And because no good deed goes unpunished,

Fletcher claimed to have been harassed by his own community and he also found bullet holes in his barn. Fletcher used the proceeds from farming the land to pay the taxes for the interned Japanese. From 1942 to 1945 he managed the Tsukamoto, Nitta, and Okamoto farms. Fletcher’s wife Teressa Cassieri also worked the farms.

But because he was a good decent human being,

The agreement was for Fletcher to keep profits after paying the taxes on the farms, but instead he returned the money to the Japanese farmers when they were released.

From a New York Times profile (cached):

For the next three years he worked a total of 90 acres on three farms — he had also decided to run Mr. Tsukamoto’s farm. He worked 18-hour days and lived in the bunkhouse Mr. Tsukamoto had reserved for migrant workers. He paid the bills of all three families — the Tsukamotos, the Okamotos and the Nittas. He kept only half of the profits.

Many Japanese-American families lost property while they were in the camps because they could not pay their bills. Most in the Florin area moved elsewhere after the war. When the Tsukamotos returned in 1945, they found that Mr. Fletcher had left them money in the bank and that his new wife, Teresa, had cleaned the Tsukamotos’ house in preparation for their return. She had chosen to join her husband in the bunkhouse instead of accepting the Tsukamotos’ offer to live in the family’s house.

The mensch lived to the ripe old age of 101 🙏 🙌 Here’s a photograph.

Source: The New York Times

Things are going well with the Metaverse:

In a follow-up memo dated September 30th, [Vishal] Shah¹ said that employees still weren’t using Horizon enough, writing that a plan was being made to “hold managers accountable” for having their teams use Horizon at least once a week. “Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it. Get in there. Organize times to do it with your colleagues or friends, in both internal builds but also the public build so you can interact with our community.”

He went on to call out specific issues with Horizon, writing that “our onboarding experience is confusing and frustrating for users” and that the team needed to “introduce new users to top-notch worlds that will ensure their first visit is a success.”

Shah said the teams working on Horizon needed to collaborate better together and expect more changes to come. “Today, we are not operating with enough flexibility,” his memo reads. “I want to be clear on this point. We are working on a product that has not found product market fit. If you are on Horizon, I need you to fully embrace ambiguity and change.”

I’m assuming that asking “What the fuck are we spending $70 billion on again?” wouldn’t be a recommended way to embrace ambiguity.

Update

Kate Duffy with Business Insider:

Zuckerberg told employees this year to have their meetings on Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app, where people can come together as avatars in virtual workspaces, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.

[…] The source, who remained anonymous, told The Times that many Meta employees didn’t have VR headsets this year or hadn’t gotten around to setting them up. Those staff then had to rush to purchase headsets and register them before their managers realized, the source told The Times.

And the kicker:

Included in the Times report was inside information from two employees who told the newspaper that some workers call important metaverse projects “make Mark happy,” abbreviating it to “MMH.”

Won’t someone think of our mad king? I’m going to return to the office only to be forced to attend meetings virtually. MMH 🥲

Update

Via Ellen 💯

Coached by a former Wall Street bond trader who studied the opposition and set up a pipeline that produces Superstar Mathletes:

“You wouldn’t grab a kid in ninth grade who’s never played football and expect him to be a great high-school football player,” he said. “For most of these kids, this is their football.”

Mr. Frazer’s insight was to connect four levels of education: The kids he scouts in elementary school develop in middle school, compete in high school and take specialized classes from college professors that he brings to Buchholz’s campus. As soon as the system was in place, the team started winning and never stopped.

It turned out there was value in putting a bunch of smart kids in the same room: They feel empowered to make each other smarter.

Many of the gifted kids in his program have parents who work at the nearby University of Florida and push to get on Mr. Frazer’s radar. Others he finds on his own. He tracks down test scores of students in his district, follows the data and recruits high achievers. Some who were discovered by his spreadsheets have since graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with math degrees and landed on Wall Street themselves.

The mathletes who try out for the team and make the cut are combined into one class section and fly through competitive algebra, geometry and calculus during the school day. Mr. Frazer essentially bends the rules to move faster through harder material and pack more than two years of math into one school year. “I cover everything the state wants me to cover,” he said. “But there is no restriction on covering extra material.”

