George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

We got a fax. At work. We didn't know we had a fax machine. Everyone just stared at it. I poked it with a stick.

read this truly fascinating story about a plane that DIDN'T crash!

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62dc98e7

Let's have a thread about #DownSyndrome #parenting and the arts, and more specifically ballet.

Joan Jett, Debbie Harry, David Johansen, and Joey Ramone. Photo by Roberta Bayley.

The Tick season 1 episode 12

My cousin died about a week ago. Graham was 60. We weren't close, but we were on friendly terms. He was a high school janitor for almost 35 years, retiring earlier this year.

I found out too late to get to Missouri for the funeral. My other relatives filled me in on what happened.

The funeral was at one of the largest churches in his city of 6,000 people. The local school district dismissed classes early so students and staff could attend.

They filled the church.

There was story after story of how Graham had made their day with a smile and a kind word, or helped them out with a difficult problem, or was just the guy they could always rely on.

Graham was actually a pretty reclusive person. Yet everyone in the city seemed to know him.

He made an impact on a lot of lives, both tangibly and intangibly.

I've reflected on all this and realized that, even with my specialized career in cybersecurity covering more than 30 years, I never made that kind of impact and never will.

People in professional contexts often seem to be posturing and positioning themselves for advancement, self-promoting and patting their friends on the back. (LinkedIn, I'm looking at you.) Maybe they spend their time exchanging private messages in public to make themselves seem part of an exclusive club. (Infosec Twitter/X, I'm looking at you.) But they're not making the kind of impact Graham made. And they never will.

Graham wouldn't have known. He didn't have a computer. The last letter I got from him was written on a typewriter. He had a difficult life in a lot of ways but he never took it out on others. I just don't possess that kind of grace, TBH.

I don't want to preach here. So I'll just keep in mind that my advanced degrees and mostly-successful career had their value - but a life spent supporting others has value as well. I'm no better than anybody else, and neither are you.

Boost if you think im cute 🥺

This is Spot. He’s getting his passpawt photo taken but won’t stop making silly faces!
Which one do you like?

I used to have a sail boat. One of the most important #safety rules in sailing is "don't sail on a schedule".

What this means is that if you have a destination & a deadline, you will override safety signals (like weather) & travel in unsafe conditions due to deadline pressure. This is how serious accidents happen while sailing.

Planning for sailing puts an emphasis on having a checklist that includes having situational awareness of issues like boat condition, charts, & weather by explicitly checking the marine weather forecasts.

Also you have to be prepared to bail on your destination & schedule if the safety signals change. You have to know where your closest port is to seek shelter if a storm arises.

It occurred to me that the #airbornePrecautions equivalent is "don't be task focused on a deadline".

The need to get a task done by a deadline causes you to lose situational awareness, & accept risk that you would not otherwise accept if you thought your safety plan through ahead of time.

This is exacerbated by the total lack of a danger signal in society right now. No mitigations visible. Out of sight, out of mind.

This bit me yesterday getting a vaccination from an unmasked pharmacist in a small room. I took a risk I should not have, because I lost situational awareness under the drive to get the task done. I never would have accepted that risk in my pre-thought out safety plan. But it just popped up in the middle of the task, & I let it slide because I wasn't situationally aware.

Now, ofc I was wearing #P100 #elastomeric so the risk here is relative. My event was ocular exposure during high water mark for community transmission, not being maskless. But it is not a risk I would have taken in a pre-thought through safety plan.

And that's the big deal now. Every little ordinary task needs a safety plan.

Its frustrating. Its exhausting.

When it goes wrong, when the safety signals change, when you get off plan, you have to be prepared to "bail". Halt a task, walk out, cancel, reschedule. Find a safe port in the new storm.

I should have refused entry with a maskless pharmacist. Cancelled, requested accommodation & rescheduled.

This is a kind of risk "velocitization" that happens. I am getting velocitized into one-way masking even during high community transmission periods. Everyone else but me unmasked is the new normal.

This is how accidents happen - a bunch of little issues leading to an unwanted, unplanned outcome.

Uptime girl
She's been living in her uptime world
I bet she's never had a downtime guy
I bet her momma never told her why
I'm gonna try for a

UPS
Redundant connectivity
Round robin DNS
High availability proxy
Multiple servers in different locations

Wah Owow Owowow.

Next time you see an ambulance rush by, know that in Colorado, Paramedics (the highly trained life savers who give medication, read ECGs, and perform procedures in the ambulance) get paid $20-30/hr to work horrible hours. For comparison, McDonalds is offering $19.50/hr right now, and the new Buc Ee’s off I-25 is going to pay cashiers around $19/hr.

Pitch: the clone of ellen ripley is called in again by the corporation because a deep space colony has gone dark. When Ripley and the space marines arrive at the colony there are no xenomorph aliens there. The colony decided to shut down communications with Earth because everything coming out of there sounded bad. Ellen and the marines decide to settle down there and live in peace. The ship’s cat hunt space butterflies during the credits.

Anyone who has ever tried to untangle the cables in their junk drawer, and wondered how could such a complex snarl even form, ought to have no problem understanding how complex molecules, and life, arose from a junk tidepool and sunlight.

When the first “shambling cablemonster” report came in, it was presumed to be a prank, or a viral marketing stunt.

Eventually we worked out that putting microchips in USB and iPhone cables had accelerated the development of sentience in the cablebeasts.

It was too late to put the genie back in the bottle, current best advice remains to keep your junk drawers tidy and, should you be confronted by a cablebeast, to remain calm and use a broom or a chair to gently guide it outside, where it will harmlessly graze on the electromagnetic field of power lines. They are to some extent our children, and deserve peace.

#MicroFiction #Tootfic

Shane MacGowan, Pogues songwriter and Irish music legend, dies aged 65 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/30/shane-macgowan-pogues-singer-dies #music #poetry #Ireland

7 signs you're dealing with a micromanager

#Caturday

@miiko @tml This one always comes to mind when I encouter mysterious tech problems. No recollection of the source or who the person in the video is, but they’re awesome to create such a funny clip. 😄

Kensington Market, Toronto