Michael Bacon

Day job: #geospatial #datascience #python #security
Academic research: #LandReform #STS #Scotland #Ecology #Landscape #CommunityOwnership

STS, planning geography, ecology, geospatial data, stuff.

I live and raise a fuss in #Durham #NC

Currently block-happy. Too many dudes being basic in my mentions.

MA Geography
Ph.D. Constructed Environment

He/him http://git.io/vxjC7

Monastic order: Corbettite (https://girlgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Corbettite_Railway)

Public Key

npub1ykp7v5r5nrgt9da2c40xn6e8dznjkh7pr937zn66lr42x8p2ua6q6h7nmx

NIP-05 Address

michaeltbacon_at_social.coop@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsztqlx2p6f359jk74v2hnfavnk3fettlq3jclpfad0364rrs4wwaqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntvd4wzg

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1ykp7v5r5nrgt9da2c40xn6e8dznjkh7pr937zn66lr42x8p2ua6q6h7nmx

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Last Notes

2026-03-27 19:21:17 UTC

Outlook just told me I was almost out of disk space and it had to quit.
I just checked and the disk is 46% full.
Amazing program, Outlook. Truly uncommon.

2026-03-25 19:30:02 UTC

I have to believe this made the headline writer's day.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/activist-pushed-2020-election-fraud-claims-convicted-election-fraud-rcna265134

2026-03-12 12:30:52 UTC

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Similarly, one should always note that "being shit," "being the shit," and "being a shit" are not the same things!

2026-02-10 13:34:26 UTC

https://bsky.app/profile/psychicozma.bsky.social/post/3meici7vgxk2o
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/116/046/585/053/771/579/original/2e7b704147e03c4f.png

2025-11-26 16:18:24 UTC

A lot of folk, including most folk in the UK, don't realize how ridiculously regressive the UK property tax system is compared to most US property taxes, which aren't super progressive in the first place.
They're fixed fees based on value bands. Above certain levels (which aren't that high), tax levies don't increase at all, currently.
Small wonder UK property is a haven for massive wealth.
https://esq.social/@andrew/115616869757022404

2025-11-03 20:49:28 UTC

SNAP should be for every child in the US. Even billionaire's kids.
Needs-test benefits, means-test taxes.

2025-10-13 23:27:13 UTC

TIL: "Tibetan" singing bowls aren't an ancient practice. They aren't even Tibetan.
It's a thing westerners did with ordinary metal food bowls that are common in many parts of Asia. The oldest ones appear to be from Persia, but not as any kind of instrument.
Some Buddhist and Taoist practices uses standing bells, which are sorta kinda similar but not the same.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/tibetan-singing-bowls-are-not-tibetan-sincerely-a-tibetan-person/article_7e4dd7ea-6e40-5584-90d6-b864a9e9d129.html

2025-10-02 01:21:53 UTC

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I love that whole letter so much.
The full last paragraph:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.— I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids8 & today I hate them worse than everything so farewell & in a sweet frame of mind, I am | Ever yours "
Charles was a real one.
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3272.xml

2025-09-23 23:48:14 UTC

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I just read this today too. Losing most of the IRA is a hard blow. But the build-out is still happening at a very fast rate, just not quite as fast as it would have been.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/23/global-investment-in-renewable-energy-up-10-on-2024-despite-trump-rollback

2025-09-12 14:18:35 UTC

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This is the only trolley problem I want to hear about from now on. Either "we don't have a trolley and that's a problem" or "the trolley system needs maintenance funds."

2025-09-06 23:09:21 UTC

Is it just me or does anyone else who ever did Y2K compliance still subconsciously put the century digits in the year on, like, everything?
Like I just put soup in the freezer and wrote "Sept 2025" on it. Yeah, better make sure I'm not confused which 25 year it is, this might be 100 year old soup!

2025-09-04 00:05:53 UTC

https://bsky.app/profile/stevepeers.bsky.social/post/3lxximbmnhk2k

2025-08-28 23:05:12 UTC

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every single time we make them take two months to do something they wanted to do in a week, that’s a win. That’s two months that they aren’t doing something else terrible. Every time we make them take a concentration camp apart and spend more money building another one, that’s a win.
It’s nowhere near enough, but I guarantee things would’ve gotten much worse much faster and hurt many more people by now if not for these little wins.

2025-08-17 21:27:28 UTC

I just learned the words "botlicker" and "slopholm syndrome" and my life is better for it.

