Quick notes, links, photos, quotes, etc.
Alan Jacobs on the Iron Laws of the Comment Section:
- Those who have read and understood the post, whether they agree with it or not, will email you if they have something to say.
All of the rules sound right, but that last one nails it. It's one reason why I have a "Reply by email" link instead of comments.
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E.B. White
Good lord, just look at all the 3D-printed cameras! I had no idea.
(via 82MHz)
That said, for $200 a month (or $20), you have a team of cybercriminals on tap that you can call at any time. You are now an absolute elite hacker, if you take time to learn some basics. Congratulations! Seeing state-level cyberweapons become a commodity is kind of a new thing, and I thought you should know about it.
It's a wild world out there. I'm a little nervous about it.
I think it's time to stop worrying about where I put notes or in what format. I record my weight in daily Denote files. It's a simple line like "Weight: 208.2". I asked claude code to help me generate reports based on it, and in 10 minutes I had a fancy HTML page with dynamic charts and stats as well as the emacs lisp function to update it on demand. Kind of wild. Seems like these days I could parse just about anything and put it just about anywhere.
Leica Camera AG appoints new CEO to succeed Matthias Harsch - Macfilos
He highlights the priorities of his tenure as:
I don't know the guy, so he's probably great, but what do these even mean? Of course you want to sell more stuff, who doesn't? Anyway, I hope he does all of the above, I guess.
The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier:
What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?
(via Gruber)
Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark?
...our tools observe us, creating forensic sensors recording behavioural anomalies without consent or awareness. They are a generative layer that projects state authority into everyday life. Every home becomes a node in a datafied evidentiary web, a site of ambient accountability. The technology of today shapes how the authority of tomorrow perceives and prosecutes you.
Cade Diehm
I hate this administration and everyone in it. That is all.
"We must not admire those who own great possessions, but those who have the strength to do without them. For it is not he who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor. The man who is not in need is not the one who has much, but the one who can go without much."
I sure wish I was that person.
Sontag said she learned that "10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction
Kurn Vonnegut quoting Susan Sontag
I wrote this on Feb 5, 2019:
I spend hours and hours getting some workflow or app or whatever JUST RIGHT, then stop using it the next day.
Never change, Jack.
I had an urge to give Gnome another go, so I installed Fedora Workstation over the KDE Fedora spin. It took two hours from installation to writing this post in Emacs. I'm getting better at it.
I become equally excited about moving out of Emacs for everything as I do deciding that I like using Emacs for everything. A week ago I left Emacs after a frustrating day of broken packages and configs. What a relief! This morning, I needed something from an old Org mode file so I launched Emacs and, well, now I'm back in it. What a great feeling!
See what I mean?
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
— Oscar Wilde
Well that stings a little.
Thoughts about coding with AI - 82MHz:
Using AI can lead to impressive results in no time at all, but it leaves me feeling hollow and discontent. Satisfaction and happiness comes from doing something myself, even if it may be difficult and uncomfortable in the moment. But if I avoid doing everything that's hard and outsource all the thinking to AI, then I will pretty soon turn into a lazy and stupid blob who isn't capable of thinking for himself anymore, and that's a fate I want to avoid at all cost.
I understand the sentiment, but I don't worry that I'll become a "lazy stupid blob" if I use AI to do some gruntwork for me. I have Claude write me all sorts of helpful little shell scripts. It means I don't have to care about how to write things like regular expressions for use in sed or whatever. I used to find that sort of thing fun, but now I just want to get to the thing I wanted the script for in the first place. It's like, do I really want to do the long division by hand or should I just grab the calculator? Now, if learning long division is meaningful to you, then go for it.
I understand that I can seem unreliable, specifically around apps and tools and processes. Why would you invest time with me if I'll probably change everything tomorrow? I get it.
Status: Today, I prefer Linux for everything other than photography and messaging. Those are important, so I remain conflicted.
I only write in Org mode or Orgmode or Org or org-mode or .org files.
baty.net
