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Briefs

Sunday, January 26th, 2020

Two interestingly contrarian pieces in the Daily Mail by authorities in their respective fields: “Ja, we Germans are jealous of Brexit” by Alexander Von Schoenburg, editor-at-large of Bild; and “Why woke diets featuring superfoods such as avocado are leading to a surge of distressing gut problems” by Luci Daniels, former chairman of the British Dietetic Association.

Tuesday, October 8th, 2019

11 Brilliant Ways To Redeem Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles by Spencer Howard at GodSaveThePoints. Most are not actually flying Virgin Atlantic but their partner airlines

Saturday, September 28th, 2019

September 25th, 2019, a Virgin Atlantic plane landed in Tel Aviv for the first time. Airplane travel writer Gilbert Ott was aboard.

Tuesday, September 24th, 2019

New business jets for 2019.

James Ketchell completes his gyrocopter global circumnavigation, apparently the first person to do so. Awesome.

Monday, July 1st, 2019

The bastards finally did it: Sde Dov Airport, within walking distance from Tel Aviv, closes. You’d have thought that enough powers-that-be would have liked a nice little airfield within 5 minutes of town. Well, hopefully eventually they’ll build another one in the Med. Update: They’re still talking. Umpteen objections submitted regarding the existing plan.

Saturday, September 8th, 2018

McKinsey offers suggestions for lean airline operations. I find this oddly exciting.

Tuesday, August 21st, 2018

This Globes article reports interesting stats re Israeli air traffic. After the domestic carriers, Wizz Air is the top airline by flights, Turkish Airlines by passengers. They’re followed by EasyJet and Aeroflot. Nasty rhetorical exchanges between the national leaders notwithstanding, the Turkish national carrier will soon operate 10 flights a day to Israel!

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018

This 1-hour Smithsonian production is a history of America in the Roaring 20s, with amazing newly-colorized footage. Richly effortlessly narrated by Liev Schreiber, it remedies our black & white impression of this not-so-distant mirror. There are things I should have learned about in school but did not, particularly the Greenwood massacre.

Saturday, September 9th, 2017

Enjoy this superb little series on contemporary American commercial aviation by Slate, from security theatre to the pilot shortage.

Monday, September 5th, 2016

In this report on Ryanair’s service between Budapest and Eilat, anna.aero lists the low-cost airlines flying to Israel. All the others fly to Ben-Gurion. So that’s Eilat to Budapest in February roundtrip for 85€!!!

Monday, July 18th, 2016

Life meets Goblin. Franky Zapata flies his Flyboard Air in Monaco during the Grand Prix on May 29th, 2016 [via my Dad].

Thursday, July 24th, 2014

Some strategic implications for Israel of Hamas’s tunnels and rockets by JCPA.

Sunday, July 15th, 2012

The stuffed former pet cat looks eerily alive reborn as a remote control helicopter. I just don’t know what to think or feel or say about this.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

“Nation on the Move” is the magnificent second episode of the America Revealed PBS series. Interestingly, the show is British-made.

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Francis Fukuyama builds a drone. Yes, that Francis Fukuyama.

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

Today: a world where big stuff can never get done.

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Conrad Black, facing more jail time, remains irrepressible.

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

The reprap, a self-replicating 3d-printer. Most mind-boggling thing ever.

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Fox News slideshow from the 49th Paris Air Show.

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Al Schwimmer, founder of Israel Aircraft Industries, dies at 94. Haaretz obit.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

GAGA-1, a hobby balloon satellite.

O reason not the need — give us the Immersive Cocoon.

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Over at The Atlantic, this is perhaps the piece and subsequent conversation in the comments on applying the Israeli airport security method in the USA. “I’d say, as a generalization, screeners here possess above-average intelligence, whereas your average TSA screener seems to be a working stiff.” Yes, and working stiff seems an overstatement.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Climategate so far.
Just how close were we to catastrophe at Copenhagen?

