This is one of those times I can’t believe I get to work at The 19th. We’re putting on a free event on voter equality with a roster of very smart speakers headlined by Stacey Abrams, in partnership with Live Nation Women and Teen Vogue, live in Atlanta or free to watch afterwards online.Go register!

Today's links A dark money group is lying about Medicare cuts: Who the fuck are the "American Prosperity Alliance?" Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2012, 2017, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading A dark money group is lying about Medicare cuts (permalink) The "American Prosperity Alliance" does not exist, except as an anonymously controlled bank account that has paid for the production and dissemination of a slick ad that spreads the falsehood that the Democrats have cut $300b from Medicare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xCep6NvbhE Let me repeat: this is a lie. What

Look around the rooftops of many cities and you’ll see wooden water towers. New York has thousands of them. The reason is simple and often overlooked: In the morning, when every resident of the building is preparing for the day, there’s a need for thousands of gallons of water under high pressure. Providing that much […]

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon these youtube videos on Hong Kong. It made me miss the city very much. I particularly enjoyed the two-part series on Sham Shui Po, one...

Wednesday, August 10, 2022 Today's song: Words of Love.# The idea of putting RSS into the world of the browser was a mistake. The world of news is another world altogether. The web tried, in every way to turn RSS into the web. And it was very unsatisfying for a reason, the web was designed for documents. Things that have lasting value. The news is different. It's ephemeral. You want to keep a record of it for sure, but yesterday's news has no value as news, because it's not new. It's like the difference between music and podcasts. Music you

Marcel in Hamburg made a list of games on his new blog Life-Size Models of the Drama. As an aside, that’s a fantastic name. It inspired me to come up with a bit of a list of my own. I… didn’t realise I had so many, given I spend most of my life in a text editor for fun! The listed platforms are where I first played them, not necessarily where they first appeared. GOATs Commander Keen 1-3 [DOS] Lemmings [DOS] Microsoft Train Simulator [Win32] Minecraft [FreeBSD] Need for Speed: SE [DOS] SimCity 3000 [Mac OS] SimTower [Win16] The Sims

Drafting is a behavior in bird-flock-like systems where one agent rides the slipstream of another in a way that delivers a collectivizable benefit, usually net energy savings. The instantaneous savings rates from drafting can be very non-trivial, ranging from 5-50%, depending on the agent geometry, formation topology, physics of the situation, and other conditions. Birds, […]

Read to the end for a good Garfield Tumblr post

charmingly naive 13-part TV series from 1996, captures footage of sites that predate the Internet Archive #

Interesting read on building “microforests”: If you don’t have enough room for actual rewilding, plant a small plot of multilevel native plants and trees in a park, school yard, or even your own back yard — especially in urban areas. Anywhere you can fit an oak (or equivalent), some shorter trees, some bushes and some […] The post Microforests appeared first on K-Squared Ramblings.

cooperate with your past selves in this browser game made in three days #

Large herbivorous mammals like the aurochs (the wild ox), tarpan (the original wild horse of Europe), wisent (the European bison), elk (known in North America as moose), European beaver and the omnivorous wild boar… aLL, according to fossil bone records, re-colonized the lowlands of Central and Western Europe along with red deer and roe deer…

Today's links A modest proposal to fix contracts: Rescuing contracts from sprawling garbage legalese novellas masquerading as "agreements." Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading A modest proposal to fix contracts (permalink) Every time I click through one of those garbage legalese novellas you're expected to say "I Agree" to before doing something totally normal and inconsequential, I'm reminded of the legendary Lenny Bruce bit "Eat, Sleep and Crap." http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=24181 In this bit, all civilization begins with agreements: "Let's see. I

The ancient settlement was accompanied by 2,807 graves from different time periods. The ground in this area was adorned with devotional rock inscriptions, one of which addressed to the ancient god Khaal. Francesca Aton https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/al-faw-saudi-arabia-prehistoric-settlement-1234636202/

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It was early in the development of a new product, and someone asked this question. I’m not sure the word “marketing” means what you think it means. Later, we will get to the promotion and advertising part. But right now, this is marketing. All of it. The product. The warranty. The team. The color choices. […]

Democrats got this one right, and economists were left in the dust.