Jira is middle-management-ware, a term I made up for software that serves the needs of middle management, or, at least, the needs middle management thinks it has, which comes to the same thing as long as you’re selling to them. (link)

Jira is a tire fire. It should be condemned and officially designated a superfund site. My goddamn ticket tracker shouldn’t spin up my fans when I try to do something as austere as access the backlog, but, as we all know, it’s impossible to display tickets withou 21 MB of JavaScript and 164 HTTP requests. (Yes, those are real numbers.) (link)

and finally,

JIRA makes it dangerously easy to implement overly bureaucratic processes. A certain kind of organization is drawn to it for that reason. Even a healthy organization switching to JIRA can get carried away with the tools now at its disposal. JIRA is a software product but also a social institution, an organizational philosophy. Sure, you can have the software without the attitude or vice versa, but use of JIRA is still a (weak) negative signal about the quality of an employer.

Turns out that the main thing protecting employee autonomy is the logistical difficulty of micromanagement. JIRA “solves” that problem. (link)

For day-to-day things, a 10-year old MacBook Air is perfectly adequate (except, maybe, if you’re trying to read an article on the Des Moines Register’s or KCCI’s websites without using a PiHole…)

Didn’t realize it was a four-parter. Major nostalgia. Have forgotten most of my French but I somehow still remember a lot of words for things (and their gender!) thanks to these books (well, Volume 1 at least). Looks like the CBSE still uses it. Here’s audio to accompany the books.

I know nothing of D&D, wanted to find out more after watching the latest season of Stranger Things, and came by this video. I still don’t understand how the figurines contribute to the gameplay but was amazed by his vast collection of them. Lots of lovely passion and camaraderie here ♥️

Here’s the campaign’s website and Instagram.

Amil Niazi in a sobering article about ambition, COVID, women, mothers, and late-stage capitalism.

Think jq but for HTML/DOM. If you wanted to get all the post titles on this log,

 curl -s -o - https://log.nikhil.io/ | gunzip - | pup "header > h2 > a" text{}

Lovely stuff.

It’s hosted by three University of Iowa engineers and scientists who are tired of “cropaganda” and is rather entertaining. The latest episode calls the recent E15 Law a “Fart in a Hurricane”.

One of the hosts is an engineer named Chris Jones who also writes a very lively blog with wonderful nuggets like this:

See also: “Iowa is Addicted to Cornography”

Simple, consistent, SVG, adjustable stroke-width, and there are 1900 of them (and counting).

It’s what all the Patagonia-clads are raving about. They tell me it solves all perf problems in a snap.

Update

Here’s an NPM package. And, of course, Java if you’d like to deploy this in an Enterprise™ setting.

Behold the story of a Master Strategist, a 5D-Chess playing Svengali absorbed in his craft 🙏🔥

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This really got me:

My job is to keep our code running while other packagers are changing theirs.

Lord have mercy. NPM continued use and existence is proof that (Almost) Every Day is a Miracle ✨

I mean just look at it 🥰

Really cool stuff. Trained on the New York Times ingredients corpus (large 13.5MB CSV) and turns this

ingredients = [
  "3 large melons",
  "5 1/2 cups water",
  "2 cups flour",
]

into this

[
  {
    "name": "melons",
    "unit": None,
    "qty": 3.0
  },
  {
    "name": "water",
    "unit": "cups",
    "qty": 5.5
  },
  {
    "name": "flour",
    "unit": "cups",
    "qty": 2
  }
]

Heslin’s vow on Wednesday comes one day after Jones offered an FBI agent and 18 members of 10 families who lost loved ones in the school shooting $120,000 each to settle defamation lawsuits he lost against them in Texas and Connecticut late last year.

[…] Jones, the host of the “Infowars” internet program, called the Sandy Hook tragedy “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”

Saved me a ton of time with small project I’m working on right now. Looks like it’s written in C.

Brilliant. Take a bow, Late Show writers.

I’ve been nearing capacity for a while and this is a Godsend.

