Events

Yesterday I wrote down some of my thoughts on the Gaza war, and promised to curate a list of other writers who have done a better job than I have. I don't necessarily agree with these folks 100%, but at least they're trying to bring some sanity to the conversation. Julia Ioffe: Two years ago, during the last war between Hamas and Israel, I did a little survey on social media and asked people where Jews came from, originally. Most people said “Europe.” It was deeply telling and explained why, in so many...

Director track

Yesterday, during the eclipse, which I guess some people in the US and Mexico got to enjoy: Gotta love Chicago during astronomical phenomena. Next April, I will make sure that I'm somewhere along the eclipse path where I can actually see the eclipse. Today, though, we have much better weather, as Cassie will attest: I've got chicken soup in my slow cooker, but I have two hours until I need to pull the chicken, so I'm going to go do nothing of value for a bit. With the dog.

Between the destruction of Twitter as a platform of consequence and my good fortune that most of my Facebook contacts are sane (and I can mute the others for 30 days at a time), I haven't seen much of the disinformation and propaganda about the Hamas pogrom and Israeli response that others have reported on. But I have read some good commentary that recognizes the context of the current conflict, particularly that its outlines haven't changed one bit in at least 3,000 years. Before I highlight some of...

Not shown: she's snoring.

Sadly, my doctor did not tell me to try to have fun no matter what I do, though we did have a brief conversation about which Bourbons we both like. Nope, he just said I'm perfectly healthy: I exercise enough, I eat right, I don't drink too much, my vital signs are perfect, and I get enough sleep. Doctor visits should be like software releases: boring. If only that were true elsewhere: Israel has given the 1.1 million residents of Gaza City until tonight to evacuate to the southern part of the territory...

First run

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head: Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into...

I could have worked from home today, and probably should have, but I felt well enough to come in (wearing an N95 mask, of course). It turned that I had a very helpful meeting, which would not have worked as well remotely, but given tomorrow's forecast and the likelihood I'll still have this cold, Cassie will just have to miss a day of school. I have to jam on a presentation for the next three hours, so I'll come back to these later: Alex Shephard says this is the week Twitter finally went totally evil....