2025-08-16 23:22:43 UTC

It's ADHD Cleaning with Michael! Follow along with these simple, straightforward steps. Clean the inattentive way!
(yes this is basically what happened)
1. Decide to vacuum downstairs
2. Go looking for the vacuum
3. Notice that laundry needs doing
4. Check with spouse about laundry needs
5. Sort laundry, change sorting strategy 3 times
6. Start laundry
7. Find vacuum
8. Start vacuuming the carpet
9. Notice the roller is making a noise, stop and clean the roller
10. Start vacuuming again
1/*

2025-08-13 20:06:23 UTC

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Starship Troopers

2025-08-12 19:24:54 UTC

The UK government saying "delete old emails" to save water. 🤦‍♂️
Most emails average about 50k of storage even for someone who gets a lot of attachments, and will have exactly zero effect on data center consumption.
"Don't use cryptocurrency" and "don't use generative AI" would of course be thousands of times more effective.

2025-08-12 14:36:42 UTC

A gentle reminder (including to myself) that unspecified social media doomerism is not productive. I don't want to tone police or tell people not to share the feels, but remember these posts are more productive:
* Actual news
* Analysis that helps us understand how to push back
* Links to proactive responses
* Resources for self care or community care
Despair is a weapon of the oppressor.

2025-08-11 20:44:44 UTC

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*10 new super-shiny things appear on the horizon*
Young dev: "ooh, those are the future! Let's go—"
Old dev: <hand out blocking the way> "Hang, on, wait for it. . . "
*7 of the 10 super-shiny things crash and burn in a fiery ball that can be seen from space*
Old dev: "almost . . ."
*1 of remaining shiny things turns evil and starts eating everything near it*
Old dev: "okay, let's go."

2025-08-11 19:39:35 UTC

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Also, techbros: "AI is going to change everything, nothing will be the same, adopt it or get left behind"
Senior devs: "Well golly gee, now that's something I've never heard before . . ."

2025-08-06 02:29:53 UTC

I'm just gonna say that $500 million in vaccine funding really isn't that much and that a couple of philanthropic multi-billionaires could cover that easily entirely with wealth they've accumulated since the pandemic started.

2025-07-23 21:06:45 UTC

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Honey I Shrunk the Kids

2025-07-05 17:32:35 UTC

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ceci n’est pas une oh nevermind…

2025-06-22 13:19:08 UTC

This is what J.K. Gibson-Graham refer to as the part of the economic iceberg that's under the surface—all the informal and non-market work, much of it in the form of maintenance and care, that underwrites the formal economy.
https://newsie.social/@TheConversationUS/114727056041740145

2025-06-04 15:35:49 UTC

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For anyone who's curious, the details were basically that he enrolled a large number of women who were open to the idea of getting pregnant, even if they weren't already, and got them to keep daily journals and collect urine samples.
Without that study and the papers from it, a good 2/3 of current pregnancy tests and pregnancy tracker apps wouldn't exist.

2025-06-04 15:32:11 UTC

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I have a close family friend, who even now in retirement and with an aggressive cancer to manage, continues to produce truly field-changing reproductive scientific papers.
Almost all of them go back to a data set he collected in the late 70s.
He credits the success to NIEHS giving him a couple of years to just sit and think about how to run a study that would really get novel information about early pregnancy, and then run that study.

2025-06-04 15:29:17 UTC

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And I have to add, the stuff about Chicago school neoliberalism is spot on. But an additional aspect here is that all these pesky women and minorities started gaining the credentials that we used to just give to "great men" to work this out. And, well, we couldn't just give lazy Black people and silly women the same ability to go and sit and Think Deep Thoughts, now could we?

2025-06-04 15:27:22 UTC

My only hesitation in wholeheartedly recommending this post is the reification of "genius," which the good work of STS has thoroughly put to bed (and which plays into the whole "intelligence" thing, etc. etc.)
But the points about hiring motivated, credentialed people and just letting them do stuff? Yeah.
https://manganiello.social/notice/AukwkbWFAQDB0uXM80

2025-05-30 20:14:43 UTC

I'm feeling the need these days to shout a few things over and over again.
- Anything you're doing is going to go way, way better if you find other folks to do it with, and also find some non-human actors as part of your assemblage.
- It's also gonna work better if your group works w/other groups.
- THIS IS HARD. Humans have been painfully figuring this out for millennia. You ain't gonna invent a better way to do it overnight. Learn from existing institutions!

2025-05-21 18:29:43 UTC

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I've come to see the artistic and political value in horror, but I still don't want to watch it. Visual images really stay with me, and there's a lot of horror I really, really don't want riding around in my brain. Internet plot synopses have been great for understanding cultural import without having to deal with actually watching it.

