Boastful Quaker Oats ad, Chicago 1891

Emulating a CPU in Postgres is an affront to God.

Direct File was an exemplary model for future civic tech projects. A lot of what the 18F team accomplished could be replicated and extended by a non-profit who was sufficiently funded and I bet a lot of the same people would help you.

A lot of people have asked what the Oakland Review of Books is. One good answer is that ORB is the opposite of whatever these guys have become. Give a thought to subscribing, won't you? www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org#/portal/signup

i've been quite skeptical of manned spaceflight but we have big machines that turn pilots and scientists into poets and i think we should keep using them

MOON MOON MOON

Monocle and Eye (light blue), from Jocular Ocular series (N221) issued by Kinney Bros. Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company 1889 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719639

We have a very simple solution to universal programs benefiting the wealthy. You claw back the money through taxes on the back end. Everyone has known this for 100 years, but people get to pretend they don’t when it’s convenient for their ideology.

On the centenary of his birth year, a nice profile of Morty Feldman from the NYTimes.

i want this for my weird, dumb city so bad.

William Butler Yeats gazing in the direction of Bethlehem:

President Richard Nixon Recieves Head-pats Like a Good Boy

This is an absolute scandal; the United States government is deliberately consolidating all deportation cases of an ethnic minority that the President has called "garbage" in front of a handpicked group of judges and with dramatically accelerated timeline. A lawsuit was filed yesterday against it.

Turns out that when every Somali case I have in court suddenly got expedited and reassigned to a new judge, it wasn't just me! The DOJ has officially denied that there is an expedited "Somali Docket," but now the public data refutes their denial. Here are the highlights: 🧵 bklg.org/blog/somali-...

Just a guy out walking his turtles.

there’s a big difference between participation in society as a citizen and being responsible for hundreds or millions of people. you can solo pilot a plane at 90 but not a commercial jetliner and we should extend that model to democratic representation and the justice system.

The Trump administration is removing a protected bike lane that runs along 15th Street from the National Mall to the Tidal Basin. Officials say it causes traffic; bike advocates say it actually makes everyone safer. 51st.news/trump-admini...

Workshop on administrative burdens in the Americas, October 28-30, 2026 in Mexico City. With @fnietomorales.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social @thepeoplelab.bsky.social @elizabethlinos.bsky.social, Bloomberg Center, Colegio de México & CIDE. Support for travel costs available. CfP tinyurl.com/k2xz28fr

ms rachel should teach rust

doge really did select hires on the basis of "too young to understand that they will likely have personal legal liability" didn't they

me, trying and failing to escape this mess we're in

Venetians are the cajuns of the Adriatic send skeet

We deserve ambassadors that can represent our nation well with extensive skills as professional diplomats, not politicians looking for a sinecure abroad. And we certainly don't need politicians that have proved themselves to be unfit for public service of any kind.

Hobby horse of mine is this can be a liberal stance, for the same reason liberals opposed the privileges of nobility. Liberals are used to thinking about an already hardened aristocracy, but we should also act against one crystallizing into place. Oligarchy is aristocracy becoming.

Developing a new hermeneutic: AI cannot create art or replicate the works of man but it can write code because code is outside the light of God

booba tea

D.C. seems to be defying Congress over a tax-policy bill that Republicans on Capitol Hill say they repealed, but what happens next is up in the air. All the details on the ongoing decoupling drama here:

i’ve never really cared for any sort of competitive figure skating but liu’s performance here is rather spectacular

Valentine Kate Greenaway 1876 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/765772

DOG AT THE OLYMPICS FULL COMPETITION HIGHLIGHTS

most of the critiques of AI I've seen on bluesky are willfully ignorant of the technology and totally unable to identify what are very real risks to well-being vs. what are inflated or minor concerns (e.g. data center water usage). This piece is a strong start to a more serious conversation.

Back on my bullshit (NASA-STD-8739.4A workman ship standards for cable harness lacing)

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

So, the March for Life appears to have brought Measles to DC. www.nbcwashington.com/news/health/...

Besides being a critical role for maintaining basic civic democracy, volunteering at polling places is incredibly satisfying. Registering people to vote for the first time, seeing kids help their parents submit their ballots, slapping "I voted" stickers on dogs' butts, its all rather great.

Finally, aluminum electrolytic capacitors for women.

The 51st is great and anybody who cares about news in DC should subscribe

one of the key motions of protest is that it places the adversary in zugzwang: either they abide the protest, and look weak, or attack the protest, and look cruel

the first step to rekindling our Special Relationship: meet up to simultaneously dump the entirety of DHS and the Home Office into the North Atlantic garbage patch

Me as a radical college student: we should tax capital gains at the same rates as earned income! Me as a sedate middle-aged homeowner: TAKE EVERYTHING OVER $10 MILLION, OR TAKE EVERYTHING OVER THE NECK. THEIR CHOICE

Today, Luke Farrell (@lukef.bsky.social) explains how complex eligibility requirements have turned America’s safety net into a lucrative revenue stream for monopolistic private contractors.

made a new bluesky bot, @metart.bsky.social , that posts random items from the met's collections. mostly written by claude code, borrowing from my other bots and the met's fantastic api (metmuseum.github.io) source here: github.com/jacobbarssba...

i'm loving the new masthead

Heads up: The National Guard will patrol Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park 24/7 "for the foreseeable future," per an email from the superintendent of Rock Creek Park. The request came from U.S. Park Police, which traditionally patrols the park, due to "high levels of incidents."

this country will do anything and everything to avoid using the metric system

Buchla's Touché was a really interesting bridge between 1970s modular synths and early computer music. As Kev says, the demos here are great.