Trenchant, brilliant stuff by William Kennedy 💯

(Cached)

Must be nice.

Caption by CO 🤣

If you liked that, you might like this longer documentary called “Being Poirot” by Suchet himself.

Was doing some digital house-keeping and came by a cached copy of that by MisterBG. Things haven’t changed too much over the past two decades…

Molly White asks if Web3 is bullshit. Short and excellent talk.

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.

That would be a Swiss gun instructor. His country has 2.3 million guns per 8.6 million people and has had exactly one mass shooting since 2001.

They are able to do this despite being one of the most armed European countries because they have commonsense gun laws, actually fucking act to prevent senseless tragedy, and do not fetishize or worship their guns or the hallowed, immutable, “God-given” Second Amendment.

There was yet another mass shooting in America, this time in Ames, Iowa, a collegetown I lived in for many years. Three innocent people died. More thoughts and prayers by our effete, corrupt leaders until the next horrifying and avoidable tragedy. Nothing will change.

Update March 21 2023

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.

The key takeaways in no particular order.

• Use <noscript>. If you are using it, use it a lot more.
• There is no guarantee that chunks will load after the main one does; the user’s location and/or network access might have changed! Think CalTrain.
• ISPs, Corporate VPNs, and Browser Plugins¹ can mess with the downloading and execution of JS.

I’m omitting CDN uptime (can’t do anything about this) and Browser compatibility (supporting 5+ year-old browsers is not something I care about doing given the work I do.)

Finally, not every fucking thing needs to be an App. For instance, your Terms of Service page can actually be a document on the Internet 😱

by Ned Gulley at Star Chamber from a long, long while ago.

I’d really hoped that this embarrassment would’ve been forgotten a few weeks after January 6th. But here we are.

“Should an attorney be sanctioned for his or her failure to withdraw allegations the attorney came to know were untrue?,” [U.S. Judge Linda Parker] said during a court hearing held by video conference. “Is that sanctionable behavior?”

She said she thought affidavits in the case had been submitted in “bad faith.”

[…] Parker dismissed the Michigan lawsuit last December, saying in a written decision that Powell’s voter fraud claims were “nothing but speculation and conjecture” and that, in any event, Powell waited too long to file her lawsuit.

[…] “What they filed was an embarrassment to the legal profession,” David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit said during Monday’s hearing. “This was a sloppy and careless effort.”

During the hearing, Parker asked Powell and her co-counsel why they did not voluntarily dismiss their Michigan case on Dec. 14 when the Electoral College formally confirmed Biden’s election victory.

“Why did the plaintiffs not recognize this lawsuit as moot and dismiss it on that date?,” Parker asked.

Donald Campbell, the attorney representing Sidney Powell and the other lawyers, replied that the election was “fluid” and unpredictable and that the pro-Trump legal team believed its lawsuit was still viable after Dec. 14.

The Best People 👌

A simple-enough argument about a dangerous, toxic worldview.

[…] To highlight that contradiction let’s try to explain these facts with individualist logic. Women and non-white people, by sheer coincidence, all individually chose to be paid less for more demanding jobs. Also by coincidence, they chose to work those jobs and be paid less than women and non-white people in other similarly developed countries. Simultaneously, people born in the same zip codes all just happened to make choices that led them to similar incomes, similar lifespans, and similar rates of disease. Those born to poor families chose, with little or no outside influence, to work lower paying jobs. The rich also chose, of their own accord and without significant systemic advantages, to work higher paying jobs. The huge differences in the inequalities between America and other wealthy nations is also a coincidence caused by Americans choosing to be lazier.

Rather than consider that centuries of enslavement and systemic racism has sabotaged the quality of life for black americans, individualists insist that black individuals choose to live in poverty more frequently than non-black people. Rather than consider that society exists, individualists have created a web of absurdities and chosen to live there. They also insist that none of these absurdities are racist, sexist, or classist. We shouldn’t temper our language here: anyone who claims that individual choices rather than systems entirely determine how most people live should be dismissed outright. It’s an embarrassing and absurd worldview and even the tiniest bit of research should make that clear.

[…] Individualism is a worldview created not to explain the world but to control it. It’s designed to fragment strong communities, turn workers against each other, and diminish the power of solidarity among the people. When you see yourself as the morally upright hero and everyone else has competition, you’re turning your back on what it means to be human. There’s plenty to go around, or at least there would be if it weren’t all funneled straight to the top, to the people who manufactured the idea of individualism.

