My heart immediately started to race. What the hell was going on? Did we need to spring into action? Was a huge injustice about to be visited upon an unsuspecting person right before our eyes? Was I about to have to grapple unavoidably with the cruelty of the world?

Then I realized it was a sleek, angular Hyundai IONIQ. There’s just no way ICE would drive an electric vehicle. In fact, DHS almost certainly has a top-down mandate to drive only coal-burning trucks. Something that makes lots of noise and pollutes. We were safe.

The driver completed his U-turn.

What a perfectly stupid encapsulation of the present moment.

All this, and I still see articles delicately debating how I.C.E. raids expose “ideological fault lines” in American society.

We have long passed the point where America was discussing constructive, productive solutions to immigration. There was once, not so long ago, an ideological discussion to be had: should we allow immigrants? How many? From where and for which jobs? And, given the dysfunctional system for arriving legally, how should we address those who didn’t follow the process? The only argument that matters now is, how should we treat our fellow human beings? As pieces of meat, or as people who deserve dignity, respect, and due process under the law? It’s a question that, in a functioning society, has nothing to do with citizenship or immigration status. If you struggle with this “ideological fault line,” I question whether you are a human.

In my world of tech startups, the chaos of business sometimes gets in the way of running a perfect hiring process. One of my favorite HR people gave a name to the framework I’ve always tried to follow: “red carpet in, red carpet out.” Stay classy at every stage, regardless of circumstances. Preserve personal dignity and organizational reputation with every message and action you take. Your reputation for fairness and kindness and transparency outlasts every potentially difficult situation. It’s the right thing to do.

I believe it. I wish my country believed it too.

One simple thing we can change for free is language.

Two cyclists died in a two-week span already this summer. This type of tragedy is reported in the media the same way every time:

“…A box truck struck a cyclist.”

“A box truck… made a turn… the two fatally collided.”

“A 55-year-old Florida woman… was struck and killed by a box truck making a right turn.”

This is an odd pattern because it’s 2024 and self-driving trucks barely exist outside the lab. The trucks in question were being piloted by human beings who failed to do their jobs and killed innocent people in the process. Writers can’t shirk the issue of social responsibility when writing about other kinds of deaths. (Does a gun shoot someone? Does a knife stab someone?) Let’s say it like it is:

“Truck driver kills cyclist.”

While we were hiking in the Middlesex Fells, we came upon this 133-year-old intake tower in a reservoir.

It’s made of hand-finished granite, brick, and a slate roof. The final courses of brick flare out artfully where the walls meet the roof, giving the simple building a remarkable bit of flair.

Today these materials and techniques would be considered super high end luxury stuff, inaccessible to most. Even the wealthiest homebuilders won’t shell out for hand-laid brickwork that breaks the plane or a slate roof that can last a century. But this simple building exists to house some valves and screens for a town water pipe.

Why did they build it like this? To showcase their pride in their infrastructure? Or just as a gift to future visitors, to whom it looks just as nice as the day it went up?

Let’s always try to build things a little nicer than necessary.

Under Interfaces > WAN:

• IPv4 Configuration Type: keep using DHCP
• IPv6 Configuration Type: DHCPv6
• Request only an IPv6 Prefix: ✓ (enabled)
• Prefix delegation size: 56
• Send IPv6 prefix hint: ✓ (enabled)

Under Interfaces > LAN:

• IPv4 Configuration Type: keep using Static IPv4
• IPv6 Configuration Type: Track Interface
• IPv6 Interface: WAN (which interface to track)
• IPv6 Prefix ID: 0

If you have other local networks, like a guest network VLAN, you can assign those interfaces a different prefix ID to keep them isolated.

But I couldn’t bear the thought of 2022 going by without a single post. Let’s see if this can become more of a habit.

The Times article offers this potential downside to the development: “it left some of the group’s targets in the lurch, unable to pay the ransom to get their data back and get their businesses running again.”

