That's interesting, Chris. I've just checked, and Huffduffer is picking up only my domain, and none of the other links present as rel="me" on my Home page. I wander what the difference is. Might need to ask @adactio.
G-FEED: COVID-19 reduces economic activity, which reduces pollution, which saves lives.
"I calculate that the reductions in air pollution in China caused by this economic disruption likely saved 20-times more lives in China than have currently been lost due to the virus in that country"
Oh boy! Data analysis rocks.
Get political reporters off the coronavirus story because they don't distinguish between right and wrong | Press Watch
[W]hen they’re just talking smack, maybe the best thing to do would be to ignore them – and instead rely on sources who actually know what they’re talking about and reporters who know enough about health and science and reality to discern between what’s true and what’s not.
That would be almost all the time, right?
There's much to applaud in Jason's write-up of a university student's efforts to show people in Japan where positive responses to the coronavirus are. And one thing to abhor, and that's the description of "a foreign virus running rampant". The virus may have had an origin elsewhere, but there is no sense in which a pathogen can be considered foreign. This sort of wording legitimises xenophobia.
Nice idea, but anecdotally, the few people on Twitter whom I’ve asked have said they don’t have a blog of their own.
Wait a minute. Are the campaign to abolish recipe headnotes and the campaign to insist on listening to podcasts at 1x somehow related? I'm not going to tell anyone what to do with their time. Listen at any speed you like; but listen. @kathrynw5 @nwquah
Woke to an unsettling SMS and email from Ryanair telling me the return flight at the end of March had been cancelled. What about the outbound flight? I need to decide what to do.
"My Brexit stash of tins of beans and toilet paper has had a rebrand. It’s now the corona virus emergency stash."
Very clever.
A Text Renaissance
Lots of interesting ideas here from Venkatash Rao, although I still don't get the attraction of tweetstorms, or whetever they are called nowadays. Certainly, though, the focus on text as the thing has always made sense to me. Presentation matters, of course it does, but so does content. Just as it does in audio.
2020-02-29
Far and away the most difficult prompt to date. So I cheated.
Currently reading: The Oldest Road: The Ridgeway by Fay Godwin and JRL Anderson, ISBN: 9780905483528
#Non-fiction
I find it curious that Strava offers handcycle ride but not Nordic walking. The new challenge of a 5 km “March” is my standard Nordic walk, and there isn’t actually an activity called March either.
2020-02-26
I had a narrow, but surely temporary, escape yesterday, after my computer greeted me with this on Monday. Apparently the parts are no long made, but it recovered and I shall keep using it till it dies.
Internet Amnesia: Clive James & his website - Richard MacManus
Smart piece, pointing out not only the strengths of Clive James as a cultural critic, but also his vision of what the entails.
I find it hard to believe that some university department of media studies, or whatever, isn't falling over itself to take over James' site and give it the care he obviously wanted to give it.
2020-02-23
Tucked in behind the grandiose arch is one of the quainter stations of Rome. Many of the stations on the line are request stops. You have to ask the driver to stop.
If it weren't for the fact that I love the actual camera (Nex-6) to bits, Sony's software for camera and iPhone would make me hurl it against the wall. Seriously, I put up with it because I have to, and I wish I didn't.
Finished reading: The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré
2020-02-20
The scale doesn't lie. The most dough I'd ever made.
2020-02-19
1 min read
Today I learned I have been utterly underusing Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource app. For that I have to thank Brett Terpstra's post Enhanced music listening on macOS.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence that we have the exact same speakers.
2020-02-18
I'm not opposed to modern art
2020-02-17
How cool is this? Lego kit for Friends, just what I needed for today's podcast.
Podcasting's biggest mistake
I'm not sure I actually read about any biggest mistake, apart from maybe not being united, in the immensely parochial piece. But I can't disagree with this:
Podcasting didn’t start in control of the monied few and gradually become democratized. Podcasting started as a democracy, and now faces the incursion of the monied few.
And while I don't mind about the monied few taking over (well, not too much) I do mind that they are even called podcasts. They really are radio on demand, and we storied few shouldn't be judged by the same standards.
@webby2001 Of course, it could easily evaporate, if something happened to Medium. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a copy on a site you actually control?
2020-02-16
1 min read
Are unsecured cafe wi-fi networks deliberately hostile to VPNs?
I’m in Bill’s cafe in Cambridge, which offers ‘free’ Wi-Fi — which of course I don’t trust. So I switch on my VPN to find that, mysteriously, it can’t connect to its server. And I’m wondering if this is just some kind of glitch, or a policy by the firm that provides the Wi-Fi. After all, they don’t want clients sending communications that are encrypted and therefore inscrutable for advertising and tracking purposes. In this stuff, only the paranoid survive.
I had the same experience as John Naughton yesterday and Friday, signed in to the wifi in a bed and breakfast. No matter what, my VPN (Mullvad) would not connect. Rather than go unsecured though, I signed out of the wifi, but it definitely is strange and I think I am seeing something similar more and more often.
2029-02-14
The warmth of a fresh sfogliatella is an essential start to any visit to Naples.
2020-02-13
Even after spending all night in the fridge, my sourdough shows a prodigious rise.
@LisaLodwick Exciting indeed. Frustrating that it remains behind a hefty paywall, especially as the research it reports was probably funded by public money. As bad as more than half the cemetery sites being unpublished.