John Remmers’s review of Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
september 2022
5 of 5 stars to Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
from twitter
september 2022
John Remmers’s Reading Progress for The Moonstone - 9 hours, 54 min ago
july 2022
Starting The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
from twitter
july 2022
John Remmers’s review of Redhead by the Side of the Road
june 2022
4 of 5 stars to Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
from twitter
june 2022
John Remmers’s review of Old Bones
april 2022
3 of 5 stars to Old Bones by Douglas Preston
from twitter
april 2022
A Web Renaissance
april 2022
While the core technology of the web is decades old, the tools that help make it and run have been quietly evolving into something extraordinary in the last few years, too. There’s a flourishing of powerful new frameworks that make it simpler than ever to build flexible, responsive, useful sites. New hosting platforms let those sites be deployed and delivered faster and more reliably than ever. And you can build one of these sites in literally under a minute, then collaborate with people anywhere in the world to iterate on making the site better.
anildash
web
creativity
april 2022
America’s big mistake about science literacy came back to haunt us in 2021 | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Jan, 2022 | Medium
january 2022
The idea that we can choose our experts based on what they’re saying and how palatable their message is to us — or worse, based on how well they already agree with our preconceptions — is a recipe for disaster. The one weapon we have against our own ignorance, and our own unwillingness to revise our previously held convictions, is scientific literacy: the ability to gather and assimilate information that itself lies beyond our own expertise to obtain for ourselves.
science
literacy
january 2022
Colors in movies and TV: What happened to them? - Vox
january 2022
So many TV shows and movies now have a dull filter applied to every scene, one that cuts away vibrancy and trends toward a boring sameness. Every frame’s color scheme ends up feeling the same as every other frame. And when there are so many projects using similar techniques, you end up with a world of boring visuals that don’t stand out.
film
movies
color
january 2022
Omicron Is the Beginning of the End - The Atlantic
december 2021
But the truth of the matter is that virtually all humans have, for virtually all of recorded history, faced daily risks of disease or violent death that are far greater than those that the residents of developed countries currently face. And despite the genuine horrors of the past 24 months, that holds true even now.
Is our drive to live life and socialize in the face of such dangers foolhardy? Or is it inspiring? I don’t know. But good or bad, it is unlikely to change. The determination to get on with our lives is deeply and perhaps unchangeably human.
In that sense, the spring of 2020 will be remembered as one of the most extraordinary periods in history—a time when people completely withdrew from social life to slow the spread of a dangerous pathogen. But what was possible for a few months has turned out to be unsustainable for years, let alone decades.
coronavirus
covid-19
pandemic
omicron
Is our drive to live life and socialize in the face of such dangers foolhardy? Or is it inspiring? I don’t know. But good or bad, it is unlikely to change. The determination to get on with our lives is deeply and perhaps unchangeably human.
In that sense, the spring of 2020 will be remembered as one of the most extraordinary periods in history—a time when people completely withdrew from social life to slow the spread of a dangerous pathogen. But what was possible for a few months has turned out to be unsustainable for years, let alone decades.
december 2021
The Surreal TV Show That Rewrote Emily Dickinson’s Story - The Atlantic
december 2021
Dickinson expanded upon Emily’s legacy by focusing on her struggle to understand herself. Each season treated her personal dilemmas—whether she should be a poet, whether she should claim ownership of her art, what kind of impact she hoped her work would make—with the same importance as, say, the conflicts that come with running a country. And by taking care to incorporate history even as it toyed with time, the show grasped that although Emily Dickinson was ahead of her time, the time in which she lived informed who she became. Not once in Dickinson’s run does Emily break free from the constraints of the era except in her mind, and as playful as the series could be in showing off her limitless vision, it drew depth from that tension.
