Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)
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📚 thirty-six of 2020: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus by Isaac Asimov ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It’s ‘50s pulp young-adult space adventure. Quality? Accurate? Progressive? Nope. But for what it is, it serves just fine. Plus, you know, telepathic Venusian frogs.

On This Day: Sep 13

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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 17 posts previously published on September 13th

  • 2023
  • 2020
    • 📚 thirty-six of 2020: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus by Isaac Asimov ⭐️⭐️⭐️ It’s ‘50s pulp young-adult space adventure. Quality? Accurate? Progressive? Nope. But for what it is, it serves just fine. Plus, you know, telepathic Venusian frogs. ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.09.12 Week twenty-eight of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 13 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 13 ➡
  • 2016
    • A better shot of both #goth #lego #minifigures (plus a couple of their friends — the #zombie #cheerleader and a #ghost — in the background). ➡
    • It was totally worth paying the premium to order this adorable little #lego #goth girl #minifigure to keep the goth boy from the current series company. She even has a cute little bear! (257/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Gorgeous day today; nice view from the hotel as we plot and scheme for #nwc38! ➡
  • 2013
    • Difficult Listening Hour 11 Something new! No particular theme or idea behind this one, this was just me goofing around with the recently released djay 2 upgrade while prepping for tomorrow's Rodeo City Rollergirls double header. ➡
  • 2010
    • Regarding Facebook 'Facebook should not be a timesink where you slowly drown in all the half-remembered named of your youth. It's a community like any other. What makes it great is that you control every member of your own community.' ➡
  • 2005
    • Goodbye FedEx Kinko’s Right, so, following up on a previous post...I'm no longer working for FedEx Kinko's. The full, long, sordid story can be sent to friends and family. ➡
    • You’ve gotta be kidding me So...when did CNN start hiring The Onion's writers? Oh, wait. They're _serious_? ➡
  • 2002
    • Wag the dog, Bushie I know Dick Cheney finds it 'reprehensible' that anyone could think the White House's timing on Iraq is politically inspired, but the administration has exhibited a pattern of behavior that (as Cheney rightly warns with Saddam) creates a context that raises extra concerns. What else should reasonable people make of these facts? ➡
    • Even cops get to play sometimes The next officer, already starting to ride down the stairs on his bike, managed to both avoid the one who'd just fallen off his bike and was laughing and trying to disentangle himself from the spokes, and keep going down without taking a spill. ➡
    • :-) I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. ➡
    • Good kitty…nice kitty… Long story short — after two weeks of waiting, and a good few hours of 'puter work, I've just upgraded my main mac (and webserver) to the newest version of Mac OS X, 'Jaguar' (v10.2). ➡
  • 2001
    • Hollywood Squares funnies Peter Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body -- what is it? Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn't neglected! ➡
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A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup.

Conspiracy vs. Democracy

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How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election

This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.

Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”

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Everything is the wrong color. Happy to not actually have fires near us, but we’re definitely getting hit by the smoke.

On This Day: Sep 12

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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 27 posts previously published on September 12th

