Ways to Reduce Consumerism

Over the last few years I've been thinking more and more about how consumerism affects my life, and, finding the effects are mostly not great, thinking about what I can do to resist it. By consumerism, I mean all the societal and cultural forces (from government policy to

Experiences Treating Cradle Cap in my Newborn

Fair warning, what follows is somewhat gross. Hopefully it is at least somewhat entertaining though, and will give you a little snapshot of the everyday trials of parenting a baby, and if you have a flaky-head baby of your own you're responsible for, maybe it will help you.

Frontend Assets in Ruby on Rails Through the Years

As a Ruby on Rails developer at a consulting agency who works with a wide variety of legacy apps, there have been many times where I need to change the JavaScript or CSS in use on the site and have to start by figuring out where those assets are currently

Migrating a a Rails Project from rails-ujs to Turbo

Recently I was helping update an app built in Ruby on Rails. It's an internal tool, so has been sitting for a while, running along happily on somewhat outdated tech. It was updated to Rails 7 already, and is already using jsbundling-rails for JavaScript, but a lot of

My Preparedness Library

Recently I've seen people talking about various devices full of offline-accessible info that are marketed to people who are worrying about the end of the world. These things like the "Prepper Disk" have been around a long time, but usually you only hear about them in

Big Sister as Gender

At a play group we attended recently for queer families with little kids, we were asked to fill out a new form for participant tracking by the host organization. Beyond some basic demographic questions you've probably been asked before, one question asked: how does your child describe their

Things I've Been Enjoying Lately

Enjoying: Games and Media I recently received my new copy of The Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, and it's so delightful. I wish I had the budget to gift it to all my most caring friends who are part of movement & activism spaces - the two I have

Logistical Tips for Moving from the US to Canada

Say you've got the visa or work permit (no small feat), and you're ready to embark on a move from the US to Canada. The rest should be easy, right? HA HA HA no, you fool. Pretty much every step of the process of moving, not

Healthcare in Canada for Newcomers

My family arrived in Canada as new permanent residents towards the end of this past summer, having moved from Nebraska in the US. We knew coming here that Ontario (and elsewhere in Canada, but I'm most familiar with Ontario & that's where we live now) is

HAM Radio for Community Preparedness

Over the last several years in the activist and community circles I've been in, people have talked occasionally about getting licensed as amateur or "HAM" radio operators so we would have an alternate means of connecting to one another in an emergency situation when cell or