Month: February 2020

On This Day: Feb 24

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 31 posts previously published on February 24th

  • 2024
    • Year 50 Day 298 Prepping my music library for DJing the Thursday night dance at Norwescon. ➡
  • 2022
  • 2021
    • 📚 10/2021: Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee 3/6 Another apocalyptic trudge through wastelands (Appalachia during the long winter of an ecological collapse), finding other travelers, & trying to avoid predatory groups. Well written; not my thing. ➡
    • New glasses! Similar to the old pair, just half frames instead of frameless. They’ll do just fine. ➡
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • I don’t think I’ve seen any of Billy Porter’s work, don’t really know who he is, but that is one hell of an outfit, and I really like what he has to say about it. ➡
    • Book nineteen of 2019: Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 Though I’m a big fan of Asimov’s short fiction, I don’t think I’d actually read this series, and I’m happy to see that (for the most part) Asimov’s writing doesn’t suffer as much as other works from this era do. ➡
  • 2018
    • Out to enjoy a chilly, drizzly, Seattle winter day at the zoo! ➡
  • 2016
    • Really liking these sunny and 50° afternoons. Spring’s closer! (55/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Without women, the story doesn’t even begin But what the story really says, this story men made up to hold women down, is that women have the power to change the world. Women have the power to throw the world into chaos and they do it because the world as it is isn’t good enough. ➡
    • Yesterday’s calendar page. This is about the only sports poll I could have an opinion on. ➡
  • 2014
    • Playing with filters; I think I made an album cover. ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for February 23rd through February 24th Sometime between February 23rd and February 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Safari 4 Hidden Preferences • And the Circle Is Complete • UserFriendly comic plagiarized multiple punchlines from Metafilter comments • Last.fm – the Blog · "Techcrunch Are Full of Shit" • Roger Ebert: The Oscars are Outsourced ➡
  • 2007
    • It’s Academic, Really… The sea squirt has a very simple brain which is used only to find a suitable spot to root itself for life. Once it's settled into a spot, it no longer needs the brain, so it eats it. This has been compared by at least one Researcher to a professor receiving tenure at a university. ➡
  • 2006
    • Schrodinger’s Mac This is the kind of geeky science stuff that I love: quantum computers that give results when they're turned off. ➡
    • Quote of the Day 15,000 atheists in London rioted after a blank sheet of paper was found on a cartoonist's desk. ➡
  • 2005
    • You Ashcroft! Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film 'Sideways' on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing 'Ashcroft' as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice. ➡
    • Yeah, I’m clueless about these things… Now, in theory, it's supposed to be possible for me to go out onto the 'net somewhere to find digitized copies of tv shows that I could download and then watch on my computer. How in the world would I go about this? ➡
    • Battlestar Galactica Episode 1 This is incredibly cool: The Sci-Fi Channel has posted the first episode of Battlestar Galactica season one on their website, free, uncut, and without commercials. ➡
  • 2004
  • 2003
    • Catching up, part four: political bits Yeah, well, I had to jump back into this side of things eventually. On the bright side, much as this stuff might worry and/or scare me, at least I'm paying attention to it now, which I wasn't for far too many years. ➡
    • Catching up, part three Again, in no particular order, bits and pieces from my 'technology' grouping in NetNewsWire… ➡
    • Catching up, part two This time, the focus is on Macintosh goodies. All you PC-using heathens can read on in wistful fantasyland, or just find something else to do — like reinstall Windows again. ;) ➡
    • Playing catchup I'm skimming over a lot of stuff in my newsreader (758 new items after being out of touch for a week!), but in no particular order, here's some of the stuff that caught my eye… ➡
    • Need some free shoes? Enough soggy Nike basketball shoes to outfit every high school team in the state are drifting through the Pacific Ocean toward Alaska after spilling from a container ship off Northern California. ➡
    • He's got a point If anyone in [My Fair Lady] was gay, it had to be Higgins and Pickering -- you're telling me two single men in their late fifties who live together and enjoy speaking properly and dressing Audrey Hepburn in fabulous outfits aren't? ➡
    • Back online We're back! Sorry about the downtime. In the end, I have to admit that it all boils down to one simple thing — money matters aren't my strong point. ➡
  • 2002
    • Infocom presents Tetris You are looking at the shaft. A large red block, four units by one unit, is above your head, dropping slowly. It has its long edge horizontally aligned. ➡
    • A splash of color A bit of visual design tweaking on the website, which, of course, messes something else up. ➡
    • Lots of moves, and Casey turns 30 I don't think I remember quite all of it, but I think it was crumb cake and white cake crumbled into pieces and mixed with pudding, put into a litterbox, with a litter scooper for a cutting/serving tool, and complete with Tootsie Rolls melted and formed into the right shapes to serve as kitty poop! ➡

