(1) Sun Sep 07 2025 09:41 August Film Roundup:

• Grosse Pointe Blank (1997): Every scene in this movie made me happy. It's not the tightest screenplay, it's got a lot of minor characters and backstory that aren't relevant to the plot, and you don't need the feds at all, but all of it is fun and I'm glad they put it in. If the screenplay was really tight it wouldn't fit the emotional mood; you'd expect something more action-forward like Die Hard.

  Old video game watch: as soon as I saw the Doom II arcade game in the convenience store I thought "this prop that had to be created specifically for the movie does not bode well for this convenience store in a film that both critiques and celebrates action-movie violence." Maybe not in those words.

• Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935): On a slow evening I picked this movie for the obvious Lebowski connection reasons. This 61-minute film felt more like a serial than a "movie", though such distinctions were still fuzzy in 1935. Gene Autry plays a character named "Gene Autry" which I guess implies that the evil dad in this movie is his actual dad?

  I dunno. The whole thing makes very little sense, but the music was good, and in that respect it sets the tone for the entire "singing cowboy" genre. I would judge the old movie racism level in this one as medium, but I think their heart was in the right place?

Sun Aug 10 2025 11:20 July Film Roundup:

• Parade (1974): The scene: Jacques Tati is in movie jail after Playtime cost one gazillion francs, so he turns to sources of foreign funding. By this point—his final film—he's reduced to doing his nightclub act for Swedish television. There is some astonishing juggling in this movie, and some more of Tati's philosophy that we are all little kids playing dress-up and pretending through life. But as for the rest of it... "mime of sporting events" isn't even a comedy category anymore, and for good reason.
• The Phoenician Scheme (2025): Love the graphic design as always. The madcap, sketchlike quest plot keeps things moving. But in classic "Leonard goes in imagining the movie he wishes he'd made" style, the trailer made me believe that the titular scheme was to unite the greater Middle East into a recreation of the ancient Phoenician civilization, a scheme that would naturally have great-power geopolitical implications and lead to a lot of violent pushback. But actually this film takes place in an alternate universe where the Middle East has already been conveniently unified into a single* country as of the 1960s, allowing Wes Anderson to make his usual goofy Wes Anderson film without it getting all heavy and topical.
• Ocean's Eleven (2001): There is a Merry and Pippin in this movie. In fact, this movie's almost beat-for-beat the same as Logan Lucky (2017) which I saw first and like better. It's not bad by any means, just not as good as Logan Lucky.
• Superman (2025): I've remained aggressively normcore about superhero stuff even as it takes over more and more of pop culture. My takes are the most middling ones you can imagine. I liked Iron Man (2008) and then I thought the trend went out of control. I think Batman is goofy and that Batman stories should lean into the inherent goofiness. And when it comes to Superman, my tastes are simple: I want to see a powerful, well-intentioned person wrestling with the fact that enormous power and good intentions aren't enough to solve every problem. Suffice to say that this movie delivered.
• Ruggles of Red Gap (1935): Definitely not a B picture. Charles Laughton mixes a feel-good American immigrant story with a helping of humorous British culture-clash snobbery. Ruggles is a great character, someone who can deeply believe both "All men are created equal" and "Blood will tell". The book is on Project Gutenberg if you want more of that style of humor.
• Ragtag (2023): I have a fondness for films that are supercuts of clips from other films. Though it's becoming really easy to put such films together without doing any substantive creative work, so as a viewer you gotta be careful. In The Afterlight (2021) the idea was to show the same kind of scene from many different movies. Here it's more like stretching video out, playing it back and forth, turning cinema into something closer to an animated GIF.

  Also like The Afterlight, Ragtag was born of a director deciding to watch a ton of movies during lockdown. And presumably torrenting them all because how else are you going to get all that footage into Final Cut Pro? Hey, I'm not judging.

• Born Yesterday (1950): Continuing our Holliday holiday with this lighthearted tale of political corruption. I hypothesized this in an earlier review, but Holliday's character in this one is a direct antecedent to Elle in Legally Blonde: a smart person who's never had to be smart before. Really enjoyable.

Sun Jul 06 2025 09:03 June Film Roundup:

• The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956): Another film where Judy Holliday brasses her way into getting what she wants because she's worth it. Her film persona is often described as a "ditz". I haven't seen Born Yesterday, whose title implies it has something to say on the issue, but I feel like that's not quite right, or maybe the meaning of "ditz" has changed over the years.

  I feel like "ditz" implies a level of absent-mindedness, like Lucy Ricardo. But so far the distinguishing feature of Judy Holliday's characters is that they believe women are equal to men. Not in an overtly militant way, just always acting from a position of equality with all other human beings. The world throws a lot of bullshit in their path to try to dissuade them from this attitude, but they ignore or plow through it. A more recent version of this character might be Elle from Legally Blonde (2001).

  You could say that this belief is fine in 2001 but naive in 1956, and Laura in The Solid Gold Cadillac is pretty easy to manipulate, which I guess is where "ditz" comes from. But since these are feel-good comedies and not the real 1950s, Laura's stubbornness wins through and she is proven correct. So really, she has an accurate view of the universe in which she lives.

• Three Ages (1923): Sort of a proto-History of the World, Part I but I didn't like that movie very much either. Some slapstick, a couple of great stunts, a soupçon of 1920s racism. There is a laugh-out-loud joke right at the end, but does this film really need to be four reels long? You're just making more work for the preservationists, Buster.
• Full of Life (1956): We're surely going to watch every Judy Holliday movie, so this won't dissuade me, but she wasn't very wacky in this one. It turns out her all-too-brief career is not an uninterrupted streak of inspired comedy chaos, and thus this was only kinda enjoyable.

  Apparently the screenplay was toned down from something more "frank", so you're left with a kitchen-sink dramedy that's extremely tame by today's mega-frank standards. Whereas The Solid Gold Cadillac still feels fresh, and It Should Happen To You feels maybe even more transgressive than before in its portrayal of low-stakes feminine obsession.

Fri Jun 20 2025 13:41 The Coffeeshop AU: My metafictional Great Gatsby fanfic "The Coffeeshop AU" is published in Solsitita issue #3, the appropriately named "Coffeeshop!AU" issue:

"He's in love with Daisy," said Jordan, with as much certainty as if she'd added the tags and written the content note herself. "Maybe Tom," she hedged, "but Tom's an asshole. Daisy's nice enough." This belief of Jordan's — that Daisy was any less obnoxious than Tom — was the first of many alarms I missed as I dropped like a flipped coin on the unalterable trajectory of my relationship with her.

Available for cheap as an EPUB or PDF!

Thu Jun 05 2025 07:05 May Film Roundup: I've been putting off writing this for several days now, so short reviews written first thing in the morning will have to do.

• Sinners (2025): This movie has one of the best individual movie scenes I've ever seen. If you've seen it you know which scene. It's a transcendent standout in what is otherwise a pretty good monster movie. A little crowded, maybe. I liked the first half (talky setup) more than the second half (monsters) but I think that's how I feel about horror movies in general.

  Fun monsters, though. The vampires in Sinners are very zombie-ish, and seem to have some kind of hive mind, which makes them pleasingly Borg-like and also feeds into their creepy Manson Family thing.

• The Great Waldo Pepper (1975): Here's a fun trick: watch this movie and then watch The Right Stuff (1983). They're very similar movies, but film nerds still remember The Right Stuff and nobody's ever heard of this flick, even though it's a big Robert Redford action spectacular. That's because Star Wars happened in 1977 and changed moviemaking, and now nobody makes this kind of movie anymore, they only make Right Stuff-type movies. Waldo Pepper is full of amazing, ill-advised live aerial stunts that don't feel as exciting as they must have pre-Star Wars.

  Bonus: I can't think of another movie that makes you look at the title of the movie for as much screentime as this one does, because it's painted on the side of Waldo's biplane. This film is famous for coining the unforgettable catchphrase, "There's Waldo!"

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016): Speaking of Star Wars, you dig that Andor season 2? Good stuff. We did a Rogue One rewatch and it really highlights how much better Andor was than even good Star Wars movies. Rogue One feels like a rough draft now. Great art direction as always.

# 01 Dec 2021, 05:43PM: Another Swath Of Recent Reading:

Some more books I've read fairly recently.

