@brainwane@social.coop
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

brainwane

@brainwane@social.coop

Indian-American gal who likes to make people laugh. #OpenSource entrepreneur, programmer, tech writer and encourager, stand-up comedian, advocate for transparency in government software and data.

New York City #NYC, Changeset Consulting, #RecurseCenter, #WisCon, #MetaFilter, #Python packaging, Geek Feminism, #Dreamwidth, harihareswara.net.

Hope you're having the best possible day.

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brainwane, (edited ) to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

If you paid for funeral expenses for someone who died in the US, and their death certificate mentions COVID as a cause, you may be eligible for up to US$9,000 in funeral expense assistance from the US federal government.

https://www.fema.gov/disaster/historic/coronavirus/economic/funeral-assistance

Eligibility does not depend on your income, even if you have a high income right now: https://www.fema.gov/node/does-fema-consider-annual-household-income-when-determining-how-much-covid-19-funeral

More info: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/historic/coronavirus/economic/funeral-assistance/faq

Currently, Sept. 30, 2025 is the end date for submitting applications, I believe.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

New Yorkers don't know where our nearest automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are, so when someone has a heart attack, more people die. A new City Council bill would change that. Help improve it & get it passed! Submit written testimony by 10am ET, April 2nd.

Not a New Yorker? We need expertise in education & . Or do 30 minutes of research about AED public data in your area. You don't have to write a lot! A paragraph is fine.

https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2023/nyc-improve-open-data-bill-prevent-heart-attack-deaths/

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Live free concert streaming now, Vienna Teng accompanying herself on piano. Thanks for the tip @elysdir .

https://www.youtube.com/live/d6iSm963r08?feature=shared

Oh wow it's been 20 years since I first saw her perform live https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2003/hilary-nandini-and-i-tonight-participated-in-an-asian-american/

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Whether you've never visited , you're a longtime , you used to participate but that was ages ago, or none of the above:

I am basically sitting back and popping popcorn pre-emptively because I predict this thread on Ask is gonna be super fun:

https://ask.metafilter.com/374257/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-reintroducing-animal-powered-transport

"What would the positive and negative impact be of going back to horses as our primary mode of transport instead of fossil fuel powered cars? I've been rolling this around in my head recently..."

brainwane, to opensource
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

I would love for more infrastructural projects to make wee videos like the 2020 "Changes are coming to pip" video we made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4GQCBBsuNU (2min20sec).

Share the faces and voices of folks (only those who don't mind participating!) who worked on this and who will be reading bug reports. Briefly explain what big changes are coming, and why you're making them. And point to where users can read more, and sign up for future user surveys/interviews.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

You know, it is just amazing how different humans can be. How deeply we vary in our responses to stimuli. Case in point:

https://ask.metafilter.com/374590/What-is-it-like-to-be-an-indirect-communicator-and-or-people-pleaser#5323840

"part of hinting is being willing to not have the hint picked up. That's the plausible deniability part! That it gives the other person the ability to politely not notice what you said."

+, later on, someone characterizing as "bullying" certain request phrasings that, to me, sound completely open to negotiation.

OK! Things to know as I navigate!

brainwane, to Medicine
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

New blog post: "Nailing Down An Answer, Or At Least A Question"

https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2023/nailing-down-answer-question-med-experts/

Sometimes you take pains to ask doctors & other medical experts a specific, deliberately-worded question, and they don't really seem to listen. They answer a question different from the one you asked, maybe a more common one. They recommend xyz even though you said that won't work for you. Etc.

Why does it happen? And how do I avoid it, or get less frustrated?

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

FEDIVERSE-ONLY:

Trying to come up with a good punchline for "why are flamingos bad at chasing things?"

My own "because they're swamped" feels like it's not the best possible answer.

Suggestions?

(They'd be good at chasing because they always have a leg up on you.)

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

The Lucira at-home test is a molecular -19 test, more accurate than an antigen test. It takes 30 minutes to run and display the results - no app needed.

As @effies noted https://wandering.shop/@effies/109395591106550269 , Amazon has it on sale for USD$30.

If you have spare "use it or lose it" Flexible/Health Savings Accounts money to spend by Dec. 31st, you could buy some of these.

brainwane, to Jokes
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Some , when I make them up, feel more like I've discovered them, revealed them, like stumbling over a partially-unearthed fossil and picking it out.

Like, the is so inevitable, so elegantly prefigured in the pre-existing setup, "hiding in plain sight," that once I've said it, I can hardly believe I'm the first.

I request that you reply to this post with a you came up with that you feel like you discovered.

(I wonder what patterns we'll find. Lots of puns? Reversals?)

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

cautious folks:

Carrying a CO2 monitor helps me check how safe the in a space is, and lower or raise my cautions accordingly. (Details: https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2023/my-current-covid-risk-approach/#ventilation ) Super useful.

I use and like the monitor. The 4 is usually USD$249. It's on sale, direct from the manufacturer, till September 17, for $184.35, with free shipping in the US.

https://shop.aranet.com/north-america/product/aranet4-home

Or from Amazon for $197: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07YY7BH2W/ref=nosim/0sil8 (Might be today only - Sept 7th.)

