s sub domains with plain text files, so they’re completely static and easy to move around.
Under fahrni.me I have iam.fahrni.me which is my old WordPress blog. I’ve pull all of it down as HTML, CSS, and any images it had. I can do iam.fahrni.me now. I’m no longer using it.
Most of the data under crabapples.net is completely static with the exception of my blog, rob.crabapples.net. That is maintained at Micro.blog, which I really like.
I’ve been thinking about moving rob.crabapples.net out of Micro.blog and to a manually maintained weblog. Completely static. I was inspired by Louie Mantia’s website. He manages everything manually. How can you not love that? 😃
Of course, like a knucklehead I want to put together some tools to take care of that. I’m thinking I can put everything on github and write something to help me generate my blog’s main page and publish each post as static HTML.
I’m sure as I lay dying I won’t really think about this, but I am now. 😄
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
We got another 10in of snow this week promptly followed by warmer temperatures and rain that almost eliminated it over night. There’s still patches of snow on the ground.
This week we’re expected to get a foot of snow from Wednesday to Thursday. It’s been a stranger that usual weather year this year.
Enjoy the links and the ravings of a mad man. 😆
The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone, according to two separate people who found the vulnerability and shared it with 404 Media. One coder added at least two database entries that are visible on the live site and say “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”
Why isn’t this in a section called Politics? Because it’s about a serious security flaw in a government computing center (maybe it’s just a server setup in someone’s closet?)
The scary thing is the kids working for DOGE — henceforth known as DODGY — have access to all kinds of personal information about you. OpSec folks must be going bonkers right now? 🤡
Spire Motorsports has to win in the NASCAR Cup Series this year.
Spire started as a very small team. Just one driver, Corey LaJoie. They eventually added a second driver and a couple years back got a huge investment of cash. They now have three drivers and are all in to becoming a top tier team. They signed longtime Cup driver Michael McDowell, Justin Haley was brought in to replace Corey LaJoie and they have last year’s rookie of the year Carson Hocevar. In other words, they’re stacked. I would expect each of them to have at least one win this year.
Just say no to JavaScript
This headline is, of course, there to get you to rage click it and go read the article. 😃
So, please, click the link and go read it. Nick is an excellent software engineer and has years and years of “in the trenches” experience to share.
This article is mainly about the benefits of writing maintainable, easy to read and understand, code. It’s something I encourage everyone I work with to do. It’s smart.
The TL;DR is use a TypeScript instead of JavaScript so you get better type checking. Take advantage of it and make your code easier to maintain all at the same time. Smart. 😃
Jyoti Mann, Pranav Dixit, and Hugh Langley • Business Insider
Several Meta employees who said they received positive performance ratings in their mid-year reviews last year had their jobs cut Monday, as the company let go of nearly 4,000 workers in its latest round of job reductions.
Companies don’t need an excuse to let you go. California is an at will state (I’m not sure if folks in other states were let go) but that doesn’t help the poor folks who lost their jobs.
Look, Zuck is the CEO of a company created to make money and please shareholders. I hate to be so blunt but that’s Capitalism.
I know the CEO of TELUS would do the exact same thing to cut our bottom line if needed.
Do I want to lose my job? HELL NO! Do I realize it’s possible? Yes, yes I do.
I hope each and every one of these folks scores much better jobs. After all, I still believe Zuck is a sociopath and Facebook is a terrible company.
Jay Peters and Alex Heath • The Verge
TikTok is back in the Google Play Store for Android users in the US, and soon it will be available on the iPhone, too.
This seems risky to me, but I guess if the folks tasked with enforcing the law say it’s ok to break it, you should just break it? 😳
I hope this doesn’t come back to bite them. I’d also like to see a better solution to this whole TikTok mess.
Recently I’ve found myself thinking about the state of pharmacy technology. Why? Simple, really. I’m bored and have been doing a little extracurricular reading. Not to mention that a few things have popped up here and there to pique my interest. It’s not one single piece of technology but rather a collection of technologies and interactions I’ve had over the past 18 months.
I love reading my brothers stuff but he hasn’t been very active since he went back to Pharmacy work full time, now as a Pharmacy Director. He’s one of the smartest folks I know and he has amazing ideas on how to improve pharmacy in the hospital.
It’s nice to see him writing again and I hope he keeps it up.
It’s frequently stated[by who?] that some core components of the AT-Protocol architecture are expensive to host and don’t scale down. So expensive that they are out of reach reach except for VC-funded commercial companies like Bluesky PBC, and expensive due to the structure of the protocol itself. Very non-decentralized.
I must confess, AT Protocol is a mystery to me. I cannot wrap my pea brain around exactly what it is and how to implement it.
