Kim Wallmark
kimwallmark.bsky.social
Kim Wallmark
@kimwallmark.bsky.social
Software engineer, fiber artist, reader, enthusiastic appreciator of interesting details. I like understanding systems and stories. she/her is fine.
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
One of the most important things I’ve learned about building teams is that a star player with a bad attitude can sink the entire team.

It’s extremely rare that the brilliance of a “brilliant jerk” overcomes the damage that comes from them being a jerk.
November 28, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.

It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.
November 30, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
When you see Donald Trump's government, a government that works great for those with money and connections and doesn’t work for anyone else, that’s corruption—plain and simple.
November 29, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
I don't disagree with John but there's another layer too which is people like him should never get near power and yet they get near it often.

There's something wrong with the system that allows people like Miller to do anything more significant than bookkeeping.
I think that somewhere along the way something in Stephen Miller got fundamentally damaged. This is neither an excuse nor a mitigating factor; the dude is genuinely fucking evil and he and everything he stands for should be fought against and stopped. But he is something beyond mere sociopathy.
Since Stephen Miller is in the midst of another of his Aryans-only trantrums, we should note that his family are 20th century immigrants from the shtetl of Antopol (Антопаль) then in the Hrodna gubernia of Russia. Applying his immigration rules, they would all have perished in the Holocaust.
November 28, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Thread (and associated discussion).

The original person on Github is displaying astonishing levels of anti-cooperation and anti-productivity.
I am so torn between wanting to share this with no context so that the reader can have the full experience of developing a relationship with each of the parties in the discussion to this PR, and with knowing that the full impact of what is happening here might evade many without more explanation
DWARF support for macOS and Linux by joelreymont · Pull Request #14369 · ocaml/ocaml
DWARF v5 Debugging Support for OCaml Native Compiler This PR adds DWARF v5 debug information to the OCaml native compiler, allowing proper source-level debugging in GDB and LLDB. What's Impleme...
github.com
November 28, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
How to handle those vaccine conversations this year...
10 years ago cousin one younger than Me’s wife had medically fragile baby in Oct. cousin one older wife announces at dinner that vaccines are dangerous and they don’t get them. She’s sitting next to new mom who is holding bowl of mashed potatoes. She just turned and dumped them on her head
November 27, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
The problem with ICE is not that it's targeting people who aren't criminals. The problem with ICE is that it's an unaccountable secret deportation police. It cannot be reformed under a better president. It can be made less terrible, but the instrument of repression remains for the next tyrant.
November 26, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Just a friendly reminder as we go into the holidays:

Folks don't have to explain to you why they don't drink.

If you offer them a drink and they decline, don't ask them why. It's not your business.

Just offer them something without alcohol to drink instead. And move on.
November 23, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Thread.

As a software engineer, I don't care if my manager is a Linux contributor or knows Haskell. I want them to have _management_ skills. It's a completely different set of skills.
All of the time -- and I mean ALL of the time -- I get messages from people in tech that if we just promoted people with the right engineering degrees, and the Technical People were in charge, all would be fixed. That is why I wrote Why I Cannot Be Technical. You either get it or you don't.
November 22, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…
November 22, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Via a friend: the recipient of the first successful neonatal heart transplant celebrated his 40th birthday a few days ago, still with the same donor heart transplanted into him when he was just days old: news.llu.edu/patient-care...
40 years of life: the miracle of ‘Baby Moses’ and the heart that changed medicine | News
First and longest-living infant-to-infant heart transplant recipient celebrates 40th birthday at reunion event.
news.llu.edu
November 21, 2025 at 3:09 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Personally I think a sitting president calling for the execution of members of Congress is A1 scream headline news, but what do I know
November 20, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Astonishing to stop and realize that, at any given moment, bands of masked men armed to the teeth are storming churches and daycares, terrorizing entire communities—and that most of the country's political establishment barely blinks.
November 19, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
THIS.

