Damon Townsend

Check out my latest article: Making Public Data Useful: A New Look at Washington's Ballot Returns linkedin.com/pulse/making-pu… via @LinkedIn

Check out my latest article: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick linkedin.com/pulse/speak-sof… via @LinkedIn

Check out my latest article: Security and Convenience Do Not Have to Be Opposing Goals linkedin.com/pulse/security-… via @LinkedIn

Check out my latest article: When the Weight Becomes Too Much linkedin.com/pulse/when-weig… via @LinkedIn

I just learned that dogs literally evolved special eyebrow muscles because humans are suckers. Seriously. Researchers compared dogs and wolves and found dogs developed stronger little eyebrow muscles that wolves barely have. That whole “sad puppy eyes” thing? Evolutionary hacking. Thousands of years ago, some proto-dog figured out: “Hey… if I make my eyes big and look emotionally devastated, this hairless ape gives me food and lets me sleep by the fire.” And humanity collectively responded: “You poor thing. Here’s some meat. Also you now live indoors.” So over thousands of years we accidentally bred wolves into furry emotional manipulators with built-in guilt projection software. Honestly, dogs may have domesticated us. Meanwhile wolves are out in the forest surviving winter storms and dogs are over here pretending they haven’t eaten in six months because they can see the bottom of the food bowl. Nature is incredible. And so are people!

Let’s se me it this will work, made a monitor on my home setup to monitor my @damon4auditor account. Let’s see if he picks it up!

Some evenings just feel absolutely surreal. I’m sitting here scrolling through Facebook on my personal phone while simultaneously checking my work phone for any NOC alerts or outages from my day job. At the same time, I’m working across four different screens on my PC. On one monitor, I’ve got Claude Code helping build a website, preview deploying it to Netlify so other people can test it and give feedback in real time. On another, I’ve got Codex open alongside a couple of PuTTY sessions connected to my home server and the new Mac Studio that’s hosting several local AI models. At the same time, I’m trying to build a Hermes agent that can run primarily off that local AI “brain” instead of constantly relying on cloud services. So there are terminals flying by, configs being edited, logs scrolling, models loading, tunnels connecting, and random moments of “why did THAT just break?” Meanwhile, in another window, I’m drafting public records requests and trying to keep all of that organized and coherent. There are definitely some interesting things buried in government records if you know where to look, how systems interact, and how to ask the right questions. Government transparency is important, but sometimes accountability requires people willing to actually dig. And every few minutes, I have to stop and look out the window because the chickens are out in the backyard. Somebody has to make sure they don’t wander off, squeeze through the fence, or become dinner for a hawk or raccoon. It’s honestly kind of funny when you stop and think about it. One minute I’m troubleshooting AI models, reverse proxy tunnels, SSH sessions, website deployments, and public records research trying to better understand how systems really operate, and the next I’m outside trying to convince a chicken not to wander into the neighbor’s bushes. But what’s really amazing is that all of these new tools are letting ordinary people actually build the things they imagine in their heads. A few years ago, a lot of this would have required entire teams, huge budgets, or specialized organizations. Now the crazy part is that regular people can actually experiment with this stuff instead of just giant companies. You can build websites, automate workflows, analyze public information, run AI systems locally, and connect ideas together in ways that just weren’t practical before. Honestly, half the battle now is just being stubborn enough to keep learning and keep trying things until they work. Feels like we’re entering an era where curiosity and persistence matter more than having access to some massive organization or budget.

APRIL FOOLS. Day for jokes, pranks, and not believing anything you read. But this one is real. Artemis II is launching today. Four people headed around the Moon. First time we’ve sent a crew that far since Apollo. No landing, just a clean loop around and back. No joke. But NASA has not always been on the serious side of things. Back in 1973 on Skylab 3, astronaut Owen Garriott pulled one of the best pranks ever on Mission Control. Before launch, he had his wife, Helen Garriott, record a message. Once they were in orbit, he quietly slipped the tape into the comms system and played it down to Houston. Mission Control suddenly hears a woman’s voice: “Hello Houston, this is Skylab… is anyone there? This is Helen Garriott. My husband told me if I came up I could bring a home-cooked meal… I’m just floating around here.” You can imagine the confusion. They had no idea what they were hearing. A woman’s voice was not supposed to be on that spacecraft. For a moment, it genuinely threw them. Then it clicked. Garriott comes back on and admits the prank, and Mission Control realizes they just got played from orbit. That is an all time prank. Here is the clip if you want to see it youtu.be/6XRuEvxWjEk?si=xm0V… So today we’ve got a real mission to the Moon. On April Fools Day. NASA has been the subject of the joke before. You know those astronauts are aware of the history. Would not surprise me one bit if someone is thinking about it.