This piece is about how Phil used a Raspberry Pi to do some AT Protocol stuff. Even though I don’t get it I find this encouraging. 😀
Some Apple TV 4K users in the US are being prompted to connect their Netflix accounts to the Apple TV app. This would appear to signal an end to the streaming service’s longtime refusal to have its content aggregated into third-party platforms.
This prompted me to ask the CEO of our household if I could purchase a new Apple TV. My CEO was not impressed with my justification so we’ll continue to use the Roku built into our TV. 🤣
I need to some reading on the current state of Roku technology. I’d like a box that aggregates all streaming service (like Apple TV) so I can search in one spot. If Roku does that we can stay with them. I just wish they didn’t collect so much data about us. 😞
Buried deep in a Welsh landfill, beneath layers of years-old garbage, there is a hard drive that holds the key to almost $800 million in bitcoin – or so James Howells believes, after accidentally throwing the drive away in 2013.
That drive is dead my friend. It’s been underground for 12-years, buried under heaps of trash that were exposed to the elements until it was finally covered over. I can’t see how it would survive the damp even if placed in a hardened container much less a plastic bag.
Would I love to see a miracle of some sort? Yes, I would! The odds are long against him.
One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry’s vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are entirely unreadable.
Speaking of hard drives. This is pretty sobering. Atoms and bits rot. Keep moving that data around if you’d like to keep it. I have CD backups of stuff I’ve moved around. I wonder if those darned things are still readable? 🤔
Square Enix has shut down the iOS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and removed it from the App Store following an unfixable bug that blocked people from accessing content they had paid for.
I don’t believe this. I can’t accept this is unfixable. The more likely story it’s not worth fixing because the fix would require upgrading the software to current versions of frameworks or something like that and they don’t want to spend the money on the effort. That I would accept. 😁
The snow is still falling and it is absolutely beautiful.
The X Name is crap, long live Twitter
Do you think Space Karen knows the name X, for the social media network formerly known as Twitter, is garbage?
I wish he’d sell all the Twitter branding to Sam Altman. Then Altman can create a Mastodon or Bluesky based social network called Twitter and we’d all be happy for it.
A rebirth of an original, but even better because it would be one node in a larger ecosystem.
Here it comes! ❄️
I do love it!
More Winter
Tuesday looks like fun. We had snow on the ground for most of January. Had a week without it. And it looks like we’re gonna get some more.
This time it’s not gonna be deep freeze city afterward. The rain that follows on Thursday and through the weekend should clean it up.
I guess Punxsutawney Phil did say six more weeks of winter. 🐿️
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
This week has been a bit of a struggle. I’m still sick and feel exhausted and our country is being dismantled.
My thoughts are not so good. I’m so pissed off.
I hope you all had positive weeks and enjoy the links. ❤️
Iván Carrillo • Knowable Magazine
North America’s largest bird disappeared from the wild in the late 1980s. Reintroduction work in the United States and Mexico has brought this huge vulture back to the skies. This is the story of its comeback.
I remember these beautiful monsters as a kid and remember being really bummed out when they became extinct.
This gives me a bit of hope.
While the work was done with trapped ions, almost every type of qubit in development can be controlled with photons, so the general approach is hardware agnostic. And, given the sophistication of our optical hardware, it should be possible to link multiple chips at a variety of distances, all using hardware that doesn’t require the best vacuum or the lowest temperatures we can generate.
I find quantum computing to be way more fascinating than LLMs. When — if? — these machines become reality the world changes dramatically, again.
I’ll probably be dead before it reaches a state of usefulness, but I hope it does, and I hope the “AIs” of the world or climate change don’t kill us off as a species before then.
Sara Hashemi • Smithsonian Magazine
In Summerville, South Carolina, a mysterious light has been seen hovering over old railroad tracks. Legend has it, it’s the glow of a lantern lighting the path of a ghost searching for her decapitated husband.
I love a good ghost story and a mystery. I also learned something new! I had no idea earthquakes could produce Earthquake lights!
Now, it’s not nearly as exciting as a good ghost story but it’s still fun nonetheless. 😀
A long dive into the features that make my ideal music app, and why nothing currently fulfils the brief.
If you have the time to read a longer post and understand how some folks prefer their music apps to work, this article is for you.
As a developer I want my music player to work a certain way and be beautiful to boot but designers can go to an entirely different level when it comes to the beauty of a thing.
Both perspectives are very necessary to make beloved software.
It’s being reported that the British government secretly ordered Apple to create a security backdoor into all content uploaded by iCloud users anywhere in the world.
This is really shameful of the British government if they’ve really asked for a back door.
Remember, once you make an exception for the “good guys” the bad guys will exploit it for their own needs.
What we need now is for Apple to implement end-to-end encryption for messages and other systems. Tighten it up, don’t dumb it down.
