Link. Will his lawyers flip?
Monthly Archives: August 2022
FileMaker is Claris P now … “there will be a freemium version of Claris Pro with free access to Claris Studio (and presumably Claris Go).”
Link.
“Burlingame had deliberately provoked the lawmaker who had beaten Sumner, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, and unable to resist any provocation, Brooks had challenged Burlingame to a duel”
Link. “Forgotten now, Burlingame’s speech was once widely considered one of the most important speeches in American history.”
China can’t imitate Russian sanction resistance.
Link. “China similarly could tuck away a billion here and two there. But then it essentially is stuck. It has a monster of an economy and is highly dependent on trade”. China is so much bigger than Russia.
“our system of liberal democracy is actually holding up pretty darn well.”
Link. Contrarian.
China and America alike: “Both stronger and weaker, both more likable and more offputting, both more tender and more cruel.”
Link. America’s cruelty isn’t quite at Russian levels but it dwarfs Canada’s.
“The web service that hosts Truth Social claims that the company had not paid its bills since March.”
Link. It can’t be super expensive. Suggests Trump has abandoned Truth.social.
U.S. Warships Sail Taiwan Strait: “Chinese military said on Sunday in a statement that it had monitored the ships’ passage but did not indicate any additional response.”
Link. Is Xi recalculating?
“Americans this year have died from Covid at a rate 80 percent higher than Canadians and 30 percent higher than residents of the European Union”
Link. US/EU numbers are as expected but WTF is it with those Canadians? Do they put IQ enhancements in Canuck water?
“Sailors who enter the program bolstered by steroids and hormones can push harder, recover faster and probably beat out the sailors who are trying to become SEALs while clean”
Link. They went too far.
Monterey: macOS Monterey kind of screwed people with physical podcast files.
Link. Apple reminds me of Daisy, the careless beauty of F Scott’s Great Gatsby.
“Gen X is now richer (30% richer!) than Boomers were at the same age (late 40s)”
Link. GDP adjusted. Millennial resemble Boomer path.
Bullying and Sex Abuse at Elite Danish Boarding School.
Link. Lord of the Flies as usual. These Danish parents “… don’t have the warmest feelings for nonhierarchical structures”
The institution should be shut down.
Corruption confounds Xi’s semiconductor goals.
Link. Still needs TSMC. So will he defer invasion?
“student journalists dedicated their final issue in June to L.G.B.T.Q. issues”
Link. Rebels with a noble cause. They were then shut down. Hope to see more like this.
“people in Taiwan call TSMC their “sacred mountain, protector of the nation.”
Link. “U.S.-proposed Chip 4 alliance, which seeks to unite the American chip supply chains with those of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — at the exclusion of China.”
NYT Kevin Roose outlines the state of AI. We are entering the danger zone.
Link. Unlike many I respect I am an AI “optimist”. Paradoxically that means I am scared. I think sentience-equivalent will came before 2080 but we will be in a new world by 2040.
Using Apple’s USB-C to T2 adapter: not for video but still good
Link. I can vouch for it. Bit surprised it works actually.
Rainfall totals for the last 24 hours to 3 days. For trail riding choice.
Link.
Will GOP seize power? “words and behavior certainly suggest that they might participate in such an effort”
Link. To “overturn election” is to seize power. Based on the evidence the GOP is willing to do that.
South Korea fertility rate – “declined for the sixth straight year to 0.81 in 2021”
Link. Japan 1.31, US 1.66. SK is in a slow moving crisis unprecedented in history.
California to Ban the Sale of New Gasoline Cars by 2035
Link. “General Motors said it was still reviewing the rule but that the company also had a goal of selling only electric vehicles by 2035.”
“ gross domestic income rose in the first two quarters, a counterpoint to a decline in G.D.P.”
Link. Biden was right. As usual.
Economists reflect of their carbon tax fail.
Link. Many lessons to learn. Homo economicus is extinct.
“In San Jose, the average police officer salary is $189,000, not including benefits.”
Link. Requires 4y degree?
Canine dementia: “The odds of a cognitive dysfunction diagnosis were 6.47 times higher in dogs reported as not active compared with those reported to be very active,”
Link. Huge effect, but only correlation.
“Dialectical behavior therapy is a subset of cognitive behavioral therapy…”
Link. Becoming Vulcan. Best description I’ve read of DBT, sounds like it’s 80% coaching (hard).
Oldness with special needs kids: “parents of a special-needs child might not be able to move to a state with a lower cost of living. Doing so could mean the adult child would lose access to their benefits and be placed at the bottom of waiting lists”
Link. America’s solution for special needs adults is the street for most, prison for the lucky.
Democracy dies in Tunisia.
Link. It would be nice to be able to leave the Arab world alone.
James Lovelock: “He had a side hustle as a real-life Q, a gadget-maker for MI5”
Link. Did not know that.
“Taiwan’s defence-related spending has fallen gradually from a peak of more than 7% of GDP in the late 1970s to only 1.9% last year, and obligatory military service has been cut to only four months.”
Link. Why did they do this?!
Dugin: “[12y ago] he was still believed to be close to Vladimir Putin …He certainly isn’t now, and has even lost his job at Moscow State University…
Link. Most of my sources consider Dugina more influential. Assassination of Dugina unlikely to bother many.
“spider news in Finland was wholly arachnologist-approved”
Link. Finland and Mexico are opposites.
Teacher quits in protest after being punished for banned books she teaches.
Link. We need a registry of those teachers and librarians who refuse to bend. One day names in a monument to freedom and knowledge.
Sociopath Andrew Tate: “4.6 million followers on Instagram”
Link. Love to know the gender composition.
Education on manipulation techniques provides some short term resistance to video misinformation.
Link. Lasting effect? Does it help to anticipate specific predictable attacks by idiocracy and Russia?
Supply chain 40% of inflation.
Link. Inflationary pressures will fall quickly.
Drag and Drop not working in Monterey?
Link. Happened to me with new machine, new install of last Monterey release. Had to disable force click and haptic feedback. Kind of amazing really.
Updated “powers of 10” map of the universe.
Link. I have an XKCD poster version. I particularly liked the near earth view and the emergent structures at the other extreme. Best on big display.
Tolkien wrote and wrote and wrote …
Link. Very profitable in the long run, but Emily asks if he did any professing. Not to mention house work. Tenure was nice then.
“I probably would have been better off to migrate my documents folder and my mail files manually, then recreate the rest.”
Link. Mojave was pretty good. I miss it.
“Artemis 3, in which NASA seeks to land a man and the first woman on the Moon by late 2025.”
Link. Not long.
“43 percent in the 19-30 age group had used cannabis 20 or more times over the previous month”
Link. Vaping and rapid-release edibles make cannabis more attractive.
macOS Mints utility gets even more features.
Link. Becoming essential.
Traveling with AirTags: location exclusion, traveling with pause.
Link.
Too much security: diminishing returns.
Link. “Safari is more annoying than other browsers because the “Remember me” checkbox on so many sites doesn’t work.”
So it’s not just me.
Apple’s unbranded Self Service Repair Store
Link. My Air needs a new battery….
Twitter security has ‘extreme, egregious deficiencies’: “half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data”
Link.
“In June, in Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court expanded the voucher system to include religious schools”
Link. How to destroy public education. No dangerous minds.
“Chinese weakness is actually good for the rest of us: Falling Chinese demand is putting a lid on the prices of oil and other commodities, reducing global inflationary pressure.”
Link. In past I felt economists treated US economy as thought the world did not exist.