tv
dickinson
emily_dickinson
december 2021
Scripting News: Why podcasting isn't dominated
december 2021
Now to the question that I actually asked that no one seems to want to answer. Why? Why is it this way? Why podcasting and not the other tech-based media. Why is podcasting still open after over 20 years? Drumroll please. The answer: there are enough users who understand how it is supposed to work. They expect to be able to listen to any podcast anywhere they want. Most probably don't understand why they have this ability, about the history and technology design that made it possible, but they understand that they have the ability. And it doesn't have to be all of them or even most of them, just enough of them, whatever that means. And for right now, at the end of 2021, there are enough. Podcasting has always been and remains an open platform. I can't say it will be for the future, but so far so good.
podcasting
open
platform
davewiner
december 2021
America’s Colonization In One GIF | by indi.ca | Nov, 2021 | Medium
december 2021
I learned this map as a kid, at least up to Ohio. I lived it, virtually, when we played Oregon Trail. In that ancient game you’d cross the frontier; fording rivers, hunting squirrels, dying of dysentery. Today I find the whole thing deeply unsettling.
This map is a map of colonialism. It’s a crime scene. It’s a crime against humanity.
history
unitedstates
colonization
This map is a map of colonialism. It’s a crime scene. It’s a crime against humanity.
december 2021
A rare interview with Robert Crumb on America, PC culture and Trump - U.S. News - Haaretz.com
december 2021
For nearly 30 years, the American counterculture icon Robert Crumb has lived with his family in a remote French village. In an interview there, he talks about making the Bible a feminist text and his brushes with political correctness
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crumb
interview
robertcrumb
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december 2021
How to use custom email domains with iCloud Mail | iMore
december 2021
If you want to turn your device into the best iPhone or iPad for business, getting set up with a custom domain is a great way to give off a professional vibe. In addition, setting it up via iCloud.com means you still get to use Apple's underlying iCloud Mail infrastructure rather than relying on something like Gmail to do the same thing.
icloud
email
domain
december 2021
Much of what you've heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong
december 2021
If you, like me, grew up in the United States of America, you’ve probably heard a story of the late 1970s and early 1980s that goes something like this: “In the 70s, Carter’s liberal big-government policies resulted in runaway inflation. Reagan came in and defeated inflation, and produced an economic boom with deregulation and tax cuts. Reagan also embarked on a massive defense spending binge which, although it increased the deficit a lot, forced the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up, and thus won the Cold War.”
That might sound like a straw man, but the narratives we tell each other about the past often consist of exactly such straw men. And debunking those narratives might feel like shooting at easy targets, but it’s helpful for taking a closer look at history.
Anyway, the above narrative is almost entirely wrong. Carter was a deregulator who didn’t increase deficits much, and appointed the Fed chair who beat inflation. Reagan didn’t do much deregulating, nor did he increase defense spending much as a share of GDP — and the USSR didn’t fall because of the arms race. Let’s go through these points one by one.
politics
carter
reagan
1970s
1980s
That might sound like a straw man, but the narratives we tell each other about the past often consist of exactly such straw men. And debunking those narratives might feel like shooting at easy targets, but it’s helpful for taking a closer look at history.
Anyway, the above narrative is almost entirely wrong. Carter was a deregulator who didn’t increase deficits much, and appointed the Fed chair who beat inflation. Reagan didn’t do much deregulating, nor did he increase defense spending much as a share of GDP — and the USSR didn’t fall because of the arms race. Let’s go through these points one by one.
december 2021
This tablet will substitute your notebook. Literally. | by Cato Minor | UX Collective
december 2021
The Tablet — The Original provides a unique experience unmatched by any other writing device. Prooved by thousands of years of usage, its natural materials, zero-latency stylus and 3D display are still unmatched in the 3rd millennium. It is the moral imperative to make wax tablets modern again.
medium
tablets
humor
december 2021
They Know Exactly What They’re Doing When They Do It | by Jessica Wildfire | Dec, 2021 | Medium
december 2021
This is what white evangelicals say every single time they get their families together to pose with their guns. They’re sending a very clear signal. They’re sending it out to other white evangelicals, that they have each other’s backs. They’re also sending it out as a threat to anyone who tries to oppose them. “Watch out. Don’t mess with us.”