Every awards season, movie fans and aspiring pundits across the country become obsessed with the ever-coveted Academy Awards. The longstanding awards show has long been considered the holy grail of the film industry and can often feel like an all-encompassing part of the discourse, particularly around the four acting categories. In the lead-up to Oscar Sunday, many of us debate who will win, and once the ceremony comes and goes, there are still debates over who should have won.
Some of these actors shocked me, like Samuel L. Jackson. He’s extremely good in everything he does. Two roles that come to mind are Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction and Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight. Oh, I also loved him in The Red Violin. I’m 100% certain I’m missing a critically acclaimed film in this mix. The man has done so much over his lifetime.
Generation X is the last cohort to have one foot firmly planted in the pre-digital world while seamlessly adapting to the rapid technological changes that followed. We were raised on mixtapes, handwritten letters, and Saturday morning cartoons, yet we were also the first to embrace personal computers, email, and the internet. This unique position grants us a rare perspective—one that values both the patience and craftsmanship of an analog world and the speed and efficiency of the digital revolution. We understand progress because we lived through it, adapting with each new wave of innovation while maintaining the ability to unplug and appreciate the world beyond the screen.
I know not everyone enjoyed their childhood but I did. We were kids of two worlds. One side middle class the other poor. But, rarely did we ever want for the basics and we always had a tremendous amount of love surrounding us thanks to an amazing mother and grandparents.
As a kid my brothers and I lived outside. During the summer we’d get up, get on our bike, and disappear for long periods of time. If not that we’d be at the trailer park swimming pool or out in the street playing football or baseball. There was always the brick yard to occupy us — the brick yard was a deep and wide hole in the ground we’d play in, swimming in the pond or jumping our bikes into it. We had lots of fun tied together with the occasional mischief.
Jerry, the middle brother, got a Commodore 64 when he was around 10 and it was great for games and the die rolling program he wrote, we played a lot of D & D as teens. I never really used his computer, he is the brains of the family, but I was fascinated by it. I also knew I wanted to be a computer programmer at some point in my life. In high school I had the chance to write some BASIC programs and I sucked at it. I was always a horrible student but at some point I figured it out.
All that to say I agree with the article. Generation X is the perfect mix of analog and digital life. We touched grass a lot and as a generation helped build some of the greatest technology on the planet.
Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath are reuniting for one last time, to play a fund-raising concert in Birmingham on 5 July.
This show is going to be amazing. Not just because of Ozzy and Sabbath. This is one for the ages and whoever gets to attend will probably have some great stories to tell. 🎙️
I didn’t think that my former (extremely former) friend and coworker could be more of an unmitigated piece of shit, but “We hired this completely inexperienced guy solely because he murdered a black man” really takes it up a level.
Mark Andressen has turned out to be a real piece of crap human being. Why anyone would work with him is beyond me. Especially now. Garbage.
Politics
Here’s the section many of you may want to avoid. Cursing may ensue, hostile opinions for sure, and general disgust lie ahead.
You’ve been warned.
We are in the early days of the destruction of our democracy. No, that’s not hyperbole. If we manage to go back to being a democracy after the next four years it will be a miracle. There’s a better than average chance the Marmalade Messiah and his boss, Space Karen, don’t leave the White House and install themselves as dictator of this new nation.
In the last three weeks Space Karen has been dismantling our Federal Government through our computer systems. He is in control, illegally.
USAID and other agencies are being ripped out, root and all, by Space Karen and his merry band of pimple faced teenagers.
When is someone with any authority going to walk into whatever building they’re occupying and arrest the entire team, Musk included?
Better yet. When will the violence begin? Musk and Trump have proven they do not respect the law and will continue to go about dismantling things until they are stopped.
Of the two Musk is certainly the bigger threat. I don’t believe he’s the genius everyone thought he was but he is smart and a narcissistic sociopath. He’s not gonna stop. The law can’t or won’t stop him. It going to take a citizen or group of citizens to end what he’s doing.
Assholes. They’re all assholes and violence may be the only way to stop them.
In the past two weeks, Elon Musk — a man no one elected to any office — has gained unprecedented access to Social Security payment systems, fired thousands of federal workers, shuttered entire agencies, and installed his loyalists throughout the government. If this were happening in any other country, we’d call it what it is: a coup.
In truth, Musk is emerging as a government within the government, using the time-honored revolutionary tactic of developing dual power in order to seize control.
Vittoria Elliott and Leah Feiger • WIRED
A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’
Let’s start here: In a sane world, Elon Musk and his merry band of marauding miscreants would have already been arrested. For crying out loud: They have taken control of government computer systems at the United States Treasury and invaded the databases containing the private records of nearly every American, including personal medical records and financial information from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, all under the pretext of rooting out waste and fraud.
Katherine Stewart • The New York Times
To be clear, “they” are not just Donald Trump and his billionaire co-pilot. Over the past half-century, an anti-democratic movement has coalesced in the United States. It draws on super-wealthy funders, ideologues of the new right, purveyors of disinformation and Christian nationalist activists. Though it pretends to revere the founders and the Constitution, it fundamentally rejects the idea of America as a modern pluralistic democracy.
