Maryland is pushing ahead with efforts to potentially redraw its congressional map to favor Democrats in time for the 2026 midterm elections,
Gov. Wes Moore announced on Tuesday.
“While other states are determining whether or not they have fair maps, so will Maryland,”
Mr. Moore, a Democrat and a possible presidential candidate in 2028, said in a video statement.
Mr. Moore’s gambit sets up a potential clash with the legislature,
given that Bill Ferguson, the Stat…

Maryland Will Explore Redrawing Its Congressional Map
Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement on Tuesday that the state would “explore every avenue possible to make sure Maryland has fair and representative maps.”

2. “The US has too much power, nobody can possibly stand up to them” − I don’t know, dude, maybe ask to copy Canada’s notes? I am not asking for magic here; I’m just asking people to try.
3. “But standing up to a fascist US is too expensive for us” − Believe me, whatever it costs us all now (inside •and• outside the US), it will cost even more later.

Week 18 NFL top storylines: Conference seeding, final playoff spots, Black Monday and more https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6934211/2026/01/04/week-18-nfl-storylines-playoffs-black-monday/

Door Dasher Life Fun Facts: This might be useful to think of when you're rating your Dasher.... Who's at fault in this situation?
Let's say I accept an offer for McDonalds.
I head straight there... pull up to the store, and as I walk in the app buzzes again with a 2nd order for the same McDs.
Naturally, I accept. (not accepting reduces my Acceptance rate and potentially my ability to get new offers).
Now I have two orders at the same place! Great! Efficient!
The first order comes up quickly, I put it in my bag, 'pick it up' in the app, and wait for the 2nd order.
Now the fun begins. The restaurant says the 2nd order will be 10 minutes beyond the pickup time. I notify the app, and both customers of the wait... and I wait... and wait... if I remove the 2nd order from my app it affects my completion rate *and* means the customer has to wait for another dasher to come along.
Eventually the 2nd order is ready and I head out to make the deliveries. Both of course now late.. the first potentially cold (even in an insulated bag) *and* late.
In addition, sometimes, often a day or two later, the dasher will receive a “Contract Violation” for the lateness. 3 Contract Violations in a short period and you can be deactivated.
So... there ya go. It happens. I'm never sure what the best course of action is... unless both orders are immediately ready, which you can never predict, someone will end up losing; the store, customer, dasher, or a mix of all three.
#DasherLife #GigWork #DoorDash #Uber
P.S. It's worth noting that Door Dash is the only service I know of that is this strict. Uber Eats does not have mechanisms like this (at least in my experience). Never used Skip, so can't say on that.

Week 18 NFL top storylines: Conference seeding, final playoff spots, Black Monday and more https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6934211/2026/01/04/week-18-nfl-storylines-playoffs-black-monday/

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

I've added another script to my bikeStats Python scripts. It's all pretty simple stuff, but maybe someone will find it useful.
I need to clean up and release all the bike mapping GPX stuff I've been working on lately as well.
https://codeberg.org/raster/milesBiked

milesBiked
A Python script to make bar graphs showing how many miles I've biked...

I'm trying to play through the implications of some software I've been thinking about maybe designing.
It's legal to make a digital copy of the media that you own (videos, audio) physical copies of. It's legal to give a physical copy of your media to someone else or loan it out, which transfers your viewing license while they have It. Then it should also be legal to let someone else use a digital copy of your media given that you don't also use it at the same time. So as long as you keep track of your license, you should be able to let exactly one person stream some media you own.
If someone else then "steals" that content and views it without a license then that has to be legally on them, otherwise streaming platforms would be liable whenever someone cracks some DRM.
So then, it should be completely legal to set up a local community media library streaming service where you can share content you own licenses to as long as you track your license count and don't let more people stream at any given time than there are licenses available.
Is there something obvious I'm missing (aside from the MPAA and RIAA don't care about the law and will just sue anyone they can just to make an example)?

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.