Friday, July 31st, 2009

EasyJet begins Luton-Tel Aviv flights in November, 2009. With a suitcase, the all-inclusive cost of a return flight is £135, less than half of current prices!

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Replacing Heathrow with a 24-hour artificial island-based airport in the Thames Estuary.

index topics flying flying

Denver Met

Tuesday, May 8th, 2018

My intent here is not only to participate in a conference but to suck up myriad Americana as a thirsty exile catapulted back in for a primer.
Yes

It’s a Somewhat Rauschenberg World

Tuesday, April 4th, 2017

I don’t like this use of animals, like Damien Hirst’s. The artist could not have asked the goat for permission so should not have assumed it was granted.

Black Tracks the Presidents

Monday, January 30th, 2017

The great virtue of Conrad Black’s Flight of the Eagle is its steady track across the entirety of the nation’s history, treating each president equally under its own law and order.

Homepage Design 2016

Monday, August 15th, 2016

No matter the screen size, a web site should feel like itself, even if it doesn’t look it. So do “mobile first” second.
Yes

From iPhone 4S to 6S: An Appreciation

Monday, December 21st, 2015

The increased size, something I was so hesitant about, feels fine to me now. And because it’s thinner it feels less obtrusive in my pocket.

Spectreview

Thursday, November 12th, 2015

With the villain’s quasi-sibling bond to the hero, 2015’s 007 movie deflates to an incestuous Möbius Strip.

In Gaza, Israel Should Own its Terrible Tactic

Sunday, August 3rd, 2014

Although such excoriating labels as “collective punishment” and “state terrorism” aren’t entirely wrong regarding Israel’s application of the Dahieh Doctrine in Gaza, history does suggest that the method is effective in fighting a fundamentally defensive war.

Go Deny Yourself

Monday, June 17th, 2013

This four-letter little word undermines our modern values of tolerance and presumption of innocence.

Some Consumer Affairs

Monday, December 17th, 2012

I’ve tried to enjoy schlepping water, thinking that it serves to keep us to some human roots.
Yes

From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.

2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

The dancers in the ape-suits; how they move is an incredibly energetic output for us. Contrast their physical reaction when witnessing the monolith to that of the astronauts in the newly-minted 21st century.

The Mouse and the Cantilever

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.

Friendship is for Weenies

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust US President Obama.

Before the Setup

Monday, March 8th, 2010

It’s 1983: Go for the Apple IIe with 64k that could be opened up as a hobbyist machine? Or the smaller, sleeker and newer IIc with double the memory but a closed case?

At Modi’in Mall

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown: Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Yes

The Israel I Love, the Bad So Far

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

If the signage were a bit more effective, the staff’s diction and demeanor more professional, then we might have avoided this testy altercation.

Shanghai Europe

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

So, finally, we stopped yesterday; the Israeli assault on Gaza of late 2008/early 2009 is over. With it, Israel lost moral purity and made vital strategic gains.
Yes

Panning for MacBook Pro

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Even if it did nothing, was just a prop in a futuristic movie, the MacBook Pro would be impressive; it’s like a sculpture of my previous computer, the MacBook, except it’s actually an improved computer!

Stop Yesterday

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Is the goal of Israel’s current assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets or to render them incapable of doing so? These are two quite different projects.

Short-circuiting Place-based Longing

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

If there’s one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.

A Crawl Across Crawley, Part 1

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Irit, the Jam and I walk from Brighton to Gatwick Airport.

Clash of the Midgets

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I was annoyed to have my sauna moments despoiled and dominated, reverberating with this old geezer’s most naff yap.
Yes

Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak?

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

If Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was part of a masterplan to staunch the damage done by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967, then today we see another step in its unfolding.

The Small Adventures, Part 2

Monday, January 7th, 2008

There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a crème brûlée. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up.
Yes

The Small Adventures

Monday, December 10th, 2007

Late for the 11pm train to Milan, we enquired frantically among the taxis for one who’d accept the two dogs and take us to Termini Station so I could begin our journey to Britain.