  • 2025
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 32/2021: Head On by John Scalzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2020
    • A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup. ➡
    • Conspiracy vs. Democracy How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not ... Read more ➡
    • Why Goodreads is bad for books After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.  ➡
    • Everything is the wrong color. Happy to not actually have fires near us, but we’re definitely getting hit by the smoke. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 12 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 12 ➡
  • 2018
    • Study finds no link between transgender rights law and bathroom crimes. Well, now. And in other shocking and entirely unforeseeable news, water is wet. ➡
    • Well, crud. I was worried this would happen, but hoped it wouldn’t: Apple has discontinued the iPhone SE. While it doesn’t affect me directly, it does make it probable that when it’s time to upgrade, my wife will move away from Apple in order to get a comfortably sized phone. ➡
    • In a perfect world, I’d have Apple’s iPhone X photo processing capabilities attached to a full-frame sensor in a Nikon f-mount compatible body. ➡
    • Listening to whatever’s playing on Apple’s livestream, with less than ten minutes before the event should start. Gotta see the new goodies (new iPhone X, Apple Watch) and then wait for the usual round of post-event dueling “Apple is the messiah/is clueless and doomed” roundups! ➡
  • 2016
    • Apparently, feeling tired and a bit worn out is good inspiration for moody album cover style photos. (256/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Looking particularly scruffy this pleasant Friday evening. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2006
    • Boy Meets Dragon I love, love, _love_ this shot -- possibly my favorite from yesterday's trip to the zoo. ➡
    • Keith Olbermann to Bush While skimming over my LiveJournal Friends Page, sirriamnis led me to this 'Special Comment' by Keith Olbermann. It's one of the few things I've found worth using YouTube's embed feature for -- this is good. For the bandwidth challenged, the transcript is under the jump. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2003
    • Namedropper ;) You lucky bastard. ➡
    • Twenty Questions Why don't we have answers to these 9/11 questions? ➡
    • Persistance of Mouse Thanks to some of today's Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I'm really looking forward to seeing this. ➡
    • The Man in Black Johnny Cash has left the building. ➡
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • It all keeps getting scarier Anytime a noice like a plane is heard everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it's coming from, where it might be going, and whether it's friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering. ➡
    • Fascinating, frightening, and touching: eyewitness accounts Blogs from ground zero. I wouldn't have had time to search all these out, many thanks to Big Pink Cookie for originally posting most of them. ➡
    • Political cartoons There's a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday's tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes, but there's one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. ➡

On This Day: Sep 11

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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 September 11th

  • 2025
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2016
    • I hope your weekend was good, and that the week ahead is pleasant for you. (255/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Yup. Won that round. #cah #cardsagainsthumanity ➡
    • Bringing out the vintage 1960s silver shrimp cocktail serving dish that Prairie inherited. It was originally her grandmother’s, and is inscribed to her grandmother from the “Connie wives”, when Prairie’s grandfather was 2nd in command of the USS Constellation aircraft carrier. ➡
  • 2008
    • I’m a Case Study I'm a case study in a textbook -- and, contrary to what might be believed, it's _not_ a psychological textbook. Rather, it's the latest repercussion from my fifteen minutes of fame way back when. ➡
    • Links for September 10th through September 11th Sometime between September 10th and September 11th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! ➡
  • 2006
    • Me and a Cockatiel Spent a very nice day at the Woodland Park Zoo today. I've got the photos sorted out and almost ready to upload, but that'll come tomorrow. In the meantime, I've uploaded four taken today of either Prairie or me. Consider it something of a 'teaser'. ➡
  • 2005
    • In Transition Along with upgrading the backend of the site to Movable Type 3.2, which I did last week sometime, I've decided to upgrade my templates to the new MT3.2 styles. For now, though...things might be a bit odd. Bear with me, hopefully this won't last _too_ long. ➡
    • Basic HTML tag cheatsheet After a friend asked me a few questions about the basic HTML tags while trying to clear up some confusion, I went Googling for some sort of cheat sheet listing just the most basic tags. I couldn't find one -- just came up with a lot of full-blown tutorials or cheat sheets listing every tag in the book -- so I tossed this together. Hopefully it helps. ➡
  • 2003
    • Can't it wait? Why in God's name do people find it acceptable to stand at the urinal and talk on their cell phone at the same time? ➡
    • Who's on stage? Okay, this is it — the last one. Mostly because it's the last version that I know of, but hey, that's okay. This one comes from one of the best TV shows of all time, the Animaniacs. ➡
    • Hu's on first? Seeing as how something tells me this is a good day for a little levity, and I keep getting laughs out of these, I'm continuing on a theme here. Hopefully nobody minds too terribly much! I actually had this posted on another blog a while ago, but here it is again. ➡
    • Who's on first? I gave a copy of the 'Who's on first' takeoff that I posted earlier to the guys I work with, and one of them was completely confused. He's originally from Britain, and had never heard of the original Abbott and Costello routine! ➡
    • Abbott and Costello in Computerland Okay, one last thing before I head off to work. Dad sent me this today, and I damn near fell off my chair laughing at it… ➡
    • Print-friendly pages with CSS Printing often seems to be the bane of web publishing doesn't it? Thankfully, CSS allows a remarkably simple way to avoid having to deal with all these frustrations. With a little bit of coding time, you can create a special 'print stylesheet' that will determine exactly how your page looks when it's printed out. ➡
  • 2002
    • Oingo Boingo Y'know, I wish I had an excuse for not discovering Oingo Boingo years ago...but I don't. ➡
    • So it’s been a year One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of 'patriotism'), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. ➡
    • Portland protest All the best things about this nation are under assault, and we have lost a great deal of ground already. We have mostly lost it through shortsightedness, internal bickering, and an annoying habit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to stop acting as though 'smash the state, stick it to the Man' is anything other than a child's point of view. ➡
  • 2001
    • Still can’t really believe it All and all, it's been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here. ➡
    • How far is this going to go? My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today -- not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair. ➡