It’s all intentional.
Let’s remember animal behavior for a moment. When other animals do anything that resembles smiling, they’re not conveying warmth and cheer. They’re baring their teeth.
medium
jessica
wildfire
guns
dog
whistle
It’s all intentional.
Let’s remember animal behavior for a moment. When other animals do anything that resembles smiling, they’re not conveying warmth and cheer. They’re baring their teeth.
december 2021
When Is a New Tech ‘Ahead of Its Time’ — Or Just Doomed? | by Clive Thompson | Nov, 2021 | OneZero
december 2021
When a bunch of techies are beavering away on a new tool, it can be tricky to figure out:
Is this a genuinely useful new thing? Or is it just some expensive prototype, a pipe dream that’ll never take off?
technology
innovation
Is this a genuinely useful new thing? Or is it just some expensive prototype, a pipe dream that’ll never take off?
december 2021
Opinion | Why Wokeness Will Fail - The New York Times
november 2021
In the long run, Americans have always gotten behind protest movements that make the country more open, more decent, less divided. What today is called Woke does none of those things. It has no future in the home of the free.
wokeness
woke
politics
racism
protest
november 2021
What makes a cultural superpower? - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion
october 2021
“Why do people like South Korean stuff so much?” A lot of ink has been spilled over this, and I don’t really know enough to weigh in. But there is one interesting thing I’ve noticed, which is that South Korea is among the first countries — perhaps the first country — to become a modern cultural superpower without having had an empire in the last 500 years.
culture
korea
k-drama
october 2021
The Paradox of Time Travel May Have Been Solved by an Undergrad | by Katrina Paulson | Sep, 2021 | Medium
october 2021
There are plenty of notions to go around about how time travel might work, with some holding more credibility than others. But something new has been discovered, which turns the conversation about time travel on its head.
time
travel
october 2021
John Remmers’s Reading Progress for Life on the Mississippi: With original illustrations - 2 hours, 47 min ago
october 2021
Starting Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
from twitter
october 2021
Mystery of the wheelie suitcase: how gender stereotypes held back the history of invention | Life and style | The Guardian
june 2021
We couldn’t see the genius of the wheeled suitcase because it didn’t align with our prevailing views on masculinity. In hindsight, we find this bizarre. How could the predominant view on masculinity turn out to be more stubborn than the market’s desire to make money? How could the crude idea that men must carry heavy things prevent us from seeing the potential in a product that would come to transform an entire global industry?
masculinity
gender
innovation
june 2021
John Remmers’s review of I Am Pilgrim
june 2021
4 of 5 stars to I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
from twitter
june 2021
I quit. Peak indifference, big tobacco… | by Cory Doctorow | Jun, 2021 | Medium
june 2021
The bad-faith “balance” game is used by fraudsters and crooks to sow doubt. It’s how homeopaths, anti-vaxers, eugenicists, raw milk pushers and other members of the Paltrow-Industrial Complex played the BBC and other sober-sided media outlets, demanding that they be given airtime to rebut scientists’ careful, empirical claims with junk they made up on the spot.
denialism
tobacco
june 2021
The End IS Near. No, Seriously.. All epidemics end, even the Black Death… | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | May, 2021 | Medium
may 2021
And that — the vague but calming sense that our own death is no longer imminent — is what is going to let each of us say, in our own moment of epiphany: “Hey — I suddenly feel like it’s over.”