But actually that’s great news too. And sorry, but I have no sympathy–none, zero–for businesses that depend on ransom payments to get back online. Their stupidity is the reason we have to deal with ransomware in the first place.

Ransomware has become a lucrative source of income for dangerous state-affiliated hacker groups and nation-states that are shut out of the real world economy. The real solution to the ransomware crisis? The United States should criminalize the payment of digital ransom money–with real, fearsome penalities like jail time for company executives. Paying digital ransom is essentially the same thing as wiring money directly from American businesses to the Russian intelligence services or the North Korean government. It’s an outrage that it happens. If everyone stopped paying, the attacks would stop completely and we could all just move on.

I stand by my conclusion that, basically, we’re in big trouble.

I strongly believe that the statute requires that the GSA Administrator ascertain, not impose, the apparent president-elect. Unfortunately, the statute provides no procedures or standards for this process… I do not think that an agency charged with improving federal procurement and property management should place itself above the constitutionally based election process. I strongly urge Congress to consider amendments to the act.

I don’t think her delay was excusable, but she’s right about one thing: she should never have been put in this position.

One of the weaknesses of American democracy that the Trump era has brought to light are that basic procedures and expectations of good behavior need to be clarified beyond a shadow of a doubt.

A consistent anti-pattern of failing companies is calcification–an unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances or try better ways of working. A determination to keep doing things the old way.

Government face similiar existential risks from this behavior. A successful democracy should work as the founders intended, such that the laws and procedures are being constantly amended and clarified as circumstances warrant.

America seems unable to address rewrites, even when they seem obvious. Most Americans agree that women should be treated as equals to men, but nearly 50 years after its introduction, we’ve been unable to pass an Equal Rights Amendment which says just that. Most Americans believe that civilian use of guns should be regulated in some capacity, but people would rather subject every letter and phrase of the obsolete Second Amendment to deep scrutiny and interpretation than replace it with a clear and unambiguous statement that reflects the modern state of affairs.

May our ability to clarify the basic rules about the transfer of power show the world that the United States still has what it takes to adapt and move with the times. To lead.

Here in Boston, the agency in charge of sewage treatment has contracted with a fellow Greentown Labs startup (Biobot) to monitor COVID-19 viral RNA levels in sewage. This is a brilliant new technique that provides an excellent early warning sign for public health events.

I combined their dataset with hospitalization data from the state. The state data includes many hospital beds that are not part of the MWRA sewage system, but you get the idea:

Basically, we’re in big trouble.

According to the Boston Globe, over $43M was spent (wasted?) on advertising for and against this initiative.

Automakers stooped to the lowest level of argument. “If question 1 passes in Massachusetts, anyone could access the most personal data stored in your vehicle,” they said, claiming the law would empower sexual predators (along with visuals of a woman alone in a parking garage).

What struck me the most about this line of reasoning is how it should (but apparently doesn’t) lead people to an even more pressing question: Is it totally acceptable that a car should store and transmit your “most personal data” in the first place?

I believe in repairing things, but I consider my privacy far more sacred than my posessions.

I saw the pictures this morning of police pepper-spraying Black protesters in North Carolina. I couldn’t stop thinking of the way people try to defend the police as an institution by claiming that acts such as these are committed by “a few bad apples.”

Of course, if that were really true, all the cops doing the pepper-spraying–their faces are clearly recognizable in the images–would have been swiftly and immediately fired. I’m guessing that didn’t happen.

During the chaos of our police violence-themed summer, Freddie shared with me an article about the “bad apples” theory stating that, actually, there are professions where we have agreed on a zero-tolerance policy for “bad apples.” For example, pilots. How many pilots do you know who aren’t very good at landing airplanes? How many aircraft do you think you’d be allowed to crash before you’d be fired?

Which brings me to another point about aviation safety: the minimum retirement age. In recognition of the inevitable decline of human capabilities, commercial pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65¹. While I’m sure there are people who can safely fly aircraft well beyond that age, we decided: why take a chance?