See also: “We Ought to Live in a Society, not an Economy”

By Michael Dearing. Couldn’t find any video and not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek (like the “48 Laws of Power”.) The distortions are:

1. Personal Exceptionalism
   “I am special.”
2. Dichotomous Thinking
   “X is sh*t. Y is genius.”
3. Correct Overgeneralization
   “I see two dots and draw the right line.”
4. Blank-Canvas Thinking
   “Painting by numbers isn’t art. And I want to make art.”
5. Schumpeterianism
   “I am a creative destruction machine.”

TL;DR be a ruthless, inflexible, self-absorbed dick so you can identify, refine, and deliver Value™.

Lovely stuff. Cached here.

Being a long and informative post that leads to “Use /dev/urandom” and features a quote by DJB and a list of computationally secure PRNGs. Cached here.

LaTeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX and ConTeXt. That’s a lot of TeX! This was most helpful, even though MacTeX solves all my problems.

Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to:

• Remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet.
• Recognize said bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it.
• Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bullshit.
• Provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bullshit.
• Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit.

Further,

We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education.

I don’t think there’s more critical a juncture than now for courses like these. Just wish more people took them.

A still-very-relevant 9-year old article. Pandas has gone from strength to strength since he wrote that.

In terms of expressing your computations, Hadoop is strictly inferior to SQL. There is no computation you can write in Hadoop which you cannot write more easily in either SQL, or with a simple Python script that scans your files.

SQL is a straightforward query language with minimal leakage of abstractions, commonly used by business analysts as well as programmers. Queries in SQL are generally pretty simple. They are also usually very fast - if your database is properly indexed, multi-second queries will be uncommon.

Hadoop does not have any conception of indexing. Hadoop has only full table scans. Hadoop is full of leaky abstractions - at my last job I spent more time fighting with java memory errors, file fragmentation and cluster contention than I spent actually worrying about the mostly straightforward analysis I wanted to perform.

If your data is not structured like a SQL table (e.g., plain text, json blobs, binary blobs), it’s generally speaking straightforward to write a small python or ruby script to process each row of your data. Store it in files, process each file, and move on. Under circumstances where SQL is a poor fit, Hadoop will be less annoying from a programming perspective. But it still provides no advantage over simply writing a Python script to read your data, process it, and dump it to disk.

In addition to being more difficult to code for, Hadoop will also nearly always be slower than the simpler alternatives. SQL queries can be made very fast by the judicious use of indexes - to compute a join, PostgreSQL will simply look at an index (if present) and look up the exact key that is needed. Hadoop requires a full table scan, followed by re-sorting the entire table. The sorting can be made faster by sharding across multiple machines, but on the other hand you are still required to stream data across multiple machines. In the case of processing binary blobs, Hadoop will require repeated trips to the namenode in order to find and process data. A simple python script will require repeated trips to the filesystem.

From over 10 years ago (I’m sorting through my old bookmarks). A single object looks like this:

{
    "ACCTOUNT_NUMBER":"1234567890",
    "CUSTOMER_NAME":"ACME Products and Services, Inc.",
    "ADDRESS":"123 Main Street",
    "CITY":"Albuquerque",
    "STATE":"NM",
    "ZIP":"87101-1234"
}

He tested the usability of a given browser while it loaded between 1 and 1,000,000 such records.

From this test, I am considering the sweet spot to be around 10,000 records at (1.55MB). The maximum number of usable records I would push to a browser would be around 25,000 records (3.87MB). Keep in mind there are numerous factors to keep in mind when determining how many records you should return to your JavaScript application. The purpose of this test was to help identify a general maximum number for conversations around large record sets with JSON.

Would love to see an updated version of the tests.

I loved how the author imagined persistence 💗

This led him to miss a court hearing where his own lawyer sought to dismiss a billion-dollar defamation case against him. This is because the Strike-Force Honcho made “false and misleading” claims about the equipment used in the 2020 election on behalf of his Stable Genius client.

I wonder how much alcoholism this saga of shit has induced in folks who write political satire for a living. It just never ends.

No. It’s just a fucking operating system¹. A giant program on a computer. What weird, disconnected, embarrassing bullshit ‘spiritual’ techbro nonsense.

“We made a website full of memes you can search through, powered by Bitcoin and Machine-Learning (of course), and are changing the world.” No. Stop it.

