Tootfinder

A citizen of Rome in 117 AD,
under Emperor Trajan,
would've found it difficult to imagine the empire not existing.
The roads, the aqueducts, the legal system, the trade networks stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia:
all of it seemed to be a near-fact of nature, like gravity
Edward Gibbon gave us six volumes explaining how that feeling turned out to be wrong,
and even he couldn't fully untangle all the causes.
But the overarching theme mig…

The empire always falls
A citizen of Rome in 117 AD, under Emperor Trajan, would've found it difficult to imagine the empire not existing. The roads, the aqueducts, the legal system, the trade networks stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia: all of it seemed to be a near-fact of nature, like gravity // the Mediterranean itself.

Today in the drizzle I stopped by the Living Library, a beautiful native plant garden near SF's Balboa Park at the San Jose/Seneca intersection. Highly recommend a visit to see some #ceanothus in bloom and California poppies and island mallows beginning to, and much more.

good grief, gnuplot is always a huge battle
here's a graph of the length of day (green, microseconds)
and UT1-UTC (purple, milliseconds)
from 1973 until today
the LoD is the difference from 24h, averaged over the previous 12 months - the LoD is _very_ noisy so it's hard to see the trends from a shorter averaging period
UT1-UTC is the integral of the LoD, with leap seconds to keep it in bounds
things have been a bit weird since 2020 because the LoD …

Regardless this good blog about the many aspects that make the midterms difficult to manipulate, I am not as optimistic as the author. The bottomline is Trump and his allies will pay with their freedom and personal wealth if democrats win the midterms and the elections after that, they simply can't allow that to happen... It puzzles me that after everything that already happened under Trump some people don't see this.

Worry, Don't Panic, Over Trump's Efforts to Subvert the Elections
America's system is quite foolproof but he can still try to delegitimize it

Chicago is getting a place for sickos
#fedifc

On a more positive note, my home now features a #vacuum robot running the open source #Valetudo cloud replacement. The guide on how to do that was surprisingly easy to follow. Some light soldering, a bit of flashing that's pretty similar to rooting an Android device, and it's done.
And becau…

EFF, along with the national ACLU and the ACLU affiliates in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey,
filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
urging the court to require a warrant for border searches of electronic devices,
-- an argumentEFF has been making in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade.
In our amicus brief, we argue that the U.S. Supreme Court’s balancing test in
Riley v. California (2014)
should govern the …

EFF to Third Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant
EFF, along with the national ACLU and the ACLU affiliates in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit urging the court to require a warrant for border searches of electronic devices.

oooof. this incumbent running for re-election to the SF Bike Coalition board is literally a landlord lawyer.
if you're a member, the voting details are here and there are 10 candidates for 8 seats. https://sfbike.org/news/meet-the-candidat…

Gavin Newsom, the California governor,
announced the appointment of two prominent scientists
who left the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in recent months over conflicts with the Trump administration to state positions.
Dr Susan Monarez, the former director of the CDC, will lead California’s new public health initiative, the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange (PHNIX).
In August, Monarez was fired by the Trump administration less than a month in…