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Briefs

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Arab Insanity Eroding

Wednesday, January 20th, 2021

What shame, to have tainted with one’s own madness such benevolent bodies as civil aviation, non-combatant status in war — even United Nations human rights bodies.

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

Even if a web site appears differently at different screen sizes, it should still feel like itself. On a larger canvas more expression abounds; distill this into the smaller screen and get more personality; 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)

Monday, September 25th, 2023

By the power of our example of the example of our power, either way… Walter Russell Mead towers over his lucky interlocutors on the Moment of Zen podcast.

Sunday, September 17th, 2023

British aviation legend Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown has died at 96.

When he went to receive an honor from King George VI, the reigning British monarch of the time reportedly said to Brown, “What, you again?”.

John Murawski writes about the climate movement at RealClearInvestigations, quoting many dissenters. One mild enough quote is from Vaclav Smil, environmental scientist and policy analyst at the University of Manitoba:

We live in this world of exaggerated promises and delusional pop science. People don’t appreciate the magnitude of the task and are setting up artificial deadlines which are unrealistic.

Saturday, September 16th, 2023

Tony Robbins hosts Jordan Peterson — it’s a bit of a humdinger.

Thursday, September 14th, 2023

Ivan Vendrov On Marl the Marginal User:

How is it possible that software gets worse, not better, over time, despite billions of dollars of R&D and rapid progress in tooling and AI? What evil force, more powerful than Innovation and Progress, is at work here?

In my six years at Google, I got to observe this force up close, relentlessly killing features users loved and eroding the last vestiges of creativity and agency from our products. I know this force well, and I hate it, but I do not yet know how to fight it. I call this force the Tyranny of the Marginal User.

Tuesday, September 12th, 2023

The World Climate Declaration: There is no climate emergency statement has been published by the Global Climate Intelligence Group and signed by 1609 scientists.

Two of the great rock performances, it seems to me: Prince on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Neil Young with Led Zeppelin.

Monday, September 11th, 2023

On this 22nd anniversary of 9/11, the worry that it succeeded.

A US-centric Hacker News discussion on domestic appliances, mainly dishwashers. The term “Miele” comes up here and there.

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

Nice Cosmopolitian piece: 10 Tiny Things He Hopes You Don’t Notice Him Doing During Sex by the spot-on Cosmo Frank.

Tuesday, September 5th, 2023

OK, stop this and get to work: more fun from Vulture: The Year of the Nepo Baby. Silly me, I did not know Josh Brolin’s mother is Barbra Streisand!

A little dip into top-flight gossip, this What Was Brangelina? article in Vulture.

Tuesday, August 29th, 2023

Marginal Revolution hosts a https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/08/does-america-or-france-have-better-food.html thread on the relative merits of food around the world, focusing on Europe and the US.

Sunday, August 20th, 2023

A nice thread at Hacker News on Shit Life Syndrome with a particular focus on British seaside towns.

Monday, August 14th, 2023

The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite

Michael Lind

♦♦♦♦

After realizing I am in complete agreement with whatever I’ve read by Michael Lind, I turned to his book The New Class War. Here Lind details how we got to the current dysfunction whereby the social order set in place after WW2 broke down during the 70s as a result of pressures from ideas from both the political left and right, leading to the majority losing power to the elites.

His fix is to reinstate democratic pluralism by re-establishing trade (guilds), local civic (wards) and religious (congregations) institutions and giving them power. But how to make that happen? Lind notes that historically only rivalry with another power has forced elites to re-enfranchise the majority, as it’s how to best marshal the nation to its fullest ability.

And indeed, there is something that might achieve this, a single issue around which the Left and Right, the majority and the elites, can agree on, which is that China must be contained.

Sunday, August 6th, 2023

I’ve seen the name Jonathan S. Tobin for years but this is my first time linking to something by him. Here he masterfully casts doubt on the good faith of the current talk of Israeli–Saudi peace. As persuasive as Tobin is in building his argument, there is perhaps a shortcut. If the Saudi paper in the drawer is anything to go by, then if the message is floated via Friedman it is not to set a policy direction but to show a road that might have been taken if only Israel make some worrying concession or other. It can be quite an office, that of New York Times columnist.

Once again I link to Brendan O’Neill, Chief Political Writer at Spiked, a publication that increasingly seems to me just about the only sane and brave outpost out there. “The climate witch trials”, an excerpt from O’Neill’s new book A Heretic’s Manifesto, ingeniously frames climate orthodoxy within medieval witch hunts. Towards the end, O’Neill laments:

Since the 1960s, the intellectual classes have been pondering the ‘social construction’ of scientific truth. The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann, was published way back in 1966. French philosopher Bruno Latour was fawned over on campuses across the West for his theories on ‘the social construction of scientific facts’. Feminist philosopher Judith Butler thinks even biological sex is a social construct. Meanwhile, the cry goes up to ‘decolonise the science curriculum’, to weave ‘Indigenous Witch-Finding knowledge’ — an equally valid way of knowing, apparently — into scientific discussion.

