I voted!

The elections are on next Tuesday, and so much is at stake, including the soul of the Democratic Party when it comes to transgender people. I am asking you to leave a very small number of races blank in which a Democrat has embraced extreme anti-trans hate. I make my case here.

Don’t Vote For The Worst Anti-Trans Democrats

The Democratic Party should, and likely will, win big in the midterms. We must not send the worst anti-trans voices to join them.

erininthemorning.com

We used to teach that Pluto was a planet. Over time, we learned more about it and realized its “planet” classification didn't really make sense. Astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet. Lay people had two common responses to this change: “Okay; there are eight planets now,” and, “I […]

If someone at Anthropic posted a torrent of the raw images/OCR of every book they scanned before feeding them into models, it would be a bigger contribution to distributed human knowledge than anything the model will ever bring.

More Miles for Maryland hiking yesterday! 21.3 miles hitting every trail in Greenbrier State Park over the course of ten hours with about 3200 feet cumulative elevation gain. The elevation definitely took its toll on me; I was seriously dragging for the last […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

Did a bit more Miles for Maryland hiking today, in Patapsco Valley State Park. Goal: 250 miles in 2026 YTD target: 63 miles Actual distance: 41 miles I'm hoping to get caught up over the summer.

RE: https://en.osm.town/@openstreetmap/116165330892920654 This is an immaculately written response. It has calm, quiet authority, and seeks to respond not in the terms of the other interested party, but in a scope of worldwide community openness and empowerment. It does so with complete respect […]

This is fascinating. A story told in increasingly archaic English, starting with 2000s vernacular and progressing back through the English used in the 1000s, in 100-year jumps. There's also a discussion of how the language has changed over time, plus a summary of the story for anyone who […]

This is pretty sad. https://www.thebanner.com/culture/food-drink/brewers-art-mount-vernon-closed-sudden-DGAFXHKFXNG3DGGNGDDNWRAYQQ/ I spent a lot of time at the Brewer's Art in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It sucks that they suddenly closed after so long, and it's extra bad that they pushed […]

I'm #colorblind and I use https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/ frequently. Randall 'xkcd' Monroe did a survey of over 100,000 readers where he showed them random rgb colors and said "what would you call this?" and afterwards he did his best to sort the results into the most popular color names and the […]

We were watching _Flow_, a short film about a cat navigating a post-apocalyptic world, and our cat got very interested in the cat making cat sounds on the TV.

Happy new year! The Maryland Department of Natural Resources is running a "Miles for Maryland" challenge this year! To celebrate Maryland's 250th anniversary (coinciding with the US's 250th, naturally), they're challenging people to hike 250 miles in Maryland state parks during the year […]

Grumble, grumble. I got a PHEV, so I needed a home EV charger. I found exactly one on Amazon that (1) works with my available power and (2) is ETL listed. But it has a smartphone app, connects to WiFi, and there's an OpenHAB binding with completely local control of the charger. So yay! But the […]

The wind yesterday knocked over a large tree in our backyard. No one was injured, but it destroyed our shed and some lawn furniture. I haven't had a chance to check the tools in the shed yet. It didn't take out our power, but it ripped the power line (and the […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

Arbitrary List of Popular Flashlights - Winter Solstice 2025 Edition https://zakreviews.com/arbitrary-list.html

My old phone finally became unusable after four and a half years—a record lifespan for me—and I had to replace it. Now I'm discovering all the programs that have disappeared from the Android ecosystem in that time and need to be replaced with something new. I'm really going to miss my podcast […]

I'm sad to write that Jon Lasser passed away on September 23, 2025 after six years living with cancer. I'm writing as his partner of 21 years, and wanted to make sure that I posted in the places he specified in his wishes. His colleagues are working on an anthology of his stories, and he still […]

https://www.clarionwest.org/2025/09/25/in-memory-of-jon-lasser/ Jon was, at least to my newcomer's eyes, a central person in the Baltimore Linux/sysadmin community in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I have many memories of him hosting Old Bay Sage meetings. I think he was involved in organizing […]

I got nerd sniped by an abandoned building I saw while I hiking. It turned out to be relevant to the local history of rail and power infrastructure, which are area of particular interest to me. So I found out everything I could in a couple of days about the building. Now you, too, can read […]

Today's long hike: 17 miles along the C&O Canal near Great Falls, including side trips to the falls overlook and the (pretty strenuous) Billy Goat Trail.

Big protests and marches don’t change things by themselves magically. But they do help show solidarity that may be able to eventually be tapped into if and when things escalate.

I've been meaning to compile this for a while. I've collected the various resources I use when deciding on a color scheme for a project or data visualization. Picking good colors is hard, y'all! https://aperiodic.net/pip/archives/Geekery/color-data-viz/

Color Schemes for Data Visualization

A collection of resources I use for choosing color schemes for data visualizations.

aperiodic.net

I definitely feel like I pushed myself to my limits today. I set out to hike all of the east side of Catoctin Mountain Park. I didn't finish. After about 17 miles, I was too worn out to try to do any more slope climbing. My tracking app estimates I had about […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

For my long hike yesterday, I hiked Calvert Cliffs State Park. All of it. Every foot of every trail, including several that weren't on any map I had. It took me 10 hours and 24 miles. That works out to an overall average pace of about 25 minutes per mile. I […] [Original post on fosstodon.org]

Every March 31 is a Trans Day of Visibility. This year's TDoV marks a year since I came out publicly, but of course my transition isn't defined by a single day. By last year's TDoV, I'd been out at work for months, out to friends for months before that, had a year+ working with a therapist […]

The German government has issued a travel advisory for its trans citizens about travel to the US. Let me repeat that. Trans European citizens are being warned that travel to the US might not be advisable. What does that say about those of us already living here? […]

The one thing I wish everyone to understand about trans people is: Trans people just want to live the truth of their own identities. https://aperiodic.net/pip/archives/General/what-to-know-about-trans-people/ There's more—far more—of course, but I feel like that's really a core facet […]

Our power's back! BGE got it fixed a little after 9:00 this morning. The furnace has been running continuously since then and the temperature's now up to 60°F, from a low of about 40°F. All told, the power was out for roughly two days and 18 hours. Most of the fallen tree is still there, but […]

Documentation of the erasure of trans people and LGBTQ+ people more broadly across thousands of government pages. https://www.madycast.com/p/not-just-stonewall-analysis-shows They want to remove evidence of the existence of trans people, and they want to remove resources that help us keep […]