Bactroid.net

Productivity

In Defense of Chaos

I am an agent of chaos. When I first learned about the D&D concept of alignment [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)], I immediately understood that I was chaotic good with a strong emphasis on chaos. In high school one of my favorite quotes was

Politics

Why We Should Fear University, Inc.

> Rather than painting student activists as censors — trying to dictate who has the right to say what and when — we should instead see them as trapped in a corporate architecture of managing offense. Have you ever been to corporate sexual harassment training? If you have, you may have been

Too Much, Too Fast

> "I'm not used to seeing people's faces," he said. "There's too much information there. Aren't you aware of it? Too much, too fast." Some time back, GQ published an article about a man who lived out in

Politics

The Full Fruits of Our Labor

Be warned that what follows is undoubtedly socialist. This makes sense because these days I identify unabashedly as a libertarian socialist / anarcho-communist. Feel free to grasp your pearls, fall back on your fainting couch, and watch some Sean Hannity instead of reading further if you feel so inclined. When USians

Nature

Something to Crow About

The crows I've been feeding can now recognize my car. I've suspected this for a about a week after an incident where a crow landed on the bike rack of an SUV in front of me while I was waiting at the stoplight out of our

Politics

The Importance of Collective Action

While reading through the archives over at Treehugger [https://www.treehugger.com/], I came across this bit of wisdom that I think has broader applications than just environmentalism and global climate change: > Inevitably, if we look solely at 'impacts' and 'footprints'—be they personal, or

Do They Owe Us A Living?

I decided to treat myself to a special birthday present this year. Those of you who have known for a long time know that the punk band Crass has been a constant in my life since high school when my friend Tyson let me borrow a CD of their album

Nature

Wild Adventures at the Haskell Hacienda

While Allyson was getting coffee with friends, a high school girl came to my front door very upset. She was trying to sell magazines, but she just saw a baby raccoon fall out of a tree in our neighbor's yard. She asked me to come take a look.

Our Daily Bread

This morning, for the first time in years, I decided to make bread. I love making bread because, more than anything else you can cook, it feels like making something out of nothing. Flour, yeast, water, salt, and a little patience and hard work will make a loaf of bread

Politics

Liberation

For me, the week started on Dr. King's birthday. I found myself pondering the frightening level of inequality in the nation I call home. Black folks are over five times more likely to be put in jails and prisons than their white peers. Whiteness is still the standard

Open the Pod Bay Doors

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there's an extended sequence where HAL, the artificial intelligence on the spaceship, is malfunctioning and is making some really terrible decisions, and arguably the worst part is that everyone involved in the story understands that HAL is malfunctioning. As a reader (or viewer,

Religion/Spirituality

The Reason for the Season

The winter solstice is once again upon us. For our ancestors, the solstice was a remarkable day. Over the course of the year, the sun slowly wanders through the sky if you keep track of its position at the same time every day. On the winter solstice, the sun is

Religion/Spirituality

Ending with the Beginning in Mind

A little over a year ago, I started personal quest to discover and write down my personal religious beliefs. I've certainly written about this publicly, but I've also filled three entire journals and even more text files on the computer with intense self-reflection and private thoughts.

Programming

Why Deadlines Need to Drop Dead

> Implement continuous delivery, and when somebody asks you when your product will ship, you can tell them, “we shipped this morning. We’re shipping again tomorrow. When will we ship a specific feature?” You know the answer to that one, right? “When it’s done.” Why Deadlines Need to

Religion/Spirituality

The Wisdom of Broken Water Heaters

Our water heater apparently broke sometime in the course of the day yesterday. This lead to water dripping from the laundry closet through the walls and floors somehow and out into the main area. We now have giant fans and dehumidifiers in two areas of the house. The cats are

Religion/Spirituality

A Light in the Darkness

Last Monday was a full moon. Furthermore, it was a special full moon because the moon was especially close to the Earth. Because we love giving everything spectacular names, folks were calling it a "supermoon." As I do on all full and new moons, I conducted a private

Nature

Lake Eola Park

> Our fundamental, self-enforced separation from the natural world is tantamount to ripping a child from its mother's breast and forcing it to live on Diet Coke. (Dianne Slyvan, The Circle Within)

Politics

How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul

> The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in

Religion/Spirituality

Prayer

I have a complicated relationship with prayer. Even when I was Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition, I didn't feel at ease with the concept of asking a more powerful being to do something on my behalf. My view of my place in the world has always had

Religion/Spirituality

Subjects and Objects

When I first started the witch's garden, I thought it was my idea. I also thought the "goal" was to collect plants that were considered medicinal or magical. When I started the witch's garden, part of me thought it was a joke. I chose

Programming

Assuming Control

I just wasted fifteen minutes because I typed enrollment.course_id instead of enrollment['course_id']. I think Python and Javascript are fighting for control of my brain. #JustDeveloperThings

How to Email

I used to write flowery emails. Then I stepped into leadership at a local non-profit while keeping my day job as an application developer. I've gotten a lot more terse, and people seem to respond well to it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Greetings and closings are relics of the handwritten

Programming

When the Lone Wolf Finds a Pack

Just had an amazing conversation with co-workers about how our first languages/platforms inform our coding style. Some of us are likely to tweak an SQL query until we get just the data we need. Others cast a wide net and narrow in language. My major takeaway from this conversation

An Excerpt from My Morning Pages

> I'm told that there's not a wrong way to do morning pages. Something I find interesting about my own approach is that I really tend to delve into explaining an idea rather than getting caught up in day-to-day minutia. This isn't really a

Religion/Spirituality

Coffee Shop Thoughts

I have the day off, and that means I get to write at a coffee shop—one of my favorite things to do. I used to dream of sitting in cafés when I was growing up. I pictured myself writing with a cup of coffee in front of me for