Something snapped into place in my mind. There is an anti-AI position that has absolutely nothing to do with luddism, or any other anti-tech position. AI is cognitive suburbanization. Think about it. Architecting everything so that I can't do even the most basic thing without gratuitously […]

Kiddo woke up late last night and said " I have 3 things to tell you and the first is my bad dream. " And I, groggy from sleep and trying to be sympathetic, told her to tell me about their dream. THEY THEN PROCEED TO RAMBLE FOR ALMOST 10 minutes about a dream with like 7 lord of the rings false […]

Went to the Boston Pretti Memorial Ride today, and as I arrived I immediately was greeted by half a dozen friends (with more arriving closer to the start time). It was a real heart-warming feeling to have that community, and to see really good showing of the Boston cycling community. #bikeboston

First day riding on studded snow tires (Marathon Winter+). Not quite a revelation in my revolutions -- I fishtailed a little bit -- but I made it over the slushy overpass bridge without having to walk! Tonight I'll take a chance on the Fitchburg Cutoff path. #BikeTooter […]

I am ever so slightly embarrassed, feeling a little foolish basically. I have a Pebble classic (the original one). I stopped using it some time ago because the screen would end up corrupted after several hours of operation. I went out and bought a Garmin but still used the Pebble now and again […]

Congresswoman who is an M.D. gained oversight access to Whipple dentention center, a Trump immigrant concentration camp in Minneapolis. She posted about it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SxPn8n2Bfg In pictures is a rough transcript of her […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Fact: Chinese first settled Taiwan because the Dutch East India company needed farmers for their new colony in the seventeenth century. Fact: For the six to ten thousand years before that it belonged solely to the Austronesian speaking Indigenous inhabitants.

"Safety Zone"

Musk and Hegseth held an event on Tuesday, which was the latest in Hegseth’s ongoing “Arsenal of Freedom” tour, at SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas. Hegseth flashed the Vulcan salute to the crowd and echoed Musk by saying, “Star Trek real!” [The Star Trek episode Arsenal of Freedom] […]

> As longtime observers of struggles to establish peace and justice in the United States and around the world, and as the editors of a magazine that is proud to have included several Nobel laureates on our editorial board and masthead—including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—we are honored […]

School Committee member Hudson posted a presentation slide that has some errors in it, as evidence teachers are bad at their job. A _student's_ slide. I haven't told my daughter that if she makes a mistake in a school presentation, Member Hudson might post it to score points; seems demoralizing.

I'm #colorblind and I use https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/ frequently. Randall 'xkcd' Monroe did a survey of over 100,000 readers where he showed them random rgb colors and said "what would you call this?" and afterwards he did his best to sort the results into the most popular color names and the […]

Final Thoughts Cancer myths don’t spread because people are careless. They spread because cancer is frightening, personal, and emotionally charged. When a message promises safety (”just avoid sugar”), hope (”this drug could cure cancer”), or certainty (”meat prevents cancer deaths”),

Fun fact: Due to an obscure Massachusetts law from 1873, whenever you see one of Cambridge or Somerville's 5-ft snow plows you are legally required to sing "Baby plow doo doo doo doo doo doo". www.cambridgeday.com/2026/01/27/b...

My talking T-shirt that experiences time in reverse has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

When you make sidewalk clearance the sole responsibility of adjacent residents, and one of your neighbors is a big vacant corner lot

Brief explainer by Judah Cohen and Mathew Barlow on how the interactions between a stretched, destabilized stratospheric #polarvortex, fluctuating jet stream, and anthropogenic #climatechange combine to induce huge and powerful winter storms. With excellent graphics […]

From the latest issue of my Triptych newsletter: How Black men and women in Pittsburgh invented emergency medical services. What was said in those sections of Plato's Symposium that were censored by Texas A&M? And a painter whose work is inspired by M.C. Escher, but packs an emotional punch.

[uspol] I just left a voicemail for one of my senators. Most of the time when I call, I say what is on my mind, unscripted. This time, I knew I would be crying (I did) so I wrote it down ahead of time. Here's what I wrote. My name is Robert Ricci, I'm a constituent in zip code XXXXX, and I […]

The hardest problem in Computer Science is doing your job while your neighbors are being abucted by masked thugs and executed in the street

WTH CPSD? Why are schools closed _tomorrow_ too? #cambridgema

🎵 Every spot is precious, every spot is great! If a parking spot is wasted, God is quite irate! Every spot is wanted, every spot is good. Every spot is needed, in your neighborhood!🎵

The largest union of nurses in the US calls for the abolition of ICE. National Nurses United outraged by murder of VA registered nurse by immigration agents, demand abolition of ICE | National Nurses United #uspol #uspoli […]

Notes from a walk in Somerville: - Market Basket isn't that crowded, for Market Basket anyway. Assuming you can walk there. Can't vouch for how well stocked it is, didn't actually go in. - Icy sidewalks are now extra dangerous cause the snow hides the fact it's icy.

