posts from 2026

1. I’m going to deploy my own mastodon instance on gravely.pizza where the only thing I change (initially, ha ha, he chuckled) will be to leave leading white space in posts alone.

2. "Where would you like to meet?”, I asked someone I’m trying to buy something from on craigslist.

   “I only meet at home, in my garage."

3. I was never able to suspend disbelief that “part of a balanced breakfast” pictured in 1990s cereal commercials with eggs, bacon, a green vegetable, tomatoes, a coffee, juice, glass of water and so on was in any way plausible.

   Well, every bowl of cereal I’ve had my entire life was three to six servings and four or five portions of milk. A balanced breakfast is good, actually (although I’ll pass on the bacon).

4. Berlin, Hamburg, and Copenhagen with the family later this month. Never been and have no agenda, I just hear great things so off we go.

5. I hit that next goal a few weeks ago and never thought to post about it.

   What I came here to post, as I approach dropping 5 more not on purpose but as just, whatever, was that while it was fun and cool to buy all new pants, none of my god damned belts fit anymore.

   I just took one, traced the end, stenciled that back on, and cut a few inches off with kitchen shears, then drilled three new holes in it with my cordless drill. Just fine.

   Anyway, -30 pounds, ish? It is weird as hell.

6. Fewer things, please and thank you.

7. BREAKING: There is a new thing out there that you don’t have yet.

8. I have this old cherner-style (but unmarked) bent ply chair that we bought in terrible condition 20 years ago and used as a side chair until one of the legs snapped. We had it repaired (glued) and then it broke again a few years later beyond repair.

   I want to put the seat on legs, but searching high and low, I have no idea where to even start.

   An Eames H-base (DSX) narrow-mount would still be too wide as the screw holes are 5" apart on center side-to-side and 5 1/1" front-to-back.

   

   

9. precisely x minutes later: yes in this scenario, “birthday pony” is a reprise

10. I like to pretend the fugazi’s “do you like me” is a song from my homunculus to me and the first 45 seconds is it’s leitmotif that I hear as I approach. i don’t really listen to lyrics much so I can’t really explain the middle bit about virginia prisons or w/e, not my problem tbh.

11. after a month or two up on craigslist and only the kegs selling, someone who saw the post asked if I’d be up for simply donating all of my home brewing gear to a makerspace in Livermore.

    Buddy, I sure am. I’ve been hauling and storing this stuff unused for ten years at this point, you do me a huge favor even picking it all up, much less putting it to such a great use.

    Check out https://www.robotgarden.org/ if you are in that area.

12. RE: https://mas.to/@gifs_bot/116658300999833884

    logging on

13. o/ to the wildflowers on Tiffany Ave rn

    

14. https://brandee.bandcamp.com/album/gadabout-season

    gm w/ Brandee Younger’s “Gadabout Season.”

    followed an allmusic ‘related’ link from Nala Sinephro earlier this week and well I’ve never listened to much harp music but, that was clearly a mistake.

15. Geektool, unfortunately, in the last few releases of OSX, doesn’t recover from monitor count or resolution changes and I’ve been patiently, manually correcting x and y from origin from time to time but forgot last week and was late to every meeting for two days in a row.

    So, enough of that I guess.

    https://meetingbar.app seems great so far.

16. RE: https://mas.to/@gifs_bot/116533258247155313

    tfw they got that pizzazz

17. RE: https://mas.to/@gifs_bot/116507305893041179

    both team logos have baseballs on them, also go giants, also lol

18. I mostly used TuneIn on bike commutes to work or taking the kid to pre-school but I don’t commute anymore and we walk to elementary school now.

    For all other bike rides, I have [star trek jargon tone] a vanity domain hostname cnamed to tailscale tailnet hostnames that are a tls’d by caddy and webauthn’d by authelia to Music Assistant as a Safari “add to home screen” + “open as web app” situation. Phew. But it just works.