Some time ago, while looking for Diane Duane tie-in novels to read, I found out that she wrote seven technothriller novels for young adults within the Tom Clancy's Net Force series. I've now read Death Match (I think reissued as Own Goal) and Safe House. They're a lot of fun! In particular, Death Match has some very accurate descriptions of what it's like to learn a second programming language, audit code, and deal with software supply chain concerns.

Once I heard that Charlie Jane Anders was working on the adaptation of Y: The Last Man, I thought "I'd like to see that" which reminded me that I might enjoy rereading the graphic novel. I did -- I think this was the first time I'd read the whole series in less than a day, so I followed some background details, visual motifs, and so on more than I had before. I cried once more in the last book -- oh how modern-day social media would have erupted at [spoiler]! Even though the TV adaptation has now been cancelled, I may still go watch the one season to see how they handled trans characters.

Also recently I read Alison Bechdel's newest graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, which was fun and funny and perhaps more personally relatable (for me) than either of her previous memoirs; I am attempting to get back in touch with the part of me that loves physical movement and strength and agility, and sometimes I have been, and Bechdel's journey isn't anything like mine but it still resonated.

My Lunches With Orson is a ride. Found via this Kottke.org post. Orson Welles, near the end of his life, complains, tells stories, self-sabotages, and offers a grudge-based history of a half-century of cinema. I will particularly remember the conversation in which he completely shoved away a promising opportunity -- that he needed -- because he didn't like the flicker of an expression on an HBO executive's face. I think it's kind of fascinating that Welles kept wanting to make work in film, a medium that required tons of collaboration, but burned bridges like it was his job. Maybe there's an alternate universe where Welles worked with a partner he could trust, starting in the 1940s -- someone he'd listen to when they said "wait, let's finish this first before you fly to another country". And I wish Welles, who wished other filmmakers would riff on F for Fake and borrow its cinematic language, could have lived long enough to see filmmakers do that -- once the means of production and distribution caught up.

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is thought-provoking. Each chapter stands alone and I'm not all the way through it yet. A quote from Andrea Smith:

...the [nonprofit-industrial complex, NPIC] encourages us to think of social justice organizing as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However, a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid. By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by millions.

From Dylan Rodríguez:

arguably, forms of sustained grassroots social movement that do not rely on the material assets and institutionalized legitimacy of the NPIC have become largely unimaginable within the political culture of the current US Left.

From Paul Kivel:

The loss of vision that narrowed the focus of men's work reflects a change that occurred in other parts of the movement to end violence, as activists who set out to change the institutions perpetrating violence settled into service jobs helping people cope.

Kivel's chapter, "Social service or social change?" has many good "questions to ask yourself". And Madonna Thunder Hawk's chapter "Native organizing before the non-profit industrial complex" has a thought-provoking case study of what activists using a much more fluid volunteering model can accomplish.

Road Fever: A High-Speed Travelogue by Tim Cahill is a fun ride. I enjoyed the suspense of "will these two guys break the Guinness world record for driving the length of the Americas?" In particular, memoir about a stunt like this is nice because you get suspense but you're not actually worried that they're going to die in the undertaking. Cahill's an entertaining travel writer who lets us see his vulnerability around, for instance, feeling insecure about his masculinity when taking driving advice.

We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown and Malkia Devich-Cyril is a small book I think I'll want to reread every once in a while. Like the pieces I rounded up on MetaFilter a while back regarding accountability and call-outs, and like Conflict Is Not Abuse by Schulman, We Will Not Cancel Us makes me aware that an audience is not a community, and that many groups I spend time in are not communities and are gonna have a much harder time meaningfully helping with accountability and repair.

Relatedly: Just today I ran into this reaction to highly populated online settings:

I think it makes sense to treat much of the internet as fundamentally adversarial, exploiting unpatched bugs in the human mind. Don't get got.....

Over the last few years I've slowly left all the massive public communities like hacker news and spent that time instead on regular video calls with distant nerd friends and hanging out in small communities that have a strong focus on actually making things.

and thought about this post about invite-only code-sharing groups.

Where do I want to spend my time? What do I want to invest in and build? Given that I'm going to spend some amount of my time in the ocean and some in tidepools, what proportion should I spend in either, and how should I shape and choose the pools I'm in? I'm chewing on this.

I really enjoyed Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown but only recommend it to you if you are, at least a little, a hippie. Pam Selle's review gets at why. I read this on a short sojourn in the outdoors and recommend that approach.

A great recent discovery: the fiction of Kate Racculia. First I read her Westing Game-inspired Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, because of this book review, and found it funny, incisive, moving, clever, really insightful about human lives, sweet, and celebratory of ridiculous joys. Then I moved on to Bellweather Rhapsody and am now reading This Must Be the Place. Racculia writes novels about knocked-around people who sometimes make ill-judged decisions and find odd emergent relationships with each other, and -- like Philip K. Dick -- gives us the interiority of those characters and makes it comprehensible and relatable. In every book, sprinkled throughout, are little articulate crystals about particular kinds of experience that I don't think I've ever seen another author describe. My old lit teacher Mr. Hatch told us that literature is about different ways of being human, and I'm enjoying how Racculia does that.

Another recommendation from skygiants and at least one other online acquaintance led to me reading Evening Class by Maeve Binchy. It's sweet and engaging and suspenseful in a soap opera-y way. If you like multi-perspective braided narratives, check it out.

I've read a few T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon novels or collections over the past couple years -- very solid fun/comfort/laughs, often centering on gruff people doing hard things because they need doing, discovering their own talents and making unexpected friends. (Kingfisher is a pseudonym for Vernon.) A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking is fun, and Swordheart to me is particularly memorable because of the pragmatic, sensible, helpful priests of the White Rat.

Some time ago I started Celia Lake's gentle magical romance Mysterious Charm series with the first book, Outcrossing, and enjoyed it, and have now read the next two in the series. Sensible adults making considerate decisions and planning and speaking so as to achieve tasks while reducing inconvenience and hurt to others! What a concept! Very soothing and recommended.

I thought I would like Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful more because I am rather a fan of The Great Gatsby. I found it a little disappointing perhaps because my hopes were wrongly configured (thinking that the author would find a way to insert this story into pre-existing dialogue without changing ANY of Fitzgerald's dialogue). But it was vivid and sharp.

And I read a bunch of the finalists for this year's Hugo Awards and to me a standout was P. Djéli Clark's Ring Shout. Harsh and visceral, didactic in the best way, and vividly atmospheric.

# 30 Nov 2021, 11:14AM: Sign Up Now For Free Maintainer Skills Workshops: Maintainers of open source projects often need help learning how to address issues such as "how do we recruit and promote project members?", "what do we spend our money on?", and "how do I finally have the difficult conversation I've been putting off with that one contributor?"

So, starting in early 2022, I'm running eight videoconference sessions -- a combination of workshops, training, co-working, and discussion -- that you can sign up for right now! OSC will "offer a limited number of places to leaders of projects hosted by Open Source Collective on a series of coaching, training, and workshops designed to work through these issues and to begin building a library of documentation." OSC is sponsoring this so it'll be free of cost to participants.

You're eligible if you are part of an open source project fiscally hosted by Open Source Collective. And in the sign-up form you can mention what challenges you're currently facing, and what problems you're looking to solve, so we can customize the topics we cover and the session structures we use.

If you're eligible and interested, please sign up by about December 9th, so we can start scheduling.

Edited to answer common questions: I anticipate that these won't be recorded, but I will be developing documents/resources based on the sessions and OSC will publish those under an open license.

And, in case you're interested, but not affiliated with OSC: these workshops are a pilot. Depending on how they work out, I'd be happy to discuss similar courses/sessions with other orgs! I'll know more around February (after we've done 2-5 of the sessions), and would be glad to discuss then.

# (1) 29 Nov 2021, 12:05PM: A Cool Thing That Could Exist: Recently I read Tim Cahill's entertaining Road Fever, a memoir from 1987. Cahill briefly mentions the news of Black Monday intersecting with his road trip, which reminded me that Black Monday plays a much larger role in Michael Lewis's autobiographical Liar's Poker.

Thus -- I am not going to make this, but some enterprising digital humanities person with access to, like, the Google Books and Amazon ebook datasets could theoretically do it:

An interactive way to explore all the memoirs/autobiographies/diaries/letters ever published for references to things happening on particular dates. So you could see a sampling of different things people around the world noted down on or regarding a particular day -- like, wouldn't it be interesting to read, side-by-side, what Jawaharlal Nehru, Johnny Cash, Jane Jacobs, and Junichiro Koizumi had to say about August 6, 1945?