I think I’m cranky because I’m hungry 🍕

I wonder if our hero has any vacation plans he’d care to share with a judge who might acquit him and his lol-dad. (Cached)

I still remember Giuliani’s stature and gravitas 20 years ago, when I arrived in this country. How the mighty have fallen. It’s almost as if The Orange Sphere of Shit corrupts all those who enter it. And comically so in the case of America’s Mayor.

Value™ must be delivered to stakeholders at any and all cost 🏏

This is for children under 13. Because children over 13 engage with Social Media in very healthy and fruitful ways.

“They are also simply too young to navigate the complexities of what they encounter online, including inappropriate content and online relationships where other users, including predators, can cloak their identities using the anonymity of the internet,” the letter reads.

[…] “Without a doubt, this is a dangerous idea that risks the safety of our children and puts them directly in harm’s way,” New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said in a statement Monday. “There are too many concerns to let Facebook move forward with this ill-conceived idea, which is why we are calling on the company to abandon its launch of Instagram Kids. We must continue to ensure the health and wellness of our next generation and beyond.”

What AG James fails to understand is that cradle-to-grave engagement greatly enhances Shareholder Value. This is the only thing in the world that matters. Here’s the Plastic Shithead Overlord who runs the sordid business:

“I think helping people stay connected with friends and learn about different content online is broadly positive,” Zuckerberg said. “There are clearly issues that need to be thought through and worked out, including how parents can control the experience of kids, especially of kids under the age of 13 but I think that something like this could be quite helpful for a lot of people.”

And why should Value be affected by the few tens of thousands of children who may not enjoy the the “broadly positive” effects of our product which has issues to be worked out?

You see, Value cannot (and should not) be shackled by the kind of careful research and measured approach that considers a target audience’s well-being. If such research by the so-called-experts establishes that our venture is, indeed, harmful to children, it will (and ought to be) brushed aside against their remonstrations. All Facebook does is “hold a mirror up to society”¹ and extract Value from whatever it finds ♥️

A shithouse company run by terrible human beings. But I hear the compensation is… *chef’s kiss*.

I have accepted that Shitkraken won’t end for a while.

Giuliani’s attorney, son, and allies like convicted former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik have urged Trump aides to dip into his massive war chest to help cover the former New York City mayor’s mounting lawyer bills after Giuliani’s home was raided by the FBI last week […]

The pleas from Giuliani’s supporters come after Trump refused to pay his former lawyer for his work on his election legal challenges. Trump “balked” at paying Giuliani after his associate sent a bill for $20,000 for a day of his work and told aides he did not want Giuliani to receive “any payment,” according to the report. Trump ultimately agreed to reimburse Giuliani $200,000 for expenses but has “stridently refused to pay” Giuliani’s fees.

The notoriously stingy former president bombarded supporters with fundraising appeals after his election loss, raising some $250 million to ostensibly fund his legal battle. But Trump spent a tiny fraction on actual legal costs as his many court challenges were quickly rejected by dozens of federal judges, including ones he appointed. Now, Giuliani’s allies are asking Trump to use the quarter-billion he raised with the Republican National Committee to help pay Giuliani’s costs in the federal probe and defamation lawsuits.

In the Yam’s defense, I wouldn’t want to pay for a 1.5% success rate either. In the Strike-Force Leader’s defense, I don’t think he could’ve seen this coming.

Because the only thing that matters is delivering Value to shareholders. (cached)

Incidentally, and to the “huh” of many Value-illiterate people, defending totalitarian governments is exactly how one gives “people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

And as a staunch Free Market Conservative, I don’t really worry about sales (cached). May the market do its thing (cached), just like St. Reagan said it would.

by Josh Comeau. Saving here to refer to later. Here’s another by Manuel Matuzovic. It features a lot more OG tags and a most clever way to cut the mustard apropos modern browsers. Saved here.

A most dangerous Easter Egg by Microsoft, known only to the most elite of hackers.

The Supreme Court disposed of the last of former President Donald Trump’s challenges to state election procedures Monday, rejecting his appeal of lower court rulings that upheld Wisconsin’s handling of mail-in ballots.

The court announced the rejection without comment in a one-line order, which is its normal practice.

Trump and his allies had a uniformly unsuccessful record before the Supreme Court in their effort to overturn the presidential election results in states won by Joe Biden.

This was a wild ride. I really hope the “Elite Strike Force” team got paid to be the winners they are 🥇 You know, from $8 million of the $250 million that was raised for the purpose.

