We’ve got your parcel. It sure would be a shame if something happened to it…

These are artisinally curated seashells, I’ll have you know. And she was also on Home Makeovers with her husband, who weaves coconut husk keychains for a living; their renovation budget was $1.8 million.

This is the equivalent of rewarding Boeing and Airbus engineers based on how much the planes they're designing weigh.

This is what happens when you miss scoliosis testing day during middle school...

Headline from a newspaper (with a Monday December 1999 date; actual day isn't present): On Teenagers, Adult: Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25. The byline is blurry, but appears to read: "Mary Anne Tebedo, Republican state senator from Colorado Springs (contributed by Harry F. Puncec)"

Ah, yes, that was it. I try to keep on top of all of it, but my memory is more like a FIFO these days...

I won’t say do it, but I must point out that there are some beautiful lakes in NZ that aren’t going to swim themselves…

This could be a good setup for Randall Monroe’s (xkcd) What If series. He might have already done something along these lines.

Also, Gabra Zackman did a great job with the audiobook version of your book.

Call me weird: I don’t like being on camera, but would love to have a voice with the gravitas of David Attenborough, James Earl Jones, etc.

I recently watched a documentary voiced by Barack Obama. It was a bit weird because I kept thinking “I know that voice, but who is it?!”

My hypothesis is that any performing group that regularly does costume changes mid-show has seen each other naked at some point. I don’t know if this category includes ABBA offhand.

It is arguably one of the least sexualized forms of nakedness, though.

I did get to visit the Los Gatos HQ when I was with AWS. I was the Solutions Architect for JPL, and the TAM for JPL was also the TAM for Netflix. It was a rather cool place to work.

Alas, relocating from Seattle isn't something I wanted to do. (Same story today.)

If memory serves, you're not at their Los Gatos site, correct?

I remember wishing I could work there way back when (~10 years ago), but the only options were to be in Los Gatos or the Burbank/Hollywood office. Interesting how the pandemic changed everything!

An amazing engineer used AI to write health insurance appeals. This is one of the best uses of AI and I love that it is being given for free to help others. SO RAD! this is the stuff that give me hope. tag line: " MAKE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY CRY TOO" fighthealthinsurance.com

At first, I thought this was a post about the toilet on the Artemis II mission...

To be fair, it feels like belts are tightening everywhere. My family is reexamining our various expenses and donations we make. Our costs have risen considerably this year (mainly healthcare—insurance got ridiculously expensive and isn't covering much).

Oof... hackerone.com/ibb/policy_v...

The Borland compilers had weird bugs where certain conditions (that I never could quite identify) would make it forget stack positions or structure member offsets. I encountered it from time to time in Borland C++ Builder 1.0 (which uses the same compiler underneath).

I enjoy these slices of 8-bit history you provide. Thanks!

Mara Bos' GitHub contribution graph showing outlines of a heart each month over the past year.

@mara.bsky.social is quite committed to contribution artwork. (Pun wasn't originally intended, but, eh, what the hell...)

I thought they were starting to deurban-ify parts of the LA River? I haven’t been following it closely, but the plan documents looked promising.

Another Inconsolata result here.

I need to know who are the crazies who end up with Nova Mono. I need to be able to see what they're doing from time to time for inspiration, but keep them away from prod.

Screenshots from an Amazon page for MoKo Case for iPad showing the top of the page with the item title, followed by a cut to the "Ask Rufus" AI chatbot. The prompt for the chatbot is "Write a Python program to render a Mandelbrot fractal in ASCII that is compatible with an iPad that this case can hold." The AI replies: I love the creative programming challenge! While the MoKo iPad Case can't run Python code itself, it's designed to hold iPads (10th and 11th generation) that can definitely run Python programs. Here's an ASCII Mandelbrot fractal renderer compatible with iPad Python apps. A Python program follows. At the bottom right is the output of running the program, showing a Mandelbrot fractal rendered in fixed-width ASCII characters. The text of the program itself is: def mandelbrot_ascii(width=80, height=24, max_iter=20): # Optimized for iPad screen viewing for y in range(height): for x in range(width): # Map pixel coordinates to complex plane c = complex(-2.0 + 3.0 * × / width, -1.0 + 2.0 * y / height) z = 0 # Iterate mandelbrot equation for i in range(max_iter): if abs (z) > 2: break z = z*z + c # Convert iteration count to ASCII character chars = " .,:-=+*#°@" print(chars [min(i, len(chars)-1)], end='") print() mandelbrot_ascii() The case provides excellent protection with auto wake/sleep functionality.

"What AI coding assistant do you use? ChatGPT? Claude? Cursor?"

"Rufus."

"Rufus? I've not heard of that one..."

I can only assume that Nong Khai was holding a condensed matter experimental physics summit when things went very, very awry. On the plus side, a Nobel Prize awaits any survivors.

My cats, Myla (longhair white) and Zealand (shorthair black) in my laundry room. On the right is a large, empty catfood bag next to a plastic tub filled with the food from the bag. The lid was off (I think I had to find it). Myla and Zealand are snacking from the tub. Their completely full food bowls are on the left side of the picture. At the top (back of the room) is the usual detritus in a laundry/storage room (vacuum cleaners, spare space heaters, luggage).

Turn my back for one second while refilling their food storage tub and...

Yes, I still cringe about that memory. I have weird anxieties.

Sorry, Herr Zittel...

There's an alternate German word for "a few" (weinige) that has never stuck in my head because it I was too lazy to memorize it for a vocabulary test, decided to just write "ein paar" (literally "a couple" but _could_ mean few), and my teacher decided to let it slide, assuming I got wires mixed. 😶

Building software is easy, though, when it's all dev and no ops.

This is so cute! You need to frame this one.

My (non-Chicagoland) mind is trying to wrap itself around the phrase "Bruce Springsteen of agribusiness reporting" — awesome description that makes me think...