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Erica Fischer

@enf.bsky.social
466 followers 138 following 253 posts

She is awake. She is not in acute distress. She is well-developed and well-groomed. She is not ill-appearing. Behavior is cooperative. Thought content normal.

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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 1h
The 1951 California report that established the lower case of the Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs standardalphabet.com/standard-alp... cc @aresluna.org @bzotto.bsky.social
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I didn't realize that my phone had been counting my steps every day for the last 10 years, but now I know how much the pandemic reduced my baseline level of physical activity, and how much getting a dog has increased it again
scatterplot of daily steps recorded by date
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Rachel Cole @rmartincole.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Cover of "Chicago Orchard (Douglas) Airport" master plan prepared for the City of Chicago, Martin H. Kennelly, mayor. Detail of an image from the master plan showing airport and runways.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I will be in Chicago (Sep 12-13) and Indianapolis (Sep 14-16). Who wants to meet up?
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Data art: still a thing
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This art was put here for all to enjoy
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Ian @woolie.meowmeow.city · 13/08/2026
youtu.be/1ju4t0XM_ig?...
youtu.be
Footage of two and three-car BART trains from the first months of train service in 1972
YouTube video by BART
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I think I understand why front yards exist now: because people walk dogs
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Big Free Library
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Marcin Wichary @aresluna.org · 11/08/2026
I was hoping for your help with something. (Please RT for reach.) Is there a particular font that’s instantly recognizable to someone who lives where you do, and appreciated/recognized/hated there, but completely unknown elsewhere? Road signs, street names, transit, infrastructure, stuff like that?
An old dot-matrix display at the platform of Bay Area Rapid Transit near San FranciscoA license plate in TaiwanA house number in San FranciscoAn old street sign in Szczecin, set in a distinctive typeface
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Baking powder
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
41th
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Golden Gate Tunnel bumper sticker
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
OMG. The drawings of Frederick Law Olmstead (Central Park, National Zoo, Mountain View Cemetery …) are archived on Flickr. www.flickr.com/photos/olmst...
Vintage planning map of Central Park, New York, NY.Vintage map of the National Zoo.Vintage planning map for Mountain View Cemetery, Piedmont, CA.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
ASCII-art maps in 1889! archive.org/details/spec...
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I had forgotten all about this map of East Bay BART station locations that were under consideration in 1958 flickr.com/photos/walki... felt.com/map/East-Bay...
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
I’m too old and out of shape to be Walking Every Street, but is it a street?
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Single-use flashbulbs! Who would believe now that that was the way it was
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Rainbow flag kids (and a few grownups) pride-parading past my door
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
The trouble with having a topo map tattoo is that then you spend months obsessing about whether it is possible to fix and mask the errors in what is already in your skin, and whether they are worth fixing when no one else notices or cares
My existing arm with topo map tattoo, and contemplated changes to fix and mask errors
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Ian @woolie.meowmeow.city · 24/05/2026
The most famous Soviet-realist sculpture in Minsk is now a KFC. youtu.be/8wRMhREDl9c?...
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Andrew Alden @geology.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
New blog post: when rocks were our roads
oaklandgeology.com
The macadam era
Oakland used to brag about the quality of its streets, which were made of Oakland rock. Two things, an accident of geology and technological happenstance, meant our first roads were built starting …
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Are there any accounts of the initial bringup of any of the 8-bit-era personal computers, like what routines in the ROM were written first, that kind of thing?
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Russ Cox @swtch.com · 19/01/2026
“Floating-Point Printing and Parsing Can Be Simple And Fast” The fastest known floating-point printer and parsing algorithms - fixed-width printing, shortest-width printing, and parsing, all in 400 lines of Go. research.swtch.com/fp research.swtch.com/fp-proof
research.swtch.com
research!rsc: Floating-Point Printing and Parsing Can Be Simple And Fast (Floating Point Formatting, Part 3)
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Kuan Butts @kuanbutts.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Starting to process years of AC Transit data into useful dashboards. Weekly/daily OTP stats: kuanbutts.com/actransit_pe... - Much higher dropped service on weekends - Rush hour delays are widespread, consistent - Delays consistent across routes, impacting reliability as a bridge to BART
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Tim Pierce @unchi.org · 28/04/2026