The violence is coming. At some point people will break. It’s just a matter of time.
Random Stuff
We expected rain with a chance of sleet or snow overnight and this morning.
We have an active thunderstorm passing through. That wasn’t in the forecast. I’ve never experienced a thunderstorm with snow, not that it’s happening now, but I’d imagine it could happen? ⛈️
Speaking of under the weather. I’m still feeling terrible. Clogged sinuses and it just won’t go away. I’m also exhausted. Why can’t I shake this? 🤒
Today, expected high of 69F, nice and sunny, just a perfect day. 🕶️
Tomorrow, high of 37F, chance of snow. ❄️
It just cracks me up. The East is a weird place. 😆
It’s a real shame Substack loves Nazis so much. I thought it was a great platform up to that point.
Their iOS app is really quite nice and the styling of the website and app are fantastic. It gets out of the way and lets you do what you’re there for, reading.
Cotton Bureau Sales! 🥳
Got my first sales report from Cotton Bureau and was super excited to see how many t-shirts and cases I’d sold! 😃
One. I sold one phone case and zero t-shirts. Oh, and that one case was sold to me, so it doesn’t count. 😳🤣
If you like the Stream icon head over to Cotton Bureau and buy a t-shirt or phone case!
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
Well, well, well, sick again, I see. Yes indeed I am. This time it’s not a stomach virus, this time it’s a common everyday cold. Stuffy head, runny nose, tired. It’s annoying. 🤧
Let’s get to the links. Enjoy!
A new ballot effort aimed at asking Californians if the state should remain in the union was approved for signature gathering to appear on the 2028 ballot on Friday.
This is nothing more than performative as it’s illegal to secede from the Union.
I mean, seeing California, Oregon, and Washington becoming their own country or joining Canada would be amazing. I’d certainly want to move back ASAP. 🤣
Lately I’ve been on the hunt for a personal database application that I could use to store, manipulate, and explore data important to me. I think I’m at least now able to articulate what it is I want, but I haven’t yet been able to find anything that perfectly matches the daydream.
This is really interesting. There are a number of database products available for the Mac, I personally use Base and love it, but something a bit more user friendly could make for an amazing product for someone. I’d personally love to see a forms creation product with a database behind it so I could make custom forms and put them on an iPad, iPhone, or Mac. It would be great for folks who do sidewalk questionnaires.
Something like this probably already exists. I just haven’t looked for it.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, WordPress no longer feels like a sure bet if you need to get a website online.
Ah, yes, the WordPress saga continues. I wonder what Matt is up to? It feels like he’s partially giving up. I hate to see that as WordPress is critical infrastructure on the internet. It powers so many sites and I can see it doing so much more.
Roger Monty’s • Search Engine Journal
Three unrelated things happened in the world of WordPress and Content Management Systems which may point the direction of how content is published on the web. Two of the developments are directly related to WordPress and has the feel of pieces falling into place.
This is a very interesting piece. If a community rises up out of WordPress and forks it I could see Matt losing out and losing control of the future of WordPress. It would be really nice to see him do something similar to what Eugen Rochko did for Mastodon.
Tesla is dying. The company’s fourth-quarter earnings read like a eulogy for the electric dream. Revenue crawled up just 2% to $25.71 billion, missing analyst estimates by over $1.5 billion. Automotive revenue - the heart of Tesla’s business - collapsed 8% to $19.8 billion. Operating income cratered 23% year-over-year to $1.6 billion. The operating margin withered to 6.2% from 8.2% a year earlier. These are the vital signs of a company in free fall.
I can only imagine it’s gonna get worse. Who wants to buy a car from a company with a Nazi as CEO?
The Tesla Board needs to grow a collective pair and fire the man. Get someone who will turn Tesla around.
I wonder when we’re going to see a round of layoffs from Tesla?
Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer’s use. Worse: it is a near-monopolist, dominating the word processing field. Its pervasive near-monopoly status has brainwashed software developers to such an extent that few can imagine a word processing tool that exists as anything other than as a shallow imitation of the Redmond Behemoth. But what exactly is wrong with it?
Charlie is a professional writer and he has a monster hatred for Microsoft Word. That made me ask myself what do writers actually use for writing their novels and books?
I know John Scalzi uses Word, but does he strip it down or just use it out of the box?
George R. R. Martin uses 1980s era WordStar for DOS.
From the article.
But then he did one better. He told Conan that he has two computers, one that’s up-to-date and has Internet access, and one that’s ancient and runs DOS. He uses the newer machine for browsing the Web and checking emails, but he turns to the older one when it’s time to write. And his late-’80s software of choice is the classic word processor WordStar 4.0.