Now look at the ages of the two US presidential candidates. Both are about twice the median age of the entire population. Putting aside for a moment any concerns about physical or cognitive decline, is it even possible to comprehend seismic cultural changes across that kind of age gap? I appreciate the wisdom of the elders, but I don’t think they should be driving the bus either. Note that the founders felt obliged to clarify that a 35-year-old would have sufficient life experience to do the job.

While we’re at it, I’m in favor of age limits for Congress and the Supreme Court too.

Go vote. We’ll fix this later.

It started with some closet clutter and a hastily-made prototype of a diaper carton and masking tape. My kids don’t even wear diapers anymore–that’s how long this project lingered in a half-done state. But I love a good cardboard prototype and keep them around until I finish the project. Eventually I went to CAD and cut a CNC prototype out of MDF.

I used my Shaper Origin to engrave our names into the front panels prior to assembly. The Shaper is very efficient at engraving. My current technique is to cover the entire panel with blue tape, route, and spraypaint. If I did this more often I’d look into using a specialized large-surface masking material but blue tape works well enough. I used a V-bit to get the details on the text outlines.

Then for a coat of Osmo polyx-oil finish. Unfortunately this finish darkened the sapele-veneer plywood much more than I expected. If I did it over, I’d use a lighter wood or white paint for the text.

But now our mittens are sorted!

• Trump suggests that North Carolina voters should vote twice
• Trump suggests postponing the election
• Trump suggests using ‘light and heat’ as a coronavirus cure
• Trump suggests Roger Stone did nothing wrong
• Trump suggests a Boycott of AT&T to Punish CNN
• Trump suggests Giving Teachers Guns
• Trump suggests Holding Next G7 at His Resort
• Trump suggests Using Bedrock China Policy as Bargaining Chip

There are even worse examples, but I can’t bear to look them up.

One of the most destructive patterns in journalism today is the way that legitimate media outlets timidly write about Trump. The man may be incapable of speaking in coherent English and studiously avoids complete sentences (have you ever tried to read a transcript of him speaking?). But when a president speaks or writes, he or she does not “suggest.” A president does not make “suggestions.” Everything a president says or writes is an on-the-record pronouncement of policy, irrespective of the medium or the grammar. The media should treat it as such. His cronies certainly do.

Continued from part 3: the finished product.

I designed the bed to be assembled in place with fasteners. It worked out that the ground clearance of the bed was a perfect match for my sawhorses. (I wish I could say that was a design feature, but rather it was a happy accident that greatly simplified assembly. This thing is heavy!)

My kids were happy to help, in particular by managing my stash of connecting dowels. I assembled the bed before the stair-drawers were complete. That didn’t stop them from testing the bed level early!

Here’s the completed stair-drawer unit. The drawer fronts are 18 mm CNC-cut birch plywood screwed to 12 mm plywood drawer boxes. From this angle you can also see one of the Lightly LED modules. The left side of the stair unit contains T-nuts that receive bolts through the right side of the bed. Clamping the pieces together stiffens the bed to the point where racking is basically undetectable.

Corner view showing the connector bolts that tie into the cross-dowel fasteners.

One last view of the finished bed. Can you find the secret message? It’s two letters chosen by my daughter.

Lighting

My daughter loves to read, so I designed the bed with a cozy kid-sized reading nook on the bottom. I like exploring the concept of kid-scale vs. adult-scale in design. The built world is made for adults. But the ceiling of this space is uncomfortably low for a grown-up, so it’s really a kid space–it belongs to her. (Children immediately notice these details.)

Nobody wants to read in a dark cave of course, and it would be inexcusable for a piece of custom furniture to have an awkwardly added-on light. I searched around for lighting that would satisfy my goals. I wanted low glare–a good feature of any reading light, but one that’s extra welcome for glossy children’s books. I wanted exceptional color rendering, because I am a photographer obsessed with the dismal quality of most LED light sources. And I wanted the sources to be nearly invisible.

The obvious choice these days is flexible LED tape strips. That might have been fine, but they have some drawbacks that drive me crazy. Chiefly, multi-shadowing caused by the large number of point sources of light, which is almost impossible to correct at close range, even with diffusers.

