Home | Cogito, Ergo Sumana

01 Nov 2016, 9:46 a.m.

I've been reminiscing about past US elections and administrations.* I've been paying attention to US federal politics since the early nineties, which means I remember a lot of details that many younger politics enthusiasts don't. …

31 Oct 2016, 11:47 a.m.

How Do We Encourage Technologists in the Public Interest?

As I mentioned when the Recompiler interviewed me, my inspirations and role models in technology are technologists who serve the public interest. The person who introduced me to free and open source software, Seth Schoen, …

27 Oct 2016, 11:06 a.m.

Learning Styles

For years, while mentoring others, I've been using these engineering learning styles as a tool to help newer engineers reflect on how they learn, and to give them a sense of the possible toolbox of …

15 Oct 2016, 13:55 p.m.

New Zine "Playing With Python: Two of My Favorite Lenses"

MergeSort, the feminist maker meetup I co-organize, had a table at Maker Faire earlier this month. Last year we'd given away (and taught people how to cut and fold) a few of my zines, and …

12 Oct 2016, 11:00 a.m.

Rough Notes for New FLOSS Contributors On The Scientific Method and Usable History

Some thrown-together thoughts towards a more comprehensive writeup. It's advice on about how to get along better as a new open source participant, based on the fundamental wisdom that you weren't the first person here …

28 Sep 2016, 16:43 p.m.

Analogy

Religion

At MidAmericon II I got to shake hands with Dr. Stanley Love and tell him that I liked his speech (he had accepted the Campbell Award for Best New Writer on behalf of his friend …

26 Sep 2016, 9:33 a.m.

iCalendar Munging with Python 3, Requests, ics.py, and Beautiful Soup

Leonard and I love seeing movies at the Museum of the Moving Image. Every few months we look at the calendar of upcoming films and decide what we'd possibly like to see together, and put …

22 Sep 2016, 15:09 p.m.

New Essay: "Toward a !!Con Aesthetic"

Over at The Recompiler, I have a new essay out: "Toward A !!Con Aesthetic". I talk about (what I consider to be) the countercultural tech conference !!Con, which focuses on "the joy, excitement, and surprise …

13 Aug 2016, 12:40 p.m.

Habit, Identity, Self-Care, and Shame

Religion

Lately I've been working to acknowledge and honor the difference it makes to me to invest in various activities and habits when they do make a difference to me. Exercising every day, and setting out …

10 Aug 2016, 10:17 a.m.

Grief

It's been a tough week. Wednesday of last week, I learned that Kevin Gorman had died. He was only 24 years old. I met Kevin through my work at the Wikimedia Foundation. He was a …