If this already exists, lemme know.

# 24 Nov 2021, 10:48AM: Health Insurance & Retirement Plans For Open Source Maintainers: This is huge.

The Open Collective Foundation has just announced: "OCF now offers employment options to initiative workers—with health insurance!" As that page says: "Initiatives fiscally hosted by OCF can have employees, with access to benefits like health insurance. Costs related to employment are paid from the initiative's budget, with OCF as the employer." (Employees must be based in the US.) And through the OCF's benefits provider, employees can also opt into 401(k) retirement savings plans.

This is such a huge step forward for open source sustainability, in particular for projects with key contributors in the United States. Let's talk about why!

Contents:

1. Open source and fiscal hosts
2. The United States, employment, retirement, and health care
3. What you can now do via OpenCollective
4. What this unlocks

Open source and fiscal hosts

A "fiscal host" is a nonprofit organization that helps out charitable endeavors by giving them certain kinds of legal and financial infrastructure and services. Here's why they exist:

If you start a mutual aid food pantry in your neighborhood, or a meditation meetup that turns into a real community, or an open source software project, eventually you'll likely need to find ways to take in and spend money without having everything go through one person's personal bank account/PayPal/Venmo. And sometimes you need a trademark to protect people against imitators, or you'd like for the domain name and the fridges and the storage unit to actually be held by the group and not just the founder.

In the United States, this means creating or getting help from a "legal entity" -- a corporation or some other organization that is registered with the government. And if you want to ask for donations or apply for grant funding, people often expect or require that your organization is a registered charity, often referred to as a "501(c)3", which means that donors can deduct their donations from the yearly taxes they pay.

It is hard and annoying to set up a 501(c)3 organization! You probably need to pay a lawyer and accountant to do bits of startup paperwork, appoint a board of trustees and have regular meetings, and so on. Sometimes this burden is way more than volunteers want to take on -- and if you mess up the recordkeeping and fall behind in tax filings, it's a real headache to catch up.

So some nonprofit organizations offer "fiscal host" (also known as "fiscal sponsor") services. Just like it's a big pain to set up your own datacenter and so a lot of people instead rent server time from Amazon Web Services or Heroku, a lot of small projects get a membership with a fiscal host to get access to legal and financial infrastructure. In this analogy it's like getting a dorm room instead of building a stately manor. The fiscal host covers its own costs by taking a percentage of donations given to member projects.

In the arts, a popular fiscal host is Fractured Atlas. In open source software, you'll see NumFOCUS, Software Freedom Conservancy, and others.

Open Collective is particularly interesting here because its fiscal host service is fairly turnkey -- the application process is pretty streamlined -- and because a fiscal host within it, Open Source Collective, serves as fiscal host to nearly three thousand open source software projects. I would be surprised if there's another fiscal host out there that supports more.

The United States, employment, retirement, and health care

Your open source software project, once you're set up as a member project at a fiscal host, can now receive and spend funds. Great! So you can register domains, buy AWS credits and laptops and plane tickets, pay contractors...

Right, yes, you can compensate people for their labor, but in the US, the way you compensate them gets complicated. Because it's fairly easy to hire someone as a contractor ("freelancer"), but hard to hire them as an employee. And to talk about the difference I need to talk about how weird the United States is. In short: being hired as a "full-time" employee (usually at least 30 hours of work per week) usually gets a knowledge worker (such as a programmer) a lot of concrete benefits that would be unavailable, inconvenient, or more expensive if they were hired as a contractor, in particular concerning health care and saving for retirement. If you've been in the US workforce for several years you can probably skip this.

The United States, compared to approximately all other countries that have its level of wealth and infrastructure and so on, is completely strange and deficient in how we deal with healthcare and retirement-type care for senior citizens. A lot of this stuff is tied to employment here.

First: retirement. (I'll cover it first because healthcare will take longer.) How are people in the US supposed to support themselves after they stop working? Through a patchwork combination of stuff.

• You can save and invest "normally" in bank accounts, real estate,* securities, and so on.
• Some people get pensions (the employer keeps paying them after they retire) but far less than half the workforce can count on this, for various reasons.
• Since 1935, we've had the Social Security program. Starting in one's 60s, almost every US worker is eligible for Social Security payments, and you get more if you earned more during your working lifetime. Some people can also get Supplemental Security Income. Many politicians scare voters by saying that Social Security is in crisis and that you will not be able to depend on it actually paying you any money by the time you retire.
• Since the 1980s, under Internal Revenue Code Section 401(k), there's a special kind of account called a "401(k)" where a person can make contributions to be saved/invested towards retirement. An employer can sweeten the deal by "matching" your contributions up to some amount, such as $5,000 per year. A 401(k) must be employer-sponsored -- that is, you can't do it just by yourself -- and you usually only get access to 401(k) benefits if you are a full-time employee. But there are alternatives called Individual Retirement Accounts which a person can create independently. It's a bit complicated but, when changing jobs, one can often "roll over" a 401(k) from one employer to another so that you have one big growing account rather than a bunch of little ones. The money in a 401(k) or IRA account gets invested in a securities portfolio; the accountholder gets to make some choices about what to invest in. You and your employer contribute the money "pre-tax" (it's deducted from your taxable income, so you pay lower income taxes) and you can't withdraw money, till you retire, without paying tax on that withdrawal -- but there's often a one-time tax exemption where you can take money out to use when buying a home.

That last item, sponsorship for 401(k)-type account and possibly some employer matching for contributions, is basically what a knowledge worker in the US now expects as a part of an employment benefit package. (And I don't love it! I don't love being handed a bunch of poker chips and directed to the casino that is Wall Street and told: go invest your retirement savings! You're in charge!** But that's the current state of play.) If no organization is your employer, then you have to do a bunch of workarounds to get a similar means of saving for retirement, and you miss out on the possibility of employer-matched contributions.

And then there's healthcare. How are US residents supposed to pay for doctor visits, medicines, and so on?

This gets super complicated as you can tell by just skimming the table of contents for the English Wikipedia entry on "Health insurance in the United States". But to painfully summarize: instead of paying out-of-pocket for medical stuff, most people have a health insurance policy, and their health insurer decrees what is approved and what's not, what bills the individual has to pay, etc. And insurance companies negotiate down the rates for what they pay for stuff, compared to the "standard"/"out of pocket" rate, so uninsured people -- generally least able to afford healthcare! -- actually get the highest bills! The main ways people get health insurance in the US:

• A lot of people get a health insurance policy as part of their benefits package with their employer. Generally employers only offer health insurance coverage to full-time employees. A really good benefits package has the employer paying the monthly "premium" (basic cost of having the policy at all); a less-good package means the employee has to pay some of the premium. An employee can put their spouse and dependent children on their plan as well, for an increase in premium. Costs are going up and have been for years.
• Military veterans are eligible for some free services and some very subsidized health insurance through the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Disabled people, and people over 65, can use low-cost Medicare as their health insurer. Medicare is a program run by the national (federal) government.
• Poor, disabled, and some other people can use Medicaid as their health insurer. Medicaid is run by individual states and some of them have different rules for who's eligible. There's a related program called Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
• Individuals can buy insurance policies to cover themselves and their immediate families. This got a little more feasible in 2013 after the passage of the Affordable Care Act -- there are standards for the quality of the policies available, and you can't be rejected for having a "pre-existing condition." We talk about this as "buying healthcare on the exchange" or "buying a marketplace plan." It's inconvenient and can be expensive, but it's still a better bet than being completely uninsured in case something awful happens, and for many people it is a huge savings (sample horror story and open source maintainer-specific story).
• Some professional organizations have deals with insurers to help members buy health insurance plans for themselves and for their small businesses, e.g., veterinarians and science fiction writers, ideally at lower prices than in the open marketplace. Some of these partnerships only work in certain states, e.g., the Freelancers Union.
• Students at colleges and universities sometimes get health insurance coverage through those schools.
• Until your 26th birthday, you're eligible to be insured through your parent's health insurance policy.

It's way too complicated! Even people eligible for government-subsidized insurance often don't know how to get it! "More Than 6 in 10 of the Remaining 27.4 Million Uninsured People in the U.S. are Eligible for Subsidized ACA Marketplace Coverage, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program"! Costs have gone way up because for-profit insurers came into the industry and started raising premiums! We spend way more per person on health care than in other comparable countries and the quality and speed of care we get is less! And even insured people end up with huge medical bills -- medical bills are the number one cause of people in the US going bankrupt, which means selling or liquidating all your assets to pay your creditors!