Standing on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, Richard Michetti allegedly took a break from the rioting to argue with his ex-girlfriend over text message. After sending photos and videos of the mob and boasting how he had avoided tear gas, Michetti parroted Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

“If you can’t see the election was stolen you’re a moron,” Michetti wrote in a text to the woman, according to court documents.

The next day, the woman he had insulted promptly told the FBI that her ex was at the Capitol, handing over to law enforcement the string of texts, photos and videos he had sent to her.

[…] The Trump supporter told his former partner that while his eyes were burning, he and the thousands there were doing the right thing to “stop the vote it’s fraud this is our country.”

[…] “This is tyranny,” he texted her later that evening. “They … told us ‘we rigged the election and there’s nuthin you can do about it’ what do you think should be done?”

And who bears any responsibility for this man’s delusion? It certainly isn’t the person who incited the riots. Or any of the Media czars who made gobs of money fomenting discord for those almighty engagement metrics.

Letters won’t do anything. Regulation is necessary (thanks again, St. Reagan.)

It’s very simple and clever. This is an example of what’s rendered from this giant Markdown file 💙

I love this more than I can describe.

The argument here being that, since the ‘general form’ of the conjecture is undecidable, TypeScript’s type system is undecidable. How does one even think of doing these things?

I love Typescript, but it isn’t nearly ambitious enough. It would be vastly improved with an --extremelyStrict flag enforcing that your Typescript code is free of side-effects; that is – no Javascript code is generated at all. Real programmers do all of their computation within the type system. Otherwise, they can’t be sure their program will work in production and should be duly fired.

Mad Lad. Via HN. (Cached)

A guide to elegant post-dinner debauchery from Mr Wei Koh, watch aficionado, Style Council member and founder of The Rake Magazine, in partnership with IWC Schaffhausen.

The ‘guide’ in a nutshell: “Drink whatever you want, with whomever you like, talking about anything you’d want to, on any day of the week, until any time that works for you. I’m rich. Buy this watch.”

I’m mostly mad at myself for finishing it.

About as ‘essential’ as it gets if you want to appreciate a tool you work with every day. (Cached)

No macOS love though 😔

See also. He was 73 years old, she was 17, and this was in 2019, when nobody had given a shit about Time’s Person of the Year for a while.

🇺🇸: We the Peope of the Unites States…

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿: 🤣

Here’s another list of 36 styles with real examples. (Cached: styles, elements one and two.)

I don’t think I’ve enjoyed an article’s title this much in a while.

Here is a list of harmful nonsense Pai and his FCC did over the last four years:

• Killed net neutrality
• Approved T-Mobile / Sprint merger
• Repeatedly released reports that claimed U.S. broadband is fine
• Defended murder of net neutrality in court
• Flubbed Puerto Rico hurricane disaster response
• Slow-walked and obstructed investigation into telecom company sale of your location data
• Said FTC would protect net neutrality (it didn’t, and couldn’t)
• Falsely claimed killing net neutrality was good for broadband access (it wasn’t)
• Refused to brief Congress about telecom companies’ sale of their customers’ phone location data
• Helped Comcast and other major telecom companies in their pursuit of monopolistic power
• Oversaw America’s falling rank in an annual “Internet Freedom” index
• Allowed Verizon to throttle California firefighters’ data while they were fighting unprecedented wildfires
• Invented a DDoS attack that shut down the FCC’s net neutrality comment system
• Lied to public about that fake DDoS attack that shut down the agency’s net neutrality comment system
• Lied to Congress about that fake DDoS attack
• Didn’t detect that dead people were leaving comments on net neutrality comment system
• Refused to change the definition of ‘broadband’
• Demanded $200 to release emails about his giant mug
• Allowed scammers to submit fake comments about net neutrality under the names of two sitting senators
• Did that dumbass Harlem Shake thing with a pizzagate conspiracy theorist
• Became a rubber stamp for Sinclair Media and
• Tried to kill a broadband assistance program that subsidized internet connections for the economically unstable and poor
• Got a literal gun from the NRA for his “courage” in killing net neutrality
• Was investigated by his own agency for alleged corruption as he pushed to dismantle media consolidation rules
• Published report claiming broadband market was magically fixed by repealing net neutrality
• Ignored 22 million comments supporting net neutrality
• Tried to reclassify cell phone data service as “broadband internet”
• Allowed phone call rates for incarcerated people to skyrocket

Here are 150 articles Motherboard wrote about Pai during his tenure.

and:

Nakamuro and his team looked at the videos Sakakibara had captured and were the first people ever to see tiny cuboid crystals made of tens of molecules of NaCl emerging from the chaotic mixture of separate sodium and chloride ions. Straight away, they noticed a statistical pattern in the frequency at which the crystals emerged; it followed what’s known as a normal distribution, which has long been theorized but only now experimentally verified.