I’d love to see someone collect data on what famous authors use as their word processor or typewriter of choice.
Andrew Cunningham • Ars Technica
But regardless of geography, it feels an awful lot like OpenAI wants to benefit from unlimited access to others' work while also restricting similar access to its own work.
I LOL’d when I read OpenAI isn’t happy about DeepSeek possibly using ChatGPT to train their model, given OpenAI crawled the web and trained their LLM with our work. Oh the irony.
“When I think about where I’ll raise a future family or how much to save for retirement, I can’t help but wonder: Will humanity even make it to that point?” he asked.
I think it’s healthy to have a bit of skepticism about LLM’s and where the future of actual AI leads us. Doom is not such a bad answer. Let’s be cautious and slow down the pace. I’d definitely hate to see someone create SkyNet. 🤔
Corey LaJoie to run partial Cup schedule for RWR, joins Prime Video as analyst
I’m happy for Corey! I’m a fan. He’s been an underdog forever and may not have the skill of top drivers but the man doesn’t give up. I’m excited to see how his own team — Stacking Pennies Performance — does this year! Getting the 01 number was quite clever. Since he’s not a chartered NASCAR member it means he’s not guaranteed a spot on the grid. What does that mean? It means there are only so many spots available to racers and he will have to qualify his way in! He starts his new adventure at the Great American Race in Daytona this month. If he qualifies it’s a victory given the number of racers qualifying Open cars.
If I were some super rich dude I’d definitely get behind this guy.
I struggled for a bit trying to decide what to write about in my next Substack. But as this - how should I put this - batsh*t crazy week came to a close, I came to the conclusion that this post needs to be about you.
Man! I wish I were enough of a somebody to get Mr. Acosta to listen to me. All of this attention focused on Substack is not good. They support Nazi and white supremacist content on their platform but so many writers and reporter, like Mr. Acosta, just ignore it.
It’s mind boggling how they can ignore the sins of Substack while covering the likes of Donald Trump and the hate and cruelty he foists on so many groups of people here in the United States.
Get off the platform.
Politics
Donald Trump has entered the White House again, an astonishing number of American voters seemingly unbothered by his authoritarian rhetoric, let alone the fact he’s an adjudicated rapist and 34-time convicted felon. No wonder the ‘f’ word is in use more than ever, especially due to the actions of Trump’s apparent right-hand man, the unelected Elon Musk.
Keep saying it. Donald J. Trump is an adjudicated rapist and 34 time felon. Oh, and he’s a fascist to boot.
Piece of garbage human.
I’ve been getting reassuring emails from my university to let me know that they have assembled a team to respond to the federal government shut down of NIH and NSF funded research. In case you hadn’t heard, they canceled review panels at NSF and suspended research at NIH. They made the uncertainty that has always haunted research funding far more shaky. This is a warning shot — they’re going to make everyone conscious of the fact that the Trump team, a collection of idiots with no qualifications in science to throttle any and all science they don’t like.
It’s depressing to see the greatest nation on the planet shut down scientific research. The Marmalade Messiah is trying his best to turn the United States of America into an Idiocracy.
Levi Rickert • Native News Online
The Trump administration’s intensified deportation efforts have created unexpected challenges for Navajo citizens living in urban areas like Phoenix. As the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began widespread raids in major cities across the country following the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, concerns have surfaced about Native Americans being mistaken for undocumented immigrants.
I knew something like this would happen. It was bound to given how gung-ho ICE has been about “rounding up” brown skinned people.
What an absolute shit show. One that will affect so many lives. It’s terribly cruel and pathetic.
Agriculture is finding out
Large numbers of farm workers in Kern County, at the heart of California’s agricultural country, have reportedly stopped showing up for work after what appears to be a wave of arrests — based, as far as anyone can tell, on racial profiling — by Border Patrol agents.
Kern, Kings, Tulare, and Fresno counties and many more are a part of the great San Joaquin Valley of California. It’s farm country. Most of the fruits and vegetables you enjoy come from there. Everything from oranges, almonds, lettuce, grapes, and a whole host of others are raised right there in the valley’s fertile soil. Guess who picks those crops? Yep, you guessed right, migrant workers. It’s back breaking labor and these folks do it in weather from below freezing to 110+ degrees. Yes, you read that right. It gets extremely hot and these folks show up to work every day.
Now, imagine if you will, all those amazing people no longer picking fruits and vegetables. Who’s gonna do it? Are you? If these raids continue you can expect food prices to sky rocket, crops to rot on the vine or branch, and farms struggle to stay in business.
The irony of the whole thing is how much farmers in the San Joaquin Valley love Trump. Oh, yes, they love the man. Before moving east I saw many a Trump 2020 sign in farmers fields and groves. Not tiny signs, gigantic signs mounted on the side of trailers. It’s the red middle of a very blue state.
