I’ve been getting myself in a right old muddle about taste lately. Not music or architecture -- well, not entirely -- but gustatory taste, the taste of food. Of course, we all acknowledge that taste is subjective. 1/6

Chicken Skin Music is truly balm for the soul on an afternoon that feels weird for reasons I cannot put my finger on.

Today I happened across two wiseacres on Twitter -- and no I am not going to bother with a link -- who make me glad I am able to say nothing, there, in return. Turning off RTs doesn't help either, when people will insist on quote RTs when they have nothing of substance to add.

I fully endorse this proposal.

I'm prompted to note that the sounds our kettle makes depend on how recently it has been de-scaled, and I have no idea why that should be so. Our water is very hard, so I have observed this often, and it mystifies me.

I think it is a splendid idea to revisit indiewebify.me and reorient the expectations around that page. It does suggest that one fiddle with HTML, and that might well be off-putting if one is new to IndieWeb.

Hey, @FAOstatistics! http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home has been unreachable for more than 24 hours. What's up?

Today, in random pieces of delight shared by people I follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=108&v=QPKS5ngz01s&feature=emb_logo

Thanks http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/

Last night we watched The Rose Tattoo on iTunes. Strange film, shot on Key West, which was why we watched it, with Anna Magnina and Burt Lancaster. She plays a woman widowed by her cheating husband, who eventually falls for Burt. Dated, histrionic, fun. Tennessee Williams wrote. Now, a competition: who was the worst young Italian? Burt, in this, or Warren Beatty in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, another Williams classic?

As a gardener myself, albeit without an actual garden, only a terrace full of pots, I could really relate to what Dezz.ie had to say.

But the really cool thing is that pink banner at the top of her site, and how it occupies the full window at any height until you scroll past it. That's intentional.

John Naughton asks: Also: isn’t herd immunity about vaccination, not infection?

Nope, it is about immunity. That may be the result of prior infection, or it may be the result of vaccination. Either way, what matters is the percentage of contacts who are susceptible.

Kudos to @Cockos for offering a temporary Reaper license to anyone who needs one to work from home.

https://cockos.com/reaper/reaper_2020_temporary_license.txt

Just wondering, what's so bad, the way Hans sees it, about the way Italy has handled the coronavirus?

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.

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.

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

Currently reading: The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré, ISBN: 9780340552056

#Fiction

Finished reading: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, ISBN: 9780060777104

#Fiction

My DropBox bill is going up, and while I get value from it, I wonder whether there might be alternatives. I don't think I want to be responsible for hosting something like NextCloud, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Could anyone who has done so offer an honest appraisal. Thanks.

How did I find the link? https://stream.jeremycherfas.net/2020/just-discovered-i-have-a-digital-note

I read both of the pieces Chris Aldrich linked to, and my main response was to feel underwhelmed. Maybe that's because I don't have the baggage of caring one whit about George Washington's teeth. And of the other discussion, on "open" I am too ignorant to form an opinion.

Yay, and welcome to WithKnown. Glad to see you got it working. One comment, I think that the twitter logo might be missing from the syndicated link for this post.

Just discovered I have a digital note called today that has entries that go back to 2015-10-10. How did that happen?

So I added "Process this note to the top of it".

Thanks to Kicks Condor I too have discovered Legible News, which is a great way to scan the previous day's events. But seriously, why did it need someone else to build the RSS feed? I imagine that creating the daily Legible News is fully automated anyway. How hard would it have been to add the microformats to make it an h-feed?

Since getting a new VPN, Spotify thinks I am in Sweden, and it is remarkable how much more tolerable the ads are. Not just because I don't understand them, because they are so much less frenetic.

I wrote about reviving my sourdough after an extended absence.

https://www.fornacalia.com/2020/sourdough-revival/

I'd certainly pay for an app that used RSS (or similar) to aggregate photographers' streams. Heck, I'd even exert pressure on my own favourite photographer to create a dedicated photo stream. I've kickstartered less promising pitches. h/t @chrisaldrich

I managed to restore my Apple Time Capsule to proper working order, I think, but how sensible is it, really, to have the reset button and the status lights on opposite sides of the device?

2019 was pretty good. 2020 will be pretty good too. That is all.

Eat This Newsletter 115 is up. Full version at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-115-chewy-bonus/

I have absolutely no problem shilling for Flickr, so if you've been considering signing up to a Pro account, use this link and save 25% https://www.flickr.com/account/upgrade/pro?coupon=25in2019

Reddit’s Best Mindblowing Facts of All Time at https://lifehacker.com/reddit-s-favorite-mindblowing-facts-of-all-time-fact-c-1840398431

My favourite: “Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in Vienna in 1913.”

h/t jgordon

What gets me about Jason shaving in the shower is not that he thinks he looks too young, but that he might have solved the problem of a mirror that does not fog up. If I could shave in the shower, gosh, how much more time I'd have to be productive the rest of the day.

Very peeved. Time Machine can no longer see my Time Capsule and neither can I. Tried restarting the computer, but that didn't help. Don'[t really want to do a factory reset. What else can I try?

"UK podcast listeners willing to pay £4 average for monthly subscriptions" it says here: https://podnews.net/press-release/uk-podcast-listeners-four-quid

Standing by, here: https://www.eatthispodcast.com/supporters/

I do not believe that consumers are the main beneficiaries of recent trends in the centralisation and industrialisation of food production. Convenient, perhaps, but safe and affordable? At what price?

Podcasts are not radio shows. Or at least, they didn't used to be. Now, judging by how almost all awards lump them together, there is no meaningful distinction. Except that, in our hearts, we know that there is.

The big problem with the “all food is processed” and “everything is a chemical” arguments is that they fail to speak the same language as the people for whom “processed” and “chemical” have other meanings. I prefer to ask who benefits from the processing and the chemicals.

Day 1 of IndieWeb Challenge https://indieweb.org/2019-12-indieweb-challenge.

Fixed all the feeds for my main blog website and checked their validity.

#IndieWeb_challenge #IndieWeb

Great piece about the difficult life of a solo podcaster, with lots of insights that another solo podcaster can both appreciate and make use of. But why on Earth limit its reach to Medium? You should have your own site, where you control the content.

Where to push for greater food safety as food supply systems change is such a difficult question, as discussed in my podcast with Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace @ILRI https://www.eatthispodcast.com/in-praise-of-meat-milk-and-eggs/

I've been doing this too since you, I think, recommended it, but it is of little help for my mountainous backlog.