07 Dec 2020, 7:55 a.m.

Reflecting on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The other night I watched two films in a row: Knock Down The House, the documentary about four progressive candidates running to unseat Democratic incumbents in the 2018 US election, and Douglas, Hannah Gadsby's comedy …

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02 Dec 2020, 17:35 p.m.

Ashwatthama (The Elephant)

I read the comic book version of the Mahabharata as a kid (thank you, Amar Chitra Katha!) and many of its stories stayed with me. As I recollected in a newspaper column in 2005: Yudhisthira …

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02 Dec 2020, 16:24 p.m.

Getting Autoconf Unstuck

For most of this year, Zack Weinberg and I have been working on a pretty ambitious project: to make a fresh release of GNU Autoconf, a crucial free and open source build tool that hadn't …

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01 Dec 2020, 14:15 p.m.

Frances, Thanksgiving, And Potatoes

Because it's World AIDS Day, today I want to tell you a story about Thanksgiving, food, breaking and remaking tradition, and family. Caution: death because of AIDS. Back in 2005, when my now-spouse Leonard and …

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01 Dec 2020, 10:36 a.m.

Potomac Jokes

When my spouse Leonard was young, his mother told him a joke about President Richard Nixon: Nixon fell into the Potomac River and was in danger of drowning. A local kid jumped in to save …

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25 Nov 2020, 11:55 a.m.

Situation Normal Giveaway, Preview, and Pre-order

My spouse Leonard Richardson has written a second novel, Situation Normal! Publishing house Candlemark & Gleam will publish it on December 14th, 2020. You can preorder it now in ebook (Kobo, Nook, Chapters Indigo, Kindle) …

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19 Nov 2020, 10:45 a.m.

Thank You

Today I finally fiddled with the Universal Access settings in GNOME to: make the mouse cursor bigger, and add a contrasting outline, so it's easier to see where it is add a visible alert every …

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13 Nov 2020, 10:52 a.m.

It Goes On One At A Time

I want to tell you a story. It's about this year's election results, and it's about hope. Just a few days after Election Day last week, with only 58% of the vote total reported, the …

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13 Nov 2020, 10:05 a.m.

Inclines and Declinations

A while ago, a friend of mine who lives in Manhattan contacted me to say that she and her spouse would have some time off this week, and suggested that they come to visit us …

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13 Nov 2020, 8:18 a.m.

Stand-Up Comedy Today

I'll perform 20 minutes of stand-up comedy about open source software today (Friday), 3:30-3:50pm PT, 6:30-6:50pm ET, at SeaGL [as I did at GUADEC]. Watch for free, no registration.

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