19. canceled my tunein premium, which I always resented and only ever signed up for so that sonos radio wouldn’t have ads, and yet “some stations will still have ads even with TuneIn Premium", which never made any sense to me.

    I’m now down to my sonos gear just being hardware on the LAN.

20. Now that I don’t buy Philz Tesora beans for the drip machine at home, I also don’t put cream in my coffee.

    Weird and unexpected to change both at once but either because of how much I’ve cut fat out of my diet everywhere else or because other beans are just better black, I’m finally hip to black coffee, after 30 years of half and half (and 15 of those w/ Tesora).

    Go figure.

21. I switched from myfitnesspal to macrofactor in December after mfp’s barcode scanner stopped working (probably an iOS issue? whatever) and told it I wanted to lose 15lbs. It turns out mf is way, way better.

    After only sorta taking it seriously and blowing through targets at least one day a week, I just hit my -15lb goal, so I told it I want to lose another 10 over the next two months.

    Pretty neat!

22. never have I ever used a single-character slack message-highlight keyboard-shortcut on purpose; never to React to a post, never to reply to a post in a Thread, never to Forward a post, not sAve a post for later, never to add a post to a list (V?).

    never have I ever attempted to bookmark a meeting in chrome only to find that I accidentally toggled my microphone settings.

23. RE: https://mastodon.palewi.re/@OldLAPhotos/116345653554076981

    I’ll put a crisp new $2 bill on the lady in the car.

24. As soon as she said it, I remembered that people have talked about adopting a similar system in the bay area on BART and recognized my error. If the cop had simply said “women only" that would have helped!

25. rookie mistake but on my first ride on metro in mexico city a cop saw us on the platform and suggested we ride in a different car further down.

    ok?

    went walked down the platform as the train was approaching but hit a fence and couldn’t go further so got on. the cop followed and suggested the same, we were like ???.

    Thankfully someone on the train spoke english and let us know my mistake.

    “He’s saying that this is the women’s car and you need to get off and back on."

26. completely unrelated to why I posted the O.P. originally but I’m pretty sure this cognitive error also contributes to a lot of boss gaslighting.

    it is akin to universalizing your experiences and the preferences they inform, to universalize one experience you had as the norm. such a bummer when not used for love or other reproductive labors.

27. I’ve considered using painters tape and sharpies, which are ready to hand in junior’s craft bin four feet away.

    I’ve considered moving the milk from the fridge’s right-side french door to the left-side french door.

    I’ve mostly just been frustrated though.

    "I should post about how frustrated I get coping with this situation”, I think to myself, and then fail to remember to do, until just now.

    What a weird impulse to have.

28. The dairy we buy milk from now features an identical promotion on the rear panel and top closure (rear panel) of all of their gable-top cartons.

    Given where the pour side of the gable is, and the fridge door side we keep our milk, and our family handedness, this creates an illusion where it appears that we have three identical open cartons in the fridge door when in fact we have half & half, whole milk, and 2% milk.

    As a result, I feel insane every morning for about fifteen seconds.

29. RE: https://framapiaf.org/@lo/116221130567315481

    a nice Friday afternoon 1,000 yard stare moment of zen

    👁️ 👁️

30. https://nalasinephro.bandcamp.com/album/endlessness gm w/ Nala Sinephro’s “Endlessness”.

    plucked this off a best jazz albums of ‘24 list and it is beautifully mellow spriitual jazz that reminds me instrumentation wise — synth, string ensemble, keys, sax, ( https://www.allmusic.com/album/endlessness-mw0004339978) — of Pharaoh Sanders’ record w/ Floating Points.

    I will be checking out more Nala Sinephro.

31. As per, my smooth brain just filters out lyrics so that’s lost on me but the band (which allmusic points out include members of the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, and El Michels Affair) really swings and the guitar parts are funky as hell. If the vocals aren’t your thing, look for the digital-only instrumental version, "Seahorse & The Storyteller Instrumentals & Echoes Of Avramina EP”, which qobuz has, so I assume other places do too.

