Tootfinder

Spot the difference from yesterday? More framSpot the difference from yesterday? More framework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.ework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.

“‘We had to destroy the village to save it’ is not a new American rationalization, and the imperial boomerang can and will, if we don’t stop it, bring it to bear on the American populace.”
https://stuff.davidaugust.com/local-law-enforceme…

Local Law Enforcement's Challenge: Uphold the Law, Even Against the Feds
in the absence of action, civilians will fill the void I do want to write something not so serious, maybe even funny, here soon. But today, I think the police have to do a very hard and necessary thing: defend Americans against their federal government. If any other group arrived

The Lurie/Mandelman RV ban is still set to go into effect and tow people's homes on Nov. 1, the same day SNAP expires and at the same time federal agents are in the Bay to terrorize immigrants.
Send a letter to the mayor and BOS asking them to extend the towing deadline:
https://

All Eyes on the Mayor’s RV Ban - No Tows Before Housing!
DSA SF is continuing its opposition to Daniel Lurie’s two-hour restriction on RV parking, which will take effect on November 1st, 2025. We know this policy for what it is - the latest attempt by San Francisco’s oligarch Mayor to exile poor and working class people from the City. While San Francisco has put in place a refuge permit program, it’s deeply flawed. The City’s initial eligibility list excludes many longtime RV residents, and those that are eligible have an uncertain offer of …

Federal Judge Cameron McGowan Currie on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James,
saying the loyalist prosecutor installed by Trump to bring the cases was put into her job unlawfully.
The twin rulings are the most significant setback yet to Trump's efforts to co-opt the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes
The dismissals,
while embarrassing for the Wh…

Judge Tosses Criminal Charges Against James Comey and Letitia James
The decision is a setback for the president’s efforts to wield the criminal justice system against his perceived enemies.

"I'm so freakin' tired, dude..."

Day 28: Samira Ahmed
As foreshadowed, we're back to YA land, which represents a lot of what I've been enjoying from the library lately.
I've read "Hollow Fires", "This Book Won't Burn", and "Love, Hate, and other Filters" by Ahmed, along with "Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know" which is quite different. All four are teen ~romances with interesting things to say about racism & growing up as a South Asian Muslim, but whereas the first three are set in small-town Indiana, the third is set in France and includes a historical fiction angle involving Dumas and a hypothetical Muslim woman who was (in this telling) the inspiration for several Lord Byron poems.
Ahmed's novels all include a strong and overt theme of social justice, and it's refreshing to see an author not try to wade around the topic or ignore it. Her romances are complex, with imperfect protagonists and endings that aren't always "happily ever after" although they're satisfying and believable.
My library has a plethora of similar authors I've been enjoying, including Adiba Jaigirdar (who appeared earlier in this list), Sabaa Tahir ("All my Rage" is fantastic but I'm less of a fan of her fantasy stuff), Sabina Khan ("The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali"), and Randa Abdel-Fattah ("Does My Head Look Big In This?"; from an earlier era). Ahmed gets the spot here because I really like her politics and the way she works them into her writing. Her characters are unapologetic advocates against things like book bans, and Ahmed doesn't second-guess them or try to make things more palatable for those who want to ban books (or whatever). Her historical fiction in "Mad..." is also really cool in terms of "huh that could actually totally be true" and grappling with literary sexism from ages past.
#30AuthorsNoMen

"We are now at a critical juncture. We are at or very close to human caused environmental change that will fundamentally unpick the life-sustaining systems on Earth. These risk triggering feedback loops...
Ultimately that could cause the planet to drift away along the pathway to “hothouse Earth”, a scenario where even if emissions were reduced, self amplifying feedback loops would drive global temperature increases up to or even beyond 5°C"

When a user doesn't understand your product, they can't use it. But when the team doesn't understand their own product, then NO ONE can.
We neglected the conceptual layer of software development, and products have devolved from a coherent experience into Proper Noun soup. To unwind this self-inflicted problem, we must stop "optimizing" for just one part of the job.
Here's how.
(this is a much deeper problem than "just UX vs UI")

When teams don't understand their own product
A usable product starts with the conceptual model, but designers have "optimized" that work out of the profession. It's time to bring it back.

Anthropic unveils two Claude Code upgrades: a new plan mode that creates more precise plans, and support for Claude Code in the Claude desktop app (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack)
https://thenewstack.io/anthropics-new-claude-opus-4-5-reclaims-…

Anthropic's New Claude Opus 4.5 Reclaims the Coding Crown
In addition to the new model, Anthropic is also announcing two updates to the Claude Developer Platform that go hand-in-hand with the Opus 4.5 release.

Paint samples arrived today and it was obvious which was gonna work better so I ordered a full 2.5l can.
Only to get an email back saying they can't make that colour in that varnish. Weird. That was literally the only actually blue they said they'd do last time they said they couldn't deliver what the website let me order.
After some discussion they have referred it to the Tainting Supervisor and it's apparently going to be here Monday.
Similarly for the wood, failed to arrive again today. They reckon Monday this time really for reals. Fingers crossed coz the carpenter can't do more until the wood arrives really and he's going on holiday this time next week.
So assuming the wood comes, four days to build the doors and finish off the walls of the closet and stuff.
Hopefully it can all be done in that time. Or at least the hard bits leaving the easy stuff for the less carpentery builder.