Tuesday, August 9, 2022 Trump is going to jail. Get used to the idea. # Trump and his Russian handlers# Listen up schmucks.# See this picture of Trump and his buddies from Russia.# That's who he is. # You sure you want him to have American secrets in his hotel safe?# In the Oval Office. How sad for America. # Before you feel any sympathy for the schmuck in the middle, he's the one that appointed the Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v Wade. # So if you like him, you're supporting the enslavement of human broodmares aka women.#

A year ago I tried an experiment: This feels very strange, but I’m writing this post from my on-call FreeBSD laptop, without X! I have everything I need here to remotely troubleshoot stuff and write, all without needing a GUI. It’s been oddly fun getting back into all this stuff, so I thought I’d share it. I explained that once I’d assembled the VPNs and basic tooling I needed, I realised none of it required a graphical environment at all. I uninstalled Xorg, and since then have been using tmux as my “window manager”. I’ll admit, I left out that

I keep a pen & notebook on my desk, which I make liberal use of to jot down my thoughts. It works pretty well: ad-hoc todo lists, notes on problems I’m working on, tables, flowcharts, etc. It has some limitations, though. Sharing anything out of my notebook online is an awful pain in the ass. I can’t draw a straight line to save my life, so tables and flowcharts are a challenge. No edits, either, so lots of crossed-out words and redrawn or rewritten pages. And of course, my handwriting sucks and I can type much more efficiently than I

Johnny Harris: I feel very against the sort of machismo fascination with conflict, like it’s sort of a cool, good thing. When what we’re talking about are people’s lives. We’re talking about the future of entire societies being ripped apart by a power struggle. This is not sexy and cool. This is a nightmare. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2022-08-10.

Thoughts on being an artist, the ways imperfection embodies beauty, algorithm slavery, the value of writing partners, and more.

The Lansky Puck tool sharpener. Got it as a gift a few years ago. I’ve stoned fresh edges on everything from Swiss Army Knives to spades with this thing. Speaking as an idiot, and someone who has not got on with sharpening devices in the past, it would appear to be pretty much idiotproof. Proving I’m an…

We took the kids to the Houston Museum of Natural Science this weekend, and afterwards, I tweeted this thread: The more I’ve gone over it in my mind, the more absurd and funnier it gets. Here is an institution dedicated to what we can learn from seeing physical objects in the fossil record in person… and […]

The art of Elspeth McLean. Cosmotechnics. “Yuk Hui… defines the concept of cosmotechnics as a “unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical activities, whether craft-making or art-making”.”

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There are 1,000 other high schools, and each one has a vice principal who isn’t you. No, you’re not irreplaceable. No one is, not really. But if we work at it, we might become indispensable. The linchpin, someone who would be missed if they were gone.

Cash isn't savings, scarcity doesn't create value.

Monday, August 8, 2022 All articles about Doug Engelbart talk about the mouse, and mention "augmenting human intellect" in a vague way, not explaining what it means, and that he actually developed real software people could use for that. Engelbart thought augmenting human intellect was his real life's work. I know because 1. he told me and 2. same with me. Augmenting human intellect sounds spacy, something only a genius could understand, which is why it's not a good term for something that's pretty simple. Using an outliner to take notes and manage a project is an example of the

People ask me all the time to share video of how I make my collages, so here’s a quick one: And here’s what it looks like in my diary, without any cleanup:

This is hard to write, but probably has shown up a few times by now. I’ve been in a melancholic funk for a couple of years now, as I’m sure we all have been. I’ve felt rudderless, tired, distant, and depressed to tears. Travel has been out of the question, and it’s been difficult to find joy in the things I usually love. Some days are easier than others, but frankly I haven’t felt it this bad since my mum died, bundled with all the regret that I couldn’t save her. I’ve avoided talking about it for fear of judgement,

Read to the end for a good tweet about Montana

Just got my second booster shot. 💉 Hoping to stay free of COVID-19 on vacation and beyond…

Today's links Podcasting "So You’ve Decided to Unfollow Me": On the joys of writing to find your people, rather than pleasing a hypothetical audience. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Podcasting "So You’ve Decided to Unfollow Me" (permalink) This week on my podcast, I read "So You’ve Decided to Unfollow Me," my Medium describing the joys of writing to attract the audience of people who want to read what you want to write. https://doctorow.medium.com/so-youve-decided-to-unfollow-me-7452c96b4772 I've been blogging for more than 20

Popular digital retro game store Good Old Games (GOG), does not really care about vintage PC hardware fans. That is my conclusion after watching GOG evolve from a superb retro PC game fixer to a giant struggling to compete with the Steam and Epic game stores, thereby also catering to the needs of not so Good Old gamers. GOG has been in trouble financially speaking a few times, especially combined with the botched Cyberpunk release, as The Verge reports: GOG launched in 2008 as Good Old Games, a platform built around selling hard-to-find classic games without digital rights management or

Lovely, lovely writing about this 1993 Counting Crows album which I have always been a bit embarrassed to love. (via MetaFilter)

For serious physical design nerds: a deep dive on the design work for STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. From the bridge right down to the flatware and the lamps. The days are getting longer and nobody knows why. I personally thought it just felt that way. Image below by Ben Zank. We’ve all felt this…

It doesn’t matter that it’s not the Super Bowl or the World Cup. For this twelve-year old, tomorrow’s game is the big game, the biggest ever, and the emotional stakes are just as high. It doesn’t matter that this illness isn’t going to be life or death in the next few days. For this patient, […]

The new economic paradigm gets a rapid reboot

If you’re subscribing via email, heads up that I’m thinking about changing my newsletter engine, possibly to Buttondown. You shouldn’t see anything particularly different - and if you’re subscribing via RSS, nothing will change at all. But, to be honest, I’ll be paying a lot less money for a lot more power.As always, I really appreciate it when people share around my posts, or let me know if they’ve disagreed with something I’ve written. Your time and attention are limited; thanks for sticking around.