FAFO season is here. Time for the “find out” part of the equation.
This man is a coward. And no amount of corporate jargon or performative masculinity can make that stain go away.
Zuck, for all his martial arts training and gold chains, is nothing more than a frightened little man. A man with children and a wife too cowardly to stand up and say “Donnie-boy, I’m not supporting your agenda because I want a free and safe America for my family.”
Instead we get a boy, going along with this wishes of an orange idiot.
Commanders over Eagles - Upset special
Bills over Chiefs
Knowing how my luck goes I’ll miss both of these picks. Good thing I’m not a gambling man. 😃
I really want to see the Bills win it all.
FIRE! 🔥
Kim got me some chili made with Ghost and Reaper chilis and I decided it would be a good idea to eat it for lunch today.
HOLY COW! My eyes are watering, nose running, my tongue is actively melting in my mouth, my gums hurt, and my throat is swelling. The milk isn’t helping. 🥵
Man-oh-man is that hot.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
What a week. We started the week celebrating a man of compassion, peace, and love, a great American!
At the same time swore in a new President. A convicted felon and rapist. A man who doesn’t have a compassionate bone in his body. A man who only loves himself. In other words, a garbage human.
Like I said, what a week.
I hope you enjoy the links.
Instrumenting Thread Stalling in Ruby Applications
Another nice post that peaks under the hood of Ruby. I won’t spoil the mystery here. Go read the post. 😃
Microsoft is gearing up to ship two new versions of the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro that have smaller displays, designed to be lighter and more portable for people looking for a more travel-friendly PC. Both devices will be premium products, and feature display sizes roughly around 11- or 12-inches, my sources say.
I’ve wanted a Surface Pro since the original version shipped. I love the form factor and it runs a full blown operating system.
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s news that Nosferatu director Robert Eggers will follow his vampire movie with a 13-century werewolf thriller called Werwulf, and today’s news that Nosferatu is in the running for four Academy Awards, the Eggers news drops keeps landing: Deadline reports that Eggers has signed a deal to direct a sequel to Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy Labyrinth.
How do you replace David Bowie? You don’t. Our youngest daughter loves this film and absolutely hates the idea of a sequel. Can’t say that I blame her.
Doom: The Dark Ages looks metal as hell and launches in May
We haven’t played a game on our XBox in ages. We’ve played some Mario Kart on the Switch but the XBox is basically a dust collector. But this game looks like it could be really interesting and anything called “metal as hell” is good in my book.
Matt Mastracci and Michael J. Sullivan • EdgeDB Blog
We’ve been working on a new HTTP fetch feature for EdgeDB, using reqwest as our HTTP client library. Everything was going smoothly: the feature worked locally, passed tests on x86_64 CI runners, and seemed stable. But then we noticed something strange: the tests started failing intermittently on our ARM64 CI runners.
This particular bug wouldn’t have happened on Windows because you can build the CRT to be thread safe. Of course they may have other issues on a Windows box. 😄
The web platform moves slowly, and I understand that can be frustrating for developers who want to innovate, but over a decade of consultancy experience has taught me time and time again that the alternative is much more restrictive in the long term. What’s brand new today starts to show its age much more quickly.
I figure a web developer type would understand this better than I. Doing work on native desktop or mobile computers could present the same issues but typically doesn’t. Our frameworks are provided by the platform vendor. Now, using them without an abstraction absolutely locks you into the platform and major changes are typically few and far between, but they absolutely do happen.😃
Stripe is laying off 300 people, but says it still plans to hire in 2025
Sigh. This is one of those companies I’d have applied to as an iOS developer if I were in the market for a job. Working on an SDK or component level would be a great deal of fun. To see them have layoffs is a real bummer and points to how fragile the tech sector remains.
Haas have restructured their race operations team with a series of changes that include appointing Laura Muller as the first female race engineer in Formula 1.
I’m still a bit miffed at Haas for firing Gunther Steiner but this move sounds like a good one.
So how hard could it be. As input we have something like in UTC, and we’d like to turn this into 1737094027, the notional (but not actual) number of seconds that have passed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
Don’t get me started on dates. We had to deal with all these issues when I was at Pelco. Just never, ever, convert the date from UTC in your system until you need to display it. It’s easy to convert it to local time then use it somewhere else like that.
Luckily we had a really great developer who understood these issues and built us a really great date class for handling all those sticky issues for us.
“It’s the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever been involved in” : the story of Mad Season, the grunge supergroup that Mike McCready hoped would save Layne Staley
For some reason the story of Layne Staley’s death really bothers me. His friends knew he was an addict and it caused a lot of problems in the band. But try as they might they could never get him to get help. He spent his final days locked away in his apartment, frightfully skinny, alone. Mike Starr, Alice In Chains bassist, visited Staley and begged him to go to the hospital. Staley wouldn’t hear it so Starr left. It’s believed it was the last time anyone saw Staley alive. He was discovered approximately two weeks later, partially decomposed, full syringe next to him. Sad, sad, ending to a talented soul.
