Just Too Efficient
I wish there were a way to quantify effectiveness rather than efficiency. It is surely effectiveness that matters.
@CharlesCMann Bad enough having a Twitter thread as the canonical source for a good point, but when the original tweet has been deleted that makes it even worse. I don't want to attribute bad faith to @jasonhickel, but what else can I do?
Krugman revisits pellagra to illuminate the US response to Covid-19
the United States is exceptional, in a very bad way.
It's not the only country that's exceptional, but it is exceptionally bad.
Very happy with the service from @widefitshoes A pair of shoes were not up to scratch -- not their fault at all -- and they agreed to send out a replacement with no argument. That is how it should be. If you need wider fittings, I highly recommend, and their foot-measuring chart makes it easy.
On second thoughts, maybe the reason my Aeropress plunger has never slipped is that I brew upside down. So the water is heating the rubber while the grounds are brewing. And the rubber expands more than the plastic of the cylinder.
I'm perfectly happy that Scott Nesbitt decided to change the backend of his interesting site The Plain Text Project. But this seems like a slap to his readers: "if you've bookmarked something you've read in this space, you'll need to update the bookmark by adding articles/ to the URL." A perfect case for a very simple rewrite rule.
Interesting tip if your Aeropress is slipping, to expand the plunger's rubber while contracting the tube. Maybe I'm just not an adequate Aeropress user, but mine shows no slippage at all. And I'm almost through my third pack of filter papers.
What was it like?
Anyone who thinks blogging died at some point in the past twenty years presumably just lost interest themselves, because there have always been plenty of blogs to read. Some slow down, some die, new ones appear. It’s as easy as it’s ever been to write and read blogs.
Phil Gyford's lovely look back to SXSW 2000 and the blogging around it. I don't actually have a crucial event like that, maybe BlogTalk in Vienna, which I didn't do nearly enough to record at the time.
So happy to see Helen Rosner @hels in The New Yorker do a much better job on rotten apples than I managed. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-apples-go-bad
What's so very strange about reading this post for me, is that the first photograph was taken less than 1 km from where I grew up. Not that it looked much like that back then, apart from the railway bridge.
https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/the-man-who-reads-1000-articles-a
I have about 100 Chrome bookmarks, and I try to visit at least 2 or 3 of them a day to make sure I’m not missing something. But even as I do that, I do it with a private irritation that they don’t have an RSS feed.
Yeah, me too. Except for the bit about checking Chrome bookmarks, because life is too short.
@isellsoap I know that @chrisaldrich was involved in doing Webmention and other IndieWeb things with his local paper; see https://boffosocko.com/2018/05/29/indieweb-ifying-coloradoboulevard-net/
@PhotoJazzy This an awful story to read, but I thank you for sharing it.
Hey @uber_support When are you going to do something about the people in Rome who park bikes where no one can find them? walked past four ghost bikes before I found one that was actually where it was supposed to be.
New decade, new theme – Lea Verou
I was hesitating to blog about it because I was embarrassed at how my website looked. This is it, I thought. If it has gotten so bad that I avoid blogging because I don’t want people to be reminded of how old my website looks, I need to get my shit together and fix this, I told myself.
Isn't that the most perfect reason of all?
OK, pure confirmation bias, but I finally read something that expands and provides details on the chaotic thoughts swirling in my brain about why Joe Rogan's Spotify deal need not be the end. The open podcast ecosystem is dying — here’s how to save it https://divinations.substack.com/p/the-open-podcast-ecosystem-is-dying
That would be a newsletter, right?
Paul Ford's new outlet
Yay! That is all.
In the olden days, these sincere email replies to content strategists and the like would have been an instant success as a book. Doubly so if a reply ever arrived.
One of the few things I dislike about living at the top of a hill is being far from water. The most enjoyable aspects of my brief stay in Utrecht a couple of years ago was walking along the small and large waterways. Some of the houseboats are just so beautiful to look at. To live in, who knows?
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage
The madness of some markets.
Search Engine Etiquette: Never, Ever Ask for a Backlink
In a nutshell ...
Once Google set the plot point, backlinks became hard to ignore. And marketers looking to get an edge started using a variety of tactics to gain a coveted spot on the front page that didn’t involve actually creating good content that people want to read.
Tim Bray, reflecting on the numbers for his Bye Amazon post.
But aren’t blogs dead? · Um, nope. For every discipline-with-depth that I care about (software/Internet, politics, energy economics, physics), if you want to find out what’s happening and you want to find out from first-person practitioners, you end up reading a blog.
Was true, is true, will be true.
The Technium
I know everybody and her mother have already linked this and bookmarked it, but I want it here for myself, because there is some good stuff in this list.
"Blaming the internet for your gullibility is like blaming a screwdriver for your neurological defects."
No idea where I found this, but I liked it enough to write it down. If you know the origin, please let me know.
I am amazed and saddened by the number of beginner bakers I see in forums saying that their bread tasted fantastic but didn't rise enough, or didn't have giant holes, or didn't a shiny crust, or whatever.
Just eat it.
Bread porn too has a lot to answer for.
It is extremely regrettable and demoralising that robbers and the élite agree on just one thing-- living in hiding.
Kierkegaard quoted in Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust p256
Meeting of the WithKnown Open Collective
To discuss possible next steps
Location: Online
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Time Zone: Europe/Rome (GMT +01:00)
See note of previous meeting
A transcript of my conversation with @smargot_finn on taste is now up at the show notes.