Musing from a weekend rental house: there's a world of difference between a kitchen that was equipped and organized by someone who was using it to cook meals every day, and one that was set up from a rental company checklist.

It's been about 35 years since I graduated from high school in NYC, but the Brooklyn Tech kids are still going to exactly the same places to smoke weed after school. I enjoy the continuity.

The 9yo, home sick from school for a week, wearies of my requirement that she listen to my "in the olden days you didn't get to choose what was on TV" essay before watching TV.

Walked past a dad telling his maybe 5yo child "yes, honey, the one drop is reggae;" I would make fun of him, but the memory of discussing blast beat with my own primary schooler is recent enough to give me pause.

As far as I cam tell, the only reason we still have paper clips in our house is that sometimes electronic devices need to be hard reset.

The daylily bed got pretty trashed this year, by branches that blew down in a storm, but daylilies gonna daylily. Probably the last one of the year. #bloomscrolling

As someone born without whatever gland produces professional ambition, I can still say this: I have developed a decent sense for when any given C-Suite person is actually saying "just please stop talking now. " And mostly for that reason, I think, I actually own a house in 2025.

The 17yo is spending a fair chunk of this vacation so far trying to create the smoked duck sandwich that he has in his head; caramelized onions seem to be a solid yes, but many open questions remain. Something acidic is apparently needed in the mix.

Only been here around 48 hours and I already had to think hard about what day of the week it is. Perfect.

When I was a kid, growing up in New York, Tintin and Asterix were the "comics" my parents' friends would generally have to entertain me on boring visits, especially when there weren't kids in the household. Then, as now, I can barely read or speak French, so it was always a super frustrating […]

Sabbath sirens in Brooklyn.

Donald Trump has been manipulating markets with tariff announcements — and he’s exempt from a bill advanced in the GOP Senate with Dem votes that bans Presidents from trading stocks. Ban all stock trading by the executive and legislative branches. No exceptions, now.

Hey OpenStreetMap people! I am looking for a specific tool/service: - preferably self hostable - stores a part of the OSM map (the size would be a 100k city) - allows adding points and other additional data - has an admin panel for user management - is easy to use for non technical people The […]

I definitely don't read anything into the fact that the "how much do you use service X vs. services Y and Z" corporate survey sent out by out IT team was sent using MS Forms.

Today the 9yo said "there are still three old movies about the parents from Descendants that I haven't seen yet," and if someone at Disney didn't automatically get a bonus immediately after that sentence was spoken out loud, then I'm disappointed in the company.

Walking by a film shot breaking down, and I love that -- in 2025 -- a huge bag of tennis balls still appears to be an essential tech requirement.

It just occurred to me that I actually have no idea WHY it's important that one never use fabric scissors for anything other than fabric. I learned the reasoning behind a lot of "you always/never" things from my childhood eventually, but never that particular one.

I hadn't thought much about this until someone outside our org responded to me about it: in online meeting invitations, I always call it out if I'm planning to record the meeting. Don't wait until the meeting has started and ask "is everybody okay if I record this," ASK UP FRONT if you want to […]

I feel like there's probably been some research done on this already, so links/references appreciated. In hindsight I've realized that my formative memories of my grandparents are of them in their 60s: my parents were in their 30s when they had kids, my grandparents in their 20s. We also had […]

Basil is going gangbusters, but no tomatoes yet, so it's pesto season. #gardening

It seems silly that I need to look up how to calculate percentage change EVERY SINGLE TIME, but I guess I'm glad to have whatever stuff in my memory isn't being replaced with that. Like phone numbers from the 1980s, for example: I remember a lot of phone numbers from the 1980s, and I'm sure […]

Emails asking me about stuff from a decade ago make me feel as old as I am, and I'm unsure how I feel about that.

Deane's Dream starting to flower, rather early, I think. #bloomscrolling

The branches that blew down in our recent storm pretty much trashed the (main) daylily bed for this year, but daylilies gonna daylilly, so they're still trying. #bloomscrolling #gardening

"Overheard in New York" was a whole thing back in Web 2.0 days; I just walked out of my house and heard a guy on his phone saying "it was going good, but since I crashed her car at the karaoke party..." I kind of want to revive the #ohny thing, but -- while it was fantastic in and of itself -- […]

Astilbe is happy this year! #bloomscrolling

[CW: US (NYC) Politics] Fuck Cuomo. That's is: just fuck that guy.

Thursday's windstorm blew four sizeable branches off a neighbor's Norway Maple and into the daylily bed. Oh, well. #gardening

For the past week or so I've been systematically unsubscribing from every political campaign email I receive, and my inbox is now manageable for the first time in years.

I'm periodically reminded of this: as a Manager of People in a work context, the answer is basically always "first things first," and almost never [though SOMETIMES] is "The First Thing" showing up for work today or tomorrow. Sure, that idea can be abused, but that's a distinct issue, in my […]

We now have a political assassin impersonating a police officer on the loose in Minnesota, which, aside from being horrifying in and of itself, underscores the danger of the proliferation of anonymous federal law enforcement deployments from a wide variety of unfamiliar agencies conducting […]

Hey, all -- I'm feeling like I want to watch something on TV in the next few hours: could you help me come up with some things I might want to watch on TV this evening?

Almost exactly a decade ago, in the summer of 2015, a friend asked me "what do you think you'll do if it comes to an actual civil war?" I thought he was being a little hyperbolic back then, but I've thought about that conversation a lot in the past year or so.

I will remind everyone that -- DJT being who he is -- it will ENRAGE him if the TV ratings for his [definitely not birthday, that's just a coincidence] military parade suck. You can attend the parade, a protest against the parade, or none of the above this weekend, but please don't watch […]

Someone on my team is going to their grandmother's 90th birthday party this weekend, and my family just celebrated my mom's 85th birthday a couple of days ago. I am officially old. My spouse still feels that I should not yet grow my Old Man Beard, nor start wearing sandals and socks every day […]

First daylilies of the year! #bloomscrolling

The hydrangea is happy this year. And I need to trim the yew. #bloomscrolling

The fascism is not a distraction from the funding of the fascism. They’re the same thing.

It's a grey morning in Brooklyn, but the first Peruvian daffodil is blooming on the front steps. #bloomscrolling

Nothing says "we're concerned about the effect that this absolutely essential cost-cutting will have on our employees" more than deciding who will get laid off while eating dinner at Nobu. Twice."

I continue to check regularly, and still -- in 2025 -- the only written biography of Jerry Reed, a legendary musician and guitar player, is some AI-generated crap. How is that possible? #musodon

Set achievable goals.

@fascinated June at Brooklyn Tech is as it ever was.

Dead nettle isn't fancy or anything, but it's so cheerful in shady parts of a garden. #bloomscrolling

Clematis. #bloomscrolling

Abort!

It may be my personality, or NYC public transportation oddities, or what-have-you, but regardless: I got on the subway just now and there was a person on the train with really good elf ears. Like, REALLY good. I spent two stops trying to see where the makeup started, you know? And then I spent […]

I really want to put in a new clematis to replace last year's failure, but I think it's probably too late in zone 7 and I should wait for the fall. Thoughts? #gardening

From Indivisible If there's money for a parade, there's money for Medicaid! No King's Day June 14 12:00 PM Nationwide

It makes me happy when I'm hearing the Sabbath sirens at 7:44 pm: summer is coming on!