Since the beginning, Railway’s compute has been built on top of Google Cloud Platform. The platform supported Railway’s initial journey, but it has caused a multitude of problems that have posed an existential risk to our business. More importantly, building on a hyperscaler prevents us from delivering the best possible platform to our customers.
Folks that run “bare metal” servers feel like race car mechanics to me and I love reading stories like this. There was a time when I wanted to be a Render Wrangler at Pixar. All that raw horsepower committed to making the greatest animated film on earth was attractive to me.
At the start of last summer, we announced that we would start working on ActivityPub support for Ghost to bring long-form publishing to the largest decentralised networking protocol on the web.
It’s been really nice to see more blogging platforms embrace ActivityPub and the Fediverse.
I’m a very happy user of Micro.blog and their integration with ActivityPub and the Fediverse is second to none. They also support cross posting to Tumblr and Bluesky, and of course Mastodon. You can even follow Micro.blog users from Mastodon. It’s really well done.
Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, he shared in a TikTok video posted on Wednesday.
This is really interesting but I wonder why he’s thinking about using At Proto instead of ActivityPub and the Fediverse? Pixelfed and Loops have been picking up steam and it’s extremely nice to be able to follow someone on Pixelfed right from my Mastodon client. You can do the same with Loops. It’s just an amazing way to integrate all social media.
Politics
Jason DeRose and Sarah Ventre • NPR
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Bishop Mariann Budde said in her 15-minute sermon. “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” said Budde, as she appeared to look towards the president.
Bishop Budde has more guts than all those fat cat billionaires sitting behind his orangeness during his swearing in.
She is a real Christian. God is a god of love. Jesus’ message was all about love and compassion. Can’t these MAGA supporters see that? A lot of American Christians need to wake up. You’ve missed the message. Trump and his administration are all about cruelty. If that’s what you’re after, fine. Just don’t say you’re a Christian who follows the teachings of Jesus.
There was a prayer service at the National Cathedral on Tuesday, and Trump and Melania attended (this time not dressed as the Babadook), along with JD and Usha Vance and members of the Trump crime family and all kinds of others. And one of America’s greatest heroes, Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopalian bishop for Washington DC, decided to speak truth to power, softly and carrying a big stick, and that stick was J-E-S-U-S.
Elon Musk doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt
The man is a Nazi. It’s just that plain. When he put his hand over his chest and flung it out he could’ve left his palm facing inward, but he didn’t. He chose to turn it down.
He’s a Nazi. He’s a racist. He is trying to remake America into a white nation while he rapes, pillages, and plunders our resources for his own selfish goals. I have no idea what those are but he’s definitely up to something.
The evidence is now undeniable. In front of thousands at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally, Elon Musk - the world’s richest man and owner of X - performed not one but two Nazi salutes.
David Gutman • The Seattle Times
Judge in Seattle blocks Trump order on birthright citizenship nationwide
Birthright citizenship is right there in black and white in the Constitution. Trump is a nasty human being who deserves to be smacked around as often as possible. Of course that wouldn’t snap him out of it. He’s a narcissist and a sociopath. He only cares about himself.
Ms. Gracie cuddling with her toy hoard. 🥹
She’s falling asleep like that.
Another cold morning here in the Charlottesville area. 🥶
On the bright side we’re going to hit a high of 37! That’s 15 degrees warmer than yesterday’s high!
The Fourteenth Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There it is, plain as day. It’s way more clear than the Second Amendment the wing nuts cling to.
If you’re born here, you are a citizen.
I mean, can Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Zuck, and whoever else gave money to Marmalade Messiah give me $1MM each, or heck, $1MM total between all of them? I’d be ok with that. I promise I would use it wisely and wouldn’t use it for corrupt reasons.
TikTok TikTok
I feel bad for the folks who made a living on TikTok. I’m hoping they’ll find another job to take the place of being an influencer or whatever they did on TickTok to make a living.
As for the folks who are bummed because they liked watching it. You’ll get over it. I wasn’t happy when Space Karen took over Twitter and shut down the API so I stopped using it, exported my tweets, and deleted my account. I don’t miss it because Mastodon is even better and isn’t controlled by a single company.
I suspect it will be back soon. Hang in there.
Chiefs over Texans Lions over Commanders Bills over Ravens Eagles over Rams
The Bills/Ravens game is gonna be a great game.
Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️
A polar vortex is heading our way this weekend. It’s been chilly this morning but it’s not bad. We’ve had lower temperatures over the last few week.
The forecast calls for snow tomorrow and single digit temperatures — Fahrenheit — next week. Guess we’ll see how accurate they are in a few days.🥶
We still have the tiniest bit of snow on the ground and expect a few inches tomorrow.❄️
On to the links!