Please read this. Witness statement submitted today by close observer of ICE murder of Alex Pretti. Full text at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26505743-tinchersealedwitnessdec012426pdf/

#mawx #boston Top off your gas tank. Charge up your power bank. fill empty space in your fridge, with water jugs or similar. Have you got matches by the candles and fresh batteries in your flashlight(s)? Anything on a porch that doesn't want to be covered in snow for a while? If you're cold […]

This semester, I'm teaching my class on System Administration / Internet Operations once again. The syllabus and all course materials are available here: https://stevens.netmeister.org/615/ All videos for the lectures and exercises are public and available for free on YouTube […]

I really hoped it wouldn't get to that but here we are #BikeTooter

If you're interested in urban politics, urbanism, urban political economy, or anything urban-y things, this book is really excellent, and on sale: www.versobooks.com/products/132...

Like 90 percent of our politics is explained if you imagine the GOP as the avatar of a surly drunk hollering YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME at anyone who looks like they might have read a book once.

Things worth really hammering to any family and acquaintances whose reflexive attitude is “but we gotta enforce the law”: (1) Lots of the folks being targeted came here legally; the administration has retroactively declared them “illegal” despite having done nothing wrong

PR2 inside

Oh Brookline… “Four non-white members have left the [diversity] commission in the past year – Wu is [was] the only remaining person of color on the committee.”

Reality check: snow doesn't actually have feet.

I'm sorry to see obituaries for Dr. Gladys West this morning: https://thezebra.org/2026/01/18/dr-gladys-west-mathematician-whose-work-made-gps-possible-dies-at-95/ She was brilliant and did a lot of incredibly important scientific work, a lot of which was hidden/uncredited early on, because she […]

[uspol] I wonder if caligula’s horse senator had better or worse approval ratings

#cbsnews copter circling #mit for the last half hour or so. #cambridgema.

Who doesn't love a good local news story about corporate misdeeds facilitated by a hapless PR flack? https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/ge-appliances-defective-range-iteam/ #consumerprotection #massachusetts

There is a massive focus on trying to get Open Source software to the point where governments or big corporations can use them to "increase sovereignty" (which sometimes means a bit of a weird mix of things). But that can lead to software being pushed towards more and more complex architectures […]

Zohran is expanding the number of public toilets in NYC and improving how the existing ones are cleaned and maintained. If this is a big enough initiative it will have a huge impact on quality of life for new yorkers. I don't know if it is big enough. Nonetheless *this* is the way to address […]

They really kept me going there. #arisia2026 at night.

China: Flies sorties into Taiwan's air defense zone (ADIZ) China: Cuts Taiwan's undersea cables China: Swarms fishing boats into military formation China: Flies a drone into Taiwan's air space China: Says it will take Taiwan by force, if necessary Rest of the world to Taiwan: Stop provoking China!

I’ve been thinking about this all week. It’s just so cruel. https://www.propublica.org/article/north-carolina-abortion-laws-ciji-graham

_throws a bomb onto the timeline_ the correct newline sequence for ASCII documents is CR LF and it chaps our hide to say _microsoft_ got this right

‼️Federal judge has issued a temporary injunction, on behalf of all persons who record, observe, or protest “Operation Metro Surge (govt’s name for ICE action in Minneapolis, prohibiting federal agents from the following. 1/ #lawfedi […]

So yeah, the Paradox of Tolerance. It's a concept coined by Karl Popper — the same guy famous for ideas such as that if you can't disprove it, it's not a scientific claim. I'm sure he's not the first to come up with it, but such is the way of named laws and discoveries. Anyway, very […]

OR Nurses Association Statement on the killing of a women by ICE.

When you’re not the good guys in the story

My daily dopamine dose comes, as per usual since new year's, live from New York and Mayor #mamdani. https://www.youtube.com/live/JGdCR7hf7S8 #workersrights #deliveristas #ruleoflaw #nycpol