I know, from personal experience, that it takes a significant amount of effort to research, write, revise, and submit a decently plausible funding proposal to the US government's National Science Foundation. A successful NSF proposal ...

   Early voting in New York City's 2025 general election started today. Yesterday I posted about the six ballot proposals; today I share some recommendations and links about the seven competitive judicial races (that is, races ...

   Early voting in New York City's 2025 general election starts this Saturday, Oct. 25th. I'm writing two blog posts sharing my thinking and recommendations, one about the six ballot proposals (this one), one about the ...

   Autumn consistently gets me into this mood, where I want to jot down a constellation of memories and feelings that gesture toward a theme without ever quite defining it.It's Deepavali, as I learned to say ...

   This past weekend in New York City, the weather's oscillated in and out of crispness, sun and breeze cordially nudging each other out of the way. Talking with a newer volunteer at the outreach table ...

   Recently, at the outreach table I run, I asked a guy what he's concerned about. He talked about an issue that's breaking his heart. I asked what actions he's taking on that issue, and he ...

   Up till now, I've mostly abstained from using generative AI. I'm now reassessing whether I should keep doing that. This post preserves a Fediverse thread I wrote yesterday, with better formatting, section headers, some additional ...

   The weekend after the Presidential election in November 2024, I was seized by the need to meet some neighbors, face-to-face, to be in solidarity with. On a crisp fall morning, I made a sign that ...

   Last-minute recommendations for New York City's Democratic primary election. (Early voting concluded Sunday; tomorrow, Tuesday the 24th, is the final day to vote.)I'm going to start with lesser-publicized races and move up the ballot.Western Queens ...

   Twenty-one years ago, Leonard Richardson created the now-popular open source tool Beautiful Soup. He's maintained it ever since. In 2024, the Python Software Foundation recognized his contributions with two service awards, naming him a PSF ...

   I used to co-run a group blog where we made fun of spam, and someday I do want to resurrect Spam As Folk Art as a static archive . But in the meantime, I need to ...

   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 2017, when I wrote, I tried going to ...

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

   I'm running a fundraiser for the Election Protection Hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE. No matter your position on the 2024 US election, I'm guessing you want the votes counted fairly. So I'm trying to raise USD 25,000 for ...

   A fictional example:You're in a volunteer group that does a public service chore, like sprucing up a local park or maintaining a health information website. It'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, "A list of commits is not a changelog " and spurred this post.Summary: We'd all benefit from restoring the distinction between a detailed changelog and brief release notes, but that'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's currently governor of Minnesota.A number of people on Bluesky, in the ...

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

   The cybersecurity expert SwiftOnSecurity, a decade ago, wrote a parable called "A Story About Jessica" 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-19 for, I'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 2024, 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 25th). I have already inflicted several thoughts ...