Everywhere science is picked apart, dismantled, relativised, often in a way that undermines the entire project of scientific inquiry and its important search for knowledge. But climate-change science is never socially deconstructed. It is sacralised, made utterly unimpeachable, put beyond the grubby questioning of both the layman and the expert.

At the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Eran Lerman has written a number of times of Israel’s burgeoning relationships with Greece and Cyprus. Happy happy days!

Saturday, August 5th, 2023

Israel will sell missile defense to Finland. May ties between these two successful small countries (both have their own tags on my site) deepen no end.

Friday, August 4th, 2023

I might as well start addressing my thoughts as my Michael Linds because they appear to be one and the same:

Most of what is called “progressivism” today is really transgressivism.

Michael Lind, The Culture of Transgression

Thursday, August 3rd, 2023

Oh my, Michael Lind writes in Tablet exactly what I’ve been thinking, so forgive the extensive quoting:

… The Western elite culture of transgression is an example of antinomianism … Derived from the Greek words meaning “against” and “law” or “norm,” the term antinomianism refers to the view that all laws and norms are oppressive always and everywhere, and that the act of transgression in itself is virtuous, if not holy.
…
The three saints of transgression are the illegal immigrant, the transsexual, and the woman who proudly celebrates abortion. All three are idealized by our revolutionary ruling class precisely because they violate traditional norms — the traditional norm of patriotism, based on the legitimacy of the city-state or nation-state or kingdom and its laws and borders; traditional gender norms; and traditional family norms, which celebrate the capacity of women to give birth and to nurture their infants and of men to provide for them. Most of what is called “progressivism” today is really transgressivism.
…
By now the antinomians in Western nations have won their war against tradition in every realm.
Having vandalized every premodern tradition, the elite antinomians of the modern West now don’t know what to do next. What should rebels against the bourgeoisie rebel against when the bourgeoisie has fallen?
The answer, it is increasingly apparent, is to rebel against the proletariat.
…
Whatever working-class “normies” believe and enjoy, the most influential tastemakers of the trans-Atlantic ruling class denounce and seek to ban, using one of their three or four specious all-purpose justifications. If non-college-educated Americans were to take up square dancing as a fad, the powers that be in the media and academia would solemnly inform us that square dancing is problematically racist or sexist or worsens climate change.

At the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Tony Badran provides bracing clarity on the Biden Administration’s inimical posture in Lebanon, fallout from the ongoing preposterousness that an accommodation can be reached with the horrendous Iranian mullahs.

Each time Hezbollah provokes, the U.S. reliably steps in to “mediate” between the terror group and Israel, with the goal of “stabilizing Lebanon.” Needless to say, the Israeli role is strictly to make concessions in the framework of a U.S.-brokered agreement, at the risk of displeasing its American patron. Hezbollah, meanwhile, knows that the structure of this Kabuki performance prohibits Israel from retaliating, making its provocations more or less risk-free — especially given the fact that the “Lebanese state” is a fiction.

When the Israel–Lebanon maritime deal went through, I thought: this will bring Bibi back to power; the average Israeli will correctly perceive the deal as a dangerous sell-out by Lapid and vote for no more of it.

At the Gatestone Institute by Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut, a tour de force survey of other nations while Israel suffers the calumny of being called a racist state.

Sunday, July 30th, 2023

Reverse Shot’s review by Vikram Murthi does justice to Asteroid City, which I acknowledge despite not much liking the movie, which does feel a churlish and scummy thing to say about such an exquisite work.

Thursday, July 27th, 2023

At Oshjosh, Boeing’s Wisk flies!

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

The increasingly invaluable Walter Russell Mead ventures beyond foreign policy:

As a grand hypothesis that claims to provide a single explanation for everything that happens in the heavens and on earth, the monotheistic idea is, for one thing, a daring leap that opens the door to a world of speculation and research—a path from tinkering to science. Postulating a single creator for the entire universe leads to the belief that the universe is predictable and rule driven. Events in the natural world are not just one darn thing after another; they do not reflect the caprices of minor deities. There are laws of nature, and because human beings are created by God—and in the Abrahamic religious accounts we were created in God’s image—most if not all of those rules should be discoverable by the human mind. The mathematical reasoning that we do in our heads corresponds with the mathematical structure that exists in the external world, and the experimental results we obtain in our labs here on earth can help us understand the nature of quasars at the far ends of the universe.