Tony Blair and the Four-State Solution

Friday, December 7th, 2007

Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. If Tony Blair were to acquire this view, perhaps he really could help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A Restoration and Return

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

There she was, sitting outside the apartment block! How did she do it? Dogs—or at least Jam—must have some sort of navigational sense we don’t understand.

Curs to Fate

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Yesterday I lost Jam in Villa Borghese, the central park here in Rome, some five miles from Talenti, the neighborhood where we’re staying. She has not turned up since.
Yes

Jam and Bread, Jam and Bread!

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

My dog Jam has spent over a third of her time here in Italy as her fixtures have fallen away—first Maddie, then me. But now I’m back!
Yes

This Trip’s Last Day

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

I went to Astor Place Haircutters. I crossed Manhattan Bridge on foot. I walked west along Canal St, seeking a bamboo steamer.

I, Thou and Pastor Bob

Friday, October 5th, 2007

At the Calvary Church here in Fort Lauderdale the Biblical locations feel so far away that they can be abstracted and spiritualized. There is religious energy here.
Yes

The Big and Easy

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

The American stage is grand, as are the achievements and ambitions, but daily life seems lamed by a compulsive denaturing.

A Drop in Time

Monday, August 27th, 2007

The camera hit the ground lens first, bashing it in so that it would no longer wind in and out, and couldn’t switch on. Without it, my perception of an important personal era was degraded.

A Ride to Gatwick Airport

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Airports. They’re so charged, so symbolic, and so empty once you’re at one; I dream of them so often.

Only the Rustle in the Trees

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Grief, loss — these are the great teachers surely. What one has will pass.

A Cabaret, Old Chum

Monday, June 18th, 2007

It’s a last bastion of civility, being allowed to drink at Penn Station, Brian mused ruefully as we carried our beers to his train home to Great Neck.

Fatahland and Hamastan

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Now Israel has a dog in a real Palestinian fight: the nationalists rather than the Islamists.
Yes

Stars, Stripes & Superlatives

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Here in Los Angeles I am bombarded with superlatives. Daniel’s record collection. The Bikram Yoga College of India world headquarters. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. All mixed in with the most ravaging mediocrity.

Shite on Brighton

Friday, May 18th, 2007

“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”

Daily Yin

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

For my first test of the day as day, I open the back door and step outside to the little patio to see the sky and feel the air. I realize not everybody does this, so if people tell me I’m a miserable bastard then perhaps this little habit will correct their impression.

Mind the Dream

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Dreaming about our passed companions as if they are alive requires tricks to the dreaming mind to overcome what it believes and knows to be true.

The Dharma Tits

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Buddhism is the philosophy and psychology closest to Cognitive Therapy and vice versa.
Yes

Still Got the Jam

Monday, March 12th, 2007

Jam was one of Maddie’s nine puppies, the one who remained after the others were all taken. That was always my plan, to keep the runt.

Such a Tramp

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Maddie, who died 18 months ago today, was a mangy mutt and stank, but she was also among the most beautiful dogs I’ve ever seen and for me the longest, richest, widest, deepest streak of feeling lucky.

So You Noticed

Monday, February 26th, 2007

I have had something very flattering: a request. Juan Carlos has asked me for comments on Casino Royale.

Reminds Me of Tel Aviv

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

You get to a stage in life where you are already formed by the past. Thoughts and dilemmas about place are either central questions or a distraction from real issues.

Fly the Blag

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Ryanair has brought wretchedness to the skies. Rather than existing on a privileged plane, you stew in a poisoned atmosphere.

Approaching Infinite Justice

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Immediately after 9/11, the burgeoning war on terror was named “Operation Infinite Justice”. Within days it was renamed “Operation Enduring Freedom”, but is the new name a mere cloaking of the first?

