A lovely vegan sushi restaurant Z found. One does not simply fly from Denver to Taipei… because there are no direct flights. So this year we decided to fly from Denver to Tokyo first, and then, after a few days, move on to Taipei. My wife is the only one among the three of us who has ever been to Japan. (1) The life-sized blue whale statue outside the science museum; (2) the model train at the…
Dare to suck is, for all intents and purposes, my friend Pete’s motto. I’ve been playing Irish music with Pete since about 2010, and for as long as I’ve known him, he has encouraged people in his seisiúns to dare to suck. (I recently learned the phrase did not originate with Pete, I believe it came from someone else he used to play with before my time.) He says it to newcomers to encourage them to…
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Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
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Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. This fellow, Jerry, has been making this map of an imaginary place for decades . The map is incredible. His process is incredible. What a delightful way to spend one’s time. The entire 45 minute People Make Games video is worth your time. (It’s also available on Nebula , if you have a Nebula subscription.) Play Video: He Won’t Stop Building a Map…
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K. Le Guin When I began writing this, I intended to make the case that there is no responsible use of “ AI ”. I was motivated by three separate encounters in a single morning of people arguing that the path forward is to adopt “ AI ” and find a way to do so responsibly. 1 2 3 In the course of…
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Time again to call your representatives. In case you haven’t heard, back in February the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act (H.R.7661) was introduced in the House of Representatives. It is a book ban. It prevents federal money given to schools to be used for programs, activites, or books that include sexually oriented material ; which includes, by the way, lewd or lascivious dancing . I guess…
Ben nudged me to publish this list, so here it is. Also because Drew DeVault wrote about Zine (including the facts that both Hugo and Zola seem open to the use of large language models in their code base). Copy-left license Anti-AI contribution policy Binary executable for easy installation Good documentation Good error messages Extensible via a scripting language Fast Built-in image manipulation…
To date, I have written very little about “Artificial Intelligence” ( AI ). I am disheartened and exhausted by this bubble and its associated hype — perhaps you are, too — and have felt little motivation to whinge about it here. What would be the point? There are already ample sources of smart criticism of the hype. 1 In my own life, I simply avoid using these tools and do my best not to…
Until recently, I have been filing my photos under the date the photos were taken. I changed this for two reasons. First, because there is a difference semantically between the date I took a photo, and the date I published it on my site. This is perhaps not a huge deal, but it leads me to the second reason for distinguishing between the published date and the photographed date: the entries in my…
This morning I learned about this informal protocol for vouching for sites that are made by people, not “Artifical Intelligence” ( AI ): human.json (Via Terence Eden ). It is easy enough to add one to a static site, so I did. I’ve vouched for a few friends and installed the browser extension (I did look through the code in the extension, and nothing jumped out at me as being malicious, but I am…
This post is part of the March IndieWeb Carnival for 2026, “Museum memories,” hosted by James . I think of myself as a Museum Person. I come from a family of Museum People. I married a Museum Person. I take my kid to museums. We’ve been going to museums for longer than I can remember. The author (left) and his brother, aged about 4 and 3, at the National Museum of Natural History When I was…
(5-year-old spots a book at the library with a penguin on the cover.) 5-year-old: What’s that book? (I take the book down from the shelf and hand it to him.) Me: Just so you know, this book isn’t about penguins, it’s about climate change. (Pause.) 5-year-old: I know… I need to know about climate change because I’m a scientist. Investing Climate Change: Scientists' Search for Answers in a Warming…
First off, I know I am being curmudgeonly here. You’ve been warned. It was announced yesterday that Eleventy is now Build Awesome , a new product being offered by Font Awesome . The change has been teased for a while, beginning with changing the color of the Eleventy mascot’s balloon from red to green, and then the addition of a weird slider over the Eleventy wordmark on the home page. For the…
Subaru's 'Everyone You Love' ad for the 2026 Outback I was really struck by this ad from Subaru when I saw it because they are actually calling attention to how dangerous our roads are. Of course, their answer to the problem of dangerous roads is not to make roads safer. That would be ridiculous. No, to protect the people you love, buy a Subaru, obviously. By the way, did you know there are a lot…
This is a new one on me: according to the Colorado Department of Transportation ( CDOT ) good weather this winter has caused an increase in traffic deaths . Usually I feel like people blame bad weather, because poor visibility and slick roads make driving more dangerous. This whole article has strong we’re all trying to find the guy who did this vibes. It certainly stands to reason that more…
I started using Obsidian three or four years ago. Originally I used it to keep a journal, 1 but I quickly got sucked into the Personal Knowledge Management ( PKM ) vortex online. I watched YouTube videos and read books about note-taking. I was awed by the promise of zettelkasten and “second brains”. I am nothing if not a sucker for “lifehacks”. 2 It hasn’t worked out The promise of pretty much all…