WRM says it so matter-of-factly, but it’s only conservatives who think this way; mainstream thought still adolescently pits religion in absolute tension with science.

Sunday, July 16th, 2023

“Amid all this madness it can be difficult to speak the truth about heatwaves. But we must try.” Brendan O’Neill hits it so well in “It’s a heatwave, not the end of the world”.

Saturday, July 15th, 2023

Glenn Loury and John McWhorter conduct a tour de force conversation on the affirmative action ruling.

Friday, July 14th, 2023

Some choice sentences from Paul Graham’s latest (and what looks to be his longest) essay, “How to Do Great Work”:

  • Always preserve excitingness.
  • Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could.
  • If you’re interested, you’re not astray.

The first of these needs no justification because it makes life fun; but if one falters and it does, the second does justify it; and the third meanwhile provides reassurance.

Dennis Prager laments the pandemic of adult children not speaking to their parents despite the Biblical commandment to honor them being no less than 5th on the list of 10, the first 3 being about God and the 4th about one’s own wellbeing, ie, Shabbat. Prager cites three primary causes for the affliction:

  • The ascent of the therapeutic mentality
  • Parental alienation … usually caused by one parent against the other during and/or after a divorce
  • Ideological … there are probably hundreds of thousands of parents who voted for Donald Trump who have a child who will not speak to them because of that vote

This parental cutoff is a particularly devastating aspect of post-Judeo-Christian morays and Prager performs a service by pointing it out.

Monday, July 10th, 2023

Via the international treasure that is Colossal, The Cut films 100 young Americans scream as loud as they can.

Friday, June 30th, 2023

Regarding Secret Invasion, Nick Fury knows his wife is a skrull yet believes Earth isn’t big enough for humans and skrulls. This does not seem a tenable moral position.

Tuesday, June 27th, 2023

Don’t fight anti-Semitism, rather, fuck ’em. This is the Global Jewish Future approach, which builds on tenets of Zionism: we work on ourselves chabibi not on others. I am so totally with this, and disappointed with myself for not realizing that my disdain for all the anti-Semitism decrying comes from this happy place.

Thursday, June 22nd, 2023

Veteran Jerusalem Post strategic affairs analyist Herb Keinon reminds us of the meaning Germany’s $4b purchase of Israel’s Arrow-3 system:

These sales are important to Israel for two main reasons. First, they strengthen bilateral ties. If Israel is providing a country with weapons that keep it safe, that country – for instance, Azerbaijan or India, which have emerged as key markets for Israeli arms – will relate to Israel in a fundamentally different way than if there were no arms sales in the relationship.

The second reason these sales are so critical for Israel is that they make it possible for the country to conduct the research and development to produce the weapons it needs for its own survival.

Spengler AKA David Goldman argues pretty persuasively that economic and demographic realities may force historic rivals India and China into alliance. That said, Goldman’s been such a Cassandra lately, you wonder if he’s almost not wishing for a bad outcome over China just to show he’s been correct.

Wednesday, June 21st, 2023

Jakob Nielsen has written a series of articles (8 so far) on UX in the age of AI. They are:

  1. AI Is First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years
  2. AI Vastly Improves Productivity for Business Users and Reduces Skill Gaps
  3. AI vs. Metaverse: Which Is the 5th Generation UI?
  4. UX Needs a Sense of Urgency About AI
  5. Prompt-Driven AI UX Hurts Usability
  6. ChatGPT Does Almost as Well as Human UX Researchers in a Case Study of Thematic Analysis
  7. How Much UX Do You Need for AI Projects?
  8. “Prompt Engineering” Showcases Poor Usability of Current Generative AI

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023

Sometimes a straightforward number cuts through all the crap. Research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Times of Israel blogger Hussain Abdul-Hussain notes that the populations of Arab minorities in Israel have grown just as the population at large has. “So much for “ethnic cleansing”,” he concludes.

Friday, June 16th, 2023

In spite of its beauty, Italy is a country of pessimists.

Edward Luttwak, The Berlusconi I Knew

Monday, June 12th, 2023

David Pogue on Apple’s VisionPro:

Its development was supposedly insanely expensive, internally contentious, and repeatedly delayed. But the result is so advanced and polished, it makes Meta’s VR headsets look like Blackberries.

My take on VisionPro: Tim Cook knew that the iPhone is near perfect for what it is, and Apple needs a whole new level of difficult to keep pushing the envelope technologically. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but I’ve just realized how many of my website’s categories this post is relevant to — a lot!

Contrast the tone of this Yahoo News article “Anti-LGBTQ backlash rattles US pride events” with every single one of the comments as far as I read, which was a few dozen.

Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

In “What’s your problem with Tailwind?” Chris Ferdinandi of Go Make Things articulates and illustrates why I’ve instinctively shied away from CSS frameworks:

It is faster during the prototyping phase… And then there inevitably comes a time where I need to update the style. Now, instead of just making a single change on a single class in a CSS file, I make a dozen little changes across numerous HTML elements scattered across many pages.

Basically, the styling code ends up being in the HTML, where it does not belong, rather than in the CSS, where it does.

At Why Svelte?, the homepage states “CSS is component-scoped by default” — the “by default” being the compliment vice pays to virtue. Because at the Github discussion on this issue (Ability to disable css scope across entire application #4764), Svelte Core Member/Maintainer @Conduitry, 2nd in commits only to founder Rich Harris, writes:

In general, using global CSS everywhere is something we want to steer people away from, and doesn’t feel like something we want to natively make easy or tacitly endorse.

The “C” in “CSS” stands for “cascading” yet the purpose of scoping CSS in components is to neuter that cascade. For the poster of this issue, Svelte’s stance was a dealbreaker, as it would be for me too. Scoped CSS components are the wussy option, which is fine and in many cases perhaps more viable, but the wussy option they should remain.

Sunday, June 4th, 2023

Interesting, seeing Ars Technica’s slant on Twitter’s handling of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman because, like most tech blogs, they lean establishment/woke, and I’d expect some pushback in the comments. But instead the comments are far more supportive of the movement (I’m trying to find a term to speak of it without speaking against it, but it objects to even being termed) than is the piece itself, and quite a few condemn the author and the publication for irresponsibly posting a link to the film. One gem by mikesmith (8y, 3,207 comments):

The next time a right-wing weirdo confidently declares that the definition of “woman” is inexorably linked to their genitalia ask them how many genitals they’ve personally inspected to be sure about it since they’re so confident.

Saturday, June 3rd, 2023

Hugh Howey, author of Wool, the book(s) behind Silo, writes:

I believe future historians will look back and recognize the 1950s or thereabout as the time that we should’ve instituted a universal basic income.

Science-fiction writers are best-positioned to have something worthwhile to say about society — though that’s perhaps a tautology; he’s not just supporting a policy, but speculating at which point in time it ideally should have been enacted!

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

In his Mr Smart Everyman way, John Gruber speaks to the eternal tags vs folders topic in this interview with the maker of a new Mac gmail client. I was shouting though to the JamBox, my BlueTooth speaker (OK no longer a Jawbone Jambox, rather a UE Boom 2, but I still call it the Jambox) that folders aren’t just for the technically weak; they are a specific type of tag and are nestable, something that tags traditionally are not.

Monday, May 29th, 2023

How much has Microsoft changed really? Well, they’re doing unexpected things, but maybe they always did that. Here’s something cool from CB Insights on the Microsoft underwater data center from December 2018:

In 2016, Microsoft’s cloud-related patent application activity was twice that of Amazon and nearly 6x more than Google.

One example is Microsoft’s 2016 patent application for an Artificial Reef Datacenter. The patent is an iteration of a 2014 patent filed by Microsoft for a Submerged Datacenter.

In both patents, Microsoft looks to submerge data centers at the bottom of the ocean, which will cool the infrastructure naturally. In the earlier patent, Microsoft also outlined the possibility of using oceanic wind turbines to power the underwater data centers.

Since these patents were originally filed, Microsoft has begun work on Project Natick, an underwater data center off the coast of Scotland. The submerged data center runs on 100% locally produced renewable electricity from on-shore wind and solar as well as off-shore tide and wave sources.

But is this a PR stunt? There’ve been no Project Natick updates since July 9th, 2020. I suspect they just wanted to show the way for someone else to bother with the hard work, whom M$ would subsequently bend to their will by being their biggest customer.

Saturday, May 27th, 2023

The tone of this litany of complaints by Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting author (and Orlando resident, I remember being told by a local taxi driver), reminds me of Victor Davis Hanson. I wonder on how many issue this ostensible leftist and rightist might actually agree.

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

Some choice sentences regarding theses privileged medievalists blocking the way.

Tuesday, April 25th, 2023

At The Ringer, Succession via the prism of Tom:

Along with a five-figure Patek Philippe watch, Tom delivers a joke to Logan: “It’s incredibly accurate. Every time you look at it, it tells you exactly how rich you are.” Unimpressed, Logan says, “That’s very funny. Did you rehearse that?” … While watching Macfadyen in that scene, [Adam] McKay recalls, [Jesse] Armstrong leaned over to him and said, “Well, I’m going to have to expand this character.”

 
 

•••

Newsroll ↻

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

experiments in refactored perception

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  • Worldly, Yet Carefree

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  • The Resourceful Life

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