On the Seventh Day

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

The Mrs is skeptical of David Allen’s Getting Things Done self-management system because it eschews the rigors of time management in lieu of what feels right. But GTD is about informed feeling.

Don’t Panic!

Monday, July 12th, 2004

An academic romp through Jewish American comedy starts out as a veritable rollercoaster ride, but grinds to halt with its obsession with one Bob Dylan.

Photographing a Handsome Old Man

Saturday, July 10th, 2004

I want to get people in my pics, but it’s tougher when you’re no longer a wide-eyed teenager, because people generally don’t like to think they are a spectacle.

The Beauty of Rain

Friday, December 19th, 2003

Rain makes the rocks shine. It puts in motion things that are otherwise static. It illustrates gravity most prettily.

Ode to Salame

Monday, December 1st, 2003

It’s supposed to be the arsehole of Tel Aviv, Salame Street, running east-west at its southern tip, but it always does me darn good.

I Love Laundry

Wednesday, November 19th, 2003

How pleasing it is to have my own washing machine. If all isn’t right with the world, not even in my world, at least the laundry cycle is functioning.

Lovely Scenery, But Walks Getting Boring

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

Unless I drive somewhere new, it’s not much fun to just step out the door and wander. But driving to go for a walk seems a tad ridiculous.

For Love of Economy

Monday, November 17th, 2003

It disturbs me to be driving a car that gets fewer kilometers to the shekel than did my previous.

Shinui and the Seven-Year Itch

Tuesday, May 20th, 2003

How refreshing to see Asian faces out shopping in Tel Aviv, or Africans riding the bus to Ra’anana. With them Israel is given fresh wellsprings of culture.

Allah Help the Jackals

Tuesday, May 13th, 2003

While it’s obvious that overplaying your power can result in a downfall, it’s less obvious that underplaying it also leads to trouble. America did this in the 1970s under Carter. Israel seems to have done it almost perennially.
Yes

For Tel Aviv, Better a Skylift Than a Subway

Wednesday, March 12th, 2003

Rather than copycatting a transportation system from the 19th century, Israel could inject into its civic planning the same audacity and resourcefulness that it has historically brought to agriculture and defence.
Yes

Canada Obscura

Monday, July 8th, 2002

There’s not a patch of water to be seen—the most liquid thing is the word “Coffee” on one of the low-slung strip-mall buildings. It’s a scene more artful than art itself.

Tour of Kitchen Duty

Monday, May 20th, 2002

There was yelling and spray and I raced to keep up. One can enjoy, briefly, the company of men.

Shiny Bright Toadstool

Thursday, August 27th, 1998

In Israel’s case, burgernomics don’t add up because significant factors contribute to the 30%-odd surcharge on a Big Mac.

The Fresh Jewels of Spring Mound

Tuesday, July 14th, 1998

Quality of life in Tel Aviv is fundamentally enhanced by two simple factors: trees are everywhere, and so are apartments.

Independence Park Up for Grabs?

Tuesday, July 7th, 1998

To this day men of many ages walk these bushes, they delicately lurk these bushes, and stand in places odd to choose.

We Tri Harder

Monday, January 19th, 1998

A land could be governed not only by the three separate arms of government, but by three sovereign states.
Yes

Tira Saunters

Sunday, August 18th, 1996

The one-lane road is empty; down below is the Sharon Plain, looking vast. Israel may be a small country but we’re still speaking here of land.

A Call to Thumbs

Friday, October 22nd, 1993

When you hitchhike it’s out of your hands, and that’s therapeutic. Paradoxically, you also see how much control you do have.
 

Briefs (cont’d)

Thursday, April 2nd, 2020

Viral dose is being ignored yet is almost certainly hugely important.

Bret writes a very nice one about his great Mum during these terrible days of covid-19.

Humane, authoritative video by Dr Jeffrey VanWingen, a family physician in Grand Rapids, Michigan on sterilizing groceries.

Complete with photos, the fucking Chinese wet market is back in business. From the Daily Mail article: “The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures.” So I am finally posting this thought for posterity: #nukeWuhan.

