2023
John Remmers’s review of Redhead by the Side of the Road
4 of 5 stars to Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
from twitter
june 2022
John Remmers’s review of Old Bones
3 of 5 stars to Old Bones by Douglas Preston
from twitter
april 2022
A Web Renaissance
While the core technology of the web is decades old, the tools that help make it and run have been quietly evolving into something extraordinary in the last few years, too. There’s a flourishing of powerful new frameworks that make it simpler than ever to build flexible, responsive, useful sites. New hosting platforms let those sites be deployed and delivered faster and more reliably than ever. And you can build one of these sites in literally under a minute, then collaborate with people anywhere in the world to iterate on making the site better.
anildash  web  creativity 
april 2022
America’s big mistake about science literacy came back to haunt us in 2021 | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Jan, 2022 | Medium
The idea that we can choose our experts based on what they’re saying and how palatable their message is to us — or worse, based on how well they already agree with our preconceptions — is a recipe for disaster. The one weapon we have against our own ignorance, and our own unwillingness to revise our previously held convictions, is scientific literacy: the ability to gather and assimilate information that itself lies beyond our own expertise to obtain for ourselves.
science  literacy 
january 2022
Colors in movies and TV: What happened to them? - Vox
So many TV shows and movies now have a dull filter applied to every scene, one that cuts away vibrancy and trends toward a boring sameness. Every frame’s color scheme ends up feeling the same as every other frame. And when there are so many projects using similar techniques, you end up with a world of boring visuals that don’t stand out.
film  movies  color 
january 2022
Omicron Is the Beginning of the End - The Atlantic
But the truth of the matter is that virtually all humans have, for virtually all of recorded history, faced daily risks of disease or violent death that are far greater than those that the residents of developed countries currently face. And despite the genuine horrors of the past 24 months, that holds true even now.

Is our drive to live life and socialize in the face of such dangers foolhardy? Or is it inspiring? I don’t know. But good or bad, it is unlikely to change. The determination to get on with our lives is deeply and perhaps unchangeably human.

In that sense, the spring of 2020 will be remembered as one of the most extraordinary periods in history—a time when people completely withdrew from social life to slow the spread of a dangerous pathogen. But what was possible for a few months has turned out to be unsustainable for years, let alone decades.
coronavirus  covid-19  pandemic  omicron 
december 2021
The Surreal TV Show That Rewrote Emily Dickinson’s Story - The Atlantic
Dickinson expanded upon Emily’s legacy by focusing on her struggle to understand herself. Each season treated her personal dilemmas—whether she should be a poet, whether she should claim ownership of her art, what kind of impact she hoped her work would make—with the same importance as, say, the conflicts that come with running a country. And by taking care to incorporate history even as it toyed with time, the show grasped that although Emily Dickinson was ahead of her time, the time in which she lived informed who she became. Not once in Dickinson’s run does Emily break free from the constraints of the era except in her mind, and as playful as the series could be in showing off her limitless vision, it drew depth from that tension.
tv  dickinson  emily_dickinson 
december 2021
Scripting News: Why podcasting isn't dominated
Now to the question that I actually asked that no one seems to want to answer. Why? Why is it this way? Why podcasting and not the other tech-based media. Why is podcasting still open after over 20 years? Drumroll please. The answer: there are enough users who understand how it is supposed to work. They expect to be able to listen to any podcast anywhere they want. Most probably don't understand why they have this ability, about the history and technology design that made it possible, but they understand that they have the ability. And it doesn't have to be all of them or even most of them, just enough of them, whatever that means. And for right now, at the end of 2021, there are enough. Podcasting has always been and remains an open platform. I can't say it will be for the future, but so far so good.
podcasting  open  platform  davewiner 
december 2021
America’s Colonization In One GIF | by indi.ca | Nov, 2021 | Medium
I learned this map as a kid, at least up to Ohio. I lived it, virtually, when we played Oregon Trail. In that ancient game you’d cross the frontier; fording rivers, hunting squirrels, dying of dysentery. Today I find the whole thing deeply unsettling.
This map is a map of colonialism. It’s a crime scene. It’s a crime against humanity.
history  unitedstates  colonization 
december 2021
A rare interview with Robert Crumb on America, PC culture and Trump - U.S. News - Haaretz.com
For nearly 30 years, the American counterculture icon Robert Crumb has lived with his family in a remote French village. In an interview there, he talks about making the Bible a feminist text and his brushes with political correctness
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crumb  interview  robertcrumb 
december 2021
How to use custom email domains with iCloud Mail | iMore
If you want to turn your device into the best iPhone or iPad for business, getting set up with a custom domain is a great way to give off a professional vibe. In addition, setting it up via iCloud.com means you still get to use Apple's underlying iCloud Mail infrastructure rather than relying on something like Gmail to do the same thing.
icloud  email  domain 
december 2021
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong
If you, like me, grew up in the United States of America, you’ve probably heard a story of the late 1970s and early 1980s that goes something like this: “In the 70s, Carter’s liberal big-government policies resulted in runaway inflation. Reagan came in and defeated inflation, and produced an economic boom with deregulation and tax cuts. Reagan also embarked on a massive defense spending binge which, although it increased the deficit a lot, forced the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up, and thus won the Cold War.”

