vtbassmatt

Catholic schools turn away Catholics all the time. A good friend of mine, extremely devout Catholic, has two of his kids in Catholic school. He was told that his child with special needs couldn’t be educated there. She’s in public school (and doing great).

Yes. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. But I also am the volunteer IT guy at a nonprofit, and am speaking entirely in that context.

I was quite unhappy to get a mail back in (checks archives) January that our grant would be discontinued and we’d either have to make do with the web versions of things, migrate someplace, or start paying. They also reminded us several more times before the drop date. I don’t really understand why Microsoft chose to discontinue the nonprofit grants, and it put a little egg on my face after I had recommended it to our board — but they definitely notified us of the change and what it would mean.

We’ve opted to pay for now; it’s $3/user/month for the SKU that gets full desktop versions of Office, Teams, etc. so not really breaking the bank compared to all the other things we have to pay for.

I would have agreed with this, and then they did the `pathlib.Path` bit of cuteness with the `/` operator: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/5afbb60e0283caaf34990...

And despite my misgivings, it’s really ergonomic.

What vehicle did Mazda screw this up so badly in? Neither of my Mazdas with CarPlay disable the touchscreen in CarPlay. The ‘21 Miata disables it while in motion (which sucks badly, and I just learned there’s a hack to fix). The ‘24 CX-5 doesn’t ever disable the touchscreen.

Heads up, most of the community migrated off Fandom a little while ago. https://mtg.wiki/page/Judge_Tower

Oops, I forgot this one wasn't public. Sorry! Auth was implemented using a library I don't know much about, so I figured better safe than sorry.

Mostly games-adjacent hobby tools, it turns out.

(Edit: forgotten in first edition) A cookbook to store the recipes my family likes to cook so I can eventually break up with Pinterest: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/Cookbook

A data extraction pipeline and search engine for a new card game called Mood Swings: https://moodswingsdata.github.io and https://moodswingsdata.github.io/feelings.

An app to let my friends and me build a Magic: the Gathering cube iteratively together: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/popcorn-cube

A custom wiki engine for a family of podcasts I enjoy: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/totalus-wikium

A systemd log viewer for the web: https://github.com/vtbassmatt/djournal

There’s a community keeping it alive with fresh content: https://nullsignal.games/

I sadly haven’t convinced my MtG playgroup (or family or other friends) to try it with me.

Wait, is this Azure or GitHub who had the booth? If it was GitHub, I’m super confused and there must have been some serious missing context. I was at GitHub from 2020-2023 and am not aware of _any_ Windows usage in the service. The only meaningful Windows footprint was for client dev (`gh`, GitHub Desktop, etc.) and even there, Windows was the exception. Service side is all Linux; most engineers worked from a Mac.

If the context was an Azure booth, I’m still mildly surprised (they’ve long been invested in beyond-Windows) but not shocked.

(Edit: I forgot about the Actions stack. Some of that was on Windows. I was pretty far removed from that world and much closer to the classic Ruby monolith side.)

It feels wrong to say something nice about Ticketmaster, but you don't need their app to add concert tickets to Apple Wallet (at least at all the venues where I live). I strictly use their website because I don't trust them.

I've never tried to pay with Apple Pay on ticketmaster.com, but I assume I could do that as well.

If you ever find yourself in Raleigh, Videri Chocolate offers tours! https://viderichocolatefactory.com/

The opposite is also true: Apple’s parental controls fail closed in inscrutable and impossible to debug ways. Yesterday, in order to share an iPad’s location with my iPhone, I had to totally disable managing Screen Time on the device. Every time I would click “share with <my name>”, the damn thing would tell me “Location settings can’t be updated right now, try again later”. No other combination of “solutions” on the Apple support forum, the random blogspam links, or the oh-so-helpful search-AI-summary thing even made a dent. I suspect something in the underlying data model was out of sync with the UI or something. Incredibly frustrating experience from the “it just works” vendor.

None of this matches my experience as a board member and officer at a nonprofit, nor what I observe with my partner who has worked at multiple nonprofits.

I don’t understand the distinction you’re drawing between “charity” and “nonprofit”. iNaturalist is a 501c3, so it’s a charity [1]. One of my partner’s previous 501c3 employers produced an app to aid with their mission.