Sunday, August 7, 2022 It seems Marco Rubio is beatable. Wouldn't it be something if the listenters to Keith Olbermann's fantastic podcast could make it happen? I think it's possible. # But what do I know. Heh. Every poll has Rubio far ahead of Demings. # I usually exercise in the afternoon, but it's been so hot, so I did my Peloton ride first thing this morning. Then swimming, a nice breakfast with a tall glass of delicious ice coffee. The sense of well-being is overwhelming. I used to have this feeling all the time after working out when I

This was decided a year ago, but still felt like the end of an era in an old VM over the weekend: The following files will be removed as part of updating to 13.1-RELEASE-p0: /usr/bin/svnlite /usr/bin/svnliteadmin /usr/bin/svnlitebench /usr/bin/svnlitedumpfilter /usr/bin/svnlitefsfs /usr/bin/svnlitelook /usr/bin/svnlitemucc /usr/bin/svnliterdump /usr/bin/svnliteserve /usr/bin/svnlitesync /usr/bin/svnliteversion FreeBSD moved to git starting in 2019. I miss and prefer svn, but I empathise why it was necessary. In some alternate universe, Linus moved to it instead of building git, just as he adopted BSD instead of writing the Linux kernel. One can dream. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2022-08-08.

An building I walk past every day either has a new friend, or I’m only just noticing it. Either way, this is great: These concrete alcoves walls seemed to be a fixture of 1980s and 1990s architecture. My school in Singapore had them, as have a few of the apartment buildings I’ve lived in over there and in Australia. The problem is, they tend not to age well. As people stop maintaining the plants, or the sprinkler systems fall into disrepair, the plants disappear and are replaced with nothing. This leads to concrete voids which end up attracting litter, dust,

I recently heard a story about a company that, when determining who would be laid off in a downsizing event, asked team leads to rank their teams based on who would be most likely to work on the weekend.Mind-blowingly, while it’s obviously (or hopefully obviously) immoral, this practice appears to be legal in the US, which has at-will employment in every state. This is one of the many contrasts between European and US employment law, which were the biggest culture shock for me when I moved to the US eleven years ago. In Europe, employers must ensure that employees don’t

Not scything, ‘Neighbours’.

I started working on plugins for GoBlog using a Go module I recently discovered: yaegi. It still feels like magic, because Go is typically a compiled language and yaegi makes it dynamic by embedding an interpreter. Is this overkill for GoBlog or does this possibly enable flexibility like WordPress plugins?

Today's links Epson boobytrapped its printers: "For your protection." Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2002, 2012, 2017, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Epson boobytrapped its printers (permalink) "Innovation" has become a curseword, thanks to…innovation. Some of the world's most imaginative, best-funded sociopaths have spent decades innovating ways to fuck you over. While the whole tech sector likes to get in on this game, no one "innovates" like inkjet printer companies. Printer companies are true fuckery pioneers: the tactical innovations they've developed in the war on their customers would

Roman Moore on more dollops of massive-but-shallow private glitz replacing the unique, interesting and characterful bits of London.

1 August - 7 August weeknotes There was a fire in the park yesterday. Videos were shared on the street WhatsApp: the upwards creep of the fire into the bushes, the sound of the breeze fanning the flames and the crackle of the dry grass as it went up in smoke. The Fire Brigade were called. This is the second local fire we’ve had in two weeks and the third so far this summer. There’s anger about the length of the grass – disagreements as to whether it should ever have been left to grow so tall. Everyone is probably

To all my feed subscribers: If you are annoyed by the TTS audio or the “Interactions” link, add a “.min” in front of the feed type in the URL. For example https://jlelse.blog/.min.rss. Thanks for following! 😄

In countries throughout the world, even in countries where there are no snakes, the most common dream is one based on our (it must be) genetic fear of snakes. But in Bhutan, they dream of rainbows. The dreams might be consistent, but the way we talk about them clearly isn’t. Perhaps the dreams we remember […]

Two weeks on, still a bit glum about this article about the redevelopment of Balfron a tower by Oliver Wainright.

The country should be a champion, but it's spinning its wheels. Why?

When we quit careers, leave relationships or start working on ourselves, we may neglect to consider the systemic consequences of that in our lives. Plenty of those times it is most likely...

