Johanna, CanCon variety
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johannab.ca
Johanna, CanCon variety
@johannab.ca
24 followers 13 following 880 posts
Yer crabby #GenX Internet Auntie.

Technology dilettante, feral tech support, filling potholes & building bike lanes on the infohighway.

Serial #fediForumAttendee, fan […]

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://cosocial.ca/@johannab, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
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johannab.ca
Noro. Darling.

This is why we are complicated ....

🧶 #yarnbarf
The end of a skein of yarn, with a tangled lump of it having pulled out of the middle. The yarn is a Noro line, notorious for frustrating knitters who still buy the damn stuff because it's so damned uniquely pretty.
November 30, 2025 at 7:37 PM
johannab.ca
Yarn.Chicken.WIIIIIIINNNNN!!!! 🧶
The cuff of a fancy cables and lace sock, with a very short length of yarn left over after finishing. It is enough to graft the few stitches needed. These are the stories knitters tell our great-grandchildren.
November 25, 2025 at 5:47 AM
johannab.ca
Please credit the creator whenever you can. This famous cartoon is a 1000-word story, created in 2009 just after COP15 in Copenhagen.

Sitting in on some of the webcast sessions from COP30 this week is really a lot to think about, vis-a-vis Sustainable Tech.

By […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
A well-known cartoon featuring a heckling climate change denier interrupting a conference with the complaint "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing??!?!!" the creator is Joel Pett, this is his best known of probably 10,000+ illustrations. https://davidbent.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/why-ive-come-to-loathe-this-cartoon/
November 19, 2025 at 8:04 PM
johannab.ca
Added some intersectional sustainability sticker swag to my gadgetry, too.
quick snap of the back of my iPad in its clear case. There are now 4 stickers attached, one for CoSocial.ca, one reading "People Not Platforms" from A New Social, a sticker of a skeleton wearing a toque and scarf that reads "Knit Fast, Die Warm", and a Longway Homestead promo sticker picturing a sheep that reads "Graze Against The Machine".
November 18, 2025 at 3:52 AM
johannab.ca
Ready, aim .... oh wait what, *I* don't even need to shoot him myself? 😆

Thanks, @snarfed.org & @quillmatiq !
A screen shot of the Bridgy Fed Bluesky side just instantaneously wiping some catfishing asshole right out of my personal fediverse. The text is the Bridge's name and handle, followed by its message "OK, you're now blocking noahdonovan120.bsky.social on Bluesky".
November 15, 2025 at 10:14 PM
johannab.ca
And again I have run out of hours before tasks were anywhere near done.

But at least I evicted the stink bug out of the sofa before someone sat on it or a cat tried to eat it.
A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (according to iNaturalist) attempting to assert squatters rights to my sofa. NOPE.
November 13, 2025 at 6:15 AM
johannab.ca
Well yes it's a Tuesday, school night, and I have late assignment and meetings tomorrow and I've lost one of my several pairs of socks already on needles but casting on a pair of stranded colourwork gloves that begin with latvian braids doesn't seem that much of a probl..... WHAT???!?!

🧶 #adhd
The beginning of a colourwork cuff in grey and pale blue knitting.
November 12, 2025 at 2:44 AM
johannab.ca
Large cat would like me to share with you all that this Time Change nonsense has resulted in an unacceptable malfunction in her Food Robot, it is delivering her meals late (and she suspects it's skimping on the kibble too).
A mottled, sortamese cat is glaring at the photographer from inside the confines of her current Cat Trap (a folded-over paper bag). She is clearly wasting away and will starve before DST returns and sets her food dispenser right again.
November 3, 2025 at 10:22 PM
johannab.ca
The inside of my OG Tilley Hat.

