Link. Putin is a war criminal but he won’t face justice. (Neither, of course, did Kissinger and friends.)
Author Archives: jgordon
“under high-density conditions, cannibalism is likely to evolve. They’re basically working out a way to eliminate future competitors.”
Link. Cane toads are hungry.
“six suicide quadcopter drones exploded into the Iranian facility near Kermanshah, Iran, on Feb. 12”
Link. Israel attacks a drone site.
Duolingo praise.
Link. I might try for an Italy trip.
“The administration’s coalition against Putin is extraordinarily delicately balanced, and that balance will collapse if the U.S. heads off on its own in a resurrection of the unilateral action”
Link. Putin should encourage direct US action.
Fall “booster” for 50+?
Link. I’m planning on it with my flu shot.
“ultranationalist view of Russia’s destiny as a conservative empire in perpetual conflict with the liberal Western world.”
Link. Owning the libs.
The Dictator Traps.
Link. Well understood thousands of years ago. Singapore’s ruler escaped but few do.
Automattic: “Five percent of the 2,000 employees work full-time contributing to open-source.”
Link. My favorite large tech company by far.
Mariupol: “estimated that the actual total could be as high as 20,000.”
Link. Russian army has a well deserved reputation for absolute brutality.
“the authors of an SPLC report published in December struggled to find a prominent American far-right figure without a cryptocurrency presence.”
Link. Deplatformed.
System settings in macOS found in Apple’s apps.
Link. Mail has always been weird this way.
“system-wide OCR capability, so that translation is directly available from any app. Anytime text is on the screen, there should be a way to select it for OCR.”
Link. Probably hard to do but great goal.
Unfixed: “gaping memory leak in the Finder’s Find command, which has made this major feature next to useless since the first release of Monterey”
Link. That’s not good.
“Apple: Don’t Attach Your iPhone to Motorcycles, Mopeds, or Scooters if You Want the Camera to Last”
Link. Bikes too? Newer cameras have optical stabilization damaged by vibration.
New Brunswick dementia “cluster”: “The oversight committee has unanimously agreed that these 48 people should never have been identified as having a neurological syndrome of unknown cause, and that based on the evidence reviewed, no such syndrome ex
Link. Phew. The known dementia syndromes are bad enough.
“Adjusting your clocks to match the sun makes far more sense when your solar day changes by 6+ hours around the year than when it changes by just over 2 hours.”
Link. Minnesotans don’t need 5am sunrise.
When iCloud Keychain stops working (No more Safari passwords) – Mojave edition.
Link. I got them back, not quite sure how. If you want to use Apple Passwords as a password manager you need an automated local backup.
“Despotism creates the circumstances of its own undermining. The information gets worse.”
Link. Stalin scholar, but also Hoover fellow. Not entirely trustworthy.
“China cannot be tied to Putin and needs to be cut off as soon as possible.”
Link. A Chinese voice, but not necessarily a Xi voice.
Anocracy: “full democracies almost never have civil wars. Full autocracies rarely have civil wars. All of the instability and violence is happening in this middle zone.”
Link. “populations in these partial democracies began to organize politically, not around ideology” Civil war. Must read.
All the Covid-19 blunders.
Link. For America fomite obsession was worst. Outdoor masking was mostly unnecessary and a distraction from indoor ventilation needs.
“Otto Von Bismark once described politics as the art of the possible, which only sounds optimistic until you think about it.”
Link. What a great line. 1/6.
“Conservatives do not approve of systemic racism. They do not condone it. They do not even ignore it, any more than skeptics ignore the ghosts they never see. They simply do not believe in it.”
Link. Religion.
China redefines zero-COVID: “zero tolerance for slow responses”
Link. Climbing down.
Convicting Nazis – the long slow trial of Hermine Braunsteiner.
Link. A Wiesenthal win. Remarkable for federal disinterest.
“A confessed courier for Al Qaeda whose tale of torture by the C.I.A. disgusted a U.S. military jury has completed his prison sentence,”
Link. The Bush/Cheney torture program is a key part of modern American history. It was quite popular.
BA.2: “It is not yet causing a new surge in the United States, and probably won’t. Existing vaccines work against the BA.2 variant, and it’s vulnerable to antibodies made by the immune system after an earlier Omicron infection.”
Link. More contagious than BA.1.
Purported FSB analyst letter.
Link. Legitimacy inside, it’s an oddly persuasive portrayal of a Russian mindset. They really could be this stupid.
“The Biden administration’s decisions not to declare a no-fly zone or help transfer Polish MiGs were both good ones; they’ve kept their heads during a very emotional time.”
Link. Essential read.
Apple corruption: “Yesterdays “Game of the Day” has a 2022 biz model of $120/year”
Link. Have Apple’s employees decided it’s fine to work for the bad guy?
“there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he’s wrong”
Link.
“highest death rates were seen in parts of Latin America, as well as Central Europe and Southern sub-Saharan Africa, though similar rates were seen in some Southern U.S. states as well.”
Link.
‘Bennett wants Ukraine to surrender’: Ukraine senior official says Israel’s mediation is useless.
Link. Israel has been compromised.
“American army doctrine says that to face down an insurgency—in this case, one backed by nato—occupiers need 20 to 25 soldiers per 1,000 people; Russia has a little over four.”
Link. Putin goes neo-Stalin to keep power.
Bioweapon conspiracy: “been circulated in recent weeks by far-right American political figures and groups, including Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host; and QAnon acolytes. Glenn Greenwald,”
Link. Xi needs distraction from surging COVID.
“This season’s flu vaccine has offered little to no protection against getting a mild or moderate case of influenza.”
Link. Might still help for severe disease but was a miss.
“the oversized trackpad on the 16-inch (Intel) MacBook Pro drives me crazy with its accidental input and misclassified clicks. There’s no way I’m buying another one of those, so 14-inch it is.”
Link. MacBook Air or Pro are still choices for most of us.
“Any of the NAS systems I reviewed would make an excellent replacement for a Time Capsule.”
Link. I use Synology.
Omicron spreads across China.
Link. As expected.
Texas anti-trans story.
Link. Mr Younger quite the character: “marriage was annulled by a court on the grounds of fraud by Mr. Younger, who had misrepresented his employment and marital history.”
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine.”
Link. Like Trump they accuse others of their own intent.
Xkcd: Qua qua qua.
Link. Today I needed the explainer.
“You can drive up to five displays, including four 6K Pro Display XDRs over Thunderbolt and a 4K display over HDMI.”
Link. Mac Studio is nice.
Raspberry Pi: “goal was simply to sell enough to increase the number of CS applicants by — this is true — 100 students.”
Link. They want to go public. So that’s over then.
“In Selma, a judge stopped voter registration meetings by prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.”
Link. Must read. I didn’t know how many were murdered. We have evil judges now.
“sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama”
Goodreads Data Loss.
Link. The Cloud dissolves data we want and preserves what we don’t want.
Never Change Your Password.
Link. Good reference for a practice most of us follow. NIST was supposed to update its guidance. Omits problem that passwords must be tappable. That’s a big one.
“A recent study revealed that Russian money has corrupted British politics; now we are beginning to learn just how much of it has done the same in the U.S.”
Link. Britain has been template for Russian corruption of US.
“Most displays sold are 27”. 4k 27” displays force you to choose between crisp, but oversized text or appropriately sized, but slightly blurry text.”
Link. Hope fixed by time I get to 4K.