And I haven't even gotten into the huge pain of choosing or changing health insurers and policies! Any given doctor, hospital, procedure, or medication may be covered by some health insurance policies but not others, and it can be tedious or even impossible to find out ahead of time whether a particular insurer will cover something! If you switch insurers, you'll sometimes have to find a new general practitioner or specialist! If your GP or a specialist stops taking your insurance then you have to scramble to find a new one! (Yes, this includes mental health practitioners!) This is particularly awful in rural areas with few doctors, or places where the only health facility around is affiliated with a religion that prohibits care that you need!

There's nearly a century of politics I haven't gotten into here -- the main thing to understand is that middle-class people in the United States are, reasonably, pretty scared of being really poor during our final years, or of being ill and really poor due to huge medical bills (which is way more likely if you don't have health insurance). And the main way we protect ourselves against those outcomes is by getting employed someplace that will give us employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and a 401(k) account.

If you make your wages as a contractor instead of as an employee, then it's harder and more tedious and more error-prone and more expensive to arrange for health insurance coverage and retirement savings. And you're less protected against changes in health insurance costs and thus against the headache of switching insurers. This basically is also true if you run a tiny business and are self-employed. And the precarity is particularly scary if you're disabled, or if your spouse or child has expensive health needs.

And so: if an organization wants to hire someone, to compensate them for labor, some people will only do it as an employee, not as a contractor.

But it's tedious and expensive to get set up to employ someone and give them those benefits, and to fund and administer those benefits on an ongoing basis! In contrast, there's very little paperwork needed to pay someone as a contractor. And that brings us back to open source projects....

What you can now do via OpenCollective

Thus: In the United States, the need for reliable health care and health insurance causes a tremendous number of open source contributors to have to take full-time jobs with employers. Sometimes these employers hired them to work on their open source projects, but more often, they're working either 0% or a very small percent of the time on open source, and they're working most of the time on proprietary software. So they squeeze in open source maintenance work during vacations, nights, and weekends.

A big focus in open source sustainability right now is finding ways to pay the maintainers. Instead of maintainers scrambling for nights-and-weekends spare time to maintain software, we should get them wages that would enable them to spend their core labor hours on open source maintenance. And though some companies and academic institutions are interested in employing particular maintainers full-time, it's probably more resilient if projects can take in relatively smaller donation streams from many sources, and combine them to hire maintainers.

But all the fiscal hosts and similar services I'm aware of that serve open source projects -- until now -- only let you pay contractors, not employees. They did not, until now, help member projects get employee-level benefits for individual laborers.

Until now.

Now, an open source project fiscally hosted by OpenCollective "can have employees, with access to benefits like health insurance. Costs related to employment are paid from the initiative's budget, with OCF as the employer." Employees must be based in the US. They're using Justworks, a company that helps small businesses provide employment benefits. In particular: 401(k) retirement plans and health insurance coverage.

So your open source project can gather donations via the OpenCollective platform, then use them to hire a US-based employee -- who reports to the project as a whole, not just one company, yet gets the benefits and at least some of the stability of a traditional employee.

Open source maintainers in the US now have substantially greater freedom to leave their jobs, go independent, and still protect their health and their future.

What this unlocks

Look at what's already happening with people who don't have to worry as much about health insurance. Check out Freexian, which is an effort where Debian developers club together and get sponsorship money, so they can each spend a certain number of hours each month consulting on really important parts of Debian software and infrastructure. A lot of those people who can take advantage of that are in Europe, or are in other places where health care isn't in question. So they can choose contracting work (or switch back and forth between full time employment and consulting, or combine flexible contracting with a stable part-time job) a lot more easily.

So now this possibility opens up more to US-based open source maintainers. We can better crowdfund and recruit US-based programmers and other workers to work on under-produced under-supported infrastructure, like Debian, or autoconf, or various glue libraries.

All the stuff we've been trying to do with grants, Tidelift, GitHub Sponsors, and similar initiatives: they're more likely to succeed, because more people -- both existing maintainers and apprentices willing to learn -- will be available to hire. If you run a program like Django Fellows, where you pay contractors to support the project through community management and code review, you can now expand your candidate pool and recruit US workers who want to work as employees.

And! we can better crowdfund and support innovative research, possibly in directions that big companies don't love. Indeed, we can better invest in FLOSS software that has no commercial competitor, or whose commercial competitors are much worse, because for-profit companies would be far warier of liability or other legal issues surrounding the project, such as youtube-dl.

More generally: any given open source software project that has a substantial user base now has a better chance at being able to hire one of its US contributors to provide ongoing maintenance and support. And so more projects will be able to sustain themselves with user support, instead of burning out unpaid volunteers and stagnating to a crawl and then a halt.

Some of this I'm basically copying and pasting from the "what if we had universal healthcare" section of my talk "What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?" Because this is, potentially, a huge step for the health of open source.

I do consulting to help open source software projects get unstuck. Sometimes I advise them on which fiscal host or funding platform might suit their needs. The advice to get set up on OpenCollective has just gotten more attractive, and I hope other startups and nonprofits in the space pay attention. Adding this benefit to more fiscal hosting or funding services would be a tangible and significant way to improve open source contributors' freedom.

* There are a bunch of strange financial and tax advantages to buying a home, so one way people save for retirement is by buying a home, so they'll own it free and clear after retiring and won't need to pay housing expenses. When we say "buy" we usually mean "pay an initial payment called a 'down payment' to the seller, take out a loan called a 'mortgage,' move into the home, and gradually pay off the mortgage over 30 years." Yes, 30 specifically. Employers who want their benefits packages to help with this aspect of retirement planning might offer -- as Electronic Frontier Foundation does -- interest-free second mortgage loans for up to a portion or percentage of a home's price.

** Daniel Davies talks about pension "reform" in case you want some more thoughts.

# 11 Nov 2021, 12:54PM: The Narrow Trash Talk Window: Sometimes I am playing a game in a competitive manner with friends. Our shared cultures sometimes include "trash talk," playful insults offered among players that are meant to express comfort and camaraderie and creativity while firing up the competitive spirit. I think.

I came very late to the level of security necessary to really understand and enjoy teasing directed at me. I remember a specific moment in 2007 when a friend jokingly called me the b-word, and I understood: Oh! He doesn't really mean it! And him calling me that is an expression of and deepening of our friendship, because he counts on me to trust and understand him enough to know he doesn't mean it! And I generally don't insult people (at least, not on purpose!) so that skill isn't one I have well-honed.

So, when I do try to imagine trash talk, my insults either go way too florid and comedic ("Are you waiting for the pyramids to crumble? Did someone dip your fingers in concrete before this game?") or too cutting and possibly hurtful ("Hey, it's really unlikely you would win this anyway, because you're starting from a poor socioeconomic foundation and you went to a bad school!"). Or it just ends up being genuine feedback ("You're slow because you keep looking for the perfect move instead of a good-enough one!").

This is not a particularly dire problem nor one I really need to solve.

# 29 Oct 2021, 09:44AM: New York City General Election 2021: A few resources that helped me decide how to vote in the New York City general election this year:

Candidate ratings by the Judiciary Committee of the Queens County Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association for judicial candidates

Questions around whether judicial candidate Soma Syed supports LGBTQ rights

What the five ballot proposal questions mean and who's endorsing what side of each

Who's on the ballot for mayor besides Adams and Sliwa

And a shout-out to The City for their mayor match quiz which helped me decide my vote in the primary (especially given the ranked-choice option)!

# 13 Oct 2021, 11:25AM: Some Recent Reading: I've recommended several short scifi/fantasy stories I've enjoyed by posting about them on MetaFilter.

In addition, here are a few notes on some books I've recently read.

I read the harrowing memoir Year of the Nurse by Cassie Alexander. She's a registered nurse in an ICU in Northern California, and her contemporaneous writings from early 2020 through mid-2021 show us the risks and the costs and the waste of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's piercing, edifying, darkly funny, sad, and a clear, loud warning about the damage done to our health care workers. Recommended but of course watch your own mental health while reading -- content notes for discussion of death, of course, and also suicide. A few quotes:

where's the drama in an endless cycle of competent people doing competent jobs?

(from early in the crisis): This feels a lot like being drafted for a war that some people still don't even believe we're in.....It's not going anywhere. It's endless. Like knowing that you're being chased by a steamroller and someone's gone and nailed down both your feet.