Here’s a giant list of games people have created with it. Here’s a teeny little introductory adventure. I plan on playing The Quest of DuBebe this evening:

Very common in India. And that article is from a journal that offers EAL news. EAL (English as an Additional Language) is not the same as ESL (English as a Second Language). EAL is favored above ESL among the language pedagogy community:

Why? Because sometimes it is not clear what an individual’s ‘first’ language is (perhaps they grew up speaking one language at home, and a different language at school). And because oftentimes people can speak more than two languages.

EAL is more inclusive and applies to “a wider range of individuals’ contexts”.

A study of DNA extracted from the leg bones of extinct moa birds in New Zealand found that the half-life of DNA is 521 years. So every 1,000 years, 75 per cent of the genetic information is lost. After 6.8 million years, every single base pair is gone. Bacterial RNA is much tougher and sequences have been recovered from ice crystals that are 419 million years old. These are only short fragments of 55 base pairs though.

Excellent stuff, particularly the mechanical keyboard envy¹. There’s a Nikhil in it too! 💁‍♂️

Because we don’t simply write non-annoying and non-creepy software that respects you and does the thing you want it to do anymore. Gotta deliver Value™ to all key stakeholders. By which we mean ourselves and the Market. Not you. You are nothing more than Data that taps “Purchase” to us.

Fun little quiz! Did not do as well as I thought I would…

Eighth Wonder of the World indeed. Here’s a nice calculator that draws graphs, and allows for monthly contributions and rate variances.

In case that site is unavailable, and for the year 2020, it’s an exponential curve with the

• 50^th at $67,463
• 75^th at $122,500
• 80^th at $141,100
• 90^th at $201,052
• 95^th at $273,850
• 98^th at $386,915
• 99^th at $594,420

Until not-too-long ago, I used to think that “the top 1%” referred to “few hundreds of millions”-millionaries or billionaires 🤷‍♂️

Forgot to add this to my Collection of Shitkraken.

Two lawyers who currently work for Trump or in the former president’s inner orbit say they want absolutely nothing to do with her and have cautioned others in MAGAland to do the same. One said they’d recently deleted her phone number.

Two other people familiar with the matter said that ever since he left office in January, certain advisers and longtime associates to Trump have kept an informal shortlist of people who they should look out for, including at Trump’s private clubs or offices in Florida, New Jersey, and New York. The point of this roster is to intercept and possibly rebuff attempted outreach, visits, or phone calls from a handful of conservative figures who could bring the ex-president more undesired headaches.

“Sidney is very much on the no-go list,” one of the knowledgeable sources said. “Her problems right now do not need to be the [former] president’s problems.”

Powell’s legal exposure right now is, of course, massive. And ever since she tried to work with Trump to orchestrate a coup last year against Joe Biden, feelings of frustration and bitterness have lingered between Trump and Powell. According to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, since December Powell has privately talked about how disappointed she was in Trump because he didn’t end up appointing her to a “special” role in his White House where she would have probed “election fraud” conspiracy theories during the final days of his term.

“She sounded pretty broken up about it,” this person noted. “I felt sorry for her.”

Meanwhile, the Brave Leader of the Elite Strike-Force Team feels bad about his own ban from State Television.

Certainly looks like it, Mr. Hlas. Go Hawks 🤘

I’m not saying there’s going to be a schism or anything, but I’m not not saying that, either.

This is just genius. (Cached)

It belongs to Tom Bosworth. I thought “I cannot even run that fast” and decided to look at the video.

While it certainly does look like they’re running, there are some severe restrictions on their movement, of course, else it’d be an event called ‘Trotting’. The rules are:

• One foot must touch the ground at all times
• The leading leg must be straight when the foot touches the ground
• It must remain straight until it passes under the torso

Judges look out any infractions by eye (no technology) and disqualify people appropriately.

Another example of the Best People attracting other Best People 🤩 And I’m sure his illustrious client will swoop in and help him out with the $250 Million he wheedled out of his supporters?

You don’t say. Could be the Elite Strike-Force Team’s enviable success rate because, ordinarily, The Best People who are most loyal to their Orange Daddy get paid well and on-time:

• Elite Strike-Force Leader’s Supporters Beseech the Angry Yam to Pay for Services Rendered
• Stable Genius Client Halts Payments to Fearless Leader of his “Elite Strike-Force” Legal Team

Shitkraken is a gift that keeps on giving 💩

“Just say we won,” Giuliani reportedly instructed Trump’s team, explaining that they should simply declare victory in each battleground state. Giuliani is then said to have told Trump directly: “Just go declare victory right now… You’ve got to go declare victory now.”