And when enough of us do — it will be
health
coronavirus
pandemic
covid-19
And when enough of us do — it will be
may 2021
Midweek pick-me-up: Getting out of your own light — Aldous Huxley on mind-body integration and how you become who you are
may 2021
Aldous Huxley (July, 26 1894–November 22, 1963) endures as one of the most visionary and unusual minds of the twentieth century — a man of strong convictions about drugs, democracy, and religion and immensely prescient ideas about the role of technology in human life; a prominent fixture of Carl Sagan’s reading list; and the author of a little-known allegorical children’s book.
huxley
brainpickings
may 2021
May 14, 2021 - Letters from an American
may 2021
Today’s vote confirmed that the leaders of the current Republican Party are willing to abandon democracy in order to save the country from what they call “socialism.”
But what Republicans mean when they say “socialism” is not the political system most countries recognize when they use that word: one in which the people, through their government, own the means of production. What Republicans mean comes from America’s peculiar history after the Civil War, when new national taxation coincided with the expansion of voting to include Black men.
politics
voting
racism
But what Republicans mean when they say “socialism” is not the political system most countries recognize when they use that word: one in which the people, through their government, own the means of production. What Republicans mean comes from America’s peculiar history after the Civil War, when new national taxation coincided with the expansion of voting to include Black men.
may 2021
Opinion | Why Covid's Airborne Transmission Was Acknowledged So Late - The New York Times
may 2021
If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small particles disperse more easily, as long as you avoid close, prolonged contact with others. We would have tried to make sure indoor spaces were well ventilated, with air filtered as necessary. Instead of blanket rules on gatherings, we would have targeted conditions that can produce superspreading events: people in poorly ventilated indoor spaces, especially if engaged over time in activities that increase aerosol production, like shouting and singing. We would have started using masks more quickly, and we would have paid more attention to their fit, too. And we would have been less obsessed with cleaning surfaces.
Our mitigations would have been much more effective, sparing us a great deal of suffering and anxiety.
Since the pandemic is far from over, with countries like India facing devastating surges, we need to understand both why this took so long to come about and what it will mean.
nytimes
covid-19
coronavirus
health
disease
pandemic
Our mitigations would have been much more effective, sparing us a great deal of suffering and anxiety.
Since the pandemic is far from over, with countries like India facing devastating surges, we need to understand both why this took so long to come about and what it will mean.
may 2021
Sudden Impact: The Day the Dinosaurs Perished | Predict
april 2021
SIXTY-SIX MILLION years ago, in one cataclysmic flash, the Earth changed forever. Without warning, a mountain-sized rock pierced through the 480 km of the atmosphere in an instant, and slammed into the deep bedrock of a shallow sea.
dinosaurs
meteor
extinction
april 2021
The Keto vs. Plant-Based Diet Showdown at the NIH | by F. Perry Wilson, MD MSCE | Jan, 2021 | Medium
march 2021
But that’s not the only theory. Many folks believe think it’s not the dietary components that matter, it’s how we take them in. Ultra-processed foods with enhanced flavors and salts and sugars overwhelm our senses and deliver calories in a dense form that basically leaves us in positive energy balance and we gain weight. That those ultra-processed foods are carb-heavy has nothing to do with it.
So the researchers decided to untie this knot.
diet
health
food
carbs
keto
So the researchers decided to untie this knot.
march 2021
"I Have Everything I Want" - Bedlam Farm
march 2021
A nurse and I were talking in an examining room recently, waiting for the doctor to come in. She asked me if I could have anything I wanted, what would it be?
I was surprised by how quickly I answered.
“I have everything I want,” I said.
She was young, and I saw that I had shocked her. “Oh,” she said, “I want a lot of things.”
Maybe, I thought to myself; she had the luxury of wanting things because she had so many years ahead of her.
Perhaps I don’t want things because I am closer to the end than the beginning. Maybe she just thought I was a crazy old man.
blog
bedlamfarm
I was surprised by how quickly I answered.
“I have everything I want,” I said.
She was young, and I saw that I had shocked her. “Oh,” she said, “I want a lot of things.”
Maybe, I thought to myself; she had the luxury of wanting things because she had so many years ahead of her.