Do you realize if they get more than 50 cases in South Korea, they shut everything back down? They treat every life there like a treasure.

I can usually bounce back with a day off and gardening. But my bounce is getting stiffer and the boxes I compartmentalize all my shit into are getting very full.

Me, this morning, watching my traveler that I'm training pull out an old N95 to use from their backpack, because she thought we wouldn't have enough PPE: "Darling, put that away and WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA."

I think you shouldn't be able to opt out of a covid vaccine until you've seen five people die of covid at a hospital. Like up close and personal. Their last 72 hrs. times five.

[what she aims to give families around a deathbed]: enough time to say good-bye and hopefully circle around to the story-telling part of things, laughing about memories and sharing photos. Where it's not about the dying person in there anymore -- it becomes about knitting together those who will be left behind.

How are we, the sane ones, to take this? Knowing that people around us would gladly chum the waters with our countrymen for sport?

[her first time seeing her friends in person since February 2020]: starting to sob, "You all lived. You all lived!"

... since 2016, the average hospital turned over 83% of their RN workforce, due to a combination of churn and burn at the lower end of the experience scale, and older RNs retiring out.....We kept coming to work because we trusted in, believed in, and wanted to help our coworkers....until I and other nurses stop picking up extra shifts, at my hospital and so many others, upper management will never learn....

There's just going to be a gap of a few years in there, post-covid-times, where you shouldn't trust any nurse that's too excited to be working.

I'm still mad that last year happened the way it did, when it didn't have to. I'm mad that serving a mad king "broke" me. But mostly I'm mad that so many people died who didn't have to. 

An amazing read that I wish didn't exist [if you read this, Cassie Alexander, I think you understand].

In fiction:

I'm friends with Benjamin Rosenbaum so I was looking forward to his new novel The Unraveling. I had a good time but I wanted the constant idea-flourishing that I get from Rosenbaum's nonfiction speaking and writing (e.g., on college and on hacking games you play with your kids), and I got that in the first third or half of the book. Then, in the second half or last third of the book, I knew where things were going and it felt like a kind of familiar story. But it's an interesting read with some ideas and one character who will stick with me, and feels like it's going to be a 2021 must-read for people who want book-length speculative fiction that plays with gender. I think it might feel brain-breaking to readers who haven't read any of Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, or the 2nd and 3rd books in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy.

(Speaking of which, the last of those Terra Ignota books, Perhaps the Stars, comes out in a few weeks, so maybe I'll go reread the first one and read the second and third so I can catch up. I also saw there's a new Neal Stephenson book coming out pretty soon, and once that would have led me to literally take time off from work to read it the day of release, and instead I'm looking at this blurb and saying like "oh no are you a climate change denier now? please say no.")

I enjoyed the anthology It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility. Lots of sweet sci-fi and fantasy stories, some more moving and some more funny, starring queer people. For a taste, read Aimee Ogden's reprint "Venti Mochaccino, No Whip, Double Shot of Magic": "his coffee comes with a nice cantrip that'll help him send all his emails for the next week with zero typos and exactly the right number of exclamation marks." I always enjoy rereading Zen Cho's "The Perseverance of Angela's Past Life" and I had a took note of "I'll Have You Know" by Charlie Jane Anders, "unchartered territories" by Swetha S., "Frequently Asked Questions About the Portals at Frank's Late-Night Starlite Drive-In" by Kristen Koopman, and "The Cafe Under the Hill" by Ziggy Schutz. The most memorable pieces: "Sea Glass at Dawn" by Leora Spitzer and "What Pucks Love" by Sonni de Soto. "Sea Glass at Dawn" tells the warm and loving story of dragons helping a human figure out how to control a new talent for fire. "What Pucks Love" illustrates the worries and joys of a relationship between an asexual person and a person with a strong sex drive, using a telescoping story structure to lovely effect.

Speaking of happy stories, yay for romance novels -- engaging, sweet, attentive to interiority, valorizing courage and care! I read some Alyssa Cole (An Extraordinary Union: An Epic Love Story of the Civil War, Loyal League #1, plus Let It Shine which was more memorable and visceral for me) and enjoyed that. I've now started Celia Lake's gentle magical romance Mysterious Charm series with the first book, Outcrossing, and enjoyed it and will probably read more.

Division Bells, a romance by Iona Datt Sharma, stands out because it stars bureaucrats trying to draft and pass a bill concerning renewable energy, and goes into lovely detail about the workings of the British Parliament, and brings that signature Datt Sharma emotional texture -- deft glimpses of indirectly expressed grief and melancholy and attentive care and hope -- to a Happy-For-Now romantic triumph.

And I've just read a really awesome romance, For The Love of April French by Penny Aimes. Aimes is a trans woman, and one of the protagonists, April, is a trans woman navigating romance after having been burned before. This novel reminds me of Courtney Milan's Trade Me in its realistic treatment of work in the tech industry, and it reminds me of Becky Chambers's work in its lively cast of supporting characters. And it goes places I haven't seen before in romance -- I haven't read that much romance that incorporates kink communities and negotiation, and Aimes's work felt very accessible to me -- and I'm eager to read more of the author's work.

I am unfortunately not super interested in reading further work by Andrew Hickey after reading his The Basilisk Murders (The Sarah Turner Mysteries, #1). The premise -- people start dying during a singularity/cyberlibertarian/longevity conference on a private island and a skeptical journalist tries to solve the murders -- sounded great! But Sarah Turner's characterization is wobbly and the narrator's choices of what to tell us leave me consistently unsatisfied, and the dialogue rang hollow. I started to wish I were rereading one of Nicola Griffith's Aud books instead.

Ah, that reminds me: sometime in the past year I read Nicola Griffith's gripping, propulsive, addictive detective series starring Aud Torvingen (The Blue Place, Stay, and Always). As page-turning as candy and as deep as a meal -- stories of love, grief, work, sex, achievement, vengeance, cities, disability, and slow true friendships. Here's Griffith talking about what Aud represents to her. If you read the first two books then have a hard time finding the third, you can borrow Always via the Open Library (do not look unless you've read the first book, as the description for Always includes spoilers for The Blue Place).

More soonish.

Sun Jun 30 2013 22:52 UTC0UTC 20 Minute Croissant Dough | Edd Kimber | The Boy Who Bakes: Genious?

Sun May 12 2013 00:43 UTC0UTC http://www.geoguessr.com?v=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%3D: Champions!

Sat May 11 2013 17:55 UTC0UTC http://www.geoguessr.com?v=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: If it's in Botswana, we're gonna find it.

Mon Jun 28 2010 22:29 I really need to check my job at the door: ...of the bookstore. The other day in Foyles I had to physically restrain myself from re-organizing some Beast Quests that were in the wrong order. Tonight in Waterstones I found myself recommending The Sky is Everywhere to someone looking for a gift for a 15 year old. What can I say? 3 years in a bookstore and old habits die hard.

Tue Apr 27 2010 21:34 Overheard in Stoke Newington:
1:"The only good thing about David Cameron"
2&3 in unison: "There's nothing good about David Cameron."
1"...is his taste in music."

Sun Apr 18 2010 17:48 Whigs and Tories: I went to a "mustache and wig" party as a Lib Dem supporter, but no one got it.

Tue Mar 13 2012 21:34 Backward Thinking: When planning a Redbox return, I felt a fleeting anxiety that I had not hit "rewind" on my movie. That was a strange throw-back.

(3) Fri Mar 09 2012 12:37 On that note. . .: I'm back to the blog and intend to update more steadily than in the last five years. Among other reasons, I stopped blogging because I was overwhelmed by how popular blogging had suddenly become. Does anyone else get overwhelmed by the thought of an internet audience beyond a handful of family members and close friends? I like to be a bit more off the radar, I guess. But I'm back.

Wed Mar 07 2012 13:22 Dear Mr. Fellowes:: Is this Masterpiece Theatre or soap opera disguised in period dress? Downton Abbey, how you frustrate me!

Thu Mar 01 2012 22:05 First Sweat of Spring: I did some impromptu weeding of the garden today. Actually, first I locked myself out of the house and then dug around in the dirt while I waited for the locksmith to arrive.

(1) Fri May 06 2011 21:01 Ratings: "Do I make the best guacamole in the world, Mom?" Atticus asks.

"You definitely make fabulous guacamole." I assure.

"Well. . . I am for sure in the top three."