Just amazing.

The 107-page lawsuit […] accuses Mr. Giuliani of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast.

You don’t say.

The suit […] is based on more than 50 statements Mr. Giuliani made at legislative hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in the conservative news media, where he spun a fictitious narrative of a plot by one of the biggest voting machine manufacturers in the country to flip votes to President Biden.

[…] “Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Chávez,” the suit says. “It was founded in 2002 in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots.” The suit later adds that the headquarters for the company’s United States subsidiary is in Denver.

[…] Laying out a timeline of Mr. Giuliani’s comments about Dominion on Twitter, his podcast and Fox News, the company notes that Mr. Giuliani avoided mentioning Dominion in court, where he could have faced legal ramifications for falsehoods. “Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit says.

Shocked.jpg. See also.

Dylan Beattie is my new favorite nerd on YouTube.

It would appear that my collection of batshittery is far from complete.

Nope. Not delusional at all.

“These things aren’t panning out,” Barr told the president, standing beside his chief of staff Will Levi. “The stuff that these people are filling your ear with just isn’t true.” Barr explained that if Trump wanted to contest the election results, the president’s internal campaign lawyers would have to do it.

The Justice Department, he continued, had looked at the major fraud allegations that Trump’s lawyers had leveled. “It’s just bullshit,” Barr told the president. Cipollone backed up Barr by saying the DOJ was investigating these claims.

Trump pointed at the TV and asked if Barr had been watching the hearing. Barr said he hadn’t. “Maybe you should,” the president said. Barr reiterated that the Justice Department was not ignoring the allegations, but that Trump’s outside lawyers were doing a terrible job.

“I’m a pretty informed legal observer and I can’t fucking figure out what the theory is here,” he added. “It’s just scattershot. It’s all over the hill and gone.”

“Maybe,” Trump said. “Maybe.”

Dark Brown or Black: Nocturnal (helps with camouflage.) Orange: Dawn and Dusk. Yellow: Daytime. There are no Blue-Eyed Owls.

Here’s a short overview but I found it as easy as

brew install tesseract

# See output.txt
tesseract -l eng input.png output

Nicely played, team. I’d say Mission Accomplished 🍾 That being said, I really hope I don’t have to collect Shitkraken stories anymore (for “completeness.”)

Not sure if this has to do with The Client’s legendary ethics and history of non-payment (one, two, three, four, five, and many, many more) or the Strike Force’s whopping 1.5% success rate. Or maybe The Genius finally realized:

Surely can’t the bad-for-ratings hair dye, the insane and casually racist witnesses, or the amazing 1.5% success rate?

It was found in 1982 in France. It’s 165M years old. Researchers reconstructed it in 3D using “synchrotron microtomography.” I was unable this reconstruction because the system of scientific journals is a money-grubbing bullshit system run by greedy people. Here she is though ♥️

This is a success rate of ~1.5% 🥇 The Best People folks, lemmetellya.

I’m really tired of this saga of ineptitude and batshittery but will continue to scrapbook these stories for ‘completeness’.

The focus of this project is to build a super reliable, durable, and stable network device from tried and tested tech. This is not a project for pushing the limits or testing out flashy new stacks. This affinity for ‘boring’ technology will reflect on most of the choices made here, from the hardware to the way we configure services and daemons.

Sounds lovely. (Cached)

By a single dev. At $42, an absolute steal for all the things you can do with it. Perpetual license, no bullshit subscription model. 😍

Confirmation that I did, indeed, see a “No, Georgia the country, idiot” flag. And then there’s this surprising tidbit:

The flags of Canada, Cuba, Georgia, India, Israel, South Korea, and South Vietnam were spotted in the mob. It’s unclear why many of these flags appeared, though a number of the white supremacist and militia groups that were present have international chapters.

India? Ah, yes of course

In a 124-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Dominion said its reputation and resale value have been deeply damaged by a “viral disinformation campaign” that Powell mounted “to financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herself to Donald Trump.”

You don’t say.

