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Podcast: Biography of Tor

Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy This episode of Peoples & Things completely nerd sniped me. On recommendation from Biella Coleman, hosts Lee Vinsel and Paula Bialski interview Ben Collier about his new book Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy (available Open Access from MIT Press. I love ethnographic works on computing history and especially admire Biella’s book Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking.

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View from our meeting room for IETF AIPREF working group this morning

View of downtown Toronto waterfront with Billy Bishop airport on the horizon

Started this on the plane The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 📚

So poetic! I have only ever read This Is How You Lose the Time War which was brilliant.

#amreading #booksky #bookstodon

Made it to Toronto

Chad points at the CN tower lit up blue at night

✈️ At the Rivers Monument in YVR, about to head to Toronto for IETF AIPREF WG, then DemocracyXchange. After that will be London and Germany. Expect photos!

www.yvr.ca/en/about-…

The poles represent the Columbia and Fraser rivers, and are topped by eagles.

Started reading: A Short History of London The Creation of a World Capital by Simon Jenkins 📚

Prepping for going back to London next Sunday.

#amreading #booksky #bookstodon #London #travel

Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy

Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Canada is on the list of 50 countries producing over 50% of their electricity with #renewable #energy

World map showing countries highlighted in varying shades of green indicating higher and lower values of renewable electricity generation. Gray countries have no data. Coverage is concentrated in South America, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa. Canada is coloured green.

“Connect, don’t collect”

Protocols and federation > data hoarding silos

Inspired by the film, my daughter hand-sewed her own PROJECT HAIL MARY mission patch. Amaze amaze amaze!

Hand sewn patch made from felt

The launching gantry for the SkyTrain extension is getting close to my future local train station. It is cool to see how it lifts and lines up those big concrete blocks for the elevated guideway. surreylangleyskytrain.gov.bc.ca #SurreyBC

Wide shot of an elevated gantry at workClose shot of the gantry and some suspended concrete blocksCloser shot of the blocksGantry from the front where you can see how the blocks connect

I’ve been really looking forward to the StatsCan results for the 2025 census to see if we are on track for Surrey to overtake Vancouver as BC’s biggest municipality soon. The old projections from BCStats signaled the overtake to happen in 2027, but a lot has changed since the census of 2021.

Table titled 'Population Projects (BCStats)' showing projected populations for Vancouver and Surrey from 2025 to 2029. Vancouver: 750,886 (2025), 739,469 (2026), 738,740 (2027), 743,432 (2028), 748,946 (2029). Surrey: 723,378 (2025), 733,760 (2026), 746,513 (2027), 760,724 (2028), 775,149 (2029). The 2027 row is highlighted in yellow, marking the year Surrey's population is projected to surpass Vancouver's

Started reading Bob Williams “Using Power Well”

#amreading #booksky #bookstodon

The book sitting on an iPad on a side table

Enjoying the sakura by the sea in Steveston

#hanami #花見

Filed my archival requests for the Royal Geographical Society in London in a couple weeks 💪 Looking forward to seeing Younghusband’s journals and maps of the Pamirs, Kashgar, Ladakh, and Tibet! 🗺️

Read in 2026: Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd 📚

Challenging. Moody. Fascinating. An admirable work of craft that inspires me to write!

Saddle up my faerie cowboys! 🧚 🤠 ✨

#mosstodon #lichensubscribe

Tree trunk with a bend where a bunch of moss has grown looking like a horse’s saddle

Went to Project Hail Mary with my daughters, and my buddy and his daughter. Great night out! Kids were entertained and on the way home said they “like science movies”. Giving them The Martian audiobook next. 🚀

Watched the Artemis II launch with my daughter live 🚀

Back from ATmosphere Conf 2026

Recovering from the four+ days of the second annual ATmosphereConf, this year held here in Vancouver at the UBC campus. It was more than twice as big as last year’s inaugural event in Seattle, and even more international with many folks coming from Europe, Japan, and Brazil. The community is very thoughtful about how to make hashtag#opensocial better for communities, as demonstrated by some excellent presentations from folks like Erin Kissane, Blaine Cook, Rudolph Fraser and many many more.

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🌸 Cherry blossoms in the local park. Nice walk with my wife this afternoon in great weather.

Cherry blossoms against a blue skyCherry blossom closeupCherry blossomsEmpty park bench  from the side with cherry blossoms overhead

We watched the finale of REPLY 1988 today. 😭

The show nails anemoia — “nostalgia for a time or place one has never known.” 😊 So good!