All tiles are modular (like WordPress’ new editor). Some go a bit further, like these tiles on a sidewalk corner that look like LEGO bricks.
Author Archives: Kelson
When Local Rules Aren’t Enough
The other day I saw an argument that things like environmental regulations should be done locally, because if we don’t rely on the federal government, a change in administration can’t just roll back protections.
Ignoring the fact that pollution doesn’t stop at the city, state or national border, I can’t help thinking of crap like this:
California Escalates Battle With Trump EPA Over ‘Clean Car’ Rules
or this:
California agrees not to enforce its net neutrality law as Justice Dept. puts lawsuit on hold
where we are doing things at the state level, but the feds are still shutting it down.
Sessions, of course, used to be really big on “states rights” when he was representing a state, but now that he’s representing the federal government…
Not a surprise, given that people who talk about “states rights” rarely (if ever) seem to care about the principle so much as whether they can use it as a tool to interfere with civil rights.
Delicious Irony
While looking up importers that I could use to move various third-party archives into something self-hosted, I found an add-on to pull Facebook posts into Keyring Social Importers, an extensible WordPress plugin. At the top of the list of built-in services: Delicious.
“Hey, I used to have a ton of stuff on Del.icio.us! I don’t know what percent of the links still work, but I should at least export it!”
delicious.com is gone, but I remembered they moved back to del.icio.us at some point, so I went there, and found…
Yeah, so I guess that’s not gonna happen. It turns out I exported my bookmarks in 2016 (into one big HTML file), which is probably as current as it needs to be.
The maintenance page mentioned Pinboard, so I looked up some articles. Apparently Pinboard bought Delicious in June 2017 and put it into read-only mode. I know I was able to look up bookmarks on Del.icio.us as recently as January, so it’s at least this July they’re talking about, but I’m guessing the server migration probably failed and it never came back.
The Fanfic Connection
In an interesting twist, I discovered that there’s a fanfic-related history in the past rivalry between Del.icio.us and Pinboard.
TL;DR: Delicious was once extensively used to categorize fic on LiveJournal, but an overhaul left it unsuitable. (Among other things, “/” became an unsearchable character, making it impossible to search for pairings.) There was a mass exodus of fanfic writers and readers, many of whom ended up at Pinboard…and Pinboard’s owner put in extra effort to address their needs.
California: Don’t sit out the midterms. Check your Voter Registration TODAY
Californians! Today is the last day to register to vote in time for the midterm election.
Don’t sit this one out!
Even if you don’t care which Senator wins, even if the propositions are overwhelming…
We’re choosing the next governor.
We’re choosing the House reps & state legislature.
For Secretary of State we’re literally choosing between one candidate who’s touting his success registering eligible voters (Padilla) and another whose campaign statement is all about how he wants to purge the voting rolls (Meuser).
So get online NOW. If you’re not registered to vote, register before tonight’s deadline.
If you are… Check to make sure you’re still registered and haven’t been dropped by mistake (it happens!) while there’s time to re-register.
California Earthquake Alerts “Falling Into Place”
KQED reports: Pieces Finally Falling Into Place for Earthquake Warnings in California
We still can’t predict them, but data is faster than seismic waves, so we can give people away from the epicenter a few seconds of warning.
That’s enough to pull your car over, put down a scalpel, climb down from a ladder, get away from a rickety building or under a sturdy desk, etc. The tech is credited with saving lives in last fall’s Mexico City earthquake.
How I Use(d) Google+
With yesterday’s news that Google+ is shutting down next August, I found myself looking again at my exported archive from the network. This time I was less interested in the format (which has changed since January – you can export as JSON instead of HTML if you choose, and it includes media now), and more interested in what I had posted there over the years.
Early on I used Google+ a lot like Twitter: short statuses and link sharing, most of them short enough they could have been cross-posts.
After that early period I still mostly posted short items, but not as short. More like Facebook, really. I checked a few and found some tailored cross-posts, where I’d cram something into 140 characters for Twitter, then restore the missing words and abbreviations for Google+.
I tried using it as a blog. I did a few longer text posts and some photos, and a handful of galleries: A partial solar eclipse, Endeavour’s stop on the way to the museum. I contributed to a shared photo gallery from SDCC, and I’d share the occasional post from someone I followed.
Somewhere in there I’d figured out what felt like Google+ instead of what felt like Twitter or Facebook.
But most of my friends went back to Facebook, and the few people and sites I was still following on Google+ were also available elsewhere. So I stopped visiting, and I stopped posting.
From around 2015 on, it’s mostly auto-posts from my blog and the occasional picture that Google Photos’ auto-stylize feature actually made look interesting.
Ironically, I got my first +1 in ages on yesterday’s here’s-where-you-can-find-me post!
Update: Google has moved up the sunset from August to April 2019.
Yes, THAT One!
They really want to make sure you know which door to use.
The funny thing is: I still reached for this one (even if momentarily) right after taking the photo!
(Every time I go back to this restaurant I remember that I still haven’t posted this photo, and by the time I have a chance to post it, I’ve forgotten again. Well, I finally remembered!)
Edit: I should mention that the door has been broken for several months. (I took the photo at the beginning of August.) I’m surprised they haven’t fixed it.
Update (Oct. 17): The door still isn’t fixed, but someone’s added another hand-written note to it since I was last there!