As Powell’s accusations about Dominion spread after the election, the company’s employees were stalked, harassed and received death threats via email, text and phone: “we are already watching you,” read a text message to one Dominion employee, according to the complaint. “Come clean and you will live.”

[…] She has claimed that Dominion’s voting system was created in Venezuela to rig elections for former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez and has said that secret algorithms in Dominion machines were used to manipulate votes in favor of Biden in 2020. She has accused the company of bribing Georgia officials to win a no-bid contract with the state. She has promised to tweet a video of Dominion’s founder — Poulos — saying he could “change a million votes, no problem at all.”

No such video ever materialized.

Shocked.jpg. Reddit user @Cycad:

Turns out the real Kraken was the enemies we made along the way…

It’s run by the fine folk at Loganberry Books, costs a nominal $4 per submission, and has a very admirable 50%+ success rate. Here’s my submission 🤞 Via CK ♥️

Followed by the Chinese Army (2.3M), Walmart (2.1M), McDonald’s (1.9M), and the NHS (1.7M). The Indian Railways comes in eighth with 1.4M people.

By the Audubon Society. Ravens are beefier, gauche, and less ‘refined’. They’re also relatively solitary. They have curvier beaks, wedge-like tails, and soar instead of flap. Here’s what a raven and a crow sound like.

(cached)

Here’s how the author made that list. Here’s a cached version.

Here are her website and Wikipedia page.

by Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen

And here’s our man, Shankar Kurhade, modeling my 2021 strategy given how confident I am in my state’s government fucking up vaccine distribution.

Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port.

Photographers will rejoice at the surprising and welcome addition of an SDXC card reader, a sign that Apple might be thinking seriously about photography.

The new MagSafe connector is a bit of Apple design genius. The charging cord stays seated securely, but pops right off if you yank on it. No more worries about destroying your $2k laptop just by accidentally kicking a cord.

😭

They use a pantograph to etch things out, after which they ‘tampograph’ the logo (at 1:45.)

When you’re following a bunch of feeds, it’s easy to forget that the web is the greatest library in the history of the world—and that a good library doesn’t just have a rack of newspapers, it has a vast collection of books and archives: the stacks.

These are stories that get reposted a lot. Many of them truly are classics.

That’s from 2010. Here’s the 2020 revision.

Bit pricey but appears to generate lovely layouts. Via Ash Furrow’s photography site.

Learn C and build a basic Lisp #VALUE 😍

“Am I truly controlling anything?” (cached)

Of course. Well, the transaction was in person and in cash (of course.)

It was just a little bag of weed sold through an Arpanet account in Stanford’s artificial intelligence lab in 1972. It’s not clear who was in on the sale aside from the students, but despite the underhanded nature of the deal, anyone with knowledge of the sale who wasn’t a square must have been excited about the implications of this early use of the Internet.

As the article clarifies:

The first online sale that we’d recognize as such today, complete with credit card information and the United States Postal Service, wasn’t until 1994. On August 11 that year, Dan Kohn sold a copy of the Sting album Ten Summoner’s Tales to a man in Philadelphia for $12.48 plus shipping, paid via encrypted credit card. Kohn later bragged, “Even if the N.S.A. was listening in, they couldn’t get his credit card number.”

(cached)

😭

Clever girl 🐘 ♥️

I must have watched this 14,221 times. A parody of this (real) miniseries. There’s a Part III too.

In another sign of the lingering unrest over President Donald Trump’s election loss, an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state’s 11 electoral votes for him.

Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the “certificate of ascertainment” that is submitted to formally cast each state’s electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election.

“We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game,” she said.

Timing and absolutely nothing else (like, say, legality) is everything, so check and mate. Emphasis mine:

“One thing I will say about conservatives, is if something is wrong, and we have lost — a true loss — then we accept,” she said. “We’re not going to drag people through the mud and fight it. But this clearly has got issues. I saw it with my own eyes and my own research. After that hearing, I was shocked we didn’t have any other marching orders.”

Pack it up, liberals. Lori did her “research”:

This includes a one paragraph “Dude… really?” from the Supreme Court over the “bid to invalidate more than 20 million votes.” So. Much. Winning.

“It’s time for this nonsense to end,” Detroit’s lawyer David Fink told Law&Crime in a phone interview. “The lawyers filing these frivolous cases that undermine democracy must pay a price,” Fink added.

but

Asked about the sanctions motion, Powell replied cryptically: “We are clearly over the target.”