Wednesday, April 1st, 2020

Devi Sridha, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, had been trying to sound the alarm about the British herd-immunity approach with pieces such as “Britain had a head start on Covid-19, but our leaders squandered it”.

Tuesday, March 31st, 2020

What a lovely piece by Peggy Noonan: “My Corona (or Is It Schmutz?)”.

In times of infectious airborne disease, the burden of proof shouldn’t on wearing a mask, it should be on not wearing one. Scott Alexander reviews the scientific literature on mask-wearing.

Sunday, March 29th, 2020

In The Atlantic, a cogent overview of America’s response to COVID-19.

Andrew McCarthy painstakingly reviews the confusion in establishing the Covid-19 fatality rate.

Saturday, March 28th, 2020

Down in the weeds regarding the management of Nightingale Hospital London.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

Tyler Cowen and Ross Douthat in conversation.

So some combination of a strong state, some kind of small-c conservative social renewal, and some sort of futurism offers some kind of alchemy…

Tuesday, March 24th, 2020

Can the novel coronavirus hang around in the air behind someone infected? It’s unlikely, concludes this article in the newly justly famous Statnews.

Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Tim Ferris disseminates instructions for making a single medical ventilator work for multiple patients.

Saturday, March 21st, 2020

There’s just so much obviously that we are all reading about the novel coronavirus, i haven’t been posting here. Starting now, here is an important one: Tyler Cowen (who is great when something big is happening) announces the Emergent Ventures prize winners for coronavirus work.

Wednesday, March 11th, 2020

Doug Tarr weighs in on learning to code. I didn’t know my old roommate could write so well. Doug, write more.

Tuesday, March 10th, 2020

Benjamin Schwarz decries the University of Chicago’s English Department for toeing the woke line, despite the Chicago Principles (it’s great to see my alma mater’s font again, and saying such things).

In Reading Newsletters with Feedbin and Reeder Federico Viticci rebels against the new too-cool-for-school notion of reading what should be on web browsers as newsletters in email clients.

“More news, less junk. Faster.” Brent Simmons has just released the free and open source RSS reader NetNewsWire app for iOS. This may well be a visible dent in the universe.

In an interview with Kelly Gulmont on MacObserver, he says in an interview that one of the things he’s most proud of is that search is really fast (in a 20-minute podcast, this, remarkably, is the only bit of substance; I won’t be listening again).

There’s a review up at MacStories, “NetNewsWire for iOS and iPadOS Review: The Perfect Complement to the App’s macOS Counterpart” while Cult of Mac has “NetNewsWire is reborn on iOS”. Also 9to5Mac.

Monday, March 9th, 2020

WorldOMeter has a handy COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak page that’s updated regularly, sortable and filterable.

Friday, March 6th, 2020

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

♦♦♦♦♦

In one of those books where we see it’s perhaps more useful to be a doer who latterly writes than a professional writer, the author scaffolds a theory of success around his own respective failures and two giant successes: creating Apple’s Safari web browser for OS X and creating the iOS keyboard, no less.

We get to share the Eureka moments when these two significant dents in the universe came together. And the story of their creations serve as perfect illustrations of his theory, derived from Darwin’s.

Must-reading for many, surely.

Mythmaking Bardic Artistry. That’s the real MBA!

Venkatesh Rao

Monday, March 2nd, 2020

INSS responds to the Deal of the Century — they don’t like it, believing it to create more trouble than it solves. Instead they push for their own Strategic Framework for the Israeli-Palestinian Arena.

I think though they take this thing too seriously; surely it was only meant as a reframing, a shot across the bow to Palestinians that they better come to the table because the narrative they’ve constructed may not always be there.

Sunday, March 1st, 2020

Venkatesh Rao’s Into the Yakverse is just too disgustingly awesomely good. Think the tone of David Goldman’s visits to Cardinal Richelieu, along with the cynical wit of top Armando Iannucci satire, and the light momentum of an Eliyahu Goldratt business novel.

