Come to my conference: https://pretix.northbaypython.org/nbpy/nbpy-2026/ I'm giving a talk?! https://pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2026/talk/GQLNDC/ Look, it's our tenth year (including the three years of nbpys-in-our-hearts-only) and it's still the only Python event I've been to that I […]

🤫 surprise social media pre-sale 🤫 https://pretix.northbaypython.org/nbpy/nbpy-2026/ 🤫 (we haven't sent the email yet) 🤫

"I was brainwashed into enjoying ABBA" is my favourite weird true life story.

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116122837453868052 Well they always did say that Musk is a modern day Henry Ford

In a world where everything is moving _so fast_, sometimes you just need to read some decades-old papers and discover that absolutely nothing foundational has changed except for the ways that people ignore those things

I submitted a proposal to #nbpy about some prior assumptions that we've made about software engineering and how we might adjust those prior assumptions in an environment where they no longer hold. Due to the magic of anonymised review affording me the privilege of submitting to my own […]

I submitted a proposal to #nbpy about some prior assumptions that we've made about software engineering and how we might adjust those prior assumptions in an environment where they no longer hold. Due to the magic of anonymised review affording me the privilege of submitting to my own […]

The reviews are complete for the #nbpy call for proposals, and all that's left is our selection meeting. I am already very excited by the shape of our program, even if the full thing isn't quite defined. It always takes a while, but it really is the event I need every year.

I had cause to look at the TIOBE index for the first time in a few years today, and apparently C's drop in relevance has been precipitous for the last 3 years. There is nothing in TIOBE's index that accounts for this, not even Python's rise. Weird.

"Long walks to the rideshare area will remain, airport officials said, though the renovated baggage claim areas will offer quicker access to public transit." https://www.oregonlive.com/travel/2026/02/portland-airports-latest-terminal-renovation-will-fix-one-lingering-annoyance.html ATTACHMENT […]

I predict that within 10 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.

My favourite piece of internet today is the theory that Jesus was actually a type of yeast. Turns water into wine Floats on water Makes bread for 5000 people Put in a cave for 3 days and lo - he has risen! Jesus was a sourdough starter. Also this would imply: We should be calling him 'Mother' […]

I SEE ASTON MARTIN IS SPONSORED BY JCB AGAIN, WHICH LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE SUPER APROPOS THIS YEAR #F1

Since I found abundant PDF scans but no text-not-in-academic paper format, I've done a quick OCR dump of the Naur paper I've been talking about at: https://gist.github.com/chrisjrn/4d2cebdd7dbea7fa41ae6c94e046f752

Still thinking about this tweet.

Things I've discovered/concluded in my recent reading: 1. I think I fully subscribe to the "Theory building" model of software engineering (https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf) 2. I'm a descriptivist, so I like to categorise things. 3. From a theory-building point of view, I separate […]

On Saturday I started a probably (quite long) piece on the role of LLMs as enablers of mediocre work, and the list of self awareness-related caveats that I need to sift through to think of these as a potential net positive has apparently already been summarised:

For example, "Thomas Keller's a cunt" bsky.app/profile/rile...

The great 1920s song, "Keep your sunny side up" has such a useful meter, which can make so many important statements into an upbeat energetic song.

RE: https://social.riley.pub/@robin/116070465168335048 the in-progress reviews for this year's #nbpy are looking very promising. We keep getting proposals that seem right for the times, which I really can't complain about.

"In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud" www.tomshardware.com/speakers/in-...

Hot damn, this Melfest entry goes so hard. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7AB...

Just a few hours left to get an nbpy proposal in You should do it. Go on. I'll wait.

I've taken a sneak peek at the #nbpy submissions queue just now, and, y'know, there's probably an interesting conference in there. Could still use 1-3 more submissions, but things are looking good so far!

hello final day for talk submissions not enough time to use more words hurry https://pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2026/cfp #python #nbpy

If YOU purchased a Defective Product between 1 August 1933 and 27 July 2025, you are eligible to make a prorated claim from the claim fund of $100,000. *receives check for $0.10 after 7 months*

Having an email address in the US is like: Floom et al. vs Global Friendly Neighborhood Stores Inc Class Action Suit alleges Defendant misrepresented hydrochloric acid as cheese ("defective products"). Defendant disputes the allegations, admits no liability and has chosen to settle out of court.

In the great Australian tradition of objecting to structures that I am required to interact with being designed by objectional Jeffreys [0], I am now referring to Amazon Pharmacy as "Jeff's Dispensary". I will be taking no further questions. [0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff's_...

I have been doing a bunch of reading over the last month and I have come to the conclusion that everyone's conclusion about the goodness/badness of current generation so-called "ai" is wrong; this conclusion is included

Today is the day: I am going to pull my stereo/TV console into the middle of the room, put furniture sliders on it for future convenience, and then carefully organize the cables. The resulting cable management will continue to look beautiful for upwards of 48 hours.

When people say Shakespeare isn't relevant to modern life it's good to have people like Sir Ian around to prove them wrong:

I have a number of thoughts about LLMs, mostly in the context of existing with coworkers who find genuine utility in them and I think my personal distaste mostly comes down to not wanting help exploring the inherently obvious parts of the thing that I'm working on and that my definition of […]

"GitHub Issues" (can't tell if referring to their product or their outage)

proposal: rename "github" to "hub", as it has been increasingly unreliable at anything related to git of late

ok maybe I'm not setting my sights high enough but long-term a man has to be able to eat, right?

because knowing one's enemy is the first step in… at the very least just carving out a niche in a career that suits one very well and one would prefer were not encroached upon by one's enemy

Why yes, I _am_ spending too much time attempting to reconcile my formal computational science education with the boom in an industry of tools that do a good enough job of making a lot of good enough code in a good enough number of contexts

Some dudes would rather clean up documentation for AI agents than make documentation easier to read for everyone, such as people

the closing date of our cfp is rapidly approaching (next week i think) please submit more things please https://pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2026/cfp

Great expression that should be used more.

Coprolites aren't my favorite fossil but they're a solid number two. #dadjokes #paleontology

We don't have audience Q&A at @NorthBayPython: enough marginalised people have a terrible experience with audience Q&A that we don't want them to have to do it; and we don't want to other the people who'll have a bad experience by making it look conspiciously like they've opted out. Post-talk […]

honestly, what better distraction from _all this_ than hanging out on a ranch in the nearest middle of nowhere available to the rest of the bay area meet good people; hear some good talks*; return energised to deal with _all that_ *talks need to be submitted first […]

hello! happy thursday! there's 3ish weeks (give or take a day) until we'll be closing talk submissions for this year. we'd definitely like to hear from you (also you, in case you're reading)! details & forms etc: https://pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2026/cfp #python #nbpy #websitesoonipromise

LOOOOOOOOOOL

i feel like the viral bus thread resonates because at every step of the way you're like "ok surely this will be resolved shortly, any second now," which seems like what all the passengers are also thinking. then the fact that the situation doesn't resolve and the bus just keeps going is an Allegory

things of which I have formed an opinion recently, having done a small amount of household electrical work here in the US: 120V is not an unreasonable mains voltage (esp. now that 95% of our appliances run on 12V or less) 120V split-phase is not an unreasonable way to transmit 240V given the […]