Sign in

Kurt Raschke

@kurtraschke.com
213 followers 111 following 375 posts

they/them Transit and technology, mostly. Prone to ranting. Reposts and favorites are not endorsements. Posts are solely my own. ABATE NOXIOUS STIMULI.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
PJ Harvey Dent @bsakat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Wendy Carlos should be on the 20 dollar bill. There should be a 50-foot-tall, solid-gold statue of her in Pawtucket. You should be able to buy all her albums in any format you want and a line of custom branded synths. She should be a household name along with Bob Moog.
51282335
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Laine Nooney @ 🔥🗑️🔥 @lainenooney.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is such an unbelievably, historically unserious bad take from Steven Levy, the light from bad takes would take a million billion years to reach it. www.wired.com/story/war-br...
wired.com
War Bros Didn’t Always Rule Silicon Valley
Some say that tech was always about the money and the military. Don’t buy that argument.
515344
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission @cpsc.gov · 26/09/2026
If you own 20+ flashlights, at a certain point you're probably running an unregistered lighthouse but we're not the lighthouse safety commission so keep up the good work.
27897123
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 26/09/2026
In spite of this I'm still very happy with my Blackwire 8225 (which I bought before the HP acquisition). But it's a damn shame that the era of good, serious headsets has ended. Sometimes you just need a voice tube and a well-fitted eartip and a chunky PTT switch. Especially the chunky PTT switch.
000
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 26/09/2026
Some of us just wanted to be Gene Kranz or Sy Liebergot when we grew up, you know?
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 26/09/2026
Well, uh, shit. If you've been dreaming, since you were a little kid, that someday you were going to get to work in a _real_ control center and wear a _real_ headset like a Plantronics MS50 or StarSet, well, it turns out that HP crushed your dreams last May: cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/05...
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 24/09/2026
You'd have to write custom authentication and authorization hooks to make this work, but that's far from an insurmountable challenge (the appcaps are just a block of JSON, after all).
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 24/09/2026
Ooh, if the @duckdb.org server-side authentication hook for Quack requests (duckdb.org/docs/current...) passed through the HTTP request headers, then you could run Quack behind @tailscale.com Serve and use app capabilities (tailscale.com/docs/feature...) to control access!
100
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Jeremy Diamond ☕️ @dmnd.me · 23/09/2026
I call this Wawa Theory. Most people don’t care about the food itself, but novel logistics, user experiences, or forms? Everybody gets excited about that. That’s Traveling Dad Nirvana. “This sandwich tastes better because I ordered it on a touch screen at a reliably clean, well-lit gas station.”
6418
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
bianca wylie @biancawylie.com · 19/09/2026
In the same way that no is a complete sentence, "I don't like this" is a complete response to the proposed use of a computer. lesscomputer.ca/computer-as-...
0107
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
British Transport Films Stills @btfstills.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
SNOWDRIFT AT BLEATH GILL (1955) | www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ugIoMD495E
An image captured from SNOWDRIFT AT BLEATH GILL (1955)
0134
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 15/09/2026
@nat.makhijani.us described this as "accessible nerdiness": nataliem.nyc/blog/cab-rid...
nataliem.nyc
The end of accessible nerdiness
120
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 15/09/2026
And sure, maybe that wasn't totally kosher, but there are far bigger risks on the railway. And if the installation of cab cameras means the death of the unofficial "hey, kid, want to come for a ride?", then we have, unfortunately lost something significant.
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 15/09/2026
I feel like I probably have to explain this: yes, cab cameras are a net positive for safety and compliance. But, so many people who are in the business today got their start—got hooked on a love of trains—after a cab ride.
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 15/09/2026
Did you think you were just going for a quick jaunt, and you had other plans afterwards? Cancel them. If someone asks you if you'd like to go for a ride, the answer is always "yes", not least because inward-facing cab cameras will eventually make mainline cab rides a thing of the past.
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 15/09/2026
Very glad to see that @tomscott.com knows the First Rule of Foaming: if you're getting a cab ride and someone asks if you'd like to stay on the footplate, the answer is always "yes". www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr4l...
youtube.com
Thomas, a tank engine, is not Thomas the Tank Engine.
YouTube video by Tom Scott
130
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The contagion of fear bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/t...
bcantrill.dtrace.org
The contagion of fear | The Observation Deck
1624083
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 13/09/2026
sometimes the menu provides clues but other times it invites more confusion.
000
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 13/09/2026
i was just thinking about this while standing in line at a coffee shop yesterday. there should be some kind of standardized vocabulary and ordering format. is it "small" or "16 oz" or "regular"? is it an "iced oat latte" or an "iced latte with oat milk"?
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
But otherwise, imposing standards just for the sake of arbitrary uniformity sucks all of the joy and creativity out of programming, and when that happens, we've lost something fundamental.
010
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
I grant that some code may be so obscure that nobody but the original author has any hope of maintaining it. (Sometimes, even the original author may not be able to figure it out, a few years later...) Perhaps, then, a gentle nudge is required.
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
Again, I'm not saying we should tolerate broken code. But in the average programming language, there are many valid ways to reach the same end result, and we should embrace this diversity. Does the code work? Can someone else read it and figure it out? Good.
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
Now, you might say "but I work in a company of thousands of developers, we can't have anarchy and we don't care about creativity!". But it's not a binary. You can admit some discretion while still reigning in really egregious cases.
