It’s been such a fun 24 hrs, even for me: a person who can’t actually meaningfully engage with the feedback we’re already getting. But what I *can* tell is how excited & helpful our nascent @miren.dev community already is — if this is something you might want to check out, we’d love to have you! 🎉

Today’s the day! We’re so proud and excited to announce the Miren Developer Preview. We’ve been hard at work on a better deployment platform for over a year. We can’t wait for you to try it! Head over to miren.dev/developer-pr... to download it and chat with us in Discord.

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“Workflows over Technology” was probably the biggest lesson I learned at @hashicorp.com. People can get excited about specific tech, but it’s really how you use it day-to-day that matters.

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I live in LA but am not a person who puts much credence into star signs or crystals or manifestation. The most woo-woo thing I do is — when leaving the gym after my workout’s over — I whisper to everyone still on a machine, “great job!” or “you’re killing it!” and I somehow think it helps them.

One BIG plus with remote work is that — assuming you and your coworkers are adept with the mute button — you don’t have to listen to people sneeze and cough and sniffle in meetings any longer. Also, the lack of germ-spreading. But sometimes the noise of sickness itself was almost as bad?! 🙉

Elections matter. Your vote MATTERS. A tidbit from yesterday: my parents’ city council ward election is currently* being decided by 7 votes. A person who makes real decisions that affect your daily life! 7! *they’re now awaiting provisional ballots and depending where those land, maybe a recount.

As one of the handful of people who saw the recent Kiss of the Spiderwoman movie adaptation, I have to wonder if its marketing & release were deliberately mismanaged to bury it?

Freddy Freeman freeing us from the tyranny of more innings!

Do the poor hot dog vendors have to just stoke their trays of bacon-wrapped treats out there for hours, waiting for the crowds to arrive when the game ends… eventually…? And all those parking attendants who are now working three hours over expectation?!?

Lowest possible bar, but thank goodness I don’t have to disavow my USC degree today. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Tonight, we revealed the *shocking news* to our teenager that when we were in high school, no one carried around their own water bottles. “What about when you had PE?!?” “Water fountains? But we also were probably just more dehydrated??”

A parenting phenomenon I wasn’t prepared for: how to confront what you most dislike in yourself when it manifests in your child. In my case, an intense tendency towards procrastination. I’ve worked out how to deal with this in myself after 40+ years but to have to go through it again with a kid? ☠️

And we’re updated: isthefederalgovernmentrunning.com I was 11 minutes late because I forgot it happened at 9pm here. Sorry to the one person who checked before I fixed it

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

The eternal outdoor concert question: does someone have a s’more-scented vape, or literally s’mores???? The aroma is making me crave toasted marshmallows…

“Grown Ups” is Pulp’s most LCD Soundsystem-coded song and I am so hopeful they play it tonight. Very excited for the Aging Millennials Show that it’s sure to be!!

“That girl looks like Megan,” remarks my 10yo. “The killer robot?” I clarify. “Yup!” And somehow, that makes perfect sense to me, because my kids don’t know one human Meg(h)an who’s within two decades of their age.

An easy way for me to suspect someone and I are *not* simpatico: they think most choices others make are 100% fueled by money. I’m not saying that people don’t get paid to do things, but someone who thinks everyone acts for money only is just too sad & nihilistic for me to engage with meaningfully.

Part of the last election’s heartbreak for me was my (childlike) hope of electing people whom I knew to be smarter than me, policy wonks who’d excitedly pore over legislation. Every day now, I still mourn how those driving this country are SO DUMB. They’re awful, cruel, & JUST SO ASTOUNDINGLY DUMB.

My mental health right now is so dependent on doing my little puzzles (almost all the NYT ones, plus a few extras) and coffee. Humbling to recognize the dependency, but also: I’m so glad I have them both. We need to clasp hard to our sanity and not let go; every tool is necessary.

Kicking off the day before the #TSITP finale with @evanphx.dev declaring, “I just can’t respect anyone who lets people call her Belly. BELLLLY?!?!” 🤣

At this point, I can only assume USC Athletics is paying off the AP to specifically disrespect the football team to the level where it motivates them to play with the world’s biggest chip on their shoulders. Let’s hope the maneuvering pays off! ✌🏽

Apparently USC football is all I post about now. Fine by me!!! Maybe I’ll drop my TSITP thoughts soon too? 😆 If I feel like pushing it.

The second perfect weekend of the season (and it could have been the third if ND had played last week!): USC wins + UCLA loses + Notre Dame loses. ✌🏽✌🏽

It's a Perfect (Opening) Weekend!

