Retired DevOps/CSE student. Bay Area burnout to Central Phoenix. Also: things urban, politics, world events, tech, nature, poverty/blight, design, history, etc

Eastlake, Phoenix, AZ
Joined January 2022
Someday these ships of death will be investigated.
It would not surprise me at all if China were manipulating the US drug appetite to deliberately destabilize Latin America and foment quasi-socialist decay-revolutions across the Pacific.
1
313
Gay Halloween plans be like:
Trump: Three guys. I won't get into the best looking—But they were massive, beautiful, handsome
2
13
247
6,683
🫠
8
2
19
1,487
201
13,687
779
126,897
5,167,645
Almost 100% chance of snowboarding this year.
1
53
Replying to @paulesq711
Say bork multiple times in a row
1
2
44
Democrats blocked Robert Bork from getting confirmed to the Supreme Court. After that, Ronald Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy, who would go on to author the gay rights cases we know and love: Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges.
Democrats did nothing for gay marriage. It was achieved entirely thanks to individuals pursuing equal protection plans through the federal courts
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
4 of 5 Obergefell SCOTUS Justices were appointed by Clinton and Obama. The 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, signed by Biden, also protects gay marriage if it is overturned D State Legislatures have also passed laws on the state level (e.g. NY 2011 Marriage Equality Act) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefel… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_f… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_… app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?Bi…
2
1
24
755
Which Midwest city has the best flag?
700
67
247
2,768
364,366
I like how they added "peel like you mean it" because of the garbage manufacture of the codes. Really makes trying to get a code off a soda cup worth it for that 1 in 1 trillion chance (just about) to win something.
I remember being so excited as a kid to rip off a @McDonalds monopoly piece and see if I won anything. Now you can’t see what you won unless you download the app. What happened to fun and whimsy in the world? My child can’t download an app!
1
1
84
Why do tinfoil hats look like that with that stupid stem. I would probably not mind a tinfoil derby, cavalry hat, or even possibly a sombrero. I would of course have to step up the rest of my outfit to match.
34
These are the people that stole Win-\d{4} and weird encodings like ShiftJIS like you. The world needs to understand mojibake again.
In September 1992, Unicode had a problem on Unix. Storing characters as 16-bit values could introduce zero bytes that C programs mistook for string terminators. Earlier encodings had compatibility problems of their own. One evening, Ken Thompson and Rob Pike went to a diner in New Jersey. Thompson sketched a new encoding on a paper placemat. ASCII stayed exactly as it was. Other characters used multiple bytes, without accidentally introducing null bytes or Unix path separators. They went back to Bell Labs and started coding. By Friday, their Plan 9 operating system was running entirely on the new encoding. They called it UTF-8. Today, it powers over 99% of websites with known character encodings.
32
Israel receives $3.8B a year, of which $2.7B must be spent with US defense contractors—a jobs program for a vital US industry employing Americans. $1.1B goes to Israel. Jordan receives $2B a year, of which $400M must be spent in the US; the rest is economic aid. Jordan receives more cash than Israel, yet Abu Al-Sayed never blames it for expensive groceries.
370
638
32
4,160
164,384
I was a huge Pete fan in 2020 and since then I've been disillusioned by his inability to win over Black voters. Ossoff, who I very much think can win in 2028, vouching for him is certainly something.
I like what’s happening here.
1
66
Snack-size does not need to exist for cheese. I will treat a 2 lb block of sharp cheddar like a candy bar and recommend more people do the same.
Idk if anyone else likes taking bites out of their giant block of Parmesan cheese but they now have snack sized squares of parm and I’m obsessed
1
1
85
i think trunk or treat is an affront to god and american car culture degeneracy
60
1,546
89
18,129
307,948
FACT: The annual funding Israel receives from the US amounts to less than one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget. Less than 1/10th of 1%. FACT: That annual funding would cover only a few hours of federal health care spending. A few hours. Yet politicians who specialize in scapegoating would have you believe that Israel is responsible for America’s affordability crisis. Like every form of scapegoating before it, it is a dangerous lie.
2,143
1,807
176
8,837
356,926
My favorite part of this amazing and nuanced article by @danwwang is this part about Taiwanese families in Arizona: "And guess what? TSMC engineers and their families are having a great time. In interviews, they marveled at their new lives in the Sun Belt — the large homes, the friendly community, the opportunities for their kids." I hope that Arizona continues to be a welcoming community. I hope that TSMC workers love their new lives in Arizona. And I hope that both Taiwan and USA greatly benefit from this massive new relationship. h/t @ThomasGalvin for posting the article. nytimes.com/2026/10/23/opini…
2
11
1
118
5,081
Polis/Buttegieg 20XX, the technocratic gay neoliberal utopia presidency where government has a form you can fill out online
The non-partisan tax foundation found that high income taxes hurt growth. It’s critical that Colorado voters reject Amendment 87 which would make Colorado the 9th highest taxed state. It’s not to late to vote No on amendment 87
33
Coates is a parrot who squawks whatever new bullshit wealthy educated people are saying to each other to signal class these days. That's it. That's his whole schtick. It's really as shallow and opportunistic as that.
One of my issues with Coates is that he consistently makes broad, sweeping claims without providing evidence or a compelling argument. Analogizing Israel with US slavery is absurd and sloppy, but he does it to morally guilt his white liberal audience. Liberals won't scrutinize Coates's arguments, because they don't want to be called racist. He also never engages with the arguments Israel makes. He immediately dismisses Israel's concerns and flattens geopolitical complexities of the conflict by comparing them to southern slave owners, which is his way of delegitimizing them. I also think he senses that the appetite for black grievances has waned, and so he's hopping onto third world anti-western sentiment because it is the new trend and keeps him relevant.
6
33
298
3,896
Israel is an apartheid state but the Arab vote can change everything. Make it make sense.
22
108
2
1,039
12,411