Sat May 13 2006 21:59 Obituary: Here is the link to Mom's obituary, printed in the Bakersfield Californian on Tuesday. The death date is wrong, it was actually May 5, 2006

Fri Sep 12 2008 12:51 Funny things: I heard today...

"There are nice ones and naughty ones like 'Hey lets make Icecream sundaes tonight' is nice, while 'Hey babe, I'll bring the nuts and chocolate syrup if you bring the cherry' is naughty."

"Can you believe I'm seventy and still wearing a g-string?"

"I'm going to choke on my ice!" "Don't worry, it should melt before you expire."

(2) Wed Aug 20 2008 01:23 Museum of Ancient Life: Yesterday we went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving point. I don't care what your philosophy is on how or when or why dinosaurs etc, existed they are still cool to learn about. I hadn't been to the museum in years but it still was fascinating to walk around. Of course my favorite was t-Rex and the giant shark. I still remember years ago when all of my cousins were in town and we pretended to throw Lorna in the shark's mouth, I ducked from the caveman skeleton that was throwing a rock, and Frances posed with the archeologists because we were sure to be related!

(14) Wed Aug 20 2008 01:21 Precepting: Newsflash... I get to precept this semester in the ER at Ogden Regional Hospital. I am so excited!!!

(1) Tue Jun 24 2008 00:07 lazy: I have nothing much to report except that I am LAZY. I have always known this, but I realize that I really just pretty much do nothing most of the time. I guess it's becaus I have to be so efficent at work and school, that I can't do it at home. oh well.

Current Projects: -catching up on my scrapbook. Doing ok except I haven't started BB season and I just printed 200 new pics. Yes seriously at least 200. I have an addiction. -Finishing my recipe book. I am frusterated because I can't find my 34th ward RS cookbook and it has recipes I need. Otherwise it is looking awesome. -Cleaning my room. Not doing so well, let's be honest. -Laundry. Hate it, need to desperatly do it. and for the love it's FREE finally, why don't I just do it already!?! -petting the dogs and watching TV....very good at this.

Random thought: I went to the movies (finally saw Indiana Jones) and there was a poster that disturbed me... "No children under 6 allowed in rated-R movies after 6 p.m. Keep your child safe." ummm last time I checked children under 6 shouldn't go to rated-R movies period. Not to mention before 6 anyway...

New favorite quote: "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

(3) Thu Apr 20 2006 10:20 PST School: So I am currently attending UVSC. I have had an ok experience and am ready to move on. Next semester I will be attending Blinn at Bryan, TX. I am very excited because I will be 2 hours away from my house instead of 22 hours!!! I am going to get a degree in early childhood education and am very pleased with my degree. I am currently reading a book that is called A Man's Search for Meaning written by Viktor E. Frankl. If you haven’t read this book, i suggest that you do! It has changed my way of looking at things. Take care Shell

(1) Thu Apr 20 2006 10:20 PST School: So I am currently attending UVSC. I have had an ok experience and am ready to move on. Next semester I will be attending Blinn at Bryan, TX. I am very excited because I will be 2 hours away from my house instead of 22 hours!!! I am going to get a degree in early childhood education and am very pleased with my degree. I am currently ready a book that is called A Man's Search for Meaning written by Viktor E. Frankl. If you haven’t read this book, i suggest that you do! It has changed my way of looking at things. Take care Shell

Thu Feb 07 2008 13:10 (Susanna Chadwick) Cookie Cookie Cookie!: I was going to go to the library after Maggie's nap, but she didn't take a nap, and also it is snowing and really blowy. So, instead I made Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. Cookies! If you have been blessed with one of mom's family recipe boxes, this is in there.

1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons flour
1 cup quick cooking oatmeal
2 T unsweetened cocoa
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
16-ounce package chocolate chips
1/2 c. walnuts, chopped
Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Beat together sugars and butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture until well-blended. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. Let stand on sheets 3 minutes. Remove cookies to racks to cool.

Susie the Chef says: 16 ounces of chocolate chips is a ridiculous waste of money and chocolate chips. I put 1/4-1/3 that much. I also didn't put nuts. Even though the batter was pretty dry, I felt like the cookies had a lot of butter in them so I might use a few tablespoons less next time. Next time: yes, they were very yummy!

Thu Jan 24 2008 18:32 (Susanna Chadwick) Yummy in my Tummy: I've been trying out a lot of new crockpot recipes in an attempt to make feeding my family easier, faster, and yummier. Yesterday I put two chicken breasts and half a jar of spaghetti sauce (Ragu was only $1 at Smith's and I had a coupon - I haven't bought spaghetti sauce in years!) and let it cook on both settings for who-knows-how-long. I served it with whole wheat pasta and parmesan cheese and it was yummy. Probably the easiest meal I've ever made!

I also made an eclair cake at John's request. I made chocolate sauce from scratch because I only use it for eclair cake and I am out of money in my grocery budget this month. It was easy and super yummy. I couldn't find mom's recipe, so I 1/3-ed one I found online:

1/3 c. cocoa
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. sugar
Boil for 2-5 minutes.

PS: I uploaded some cute pictures of the bug to our picture blog - click on "Pictures" to the right. And read all my latest articles while you're at it!

Tue Dec 04 2007 22:13 (Susanna Chadwick) Taco Stack: I was a good wife and made dinner tonight. This isn't the recipe I kept the page for, but it was yummy!

1 lb ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1/2 package taco seasoning
12 corn tortillas
shredded cheese

Brown ground beef with onion in skillet; drain fat. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and taco seasoning. Place 1/4 c. meat in bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Place two tortillas side by side on meat mixture. Top each tortilla with some meat mixture and shredded cheese. Repeat until each stack contains 6 tortillas layered with meat and cheese. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Cut each stack into quarters. I served it with sour cream and green onions.

Also, Tasha inspired me to make babyfood so I bought a butternut squash, baked it, and pureed it in the blender with a bit of water. It is delicious! Maggie liked it too. I'm not sure it was any cheaper though. I will have to try some other recipes.

Mon Oct 01 2007 23:08 (Susanna Chadwick) Apple-Cheddar Soup: I made this earlier today and it is so yummy. I think I put too many potatoes, because it was kind of chunky.

1/2 c. finely chopped onion
1 T. butter
2 med. potatoes, diced
2 c. apple cider
1 t. fresh thyme
1/2 t. salt
dash cayenne pepper
1 med apple, peeled, coarsely chopped
1/2 c. milk
2 T. flour
4 oz (1 cup) shredded cheese
fresh apple slices

Cook onion in butter. Stir in potatoes, cider and seasonings. Boil. Simmer covered 15 minutes. Add apple. Simmer 5 minutes until potatoes are tender. combine milk and flour - stir into soup. Cook and stir until bubbly. Whisk in cheese until melted. Top serving dishes with apple slices and fresh ground pepper.

Fri Aug 03 2007 12:10 (Susanna Chadwick) Fondue for Two: Last night John and I celebrated our anniversary at The Melting Pot. Maggie got babysat by a couple in the ward with two little boys and had the best time.

We enjoyed our yummy fondue meal, but it was very expensive and now that we've done it I don't think we'll go back. We especially enjoyed the dessert fondue. The waiter told us how to make the cookie and/or graham cracker crumb covered marshmallows (just dip the marshmallows in water), so now we can just do that at home. We were thinking what a fun FHE activity that would be to do with young kids.

Mon Jan 27 2025 08:45 I Am: Sienna wrote an I Am poem in 5th grade, and I did one alongside her.

I am creative and alive
I wonder what's for dinner
I hear the wind
I see green
I want happiness
I am creative and alive

I pretend to sleep
I feel at one with the earth
I touch soft, cool air
I worry it's never enough
I cry when I'm alone
I am creative and alive

I understand life is not easy
I say I can make a difference
I dream about packing
I try to be kind
I hope for happiness
I am creative and alive

Thu Feb 29 2024 19:37 Evolvtion : One of my favorite mispronunciations is Arthur and Sienna saying “evolvtion” instead of evolution, with reference to Pokemon.

Sat Jan 20 2024 14:28 Pigs: Arthur is going around talking about Pigs constantly. Asking me questions like “are you a pig? Is there a pig in this drawer? What did you do when you were a pig?”

(1) Fri Aug 05 2005 08:40 (Pete) The Eagle Has Landed: We made it. I'm writing this now via some neighbor's wireless.