On This Day: Feb 23

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 15 posts previously published on February 23rd

  • 2024
  • 2022
    • Hey, friends? I love you! I hope you are doing well, and for those of you who have the privilege, time, energy, and ability, that you do what you can to give your friends and loved ones the support they need. ➡
  • 2020
  • 2016
    • It seems my recent photos may have been overly moody. So here’s a post-workout grin with minimal processing. (54/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • I never left the house today, so I figured I’d see if these guys had any ideas for an interesting photo. ➡
  • 2009
    • Links for February 18th through February 23rd Sometime between February 18th and February 23rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Reality TV Helps Break Down Racial Barriers • Can You Really Just Waltz Into SAM, Say You Have No Money to Pay the Suggested Donation, and Be Let In? • Re: The P-I's Online Plan • The Mystery of Ireland's Worst Driver • Wil Wheaton: Spoiler Alert: WATCHMEN is fucking awesome. • Writing Star Trek Novels, Or, Why Don’t You Get a Morally Acceptable Job? ➡
  • 2007
    • The Clothesline Project The Clothesline Project is a program started on Cape Cod, MA, in 1990 to address the issue of violence against women. It is a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. ➡
  • 2006
    • Option 30 I have no idea where this came from or who dug it up, but it gave me a good laugh: Trent Reznor, _long_ before Nine Inch Nails, covering Billy Idol's 'Eyes Without A Face' with Reznor's early-80's band Option 30. ➡
    • Alaskan Barbies A new (to me) variation of an old joke. This particular version will likely only be amusing to those who've lived in Anchorage at some point. Others may find it a handy guide to Anchorage's neighborhoods. ;) ➡
  • 2005
    • Now with Markdown I've just added John Gruber's excellent text-processing plugin Markdown to the site, and enabled it for comments as well as for my own use when writing posts. ➡
    • Hunter S. Thompson Seeing all the many varied reports of Hunter S. Thompson's unfortunate demise reminds me that I've actually never read any of his work. So, then, a question for those more familiar with Thompson's work than I am: any recommendations? ➡
  • 2004
    • Grey Tuesday It's time for music fans to stand up and demand change from the music industry's copyright cartel. Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work. ➡
    • Mardi Gras I'll be making one of my few mid-week appearances at the Vogue tonight… ➡
    • Welcome to the neighborhood After watching Phil struggle with his hosting provider for a couple weeks over system resources, he and I got to talking, and in the name of good geek-karma, I offered him a spot on my personal webserver. ➡
    • Introductions Got to introduce Jonas, Jon, and Jeannie to Fetish Night at the Vogue last night. Much fun was had by all, as far as I know, even if Jonas did give me crap for going out to dance to Depeche Mode's 'Strangelove'. ;) ➡

Elizabeth Warren Seattle Rally

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We went out to Elizabeth Warren’s rally at the Seattle Center Armory tonight. Warren was great. So glad we went out and got to see her. She’s really does come across just as good as you’d hope she would: incredibly intelligent, passionate, articulate, engaged, warm, and through everything, energetic and having fun.

She went through about a fifteen minute stump speech, then took five questions from pre-selected attendees, and spent about 30 minutes total answering them. Her answers were incredible—both because she gave good answers to the questions, and also because she very deftly was able to use each of them as launching points for touching on other focus points and areas of her campaign, but always coming back to the original question and never giving the impression that the question didn’t actually matter. I didn’t record the stump speech, but did record the Q&A; I’ve got it going up to YouTube now and will add it to this post later…but rather than bother with my amateur, from-the-crowd video, here’s King 5’s video of the full thing (Warren starts speaking at about 25 minutes in):

So, yes. Warren is my preferred candidate. I absolutely believe that she has a plan for everything, and knows exactly how to get about getting it done.

Once again, very glad we got to go.

Now, though, we’re exhausted.