That might sound like a straw man, but the narratives we tell each other about the past often consist of exactly such straw men. And debunking those narratives might feel like shooting at easy targets, but it’s helpful for taking a closer look at history.

Anyway, the above narrative is almost entirely wrong. Carter was a deregulator who didn’t increase deficits much, and appointed the Fed chair who beat inflation. Reagan didn’t do much deregulating, nor did he increase defense spending much as a share of GDP — and the USSR didn’t fall because of the arms race. Let’s go through these points one by one.
politics  carter  reagan  1970s  1980s 
december 2021
This tablet will substitute your notebook. Literally. | by Cato Minor | UX Collective
The Tablet — The Original provides a unique experience unmatched by any other writing device. Prooved by thousands of years of usage, its natural materials, zero-latency stylus and 3D display are still unmatched in the 3rd millennium. It is the moral imperative to make wax tablets modern again.
medium  tablets  humor 
december 2021
They Know Exactly What They’re Doing When They Do It | by Jessica Wildfire | Dec, 2021 | Medium
This is what white evangelicals say every single time they get their families together to pose with their guns. They’re sending a very clear signal. They’re sending it out to other white evangelicals, that they have each other’s backs. They’re also sending it out as a threat to anyone who tries to oppose them. “Watch out. Don’t mess with us.”
It’s all intentional.
Let’s remember animal behavior for a moment. When other animals do anything that resembles smiling, they’re not conveying warmth and cheer. They’re baring their teeth.
medium  jessica  wildfire  guns  dog  whistle 
december 2021
When Is a New Tech ‘Ahead of Its Time’ — Or Just Doomed? | by Clive Thompson | Nov, 2021 | OneZero
When a bunch of techies are beavering away on a new tool, it can be tricky to figure out:
Is this a genuinely useful new thing? Or is it just some expensive prototype, a pipe dream that’ll never take off?
technology  innovation 
december 2021
Opinion | Why Wokeness Will Fail - The New York Times
In the long run, Americans have always gotten behind protest movements that make the country more open, more decent, less divided. What today is called Woke does none of those things. It has no future in the home of the free.
wokeness  woke  politics  racism  protest 
november 2021
What makes a cultural superpower? - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion
“Why do people like South Korean stuff so much?” A lot of ink has been spilled over this, and I don’t really know enough to weigh in. But there is one interesting thing I’ve noticed, which is that South Korea is among the first countries — perhaps the first country — to become a modern cultural superpower without having had an empire in the last 500 years.
culture  korea  k-drama 
october 2021
The Paradox of Time Travel May Have Been Solved by an Undergrad | by Katrina Paulson | Sep, 2021 | Medium
There are plenty of notions to go around about how time travel might work, with some holding more credibility than others. But something new has been discovered, which turns the conversation about time travel on its head.
time  travel 
october 2021
Mystery of the wheelie suitcase: how gender stereotypes held back the history of invention | Life and style | The Guardian
We couldn’t see the genius of the wheeled suitcase because it didn’t align with our prevailing views on masculinity. In hindsight, we find this bizarre. How could the predominant view on masculinity turn out to be more stubborn than the market’s desire to make money? How could the crude idea that men must carry heavy things prevent us from seeing the potential in a product that would come to transform an entire global industry?
masculinity  gender  innovation 
june 2021
John Remmers’s review of I Am Pilgrim
4 of 5 stars to I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
from twitter
june 2021
I quit. Peak indifference, big tobacco… | by Cory Doctorow | Jun, 2021 | Medium
The bad-faith “balance” game is used by fraudsters and crooks to sow doubt. It’s how homeopaths, anti-vaxers, eugenicists, raw milk pushers and other members of the Paltrow-Industrial Complex played the BBC and other sober-sided media outlets, demanding that they be given airtime to rebut scientists’ careful, empirical claims with junk they made up on the spot.
denialism  tobacco 
june 2021
The End IS Near. No, Seriously.. All epidemics end, even the Black Death… | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | May, 2021 | Medium
And that — the vague but calming sense that our own death is no longer imminent — is what is going to let each of us say, in our own moment of epiphany: “Hey — I suddenly feel like it’s over.”
And when enough of us do — it will be
health  coronavirus  pandemic  covid-19 
may 2021
Midweek pick-me-up: Getting out of your own light — Aldous Huxley on mind-body integration and how you become who you are
Aldous Huxley (July, 26 1894–November 22, 1963) endures as one of the most visionary and unusual minds of the twentieth century — a man of strong convictions about drugs, democracy, and religion and immensely prescient ideas about the role of technology in human life; a prominent fixture of Carl Sagan’s reading list; and the author of a little-known allegorical children’s book.
huxley  brainpickings 
may 2021
May 14, 2021 - Letters from an American
Today’s vote confirmed that the leaders of the current Republican Party are willing to abandon democracy in order to save the country from what they call “socialism.”