I wound up choosing Hikari SQ light panels from an Irish company called Lightly. This is an incredible product. Basically they have turned flat-panel display backlighting technology into an illumination product. A ring of very high-quality LEDs pump light into a well-engineered flat plastic light guide that emits photons evenly over its entire 100x100 mm surface–in a package that’s only 3.2 mm thick. The large apparent source size is the secret to low glare, and they’ve chosen great LEDs that render color as well as anything on the market. I will be using these again!

A neat thing about a light source that’s only 3.2 mm (1/8 inch) thick is that you can fully recess it into a piece of plywood without any meaningful loss of strength. I needed two lights to provide even illumination, so I planned those pockets into the grid of mattress vent-holes in the floor of the bed. The Shaper Origin makes quick work out of cutting square pockets in things.

I did a power-on test to remind myself how awesome these lights are. Did I mention that I like testing?

Now for one more detail. Nobody wants to see wires! That would ruin the magic. Behind the lights, on the mattress side of the bed floor, I cut a groove for the wire. Forgive the zig-zaggy shape–I’ve been routing too many circuit boards at my day job.

With some diagonal hand-drilling, I fashioned this transition which allows the wire to pass through the side of the bed and into the stair unit (where the LED driver lives) without being seen.

After tacking the LED wiring neatly into the groove with superglue, I back-filled it with silicone caulk to protect it from damage. Done. Maybe a little over-engineered.

Painting and Finishing

Finishing is my least favorite part of any project. I mean “finishing” in the sense of applying wood finish. Of course I like to be finished. Right?

I wanted a combination of white and natural birch surfaces for this project, and I was really hoping to get them in the most environmentally-friendly way possible. Not just for the benefit of the outdoor environment, but the indoor one–many indoor materials and finishes emit VOCs over a period of time and there are probably health consequences that we don’t fully understand.

I chose traditional milk paint for the white surfaces. It’s an incredibly benign product with a lovely texture and interesting tints if that’s what you seek. But if you want a perfectly smooth, opaque surface with a small number of coats, it’s an infuriatingly slow way to go. Next time I want solid white on my plywood I’ll probably go with a surface laminate, or maybe modern paint.

For the top coat, I went with Osmo Polyx-Oil 3043. This magical finish, from a German company, is relatively new to the North American market. It produces a hybrid penetrating and surface finish that doesn’t chip and seems to last forever. Improbably, it is made of mostly plant-derived oils and waxes. Buy it from the nice people at Tools for Working Wood in Brooklyn. In a moment of weakness I bought one can from Amazon and of course it arrived with a huge dent in the side. TFWW has never let me down.

The one drawback to Osmo Polyx-Oil is the cure time. Each coat takes up to 24 hours to cure–and each side of each part would need about 3 coats of finish. I applied the finish to individual pieces prior to assembly. You can imagine that this process stretched on for what felt like an eternity.

I almost forgot the drawers. I gave my daughter a complete set of paint swatches and let her choose her three favorite colors. I love watching how kids contemplate possibilities. Then the kids got to paint the drawer fronts. (Advantage milk paint! Totally harmless stuff.) This was my favorite part of the finishing process by far. I think they did a pretty good job!

Coming up in part 4: final assembly!

The bed would be my first big test of a hybrid track saw-CNC router workflow. I have no place for an industrial-size CNC router in my shop, but I’ve found that the Shaper Origin is really adept at working on projects both tiny and large. Cutting the full outline of each large bed piece with the Shaper would be laborious and slow, however, so I used the track saw to break down the plywood panels into their final rectangular dimensions. Then I used the Shaper to accurately plunge-route the hidden dowel-holes¹, squarely drill the connecting fastener holes, route out internal features, and add external contours.

I have to say this technique worked pretty well.

Now for the first multi-piece test fit, with help from the sawhorse. Here I threw in the prototype stair unit, which is made of cheap plywood and OSB. The stair unit serves an important purpose in stiffening the bed against racking, so the final version gets bolted tightly to the end piece of the frame.

