Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)
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He had long since lost faith in his ability to reliably predict what was and what wasn’t possible. Mystical creatures surrounded him, magic was not just real but apparently limitless, and most amazing of all, he’d been fed a dish of Brussels sprouts that was actually quite tasty.

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Most common passwords of 2020: The list details how many times a password has been exposed, used, and how much time it would take to crack it. If you’re using any of these for your passwords, change them.

Halfway Between the Truth and the Lie

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Rebecca Solnit’s essay “On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway” is excellent.

…the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

If half of us believe the earth is flat, we do not make peace by settling on it being halfway between round and flat. Those of us who know it’s round will not recruit them through compromise. We all know that you do better bringing people out of delusion by being kind and inviting than by mocking them, but that’s inviting them to come over, which is not the same thing as heading in their direction.

Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s and it won’t work now. That doesn’t mean that people have to be angry or hate back or hostile, but it does mean they have to stand on principle and defend what’s under attack. There are situations in which there is no common ground worth standing on, let alone hiking over to.

On This Day: Nov 19

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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 28 posts previously published on November 19th

  • 2023
  • 2022
    • Travel and CO2 I tracked CO2 levels as I traveled from Denver to Seattle. Airlines may say their planes have good ventilation, but my monitor sure wasn’t impressed. ➡
    • 🎥 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Gilliam's tendency to slip in and out of reality at any given point always engages well with me. ➡
  • 2020
    • 🖖 Discovery S03E06: A rather “meh” A plot (a bit much on Georgiou’s snark; the Running Man homage amused me but was too violent for my wife), but all the B plot bits on the Disco (geeking out over the upgrades, Tilly vs. Grudge, Stamets and Adira) were much more interesting. ➡
    • He looked over the valley in amazement. Instead of wooded slopes on either side of the small river, there was a town that looked as if had been there for decades, with ships docked at a pier, and though it didn’t seem possible, small, winged people flitting between buildings. ➡
    • He had long since lost faith in his ability to reliably predict what was and what wasn’t possible. Mystical creatures surrounded him, magic was not just real but apparently limitless, and most amazing of all, he’d been fed a dish of Brussels sprouts that was actually quite tasty. ➡
    • Most common passwords of 2020: The list details how many times a password has been exposed, used, and how much time it would take to crack it. If you’re using any of these for your passwords, change them. ➡
    • Facing collapse, the famed Arecibo Observatory will be demolished: While teams will try to salvage some parts of the observatory, the decommission will bring an end to the popular 57-year-old telescope, which has been featured in numerous films and television shows. ➡
    • Halfway Between the Truth and the Lie 'If half of us believe the earth is flat, we do not make peace by settling on it being halfway between round and flat.' ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 19 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 19 ➡
  • 2019
    • The ship drifted in space, sensors active, waiting for the radiation surge to abate so the crew could be revived. But the stasis pods weren’t shielded against this type of radiation, and what emerged would be very different from what had gone in. Microblogvember: abate ➡
  • 2018
    • Book forty-eight of 2018: IKS Gorkon Book One: A Good Day to Die, by Keith R. A. DeCandido. 🌟🌟🌟 ➡
    • Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? This is a really clever way to analyze this question. Nice presentation, too! ➡
    • The ERA May Have A Chance of Finally Being Ratified Good luck to Virginia, to the ERA, and to all the women in the country who could benefit from the ERA finally being ratified! ➡
  • 2017
    • Took this last week, forgot to post until now. Streaming video glitches amuse me. I knew #startrekdiscovery was switching things up, but I didn’t expect a #madamesecretary crossover! ;) #startrek #discovery #dis #disco 🖖 ➡
    • Book forty-six of 2017: Silence Fallen, by Patricia Briggs. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is I’ve just set up small recurring monthly donations to Planned Parenthood, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the ACLU. Have you added donations to your routine? If so, who are you donating to? ➡
    • It’s a bit earlier than we’d normally do it, but with the daylight savings switch and the election falling in the same week, we decided we needed some Christmas to push back against the literal and metaphorical dark times we’re living in. ➡
    • Book forty-eight of 2016: The Tears of the Singers, by Melinda Snodgrass. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tos ➡
    • Book forty-seven of 2016: Penny Dreadfuls, compiled by Stefan Dziemianowicz. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (324/366) ➡
  • 2010
    • Not Really a Surprise It is no accident that women have been complaining...for nearly 10 years now.... What was different? Suddenly an able-bodied white man is the one who was complaining. ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
    • True Enough My coworker Rachel watched as our poster printer produced three posters, all wintertime shots taken in the late 1800's or early 1900's. 'Y'know,' she said, 'all the people in those shots are probably dead. That's kind of depressing.' ➡
  • 2004
    • New Reads Thanks to tdavid's creation of an easy-to-import OPML file of Wednesday's Meetup attendees, I've just added a good number of local webloggers to my daily reads. ➡
    • Me as a South Park character Just a little mid-morning amusement: me as a South Park character, thanks to the South Park Character Creator. ➡
  • 2003
  • 2001
    • Junet and Caro, ‘shrooms, and small worlds I'd bounce off and online from time to time during the day, and ended up getting in a conversation with Candice, a girl from the Seattle chatroom. Turns out she's also an ex-Alaskan, so we started babbling about things we knew about from Anchorage. ➡
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“How is it you’ve been able to manage being isolated out here for so long?”