On the other hand, every court that has heard her conspiracy theories about a supposed plot involving Dominion voting machines, dead Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, bipartisan government officials and election workers in counties across the United States found that narrative untethered to reality.

Via PLG.

“[Cruz] has proven himself neither to be a genius in terms of the law nor a genius, frankly, in terms of [emotional intelligence]. He is a sad sack,” Shapiro, a Democrat, told CNN. “I would say to him — and, frankly, I’d say to my 17 colleagues who have gone along with this circus — I don’t know whether I need to send you a surgeon to examine your spine or a psychiatrist to examine your head. But something’s wrong with you if you continue to follow this president.”

Whatever. I think the Senator would be a lovely and strategic addition to the already Elite-as-fuck Strike Force Team.

Had to cache it because this is just lovely stuff. Pretty sure I had a mini-blackout when I read the Trainspotting part 💯

“It has to stop,” Sterling said. Directing his remarks to Trump, he added, “Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.”

Lest any members of the public fail to understand: Certifying the winner of a presidential election, as Sterling (a Republican) did, is not an act of treason. It is the fulfillment of America’s centuries-old tradition of upholding the nation’s most fundamental democratic values.

It’s no longer clear whether Trump’s base is lashing out on its own, or whether the statements by Trump, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Estes and a vast army of other GOP officials are what’s inciting Trump supporters to take vigilante action. What is certain is that the rhetoric is out of control. These are, of course, representatives of the party that claims to support a “pro-life” agenda — even while their words are moving ever closer to driving families from their homes and getting someone killed.

(cached)

“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity. We condemn this conduct without reservation.” said the letter.

She then proceeded to attend a WH Party, of course.

President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis has informed associates she tested positive for the coronavirus, multiple sources tell Axios, stirring West Wing fears after she attended a senior staff Christmas party on Friday.

“She had the nerve to show up at the senior staff Christmas party knowing everyone was furious with her for constantly stirring Trump up with nonsense,” said a senior administration official.

Because she sat right next to the Fearless Team Leader, and because I am a child:

In other words, of which there are many, since the Supreme Court needed only 18 to hurl this nonsense into the Tidal Basin, Rep. Mike Kelly handed the Supreme Court of the United States a reeking dead fish and the Court refused delivery. And the Kelly suit looked like it was drafted by Clarence Darrow compared to that idiocy that emerged from Texas Tuesday morning, and Kelly’s suit was something at which even Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito turned up their noses. The administration* is done like dinner. SCOTUS has precious engagements.

A channel name is LEAD SYNTH FART 💯 I am a child and am fine with this.

Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News earlier on Sunday. Speaking with the host Maria Bartiromo via satellite, Mr. Giuliani repeated baseless claims about fraud in Georgia and Wisconsin on “Sunday Morning Futures.” When asked if he believed Mr. Trump still had a path to victory, he said, “We do.”

On Monday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said that a four-hour hearing last Wednesday with a roomful of unmasked witnesses had all the ingredients of a super-spreader event.

“That hearing last week was reckless, it was unnecessary and didn’t change a thing,” she said. “It’s action like this that threatens our ability to open up some of these businesses.”

Operation #shitkraken appears to limping along quite well.

A living caricature who could’ve been drunk, who was likened to an SNL character, who put out so much Can-I-See-Your-Manager Conspiracy Karen Energy she had to be shushed by the flatulent Leader of the Elite Strike-Force Team, who described herself as a “Duchess of CyberSecurity¹”, and who was definitely arrested for harassing her boyfriend’s ex with videos of them having sex.

Imagine my surprise when she was found to be “not credible.” I’d genuinely hoped she was an elite troll and that it was performance art of highest calibre², but there’s a higher likelihood of Mediacom deciding to treat its customers with respect.

Update

Even though both the Fearless Leader and his Elite Sidekick have COVID, she won’t quarantine unless her God Emperor tells her to:

That would be a real, casually racist quote from one of Mr. Giuliani’s witnesses testifying in Michigan as part of Operation Shitkraken. I had to save this one.

And: Naturalized Indian people supporting politicians who vilify new immigrants and want to keep them out is kinda on-brand 👏👏👏

If impatient, skip to the last minute.

One should be good 80%+ of time between that and the awesome pgcli.

I created YVFT site after my Conservative voting aunt complained on Facebook that there weren’t enough police to deal with disruptive teenagers in her town. I wanted to scream, “But you voted for this!” without looking like a lunatic.