Saturday, August 6, 2022 When I wrote about Utopia Bagels yesterday, I forgot to mention that Whitestone is part of Queens. It's a weird thing, of the five boroughs of NYC, the oddball is Queens, where each neighborhood was once a town, and they kept it that way even when they all became part of Queens. So my parents' address was in Flushing, NY -- not Queens, NY as it would have been if we were in Brooklyn, The Bronx or Staten Island (actually not sure about Staten Island, it's the forgotten borough, more part of the Lost Cause of

I had reason to port forward through my home router’s NAT to our bhyve box this weekend. There are some updates to Minecraft and Plex, and I wanted to do my Sunday maintenance from a coffee shop over SSH, like a gentleman. Before I left, I opened the requisite port and enabled the port forward on the router. I tested it from an external IP and… nothing. I rebooted it to confirm the setting was correct and had been committed… still nothing. OpenSSH dutifully timed out each time. I was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered doing a port

A few eagle-eyed readers among you noticed my new blog theme. Truth be told it’s the same theme I wrote and used up to 2015, albeit with backported fixes for modern Hugo (cough)! I realised that for all my talk about how I missed depth and textures in desktop interfaces, my site was also entirely flat. I think the border around each section makes them much clearer. The “paper” methaphor extends to posts, the About Me section, and archives. Some of you think it should only be around the posts themselves, but I didn’t want large blocks of text floating

I enjoyed this detailed look into how to make Kroger's website much faster. All the way through I was thinking, "How will you get the org to adopt your changes?" and inevitably… (via @simonw)

I clicked on this click-baity youtube video titled, “The BEST Cooking Videos on Youtube” expecting to roll my eyes while watching it, but I was pleasantly surprised to be schooled in a...

When we sing in the shower, we hardly expect applause. In fact, that would be awfully weird. But online, when just about anyone might be clicking, watching or sharing, it’s disappointing to put your work into the world and hear nothing. Nothing but a black hole that absorbs your best work and reflects nothing back. […]

Friday, August 5, 2022 Everyone who reads my blog must listen to Keith Olbermann's new podcast. Start with the first episode. There's more to the history of the Civil War as he tells it. What the Confederacy did by seceding from the Union was quite similar to the January 6 attempted coup, but after the Civil War, we (ie the United States) made the same mistake the Bidens are making. They wanted to bring the Confederates themselves back into the country. So really it was no surprise that slavery continued, it was just a bit more complicated. When we prevail

I don’t appreciate just how much baristas act like councillors. I wonder if they’re vetted by their managers for additional soft skills like this? They must be. Every morning I go to my favourite local coffee shop, and the baristas are always talking with customers about their day, the weather, what problems they’re currently facing, how the long weekend wasn’t long enough. Some lend a sympathetic ear, others are actively involved in mediation or working out solutions in between running the coffee grinders, the espresso machines, the filter drips, and asking if they wanted almond milk instead of skim lactose

Last Wednesday I talked about the growing trend of superficial Linux distro reviews, both on YouTube and in thousands of cookie-cutter websites. Michael Dexter has lamented the fact that site wrapping software announcement with ads places higher in search results than the announcements themselves. I have intimate experience with this. Software and writing I once published under my (now retired) alias would routinely get picked up and disseminated, usually without attribution. My primary blog here is now big and old enough that its harder to get away with this, but I still find people wrapping my words wholesale so they

Brandon, incidentally one of the oldest members on Fosstodon, asked a few questions in response to my post on Five Years of Fosstodon. So I thought I’d answer them here. ... https://kevq.uk/five-years-of-fosstodon-questions/" title="Five Years of Fosstodon Questions">More -->

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Today's links Uber's still not profitable: An effective wealth transfer of $2.8 billion from labor to capital in just three months. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2002, 2007, 2017, 2021 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Uber's still not profitable (permalink) Uber just released its Q2 numbers for 2022 and trumpeted that it had finally achieved cash-flow positivity – and it only took 13 years and $32 billion in losses! So has Uber finally turned a corner? Will the company finally attain profitability and repay those billions? Nope. The best

Monday 25 July Watch Sunak and Truss in the leadership debate. It’s fortunate the debate isn’t for my benefit; I can’t vote, but I also can’t concentrate. The background screens are so busy. Some kind of isometric cube pattern in shades of blue. At first, all I can see is Truss’ jacket. It’s the same colour but a different tone to a rhombus on the panel behind her. The angle of her shoulder and 2 sides of the rhombus are almost the same. Then Sunak. To the left of his shoulder the flat surfaces of the cubes are supposed to

So many choices. So many sorts of metrics, critics and measures. Perhaps it makes sense to count things where the counting tells us how to do better next time. And to count things that let us know how much risk we can take next time. Or to calibrate our judgment about the market. But it […]