Category: society
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Acceptance at WordCamp US
I wish that the greater society could follow the model of WordCamp US, where people see each other as the individuals they are but treat them with respect no matter what their personal beliefs may be.
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Who Defines Success?
“Sad.” That’s the response I got from a friend after I announced we were closing our custom screen printing business in February 2023. We had been in business for a little over ten years. For a two-person operation, we had a nice chunk of the apparel printing market in Southern California for many years. In…
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It’s Okay to Hate Mastodon
“I don’t get Mastodon.” “It’s just another version of twitter, but run by leftists.” “I don’t want to have to learn how to build a server just to talk to my friends.” “The main drawback is that it’s boring! Otherwise it’s a functional twitter clone.” These are some of the comments I’ve been seeing on…
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Surveiled
I took my regular walk in my neighborhood this morning. It was Sunday, already hot at 10:00 am, and super quiet. No one was around except for the odd car driving by. Suddenly, I heard a cheery, female voice. “Hi!” it said. I looked around, but didn’t see anyone. “You are being recorded,” said the…
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Helping but not helping
Our yard is a mess. Okay, it’s mostly fine but we have a lot of weeds, and the grass — where it exists — is dry and crackly. I’m okay with this for the most part because we live in super dry Southern California and it turns out that the natural landscape is not a…
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When we just looked at things
As Jenni and I were driving to the store today, I glanced in my rear view mirror. I was slowing down for a red light and I noticed that even before we got there, the driver behind us was already looking down at her phone, while still rolling to a stop. It seems like everywhere…
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You’re going to die anyway.
You’re going to die anyway. “You know you’re going to die anyway, right?” It was 1999 and I had just temporarily moved into my Uncle John’s studio apartment in New York City. He very generously let me stay with him while I found an apartment for my family. After several years of trying to break…
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The frustration and magic of being a slow thinker
I’m a slow thinker. Not slow in that I don’t understand what’s going on, but slow in that my thoughts tend to percolate a little longer than others’ do. I guess you could say I’m more of a pourover thinker than a Nespresso thinker. I’ve always been a slow thinker. In school, I was never…
