For the first three tournaments, I made physical trophies for all the winners. There’s a box in my workshop containing the ones that never got sent out; some were because I never had shipping addresses for folks, but many were…
Gerrymandering: Will Making It Worse Actually Make Anything Better?
Gerrymandering is continuing to have it’s day in the national press. Which is kinda good? I mean, Texas’ latest venture into gerrymandering is bad, but the fact that the press is actually paying attention is good. Though the fact that…
Archive: ICANN Election Begins. Issues?
I ran in the first ICANN board of directors election on a platform that ICANN should immediately dissolve itself. If I remember correctly, I came third. An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Sun Oct 1st, 2000 at 11:05:43…
Presidential Fitness: I Will If You Will
So, Trump wants to bring back the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. Fine, fine. That’s fine. Leaving aside the general inadequacy of one-size-fits-all standards and of how such fitness standards are constructed, physical fitness in general is a laudable goal for…
On Democrats: Are They Still Less-Evil Enough?
It may give you some idea how old I actually am to know that I canvassed for Jesse Jackson at the state Democratic convention when I was in high school. I’m old enough to know better than to expect much…
Archive: /dev/null/nethack Tournament Preparations
My brother and I first held a tournament for NetHack players in 1999. We co-hosted it for several years, then I ran it with various volunteers for the rest of its 17-year run. The tournament turns out to also be…
Hey, You: Stop Bitching About Jury Duty
I spent three days in jury selection over the past week. It wasn’t much fun. Especially since, after the various lawyers involved each gave their synopsis of the case, it was obvious that it was one of those situations where…
Archive: Help OpenNIC make its plans
OpenNIC is, I think, the only thing I’ve done that has a Wikipedia page? I haven’t been directly involved with it since I had kids, but I’m very happy that it still exists. An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org,…
Private Equity: Parasites In The Capitalist Ecosystem
I was reading “Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed“, by Molly Osberg on The New Republic, this morning and it occurred to me that this is another problem that would be solved by a suggestion I…
Archive: Book Review: the conquest of cool
I still like Tom Frank’s work a lot, but these days I want more escapism in my long-form reading. An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Mon Jul 3rd, 2000 at 11:31:12 PM EST”. I finished reading this book…