2025-05-05 20:05:14 UTC

LOL the WaPo has an incredibly awkward piece up celebrating the Pulitzer win for Ann Telnaes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/05/washington-post-pulitzer-trump-shooting-telnaes/
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/457/014/854/133/011/original/e191ee2b720bae2f.png
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/457/017/952/760/815/original/02ccf366311289e4.png

2025-04-26 19:12:22 UTC

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I always love how the ancient Greeks were "rediscovered" during the Renaissance. When I heard this as a kid, I wondered if someone had found some box full of scrolls and books.
The "rediscovery" of course was new translations, almost all of them from Arabic, and almost all of them came with extant Arabic commentaries and annotations.

2025-04-05 16:59:09 UTC

Huge turnout at #HandsOff Durham, NC. I never got a look at the full crowd so it's hard to estimate but I'd say it was close to or over 10k people.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/286/410/515/305/159/original/ef4e987e47fb9355.png

2025-03-13 13:41:43 UTC

6,000 probationary USDA employees hired back.
Guantanamo detainees brought back stateside
Weldon's CDC nomination yanked.
Tesla stock in the toilet.
Pushback works. Court battles work. Protests work.
We can't save everything, but the things we can save are worth saving.
Keep going.
#uspol

2025-03-11 22:41:17 UTC

Jamie Raskin is encouraging people to file Federal Privacy Act requests on their personal DOGE data. Fillable forms here:
https://jamieraskin.com/doge-privacy-act-requests/
#uspol

2025-02-22 16:35:52 UTC

https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/048/505/381/739/474/original/d343f9e2970e3e8c.png

2025-02-17 18:39:21 UTC

I'm going to be beating this drum repeatedly but one of the key things that the regime's assaults on federal services is revealing is the power of #unions at all levels in maintaining a just and stable society, and we need to keep talking about that going forward in terms of how we pick up the pieces after this eventually ends and how we keep it from happening again.

2025-02-14 22:53:35 UTC

IMPORTANT FOR FIRED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES:
If you were in probationary period in your current job but had continuous federal service before that, it's likely your firing was illegal. It may be worth contacting an attorney.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/important-note-for-federal-civil-servants

2025-02-09 13:58:54 UTC

A reminder that *if you are so inclined*, religious spaces of all sorts have long been outstanding ground for organizing mutual aid, sanctuary, collective action, collective education and training, and a range of other actions.
It is a center of power but it is also contested space. Nearly every tradition has a radical corner of it. There are people in religious spaces doing outstanding work and they need help from those able to give it.

2025-02-05 00:21:14 UTC

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Yep. It was in the 90s that a CS prof told me, "if there is Fortran code that does what you want, you will never write code in another language that runs it as fast." (Both because all that code was written in days when processing power was precious and also Fortran is fast as hell.)

2025-02-03 20:33:15 UTC

ICYMI
A small number of Democratic representatives went to the USAID building and spoke to the protests there, and tried to physically enter the building.
First off, it's important to note that yes, some of them ARE trying to do something.
Second, let's note that when you have official position but little power, simply putting yourself as a body in those spaces may have power.
It's not much but it's a start.

2025-01-30 18:24:29 UTC

In case you missed it, acting ICE head Tom Homan was up yesterday complaining that ICE is having a hard time meeting the quotas they're setting because of campaigns telling people their rights and how to resist raids.
In case you're wondering if the little things you do could possibly make a difference, know that they already are.

2025-01-29 00:23:36 UTC

Wired and TPM reckon that all this shit coming out of OPM is all Musk's people, including one who just graduated from high school last summer.
Which raises an important point: This is all evil. But it's *also* incompetence.
We can give these people too much credit as nefarious Masters of the Universe when they're actually a bunch of nefarious, ill-intentioned dingbats who are just doing shit that seems good to them and not caring who or what it destroys.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/breaking-musk-takeover-of-federal-hr-office

2025-01-15 22:00:06 UTC

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The Seven Samurai

2024-12-11 15:13:00 UTC

At a time when so much tech is bad or enshitified or destructive or useless, I have to say that Zoom's background noise cancelling is fucking amazing. I was just on a meeting outside on my porch with like four sirens going off in the neighborhood and nobody could hear them, but they could hear me talking clearly.

2024-11-22 17:32:07 UTC

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Some dudes at Harvard put out a book like 20 years ago called Capital as Power and while a lot of it ended up really bad, one thing I appreciated about it was that they revived Thorstein Veblen's notion of capital control as the means of sabotage. When you hold the means of sabotage for something, it can be used strategically for exploitation and extraction.
I prefer "strategic sabotage" to "leverage" because it's much more specific and evocative.