“I was born in 2013. My parents were fanatical antivax isolationists, so I didn’t see anyone other than them from 2020 until they died in 2033. I never developed much dependence on other people.”

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She didn’t know quite when she’d first realized the fluid was seeping from her walls, or why she’d ever been tempted to taste it. But she was increasingly worried that she’d so quickly developed such a strong dependence on the substance to get her through the tedium of her day.

On This Day: Nov 18

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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 19 posts previously published on November 18th

  • 2023
  • 2022
    • Accessing Higher Ground 2022 On this last day of the 2022 Accessing Higher Ground conference, I put together a thread about the week. This is a lightly edited version for this blog. Be warned, this isn't short. :) ➡
  • 2020
    • “How is it you’ve been able to manage being isolated out here for so long?” “I was born in 2013. My parents were fanatical antivax isolationists, so I didn’t see anyone other than them from 2020 until they died in 2033. I never developed much dependence on other people.” ➡
    • She didn’t know quite when she’d first realized the fluid was seeping from her walls, or why she’d ever been tempted to taste it. But she was increasingly worried that she’d so quickly developed such a strong dependence on the substance to get her through the tedium of her day. ➡
    • On This Day: Nov 18 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from November 18 ➡
  • 2019
    • The parts arrived in the mail, each one with just enough instructions to allow him to attach it to what had come before. Who sent them or what they would build were the mystery that kept him working, but the quantity of needles was starting to worry him. Microblogvember: build ➡
    • Monty Python and Enjoying Problematic Media There are the Monty Python skits everyone knows and remembers fondly. Then…there are the others. ➡
  • 2016
    • Choir fall concert night! (323/366) ➡
    • A Resurrection It won't always be easy, and it may take some time for me to really get into the routine again. But to me, this is important. I will not be silent. ➡
  • 2007
    • Oscar the Adults-Only Grouch According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, 'Sesame Street: Old School' is adults-only: 'These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.' ➡
  • 2005
    • Frack! Hehe -- Prairie and I just finished watching Season One of Battlestar Galactica. I'd seen it before, 'twas the first time for her. She's hooked. ➡
    • Sony’s rootkit In one of the (many) stories that have been flying by my radar without being remarked on over the past few weeks, it recently came to light that Sony has been using some _incredibly_ nasty "copy protection" schemes on many of its audio CDs. Wired News has an excellent rundown of the situation that's worth reading. _This_ is how the major corporations are treating their customers these days. It's not a pretty thing. ➡
    • Could I be a US Citizen? Oh. Oops. Okay, so it’s been a long time since high school, but still…I need to do some studying! ➡
    • Top Artists according to last.fm From Adriaan: last.fm has nice charting tools, mapping out your listening trends. From data collected over the past year, this list appears to show my top artists. ➡
  • 2004
    • Resurrecting the Evil Dead The good news: the previously rumored 'Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash' is probably dead. The bad news: that's because Raimi is remaking The Evil Dead (bad enough) and will be letting someone else direct it (worse). ➡
  • 2003
    • Same sex marriage OK in Massachusetts Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that the state cannot deny gays and lesbians the right to marry and ordered the state's lawmakers to devise changes in the law within six months. ➡
    • Apple updates iMac, G5 families New goodies from Apple today! The mid-range G5 is now a dual 1.8Ghz machine, and a new iMac was announced with a 20 inch screen. ➡
  • 2002
    • Karen by Night Just a silly little song that I hadn't heard in a while that popped into my headphones during work today, as a way for me to start actually posting here again, after a few busy weeks. ➡
  • 2001
    • Boo-ya! I'm online! It's slow , it's not under my name yet, and it's not on the mac -- but I'm up! It's a start.... ➡
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Though no train had come through in ages, the ties were kept clear of growth, rails shined as if they’d just been laid down, and the whole town had come out for the ritual tying of the damsel across the tracks to be saved or sacrificed at the will of their diesel powered god.