Let me reframe your first bullet to reflect my lived experience (both in the nonprofit world and building software at a for-profit):

> Decisions at a charity feeding the poor are high-stakes and often controversial compared with decisions for a product focused app organization. If people are making a lot of decisions bottom-up at the charity, the scarce budget won’t stretch to cover the needs of the mission. In a product-focused organization, decisions are much lower stakes. Through the magic of version control, A/B testing, and vendor app stores, you rarely need to commit deeply to decisions, so the individual developer can make the initial call: will we use this app icon design or that one? Will we have one app for professionals and one for laypeople or a unified app? Will we use SVM or a neural network? Ship, learn, iterate.

My for-profit employer explicitly hires for (or at least used to) “passion” and intrinsic motivation. And there are several corporations I’m not willing to work for despite their reputation for high compensation. I think it’s pretty tenuous to connect org structure with motivation so directly and concretely.

The third bullet is uninformed. 501c3s answer to the people they derive funding from, their customers/clients/served population, their board, and the government (tax authority) whether they’re putting spaghetti on plates or pixels on screens. The IRS has a pretty readable intro to the requirements [2].

This kind of first-principles reasoning from vibes about what it must be like is seductive but often misleading. I encourage everyone I can to serve on a nonprofit board. The organizations can usually benefit from the perspective and different type of thinking that computer people bring, and it’ll open your eyes to new perspectives about your own work and life!

[1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/921296468

[2] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...

Accidentally turning on the wipers was definitely #1 for me. A close second was nearly turning the wrong way in roundabouts. I’m not sure why regular box turns were easy to mentally flip but roundabouts just broke my brain instead.

I have another reply in this tree talking about outcomes and independence being much worse not even all that long ago. I won’t repeat it all here but it squares with what you observed in an older neighbor growing up.

Also: did they tell you they were miserable or felt stuck in Groundhog Day? If not, then it’s not a safe assumption. AFAIK many caretakers and family members report satisfaction with their lives despite the added complications. (Maybe your neighbors really were miserable, and if so, just know it’s not the norm anymore.)

The early genetic testing for Down syndrome is pretty accurate now. If it’s still a major worry for you about having kids, get the testing done early enough to terminate. I strongly hope that no one terminates out of ignorance about the realities - both positive and negative - of Down syndrome, but have no problem at all with informed choices.

People with Down syndrome aren’t “downs” or “downs patients”, though. It’s easy to dismiss this as language policing or, as another thread hinted at, performative. But the words we use and how we view the world are part of a feedback loop on each other. Synecdoche-izing people as merely a medical diagnosis colors whether society treats them as full members or not. And unlike, say, the Deaf or autism communities, it’s not currently a subculture or something that many people with Down syndrome identify as.

As an internet stranger, I’m asking folks to consider using “person with DS” instead of “DS patient/person/etc”.

> I'm sorry, what? Those with Down's Syndrome are people, with all the emotions and experiences that entails. If they are supported, nurtured and loved then they'll lead correspondingly happy lives.

Heartily agree! My question was a reaction to the last line in the parent comment:

> If a child can't achieve independence and a life of their own, why let all parties suffer through that ordeal?

I’m sorry that I didn’t make that as clear as I could have.

* * *

I’ve seen the negativity on Reddit and, now, here. Some of that is based on historical reality: the standards for medical care and early intervention have dramatically improved outcomes for people with DS even just in my lifetime. It turns out that if you don’t believe a child is capable of, say, reading, then you don’t bother teaching them to read. This becomes a self-fulfilling diagnosis. And not too long ago, many kids with DS had inner ear damage from undetected ear infections, leading to hearing loss and difficulty communicating. As we learn more about what’s possible and what needs monitoring in kids with DS, long-term outcomes get better and better.

This recent (~last 20-40 years) improvement means there’s still a visible cohort of people who didn’t receive that level of care and probably are less independent. But I’d also suggest that there’s sample bias in anecdotes on Reddit. Like with product reviews: the vast majority in the middle don’t bother to post, and negative experiences get more emotional traction than positive ones.

The range of associated medical conditions is long and scary. But no individual gets all, or even many, of those conditions. And a lot of the scariest/most complicated stuff is correctable early post-natal (heart surgeries are common) or end of life (early appearance of dementia is unfortunately still the likely outcome for most people with DS). Medicine continues to make progress, and I think outcomes will continue to dramatically improve.