Lynch was one of those creative voices who found his own octave, doing for film what people like David Bowie or Prince did for music, shattering expectations of what a piece of art could be.
Dune, Twin Peaks, and Blue Velvet are the productions I remember the most. I know Dune is not universally liked but I’ve always liked it and Twin Peaks was spooky and creepy. I barely remember seeing Blue Velvet but now I need to watch it again.
RIP 🪦
The Milwaukee Brewers legend, Baseball Hall of Famer, iconic announcer, and beloved actor Bob Uecker passes away at 90.
I remember Bob Uecker being funny, especially in the movie Major League and his Miller Light commercials with his famous “Must be in the front row.”
RIP 🪦
Honestly the story I want someone to break wide open is the drug epidemic among the tech elite
I’ve tried to get my doctor(s) to prescribe me testosterone or HGH, they wouldn’t do it. But, if you’re rich you can get folks to help you find someone willing to get things for you.
Decentralized social network organization Mastodon said Monday that it is planning to create a new non-profit organization in Europe and hand over ownership of entities responsible for key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components. This means one person won’t have control over the entire project.
This is really great news for Mastodon and the Fediverse. With all the hubbub surrounding governance of WordPress it’s nice to see this happening with Masstodon. I hope it works as expected.
Pixelfed, a decentralized and ad-free Instagram alternative, now has apps on iOS and Android, as reported by TechCrunch. The iOS app launched today, while the Android app launched on January 10th.
Folks walking away from Facebook and Instagram should absolutely consider using Pixelfed. It’s very similar to Instagram but it’s based on Fediverse protocols so it’s easy to follow folks from Mastodon if you’d like. No Pixelfed account required.
Jen Rubin exits Washington Post, joins Norm Eisen to launch new outlet countering ‘authoritarian threat’
This is a huge move. I’m a Democrat but I’ve always read and respected Jennifer Rubin. She’s been a constant critic of Donald Trump and his ilk and I’m looking forward to reading The Contrarian everyday.
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project.
The infighting and lawsuit being fought by WordPress and Matt Mullenweg could destroy the entire organization. I hope they’re able to keep things together and WordPress continues to be used worldwide.
I’ve had an idea for a blogging system based on WordPress for years. I blame my friend, Bill Lazar, for planting the idea in my brain. 😃
There are so many things around blogging I’d love to build. Time to do it is the thing I’m missing.
TikTok, creators face tough day at SCOTUS, with ban set to go into effect on Jan. 19
It sounds like there may be some last minute heroics by politicians or incoming President Orange Man to push this off for the next 90-days.
Ultimately finding a way to keep CCP propaganda out of American feeds would probably be the better solution, but I think that would take heavy government involvement and regulation. Perhaps an independent TikTok organization who share TikTok client code and service code but run them independently?
Newsom’s order aims to help Angelenos, but is rebuilding in the same areas a good idea?
So many folks lives have been turned upside down. Talking about rebuilding seems premature but if you’re living on the street or in your car you’re ready to get your new house built.
If you want to know when I pretty much drew a line though my friendship with Neil Gaiman, it was when Neil acknowledged that he made moves on his early-20s nanny on her first day of employment.
It’s so difficult to believe Neil Gaiman is such a creep.
Tractor maker John Deere faces a federal lawsuit that accuses the company of illegally forcing farmers to use only authorized dealers for critical repairs, boosting its multibillion-dollar profits.
When I was employed at Agrian we’d talk about this from time to time. Forcing farmers into contracts that don’t give them the power to repair their own equipment is so costly. Most farmers I know are skilled at fixing their equipment. My grandfather made his living for well over 50-years repairing Cat equipment in fields all over California. Sure, he was an independent mechanic and welder, but he sure could turn a wrench and fix anything, and his services didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
Saquon Barkley looked to be off to the races, headed for a last-minute touchdown that would have had no impact on the outcome of the Philadelphia Eagles' 22-10 win over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday but would’ve cashed a lot of tickets for the betting public.
How many players, coaches, and team employees are gambling on teams? How long before they start making deals with the players to throw games for big money?
I’m glad Barkley slid. Your bet means nothing to the game.
Politics
Steve Beschloss • America, America
But as much as the Democrats stripped away Hegseth’s arrogant, macho veneer to illustrate his lack of traditional qualifications—and that particularly included questioning his documented record of drunkenness, sexual abuse and hostility toward women and female combat soldiers—it was painfully clear that the unqualified Hegseth’s main purpose was to smile and nod as the Republicans waxed rhapsodic about him and to push back with aggression or sneer silently when Democrats dared to doubt Donald Trump’s insulting pick to run our military.
Hegseth is an unqualified buffoon, adulterer, and drunk. A perfect choice for the Marmalade Messiah.
