On minds, in my neck of the woods, are how a group of adults could completely fail at their jobs running a school district and a city. I live in Philly. The mayor appointed school board voted to close amazing schools that were working. It took years of collective parent effort my wife and I were involved in just to get the school board to mandate recess not be used as collective punishment and that after lunch kids were ALLOWED to go to the bathroom. For 3 years we knew there would be a massive budget shortfall but no one did anything so now they're cutting teachers even though city council (who also could see the shortfall coming) waited to the last minute to pass extra funding for a single year. Failure from top to bottom.

My little town has this cool container village of businesses and restaurants at the waterfront with a few rentable shipping containers for temporary pop up shops. So for the second year I'm getting my own little shop & gallery to show off my work for a couple of weeks this month.

It's fun to play shopkeeper for these days, chat with people, and just have a space outside of my home to work. It's also the perfect time of year where it's not too hot, yet the crowds are busy enough to make the whole effort worth it. I'm really looking forward to it!

I'm heading off to see my son for a few days; we haven't spent any one-on-one time together since last summer, so I'm really looking forward to it.

I watched Vertigo last night for the first time and I liked it but also don't fully understand why it is considered one of the two or three best films ever made. 🤷‍♂️ I also recently watched Hoppers with my daughter, which was better than I expected.

Last year I launched a daily word puzzle that's been finding some traction (I'm resisting the urge to name the game, to avoid accusations of self-promotion), and today I've been receiving some guff via email about one of the words in the solution (I'm resisting the urge to name the word, to avoid spoilers). I think it's a perfectly cromulent word.

I'm finally reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance after having it on my list for 30+ years. So far so good.

Oh and I meant to ask in the post: did anyone end up making something from this fantastic recipe thread? How did it go? (I made the focaccia.)

I took my daughter on our annual just-us night away camping trip last night. We started doing this when she was three, she's now nine. We hopped across the bay, checked out a lighthouse, set up camp, read, ate hot dogs, and played Yahtzee and Go Fish.

Then she made up a combo card/dice game. The idea is you roll dice, combine like dice, and then pick a card. If the card matches any number of single or combined dice, you get to keep the card. If not, discard. Most card points when you're done with the deck wins. We talked through ways to make it not only luck on the way home on a beautiful Golden Gate morning.

The last couple weeks of the school year are always such a liminal time; half of the activities that structure my week are over but the kids are still in school. It feels luxurious to have a little more breathing room in my schedule.

My eldest is twelve and a half now and something has shifted in his brain. He is actually responsible now! We are fortunate to live in an area where he can bike himself to school and to the Y, and he can walk to a pharmacy (to buy candy), the library, and a trading card shop on his own, too. Gotta love urban living!

We bought him a dumbphone for his birthday to help enable this kind of independence (no small feat; the first attempt still had a youtube app on it!). He called me from the library to ask when he should be come for dinner. He never would have thought of that until like two weeks ago! It's incredible. He's basically a person now. He used to just be a hungry, crying little lump that wanted nothing more than to be back in the womb where life was simple.

Also, having a twelve-year-old is great because you can leave fart sounds on their voicemail and be unanimously elected mother of the year.

Yesterday I hauled ass to Sonoma after work to meet a friend to watch the Sonoma Stompers play the Petaluma Leghorns and it was just the absolutely perfect early summer evening, complete with hot dog, beer, and a passel of little kids tearing through the parking lot to shag foul balls which they exchange at the snack bar for a small bag of candy per ball. Those kids were HOPPED up on sugar by the 5th inning! (Oh, and the Stompers won, 6-3.)

First time posting here. I recently got back from a trip to Colombia and took a lot of photos I'm really proud of. https://www.aregularphoto.com/a-regular-photo/colombia-2026

We're buying an apartment here in Mexico City and lemme tell ya — the process here is slowwwwww. Such a difference from the United States, in so many ways.

Okay so since Jason says self promotion is fine I’ll go out on a limb here. I’ve been having so much fun vibe coding pretty much all of 2026. A few of those I’ve made as little web, iOS or Mac apps that I’ve made shareable. I have no idea what the audience is for these but they’re all free. They’re mainly little itches I’ve scratched that I thought maybe if someone has the same itch they’re there.

https://coefficiencies.com/apps/

I am a big fan of Armand Hammer, the song "Charms," and it's unreal video.

I did a short interview with the director Joseph Mault. The making of video is fun.

I broke my ankle back in January (I hate treadmills!) and it never healed up fully ... so I finally had surgery a few days ago. I have to stay off of it (non load-bearing) for 4-8 weeks, and have been really struggling with crutches so far. A family friend kindly loaned me their knee scooter — it has already changed everything!

Long story short: Don't sleep on the amazing knee scooter!

Long story longer: I've taken mobility for granted, for probably my entire life. This has been a really eye-opening experience about how we navigate in our mostly bipedal world. I can't drive, I'm afraid of stairs, and I loathe negotiating restrooms now. I'm lucky that my recovery will likely get me back to 90-95% in time, but I will never forget how much I've taken for granted.

I left up our winter holiday wreath a little too long and House Wrens set up a nest there.

All five eggs hatched and the babies are a good mix of cute and dinosaur.

I have a home project in the works of building some cabinets under our basement stairs. In preparation I've been watching YouTube videos and trying to figure out some simple projects to practice the cuts and techniques I'll eventually need. I've been really enjoying 10 minute Workshop for this and am hoping to make a few simple boxes over the week or so based on some of the simple projects he's done.

My wife's band, The Honey Empire (she's the one on the right), is playing tonight. They are opening for Bob Schneider this week in Ft. Collins and Denver. She and a friend started taking lessons together about seven years ago. They started a little cover band. Then they started writing songs. There were some Jefferson Airplane moments. Now, they're a tiny bit of a thing. But most exciting, I'm playing with them. It's only one song, but I'm so excited. I started playing guitar during the pandemic, and here we are. Anyway, amazing how life progresses sometimes.

Wife and I are traveling to Munich, Gaz (Red Bull Ring) and Vienna at the end of June. Anyone familiar with these cities and have any recommendations?

The rise of AI in the world of programming hit me hard this spring (TL;DR: I hate AI), and I decided to retire a few years early, rather than deal with retraining and reshaping my work. It's been a very bumpy ride on the financial and emotional roller coaster for the past few months. It turns out that the rise of AI made me richer than I thought (thanks?), so I can do this without worrying about money. I'm still finding it hard to accept that my career died such an unpleasant death, but I'm starting to get excited about my upcoming freedom. Last day at work is July 2nd...

A couple of good things happening lately. At the top of the list, I started a new job in nonprofit work with a significant bump in salary and the chance to build something significant for an important group. It's only been a couple of weeks and I'm still in absorb/learn mode but I can see a lot of places to make things happen here and I'm pretty excited about it.

Playing Lincoln Center next week with a volunteer army of 100 guitar players. It appears to be sold out, though! Here is what it sounds like.