Going to extremes
Extreme Economies by Richard Davies, as reviewed by Diane Coyle, does sound like a book I would enjoy reading.
Structured Procrastination
via gwern.net
[W]hat could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?
Weeknotes 30 - Get me a red — Nat Buckley
Frankly, if I wanted to read a detailed report on the work you did in the past week, I’d become your boss.
Via Phil Gyford
Its bad enough feeling bad about monthly round-ups. I'm not going to foist weeknotes on myself or anyone else. But this is a good reminder.
Uses This / Paul Ford
in 2019 the web is less about documents and more for restaurants
This, from one who knows.
My Changing World: An elegy for the window fan
So glad to see this site spring back to life, and this post is a great example of how anecdote can illuminate data.
Well just fancy that
"States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divide appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states."
A brief history of the “walking simulator,” gaming's most detested genre
As a non-gamer, I had no idea that this was even a thing. And some of these games are almost tempting. Found via Craig Mod's Ridgeline newsletter.
Thinking about the Land: A Personal Perspective on the Origin of Organic Farming – Rachel Laudan
Rachel Laudan is promising a personal look into some of the history of the organic farming movement in England. Looking forward to the rest of her series.
Walk vs. Hike — Ridgeline issue 030
The clever distinctions Craig makes between "walk" and "hike" are subtle and important.
The Grassroots Growth of Mechanical Keyboard Culture
Uh-oh. Keyboard envy ...
Tim Harford — Article — How the Brexit debate was flushed down the drain
Far too reasonable to be taken seriously.
1Password 6 will stop working with Safari 13
Looks like I might be in the same boat, considering similar alternatives to 1Password.
Fake Is Easy, Back Up Your Words With Hyperlinks
I don't like embedding tweets for all the right reasons, so I try to use screenshots. Just have to remember always to save to The Internet Archive and link.
The New Wilderness (Idle Words)
The large tech companies point to our willing use of their services as proof that people don’t really care about their privacy. But this is like arguing that inmates are happy to be in jail because they use the prison library.
Clever! Maybe not entirely true, but clever.
Telling people that they own their data, and should decide what to do with it, is just another way of disempowering them.
Tiny Loops, Hold Me Closer — Roden Explorers Archive
Phenomenally interesting edition of his newsletter from Craig Mod, talking at length about the seductive little loops that keep us in thrall.
Uses This / Jesse Kriss
Why should I be using mobile data to stream music to a $1000 phone when I can get an MP3 player for $26 that can hold 7000 songs on a micro SD card and has 80 hour battery life? The ethical and ecological impact of cheaply made products isn't so great, but I think it's at least worth being somewhat aware of the tradeoffs we're making.
So true. And the headphone can have a jack too, if that's what you want.
A full test: how do show notes display in podcast apps?
If you care about anything apart from the audio of the podcasts you subscribe to, you may want to check that the app you use gets a good rating for how it displays show notes.
TextEdit goes out of its way to destroy data
Like so many other standard tools in macOS, TextEdit is another festering sore on the rump of Apple’s engineering indolence.
Yikes. (Not that I ever actually use TextEdit to do anything.)
All Podcasts Are Shows; Not All Shows Are Podcasts
As a side note, I think the $100 million in venture capital that Luminary raised is going to be $100 million flushed down a toilet.
The sooner the better, AFAIAC
Extinction Rebellion, David Blunkett and Me
Very interesting and thoughtful read. How one sanctimonious ex-MP turned "a stereotypically diffident Englishman who hates getting in other people’s way and making an exhibition of myself" into a potentional eco-anarchist, although he also very sensibly denies that label, it being utter tosh.
Mexican X-plainer: Balls, Nuts & Avocados
Because an article on Medium is obviously a lot more long-lived and citable than a Twitter thread, right?
Luckily, someone else is taking care of keeping it available. https://web.archive.org/web/20190125102937/https://medium.com/@davidbowles/mexican-x-plainer-balls-n...
Which is why I support The Internet Archive and not Medium.
Hearsay Festival is the Coachella of creative audio
I don't know what Coachella is (well, not directly) but I do know that Hearsay is the business.
We Built a (Legal) Facial Recognition Machine for $60 – Theoreti.ca
A particularly interesting take on a topic that most people have mostly reacted to with horror or naivete.
Sydney Brenner (1927–2019)
Great, great man and a terrific teacher. Why he didn't get the Nobel for triplets and mRNA will be a mystery forever.
Codename: nvUltra - BrettTerpstra.com
"it works with multiple folders and sub-folders"
This could be a game changer.
Julia Reda on Twitter: "Dark day for internet freedom: The @Europarl_EN has rubber-stamped copyright reform including #Article13 and #Article11. MEPs refused to even consider amendments. The results of the final vote: 348 in favor, 274 against #SaveYourInternet… https://t.co/Wb2xwuNUZQ";
A sad day indeed.
"“But I’m not a lawyer. I’m an agent.”"
PESOS from Reading.am.
"Take my wife, please !"
PESOS from Reading.am.