Notices by Sumana Harihareswara (brainwane@social.coop)

What's a good replacement for "office hours" (meaning #2 at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/office_hours )?

Again, I am only interested in opinions from people who sometimes actively do written outreach (such as paper flyers or social media posts), to large groups of English-speaking strangers, trying to get them to participate in synchronous events in contexts like education or volunteer efforts.

Trying to get across: "Come to [this place] during [this time] so you can bring questions, ideas, etc. to [this expert or set of experts] about [this set of topics] in a *conversational* environment".

Distinct from:

a free-for-all chat (instead, we expect the expert(s) authoritatively facilitate)

service appointments (it's okay if you don't have a crisp request/suggestion)

https://web.archive.org/web/20031006013813/http://www.irs.gov/individuals/page/0,,id=15565,00.html

The IRS for Kids website used to include an interactive Taxes in US History curriculum concentrating on the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the protective tariff issue of the 1830s, and the income tax's introduction in the early 1900s

Each topic had an "activity zone"

https://canadahealthwatch.ca/2025/03/25/i-traded-my-u-s-medical-career-for-life-in-canada-heres-how-the-two-health-systems-stack-up

"Burnout, I’ve come to believe, isn’t just about time or tasks. It’s about purpose, alignment, and whether you believe the system you work in deserves your sacrifice."

via @wingo boosting https://mastodon.social/@CdnCurmudgeon/114228687712438487

COVID-cautious people in the US:

Some pharmacies have Novavax vaccines in stock that expire at the end of the month. If it's been several months since your last jab, you might want to get one before March 30th.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1jid0ap/comment/mje8cz1/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Novavax_vaccine_talk/comments/1jfegz8/comment/miuupfi/

https://us-hcp.novavaxcovidvaccine.com/resources

@mattl @brooke ahahahaha

[boosting]

🗓️ NEW EVENT: Join Lambda Legal for Know Your Rights: Passports —a free virtual info session on Wednesday, February 26 at 3 p.m. ET / 12 p.m. PT — to unpack the latest developments and hear answers to common questions re: federal ID policies.

✍️ RSVP today: https://lambdalegal.org/id-info-session

original post: https://bsky.app/profile/lambdalegal.bsky.social/post/3lin2fg4pp22g

@indieblog hi! Small bug report:

Your site has my blog (Cogito, Ergo Sumana) listed twice at https://indieblog.page/all , once with and once without the www prefix. And more intriguingly, even though their RSS feeds are pretty much identical, for one of them, Indieblog lists the most recent post as 2025-01-04, and for the other, 2024-10-04.

https://www.brainwane.net/dystopia/

Tired of the same old dystopias? Randomized Dystopia suggests a right that your fictional tyranny could deny its citizens!

Hit the Custom Terribleness page to make a sexist or ageist dystopia!

[please do not use this as an actual TODO list]

grateful to https://try.diffoscope.org just now which let me compare two very slightly different PDFs and find the minute textual differences

(no login necessary; free and open source software you can also run on your machine)

A question to ponder:

what, in your life, is like this microwave

technically present, yet functionally unavailable

such that a person with a fresh perspective would likely decide to either find a way to get it working again or replace it

https://wetdry.world/@nonfedimemes/113779256395998255

Today I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Chief O'Brien upon realizing that, while turning Terok Nor into Deep Space 9, he had to figure out how to convert Federation or Starfleet replicator files to the Cardassian replicator file format, or get the station replicators to run off Starfleet's file format

#StarTrek

every once in a while I think about this Reddit post, where a woman discovers her boyfriend has been consistently lying to her to keep her feeling bad

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/gy79dx/boyfriend_wont_stop_telling_me_i_have_bo/

and I wonder what other varieties of manipulative lies people deliberately tell, one-on-one (such as https://www.askamanager.org/2024/04/my-boss-says-my-work-is-bad-but-all-evidence-says-the-opposite.html ) and en masse

and whether the victims ever find out, and what scars are left behind

recently I have been reminded of how institutional systems will do this, deliberately https://social.coop/@brainwane/113617389825901634

and I think of the constant work it takes to remember the conditions of my struggle (instead of just lamenting my poor capabilities)
https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2019/its-not-just-you/

Decades ago, beginning to manage my own health care as a young adult, it was hard for me and I felt so much shame. I felt like I constantly got charged fees that I hadn't expected and I assumed it was my fault. I felt helpless and it discouraged me from using my healthcare.

Eventually I came to understand that it was not purely my fault, that the insurers profited from my confusion and deliberately created it, all while pretending they weren't doing so. And that they do this to all of us, unapologetically, draining us of money and time and life.

new robots.txt just dropped?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/12/certain-names-make-chatgpt-grind-to-a-halt-and-we-know-why/

If you've ever benefited from Slacktivist's (Fred Clark's) writings (such as his deep dive into the flaws of the Left Behind books, or his articulation of the dishonesty of those automated corporate surveys*), know that his family could use some help right now.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/08/21/pre-surgery-testing-we-hope-and-pre-surgery-fundraising/

* https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2019/06/25/all-fives-ready-or-not-here-i-come/

#xoxofest

Molly White just asked us to remember the 1st time we felt like the Web was magic

There is a saying that the Golden Age of science fiction is 12 - like, whatever you found at that age was magic to you

for me, the Web is similar

@technomancy Sad that it does not work!! (I am depending on your assertion and my other friends' assertions here and have not tried it myself)