Hang onto your butts! It’s the fourth Sunday of Advent,
and it seems I’ve thrown my commitment to thoughtful curation out the window & just re-posted everything Eric Bailey and Kottke write about.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: How To Celebrate ‘Carol’ Day, Which Is Today! A very happy Carol Day to all who celebrate. 👭
SFMTA board poised to approve another fare increase, by Scott Feeney. [The] overall picture was that of an agency staff and board alarmingly out of touch with transit riders, placing Muni’s ridership, reputation, and political support at needless risk.
The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course., by Jonathan Slotkin, via Eryn. There’s a future in which manual driving becomes uncommon, perhaps even quaint, the way riding horses is today. It’s a future where we no longer accept thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of broken spines as the price of mobility. It’s time to stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention.
This matches my experience with them in SF.
MTG’s Felony National Youth Trans Ban Passes House; 3 Dems Vote For It, 4 GOP Vote Against It, by Erin Reed. See also The Big Tent Collapses in on Us, by Katelyn Burns.
The ban has no hope of passing the Senate, but that won’t necessarily stop the administration: Nationwide Trans Youth Care Ban Incoming As Trump Admin Announces “Nuclear Option” Federal Rule and Trans Youth Emergency Project Offers Families Guidance To Help Keep Getting Care After New Trump Anti-Trans Rule, also by Erin.
I’m so tired of being ruled over by a fucktangle of bigoted know-nothings, inflicting their own childish insecurities on the rest of us.
Activists urge HSE to take action over trans healthcare waiting list closure, by Sarah McKenna Barry.
Texas Appears to Be Collecting a List of Trans People That Request Gender Marker Changes, by Abby Monteil.
Two articles by Margaret Hetherman:
- Texas Launches Complaint Form To Report Trans Women Using Bathrooms.
- Library Board Dismissed After Voting To Keep Picture Book About Trans Boy.
Playfair Pies, by Brian.
Several links via Eric Bailey:
Freakpages is a community-curated directory of esoteric articles across the internet,
- The Rise And Fall of Queer Cartoons, by Gareth Watkins.
- “Gosh, It’s Beautiful.” How did a boring Nintendo game from 1987 become the most coveted cartridge ever?, by Justin Heckert.
- During Helene, I Just Wanted a Plain Text Website, by Josh Winn.
Stuff I built just for me in 2025, by Gina Trapani, also via Karl. This year I’ve been having a blast programming again and I’ve really embraced the idea: Software is useful even if it has just one user.
Why Do You Need Big Tech for Your SSG?, by Kev Quirk, via Karl.
A small fix, by James. Hear, hear! This links to a piece of his from last year that’s also well worth a read: the joy of incremental website improvements. Also by James: The indie web in 2030.
antonmedv/ is a static page generator for [Git] repos
.
How I wrote JustHTML using coding agents, by Emil Stenström. GH: EmilStenstrom/. See also JustHTML is a fascinating example of vibe engineering in action, by Simon Willison.
Several links via Leah:
- FreeBSD 15.0 is out!
- moss a
Rust Linux-compatible kernel.
- Wanix is
a virtual environment kit for the local-first web, inspired by Plan 9.
How We Lost Communication to Entertainment, by Lionel Dricot.
時事通信：ローマ字新表記、２２日告示 約７０年ぶり改定、ヘボン式基本に。
(en: Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years.)
As a native English speaker, I find ヘボン式 more intuitive than 訓令式, but I can certainly see how others could prefer the latter. As an aside, it’s too bad that BCP 47 language tags can’t distinguish between Hepburn and Kunrei romanizations: both are ja-Latn.
(No, private use subtags aren’t a great work-around, as they can’t be used with the :lang() selector.)
The Lies and Falsifications of Oliver Sacks, by Kottke. Honestly shocking.
Rob Reiner was a master who didn’t care if you noticed, by Alan Sepinwall, via Kottke.
America Is an Unserious Country Filled With Unserious People , by Jonathan V. Last, also via Kottke.
The ethnic cleansing of the United States will destroy it, by Heba Gowayed, also via Kottke.
Finally, although they do not name any states that might threaten America, the authors do focus on one enemy ideology. It is not Chinese communism, Russian autocracy, or Islamic extremism but rather European liberal democracy. This is what this radical faction really fears: people who talk about transparency, accountability, civil rights, and the rule of law. Not coincidentally, these are the same people whom the MAGA ideologues hate and dislike at home, the same people who are fighting to prevent MAGA from redefining the United States as a white ethnostate, who oppose the corruption of America’s democratic institutions, and who object when Trump’s friends, family, and tech allies redirect U.S. foreign policy to benefit their private interests.
Debate: Is Trump a viable mediator for peace [in Ukraine]?, by Tim Mak and Steven Moore.
FBI Making List of American “Extremists,” Leaked Memo Reveals, by Ken Klippenstein. The target is those expressing
opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,
as well as anti-Americanism,
anti-capitalism,
and anti-Christianity.
The politics of tedium, by Iris Meredith.
The ACM: Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications[…] will be made open access. This change reflects the long-standing and growing call across the global computing community for research to be more accessible, more discoverable, and more reusable.
Advent of Swift, by Leah.
Control structures in programming languages: from goto to algebraic effects, by Xavier Leroy, via Karl.
Bostonian Born Again Upon Introduction to Euchre, by Kirk Woodlawn. It’s been so long since college I can’t remember if Sheehe ever successfully got me to play it.
The 2025 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog, by Drew Magary, via jæ.