Perhaps I don’t want things because I am closer to the end than the beginning. Maybe she just thought I was a crazy old man.
march 2021
Kim's Convenience: The end of the dream - Noahpinion
march 2021
For three years, during the darkest days of Trump’s presidency and the COVID pandemic, during times of social unrest and violence and mass insanity, I took refuge in a Canadian sitcom called Kim’s Convenience. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it on Netflix. It’s a show about a family that owns a convenience store in Toronto. The parents are immigrants from Korea, their adult children Jung and Janet are trying to make their way in the world.
canada
sitcom
asian
race
family
march 2021
The Future is More Terrifying Than We Can Imagine | by Alastair Isaacs | Predict | Mar, 2021 | Medium
march 2021
The fact that searches for alien intelligence have so far come up empty handed is almost meaningless. It means only that we have been looking for the wrong signs. Indeed, the right signs may be just in front of our noses, clear if only we could read them.
science
physics
future
aliens
alaister_isaacs
march 2021
All the Apps That Support Apple's Spatial Audio Feature - MacRumors
march 2021
The feature works by comparing the data from your iOS device's gyroscope and accelerometer against the data from your AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, ensuring that the sound field stays anchored to the device, even if you move your head.
Unsurprisingly, spatial audio isn't universally supported by third-party apps and services. To save you spending time wondering if a particular app works with the feature, we've put together a list below of all the apps that have officially been updated to support Spatial Audio, and some popular apps that have yet to add support.
apple
spatial
audio
airpods
Unsurprisingly, spatial audio isn't universally supported by third-party apps and services. To save you spending time wondering if a particular app works with the feature, we've put together a list below of all the apps that have officially been updated to support Spatial Audio, and some popular apps that have yet to add support.
march 2021
The Frontiers Of Digital Democracy
march 2021
The idea behind vTaiwan (virtual Taiwan) is that government needs to respond here and now when citizens express concern about a given issue by inviting them to set the agenda. To do so, information must be transparent and available to all. The government and its citizens must have the same information so that there is a trustworthy basis for a public conversation.
deliberative
democracy
taiwan
audrey_tang
march 2021
How Apple's locked down security gives extra protection to the best hackers
march 2021
“You’re going to keep out a lot of the riffraff by making it harder to break iPhones. But the 1% of top hackers are going to find a way in and, once they’re inside, the impenetrable fortress of the iPhone protects them.”BILL MARCZAK, CITIZEN LAB
apple
ios
security
hacking
march 2021
Radio Garden – Roccasecca
The green dots represent radio stations. Click on any one to hear the station.
february 2021
MailTrackerBlocker for Mail on macOS
february 2021
An email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail.
email
tracking
blocking
mailtrackerblocker
macos
february 2021
YouTube Over RSS - Initial Charge
february 2021
And that’s likely why YouTube doesn’t make it easy to follow channels by RSS. They don’t offer any type of feed discovery on channel pages and the OPML download that used to be available from a difficult to find subscriptions page disappeared sometime last Fall. Each channel does still have an RSS feed, but you have to work a little bit to get it.
You can use this URL template for each feed:
rss
youtube
You can use this URL template for each feed:
february 2021
Netherlands building ages
february 2021
Interactive map showing the age of every building in The Netherlands.
interactive
map
history
february 2021
I Sure Hope You’re Happy, Gina Carano | by John DeVore | Humungus | Feb, 2021 | Medium
february 2021
There are just times you have to get rid of a toxic person who can’t play nice with others. And sometimes those toxic people don’t have the spine to just walk away when they’re unhappy. So. Buh-bye. The old saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ has been around for a long time because it is true: sometimes we don’t know what we truly want until we get it.
gina
carano
mandalorian
firing
social
media
february 2021
The Dasgupta Review: Making space for nature in the global portfolio
february 2021
It’s clear that we still have a long way to go when it comes to meaningfully acknowledging the intrinsic value of nature. There’s no doubt though that the Dasgupta Review poses an important and timely challenge to mainstream economics; we can only hope that through its influence, more and more people come to think of themselves as naturalists.
dasgupta
biodiversity
economics
february 2021
We’ve Given Our Lives to the Screen. What Happens When We Have to Turn It Off? | by Angela Lashbrook | Feb, 2021 | Debugger
february 2021
Eventually, your brain begins to associate that surge of dopamine with the checking behavior. “This is exactly why slot machines are so addictive. We’re inadvertently setting ourselves up to get addicted to checking the news through what is called intermittent reinforcement — a fancy term for getting random rewards,” Brewer writes.
