That feeling when when you discover someone else had the same weird niche coding side project idea! Not only is it evidence the idea wasn’t completely dumb but they implement sub ideas you never got to! Bumped into these two recently 1. stacktower.io 2. www.backseatgeologist.com

Always make sure your gifts are age appropriate!

Reminder if you’re in Houston to order a pie! They’re so good. Gotta keep them around.

Wrote post about using instruction.md files to guide GitHub #Copilot to avoid risky code dependencies. Approach fills gaps of traditional SAST tool compliance approaches - repos pick their own risk thresholds & community health risks flagged before any code written. justingosses.com/blog/instruc...

Sponsoring #opensource often means putting $ into what amounts to a tip jar. Great but sometimes too ambiguous for both giver and receiver. OSS-wishlist oss-wishlist.com/about-us is a new concept by @sunnydeveloper.bsky.social to bring more clarity to who needs what and who can supply what

Thank you, Microsoft Open Source Team. Mad props. Also: I’m shocked this has not been done before and I must admit to not knowing who owned Zork these days. This was a surprise.

just learned we won an award for our blog post about Tom Holland and stormwater management. remember, when you see an article about stormwater management, you repost it. i don’t make the rules.

Submit them to Aurorasaurus!!! They're an NSF funded project out of University of New Mexico that takes crowdsourced aurora observations for research purposes: www.aurorasaurus.org

Have you heard about this? "As the govt shutdown drags on, buildings at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (HQ for the Webb telescope among other missions) are being emptied without notice. Highly specialized equipment is at risk of being thrown away like trash." h/t @climatebrad.hillheat.com

“the last domestic tsunami came from Alaska, and the next one likely will” Just $300k/year to support these stations, for the benefit of so many future lives.

"The economic consequences are severe."

Confused seeing this #flood warning knowing no rain was forecasted, but it’s related to a possible dam failure NE of #Houston ! For context, Carter Lake is north of Livingston, Texas

*caution niche map rant* My vision coverage through eyemed (luxottica glasses monopoly) has worst map-based user interface I’ve ever seen. Only shows you a portion of all in-network offices because whoever coded it had some crazy assumptions about zip codes. (1/?)

Today’s the day there’s an XKCD comic about something I have upstairs in a cabinet. xkcd.com/3162/

I'm very excited to announce `usaspending-orm` a new Python library to ease access to data from the USASpending API. Available now on PyPI and GitHub. Repo link in thread.

I keep hearing Trump and Republicans say rising health care costs isn’t an urgent problem, but take a look at the price increases on the ACA exchange for the same insurance plans from 2025 to 2026. Millions of Americans are about to get screwed over with higher bills.

The Guardian is hiring for a graphics reporter and data reporter to cover how the US government is deleting and altering important datasets. If you like the work we do, come join us! Data: workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/e... Graphics: workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/e...

Great, now I’m distracted for next hour considering social, functional, and economic implications of tacos instead of candy for Halloween

"But soft! What light through yonder window... BRAKES!"

i don’t know how to cross-post this from FB but this is absolutely heartbreaking. The age of scientific ocean discovery we were brought up in is gone & will never come back. I can’t.

As always, it's clear that virtually no one (including me) understands the reach and scope of government programs and services. These things can't and shouldn't be replaced by other institutions and the reason we need a functioning government is that it's the only way to have a functioning SOCIETY.

Thumbs down 👎 to Union Pacific, which has money for President Trump tear down the White House and build a gilded ballroom, but apparently no money to build safe railroad crossings for Houston school kids. www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/edit...

early voting starts today in TX and the @houstonchronicle.com has the paywall up on their voter guide. please be serious

The Trump regime tried to paint No Kings Day as a “hate America” protest, but what we saw on display was the best of what this country is meant to be. #NoKings

No Kings or not, waving a sign doesn't make you a terrorist. It makes you a Texan. | Editorial www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/edit...

How to Use Millions(!) of Historic Maps Ian Spangler: itspangler.com 200,000 maps digitized and available to use at the Boston Public Library Leventhal Map Center: www.leventhalmap.org Allmpas, an open source library for creating editing and curating maps: allmaps.org #NACIS2025

Tomorrow about a third of Perseverance rover staff will be laid off, despite the mission being the penultimate step in a decades long effort to bring samples back from mars. Reckless, needless budget cuts intended to hinder the pursuit of knowledge.

Love this use case of machine learning for detecting of small earthquakes arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Lot of people should read this exhaustive list of life improvements from the 90s: gwern.net/improvement

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better." Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better. Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand. We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

There’s statistics about how bad the job market is for software engineers, especially at the lower experience end, and then there’s the experience of posting on LinkedIn about a job in your group.

I’m starting to notice a trend in the polling data… —Top Public Worry: Corruption —Biggest problem in Fed Gov: Corruption —Top fear: Corruption —What one word would you use to describe American government?: “Corrupt” It’s almost like voters are trying to tell us something.

Reminder: a large (2.5M+) sibling control study found "no evidence of increased risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability associated with acetaminophen use". Precisely the kind of data that requires serious consideration before declaring mission accomplished. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Secure Software Supply Chains, Urges Former Go Lead Russ Cox https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/09/21/0650219/secure-software-supply-chains-urges-former-go-lead-russ-cox?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

What the Water Rat said to the Mole: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

In Houston, there is a famous bit of graffiti on a railway overpass crossing I-10 that reads "BE SOMEONE". This is my brief essay on that thought. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

If we reshare this enough, it might be seen by a very specific nerd with just the right skills to build a cheesecake boat.

AI and politics have hampered the movement to sustain the security of open source software -- and yet I remain hopeful that EU's Cyber Resilience Act will encourage more companies to participate in safeguarding the building blocks of our digital commons. www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/open-so...

HERE WE GO! Live now.

Yes, do this. "You cannot arrest someone because they are Hispanic" is worth fighting for. It's worth shutting down the government for. And it's worth attracting attention to.

Lemme speak with directness and a sense of urgency about our most important economic threats, and what history teaches us about moments like this.

Should have tagged mineralcup.org #geology #mineral #MinCup25 earlier, but I see poor Sanidine is getting its but kicked by the feebly magnetic hematite with only a few hours left.

Tomorrow marks the 125th anniversary of the Galveston Storm, the devastating hurricane that killed about 10,000 people and nearly destroyed the island city on September 8, 1900. This is a thread about how a society writer responded to the storm in a strange and poignant newspaper story. 🧵🗃️ 1/25

Mineral cup is one of those things that should be boring… but then they put one of my favorite minerals as a kid up against a mineral that was important to my grad school research …and that’s a hard choice.

Trump would have to be the stupidest person in the world to fuck with this march. Completely peaceful. Permitted. Thousands of profoundly regular people This is the platonic peaceful protest. Take note of the people who demonize it: these people openly despise our first amendment

Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC is now Open Source opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09...

It would be so dumb to waste billions of flood prevention funding by giving it to Elon Musk for tiny tunnels that don’t actually reduce much flood risk but do interfere with bridge foundations….but I could sadly see it happening with today’s Texas GOP. Any sort of good governance is gone.

Here is the direct link to the new USGS map. Try it out on your phone/tablet and see how it works! #usgs #geologicmap #naturalresources #cartography 🧪⚒️🗺️