Annually, the last week of the year, singer songwriter Dar Williams plays at a concert here in New York City. I really loved the one I attended in , when I wrote, I tried going to ...

   Ever since I came across the sort of pop psychology metaphor quot;boundaries quot; several years ago, I x ;ve felt a little out of sync with it. And when I took some time to ask myself why, I ...

   I x ;m running a fundraiser for the Election Protection Hotline, OUR VOTE. No matter your position on the US election, I x ;m guessing you want the votes counted fairly. So I x ;m trying to raise USD , for ...

   A fictional example:You x ;re in a volunteer group that does a public service chore, like sprucing up a local park or maintaining a health information website. It x ;s been around for many years. Most people treat each ...

   On a weekend morning many years ago, the constant low level radiation of mailing list fracas led me to idly fantasize of sending a beseeching plaintive yet rousing post to one of them:Do you think there is no ...

   My friend Ned Batchelder posted, quot;A list of commits is not a changelog quot; and spurred this post.Summary: We x ;d all benefit from restoring the distinction between a detailed changelog and brief release notes, but that x ;s hard ...

   This week, US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced that her choice to join her on the ballot as running mate is Tim Walz, who x ;s currently governor of Minnesota.A number of people on Bluesky, in the ...

   My friend Mel Chua died this week.I x ;m middle aged now. I started this weblog as a young adult, and now it x ;s been more than twenty years, and today I x ;m really feeling that change.Nearly eleven years ago, ...

   The cybersecurity expert SwiftOnSecurity, a decade ago, wrote a parable called quot;A Story About Jessica quot; and posted it to their now deleted Tumblr blog. I found it moving and insightful. The consultancy Superbloom pointed to it ...

   In mid June I caught COVID for, I x ;m pretty sure, the first time. The current dominant variants are transmissible enough that they got past my defenses. I believe I caught the virus either while wearing an ...

   We live in interesting times.A friend of mine was taking an online class yesterday, and big national news President Biden deciding not to pursue re election interrupted that class. The news distracted everyone and shattered concentration.Sometimes ...

   Today I’m giving the closing keynote address at PyCon US , sharing Untold stories from six years working on Python packaging. I aim to post a fuller transcript with slides within the next several weeks. But, ...

   If you work on open source software, especially command line tools, I want you to know about newly available research reports and design guidance, and a user research HOWTO, that you can pick up and reuse.The ...

   I love The Great Gatsby if you absolutely loathe it, turn back now and recently got to watch a preview performance of a Broadway theatrical adaptation opens April th . I have already inflicted several thoughts ...

   A few times in the past week, I x ;ve spoken with artists who are working on uncomfortable art the kind of art that intentionally challenges the audience with displeasure. In one of them, it x ;s like ...

   Please help join a celebration for the th anniversary of the software project Beautiful Soup on May th, For twenty years, this screen scraping library has made it easier to get data out of HTML.You ...

   This is one of the quot;people are wrong on the internet quot; posts I write to clear it out of my head. And then refer back to later in future arguments, in imagined triumph, as though ...

   I x ;m partway through a wilderness medicine textbook from NOLS formerly National Outdoor Leadership School . Something from the section on burns keeps ringing in my head because it x ;s interesting in its literal truth but also figuratively ...

   How should we think about trust when it comes to adding new maintainers to a project Another way of saying that is: if I x ;m an existing project maintainer, considering whether to entrust you with co maintainership, ...

   You are a selected audience. That is to say, you have selected, yourself, to read this. You have a variety of reasons to do so, and I imagine that, for some of you, you do ...

   I started on a more systematic retrospective post, and found that a pretty significant amount of my centered on stuff I don x ;t want to talk about on my blog. Feel free to ask ...

   I have learned or re learned a smattering of lessons in the last few months, concerning athletic activities and inhabiting my body in general.Sometimes, when I do crunches or sit ups or similar abdominal exercises, my neck ...

   Colleagues ask me for advice on diversifying their hiring pipelines, recruiting and retaining volunteer contributors, and addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion DEI in marketing to and taking care of their users. Here are a few ...

   Someone in a group chat mentioned a particular annoyance in dealing with doctors, nurses, and similar medical experts. Sometimes you take pains to ask them a specific, deliberately worded question, and they don x ;t really seem to ...

   My country x ;s Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA offers a bunch of free independent study online classes. I started poking around and there x ;s some neat stuff in there.You can read all the material for free online, ...