Inside of you there are two wolves. This is a race condition that has been fixed and will be resolved in the next nightly build.
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Ben Zotto @bzotto.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
How I found Sphere's lost disk operating system, how it connects to Motorola's 6800 development system, and how professional self-hosted development on micros took away one of the things that minis uniquely could do. sphere.computer/news/2026-05...
sphere.computer
Sphere News: Finding a Lost DOS in the Desert
Recovering FDOS, Sphere's Disk Operating System.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Nancy's Hand-Painted Calculators! 10¢
Calculators? Nancy, that's just a pebble with '4' on it.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
It is not in fact the end of the line
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Ben Zotto @bzotto.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
New: Signetics CRT font family, based on the bitmap letterforms of the Signetics 2513 character generator, as seen on an analog CRT screen. Mixed-case, style variants and TTF variable axis included. www.fogcitytype.com/signetics-crt
fogcitytype.com
Signetics CRT — Fog City Type
Monospace font family designed with the bitmap letterforms of the Signetics 2513 character ROM, as seen on a cathode ray tube screen. Four styles, boldface versions, and variable TTF.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
The Downloads folder, with nothing but leftover Unconfirmed *.crdownload placeholders visible
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Suddenly wondering how long until product placement becomes a thing in AI image generation
Billy Joel, David Bowie, and Richard Nixon cooking spaghetti
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Zachary Schrag @zacharyschrag.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
For twenty years I've been asked about this. Here are my answers, for all to see. ggwash.org/view/102941/...
ggwash.org
Frequently asked questions about the missing Georgetown Metro station
Following the 20th anniversary of Zachary Schrag’s The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, and the 50th anniversary of the first Metrorail service, Schrag offers his best answers ...
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Happy Trans Day of Visibility!
Me with a rainbow flag
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Camera selling your location data ^
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
I think ChatGPT is onto me
Fake New Yorker cartoon of my present and past selves generated by gpt-image-1.5, captioned "Honestly, sometimes it feels like all anyone talks about is transgender issues and map nerdery."
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Ben Zotto @bzotto.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
One of the stranger mysteries about the Sphere computers has been their BASIC language. Slow, huge... but oddly powerful. Full details only emerged late, so barely in advance of the book's arrival, I present the wild story of Sphere BASIC: sphere.computer/news/2026-03...
sphere.computer
Sphere News: The Secret Minicomputer Inside Your Sphere
Unveiling the extraordinary origins of Sphere's BASIC programming language.
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Ben Schmidt @bschmidt.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
When a Schmidt dies, we take all the USB cables they accumulated in life, chain them through older and older ports, back to a splitter on my great-grandfather’s telephone jack… and so back through the generations, across the sea. Each grave flickers with power from a waterwheel in the old country.
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
YES! After a few hours searching, I finally dug up a high-quality scan of the first (known) color choropleth. From haab-digital.klassik-stiftung.de/viewer/fulls... Thanks to @datavisfriendly.bsky.social & @infowetrust.com who helped with the search. #cartography #maps #dataviz
Color map showing population density from Administrativ-Statistischer Atlas vom Preussischen Staate. It is the first known color choropleth.
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
From the archives
The Internet: How it could be ruining your hair
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Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Just started doing new data analysis and I know I keep saying this, but: I really, really don't think people appreciate how much this moral panic was a deliberate and extremely expensive invention.
news articles about trans people based on keyword, left is cnn, right is fox. fox has  10x as many
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
​Greetings from the Northwestern University Transportation Library, where Rachel just showed me the original!
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Alan McConchie @mappingmashups.net · 02/03/2026
Big news in Cascadia: British Columbia will switch to permanent #DaylightSavingTime. Clocks will change for the last time on March 8 and then will not switch back in the fall. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
B.C. to end time changes, adopt year-round daylight time | CBC News
March 8 will be the last time most British Columbians have to change their clocks, B.C. Premier David Eby announced Monday.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Update/Scoop— New guidance sent this AM to Kansas DMVs indicates licenses that previously had gender marker changed not actually invalid yet. However, internally DMV can see who is flagged, and keeping track of who has/hasn't come in to update. Seems about 300 trans/GNC ppl flagged across the state.
Good morning,

As a reminder notice was sent to about 300 Kansas credential holders on 2/23/26 and 2/25/26 and those records will reflect SB244 MM/DD/YY. If you see SB244 UPDATED it means the applicant has come in and been reissued whether they were sent a notice or not.

