Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

You might object, "Sure it's not actionable for me, but if no one consumed the news, even important things wouldn't percolate through society!"

That is probably true, but we're so far from the point where the marginal consumption of additional news is a net positive that I don't think we're in any danger of an under-informed network here.

It would be interesting to have a service that gives you summaries of the news from 6 or 12 months ago, with care taken to cover the general response and counter-narratives.

I think more people should have this attitude (that you should not consume news):

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.html

I have talked to people who are genuinely distressed by things happening in the news and are afraid to miss something if they cut it out. But usually information in the news isn't *actionable* even if it's important.

@eloquence It's annoying that "have a good archive of the content" seems to be at odds with "keep content up to date".

Wikipedia articles have built-in history tracking, so you can permalink to the version you saw, but generally it's better to link to the latest version, which is more likely to be missing the information you want it to contain.

Just finished speaking at Chicago's #python meetup Chipy.

One nice thing about virtual meetups — no waiting for the video to be processed and released!

Stream from my ChiPy talk is already up. Full meetup: https://youtu.be/8JFUgAJLoQE

My talk starts at ~41:53: https://youtu.be/8JFUgAJLoQE?t=2513

Slides: https://pganssle-talks.github.io/chipy-nov-2020-zoneinfo

@mikegerwitz I used to use `-caps:none`, but now I've got caps as my Compose Key and I'm not going back. Ĥéłłö diacritics!

(Though in practice setxkbmap stopped working properly for me a while back, and instead I set up compose key via the keyboard settings on Cinnamon).

@2ck I thought of that, but it's got an earring. Who would put an earring on a raccoon?

Saw this in my back yard on Monday.

Man, people around here really over-feed their dogs!

@eric How do you keep track of the number of individuals you see like that?

I usually have a bunch of tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos flitting in and out of the trees in my back yard, but I can't tell them apart well enough to know if I'm double-counting them.

@freemo @arteteco This one seems active this year: https://www.votepact.org

Though you have to find your own person to pair up with.

@freemo @arteteco Not sure if they have them this year, but in 2016 they had vote trading websites where people in swing states could swap votes with people in solid-(blue|red) states.

If you're in a swing state but want to vote 3rd party, you find someone in an "uncontested" state who wants to vote mainstream. They vote for your chosen candidate and you vote for theirs.

I don't remember if there was any mechanism for enforcement (though I imagine there can't be — anything that can be used to enforce a vote trade could also be used to use violence or payment to influence votes).

The pumpkins I carved for Halloween yesterday. My son picked the general designs and left me with the trivial detail of executing them. 😅

Not bad considering I can't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin. 😀

(Note the "Easter egg" shadow behind the kitty 😺)

#Halloween #pumpkins

@2ck I'm 6'2" (188cm), so I don't really need the low setting for myself, but I have a 2 year old, so I figured I'd pay a bit extra to be able to lower it to work on projects with him.

@eric Though also the main computer is connected to the router with an Ethernet cable.

@2ck It's an Uplift V2 C-frame (I think corporate configuration - it goes very low, like 22" or so).

@eric WiFi is directly above my head, and there's no insulation overhead, so if the insulation interferes with the signal I haven't noticed.

Doesn't seem to affect my cell phone service, though, so I think it's probably not very effective RF shielding.

@Sphinx Yeah, I believe the dock is doing the work there.

@Sphinx It's the laptop. The monitors are connected to a dock. My work and home laptops are both Thinkpads so I put the main one I'm using at a given moment on the dock (which is also connected to all the various peripherals — keyboard, mouse, microphone, webcam, etc).