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I don’t dream of labor, but if I did, working for 18F would have been a dream job. Their work raised the bar for what citizens can and should expect from government technology. They saved taxpayers billions of dollars. And, thanks to their open-first philosophy, their contributions to the disciplines of human-centered design and software development are immeasurable.
The concept of “running government like a business” is deeply flawed, because it misunderstands the purpose of both. But, in terms of efficiency, excellence, impact, and value, it would be hard to beat the 18F model.
I hope those impacted quickly find new opportunities, and I invite you to join me in demanding that that our elected officials immediately address the outrageous circumstances that led to 18F’s closure. We all deserve better.
As a person who grew up with 5.25" floppy disks, and a person who has spent untold sums on hard drive space over the years, it remains unbelievable to me that you can now buy a 1TB drive that fits on your keychain for about $80.
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which remains a perfect album, turns 30 today.
… It would have been very, very easy to fuck it up. I’m forever grateful that they did anything but fuck it up.
Music for a snowy, headphones-on-and-cranking workday: Fishmans - LONG SEASON - Otokotachi No Wakare 98.12.28 @ Akasaka Blitz
Garth Hudson, Last Surviving Member of the Band, Dies at 87
RIP to a legend, and the last living link to one of the most important musical acts of the 20th century.
Accountability post: I had to write a little web scraper in Google AppScript today and ChatGPT was immensely helpful. It still messed up a lot and fortunately this wasn’t mission-critical data, so I could just run and debug at will, but I don’t know where I would have even started without it.
The news of Matthew Sweet’s stroke is devastating. Please join Mike Mills, Peter Buck, Sebastian Steinberg, myself and thousands of others who have been impacted by Sweet’s music in donating to the GoFundMe for his care and recovery.
What I feel bad about, when people are sort of like, “oh yeah everything is terrible. We haven’t made any progress, blah blah blah.” I’m like, “yo, do you have any idea how hard people had to work for people to even notice that black people are being killed by the cops?" Because that was happening for a long time and nobody even knew. Nobody even knew, all right? People had to work hard just to get to that point, and then to get to the point we have at least some duties that should not be in police offices being pulled out and put into other things, some places actually being defunded (have you seen Camden, New Jersey?) Like, that took work, and people who worked very hard and risked their lives to do these things. So I feel like, to sit to just blanketly be like there’s no hope you can’t do anything, you’re kinda, like, crapping a lot of really hard work by a lot of people, buddy.
Thank you to Pam Selle for hosting this conversation, and to David Dylan Thomas for saying this. For various reasons, I really needed to hear it, and I think a lot of other people might, too.
I have never been as enraptured with a piece of software as I currently am with Capacities.
Once again, we are obliged to ask, “Who’s defunding who?”
The settlement follows a familiar pattern: Delaware police kill someone, their supervisory authorities dispute any wrongdoing, the victims' family file a lawsuit seeking accountability and the litigation ends with a settlement paid by a municipal insurance provider and a gag order about the case for municipal authorities and family members party to the settlement.
It’s likely costs will be passed along to municipal taxpayers through higher insurance premiums, though that is unclear as of now.
What a six-figure lawsuit settlement after 2022 killing by Milford Police doesn’t tell us
Full marks to Xerxes Wilson for speaking plainly and placing this story in the broader context of state-sponsored violence.
Good thing Delaware just legalized raw milk!
As of February, at least 165 people were sickened with salmonella infections tied to raw milk products from Raw Farm, of Fresno, California. It is the largest reported salmonella outbreak linked to raw milk in the U.S. in the past decade, according to health officials.
Dozens were sickened with salmonella after drinking raw milk from a California farm | AP News
Today I learned that Phillies reliever (and newly-minted All Star) Matt Strahm has a Youtube channel called Strahm’s Stadium Pulls that features him opening packs of baseball cards, and is extremely wholesome content.
Finished reading: Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross 📚
I came away respecting Cobain’s artistry more than ever, and understanding the true raw power of Nirvana at their peak in a way I had never appreciated before.
Cross retells the Cobain story in a fresh way, using his unprecedented access to nearly everyone in Cobain’s life and his own experience as a contemporaneous member of the Seattle music scene, to recontextualize the bits we’ve all heard with new sources, new angles, and new insights.
Highly, highly recommended.
Gotta love an establishment that hangs a reproduction of Guernica above the toilet.