Also, I can't help but think of Claudine Gay being forced out of the Harvard presidency over trumped-up accusations of plagiarism and tolerating antisemitism.

While Summers was questioning the intellectual capacity of women while president. And sexually harassed at least one woman.
It says a lot about whose voices matter in higher ed that Larry Summers is still allowed to teach his college students, while Jessica Adams* is not.
November 19, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
And this isn't just the US.

A lot of people don't know that the reputation London had for thick fog was actually soot and particulates and smog from a bunch of coal (and sometimes wood) fires.

Cleaning up the air and water did wonders. We should be *expanding* on that to clean indoor air too.
Literally just lectured about this!

In the late 1960s, air quality was so bad in several cities they had to turn on the street lights during the day so drivers could see. And yeah, the Cuyahoga River was so polluted it literally caught on fire.
Oh, I don’t know. Our rivers no longer catch on fire and our air is far less poisonous than it used to be, even in smog bowls like Los Angeles. And I think those are good things.
November 19, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
TIL that AOC's website has a "Know Your Rights" page for her immigrant constituents, where she recommends that they fill out a DHS Privacy Release form so her office can intervene for them.

I wrote to @mccollum.house.gov suggesting she do the same.

ocasio-cortez.house.gov/services/imm...
Immigration - Know Your Rights
Have a pending application with USCIS that's outside of normal processing times? Awaiting your naturalization certificate or need a work authorization document expedited?
ocasio-cortez.house.gov
November 19, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
I am going to be banging this drum forever, but holy shit moving menus is evil from an accessibility standpoint. It sucks for those of us who can see and aren’t in any stage of senility, but if you can’t see it’s the fucking worst.
November 19, 2025 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
when we talk about efforts to "erase DEI" can we be more precise and say "efforts to re-segregate workplaces and schools"
npr.org NPR @npr.org · 12d
Since 1981, Chicago Women in Trades has worked to promote equity by getting more women into the construction trades. Now the nonprofit faces a different challenge: Trump's efforts to erase DEI. n.pr/4pmCNr2
How a small Chicago nonprofit is resisting Trump's war on DEI
Since 1981, Chicago Women in Trades has worked to promote equity by getting more women into the construction trades. Now the nonprofit faces a different challenge: Trump's efforts to erase DEI.
n.pr
November 19, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
According to the news
due to current measles outbreaks
“The US could soon lose
its standing as a country
that has eliminated measles,”
which is yet another reminder
that this is not
an era of plague,
but instead
an era of plagues.
November 19, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Annual reminder that the Salvation Army is a hate group

(pro tip: any Christian org with military terminology in their name or description is probably a hate group or at least sympathetic to them)

if you have spare physical change, give it to a panhandler

do not put it in the Bigot Bucket
I know it's a tad early but I know those bitches with the buckets will be out soon. Don't gove them a penny. The volunteers may not know but the salvation army is no ally and actively combative and harmful to many queer minorities especially during the holiday season
November 17, 2025 at 9:31 PM
This, and this whole thread.
I know a lot of astronomers and physicists tell themselves that I seem like a strong person/ality who can handle anything and I just need everyone to know how fucking sexist and racist it is to simply put it down to “well she can take it”

I’m a person and even if I can why should I have to
November 16, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.
The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.
November 16, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
I do not want to “Do my own research.” I want to pay trained accredited experts to do the research, trained accredited experts to report on findings, and trained accredited experts to make policy based on them.

I am busy af with my own job, I don’t need to do eight zillion more.
November 15, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
She has not walked away from the vicious antisemitism, the gleeful racism, or the thing where she went out of her fucking way to personally harass queer and trans colleagues

It really is okay to have some fucking standards.
The line is not that Marjorie Taylor Greene has seen the error of her ways and realized that she, in all her idealism, was snookered by bad actors and conspiratorial pedophiles.

It is that she enabled them until it became so obvious that she either had to turn on her masters or share their guilt.
November 15, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Kim Wallmark
Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics"

guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation
November 13, 2025 at 10:03 PM