I had to lay out my thoughts to traverse my history with digital photography and why I find myself working on photo tools again. There are good reasons to be working on @aphera.

https://nazhamid.com/journal/the-items-we-carry-now/

ohhhh crying in the libraryyyyyyyy

A student in their final semester who has been checking out a laptop from us every week their whole time here just came up to return, not renew, one because they could finally afford their own and they wrote up a testimonial to talk about the positive impact it had for them.

There is a lot, way too much, bullshit at my institution, but these little moments where we get to really see what the library can do for a person is what keeps me in the fight.

Donald Trump Is Waging War Against Human Conscience. “The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late — neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/14/donald-trump-plato-gender-education

What if the solution to stimulating the economy isn't an unfettered invisible hand, but actually a really boring stable and functional government?

Notes from @ernie about designing a risograph-printed zine for @404mediaco on a Linux operating system with the Affinity app:
https://tedium.co/2025/12/10/404-media-zine-linux-affinity/

It’s great to see more professional design work – especially print design – being done for real-world projects without as much reliance on the typical corporate technology configurations.

@kizu 👍🏻 NY Times does this if you are looking for examples

It's time to throw the line out again.

I have been working in SRE for 13 years. I am a specialist in Observability, Incident Management, and DevEx. I have also managed teams and been certified in observability, agile, and unix operating systems.

In June of 2025, I was suddenly laid off. I'm still jobless in my seventh month of trying to find work.

I'll be completely honest, I don't know why I can't find a role, I'm either over- or under-qualified, I either give too much detail or not enough, I don't tell it like a story or I tell it too much like it's a story.

The people I used to work with have been shocked when I tell them I can't find work. One of them even said:

"you have such a great mix of talents that I wish more engineers had, and I still cite you as an example of the type of people I want to work with"

If you know of any leads in the SRE, DevEx, DevOps, InfoSec, or anything of the sort, I'm still searching as hard as I can.

Remote, I'm in Southern California.

My profile on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcookedavis

For direct help, please buy my music:

https://craque.bandcamp.com

#sre #FediHire

@octothorpe It can have wonderful moments, but whatever you do, stop watching before you hit Season 7. Season 6 is meh, but season 7 really made me dislike the show.

What’s up with people who say “yes” instead of “here” during roll call?

My current theory: roll call is a specific and rare context, and “here” probably feels really weird for some people, even if everyone else is saying it.

@alienghic @noodlemaz I didn’t mean to imply LA public transit is without need for significant improvement. It’s still US public transit in a sprawling metro area with all the faults. In my experience, it’s not as good as NYC or EU system, and about on par with DC.

Free business idea: a place near every courthouse for jurors with a solid cafeteria, clean gym, secure bicycle storage, and enjoyable novels.

The number one thing I've been hearing from people in tech lately is, basically, "How the hell am I supposed to work in this industry anymore?" Though most folks are kind of afraid to say it out loud. So I wrote about how to think about it: https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/05/a-tech-career-in-2026/

@inthehands the biblical misappropriation is just wild with this one.

@fleeky we have heavily subsidized “dash” commuter buses. So I’m not being entirely fair as most rides will cost a lot more.

@scott @mekkaokereke @ZDL

There's this 2023 piece:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-03/los-angeles-public-transportation-metro-bus-train

which leads with this fairly positive review of LA Metro:

"I just spent a week riding Los Angeles buses and trains, along with 25 broadcast journalists from Germany, all of us in L.A. for a mid-career fellowship program. When I told my local contacts we planned to take public transit to dozens of meetings and events — three to four a day, from the Westside to downtown and beyond — they seemed shocked and offered dire warnings along the lines of “are you out of your mind?”

But their fears of lurking danger, little reliability and less comfort turned out to be wrong, albeit well intentioned.

We rode a big selection of Metro’s 120 bus and six train lines. With surprising ease. Safely. Happily. And on time,..."

@mekkaokereke @ZDL 💜 glad to see LA getting some love here. The bus to my office is 35¢ and is spotless. LA public transit is severely underrated and under appreciated.

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song.

here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

https://henry.codes/writing/a-website-to-destroy-all-websites/

Appelbeignets every new year’s 😍