(13) Tue Aug 02 2005 23:06 (Sumana) The Right To Bear Fardels: During a recent summit The Poor Man made some nonsensical remark denying that there's any humor in C.S. Lewis or Shakespeare. One of those half-drunk "contrarian = sophisticated" bits of bollocks.

In refutation, I've found my favorite (so far) joke in the Bard: Act III, Scene 2 of Hamlet, the bit about Guildenstern, Hamlet, and the pipe. Gertrude has sent Tweedlecrantz and Guildendee to check on why Hamlet Jr. is acting so crazay. Our goth protagonist asks Guildenstern to try playing a recorder.

GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET
It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN
But these cannot I command to any utt'rance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play'd upon than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Mon Aug 01 2005 12:37 (Riana) Geeks, Fire, and Dangerous Things: Seth and I were at Defcon in Las Vegas this weekend. Seth got our friend Praveen to bring Seth's giant Fresnel lens to the con when Praveen drove out on Saturday. The Fresnel lens is roughly 1 meter in diameter. On Sunday afternoon, as the con was winding down, we took the lens (wrapped in a black sheet for safety) out to a quiet back lot behind the convention hotel and, though the sky was overcast with a thin cloud layer so that we could not focus direct sunlight through the lens, we set some stuff on fire. Seth brought four pairs of welding goggles and two pairs of sunglasses for the group, plus safety gloves for whoever held the lens. It was about 102 degrees out, scorching hot even with the clouds, but before the heat drove me back indoors, I watched Seth and David Weekly burn a brown spot into the side of an aluminum can; turn a piece of wood to charcoal; set aflame and burn through a handful of dry grass; and light an onlooker's cigarette (placed on the ground, not in his mouth!). They also tried unsuccessfully to melt a penny and a quarter. I guess it's not as easy as I thought to burn through your money in Las Vegas.

(1) Sat Jul 30 2005 14:35 (Sumana) She's an ENIAC: From phone conversations today I gather that Leonard and Frances are visiting the American Computer Museum. In contrast, I'll be enjoying Will Franken's comedy shows tonight, whose most computer-related joke is probably his absurdist "voice command for file cabinet" bit. You can get a hint of that style in his "Show!" clip.

Note to local comics I saw in the back room of a pizza place last night: it is possible to do good spam and Match.com jokes. Please try harder.

Sat Jul 30 2005 06:15 (Pete) Mr. Joad's Wild Ride: Today Annalisa and I start our drive out west. On our first trip out, we lost a mirror in the middle of Nebraska at 80 mph, ran over a tumbleweed in Colorado, got our truck towed in LA because it was in 7th Heaven's shot, and almost rented Charles Manson's quaint Topanga getaway... here's hoping for a less exciting trip. Here's also hoping that I will be able to post while I'm on the road. California, here we come!

(1) Mon Nov 23 2015 11:04 Being an example of the believers (Timothy): I taught SS Lesson 41 the other week, which covers a lot of stuff (they all do), but I chose to focus on what it means to be a believer. Literally every time I sat down to prepare for this lesson, I ended up on a Mormon blog to re-hash recent events. It became a real distraction. I finally began to discipline and focus myself about two days before it was time to give my lesson. I was literally a wreck; I had no direction for this discussion.

Then I had an idea. On the chalkboard that Sunday, I wrote four names on the board: Nephi, Laman, Moses, and Emma Smith. The names of four believers, two brothers from the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament prophet responsible for re-establishing Judaism and Israel after the Egyptian captivity, and the wife of the first modern day prophet of the LDS church.

Under each name we listed their attributes. Then we had to collectively agree on one word that best fit each person: Nephi was recognized for his valiance; Laman for his worldliness; Moses as a lawgiver; Emma for her longsuffering. We then discussed that under the umbrella of attributes assigned to the term "believer" is the individual brands that follow. So the question becomes, what will be our individual brand as a believer? Will it be attributable to the Word of Wisdom, will we choose to be known for keeping a set of laws, or will it be for our zeal, or love, our compassion, etc? None of these is right or wrong per se, though there may be an individual answer that is better for us. The takeaway: play to your strength as a believer, and use your brand to make the world a better place.

This exercise literally lasted the entire length of the class, about 30 minutes (we were cut short due to the overrun of the Primary Program that day). I walked away feeling much better about life, and am particularly looking forward to my lesson next Sunday on the Epistle of Peter. Should it be successful, perhaps I will post more.

The manual, I might add, contained none of this, which is what I love. The prophet sets the curriculum, but I get to wrestle with the Spirit on the who, what why, and how (when and where are also outside my jurisdiction). It's been a great blessing in my life to study the material and try and direct the material in a direction that can be beneficial to many, including myself. I'm grateful for this calling.

(4) Fri Nov 06 2015 14:55 Why I stay: It's probably safe to assume no one reads this blog anymore, because I don't post very often. I normally find Instagram to be my safe place, because who doesn't love pictures of food, cats, cool scenery, and the like, without the vagueness, fighting, and incorrect doctrine that is Facebook?

But today something happened, and I feel like talking about it. Perhaps this is the perfect outlet; I get to say it, and no one will read it, and thus no one gets offended (again, a huge perk of not being on Facebook).

My Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has added to its handbook a new category of apostasy: same sex marriage. Now children living in SSM families cannot be baptized until they are 18, and until they disavow the sins of their parents. While the former makes me wonder, and the latter makes me curious (the who, what, when, where, why and how of the disavowal intrigues me), on the whole I've added one more reason to my list of why the Church just plain no longer works for me.

That being said, I stay. Don't get me wrong. I've often thought about leaving, if for no other reason than to make a point. The point being: you are wrong, and I therefore shun you. But really, that's a silly way to make a point. The Church continues without me, and I lose a part of me in the process.

So I stay. I stay because, despite this policy (the same policy exists for children from polygamous families by the way), despite the PR embarrassment we call Prop 8, despite the fact that we oust those that question things, despite the fact that Republicans=Mormonism, despite the fact that no one can give a good answer for why women cannot hold the Priesthood, despite the fact that I never knew until July that Joseph Smith married a 14 year old girl and translated the book of Mormon with a brown stone inside a hat, despite the lame attempts to explain the Priesthood ban as anything other than the flaws of good men, this is my home.

I currently have the calling of Gospel Doctrine teacher. Which means, during the 180 minute church block, I am effectively in charge for 40 minutes of that time, roughly 25%. I have spent the last year, during our study of the New Testament, to use this time to achieve the following: (1) Focus more on Christ and less on silly things that often takes up valuable church space, including missionary guilt, defending the family (whatever that means; no one wants to abolish families), and pornography for the 5,000th time; (2) Challenge the class to read the scriptures with fresh eyes, to see things they never saw before, even though they've read the stories since they were children; (3) Contribute to a class environment where their voice can be heard (ie, I'm a facilitator, not a lecturer); (4) Help us feel the Holy Ghost in class, and follow its promptings to be better people the next six days.

I personally believe I fail at this more than I succeed. But the fact is, I currently have the opportunity/responsibility to be the change I want to see in the church. And that is way more powerful than walking away and being forgotten within a week.

I also stay because I don't have all the answers. So while I currently am at odds on probably 20 or so doctrinal and/or procedural aspects of the church, I recognize that I could be wrong. And until I receive my own personal revelation on these matters (something I'm working on, but for personal reasons seems to take time for me), I just can't write it off. The truth is, despite these obstacles, the church has been good to me. I've learned inside this church the joy of giving, the humility of receiving, to wonder and awe at the notion of sin, forgiveness, and the atonement, and to find purpose in mortality. And while I know I could have learned these elsewhere, I learned them here.

So I'm sticking with my Church. Because I believe I have a part to play. I can show people by the way I live my life that the Church tent is big enough for all, that the Church is not threatened when people bring their questions or their baggage along for the ride, and that the Church can still be a safe place where compassion is the rule and not the exception. So I stay.

Fri Nov 06 2015 14:25 test: test

Sat Mar 01 2014 18:59 the 'Go-to': Everyone has a go-to phrase, something they say when they don't know what to say. For Mary Poppins, it was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, for example.

For Dalton, it's 'you're funny!'

He seriously says it to adults when they say something to him and he's not quite sure how to respond. It normally gets a laugh in response, so perhaps HE is the funny one....