DesignBoom’s sauna page. This is just great work about great work about great living.

A great crowdsourced set of tips for improving the performance of a LAMP-stack web site/system. Some takeaways: 1) upgrade to the latest version of php 2) index mysql fields involved in joins 3) cache not to file or db but using memcache or redis.

A call to arms for gigworld: Towards Gigwork as a Folkway by Venkatesh Rao.

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of an Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

Brent Schlener and Rick Tetzell

♦♦♦♦

Although the simple thesis gets repeated interminably, nonetheless it’s a nice one: that Steve Jobs’s greatness stems muchly from his constant becoming, constant learning, constant trying to overcome himself (hence the title, which can be read as descriptive).

It’s great to be in his company, which you feel you are, as one of the authors was himself repeatedly so for decades.

One thing new to me was Pixar’s role in maturing Jobs; we don’t often read about who and what shaped the shaper.

Saturday, February 29th, 2020

Suspending the need for meaningfulness is exhausting!

Venkatesh Rao, The Price of Freedom

Friday, February 28th, 2020

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Peter Drucker

Data without generalization is just gossip.

Robert Pirsig, Lila

First one to get back to reality is the biggest sociopath in the room.

Venkatesh Rao, The Shtickbox Affair

In CSS-only fluid modular type scales, Trys Mudford lays out the code for letting type grow appropriately (and uses the Golden Ratio for the steps). Very nice!

And I love the applied musical modular scale, which I’d not seen before, one of those great things that in retrospect seem obvious.

I’ve been fumbling towards all this without stopping to actually systematize it as they’ve done. And they did it here in Brighton, at Clearleft. Kudos.

Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

My go-to type foundry Hoefler&Co have really stepped up their website game at typography.com, with a thrilling new typeface combination throughout of Idlewild for eyebrows and Ideal Sans for titles, and their rich How We Use Type feature for each font family.

The Verge today covered Fraidycat, a newsreader that shows not a list of posts but recently active individuals. See fraidyc.at. Nice to see that The Verge itself posts its RSS link pretty prominently, third after Facebook and Twitter.

Is RSS coming back?, a topic today at /r/webdev. According to the comments, a) it never went away, b) no.

Friday, February 21st, 2020

From Paul Graham’s essay “Having Kids”, December 2019:

I remember perfectly well what life was like before. Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the ability to take off for some other country at a moment’s notice. That was so great. Why did I never do that?

Thursday, February 20th, 2020

Mike and Rich of Red Letter Media do a re:View of Star Trek: Picard. I hadn’t articulated to myself why I chose not to watch beyond the first episode — they explain it. One criticism though: they mock the term positronic, seeming not to know it comes from Asimov’s robots.

Sunday, February 16th, 2020

Great thread: What do software engineers who work at a large scale understand that other developers don’t? at /r/programming.

Sunday, February 2nd, 2020

pleonasm

the use of more words or parts of words than are necessary or sufficient for clear expression

Since the media as well as the Democrats (pardon the pleonasm) clearly enjoy the spectacle of impeachment, I suggest that Barack Obama retroactively be impeached, not for anything as mealy-mouthed as “obstruction of Congress” but for aiding and abetting America’s enemies by shoveling billions of dollars to the Iranian mullahs.

Roger Kimball, “ ‘Walls Are Closing In’ on the Democrats”, American Greatness

irrefragable

irrefutable

I feel constrained to point out to [US Senator Chuck] Schumer that President Trump’s acquittal will have at least this irrefragable meaning: Donald J. Trump will still be president of the United States.

Roger Kimball, “ ‘Walls Are Closing In’ on the Democrats”, American Greatness

Monday, January 27th, 2020

The inaugural State of SaaS Report.

