Chema Hernández Gil

Close up of the cut lock.

Another month, another cut lock in my building's garage, all that's left of a stolen bike. This is in a locked, "secured" building in SOMA, here in SF. I lost several bikes the first few years here and finally learned my lesson: I store them either in my apartment […]

[Original post on ctrvx.net]

Now that I spend less time on the fedi, I'm not sure there's much value in having two single-user instances (this one and social.sanfranciscan.org). They're complementary in many ways, and that's cool, but maybe I ought to consolidate it all into one.

I haven't had mail service in weeks. Our building's mailboxes kept getting broken into, which led USPS suspending mail to our building, forcing tenants to go to the Townsend annex across SOMA to pick up their mail. This has meant waiting 30-45 minutes in line to get a fraction of my mail. I […]

This has been a crazy year. Work has been particularly intense, with the unexpected November election and preparing to get a new CEO tax on the June ballot. Then there's been a decent amount of travel, both abroad and within California. And then there's the national political climate, which is […]

It's been crazy cold here in SF. Luna, my quarter Chihuahua dog, hates it. She's been spending 22 hours a day hiding in her bed.

I spent the better part of a week in the Indigenous COP30 village. It was a strange, humbling and challenging experience. I've never been in a space with Native individuals from all over the Americas. We had Spanish-speaking, Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and English-speaking Natives in my […]

Simple graphic with time, location and talk title.

Tomorrow, here in #Belem for the #PeoplesSummit at #COP30, we will be doing a presentation on Regeneration, Reforestation, and Lessons from Mesoamerican Indigenous Traditions for a Just Transition. From 2:30PM at Salas ICB, SAT 04 in the UFPA campus […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

In a week's time, I'll be heading to Brazil for the Peoples' Summit towards COP30. I'll be there wearing a couple of hats: giving a presentation on veganic agroecology and Indigenous urbanism with Seed the Commons and preparing a report back for the members of my public sector union employer […]

I have a bunch of domain names coming up for renewal and the project I was planning on using them for has stalled. Unsure if I should renew them. One month to decide.

I gifted myself a tiny wooden box to store the devotional items I've had since I was a little kid, and it makes me very happy. It also perfectly inside my Zapatista pouch. I was certain it had been lost in the mail, but it ultimately found its way home. I feel like my grandma would approve.

This year has been good to me, if only because it's helped me ground myself in Nick Black Elk’s Great Spirit and Juan Diego Talking Eagle’s Tonantzin.

Cool! It seems like a nice place. A bit remote.

It seems my great‑grandmother was born and raised in New Mexico and belonged to the Kewa Pueblo. How she later ended up in Guanajuato is a mystery, but it does makes sense that she settled in another Indigenous town with a long artisanal tradition. If true, my grandma (RIP) would probably be […]

Last week felt both like an entire month and a single day.

So I guess the National Guard is coming to SF...

I haven't been spending much time online these past few months, which is great. It's also great that I can come back to the fediverse and not feel like I missed out on 1,001 things. It feels "normal". Like a virtual extension of real life, as opposed to a parallel reality that's algorithmically […]

I'm excited about how organized labor here in SF is making a very conscious effort to organize with communities of faith. Building

A flier for "Choose your own comedy", which was created using genAI. It shows a comic book style page of a woman deciding if she wants to fall in love with a knight or become a witch.

A flier for "The Longest Table", a community event hosted by the Civic Joy Fund. The art is people eating at a long table, but the art was generated using AI.

A flier for "Brushin' Around Painting". This one has AI generated elements like a paintbrush and paint roller, plus the same very generic yellowish hue that a lot of AI art has now. Looking closely at the letters and you can see the font isn't very clean looking. It's hard to describe, but nobdy would make a font like this. It's all capital letters but they don't feel like they belong together. Straight edges aren't quiet straight, letters have weird bumps on them, etc.

A close up of an AI generated poster. The letters have this weird inconsistency to them, for example all of the "E"s look slightly different than each other. Some of the letters disappear at weird points, like part of an "N" is missing. There's a weird white glow around the letters that doesn't look on purpose. It looks like a compression artifact where the dark blue font couldn't blend properly with the yellow background.

So many AI-generated posters in our neighborhood lately. Comedy shows, house painters, community events… all rendered in the same generic slop-style. It even looks like the fonts are generated too, which creates weird artifacts and inconsistent letters. Gross.

Initial estimate: 4.6 under Frat Row in Berkeley, right on the Hayward Fault.

That #quake freaked me and @luna@sanfranciscan.org awake.

Things feel, and are, really scary for many people in the United States right now. The uncertainty only makes it worse. I'm coping by keeping a routine, carving out time for fun, and practicing skills that stay useful no matter how rough things get. Hiking, camping, and reading have all helped a […]

I got to see a hawk dive‑hunt a flock of pigeons over South Beach Harbor. The hawk missed both times I watched it, but it seemed determined. I’ve spotted hawks a few times along the Embarcadero, though never while they were actively hunting. It was a cool thing to witness.

Preventing a slide toward authoritarianism is never easy, and it becomes even harder today because many people are disconnected from real‑life communities and meaningful connections. Their primary virtual connections are mediated by some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful companies […]

How the world turns. The supervisor who called for mandatory bicycle licenses, asserting that “as a growing number of bicycle commuters assert political power to get their own lanes, they need to put some skin in the game,” was recalled by his anti-park/pro‑car constituents.

A little is very nice IMO, but I get the desire to eat it direct from the jar. It's sort of like the Mexican Duvalín candy.

I got three jars of the new vegan Nutella in my last trip to Switzerland and I'm looking forward to finishing the last one. Too much.

The thing I appreciate most about this work is how much I learn from other Indigenous communities up and down the continent. It makes everything feel real, concrete, and lived.

Sixteen years in, the online Native American space I help moderate keeps growing thanks to everyone who shows up. This past year: 2.3 million views, nearly 61k members, 28k+ comments. Grateful for the mod team that makes it possible.

I’m kind of excited about the end of official support for Windows 10. I’ve been dual‑booting my personal laptop with Linux for years and generally ignoring my work laptop, so this will force me to go full‑time Linux on my personal machine and stop using it for work.

Went and came back to Switzerland without any issue. I was able to get in a couple of solid days walking the Via Francigena along the Léman and a night's stay at the Abbey of Saint Maurice, which was quite an experience. Looking forward to continuing the hike up to the Great St Bernard Pass […]