Some solid strategery here. The Best People, folks. I want this to end but I don’t want it to end.

Of course. The Best People, folks. He did mention the use of “the binomial probability formula”, so there’s that at least. He’s being sued by Dominion Systems, along key members of his Daddy’s Elite Strike-Force Legal team.

Shitkraken keeps on giving ♥️

The Fearless Leader’s motion was denied as well. Pillow Bro as well. The best people.

“As an initial matter, there is no blanket immunity for statements that are “political” in nature: as the Court of Appeals has put it, the fact that statements were made in a “political ‘context’ does not indiscriminately immunize every statement contained therein.” It is true that courts recognize the value in some level of “imaginative expression” or “rhetorical hyperbole” in our public debate. But it is simply not the law that provably false statements cannot be actionable if made in the context of an election.

Wow. If I were a Patriot, I would also get tired of Liberal judges meting out this kind of treatment to my Orange Daddy’s defense team.

On June 7, 2018, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Nichols to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On June 18, 2018, his nomination was sent to the Senate. President Trump nominated Nichols to the seat vacated by Richard W. Roberts, who took senior status on March 16, 2016.

Shitkraken keeps on giving ♥️

Don Gorske started eating them in 1972 and continues to do so. He will buy 6-8 at a time twice a week (at the same McDonald’s franchise) to save on gas. He’s kept all boxes and receipts, which I suppose are what you’d need to apply for and maintain a Guinness Record.

Emphasis mine:

Seriously, if you have five minutes, give the whole video a watch. Even if the idea of eating Big Macs every day isn’t for you, there’s something to be said for Gorske’s power of persistence and the joy he finds not only in his routine but in being himself. Sure, it’s not necessarily the noblest of records, but at a time when people are winning medals for artistic swimming and table tennis, who’s really to say which feats are more notable than others?

Two things:

1. I don’t get why the author doesn’t consider Artistic Swimming and Table Tennis ‘real’ sports. In which Universe are either ‘easier’ than hoovering two Big Macs™ a day? Am I Shapiro-ing this? I think I’m Shapiro-ing this.
2. I hope Mr. Gorske donates his body to science so we can have a collective appreciation of the limits of trauma and duress our digestive systems can handle 🍔🍔🍔

She addresses graduate/PhD students struggling to complete their theses but there’s quite a bit to learn here. She considers procrastination as a perfectly logical response: why wouldn’t one seek pleasure? It’s something that (a) reveals a lot about what you’re afraid of and (b) is hence a protection response.

Other notes, thoughts, etc:

• “B’s get degrees.” Don’t pursue perfectionism. Done is better. Don’t let Perfect be the enemy of the Good. Don’t get Good be the enemy of the Necessary. “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” You’ll be OK. Finish it.
• The environment you do your work in and your work ritual are very, very important. Set a time and place every day to what needs to be done. Diminish distractions as much as possible¹.
  • Set your phone in distraction-free mode and place it on the floor, face down. Allow only a few people to break its silence in case of emergencies. Establish working hours with them and everyone else (i.e., not everything is an emergency.) Guard your time fiercely.
• Chunk the job/project into as many atomic tasks as possible. Do the smallest task. Celebrate its completion (briefly) and be kind to yourself. Rinse and repeat. Seek momentum.
  • Procrastination ultimately is about the past or the future. Try not to think of the end result. You are here right now to finish a paragraph, write a bit of code, read that paper. Be here now.
• Assume responsibility. Stop whinging.

Over the past year, I’ve been amazed by how much mindfulness comes up with almost every conversation I have (or book I read or podcast I listen to) about self improvement and Joy in Life.

Update

Was reading an article on the efficacy of todo lists and lo!

Pathetic and Evil:

“The next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate,” Carlson said. “Ask politely but firmly: ‘Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.’”

and

Pathetic Douchebag is like watching a dumpster catch fire slowly. Evil Douchebag wouldn’t be worth thinking about if it weren’t for his reach and the preventable deaths he’s directly responsible for.