Sunday, January 26th, 2020

Two interestingly contrarian pieces in the Daily Mail by authorities in their respective fields: “Ja, we Germans are jealous of Brexit” by Alexander Von Schoenburg, editor-at-large of Bild; and “Why woke diets featuring superfoods such as avocado are leading to a surge of distressing gut problems” by Luci Daniels, former chairman of the British Dietetic Association.

Thursday, January 9th, 2020

“The Soleimani Killing: An Initial Assessment” [PDF], a study by Hillel Frisch, Eytan Gilboa, Gershon Hacohen, Doron Itzchakov, and Alexander Joffe at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

Friday, January 3rd, 2020

From “you can’t do anything” to “a severe revenge”: Khamenei fumes regarding “that guy” Trump as US kills Iran’s Al-Quds Force leader Soleimani in a missile attack at Baghdad Airport.

Tuesday, December 31st, 2019

In trying to improve the performance of an ExpressionEngine-powered web-based system, I came across the following database fields within MySQL query WHERE clauses that therefore should be indexed but aren’t:

  • exp_actions: class, method
  • exp_categories: cat_url_title
  • exp_ce_cache_tagged_items: item_id
  • exp_channels: channel_title
  • exp_channel_fields: field_name
  • exp_extensions: enabled, hook, priority
  • exp_fieldtypes: name
  • exp_members: in_authorlist, screen_name, username
  • exp_menu_items: sort
  • exp_modules: module_name
  • exp_playa_relationships: parent_is_draft
  • exp_plugins: is_typography_related

Every little helps.

In r/saltierthancrait and posted by u/yellowdawg299, In your opinion, who is the worst character in Star Wars?. Great stuff.

  • “I tell you what, if Rose had killed Leia in TROS and monologued about what idiots the Rebels were for buying her ‘save the people you love’ bullshit, I’d be dragging everyone I knew to the theatre.” —rothbard_anarchist
  • “Snoke continues to shrink in intrigue until he is in a fetal position in a jar.” —Wiffernubbin
  • “Replace Holdo with an emotionless machine that locks their escape behind a passcode/override that no one but Leia knows after the bridge destruction, and the story becomes more coherent since that’s a matter of procedure rather than a person making active decisions that contradict themselves and their own goals.” —Hylian-Highwind
  • “Jar Jar, because the others aren’t in Star Wars.” —JBlitzen

Etc, etc.

Saturday, December 21st, 2019

Smoother CSS shadows by Philipp Brumm. Simple; excellent. [via CSSTricks]

Wednesday, December 18th, 2019

Matt Layman’s handy Failed SaaS Postmortem — too much tech tinkering; I need to take heed. Plus it’s great he’s getting right back in the saddle.

“A proper understanding of biblical and rabbinic theology might identify a solution to Israel’s constitutional vacuum“. By Michael Wyschogrod in First Things [2010]

Counterintuitive arguments from the redoubtable Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that Boris’s ascension reduces the plausibility of Scottish secession from the UK.

 
 

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Newsroll ↻

A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.

experiments in refactored perception

  • Pandemic Dashboard: 2

    Flattening the Curve We’ve moved on from the innumeracy edition to the “spot the inflection” phase as bureaucrats everywhere try to solve for the flattening and claim success. PPE Shortages Now it looks like a bustling brokered market in N95 masks is seeing bureaucrats getting outbid by foreign buyers. Peter Navarro could have done one […]

  • Scorpio Season: A New Talk Show

    My friend Lisa (@niftynei) and I decided to start a talk show. It’s called Scorpio Season, since we’re both scorpios. You can subscribe to it as a podcast, or watch/listen it on YouTube. At the moment the video version is just the two of us as talking heads, but we might throw in some graphics […]

  • Pandemic Dashboard: 1

    I’m starting a new blogchain to track the COVID-19 pandemic, in a new, modular, block-based format. Each part will be a variable number of tweet-sized status assessments in titled blocks, coded red/green/yellow, like so: Flattening the Curve The innumeracy of the initial versions has given way to an appreciation of the actual level to which […]