April 2025: Running for the toilet and the exit
Happy April! It’s been a bit of a grim month here on TERF Island. There was a Supreme Court ruling about trans people and the Equality Act, which led to people making bold pronouncements about trans people (without talking to us, of course). A lot of strangers are weirdly obsessed about my genitals and what I do in the toilet.
I just want to do my business in peace, and not be harassed while doing it.
But frustrated as I am at people who want to erase me from public life, I also feel a sliver of sympathy? I'm here living my best life, and I’m surrounded by friends who love me. Everybody yelling about trans people seems to be angry and miserable, and they’re trying to make us disappear to make themselves feel better. For all the people who hate my guts, my life is full of joy and I feel blessed to have that.
In other gender-related news, the warm weather means I can start wearing my summer dresses. I've really been enjoying the pop of colour and lighter fabric in my outfits.
For various reasons, I've spent this entire month working from home, and I’ve only been into the office to water the plants. It's given me a lot of extra time and energy, and I'm getting more stuff done both at work and at home – my house is cleaner than it's been in a long time! This is only temporary and I'm back in the office next week, but it’s been a nice reminder of how much I enjoy remote working.
I've had a lot of fun evenings and day trips this month, concluding tonight with three book shops and a pizza by the King's Cross canal. The weather was warm and the sunset was beautiful. There's a lot of anger and hatred in the world, but there's joy to be found as well.
What have I been writing?
I began the month with some fiction/poetry, Always running. It’s about the “running man” in emergency exit signs – someone who leads us to safety, but can never escape himself. This didn’t get much traction with my mostly-programmer audience, but I’m really proud of it.
I also wrote about some quality-of-life improvements I’ve been making to tools at work.
Localising the <time> with JavaScript is about showing timestamps as human-readable and timezone-aware text. Something like Tue, 15 Apr 2025 at 20:45 BST is easier to read than 2025-04-15T19:45:00Z.
Beyond None: actionable error messages for keyring.get_password() is about providing better error messages when somebody doesn't have a password saved in their system keyring, and explaining how to fix it. How do they set a password, and what password should they be using?
And a faster way to copy SQLite databases between computers is about a counterintuitive result: dumping a SQLite database to a text file can make it much smaller, which means you can download it faster.
Finally, I made a small fix to my site itself: A flash of light in the darkness is about how I forgot to set a fallback colour in dark mode, in a bug reminiscent of “flash of unstyled text”.
And I wrote a lot of “today I learned” posts in April:
Python 3.13 throws a ResourceWarning for SQLite databases that aren't explicitly closed
console.log() holds a reference to an object, not a copy of it
When fixing mojibake, use ftfy.fix_and_explain() to understand how it's fixing a piece of text
What’s making me smile?
🎸 I went to the Postmodern Jukebox “Magic and Moonlight” tour in Bristol with my sister, and we had such fun. They’re a group that plays jazz covers of modern songs, but in vintage genres. The show was carefully balanced to give us a variety of music styles, and to showcase the immense talent of the ensemble. Every performer got a moment to shine, but they also worked together as a group.
📺 It’s been a great month for television. The first three episodes of Andor are a gripping story of how oppression breeds rebellion, last week's episode of Doctor Who was suitably spooky, and Sam Reich continues to have so much fun in Game Changer.
🌅 This month’s YouTube music discovery is an a cappella rendition of House of the Rising Sun by the Harvard Veritones. The group is so talented; I’ve watched it at least twenty times already.
🛰️ I think a lot about building systems to last, so I really enjoyed this interview with Linda Spilker, the project scientist on the Voyager program. It emphasises that the striking part isn't the technical achievement, it’s the human infrastructure – keeping the institutional knowledge and know-how alive for half a century.
🚠 Finally, I was fascinated by a Wendover Productions video about gondolas used for public transit. My only real experience of gondolas is the London cable car, where they’re a bit of a joke – I had no idea they were enjoying such success in South American cities.
My diary for next month is already quite busy, but it also features a week-long break from work. I have a good feeling about May. I hope you do as well!
With love,
~ Alex