On This Day: Feb 22

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 18 posts previously published on February 22nd

  • 2024
  • 2021
    • We’re Just Rediscovering a 19th-Century Pandemic Strategy: “Imagine a sci-fi movie featuring a scary new virus. You would probably picture people protecting themselves with space suits and respirators. Who would have thought that the key to fighting this novel coronavirus would be as simple as fresh air? Only everyone 100 years ago.” ➡
  • 2020
  • 2016
    • Moody Monday? Just liked the strong shadows from the afternoon sun. (53/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Possibly as close as I’m likely to get to the stereotypical selfie. Couldn’t get myself to stoop to duckface, though. I have some pride. ➡
  • 2010
    • Links for February 16th through February 22nd Sometime between February 16th and February 22nd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! • Tommy Westphall’s Mind: A Multiverse Explored • Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History • Typography for Lawyers • PeteSearch: How to Split Up the US by Facebook Interactions ➡
  • 2008
  • 2007
    • Entropy and Breakthrough I've submitted two photos to JPG Magazine for possible inclusion in their next issue, one each for their themes of Entropy and Breakthrough. If you're a JPG member, click through and toss a vote my way! ➡
  • 2005
    • Jim Steinman I just need to know what the song you just played was — but before you tell me, I want you to check something out for me. By any chance was that song written or produced by Jim Steinman? ➡
    • Kubrickr Here's a nifty toy for all you Wordpress users that have recently updated to v1.5 and are using the default 'Kubrick' theme: Kubrickr. Given a tag, it will search Flickr for all licensed photos with that tag and then allow you to crop the photo down to create a replacement header graphic that drops right into the Kubrick layout. ➡
    • My Netflix ‘wishlist’ I've (again) run up against the 500-title limit in my Netflix Queue. To get around that, I've made a very focused del.icio.us account for DVDs I want to rent, but can't put in my Netflix queue at the moment. Keep an eye on it if you like. Or not. Whichever. ;) ➡
    • Fun with typos Seen today on Accelerate Your Macintosh: Mac Ureal Tournament 2004 v3355 Update. Eeeeewwwww. ➡
    • Ego …accusing a blogger of narcissism is like accusing your minister of piety, isn't it? ➡
    • Full-time blogging I've got to admit, I wish I could 'pull a kottke' and move to blogging as a 'job'. The idea has a lot of appeal. Unfortunately, I'm in no shape financially to do such a thing, and I don't have the wide readership that he has that would allow me to request donations. ➡
  • 2004
    • Safety != comfort In linking to the story on SUV safety yesterday, Scoble mentioned the statistical ridiculousness of being comfortable driving, yet being afraid to fly. The thing is, this is something that I can identify with — far better than I'd like, in fact. ➡
  • 2001
    • DJ Wudi @ UAA this Saturday Just a quick reminder that this Saturday I'll be spinning from 2pm-10pm for the UAA Dance Marathon fundraiser for the Providence Children's ICU. ➡
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On S3 of ENT (my first time), and people complaining about how dark DIS is must be forgetting the millions dead on Earth, Archer’s obsession leading to psychological torture, organ farming, and piracy, T’Pol’s drug addiction, and who knows what else. Not a shiny happy show! 🖖

Difficult Listening Hour 2020.02.20

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Week five of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. As a way of getting back into practice and doing something regularly, I’ve started doing regular Twitch broadcasts on Thursday nights. These are the results. Anything goes.

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On This Day: Feb 21

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 23 posts previously published on February 21st