Everything is so much, but: we spent our evening ordering in Thai (unsurprisingly great here in Australia) and showing our kids Star Wars for the first time. I severely underestimated how fun it’d be to watch it with them — and good news, we have approximately 2,623 more movies and shows to go!

Just woke up in Australia from dread-filled half-dreams of what U.S. news awaited me, since most No Kings protests happened while we slept. So relieved to hear of no big state violence. I’m now just delighting in the astounding number of beautiful protests. Breathing easier… thank you, protestors!

We had a lot of choices in 2007 about where to move to, live, put down roots, raise a family. In the 18 years since, I pick LA over and over again — it’s the only American city I would live in, and it’s not even close.

Today, @evanphx.dev ran some slang by the kids, saying, “so does anyone say this?” Our 10yo, after the full-body cringe of hearing her dad say it passed: “…WELL. NOT. ANYMORE.” 😅

I just told my kids they can call me whatever they want (within respectful reason) and they’re now workshopping “Crabs” and “maternal unit.” 😆🤷🏻‍♀️

My highly secular 10yo: “is Easter on Saturday or Sunday?” Me, steeped in 10 years of Catholic education: 🤯😆🤯

I try not to be too smug about “the good old days,” so I’ll just say that our Coachella experience in 2009 was ideal: we stayed at the just-opened Ace Hotel in Palm Springs for $129/night and spent every day lounging at their swim-up pool before driving over to Coachella to see this insane lineup.

So many awful things feel immediate and achingly real right now. Simultaneously, it’s been a very joy-filled time inside of our family — the emotional dissonance is stark.

Can’t wait to head upstairs and find out what THIS means. 👀 Highly recommend choosing to live with your favorite vague-poster. 😆😘

I think it’s a great show of faith that I’m checking a bag on this trip to NYC, even after the summer of 2019 when Delta lost my bag and I roamed the 95°F muggy NY streets with only my purse and the clothes on my body for five days. ⚡️🥵

Really just sharing to note this moment of idiocy for myself: I cannot BELIEVE it took me almost all day to figure out the Spelling Bee pangram when it is… my Confirmation name. 🤦🏻‍♀️✝️🪻

After a raucous family conversation about eating electronics, culminating in serious consideration of “what would happen if you ATE! AN AIRTAG?!?” Me: @evanphx.dev, this is exactly what I imagined it’d be like to have kids with you.

I just gave my 13yo my copy of The Crucible to read and I’m on the verge of tears now, both from the sweetness of sharing a recommendation from my own teen years and the bitterness of how it’s more relevant now than it was in my youth.

For our 19th wedding anniversary last night, LA gifted me and @evanphx.dev a car chase that ended super dramatically basically on our doorstep. www.foxla.com/news/la-poli... (our place is briefly visible in this vid, but the news misidentifies the intersection, so… 😉) What will it do for 20?!?

What’s your crutch word that you lean on most when traveling? I’m in Colombia rn and am constantly saying “sí”/yes. At the end of a sentence, “¿sí?” to make sure they understand/agree. As a response to anything anyone else says, “ahh, sí, sí.” And of courses, a drawn-out “sííí” for “sure, why not?”

I’m so excited to finally get to talk about what Evan and I have been cooking up for the last few months! It’s been so fun already, and there’s so much ahead. Wanna follow along on the Miren journey? Sign up for updates at miren.dev

I feel a lot of clarity. That we are living in a terrible world with terrible systems and a terrible ruling class grinding us down. AND I feel so much intense affection and gratitude for all the human beings making their way through, forming communities, trying so hard to care for one another.

If you see this, post a gif from one of your comfort shows

On this Jan 31, it almost feels like equivalent accomplishments that we’ve reached 1) the end of this exhausting month and 2) the end of our first decade as a family of four. Happy 10th birthday, Kira!! Even with its share of wild months, it’s been the absolute best decade of life so far.

#1 in the 🌎 For the second year running, Los Angeles Public Library is the number one lending library in the world on Overdrive/Libby with over 14 million items borrowed in 2024. We couldn't have done it without you 🫶📚🎉

Number of dogs my 9yo & I saw on the walk home from school: 10 Number of dogs she enthusiastically greeted & made a point of telling their person, “I like your dog! They’re so cute!!”: 10 Even the one who wouldn’t stop growling at us because, his person said apologetically, “he hates scooters.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

These days, I often am drawn to people who are curious: those who — when encountering new information or experiences — are instantly intrigued, not threatened or dismissive.

A helpful thing to remember, or at least it has been for me: in hard times, there will be discrete moments—maybe lots of them—where you experience love and joy and community. It is no sin to enjoy them, and arguably more of one to refuse them.