jmac

This is my third #NoKings march in #NYC, and the turnout was so huge that the route overflowed in multiple directions; I've never seen anything like it. Amy and I chilled in the park for a while waiting for the throng in Columbus Circle to move at all, then we scooted down 6th Ave a bit to find the march underway at both 7th and Broadway in parallel. The resulting human traffic jam in Times prevented any continuous walking. We baby-stepped as far as 50th St with our bad knees and called it good.

I just stumbled upon a wonderful archaeo-website, mostly frozen in 1999, and personally meaningful: https://www.mklinux.org

This is the homepage of MkLinux, the long-defunct but historically important effort to port Linux onto PowerPC Macs. A pre-Jobs Apple co-funded this open-source project as an experimental step towards what would eventually become Mac OS X.

It was my first Linux. And I remember in a flash how people would pronounce it "McLinux”, and how I hated that so much, arggh.

I'm a recent enough #NYC transplant that this phenomenon is new to me, and I look forward to its return. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/nyregion/nyc-parking-stickers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3FA.46PL.uQuuiUrDK56L&smid=url-share

Here's the NYT photo roundup of #NoKings, all across the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/us/no-kings-protest-photos-videos.html?unlocked_article_code=1.W1A.Ro85.nFGwqek5o9Kg&smid=url-share

Cooldown with a Brooklyn Lager at The Upside after an unusually heavy workday. No complaints. #NYC

RE: @maiji@mastodon.art

I’m really into this gradually accumulating thread of pen-and-ink Tarot interpretations by @maiji@mastodon.art

I wonder if I am the only person alive with the exact levels of personal interactive-fiction history and present indie-TTRPG study to always and only read “PbtA" as standing for "Pick up the Phone Booth and Die". Probably!

RE: @DemocracyMattersALot@mstdn.social

I need to push back on this one. Trump and Miller sending their goon squads to #Maine is no “Ha ha, incompetent fascists” joke. Yes, Maine is overwhelmingly white—but Lewiston, one of the two cities on alert, has a famously significant Somali community. In recent years this community, and the success of their integration as newer Mainers, has been a source of positive media attention. The Magas are well aware of this, a model of neighborly grace that they are eager to punish and destroy. #uspol

RE: @2600@mastodon.online

I have purchased my tickets to attend HOPE in person this year! I've been to hackerly conferences before, but not this one. And it's a 20-minute subway ride from my house, so.

I've been sliding into reading 2600 Magazine and going to local meetups and such during my increasingly long funemployment, so this was probably inevitable. Will very likely attend with neither agenda nor expectations, and looking forward to it. #NYC

RE: @ceejbot@toot.cat

Writing a cover letter yesterday, I got a brain-bolt to end a paragraph with “Ask me sometime to tell you about how I once [X]ed a [Y] using [Z].” This felt very good and right and I don't expect to get a callback from this one, but I do intend to keep doing this sort of thing.

The difference in my mood on days where I work out for 20 minutes first thing in the morning and the days when I skip it is just so profound, and it's not like I don't *know* this. It's like an inverse marshmallow test every day, and I get it wrong way more often than I'd predict.

RE: @jmac@masto.nyc

I enjoyed the lively discussion that this post launched last month, and it also taught me about the existence of "arch-style” d4s.

This immediately made me unsatisfied with the classic “caltrop-style" pyramidal dice I've been using my whole life. Suddenly they seem so resistant to picking up, so unpleasant to roll, and always a chore to read. I have never felt such intense dissatisfaction about so small a thing, the moment I learn about an alternative.

Anyway, time for FLGS shopping! #ttrpg

Every time @josephcox@infosec.exchange says "Marathon" in the latest @404mediaco@mastodon.social podcast episode I go “(Beeeww) DERRRN, DERRRN, DERRRN” because my peak shooter-gaming days sounded like a Mac Performa 6115 speaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlRM9-Rm34Q

Thinking about how on "Seinfeld" Jerry clearly went through the trouble of upgrading the Mac in his apartment from season to season, but never seemed to actually power it on for any reason

RE: @Aviation_Librarian@mastodon.online

I love how this photograph makes it look like Logan Airport’s runway is just a big ol’ pier on stilts

I can't remember whether I already shared this poster from the Raleigh airport last December, but I just came across it again and it still cracks my shit up.

RE: @lashman@mastodon.social

I am under the impression that intentionally word-salad titles like this are a thing in Japanese-style “light novels” and related media, but still, this one's still impressive to me

#NYC: The #NoKings march starts tomorrow, March 28, at 1 PM. 5th Ave and Central Park South. https://www.nokings.org

There is also a preliminary march down Central Park West, organized by the neighborhood ICE-watch group, starting at 11:15: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWZA9tqDvj-/

As with all the protests I've attended since last year, I plan to show up well-rested, fed, and alert, but with no special gear or props or chants or whatever. My calling's just to be present.

A nice thing I encountered yesterday:

I'm enrolled in a Zoom-based class about music and the Tarot, taught by a musicologist. Normally the teacher opens the Zoom room bang on time. For yesterday's class, I showed up a few minutes early, and instead of the wait screen, I encountered the teacher sitting at a piano, his back to the camera, playing Bach’s Prelude in F-sharp Major while students filed in.

No point or moral here; it was just someone finding a novel way to be classy, and generous.

RE: @stefan@stefanbohacek.online

This is the best thing I’ve seen all week. Be sure to mouse over the subway bullets, and try the "Bars" button.

Some happy vibes from my city to yours, today. #NYC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAGd9FOOc6Y

Twila feels very needy today, and has even now manacled her Maine Coon-scale mongrel body across my wrists as I type. But she also possesses so much wondrous grace that when I placed my full Dunkies on the desk a half-second before she leapt onto my desktop, she successfully twisted around in the air with only the softest of grunts to avoid it, instead of sending its contents galoshing into my keyboard. And so she gets to stay.

#Expedition33 status: Spending far longer playing barbie dress-up with my characters than deciding which actual play-affecting (but totally invisible) power-ups to equip on them

RE: @frew@mastodon.social

I like @frew@mastodon.social’s report from his own senior-engineer trench about how AI-assisted coding has transformed his work in the last few months, and where he sees things headed.

Of especial note: he sees more production incidents now, and attributes it to company AI use—not because of sloppy code, but because there's *so many more* code commits now, where (as always) every commit is another chance for bugs to get introduced into prod.

Plus his note on the changing value of ideas, within engineering.

RE: @mcfadden@mastodon.social

I think maybe the only holiday that online leftish people absolutely do have a War On is AFD. They don't even wanna rename it to Serious People Day or anything. It's just universally loathed! (And I do not disagree with Mr. McFadden, here.)

DId Claude Code recently remove the "prompt suggestion" feature? I shut it off some weeks ago. Since then, it looks like the configuration option has vanished, and when I manually delete the line from `.claude/settings.json` the suggestions don't reppear.

If so, uh, good? It felt bad, like an intrusive voice. Claude might say, ”All done. Do you want me to commit and push the changes?" And I’d think “Hold on there, sport, let me review”, while the prompt printed "yes commit it” in gray text.

RE: @acarsdrama@live.acarsdrama.com

Having most recently flown a 2-hour ORD > EWR leg that took well over 12 hours, uh huh