But what Republicans mean when they say “socialism” is not the political system most countries recognize when they use that word: one in which the people, through their government, own the means of production. What Republicans mean comes from America’s peculiar history after the Civil War, when new national taxation coincided with the expansion of voting to include Black men.
politics  voting  racism 
may 2021
Opinion | Why Covid's Airborne Transmission Was Acknowledged So Late - The New York Times
If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small particles disperse more easily, as long as you avoid close, prolonged contact with others. We would have tried to make sure indoor spaces were well ventilated, with air filtered as necessary. Instead of blanket rules on gatherings, we would have targeted conditions that can produce superspreading events: people in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, especially if engaged over time in activities that increase aerosol production, like shouting and singing. We would have started using masks more quickly, and we would have paid more attention to their fit, too. And we would have been less obsessed with cleaning surfaces.

Our mitigations would have been much more effective, sparing us a great deal of suffering and anxiety.

Since the pandemic is far from over, with countries like India facing devastating surges, we need to understand both why this took so long to come about and what it will mean.
nytimes  covid-19  coronavirus  health  disease  pandemic 
may 2021
Sudden Impact: The Day the Dinosaurs Perished | Predict
SIXTY-SIX MILLION years ago, in one cataclysmic flash, the Earth changed forever. Without warning, a mountain-sized rock pierced through the 480 km of the atmosphere in an instant, and slammed into the deep bedrock of a shallow sea.
dinosaurs  meteor  extinction 
april 2021
The Keto vs. Plant-Based Diet Showdown at the NIH | by F. Perry Wilson, MD MSCE | Jan, 2021 | Medium
But that’s not the only theory. Many folks believe think it’s not the dietary components that matter, it’s how we take them in. Ultra-processed foods with enhanced flavors and salts and sugars overwhelm our senses and deliver calories in a dense form that basically leaves us in positive energy balance and we gain weight. That those ultra-processed foods are carb-heavy has nothing to do with it.
So the researchers decided to untie this knot.
diet  health  food  carbs  keto 
march 2021
"I Have Everything I Want" - Bedlam Farm
A nurse and I were talking in an examining room recently, waiting for the doctor to come in. She asked me if I could have anything I wanted, what would it be?

I was surprised by how quickly I answered.

“I have everything I want,” I said.

She was young, and I saw that I had shocked her. “Oh,” she said, “I want a lot of things.”

Maybe, I thought to myself; she had the luxury of wanting things because she had so many years ahead of her.

Perhaps I don’t want things because I am closer to the end than the beginning. Maybe she just thought I was a crazy old man.
blog  bedlamfarm 
march 2021
Kim's Convenience: The end of the dream - Noahpinion
For three years, during the darkest days of Trump’s presidency and the COVID pandemic, during times of social unrest and violence and mass insanity, I took refuge in a Canadian sitcom called Kim’s Convenience. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it on Netflix. It’s a show about a family that owns a convenience store in Toronto. The parents are immigrants from Korea, their adult children Jung and Janet are trying to make their way in the world.
canada  sitcom  asian  race  family 
march 2021
The Future is More Terrifying Than We Can Imagine | by Alastair Isaacs | Predict | Mar, 2021 | Medium
The fact that searches for alien intelligence have so far come up empty handed is almost meaningless. It means only that we have been looking for the wrong signs. Indeed, the right signs may be just in front of our noses, clear if only we could read them.
science  physics  future  aliens  alaister_isaacs 
march 2021
All the Apps That Support Apple's Spatial Audio Feature - MacRumors
The feature works by comparing the data from your iOS device's gyroscope and accelerometer against the data from your ‌AirPods‌ Pro or ‌AirPods Max‌, ensuring that the sound field stays anchored to the device, even if you move your head.