Every hat sold at that show was signed and Tilley wrote in the purchaser's name and phone number so it could be returned if lost. This was in the days before pockets and flotation aids in the crown. whatever marker he used held up […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
The inside of a canvas bucket hat. The faded but still readable Tilley Endurables label is in the upper right of frame; just upper-left of centre is the maker's autograph and the date 3-84 (upside down)
November 2, 2025 at 5:02 PM
johannab.ca
@mcorbettwilson

Seconded! can we also please stop having the user profile pop-up trigger at every glancing cursor hover and appear right over top of the Edit dialogue I'm typing in or the post I'm trying to read? If I moved the cursor out of my way I probably do […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
A snipped of the Mastodon Web, Advanced interface, through which I am trying to read posts from the EFF. Unfortunately the post from the EFF is almost completely covered by the pop-up-on-hover Profile of the EFF, because in wiggling my cursor out of the way of my eyeballs so I could read a word in the post, it glanced across the poster's name ABOVE the post, triggering the profile pop-up.
October 30, 2025 at 11:33 PM
johannab.ca
The team at the table next to ours consisted of an electrical engineer and a statistician and they designed a remarkable, efficient and functional grid that completely looked like a circuitboard!

Amongst a room of primarily undergrad engineers and mathies […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
The neighbouring city is sectoral, very well planned with a vast and efficient subsurface infrastructure layer.
October 28, 2025 at 4:06 AM
johannab.ca
I spent part of my afternoon building cities again today! Chuffed to dicover that UW's Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering is also a certified professional LEGO teacher. This is World Cities Week here and the office of the Chair and the Future Cities Institute […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
A very basic and blocky model of a city, with colour-coded components of infrastructure laid out on a base plate. The "shape" of this construct has a built-up but green "city centre" with spokes radiating outward to the edges and diagonally to the corners, featuring four quadrants of built environment served by minimal roads and integrated public and active transport. Another view of the city-amongst-green-space quadrant plan. It is in "quadrants" because LEGO only exists on a cartesian grid. The more typical city form that several teams in the room went for was the radiating, hub-spoke layout that old, pre-automobile cities tended to have as humans assembled their places that way rather organically, only with their water sources squashing the shape or placing things along a line. There were two layers to the city - we also had a plate to build the sub-surface. Ours actually started with some aquifers in place. The second plate is shown, with natural (green/blue) subsurface water sources, and white (built infrastructure) separating the natural, now essential, sources from contaminated waste networks.
October 28, 2025 at 4:03 AM
johannab.ca
Second time since starting grad school that the project agenda starts at LEGO!!!!
The title slide in today’s engineering seminar for World Cities Week. The title is “Build Your Own LEGO City”
October 27, 2025 at 4:22 PM
johannab.ca
I already "boosted" the post where I found this but I'm gonna share it myself too for some reach.

C'mon out Uptown #waterloo for a dinner-hour dance party and support our #2slgbtqia+ Spectrum Waterloo friends & fam!

https://ourspectrum.com/
A screenshot for a public event poster. The graphic features the logos of Waterloo's Spectrum organization and the Uptown BIA, on a muted rainbow background with graphic elements in the corners, the bottom right corner has an impressionistic sketch of a trio of dancers in shades of pink, blue and lavender. Text Reads: Public Pride Dance Party! Come out and show your love and support for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community with a public dance party. This event will be a family-friendly expression of joy. Come with your brightest colours on, and ready to move. When hate gets loud, we get louder! Monday, Oct. 27 5:30 - 6:30 PM Waterloo Town Square
October 25, 2025 at 10:37 PM
johannab.ca
#silentsunday #adhd

because I missed #fuckitfriday
This is a manipulated photo at least in the billboard text and possibly in the car fire. A car on fire is pictured flipped over on a highway exit ramp just between the off ramp and the through lane. A signboard above labels the routes "Doing what you need to do" and "Doing what you want to do" and the flaming upside down car is captioned "ADHDers somehow doing neither". Today, it me.
October 13, 2025 at 4:03 AM
johannab.ca
So I got in the door early enough to finally get my hands on a copy of Multisolving. And I discovered whoever designed the cover, whether they meant to do this or not, managed to hack my ADHD brain with the colour scheme.

