https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/stop-drinking-now.html
Fully agree with #TylerCowen on this one.
Last night I dreamt that I went to tutoring with my #literature professor, someone whom I admired greatly (entirely fictional character).
We were casually talking #books and getting along very well. Then he asked me what I was reading at the moment. I said volume three of Proust's “In Search of Lost time”, and his face changed immediately.
He looked very serious, and told me we'd go right then to my place to grab the book and burn it, because it was a waste of time. It was clearly all in good spirits, and he was playing a certain role to amuse me — but at the same time there was no doubt in my mind that he was intent on doing what he had said.
So I had to play along. We walked together to my place, while I questioned him. He explained to me that yes, Proust is indeed good, but that investing so much time in reading >4,000 very dense pages was simply not rational. Very poor ROI. I kinda agreed and felt somewhat relieved of my self-imposed burden of reading the entire series, although I hated the idea of halting the project and burning the book (never mind that I'm reading on an e-reader!).
#MissEntropy walked me up at that moment, and so I don't know what was going to happen in my #dream.
And so I'll have to keep on reading #Proust.
TIL about [_The Thing_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device))
“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”
— Larry Hardiman
#Q4TD http://q4td.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-word-politics-is-derived-from-word.html
Home-delivered meals have always bothered me. It looks like the perfect example of overlooked irresponsible #consumerism.
You have a **fridge** where you can store food for days, a **freezer** where you can store food for months, **grocery stores and supermarkets** everywhere around you (some of them open during weekends or at night), convenient **online orders** and cheap **delivery** of those groceries…
…and yet you need that a local restaurant wraps their stuff in way more plastic and paper than is necessary, and that some kid jumps on a dirty moped and whizzes dangerously through the city to get to your door _right now_?
At 11PM?
Probably the best distillation of #morality in one sentence, by #DerekParfit:
> _“Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.”_
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good
You guys who travel, go to gigs, try new restaurants, watch movies, meet friends, improvise, slack, have brunch, play sports… you don't know what you have.
I found myself this afternoon with an unexpected fifteen minutes to spare, wearing my earbuds and listening to my favourite podcasts, next to a huge department store with blissful AC, and with a Starbucks right at the entrance. I even nailed the perfect order (_espresso macchiato_ with a little extra hot milk, only €1.90).
It felt like a luxurious holiday in Maldives. Such is my routine these days. 🤣
To future historians—not just of computing, but of humanity—the current period will be a dark age.
How was Facebook used by students in the 2010s? We cannot show you, that version of Facebook is not hosted anywhere.
How did MySpace look around 2009? We don't really know, the Wayback Machine only shows a limited amount of static content, and there may only be a few surviving screenshots
What correspondence did Vint Cerf have as president of the ACM with other luminaries of computing industry and research? We do not know; Google will not publish his emails.
What was it like playing Angry Birds on an iPhone 3G? We do not know; Apple is no longer distributing signed receipts for that binary.
What did the British cabinet discuss when they first learned of the Coronavirus pandemic? We do not know; they chatted on a private WhatsApp group.
What books were published analysing the aftermath of the Maidan coup in Ukraine? We do not know; we do not have the keys for the Digital Editions DRM.
How was the coup covered in televised news? We do not know; the broadcasters used RealVideo and Windows Media Encoder and we cannot read those files.
We have to ask ourselves how we are going to preserve and transmit knowledge about our age to the next generations. Knowledge about an age where information is produced, consumed and discarded within hours, days or months, or where it's only stored on the server rooms of a handful of corporations, with no guarantees that those businesses will exist in the future, and with no way of accessing that information unless a certain set of regulatory, hardware, software pre-conditions are met.
That's why projects like the Internet Archive deserve more recognition and funding. That's why web scraping should not only be a civic right, but a civic duty to the next generations. Otherwise all the knowledge about the great age of information will be transmitted orally - with all the distortions that such transmission implies.
RT @ceolinwill@twitter.com
Open-source alternatives to popular products:
- Figma: @penpotapp@twitter.com
- Google Analytics: @PlausibleHQ@twitter.com
- Notion: @appflowy@twitter.com @Boostnoteapp@twitter.com
- Slack: @Mattermost@twitter.com @RocketChat@twitter.com @element_hq@twitter.com
- Zoom: @jitsinews@twitter.com
- Airtable: @baserow@twitter.com @nocodb@twitter.com
- Calendly: @calcom@twitter.com
- Mailchimp: listmonk
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/ceolinwill/status/1546622473193537537
RT @NASA@twitter.com
It's here–the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date: Webb's First Deep Field.
Previewed by @POTUS@twitter.com on July 11, it shows galaxies once invisible to us. The full set of @NASAWebb@twitter.com's first full-color images & data will be revealed July 12: http://nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
La vergüenza del #decretoley, que siempre fue una vergüenza, es una vergüenza aberrante y miserable con este #gobierno:
https://civio.es/el-boe-nuestro-de-cada-dia/2022/07/07/decretos-ley-desde-1996/
Dear Linux desktop apps, you have full authorization to create a folder in my ~/.config directory, you are even invited to stuff your data in my ~/.local/share directory, and let's not forget about that ~/.cache y'all! Wunderbar! Much freedom!
So, now, please repeat after me:
👏 I 👏 SHALL 👏 NOT 👏 MAKE 👏 A 👏 FOLDER 👏 IN 👏 YOUR 👏 HOME 👏 DIRECTORY 👏
Thank you kindly