Unsurprisingly, spatial audio isn't universally supported by third-party apps and services. To save you spending time wondering if a particular app works with the feature, we've put together a list below of all the apps that have officially been updated to support Spatial Audio, and some popular apps that have yet to add support.
apple  spatial  audio  airpods 
march 2021
The Frontiers Of Digital Democracy
The idea behind vTaiwan (virtual Taiwan) is that government needs to respond here and now when citizens express concern about a given issue by inviting them to set the agenda. To do so, information must be transparent and available to all. The government and its citizens must have the same information so that there is a trustworthy basis for a public conversation.
deliberative  democracy  taiwan  audrey_tang 
march 2021
How Apple's locked down security gives extra protection to the best hackers
“You’re going to keep out a lot of the riffraff by making it harder to break iPhones. But the 1% of top hackers are going to find a way in and, once they’re inside, the impenetrable fortress of the iPhone protects them.”BILL MARCZAK, CITIZEN LAB
apple  ios  security  hacking 
march 2021
Radio Garden – Roccasecca
The green dots represent radio stations. Click on any one to hear the station.
february 2021
MailTrackerBlocker for Mail on macOS
An email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail.
email  tracking  blocking  mailtrackerblocker  macos 
february 2021
YouTube Over RSS - Initial Charge
And that’s likely why YouTube doesn’t make it easy to follow channels by RSS. They don’t offer any type of feed discovery on channel pages and the OPML download that used to be available from a difficult to find subscriptions page disappeared sometime last Fall. Each channel does still have an RSS feed, but you have to work a little bit to get it.

You can use this URL template for each feed:
rss  youtube 
february 2021
Netherlands building ages
Interactive map showing the age of every building in The Netherlands.
interactive  map  history 
february 2021
I Sure Hope You’re Happy, Gina Carano | by John DeVore | Humungus | Feb, 2021 | Medium
There are just times you have to get rid of a toxic person who can’t play nice with others. And sometimes those toxic people don’t have the spine to just walk away when they’re unhappy. So. Buh-bye. The old saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ has been around for a long time because it is true: sometimes we don’t know what we truly want until we get it.
gina  carano  mandalorian  firing  social  media 
february 2021
The Dasgupta Review: Making space for nature in the global portfolio
It’s clear that we still have a long way to go when it comes to meaningfully acknowledging the intrinsic value of nature. There’s no doubt though that the Dasgupta Review poses an important and timely challenge to mainstream economics; we can only hope that through its influence, more and more people come to think of themselves as naturalists.
dasgupta  biodiversity  economics 
february 2021
We’ve Given Our Lives to the Screen. What Happens When We Have to Turn It Off? | by Angela Lashbrook | Feb, 2021 | Debugger
Eventually, your brain begins to associate that surge of dopamine with the checking behavior. “This is exactly why slot machines are so addictive. We’re inadvertently setting ourselves up to get addicted to checking the news through what is called intermittent reinforcement — a fancy term for getting random rewards,” Brewer writes.
Everyone’s media-checking behaviors have skyrocketed, their focus has flagged, and their once-natural ability to talk normally to people face-to-face has become a struggle.
internet  habits  addiction  psychology  dopamine 
february 2021
“A damn stupid thing to do”—the origins of C | Ars Technica
In one form or another, C has influenced the shape of almost every programming language developed since the 1980s. Some languages like C++, C#, and objective C are intended to be direct successors to the language, while other languages have merely adopted and adapted C’s syntax. A programmer conversant in Java, PHP, Ruby, Python or Perl will have little difficulty understanding simple C programs, and in that sense, C may be thought of almost as a lingua franca among programmers.

But C did not emerge fully formed out of thin air as some programming monolith. The story of C begins in England, with a colleague of Alan Turing and a program that played checkers.
c  programming  language  history 
february 2021
Describing a Slur Is Not the Same As Using It
It would be one thing to decide that not only is it unacceptable to use a slur but it is also unacceptable to utter or mention in it any form. It is another thing to treat those two different actions as completely indistinguishable, as the Daily Beast appears to have done.
n-word  language  racism  cancel  culture 
february 2021
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