Turns out Miyazaki’s dad was an aeronautical engineer.

🐶

Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said.

Because political victories, not cases or deaths, should inform and ‘validate’ one’s strategy when dealing with a raging pandemic.

Woo! Covers the biggest reason why I use jq (grep for fields) which, as the gron author notes, is more general-purpose and takes a little more effort to understand and use.

It helps minimize or eliminate popping sounds (“aspirated plosives”) like when you say ‘pop’ or ‘pepper’ or ‘pots’!

Foreign correspondents on the state of America and the election in four days.

It’s priced at $475 for the basic model and $800 for a deluxe version. The video is very satisfying to watch (I couldn’t have picked better background music.)

One could start with a Brachiograph for around $20 (basic Raspberry Pi setup, soldering skills, and assembly required.)

Via AS as we were discussing Audemars Piguet’s “petite tapisserie”

On why GNU grep is fast. Via HN.

So saith Uncle Roger, who finally approved someone’s egg-fried rice. Via KP.

to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Facebook’s engagement practices and likens them to time-tested strategies used by Big Tobacco before they were somewhat regulated.

And he would know. Kendall was the former “Director of Monetization” at Facebook and is currently the CEO of Moment, a company that seeks to help people “build healthier relationships with their phones.” Which I suppose is one way to atone.

. I mean yes, Denis Villeneuve and all that. But please don’t suck.

is a simple and aptly-named COVID tracker that uses data from Johns Hopkins. As of September 1^st 2020, my state of Iowa is #1 (woohoo!) with a 7-day infection rate of 261/100,000 people (“there might be 2 to 6 times as many recent infections”) and an R₀ rate of 1.7. “Over the past 30 days, 246 people in Iowa have died of Covid-19. If Iowa remains on its current trajectory, expect to see more than three times as many deaths from Covid-19 over the next 30 days.” That’ll show 'em.

helps you “bust writer’s block and be more creative” using an AI. Came by it after reading this amazing result of a collaboration between GPT-3 and James Yu.

👏 👏 👏 (cached)

Yep. And the tweet was in the context of school openings, but college towns like Ames and Iowa City, are no exceptions (like she continues.) I say we continue to doubt the science, exercise absolutely no discipline in the interest of the economy (because the Communist Kiwis maintain zero interest in restoring theirs as quickly as possible), yell at people who wear masks, fight Big Government telling us what to do, expect maturity and restraint from children and teenagers, have no bloody plan, defend our effete leaders who institute weak policies that are too little and too late, control the numbers and the narrative, and just continue to be awesome ♥️ That’ll show 'em. We’re only beginning to get tired of winning folks.

, ThriftBooks, and Bookshop are three alternatives to purchasing books on Amazon. Powell’s is withdrawing from the Amazon Marketplace: “The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive. We will not participate in undermining that vitality.”

and Advanced Custom Fields Pro are two must-have plugins for advanced Wordpressing according to my friend Mike, a seasoned Wordpresser.

Myrna Tellingheusen is my new favorite person on the internet ♥️

See also: “Creating a QR Code step by step”

Look we just wanted to make sure The Ocean would remember our species for having delivered value at any cost.

The Punisher logo is genius. Via Pete.

Ah, lovely. Absolutely lovely. Really lovely folks, let me tell you.

Wikipedia calls it “decompression damage”. The Smithsonian Magazine has more.

They call themselves Blac Rabbit. Here they are on Ellen.

I had no idea how these were made until watching this. The music is annoying.

via Mark

What’s even more remarkable is that it has about 12,000 posts in a single ~38MB file! He uses TiddlyWiki which I need to try and understand.

Being a satirical take on the state of enterprise software development, and authored by smart people who presumably like to watch the world burn. The issues are highly entertaining as well.

The firm also did the beautiful, interactive version of Transmit’s awesome logo.

I wish I had this intuitive, visual understanding and appreciation of the topic when I was in college.

This is some astounding PowerPoint-fu. Reminded me of the words of Linus Torvalds, “That is either genius, or a seriously diseased mind.”

He played Hans Gruber’s “right-hand man” Karl Vreski. Here’s more on his roller-coaster of a life.

By someone at Toggl, a software company that also makes great comics… 🤷‍♂️

It also doesn’t retail for less than $21,000 so there’s that.

Constructed around 1100 BCE, it had “995 graffiti left by visitors […], ranging from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD” a 1,000 years later.