Test-fitting the bottom. Always be testing.

I couldn’t resist using 3D printing to solve a dilemma that the Shaper Origin couldn’t deal with: squarely edge-drilling the plywood to accept dowels or Confirmat screws. So I designed my own jig to align an edge hole perfectly to a pencil mark. I made this one out of Formlabs Rigid resin, which is amazing for little fixtures. A steel drill bushing makes it last forever. Unfortunately it is so rigid (and overconstrained) that it can’t deal with the natural thickness change of wood due to humidity variation, so this jig only works on dry days. And it looks like a giant alien tooth. Always something for next time.

I also built a version of this jig to drill edge holes that perfectly meet the cross-dowel bores that I CNC-routed into the face of the board. That jig turns out to be a handy tool for making flat-pack furniture with the Shaper.

On with the test-fitting:

And I built the stair unit. Note how I optimistically included a carry-handle on the back for easy moving. This thing weighs a million pounds and will never be moved. But I like handles.

Those are Blum Tandem drawer glides. So nice. Throw away the drawings and use their Excel spreadsheet for calculating the drawer box dimensions.

Coming up in part 3: lighting and finishing.

I started by making a few dozen low-fidelity sketches of different bed concepts I’d been thinking about for a while. None of them resemble the finished product in any way.

My kid has always loved books, so almost every concept included a reading feature–usually integrated bookshelves. I also wanted the bed to feel cozy. The city is a noisy place, so I thought I would try to employ upholstered acoustical panels to create a space with a built-in sense of quiet while offering some varied surface textures. But my planned wood-Rockwool-fabric assembly was becoming intimidatingly complex, so I abandoned that path. I settled on the idea of providing a sense of enclosure from simple wood sides around the bed with small openings to provide visibility and light.

Eventually, my daughter dictated that she wanted a bunk bed after seeing a large one at a friend’s house, complete with storage-unit stairs. My material of choice these last few years is all birch plywood all the time. I found a good deal of inspiration from the designs of Flexa and Casa Kids.

As I do with every kid project, I carefully researched the appropriate safety requirements, and in doing so learned that bunk-bed injuries are extremely common in her age group. To minimize the risk, I decided to limit the height to what I call a “mid-height bunk,” which rules out a second sleeper below. I would discover later that this results in the perfect height for giving a goodnight kiss.

Much of the geometry of the bed would ultimately be governed by how much rise/run I could get away with on the stair unit. This necessitated “user testing,” so I made an educated guess and built a quick prototype of the stairs with scrap wood and a nail gun. I always forget how fast construction can be when you’re not being fussy. Watching the kids interact with full-scale pieces was so much fun that it gave me the burst of energy I needed to get the project off the drawing board and into the shop.

I moved quickly into CAD. It’s rare that I start a CAD design without a fairly complete paper drawing but in this case there were too many variables to play with. It was a big help to parameterize dimensions like the mattress size and side clearance for tucking sheets (the mattress sits at the bottom of a deep box).

I always design for longevity. For this project, I did not wish to make a glorified IKEA piece, but rather something that improves with age, something my kids might want to store and use again. That led to a requirement for repeated assembly and disassembly. So: “no” to nails and glue. “Yes” to cross dowels, connector bolts, and Confirmat screws. And with those things come requirements for precision manufacturing to ensure accurate alignment between pieces. I would need to plan my cuts carefully and lean on tools to help.

Coming up in part 2: constructing the bed.

I don’t dive, but I’ve wanted a waterproof camera for years. I’ve never shaken my Midwestern determination to be outdoors during rainstorms. Now that the kids are learning to swim, I have a perfect excuse to try more in- and on-water photography.

The seller kindly included this original brochure from the eighties. Will owning this camera finally put hair on my chest?

