Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Hummingbirds are returning!
It's easy and cheap to make hummingbird nectar:
1: Boil water
2. Dissolve sugar (1:4 sugar:water)
3. Let cool
Change every couple of days. Extra can be stored in the fridge for a few days.
I’ve heard here and there about a bird disease going around and that people should take down their feeders, but I can’t find any good up-to-date resources about what parts of the country (US) are affected.
Anyone know if there is a good website that will tell me whether or not I should take down my feeders, and when I should put them back up?
Interesting, Metaculus was overly pessimistic about the timeline for the COVID-19 vaccine, but not absurdly so considering that predictions closed on May 2020:
How many people 11 months ago would have put even 25% probability of widespread vaccination by March 2021?
Also a good way to introduce them to being skeptical of the motives of supernatural beings.
How to explain the Easter bunny to your children if you don’t want them eating so much candy:
“Yes, we know he comes every year to leave us candy. What we don’t know is what he takes in return…”
I bought a 3-pack of Chapstick a few months ago and I just finished using up the last one without losing or putting any of them through the dryer.
I’m mildly afraid to tell anyone, since those who know me will assume that this is an obvious lie meant as a distress beacon.
Not a bird, but when I was chasing down the Pileated Woodpecker, I came across this very sleepy squirrel and had to take a photo.
This was right around noon, so I’m guessing he had a big lunch…
I also found this male and female Eastern Bluebird pair hanging around by a nest near the river.
I have no idea if it’s accurate, but in my head they are a breeding pair guarding or establishing a nesting location (though maybe they tried it out in college and it didn’t work out, so now they’re “just friends”).
I also got my first picture of a Pileated Woodpecker just the other day — then I saw two more directly in my back yard this morning!
They are surprisingly big…
The goldfinches in my area seem to be right behind them. Here’s a picture of a goldfinch 11 days ago, and another goldfinch yesterday: he’s molting!
Looks like the birds got the message that it’s spring! It seems these red-winged blackbirds are back and in full breeding plumage.
On the plus side, if he keeps it up, maybe I’ll eventually get those ripped jaw muscles the ladies go wild for.
Is it possible to shatter a night guard into tiny pieces using only your jaw strength? Apparently my sleeping mind thinks it is, and finds that a desirable outcome for some reason, because I wake up every morning feeling like I’ve been single-handedly trying to eat a locomotive…
Whenever I drain the bath lately, my son has been saying, “I wish I could go down the drain.” I was confused as to why he would want this, but then I realized, he’s mimicking Daniel Tiger — apparently he saw this, but missed that Daniel was afraid of going down the drain.😅
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Hey guys, Thunderbird is STILL hiring developers. You can help modernize an application used by ~20,000,000 people and growing!
The open source community can make something better than Outlook, but only if folks come and build it.
Lessons learned from the “eating Tide Pods” meme: people love it when you blur the lines between soap and food.
We legitimately could not tell whether this is something edible. The front side of the label says “Yummmers”, but the container doesn’t have a tamper-evident seal, and there are no nutrition facts anywhere…
Paul Ganssle
boosted
RT @juanluisback@twitter.com
Hello everyone! 👋 I'm Juanlu, I've been in love with the Python community for years, and next Monday I will start working at @readthedocs@twitter.com as Developer Advocate ❤️
Follow me if you want to read about Documentation, Science, and everything in between!
Paul Ganssle
boosted
🇳🇱
@ianmacd We put a lot of effort into being respectful well behaved members of the wider community. So I'm glad that can be seen.
We actually had a rather unique history with our stance as free speech. Early on when GAB came ont he scene is when instances started to push other instances to defederate with anyone they didnt like. As such you get a few instances with massive block lists of pretty much any instance that federates with any instance they block, and then any instance that federates with them, ad nauseum. At the time we were stuck to make a decision, get cut off from short sighted but well intentioned instances, or start censoring our users view of the fediverse. So it entered a debate here in our very early days as an instance.
It turned out that the LGBT community were actually the ones that convinced me of a free speech stance, which is ironic as many of the LGBT instances are the ones that ultimately took a block-first mentality. What had happened is LGBT servers were very heavily blocking instances that exhibited anything remotely resembling intolerance. This left very few LGBT friendly instances that were free speech and as a result we had a sort of exodus of LGBT scholars joining QOTO (and boosting our early numbers).
It turns out the LGBT community had a strong voice when we opened the discussion up to the community. Many of them explained to use that they came here because they monitored hate-speech accounts on GAB and other places to identify doxing within their community and other threats and warn the members of their community. So they felt their safety was at risk on other servers, they also didnt feel safe on other free speech instances since hate was common on those servers and didnt want to be on a hate speech instance. So they urged us to not block other instances, and ultimately the community agreed and we remain free-speech.
It is also why we implemented features like subscriptions, specifically for the LGBT communities safety and others in a similar position as them. This way they can get alerts of the public posts from threatening accounts they monitor without actually needing to follow the account and alerting the account that they are following them.
Its just really sad how some in the LGBT community have ultimately used that against us, that we went out of our way to take the heat for the LGBT community at the time only to see a small number of people use our decision as a weapon against us. Thankfully its a small minority of servers today, but still it was sad to see.
For what its worth QOTO is one of the most heavily connected servers in the fediverse. Last I checked we were in the top 10 of english speaking servers.
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
