Waldo Jaquith
@waldo
Thought follower. Public servant. Male software developer. Alumnus of 18F, the Obama White House, Georgetown's Beeck Center, U.S. Digital Response, the Biden-Harris Transition Team, Biden administration, GSA, and Treasury. He/him. Charlottesville, VA, USA.
This paragraph will not age well. I *might* have bought this a year ago, but we’re months into the U.S. shutting down a big chunk of the world’s access to oil. China will flood the world with cheap EVs. We’ll hit 50% within a few years, not a decade.
All I’ve done since I woke up is paint this coop. (My wife and son were already painting when I woke up.) I’ve started to put on the trim, which I painted in advance. Once all the trim is on, I’ll paint the interior, then move onto doors, shutters, and ramps.
My local airport used to only have prop flights, and sometimes I'd be on a plane so small that the length of my femur exceeded the distance between seats. When that happened, the flight attendant would seat me in a jump seat up front, facing backward. I'd have this adorable little tray table.
Please gaze upon this photo of a bathroom I encountered in Geneva. This is the entire thing. One could shower while sitting on the toilet, which I suppose earns points for efficiency.
This is extremely not the point of this article, but it blows my mind when I see mentions of what people were doing at the height of the pandemic. Going on a first date…to a restaurant…in January 2021? The month 365k people died? Amazing! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/n...
We’ve sure got those. Now I’m curious to what extent you could create a identifier for a place based on this data, and whether that ID could be used to say “ah so you’re west of Charlottesville, but east of the mountains, and south of 33” (or whatever).
Congratulations to Van Leeuwen for absolutely nailing the flavor on this one—it tastes exactly how Triple Crown's Senior horse feed smells. Not even a little bit like Guinness, but I'd chalk that up to a printing error.
As surprising as this paragraph is, the next is somehow even more surprising. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
The real explanation is so much less stupid than I thought! Yes, iOS is just using the room name from Home, case intact, which looks goofy and I would personally convert to lowercase, but whatever. (I tested it by lowercasing it in Home.)
I don't know if it's because of the sitcom or the Microsoft product, but it's pathetic that Apple capitalizes "office." I cringe every time I see it.
For the second time in as many years, I traded in a MacBook to Apple, which drastically revised down the MacBook's value because of a "bent corner." There are no bent corners. I'll have them send it back, and I think I'll make an AppleCare claim to have the "bent corner" fixed.
The chicken coop roof is on, which was exhausting and difficult work with meh results—basically, you should pay roofers whatever they ask. And I’ve got all the plywood interior walls up. Next up: lots of finish work, like painting, building doors, a nesting box, ramps, etc. (And then adding a run.)
Matilda just lost cloacal control and laid an egg in the yard. She doesn’t know what to do. This is not where eggs go. She’s just standing around, confused.
Virginia Gov. Spanberger has returned the proposed budget to the legislature with amendments, one of which would create a Virginia digital service! This would save the state vastly more than the budgeted $5 million. It will be a Big Deal if legislature passes this. www.wric.com/wp-content/u...
The chicken coop has exterior walls and (most of) a galvalume roof. Next up: Finish the roof, caulk the whole thing, put up the interior walls.
A quick message from our sponsor, the American Sponge Council: Friend, did you know your sponge is TOO OLD? Yes, that's right, it's now 90% bacteria, by volume. There's only one thing for it—replace that sponge. We recommend a two-week sponge rotation. Do it for yourself. Do it for the children.
Commerce will not rest until text messages are as useless as phone calls.
Yes, I also think they should die on this hill. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/u...