It seems pretty safe to conclude that they had their insurance company pay them off, which would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

Ransomware, which is increasingly difficult to stop by technical means, could be neutralized forever with a stroke of the pen: make it a federal crime to pay off cybercriminals. No exceptions. And this would not be a crime penalized with a easily-paid “slap on the hand” fine (like we do with environmental laws), but one with serious consequences: prison time for company executives, or perhaps forfeiture of company assets. Imagine how the federal government might react if Garmin executives had instead wired $10M to a cartel for some drugs.

Paying cybercriminals creates more cybercrime. It is a choice that we make.

File under: hard technical problems with easy political solutions.

I bought a case of jumbo bathroom-stall toilet paper from McMaster-Carr.

For someone accustomed to fluffy grocery-store TP, these rolls were impressive to behold: 300 meters long, improbably dense, surprisingly abrasive, strangely unperforated, and… way too big to fit on a normal dispenser.

It was time to employ one of my standard engineering solutions: build an adapter. Fortunately I had a suitable scrap of Baltic birch already covered with Shaper tape, ready for cutting, helping to qualify this job as an elusive one-night woodworking project.

Behold.

Time seemed to come to a standstill during lockdown, but the really surprising thing about these commercial TP rolls was how much they amplified the effect by basically never running out.

In case you were wondering, we’ve gone back to normal TP.

If, for a moment, you can look past how obviously discriminatory that stance is, you will see an even dumber problem that is so deeply rooted in the American tradition that it’s not even discussed in the article. Why are employers involved at all in health care? In this country, your employment status and choice of employer have a wide-reaching impact on your health, now and in the future.

Postscript: it was an insanely shortsighted idea to allow people to call the Affordable Care Act “Obamacare,” as the Times does in the URL to this news story.

Massive changes are underway in the world–some terrifying, some exciting, many without recent precedent. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be in good physical and financial health, surrounded by at least my immediate family, while we wait to see what comes next.

Approaching today, the eve of a milestone birthday, a number of people have asked me if I have a theme for the next decade: a plan, goals, a roadmap? I don’t. In a summer of disease, travel cancellations, and political upheaval, long-term planning feels like a quaint idea. Perhaps it needn’t be. Earlier this spring, I made an effort to drop my near-hourly headline-reading habit to stay focused on the bigger picture, favoring weekly news round-ups, analytical monthlies, and books. It was good while it lasted but I’ve sort of lapsed.

What use is the short-term news cycle? Should I be surprised that the pandemic still kills people who reject the science or can’t afford to heed it? Or to learn that police brutality is an on-demand service in the United States? Or to find that the president has done another incredibly dumb thing? Everyone is so focused on the short term that the long term vision is rarely mentioned.

Maybe I do need a plan for my next decade. What seems to be missing from America on the eve of its birthday is a set of guiding principles that everyone continues to believe in. I’m lucky to still have mine.

The Trump administration moved on Friday to roll back school nutrition standards championed by Michelle Obama, an effort long sought by food manufacturers and some school districts that have chafed at the cost of Mrs. Obama’s prescriptions for fresh fruit and vegetables.

Donald Trump has been pretty transparent that his policy objectives, as a whole, can be framed as “try to undo everything Obama achieved.”

Trump likes to portray himself as a builder. But the reality is that he is a destroyer. It’s far easier to destroy than to build. Building requires intelligence, persuasion, determination, and a vision. To destroy, one needs to simply swing wildly with a hatchet.

Everything Trump has achieved so far in his presidency has been destructive. He has created nothing. Both his actions and his words confirm that he has no vision for a better America–only a desperate need for applause fueled by latent partisan rancor.

This election, look for the builders.

I’ve long felt that it was Twitter’s responsibility to turn off Donald Trump’s account. It’s not just an unwelcome (and obviously rule-breaking) source of threats, harassment, and hateful conduct on the Internet. It’s a major force for the destabilization of global politics.

Since Twitter has long ago forsaken any social responsibility for what they do, the time is right for the rest of us to take action. We must immediately raise $24.5B, purchase Twitter, and shut the whole damn thing down. There are no drawbacks; only benefits.