Currently, KDOR has not "invalidated" any records for people who were sent letters due to the passing of SB244 which requires the "sex at birth" to be listed on Kansas credentials. If this is completed, we will let you know.

Even if a record isn't flagged as having an updated gender, we are still required to update these records to reflect the applicant's "sex at birth" when they come in to be reissued. The applicant does not need to provide any documentation for the update other than their current credential and proof of address.

KDOR's Gender Reclassification Policy has been updated to include information regarding the handling of these records and information you may need.

Please reach out if you have any questions.
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Julia Serano @juliaserano.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
precisely 10 years ago today, the concept of "transgender social contagion" was first invented on the now infamous anti-trans parent website 4thWaveNow. a full timeline of how the concept spread (not unlike a "social contagion") can be found here: juliaserano.blogspot.com/2019/02/orig...
screenshot from the linked-to timeline that reads:
February 20, 2016: Insofar as I can tell, the first ever claim that "social contagion" is turning kids transgender.
It occurs as a comment on the 4thwavenow.com "About" page, posted on February 20, 2016 at 5:27pm, under the handle "skepticaltherapist." Shortly thereafter, 4thwavenow.com turned this comment into its own post, called...
February 29, 2016: 4thwavenow.com publishes "Tumblr snags another girl, but her therapist-mom knows a thing or two about social contagion."
As noted in the previous entry, this is skepticaltherapist's earlier comment, posted along with a brief intro from the folks at 4thwavenow. There are several potentially noteworthy things about it, and the comments that follow it:
o    It begins by referencing a Star Trek TNG episode in which the crew becomes addicted to an alien video game, then makes the following analogy: "The alien mind control device made its way into my home about two years ago when my then eleven-year-old daughter begged me for a Tumblr account since her friends all had one."
o    In the piece, skepticaltherapist describes herself as a psychotherapist, later adding, "As a therapist, I mostly work with adults."
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 20/02/2026
2. Every few months, I publish a national risk assessment for transgender youth and adults when it comes to legal threats. This particular update is a large one, with a new way of scoring risk for trans youth given the changing environment, and with major updates for adults.
erininthemorning.com
Anti-Trans National Legal Risk Assessment Map: Feb 2026
The situation continues to deteriorate when it comes to transgender youth care. For adults, we see Kansas as the newest state added to a "Do Not Travel" advisory list.
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Benj Edwards @benjedwards.com · 11/02/2026
I wrote a tribute for BYTE Magazine's amazing cover artist, Robert Tinney, who died Feb 1st Tinney painted 80 vivid and surreal covers illustrating various concepts in early personal computing from 1978-1990, usually airbrushed with gouache. May he RIP ❤️ arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026...
A trio of Robert Tinney illustrated magazine covers: Floppy Disk, Software Piracy, Smalltalk Balloon
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
I have mixed feeling about this cloud map I helped create appearing in William Rankin’s book *Radical Cartography*. On the one hand, it’s an honor. On the other hand it’s disappointing that the work we did as a small team (I think we had 5 people at the time?) gets subsumed into NASA as a whole.
Page from the book Radical Cartography. At the top is a global map of cloud cover in the Hammer-Aitoff projection, colored from dark blue (few clouds) to white (lots of clouds). The data is plotted without a coastline or boundaries. The text reads, in part: "It provides empirical insight into a range of climatic patterns, but it's also an invitation to replace the familiar dichotomy of land and water with a more fluid understanding (literally) of the contrasts and continuities that might shape a sense of place. Adding traditional base data-as NASA did in its public maps—strips the map of both its utility and its affect."
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Erica Fischer @enf.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
I've been carrying a GPS logger around with me for 19 years, but it's probably time to stop because I went 11 months without downloading the logs
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Andrew Alden @geology.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
New blog post.
oaklandgeology.com
The story of blue rock
There was a long period in Oakland’s history when the city cared deeply about its streets and took great pains with the rock it used in them. The tiny village that became Oakland in 1852 was …
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