Mid-December link dump

Kottke’s 2025 Holiday Gift Guide is worth a look. Were I ever to put together a gift guide, it’d definitely include these objects:

Joshuvela’s Keyhook in Brass. I’ve had mine for many years and love it.
Toyo Steel’s Cantilever Toolbox. The perfect toolbox for a city apartment.

8 Kid-Friendly Christmas Cookie Recipes for a Joyfully Messy Kitchen, by Leah Colins.

Playing Santa Does Strange Things to a Man. What It Did to Bob Rutan Was Even Stranger, by David Gauvey Herbert, via Matt.

A wooded valley lies between mountains. A blue river snakes through the trees in the center of the frame. — The Snake River, Wyoming, October 2024

Also via Matt:

Running on Empty: Copper, by B, the Honest Sorcerer.
The Deep Dive, by Ajinkya Nair. My most capable dive watch, the Mühle Glashütte S.A.R. Rescue-Timer, is rated to 100 atm (≈ 1,000 m). I expect I’ll never take it any deeper than 5 m.

In New York City, Congestion Pricing Leads to Marked Drop in Pollution, via Don Moynihan.

A Very Big Fight Over a Very Small Language, by Simon Akam, via Language Hat.

Alexandra Pattillo asks: How Healthy Are Potatoes? (Español)

Via Erin: The neologism ‘necrosecurity’ describes the cultural idea that mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order. It’s got big Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice i am willing to make energy. Coined in:

Lincoln, Martha PhD. Necrosecurity, Immunosupremacy, and Survivorship in the Political Imagination of COVID-19. Open Anthropological Research (May 2021). https://doi.org/10.1515/opan-2020-0104

A dog with light colored fur is curled up on a blanket that’s a similar color to him. — Rusty, San Francisco, January 2021

Mitchell Hashimoto: Ghostty is now fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Force Remove Copilot, Recall and More in Windows 11 with zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI, via nixCraft@mastodon.social.

My 2025 with the fediverse, by 洪民憙 (Hong Minhee), the creator of Fedify, Hollo, and BotKit. Incidentally, the best BCP 47 language tag for runs of 國漢文混用 (국한문 혼용) (Mixed-script Korean) is ko-Kore. (If you know the run contains only Han characters, ko-Hani would be appropriate, but that case is exceedingly rare.)

Rethinking Mastodon’s post visibility UX, by pheonix@fosstodon.org.

Data Storage As Files on Disk Paired With an LLM, by Jim Nielsen, via Karl.

The Resonant Computing Manifesto, by Maggie Appleton, Samuel Arbesman, Daniel Barcay, Rob Hardy, Aishwarya Khanduja, Alex Komoroske, Geoffrey Litt, Michael Masnick, Brendan McCord, Bernhard Seefeld, Ivan Vendrov, Amelia Wattenberger, Zoe Weinberg, and Simon Willison, with illustrations by Forest Stearns.

Also by Simon: Useful patterns for building HTML tools.

So Many Websites, by Robin Rendle.

WebKit Features for Safari 26.2, by Jen Simmons, Tim Nguyen, Vassili Bykov, David Johnson, Lily Spiniolas, and Brian Weinstein.

W3C seeking community input for TAG appointments, by Yves & Coralie. (中文（简体）)

Why the UN’s Next Decision on Internet Governance Matters for Everyone , by Sally Wentworth, President and CEO of the Internet Society.

A man with a neutral expression faces the camera. He’s wearing a hoodie and a beanie, and has facial hair. Behind him, trees with autumnal leaves are visible. — Dan “The Liberator” O’Connell, 国営昭和記念公園 (Showa Memorial Park)、2013年3月

We asked critics from authoritarian regimes what they wish they’d known sooner. Here’s what they said, by Danielle Renwick, via Kottke.

Via Eva:

[After] three years as [an FTC] commissioner, the way I look at the world has [changed]. I used to think that the defining fight for our country was between the left and the right. Now, I am much more worried about the money at the top crushing everyone underneath.

— Alvaro M. Bedoya, in How I Became a Populist (emphasis his)

A World Cup ‘Pride Match’ In Seattle Will Feature Two Nations Where Being Gay Is Criminalized, by Dan Tracer.

Several people walk along the beach. Beyond them, a wooded peninsula sticks into the water. — Waihī Beach, Aotearoa (New Zealand), March 2020

First Know Your Rights guide for trans and non-binary people launched in Ireland, by Sarah Creighton Keogh.

Speaking of Ireland: Transgender care waiting list to close due to resourcing concerns, by Sallyanne Godson and Paul Murphy. It’s notable but not surprising that RTÉ couldn’t be bothered to talk to any reputable international experts or, for that matter, any actual trans people subjected to NGS’s care. They’ve simply parroted NGS’s fundamentally flawed framing of the situation. It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible, after all.

transgress.ie’s statement (emphasis mine): This is yet more evidence of the dire situation facing trans people trying to access life-saving healthcare in the Republic of Ireland. The non-functionality of the NGS […] is entirely due to the model of care they follow and their commitment to gatekeeping our access to healthcare. [… The] government must take urgent action to ensure trans people aren’t left without access to care. [… We’re] deeply frustrated about how this decision has been […] covered by RTÉ, through the lack of input from trans people and community organisations.
transpridedublin also posted about this: Closure of the NGS waiting list [means] there will no way for any trans person to access HRT, if they haven’t already gotten a referral. […] No amount of money or staffing can fix the underlying issues of the NGS.