Aranet CO2 monitoring app screenshot from one week in May 2023. Almost all readings are in the green range, under 1,000 ppm. A few hours in the yellow and red ranges, about 1,000 to 2,100 ppm, are during airplane travel. The 5,905 ppm peak is during a car ride.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

By the way, if you want to check out what it's like when a post goes viral by Fediverse standards (300+ boosts), consider the replies I have received in this thread:

https://social.coop/@brainwane/111063483396978830

At least 2 people have blocked me because of my replies to their replies about this post!

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

It's interesting to contemplate fictional characters who would be good or bad waiting room companions at the doctor's office.

Probably good: Jane Eyre, Simone from The Good Place, Data or Chakotay from Star Trek, Dr. Rivers from Regeneration, Murderbot

Probably bad: Chidi from The Good Place, most of Zen Cho's protagonists, Beckett Mariner or Q from Star Trek, Randy Waterhouse for most of Cryptonomicon, Siegfried Sassoon in Regeneration, pretty much everyone in The Great Gatsby

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

It's All Too Much not because I am inadequate, but because standards for my class's behavior have risen faster than we've built the infrastructure and prosthetics we'd need to meet them, and because of an unequal distribution of the benefits of the information revolution.

https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2019/its-not-just-you/

a ton of fiddly expensive-if-you-make-a-mistake labor has emerged or shifted onto our shoulders, without commensurate logistical, psychological, or financial support for that shift.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

What's the incubation period range for the current dominant variants transmitting around the northeastern US?

I likely had an exposure last night and am now in that "I have the tiniest bit of a sore throat, is this The Symptoms" phase.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

New long blog post: Eldercare, Family Caretaking, and End-of-life Logistics: Stuff I Learned

http://harihareswara.net/posts/2023/eldercare-family-caretaking-end-of-life-logistics-learned/

Topics:

You HAVE to take care of yourself

Changes to expect in the months/weeks/days before death

Checklists for before & just after death

Wills, powers of attorney, & advance health care directives

Easy-to-eat food; letting your friends help you

Hospital chaplains can do a lot

Patient advocacy (catching mistakes)

Medical notetaking at appointments and the bedside

[1/n]

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

I feel really lucky that my 11th grade American literature teacher devised a curriculum that relentlessly attacked the American success myth.

We read Christopher Lasch, Ben Franklin's autobiography, The Great Gatsby, "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather, a bunch of other stuff ....

And at the same time, I was volunteering with the local hippies, and my mentor was a guy who'd burned out on working as a philosophy professor, and now did carpentry to support his peace activism.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

https://www.askamanager.org/2024/02/my-store-is-doing-great-because-im-breaking-all-our-policies.html

"I feel like everything I’ve done to make our store a good place to work at and shop at has been directly at odds with the instructions and directions I am supposed to be following."

Echoes of so many critiques of human institutions - "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence" (by Norman Dixon, 1976) comes to mind for me. Also, this is kind of the opposite of the classic principal-agent problem.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Twice in the last month, someone has lamented near me that they have a bunch of learned-through-experience knowledge in their head, and they don't know how to draw it out into lessons to their colleagues.

This is called "tacit knowledge". And fortunately, we actually know some ways to elicit it from experts & use it to train new learners!

I've appreciated Cedric Chin's blog series on this:

https://commoncog.com/the-tacit-knowledge-series/

Thread on :

https://www.metafilter.com/192038/What-is-the-experience-giving-you

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

In open source/devrel kinds of situations, we often find ourselves trying to teach or coordinate people we barely know, en masse, remotely, who have various affiliations, and who have a mix of motivations for collaborating with us, some of them ideological.

And 2 big institutions that have been addressing those problems for thousands of years, and writing down stuff to be read and implemented, are religions & militaries.

So one reads missiology, or old public domain US Army handbooks...

[1/n]

brainwane, to movies
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

https://tubitv.com/movies/595077/rivers-and-tides

The 2001 documentary "Rivers and Tides" on Andy Goldsworthy's art process and work is free to view, in the US, on Tubi.

Slow, reflective, fluid. Moments that stuck with me when I first saw it decades ago, and then freshly struck me when I rewatched it this year. Musings on failure, artistic practice, and flows.

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

@siderea @kissane Curious whether either of you have opinions/assessments of either at-home UV rigs

https://mstdn.social/@DrPsyBuffy/111677218537879511

or antihistamines

https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

as COVID infection mitigations. (Synecdochic links to research that I haven't yet read.)

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

Really happy to share https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/ !

Back in 2020, during grant-funded work on the next-generation pip resolver, @sprblm did fascinating user experience research & design work. https://pyfound.blogspot.com/search/label/pip

They wrote several useful documents that took a while to get merged, but now live in pip's documentation! Like:

how to design a survey https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/guidance/#designing-surveys

how users think pip should react to dependency conflicts https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/research-results/override-conflicting-dependencies/

security practices https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ux-research-design/research-results/users-and-security/

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

https://ask.metafilter.com/375214/Be-careful

This Q&A on what a person means when they say "be careful!" reminds me to share a bit of personal discipline I'm working on:

Instead of or in addition to literally saying the vague advice-phrase "be careful" to someone who's about to do something, I must SPECIFY a particular kind of caution or behavior change. Examples: "it's slippery," "cars often break the speed limit here," "that's more fragile than it looks so notice if the tension starts changing."

brainwane, to random
@brainwane@social.coop avatar

ok so I don't think of myself as a Very Online person

I have friends whom I see in person

I sometimes see references I don't understand

but something happened the other day that is making me recalibrate

1/n

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