32. I end up craving Sean Lennon’s “Asterisms” album ( https://www.allmusic.com/album/asterisms-mw0004180789) enough in the evening that I’ve started drilling into the musicians on it and the first one to stick has been Michael Leonhart, trumpet player and leader in his own right, whose “Seahorse and the Storyteller” ( https://www.allmusic.com/album/seahorse-and-the-storyteller-mw0001977904) I’ve had on all weekend.

33. 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️

    🏁 what I’m considering Portola, bound by 280, San Bruno Ave (or 101 I guess?), Mansell St, McLaren Park, and uh, the Excelsior? The north ridge of Visitacion Knob?

    Poor winter weather, always a two-bus transfer to get there and to get back, and strava glitching out by 101 more than once made this take a long time to complete.

    I also started biking weekdays for cardio instead of walking, so I had to put off the far corner for weekends.

    

34. RE: https://mastodon.palewi.re/@OldLAPhotos/116177989094501821

    Howard Waldrop’s "Flatfeet!”

    It’s important that bits that only one in a thousand or fewer people will get are also funny on their own merits but some days, not important enough to send to drafts.

35. I push open the swinging half doors to the e-saloon. A clanker is supposedly playing the gameboy in the corner but we all know it’s a mod file on an unlicensed cartridge.

    I spit e-tobacco juice into the trash can that has the words Recycling Bin hovering under it by the doors and a “ppoint!" effect plays. The label rotates to face me as I proceed to bar. That I don’t miss the can here tells me the “no aim bots" promise out front is phonier than an $3 NFT but at least mine’s workin’ again.

36. “new incident response leitmotif” I thought to myself when the rhythm section joins in on the Sunflower Slow Drag with what makes me think of cartoon bubble-popping or spittoon spitting foley effects? holy moly https://ragger.bandcamp.com/album/euphonic-sounds

37. just learned that Grimace is not the CEO of McDonalds.

38. RE: https://mastodon.ozioso.online/@DorotheaLange/116150147278065446

    1. that is quite the schulzian name

    2. [antiques roadshow clarinet ditty] We’re in historic Dead Ox Flat in Malheur County, Oregon, where today folks are brining in all kinds of goodies to be valued by our team of expert appraisers [L-cut] “This workwear would fetch a pretty high price on todays auction market, and even in that condition, I would insure it for $1,000.”

39. .

    After finding a banana in the smaller pocket of Junior’s backpack Monday morning that had probably been there since the school handed him breakfast Friday morning, Mom asked, “Why is this banana in your backpack?”

    “Because I like using it as a bananaphone.”

40. Most of what I want to say about Sky Daddy would spoil the afterword, which was a minor revelation for me. “Oh, jeeze.”

    Set in San Francisco and viciously deadpan about it.

    

41. RE: https://xoxo.zone/@scruss/116020979287398246

    reminded about Angine de Poitrine by DJ Food posting about them, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws3EAdMpEVA hell yeah

42. I mistakenly ignored the Wachowskis’s Speed Racer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Racer_(film)) on release and now junior has asked to (and so I also get to) watch it a second time (with Mom this time) this year, and it is really pretty incredible. Wildly underrated.

    “assault [on] every single modern aesthetic”. --Lana Wachowskis

43. A lovely coming-of-age (I learned from a Bookwyrm post that you can call these a Bildungsroman) New York City story with a lot of heart. Another reviewer called it a “funny-sad” which: yeah it’s that too. While I also more than enjoyed Auster’s similar 4, 3, 2, 1, in this case, the same kind of story (or, one quarter of the same kind of story), follows someone just under two years older than me to New York City so rather than the former’s dips into period-overexposure I had lots of “yes, hello” moments. I’m not a nostalgic person but that was a nice personal bonus.