  • 2024
  • 2020
    • On S3 of ENT (my first time), and people complaining about how dark DIS is must be forgetting the millions dead on Earth, Archer’s obsession leading to psychological torture, organ farming, and piracy, T’Pol’s drug addiction, and who knows what else. Not a shiny happy show! 🖖 ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.02.20 Week five of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 21 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 21 ➡
    • 📚 eleven of 2020: The Little Animals by Sarah Tolmie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee Unlike most or all of the other nominees, this was more historical fiction with a thread of magical realism—not a bad thing, though, as it’s a neat work that I very much enjoyed. ➡
  • 2019
    • 🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E06: 90% strong episode, but that last 10%…I have serious concerns with the Discovery’s actions in this episode. Pike did far more than bend General Order 1. Sigh. Mixed feelings tonight. Oh, and (unsurprisingly) my theory about Saru was wrong after all. ➡
    • (2/2) Or, presented in a slightly different format (that works well for this, but would take far too many pages for the full listing), my Star Trek library, sorted by ©/release date. 📚 🖖 ➡
    • (1/2) Our home library currently stands at 2,167 books. Should you be curious and/or bored enough, here’s a link to a listing, sortable by title, author, or a couple other less-useful categories. 📚 ➡
    • Book eighteen of 2019: The Patrian Transgression, by Simon Hawke. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 (Trek novels are my “fluffy comfort food” reading. With few exceptions, I enjoy them all, good and bad, so even mini-reviews are somewhat pointless. You understand, I’m sure. LLAP 🖖) ➡
  • 2017
    • I also got new smut from @ironcircus: Yes, Roya and My Monster Boyfriend. Supporting small-press publishers of NSFW material (at which Prairie rolls her eyes in amusement). ➡
    • Prairie and I got each other shirts! We each now have both #shepersisted and #roguenasa shirts to wear at marches, protests, or just going to the grocery store in this small town on the red side of the state (I’m more likely to do that last one…probably while wearing my kilt). ➡
  • 2016
    • Just feeling a little prickly this evening. (52/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Why, yes universe – a headache was just what I needed on a Friday afternoon. How thoughtful of you! ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
    • Field Guide to Seattle Viaduct Debate Can't keep all the various options or points of view on Seattle's ongoing 'what do we do about the Viaduct' battle straight? Here's a handy-dandy guide to the various species involved, thanks to SLOG reader 'Golob'. ➡
  • 2005
    • Mature? Me? Naaahhh… The thing about seeing a flock of birds camped out on a publicly accessible dock is that one is faced with the completely immature and totally insurmountable desire to go running down the dock and into the flock. ➡
    • Gorgeous weekend We're back! This was a great weekend — incredibly gorgeous weather. Rather bizarrely for February in Washington, we got clear blue skies, temperatures in the mid-60's, and just a hint of breeze along the beach. ➡
  • 2004
    • Well-Designed Weblogs Looking for some design inspiration? Good pointers to quite a few very impressively designed sites at Well Designed Weblogs Part One and Part Two. And no, I'm not on the list. ;) ➡
    • Help send flowers to the newlyweds Another nice project springing up over the past few days — Flowers for Al and Don. ➡
  • 2002
    • The pope said what? In November, the frail and ailing Pontiff sent his first email, a message sent to his Bishops in Oceania in lieu of what would be a taxing visit. 'This new Internet is a Blessing from the Lord,' the Pope said through an interpreter, 'but Jesus Motherfarking Christ, these annoying-ass pop-up ads are farking pissing me off.' ➡
    • The return of Spudnuts I vas born in a part of Belarus where people what have bluejeans cannot for be to using them becausk they hef no bones. Very sad. Very, very sad. Yes. Funny. But also... SAD. ➡
  • 2001
    • The cam is back One of the side benefits to the new 'puter is that as I've decided to stick mostly to OS 9 on this box, it allows me to resurrect some features of this site that had been on hold for a while. ➡
    • Snoogans Back a while ago, Kevin Smith and company were creating an animated show based on the characters from his film Clerks. Six episodes were made, but only two were ever broadcast (neither of which I ever saw). ➡
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📚 eleven of 2020: The Little Animals by Sarah Tolmie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee

Unlike most or all of the other nominees, this was more historical fiction with a thread of magical realism—not a bad thing, though, as it’s a neat work that I very much enjoyed.

Be Angry, Elizabeth

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From Cosmopolitan: I WANT an Angry Woman as My President, Actually:

Warren’s anger is a great thing. She’s not using it to fight for herself. She’s fighting for the less privileged, a trait I actually really, really want in a leader. For instance, during the debate, she was furious as she stood up for the thousands of men of color who have been stopped and frisked, the millions of black and brown families who were preyed upon with redlining, and children with disabilities who faced budget cuts while billionaires got a tax break this year.

Warren’s rage is almost always in the service of others and that’s her secret weapon. Nothing made that more obvious than when Pete Buttigieg pressed Amy Klobuchar about forgetting the name of the president of Mexico. Warren jumped in, not to prove that she knew the answer, but to stand up for the only other woman onstage, even if she’s her competitor.

“Let’s be clear: Missing a name all by itself does not indicate that you do not understand what’s going on, and I just think that’s a mistake,” Warren said. Even when an injustice is lobbed at her opponent in a way that could totally benefit her, Warren doesn’t take the bait. Isn’t that precisely the quality we want in the person we elect to the highest office?

And, related, an image I found on Facebook and reposted earlier today:

Warren was not mean, nor angry. She was _effective_.

There is nothing wrong with women expressing anger. We’ve certainly given them enough reasons to do so.

And any blather about Warren’s debate performance being too mean, or aggressive, or not pleasant enough, is astoundingly obvious sexist claptrap (but of course, to my utter lack of surprise, is plentiful).