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
It's one thing to say "you've missed something; this code doesn't actually work". But to say, in essence, "write it like this, not that" strips the programmer of autonomy and discretion. It smothers creativity and expression and, ultimately, the things that make us human.
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
I've mostly made my peace with codebases being automatically formatted, but there are many stylistic decisions to be made above and beyond formatting. This is perhaps the biggest complaint I have about the oppressive imposition of coding standards and so-called "code review".
100
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/09/2026
I'd been meaning to write a post about code as a creative endeavor for a long while now, but this post by @kayserifserif.place says everything I would have said. Code is functional, yes, of course, but it is also a creative activity. It bears our fingerprints.
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 10/09/2026
oh. it actually is. (yes, i had to look just now)
040
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST @chathamharrison.bsky.social · 31/12/2023
You can be as terrified or nonplussed or unperturbed as you like; the sun will still rise tomorrow & the rent will still be due on the 31st. The world has no romantic narratives for its fate except those we invent, because the world does not die. That is our privilege.
136066
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Claire Ultraviolet @ultraviolet.photo · 01/09/2026
I wrote something about why SF is meaningful enough to me to keep flying there and take thousands upon thousands of photos. There’s a vulnerability it presses inside me, in symbols and in images. Maybe it touches the same place for you. buttondown.com/ultraviolet/...
buttondown.com
San Francisco, California
Thoughts of a city I will never stop loving, and the importance of having feelings.
5318
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 01/09/2026
it's okay to cry.
021
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 31/08/2026
danluu.com/bug-blind/
danluu.com
Bug blindness
110
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 25/08/2026
I think perhaps the most absolutely incredible thing about this is watching Cliff present authentic viewgraphs that are literally as old as I am. I remember reading The Cuckoo's Egg as a kid and finding it captivating but watching the story is another level entirely.
020
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
TransportationCamp New England @transpocampne.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Registration is now open for the 9th annual TransportationCamp New England on Sat, Oct 17 at MIT Stata Center! #tcne26 buff.ly/vX8h8kP
tcne.ticketspice.com
TransportationCamp NE
Get Tickets for TransportationCamp New England 2026.
073
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 23/08/2026
www.moma.org/calendar/exh...
moma.org
The Many Lives of the Nakagin Capsule Tower | MoMA
Exhibition. Jul 10, 2025–Jul 12, 2026. “This building is not an apartment house.” With this declaration, Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa introduced the Nakagin Capsule Tower as a radically new visio...
110
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
maisie @maisie.dog · 10/08/2026
WAS IT WORTH IT? mbell.dev/post/was-it-...
mbell.dev
Was it worth it?
Are you happy now?
12310
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 21/08/2026
The plural of bus is beese.
020
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 19/08/2026
You know that compulsive thing some people do at the airport where they go look for their gate before they do anything else? And you know how some folks say things like “what, do you think it won’t be there”? Well, I sure am glad I went looking for my gate just now, because I had the wrong number!
160
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 17/08/2026
ergo, "neighbors for more neighbors": www.moreneighbors.org
moreneighbors.org
Neighbors For More Neighbors
Neighbors for More Neighbors is a Minnesota housing advocacy organization working to expand secure, affordable, and abundant homes statewide.
020
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 16/08/2026
TIL that when you divide something into low/mid/high, you've constructed "terciles." Filing that with "smoke test" and a very special sense of the word "seam," in the folder "English Words I Don't Use With Humans."
8676
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 16/08/2026
Even today, as an adult, I sometimes find myself asking “please tell me what you are doing to me and why” and people act like I have three heads, like it’s the strangest question they’ve ever heard. This is a matter of basic autonomy! Explain yourself!
031
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 16/08/2026
I know this is going to sound absurd but school would make so much more sense for kids on the spectrum if people would just TELL US THESE THINGS.
131
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Natalie Makhijani @nat.makhijani.us · 01/08/2026
please do not hesitate to email me pictures of hard panel control interfaces at your place of work
4194
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 13/08/2026
we need a word for kompromat but positive (i.e. a picture you hold on to so you can send it back to a friend when they are feeling down and say "hey, remember how this was? it's going to be like this again")
040
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Claire Ultraviolet @ultraviolet.photo · 13/08/2026
gold star foamer (never licensed to drive)
1525
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/08/2026
😢
020
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 12/08/2026
what is the point of a `curl ... | sh` "installer" if all it does is drop a binary in the cwd? i could just curl the binary, then!
010
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 09/08/2026
i literally just introduced @multipleunit.bsky.social to @jetbrains.com DataSpell and then this pops up! the horrors!
DataSpell update

DataSpell will be sunset on September 1, 2026.
Learn more about how this affects your license...
020
Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 09/08/2026
this adaptation of the Rumsfeld matrix to experiences came to me in a discussion with @multipleunit.bsky.social yesterday and now you have to see it too
a 2x2 matrix with the following items:
"expected pleasant"
"unexpected pleasant"
"expected unpleasant"
"unexpected unpleasant"
053
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
✧✦Catherine✦✧ @whitequark.treehouse.systems.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2026
is "vendor" a slur?
143
Reposted by Kurt Raschke
Seamus Blackley @seamus.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Either you know you’re doing something right in life or else you’re spending too much on parts. Probably the latter.
1217523