George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

At the #library

Me: Okay. I’m going to go browse some books. You two stay here and read quietly.

9yo: What if we get abducted?

Me: Be annoying until they let you go.

Other library patron: *snort*

#parenthood

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough.

Jim quietly smiled in response while looking away from the young software engineer, “You know what I did before this? Before coding?”
“No.”
“I was a chemical plant operator. You can’t just restart one of those. The fire, the spark, the pressurization, the catalyzation, it has to keep running. Has to be tended at all times. You walk the jungles of process lines at 4AM and feel their swirling and vibration and heat. They are a physical thing. An obligation. They are more a child than the thing back there will ever be, John. You drop them and they break forever. You talk about your fear of machines. But I know someone killed by a machine.”
John started to talk, but was gently preempted in a rumbly voice.
“A human decided that. Not the braided stainlessless steel hose rotting away. A human decided it could last longer, to save money. That machine was just a messenger for the choice of a man.”

Being afraid doesn’t say anything bad about you, it’s your body’s signal to you that something in your environment is possibly dangerous. It’s just as right and worthy as any other feeling of being felt, and doesn’t mean you can’t handle the thing you’re afraid of - just that there’s possibly danger.

this is the only xkcd that matters and i've kept it bookmarked for years since i first found it

In desert climates of the US a suburban lawn, with irrigation and soil aeration "maintenance" is basically a fire ant paradise. Fire ants love direct sun. They hate bushes that shade the ground, diverse clumps of plants, and fire ants can't live in the desert. They are tropical and the sprinklers for lawns complete the picture. Fire ant paradise!

But then people get so angry when they show up to live in something clearly made for them.

@futurebird
That's what the javelina was saying! 😂

https://defector.com/i-ate-all-your-precious-golf-worms-and-id-do-it-again

#lgbtq

Holy crap, these kick major ass.

I strongly suspect M.C. Escher's walk to and from school was uphill both ways.
#MCEscher

Professor Melissa Murray for President and running mate Elie Mystal for V.P.

The new light switch I got for @thevowel is finally installed.

i'm trying to figure out what high-level abstraction git presents. I think it's something like this?

(yes, all of this is "wrong", but I feel like git's UI does a lot of work to try to provide this abstraction in an inconsistent and leaky way)

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 🥺