Improving your project's hospitality. And Angela Byron on hospitality in "The story of my first DrupalCon". An October 26th tweet: "We only solve the problems that cause us pain. That's why design thinking starts with empathy."

As you think about end-of-year giving, consider the current matching initiative from OpenHatch? Your gift counts twice as much before 24 December. And you know many folks have already suggested that you give to The Ada Initiative (see my posts).

"Data & Society" is seeking its inaugural class of fellows.

Oh my gosh, Wikimedia Loves Monuments and Antarctica! And look at pretty resultant photos! Speaking of Wikimedia and freely licensed work, I'd love it if someone updated Dilip Singh Saund's info on the Wikimedia projects with the National Museum of American History's artifacts. Perhaps I shall look into that the next time I am in DC.

"Tooth."

Why repealing DOMA matters to someone in your community.

A short new aphorism from Mary Anne Mohanraj.

"Why I Will Never Return to the USA."

Maria Farrell on forms of exercise -- includes mention of a hypothetical fart!

I am a sucker for stories of artists who also study engineering: "The opening night film was Chittagong made by first time filmmaker Bedabrata Pain, who was a scientist at NASA before he decided to become a filmmaker. In fact, he has been inducted into the US Space Technology Hall of Fame for his inventions in digital imaging..."

"This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition (Yoda Press, 336 pages, Rs. 595) edited by Vishwajyoti Ghosh, is not intended to explain Partition to a global audience. It is a book written by and for South Asians." Sounds interesting.

"What do you do about the existential terror that being a woman is ultimately going to cut the legs from under your writing career?" Relatedly: the "Girl Scout" tax on women in the workplace.

An African-American sociologist writes: "I learned, watching my mother, that there was a price we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging. It meant dressing well and speaking well." If you've ever wondered why some poor people spend money on status symbols, or made assumptions about why poor people do that, read this.

"...I and other people at SFLC started posting on on patient forums, and we were attacked for being so insensitive and trying to fearmonger on those forums because 'we don’t know what it's like to have a device' and then's when I realised that I needed to talk about my own experience." Karen Sandler, on-it as always.

Empathy CAPTCHA - source code, FAQ and usage instructions.

Doing the rounds in several of my communities: James Mickens's hilarious columns.

An initiative to start more conversation around mental health and the tech industry.

I'm curious about Mozilla's interest in building a volunteer system administration team (mrz in 2012 and 2013). Interesting - they have a weekly BigBlueButton open meeting.

"This is how I have felt ever since."

A guide to really bad ideas - in Python.

Margo Seltzer, founder and CTO of Sleepycat Software and Harvard professor, talks about her career. Great video. I have been thinking about her recommendation to have three major endeavors simultaneously -- work, family/friends, and hobby -- for redundancy, so you rarely have everything in your life going to pieces at once!

"I am not an inferior programmer for applying three times. I did it despite being discouraged because I wanted to grow and that desire was stronger than any negative thoughts I had."

If you have ever wondered what the hell should actually go into setup.py, here's an incomplete but a helpful guide, here's a history of Python package management, and here's a guide to the future.

I'm very slowly working my way through an algorithms/data structures textbook whose language of instruction is Python.

I sort of fumbled around half-understanding Python decorators, then came across this explanation, which helped a lot.