See, my other recent on-paper (I read a […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
Two new paperback books, one is a later edition/print run of Donella Meadows' foundational work Thinking In Systems, the book cover picturing a rainbow gradient coloured Slinky toy. The second is the recent work Multisolving by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, a protegé of Meadows. Multisolving's cover features a dot-art spray of bubbles floating up from a lightbulb-shaped collection of the dots, and the dots are coloured in a ROYGBV rainbow range. The books are nearly the same size and the colour of the cover background is a bright white on which the coloured motifs float. The effect is that the later book very much appears to be a sequel or next instalment to the first. THIS is where I say my brain has been hacked, for I cannot consider my reading "finished" if I perceive this to be a 2-part work, until I finish both books. Now I just need that extra 6 hours per day I've requested....
October 11, 2025 at 3:48 AM
johannab.ca
@julian

Poutine Bar with Lobster-Emmental Cream Sauce.

See y’all after my cardiologist lets me back out of the ICU.
October 8, 2025 at 7:03 PM
johannab.ca
I am quite charmed by the on-stage setup for plenary and panels at ICLEI Canada’s #lcf2025. They are calling it the Kitchen Ceilidh and have a rustic table with mismatched chairs and breakfast dishes set for the speakers to chat over.
A conference centre stage. A rustic “kitchen table” is set for the speakers where most events would have a line of chairs.
October 7, 2025 at 12:03 PM
johannab.ca
My location services ARE in, Y’know, WTForecast… (???)

And this airport isn’t THAT bad, it’s only 3rd or 4th circle.
A screen shot of the weather app known as WTForecast, which is giving me the current weather report for the 7th Circle of Hell. I’m pretty sure that’s CDG, Canadian regional airports can’t compete.
October 5, 2025 at 10:27 PM
johannab.ca
Have I stolen your coffee beans?

Sometimes I take photos of things i stumble across that seem quite surreal, the kinds of things that leave me looking around for a hidden camera or some punk-ass "influencer" trying to stage a practical joke.

This bag of local […]

[Original post on cosocial.ca]
One end of a park bench, which has a steel frame on one end that functions as both a support/leg, and apparent "armrest" or narrow side table. A yellow bag of roasted coffee beans is set on the surface of this metal arm.
October 2, 2025 at 9:43 PM
johannab.ca
Greetings from the far side of The Rift, through which I presume I have fallen, into this parallel universe in which I am a Sportzball Mom.

send halp.
Some kind of criminal gang comprised of tween girls in shiny gold jerseys is in the distance on a grassy field. I guess they are conspiring on some sort of act of war to be inflicted on a competing sporzball girl squad. I am parent to one of them but they are far enough away as to be unidentifiable as individuals and I forgot my glasses, I don't know which one's mine but I presume the one that was in my car after the battle was ... won? Lost? nobody's sure ... followed the correct parent and checked the license plate. A shiny gold sprotz jersey being worn by large child with a braided ponytail draping to the front of her shoulder. It is emblazoned with "Mustangs" and the number "20" and supposedly this is my progeny but I am entirely uncertain of reality any more. It smells rather off and is conversely remarkably NOT muddy for the activity it was just retrieved from. My REAL spawn wears pink frilly stuff and smells like an entire pharmacy perfume counter but is usually covered in dirt and stains.
October 2, 2025 at 2:43 AM
johannab.ca
Kicking back a bit on the Gaukel Block in Kitchener after getting some sun at #climatefestwr

City of Waterloo needs to pick up the pedestrianization pace, why the heck haven’t we got this at Willis Way?
September 28, 2025 at 9:51 PM
johannab.ca
Also, THIS IS ART:
A screenshot of a comment, with attached photo. The comment reads “I’ll be putting dry ice in a pair of shoes. Gets them every time”. Photo is of a pair of well-worn boots that appear to be smouldering.
September 23, 2025 at 7:26 AM
johannab.ca
Oh RIGHT, I nearly forgot.

RAPTURE BALLOONS.
A Facebook post by Jim Wright humorously discusses "Rapture Day" and the concept of "Rapture Balloons," suggesting one keep “a goodly length of stout cord” in hand for Rapture day, to lasso around the ankles of ascending Christians, who then presumably float along above you tethered to your string.
September 23, 2025 at 7:22 AM
johannab.ca
Oops I accidentally the #kwknittersfair2025 🧶

#yaaaarrrnnnzzz!!!
September 14, 2025 at 3:45 AM