I had to look both of those up, and you’re right. The rule is inconsistently applied for sure. This got me curious about where the so-called rule came from. Wikipedia says:

> Auto-eponyms may use either the possessive or non-possessive form, with the preference to use the non-possessive form for a disease named for a physician or health care professional who first described it and the possessive form in cases of a disease named for a patient (commonly, but not always, the first patient) in whom the particular disease was identified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_diseases#Aut...

This is sourced by a link to the American Association of Medical Transcriptionists, which is not a body I’d heard of but I guess have some skin in the game when it comes to the intersection of medicine and grammar. https://www.mtstars.com/word-For-eponyms-AAMT-advocates-drop...

“Performative” feels a bit judgmental, given that America/UK differences in orthography are common. But yeah, y’all spell it differently than we do. I think you might also capitalize the “s” in syndrome?

Yes.

> Down Syndrome leads to an objectively worse outcome for the affected individuals. And their parents, I might add.

Please cite your sources and show your work.

My child with Down syndrome is a giant pain in my ass, I worry about him constantly, and there are days where I wonder “why me?”

The same is 100% true about my typically-developing daughter.

There is absolutely no benefit to being many things that some humans are.

If you never interacted with the residents there, how are you so sure it was so bad? Nevermind the people in the group home — on what basis did you acquire the belief that the neighbors were “relieved” not to interact with them?

Maybe you’re right and this situation was terrible for everyone. Is this arrangement required? Is it the best we can do?

I don’t think most people would choose to live a life with many common afflictions. I certainly wish my lower back didn’t hurt all the time. That doesn’t invalidate my existence, and neither does my son’s Down syndrome invalidate his.

This starts from an incorrect premise — that everyone with Down syndrome “will perpetually need care and supervision” — and then heads downhill. “Misery” and “ends up in a hellhole” are choices society has often made in the past for people with intellectual disabilities, but they aren’t a law of physics or fundamental moral law.

What are the ethics (and societal obligation) of supporting someone who’s had a severe stroke? Or how about a traumatic brain injury from a car accident? Oxygen deprivation from near drowning? If these are different from a congenital condition like DS, why?

I don’t think I entirely disagree with your position. However, positioning my kid (and others with DS) in opposition to “normal” makes it hard to engage respectfully. As a parent of one typically-developing child and one with Down syndrome, I feel qualified to say they both come with quantifiable economic costs. Quantifiable economic benefits are pretty far in the future for both of them (they’re 11 and 8, if it helps ground my points).

I think this point would be better made without using the word “extreme” so much. All children bring new challenges; kids with DS often bring more; my child with DS has never, ever been an “extreme” challenge (just like most of the other families with kids with DS we know). There are definitely outliers where the “extreme” applies, but it’s not a helpful way of thinking about DS in general.

Why do you think that people with Down syndrome are “utterly dependent on [their parents] for their entire lives”? All children come with a severe “emotional and mental cost”, have you seen the world today??

We knew with (well beyond) reasonable certainty that our son would have Down syndrome and chose to continue the pregnancy. We’re not religious and not part of any pro-birth political cohort; it was absolutely an affirmative choice.

Why do you think people with Down syndrome can’t “achieve independence and a life of their own”? And what makes you think they, or their families, see their existence as suffering?

As the parent of a child with Down syndrome, I really appreciate the way you and the parent comment approached this topic. Thank you.

Tiny nit, in the US it’s “Down syndrome”, not “Down’s”. Apparently we name conditions with a possessive if named for someone with it (“Lou Gehrig’s”) and without the possessive if named for, say, the person who first described the condition in a medical journal.

I own a 2011 3 hatchback, bought new in 2010. Besides wear items, I think I’ve replaced one belt and one hose. It’s only on its third battery and 2nd/3rd lightbulbs all around. Absolutely the most reliable car I’ve ever owned, whether I measure by problems/mile, problems/year, or dollars/year.

I also have a Miata (ND - 4th gen) that gets driven less than 3K miles/year. No problems there other than Mazda’s buggy CarPlay (and insane choice to disable the touchscreen when in motion).

As a Hokie, it drives me crazy that journalists (and ESPN) continue to use the non-name “VA Tech”. It’s VT, Virginia Tech, or the full name, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. https://brand.vt.edu/licensing/university-trademarks.html#tr...