I came across this book review via Cory Doctorow’s blog . It’s a review of, I think, two different books relating to finance. I find I am not that interested in reading either of these books, but the first six or so paragraphs of the review have a pretty cogent explanation of why finance is utterly useless: finance is just gambling. Very little of what happens in the finance sector has to do with…
For some time now I’ve been thinking about how our RSS 1 feeds homogenize the web. Web standards have grown over the past few decades to provide us with more interactivity and more room for expression, but most feed readers strip all of this away. I’ve written before about my ambivalence towards RSS , how reading blog posts from friends in my feed reader denudes their beautifully designed websites…
Have you ever noticed that one unkind act — even a small one — can wreck your day? Someone driving aggressively on the highway, maybe they shout at you or give you the finger. The other day, for example, I was biking home from the pharmacy. The sidewalks in our neighborhood are generally too narrow to accommodate more than one bike, so I leave those for the pedestrians. The collector that runs…
Today I learned that instead of recycling our empty plastic bottles and glass jars, we can clean them out and donate them to our local food bank. The food bank gets donations of bulk items — 20lb bags of flour, rice, large containers of laundry detergent, and so on — which they don’t distribute as-is. Instead, they repackage them in empty plastic bottles and glass jars so that they can distribute…
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Wife : I was thinking that maybe we should start doing a movie night. We can make some pizza, get a movie, and eat while we watch the movie. 5-year-old : You know what movie I’m most excited to see? Me : What movie? 5-year-old : The Fast and the Furious! Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Today I discovered — although I think I used to know this — that Ursula K. Le Guin had a blog . It is delightful. And now you, too, have discovered this. Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Today was my kid’s first day of kindergarten. It’s half days this week to help the kids adjust and give the teachers a chance to decide how to split up the classes, then starting Monday it’s full day. O was totally ready. He wanted to leave early for class, and as soon as the teachers told the kids they could go in, he was off. No goodbye, not even a glance over his shoulder. He waddled off with…
Let’s suppose we have a blog built with Eleventy. And let’s further suppose that we want our URLs for our blog posts to be based on the publication date for the post; something like /blog/<year>/<month>/<day>/ . Seems perfectly reasonable, right? There’s a footgun 1 here. Any time we publish on a day whose date matches the month — 1 January, 2 February, 3 March, etc. — the <day> part of our URL is…
It was last Thursday, folks. Two days ago I utterly failed to put a new bike tire on a bike wheel. I’m 42 years old; I estimate that I’ve been changing bike tires for over 30 years now, and two days ago I failed to get a bike tire onto a bike wheel. I took my wheels, tubes, and tires into my local bike shop to find out if I had somehow managed to buy the wrong size tires (twice), and they got the…
I feel like I’m going crazy. I keep hearing people talk about how they still trust Firefox more than any of the alternative browsers. Most recently, it was in this article in the Register, Firefox is fine. The people running it are not . But Firefox is not fine. Firefox is turning into a tool for surveillance capitalism . Look, I’m not here to tell you to stop using Firefox. I don’t really care…
Roughly a year ago, I decided to stop keeping a list of the books I wanted to read — my to-be-read ( TBR ) list. That decision brought with it a profound sense of relief. I felt lighter, as if I’d set down a burden I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I haven’t missed it. At all. And I never lack for something to read. I suppose if you want to be precise, I do still have a TBR in the sense that I…
5-year-old : My Honda Fit is not like a normal Honda Fit; it can go from 0 to… 5 miles per hour in… 3… minutes! Me : That’s pretty good. I wish more cars were like that. Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
For much of my life, taking public transit has been A Choice. I think New York City is the only place I’ve lived where taking public transit was typical. Even in cities like Pittsburgh or Boulder ― which have decent public transit ― people seem to default to driving themselves places. Because even when the transit is ‘decent’ it is still often slower than driving. That’s certainly true where I…
Because Ben asked … These questions were originally posed by Ava for folks using Bear Blog . Why did you start blogging in the first place? Seemed like a good idea at the time. I wrote the first post on this blog before I even had a blog, so I guess I made the blog to have somewhere to put that. One thing lead to another and, well, time makes fools of us all. What platform are you using to manage…
4-year-old: You got shot in the head by radar. Me: How did you learn about radar? 4-year-old: I dunno… RADAR! That was like eight radar shots. Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Miriam Suzanne wrote a great post that is largely about how readily and easily people ignore the harms of the current crop of AI tools; how frustrating it is to listen to people bend over backwards trying to come up with some way to actually use these things. It’s poignant (and, at times, funny). I related to it a lot. I read it twice. I think it’s worth your time. It’s impossible for me to…
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .
Comments, questions, suggestions? Email me at comment@darthmall.net .