(2) Sun Feb 23 2014 18:48 a funny thing happened on the way to the playground: Kids these days:

Maggie: I got invited to Ronan's birthday! Susie/John: Who's Ronan? Maggie: A boy from school. Susie/John: Are you friends with Ronan? Maggie: No, but he invited me, I think, because I'm a good example at school and he wants to say thank you. (Editor's note: Doubtful this is true, but glad my daughter has a pure heart).

John: I'm going for a walk. Maggie, want to ride your scooter? Maggie: No, I'll just walk with you dad. John: But it's going to be a long walk. Are you sure? Maggie: Yes. If I ride my scooter, I can't talk to you about things.

Dalton: Dad, I'm tired of being the cutest. I do NOT want to be the cutest anymore. (Editor's Note: Sienna is now the cutest and Dalton is the happiest).

Legoland is a pain because Sienna can't go on anything. Unlike Disneyland, the king of all amusement parks. The kids fight in line about who gets to take their turn with me. I may not have been cool at school, but I'm officially the favorite dad in this house!

(5) Sat Nov 21 2009 15:28 On death and dying: Nothing prepared me for the day one of my kids asked me why do people die?, so naturally when Lily asked me that question I was dumbstruck. We decided to buy the new Pixar movie Up. It came highly recommended by many people including Louise, who is a very tough critic. She rarely thinks anything is "really good" so I thought it really must be good.

Aaron popped it in for the kids. I was puttering around, getting things done, and still haven't seen it. It wasn't until the next day while Gunnar was napping, and Lily was watching it as I was doing the dishes. When all the sudden I heard this sad little voice and teary eyed girl peeking over the arm of the sofa almost begging me mommy, I don't want you to die. Why did Ellie have to die? When will she be back? I want Ellie to come back. I don't want you to leave. Why do people have to die? Where do people go when they die? I felt ill prepared to answer all these abstract questions in a way a 5 yr old would understand. All I could do was hug her and cry on each other's shoulder. I know it was wrong, but I promised her I wouldn't die, at least anytime soon. She was so sad and I wanted to reassure her and make her feel better.

Death is such a difficult topic and I think it is every child's worst nightmare. We talked about heaven and the resurrection and eternal families and I think we both felt better. It made me remember life is short and fragile and as a result I have not yelled at my kids as much this past week. I used to ask my mom what would you do if I died? And she would always say I would spank your little bottom. Death is something I struggle with and definitely don't want a lesson on it anytime soon. So the moral of the story is if you watch Up with your kids you might have to explain the mysteries of the universe with your kids.

(5) Tue Nov 17 2009 15:44 for your eyes only: So last week, I tried to write a health care post about my health care of all things. A couple hours after I had posted it, my brain reflected on it and I just about died inside to think I just shared with the world my IUD problems. I quickly got to a computer and deleted it and spent the rest of the night feeling sheepish and wondering if anyone had already read my open book life.

Today, I will give it a go again, yet this time about Gunnar and with much less TMI. Gunnar's health care. My poor little baby Gunnar. I adore this little boy. I could eat him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still snack on him throughout the day. Gunnar is and will always be my baby. This little guy went in for his "6 month" ophthalmologist appt. He was actually a few months overdue for a proper one since the past two were right before the move and right after the move and weren't proper appointments at all. We finally got the full blown appt out of the way and have been given two official diagnoses. First, our suspicions are correct. Gunnar has intermittent exotropia. Basically, one eye wanders when he is tired or not on his A game or zoned out. He can have surgery to correct it, but it really isn't too bad yet and the Dr and I both agreed that it is something to look into when he is older like 6 or 7 when "kids start making fun of his eyes in school" as the Dr put it, since his condition is very mild right now. Kids are so mean! And they probably will make fun of him, so when he is older and if it gets worse we will look into that, but for now he is ok. Just ignore his wandering eyes if you speak with him face to face and he zones out.

Secondly, his nearsightedness is now a raging -6.50 in both eyes. A whole 1.25 higher than last dilation. He's legally blind, but with his glasses he has near perfect vision, and it is very correctable with surgery if he chooses to get lasik when he is older. All in all, it is nothing serious. He is a happy, healthy boy. Sometimes, as his mother, I wished my body had been able to make his body more perfect, but there my vanity goes thinking I am responsible for creating my beautiful children. They are Heavenly Father's children and he is just letting me borrow them to discover tremendous happiness, and just a touch of torture.

But, there it is. Gunnar's health update. He is turning 3 in exactly 2 weeks so I better get onto making his well baby check up. Then we shall see how much this boy has g r o w n!

(2) Wed Nov 11 2009 11:33 Burr, it's cold in here: This is all quite new to me, the wearing jackets in Oct and not really letting up. In TX the year Gunnar was born, I was so excited to not have to be my largest in the summer. It may have well been summer because as I recall, it did not get cool until the day I left the hospital with him. Geez, thanks!

Oh sure you might need a zip up in the morning, but by 2:00 you were sweating. I literally NEVER EVER wore jeans from the months of May-Oct. For 6 months I wore shorts every day. Even in April and Nov, the jeans were worn intermittently. But for those 6 months I didn't even look at jeans.

Yesterday, to make more room in my closet, and because I have a large Rubbermaid labeled jeans and sweaters that needed to be unpacked (and still one in the garage), I gathered all my shorts that I haven't worn a single time in a month, and all Aaron's shorts and exchanged places in the Rubbermaid with the jeans and sweaters.

It's not that it has been too bad here, gorgeous weather actually, but if I am not dressed properly my toes and hands will be frozen by 4:00 on. In SA I remember wearing flip flops year round. If it was too cold to wear them, that's ok because I knew by the afternoon I would be fine. It goes like this in the winter-mornings and evenings it is cool. Midday is warm. For a week or two we could have a cold front and then it is chilly, but then it goes away and for 3 weeks you are left with "perfect winter weather" picnic weather if you will. And the cycle continues.

Now maybe I am a tad cold because we haven't turned our heater on past 66 degrees. Perhaps. We are trying to save money, electricity is a lot more here, and all I have to do to get comfortable again is vacuum. (Why does that job make you sweat even in the winter? You are just pushing the thing around.) OR my new favorite thing is what Aaron calls my Back To The Future vest. It is AWE--wait for it--SOME. I have it in a couple colors, and it's perfect. It keeps you cozy at the same time freeing your arms to do household chores without feeling constricted like sweat shirts or jackets do. Plus, Old Navy is having 50% off all their outerwear. (Ok, online they are not quite 50%, they are more like 30% off and they have half the color selection so go to the actual store.) Go and get you one, and if you have an Old Navy card like me, you can get it for another 30% off that making it only $14. It's that awesome.

Now I am looking for some rain boots, because every week it rains cold rain here ALL DAY LONG from anywhere between a day to 5 days straight. My feetsies get cold walking around with wet socks and tennis shoes. So if anyone one knows of awesome rain boots for cheap (you know me, it's gotta be a good deal) please let me know.

(1) Sat Nov 07 2009 14:53 Brisk: During my early morning run today, the sweat from my hands came out on top of my gloves and then turned frosty. I could tell because I was wearing black gloves and it looked like they had been flocked a little bit. Pretty weird--I've never had this happen before. Yeah, it was cold!

Sat Oct 31 2009 13:33 There were four in the bed and the little one said: I love lazy Saturday mornings. I awoke to Gunnar's noise and decided I wasn't ready to get up for the day and that I wanted to see if Gunnar was old enough to snuggle in the morning. Lily is at the age where she will lay down for a couple minutes but I didn't know if Gunnar "got it" yet. I went and got him and brought him in the bed. He knows what snuggling is because at night he always asks for me to snuggle just a minute so when I told him that he went for it.

It's seriously one of my favorite things to do is on a Saturday morning when no one has to be anywhere, just to lay in bed and snuggle and play and laugh with the kid(s). Gunnar is the most affectionate little guy. He leaned over to Aaron sleeping and kissed his cheek and said "I love you daddy". He then snuggled into me and said "I love you mommy, you're my big boy". He calls me that because I go between saying "You're my baby" or more lately "You're my big boy" so now he calls me his big boy too. He knows the difference between boys and girls which makes it that much funnier to hear him say it.

Gunnar leaned over and was pointing to my eyes and said "eww, what's that brown stuff?" I had a little smudged eye liner on from the night before that didn't wash off and he goes "that's disgusting." lol little noodge. Lily woke up finally and came in. Then I got to really snuggle-this girl knows how to spoon. It was the complete family, all four of us in the bed spending time together. It was a great way to start off the day.