2024-11-14 20:17:46 UTC

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I'm not saying homeowners are "gouging" the market. Because if you sell your house, you generally need to buy another one, or find housing somewhere else.
Corporate landlords are a huge problem but their impact right now is in the rental market, not in the home sales market. I need to look but I don't think they have the market clout to drive that up.
In short, REITs usually own apartments. That link explains how they're driving up rents. But not owner-occupied home prices.

2024-11-14 18:58:07 UTC

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Not sure how you just lower the prices. If it's for buying existing houses, that's taking money away from homeowners. If it's for new houses, I don't know how you do that either given that construction costs are still really high.
Harris's $25k tax credit for new buyers was a really good idea. Alas.

2024-11-12 00:24:32 UTC

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Masto has gotten a (fairly deserved) bad reputation among certain populations because of its inability to effectively moderate racist trolls.
Some folks really don't want to hear this but the number of follows I've had quit over this is way too high.

2024-11-05 23:39:43 UTC

WE ARE DURHAM AND WE'RE GONNA SAVE THIS FUCKIN' COUNTRY
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/432/982/393/211/430/original/19edb59725dbaaef.png

2024-11-03 02:36:10 UTC

Okay, y'all, making an executive decision that I'm going to be doing #uspol stuff without CWs for the next week. Mastodon has a 7 day mute feature, so if you want to avoid the stuff without CWs, probably mute me for a week.
Otherwise my feed is going to be nothing but CWs and that's just painful to look at.

2024-10-29 19:03:17 UTC

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How in the world is PHP still that far up there?

2024-10-17 01:24:07 UTC

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One day I picked up my kids from school, and we were leaning towards going out to eat.
5yo: Noooo Dada, I want to eat at hoooome
Me: Oh, okay, do you want to pick up some food and take it home?
5yo: Noooo, I want to go home and eat something you cook.
No one can take that day away from me. No one. It's mine. I'll probably remember it after I forget my own name.

2024-10-13 01:51:40 UTC

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Related:
https://lcczinecollection.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2020/04/22/a-muppet-wicker-man/

2024-09-26 00:37:18 UTC

Long past time to abolish the death penalty.
Let's make this happen.

2024-09-14 16:53:07 UTC

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Alt-texted version:
(Alt text is edited for character length.)
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/136/906/063/033/624/original/3b6c1e6c4ecdc310.png

2024-09-12 00:46:15 UTC

This is outstanding, utterly damning work by the WaPo. (Get this guest link out in the world please.)
https://wapo.st/3TsmzPn

2024-09-02 02:55:24 UTC

I would like to unironically thank Elon Musk for taking an almost unimaginable amount of wealth from this list of terrible people and vaporizing it.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/065/696/344/102/742/original/2daad522253eb75e.png

2024-08-30 14:11:39 UTC

A project I'm on at work is trialing a chatbot.
I'm doing my best to try to come up with an answer that conveys my strong sense of what a mistake our current approach is, but without letting the internal screaming come out too much.
(Most folks on the project already know my general take on this so I don't need to belabor the point too much.)

2024-08-29 15:12:19 UTC

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This whole thing reminds me of a friend in high school trying to convince me to read a Heinlein novel. He said it was fascinating in that it started with the premise that "the eugenics experiments worked" and went from there.
Like, even then (when I didn't realize a lot of things), I realized that was just not an okay premise to start with. At all.
(Oddly that friend is Jewish so him apologizing for an extremely Nazi-adjacent construct was . . . ugh.)

2024-08-24 14:10:29 UTC

Why, despite enjoying the sport for decades, I refuse to give the football played by the NFL even the tiniest bit of my attention anymore.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/08/20/nfl-concussion-settlement-mri-alzheimer/

2024-08-23 04:05:37 UTC

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Beto got within 2 points six years ago, and Cruz was more popular then. I'm not super optimistic but I think Allred's got a 1-in-3 shot.

2024-08-04 18:42:59 UTC

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I haven't read them in their entirety but I read several of the essays in Bad Feminist and Hunger and they hit hard.

2024-07-31 02:29:19 UTC

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social.coop is run on a co-op model of sorts. I really should know more about the governance model, but I do know it's run through https://opencollective.com/ .

2024-07-01 00:20:42 UTC

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But the fact that it's already a Safir-Simpson Category 4 when it hasn't even gotten near the Tropic of Cancer is extremely worrying.

2024-07-01 00:19:50 UTC

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This is the current graphical wind probability for tropical storm force winds. That can change a lot of course but this is the general direction.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/112/708/362/626/401/742/original/60cd5bdcab8bab6d.png