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I don't post about work much here, but I spent 5+ years working on Vox Media's CMS Chorus. Straight up built my career by growing, refactoring and hacking on it.

Two things I learned:

- All code is dies. Some sooner than later.
- The most rewarding work is anything that reduces pain points for coworkers and customers.

Sad to see Chorus is shutting down. A lot of great engineers and writers worked on and in it, and I'm thinking about them today 💖

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/18/vox-media-chorus

Heads up, @cfaworkers has made a call for public support of their nascent union, which is facing union-busting tactics.

If you think civic tech workers deserve a union, this is the time to voice it to Code for America's leadership—specific instructions at the bottom of the post:

https://cfaworkersunited.com/stories/2023/07/14/cfa-actions-dont-align-with-values.html

one of those "spend two hours writing one email" kind of days

oppenheimer shitpost 

Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer looks just enough like David Byrne that I have been trying to rewrite Talking Heads songs accordingly ("Making Bobby Oppy", "Burning Down Japan", "Life During Wartime" just works)

Having a smartphone is not a luxury anymore, one sex worker in Kolkata said. “It is like having a laptop for an office going person. They need it for work. We also need smartphones for our work, because time is changing, everyone is online”
https://restofworld.org/2023/india-sex-workers-online-safety/

@jomc listen, there's an out of print book from a university press that costs $700. it won a prize from an academic association, once. Obviously our work is done

@jomc IDK! not sure if they read my critique as being too "no one is talking about this" or something (feel like I did an ok job citing examples of good critical work?) but it felt weird amidst otherwise totally valid points

@Wolven yeah I don't think any of the historians who have countered that narrative and like, won awards for their work would say that it's no longer necessary? a handful of SHOT book prizes does not a social sea change make sorry

it's very petty of me but one of the comments on my grant proposal was that critiquing the tendency toward Great Man narratives of computer history is "overdrawn and out of date" and I'm sorry, in a world where people think Elon Musk is smart there is definitely still value in critiquing Great Men narratives imo??

buttondown.email/perfectsenten this week in sentences: gum, a secret opinion, a new name, subsumption by the great enzyme, chatting away to a tortoise

Also from the same 19th century chemistry lab: beautiful illustrations of the uses of chlorine, hydrogen, nitric acid…early 20th century? any guesses on rough dates?

I started crying tonight because I love my dog so much?? she's fine I just felt overwhelmed by the vulnerability of loving

Found this web page about Jonathan the tortoise, the world's longest living land animal, and it is a delight sainthelenaisland.info/jonatha

Related, feel like we should be talking more about the fact Ron Perlman's IG handle is "perlmutations"

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My favorite part of academia is spending a lot of time developing comprehensive and detailed grant proposals that demonstrate I'm doing groundbreaking work but also the grant cannot pay me a stipend of more than thirty thousand dollars

someone online once described Tommy Wiseau as a Belgian cyborg

Tiny Awards is a new effort to celebrate the best of the "small, playful, and heartfelt web” made in the last year. As part of the selection committee, I helped narrow the ~300 nominees down to 16 finalists, and now you decide who wins. I wrote a little about each site here— voting’s open until July 20! https://waxy.org/2023/07/vote-on-the-tiny-awards/

For years we thought Kitty was afraid of/physically unable to get into the bathtub and last night during the thunderstorm she just got into the tub like it was no big deal??

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Horsin' Around

This is a hometown instance run by Sam and Ingrid, for some friends.