Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Latest post is a big one: "Why you shouldn't invoke setup​.py directly"

A lot of people don't know about this because we haven't been great about getting the word out. This blog post is in part an attempt to remedy this.

Please help spread the word!

https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2021/10/setup-py-deprecated.html

From the archives of my blog but still very relevant: "pytz: The Fastest Footgun in the West", about why you probably shouldn't be using pytz:

https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2018/03/pytz-fastest-footgun.html

If you have had trouble getting talks accepted at conferences, this is a good "behind the scenes" look at how talks are selected at PyCon US from @brass75: https://brassnet.biz/blog/picking-talks-for-pycon-us.html

I will say that serving on a program committee *one time* was actually really valuable for understanding what makes a good proposal.

> Bola de Dragón Z (also known as Dragon Ball Z) is the European Spanish dub of ドラゴンボールZ. This dub was based on three dubs: the Galician dub (also from Spain, although it was a translation derived from the French dub); the English translated scripts by Toei; and the French dub.

Apparently the first 103 episodes of Dragon Ball Z in the European Spanish dub were a translation of the Galician dub, which was a translation of the French translation of the original Japanese.

https://dubdb.fandom.com/wiki/Bola_de_Drag%C3%B3n_Z

Link to "my podcast" goes to a YouTube channel instead of an RSS feed.

Major Tom: "Tell my wife I love her very much."
Ground Control: "She knows."
Major Tom: "Wait, is that what she said? My last words to her are that I love her very much and her last words are 'I know'? Wow, Diane, just... wow. You know what? I'm changing my mind. Tell my wife I wish I had married her sister."

Snake bites can be extra dangerous when they happen far from medical care. But what if we could make that a thing of the past?

Today I am launching an ambitious campaign to provide emergency medicine education for all snakes so that if you are bitten by a snake you know emergency care is only seconds away.

About 6 or 7 years ago a transformer exploded near where I lived in Queens and it was a seriously crazy experience. I had no idea what was going on but the sky was lit up like an aurora. This just happened again kinda near me in I guess Medford or something (though I didn't see it) and other folks are saying it is one of the craziest things they have ever seen.

Now I'm starting to wonder exactly how expensive it would be to replicate this deliberately, and whether this could replace fireworks displays...

Ok so we have learned now that Vitamix does not make good blenders. I am not sure why so many people seem to like them.

We should make days roll over around 19:00 instead of midnight. It would complicate a lot of things about record keeping for the majority of the year, but at least we would be able to have a New Year's Party at a reasonable hour.

Just got my new Lenovo P14s and the Fn and Ctrl keys are switched like they are on the Framework! Wtf? When did everyone decide to do this the wrong way?

My son asked Santa for "math" for Christmas (among other things) so we gave him some worksheets as part of a series of puzzles. Apparently they haven't covered adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers yet so I told him how to add them up in columns.

A bit later he runs over and tells me, "Papa I was doing your strat and I hit my first 8 + 2, what do I do?"

#MathStrat