    (Also Cheers gets another well deserved tip of the hat in Beautyland, like it did in Exit Zero.)

    

44. RE: https://mastodon.ozioso.online/@DorotheaLange/116095963618017025

    tfw work follows you hope

45. RE: https://zirk.us/@SmithsonianRoulette/116094653331515413

    ik bin het, rembrandt!

46. RE: https://muffin.industries/@wayback_exe/116074611554981860

    new insult just dropped

47. Having the picket right along Cesar Chavez morning commute traffic is great for solidarity honks and I have to imagine the vibe is totally different (and great in other ways) at schools deeper in the neighborhoods. Also nice to see DSASF turned someone out too (who is probably also a Flynn parent, nevertheless, wtg DSA).

48. Snuck in 30 minutes on the picket line w/ UESF at Flynn, my kid’s school, this morning. Parent turnout seems up from Monday’s picket and Wednesday in Dolores but maybe my timing was just more aligned w/ other parents today and it has been great all week? Also we had a killer marching-band style bass drum player this morning!

49. RE: https://mastodon.social/@publicdomainrev/116053252927843414

    Fun fact!

    Testard’s 15th century illustrations were the inspiration for Killer Queen (2013, https://killerqueenarcade.com/howtoplay).

50. Walked the UESF picket at Flynn for about an hour this morning. Junior was stoked to make his sign and to wear red but kinda panicked once we got there so he stayed across the street with mom.

51. children have an uncanny sense, as if imprinted in the womb, for when one of their parents try to immerse themselves in any hobby that predates themselves.

    no, not that one.

52. the construction of “used to” that some but not all use sometimes to describe outlier instances is so weird to me. I see other people do it and think how implausible it is but, and then I find myself doing it too, and like, it serves a purpose and is fine?

    “oh yeah like we used like ____" where the blank is some kind of outrageous or funny or cool thing that happened exactly one time, presented as if it was at least twice or in fact, annual or even seasonal for years in a row.

53. RE: https://mastodon.ozioso.online/@DorotheaLange/115987473722292598

    we got a badass here

54. I know i’m unranked and all, but we gotta nerf vizier meta.

55. the purpose of a t-shirt is to show that it can catch toothpaste that dripped out of my mouth while I was multi-tasking this morning.

56. Gelli Haha ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqHWfxmsiDY) is so fun, I finally went and grabbed Switcheroo on bandcamp ( https://gellihaha.bandcamp.com/album/switcheroo) this morning.

57. RE: https://mastodon.social/@vga_gradients/115911115720267313

    it’s this time of year in the evenings in san francisco and it’s very subtle and very pretty

58. (one of my other favorite remix Tumblrs was seinfelt ( https://www.tumblr.com/seinfelt)).

59. Ah, yes, Garfbert, one of my favorite remix Tumblrs (swept up in moving to insta and now who knows, best wishes to J.J.) https://garfbertcomic.tumblr.com/.

60. just spite-posting drafts today instead of posting what I’m actually mad about, that’ll work.

61. Hi are you a registered San Francisco Voter? We’re gathering signatures for a ballot measure for a bond that will fund the construction in Sunset Dunes Park of a colossal Sancho Panza facing the dutch windmill in Golden Gate Park asking a collosul Don Quixote “Which giants?” Yes we are doing it to make fun of car-brained sunset voters. I know right? Idiots. Oh, no it’s not a baseball team reference but that is funny too. Anyway thank you for signing, have a great day.

    Hi, are you are you a re—

62. You’re absolutely right, you asked for a to go box for the rest of your meal and I just scraped food and paper straw wrappers off of the unfinished plates in the bus bin into one for you.

63. community tables 👎🏼

64. trip report nearly a year later: the home assistant music assistant add-on ( https://www.music-assistant.io/) plus https://www.radio-browser.info as a music provider are good enough now that I stopped using sonos apps entirely.