On This Day: Sep 10

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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 24 posts previously published on September 10th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 31/2021: The Star to Every Wandering by David R. George III ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🖖🏻 ➡
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Summer Vacation Part One As noted before, I posted these backwards, but here are the photos from the first part of our summer vacation. We spent four nights at Seaquest State Park (and had two of our nieces and their mom join us for two of those nights), wandering the woods and driving up to visit Mount St. Helens. ➡
  • 2017
    • At the Seattle Center to see a play, and happened upon their Hawaiian festival. Now sitting by the International Fountain and watching kids play. ➡
  • 2016
    • When clearance sales mean you can get a #batman onesie for $9, you don’t pass up on the opportunity. (254/366) ➡
    • More #Lego #minifig success! Got the #penguin costume, #icequeen, #boxer, and #babysitter (#bigsister? #mom?) with the cutest lil’ baby Lego! ➡
  • 2014
    • Halfway through the week. So far, so good. ➡
    • Oh, yum. Came home to still warm fresh baked bread, with the homemade fireweed jelly we got from my friend Thumper (AnnaMaria) when we were in Anchorage. So good! ➡
    • Bird, meet window. Window, meet bird. (The bird was fine, flew right away. I just couldn’t help but be amused at the almost cartoon-like near perfection of the smudge.) ➡
  • 2009
  • 2008
    • Jazzy Genius Here's a playlist my iPod just put together (pulling only from songs that happened to be loaded at the time), seeding off of Tony Bennett's take on 'Steppin' Out With My Baby'. ➡
  • 2004
    • Bush vs. Jesus If George W. Bush were running against Jesus H. Christ... ➡
    • North to Alaska On the off chance there's anyone in Anchorage who might have nothing better to do tonight than hang out at the airport, I'll be arriving on Continental flight 1587, scheduled to show up at 11:40pm Ak time tonight. ➡
    • Ten Tech Items Inspired by Science Fiction I WAS going to ask you to research whether or not there have been any women in Sci-Fi but I have answered that myself, having found Flash Gordon's moll. However it is a Sci-Fi question. Can you list 10 real technological 'things' that have reputedly come out of Sci-Fi stuff written in the 20th Century? ➡
  • 2003
    • www.michaelhanscom.com Eclecticism is now residing at www.michaelhanscom.com! Even better, the old address of djwudi.typepad.com will still work as a backup, so any links out there pointing my way will still work, without any issues whatsoever. ➡
    • Dean 'near-perfect' in latest debate The thought of that lying, hedging, mealymouthed stumblebum of a president trying to go up against the confidence, poise, and fire that Dean so often shows (and is apparently getting much better at as things progress) is incredibly amusing. ➡
  • 2002
    • Search re-enabled I know that the majority of my posts lately have been site-oriented, and are probably insanely boring, but...well...from time to time, I fall into full-on-'geek mode'. Just bear with me. ➡
    • 9-11 tributes Several sites across the 'net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren't bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least). ➡
    • The Height of Ambition But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler -- standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority's chief engineer -- began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. ➡
  • 2001
    • Nano-nano! In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash -- takes today's best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. ➡