Everyone’s media-checking behaviors have skyrocketed, their focus has flagged, and their once-natural ability to talk normally to people face-to-face has become a struggle.
internet
habits
addiction
psychology
dopamine
Everyone’s media-checking behaviors have skyrocketed, their focus has flagged, and their once-natural ability to talk normally to people face-to-face has become a struggle.
february 2021
“A damn stupid thing to do”—the origins of C | Ars Technica
february 2021
In one form or another, C has influenced the shape of almost every programming language developed since the 1980s. Some languages like C++, C#, and objective C are intended to be direct successors to the language, while other languages have merely adopted and adapted C’s syntax. A programmer conversant in Java, PHP, Ruby, Python or Perl will have little difficulty understanding simple C programs, and in that sense, C may be thought of almost as a lingua franca among programmers.
But C did not emerge fully formed out of thin air as some programming monolith. The story of C begins in England, with a colleague of Alan Turing and a program that played checkers.
c
programming
language
history
But C did not emerge fully formed out of thin air as some programming monolith. The story of C begins in England, with a colleague of Alan Turing and a program that played checkers.
february 2021
Describing a Slur Is Not the Same As Using It
february 2021
It would be one thing to decide that not only is it unacceptable to use a slur but it is also unacceptable to utter or mention in it any form. It is another thing to treat those two different actions as completely indistinguishable, as the Daily Beast appears to have done.
n-word
language
racism
cancel
culture
february 2021
2016
538
advertising
aging
ai
amazon
android
animation
annarbor
api
apple
apps
art
aynrand
best
bitcoin
blogging
bookmarking
books
broadband
browser
business
cable
cancel
children
china
chrome
cinema
climate
cloud
coffee
comic
comics
copyright
coronavirus
covid-19
css
culture
data
davewiner
democracy
design
development
dickinson
diet
digital
dns
docsearls
domain
drm
dropbox
earth
ebooks
economics
economy
education
election
email
encryption
exercise
extensions
facebook
fake
fcc
fiber
film
fitness
fonts
food
free
friscrib
funny
git
globalwarming
gmail
google
google+
googlereader
government
graphic
guns
hacking
health
history
html
html5
http
https
humor
infographic
innovation
intents
internet
interview
ios
ip
ipad
iphone
javascript
jeffjarvis
journalism
keyboard
kids
kindle
language
law
lifehacking
lifehacks
lion
list
literature
loc
mac
macos
maps
markdown
math
mathematics
media
medicine
medium
microsoft
mobile
mountain
movies
music
nancy
netflix
news
nexus
nsa
nutrition
nytimes
obama
opensource
opml
osx
pandemic
passwords
patents
paywall
periscope
physics
pinboard
piracy
pixel
poetry
police
politics
polls
privacy
productivity
programming
psychology
publishing
quora
race
racism
ragtime
reader
reading
religion
remwrite
republicans
responsive
review
rss
safari
science
search
security
semanticweb
server
services
sethgodin
sharing
shortcuts
slavery
sleep
smartphones
social
society
software
ssh
statistics
stevejobs
streaming
surveillance
tablets
technology
timothyblee
tips
tracking
transparency
trump
trust
tutorial
tv
twitter
typography
video
vpn
web
webapps
webdesign
webdev
wikipedia
wordpress
writing
xkcd
youtube
zenhabits