Author: Chris G Page 3 of 77

not donating directly to any campaigns this year. instead I’m going to give to organizations that have been working for progress year in & year out – and will continue working after election day. I really like Movement Voter Project for this

(& as they say: early money goes further)

The Onion: Italian Immigrants Shopping In U.S. Grocery Stores Announce These Tomatoes No Good

“I eat this, I die by poison. This the trash section, no? You can take me to real grocery store in your car? I send my mother picture, it make her weep.”

another example of what a user-hostile wasteland Amazon is: sellers trying (and failing!) to use AI-generated product names (though that “I’m Unable to Assist with This Request it goes Against OpenAI use Policy and Encourages Unethical Behavior-Black” does look nice…)

lots of skepticism about the Apple Vision Pro. I think it looks cool (figuratively); who knows? maybe it’s a dud. but as to that $3.5k price, see the Mac Pro, starting at twice that ($7k), or the Pro Display XDR, $5k “standard glass”; $6k for “nano-texture glass”. this ain’t Gateway, folks 🐄

The Guardian: World’s five richest men double their money as poorest get poorer

the combined wealth of the top five richest people in the world – Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg – have increased by $464bn, or 114%. Over the same period, the total wealth of the poorest 4.77 billion people – making up 60% of the world population – has declined by 0.2% in real terms.

from NYT Magazine: The Secret History of Women in Coding (2019). fascinating & infuriating. hit the next person you hear blathering on about meritocracy over the head with this

But if biology were the reason so few women are in coding, it would be impossible to explain why women were so prominent in the early years of programming, when the work could be, if anything, far harder than today. It was an uncharted new field, in which you had to do math in binary and hexadecimal formats, and there were no helpful internet forums, no Google to query, for assistance with your bug

was getting frustrated trying to figure out how to summon the “global micropost” dialog in MarsEdit… then finally realized two things: that’s a 5.x feature, and I hadn’t upgraded from 4. fixed!

…unfortunately I can’t set default type or categories, so I probably won’t use that feature much after all

sometimes The Onion just cracks me up: Potholes In Nice Part Of Town Filled With Italian Marble

Saturday’s beer: Gigantic Brewing’s Most Most Premium Russia Imperial Stout
⭐️⭐️⭐️
another from Mike’s basement stash, a little flat (not sure what year it’s from) but tasty nonetheless 🍺

#lifehacks

The Guardian answers: how problematic is mineral mining for electric cars?

The data we have leaves little doubt that resource extraction will be significantly lower for electric cars compared with their petrol or diesel equivalents as recycling increases.

also:

“[Human rights] problems have always existed in mining,” [Amnesty International’s] Dummett said. “I strongly believe that this problem has been exaggerated hugely by opponents of the energy transition, the fossil fuel lobby.”

these concerns sounded like big downsides of EVs; glad to learn they’ve been overblown

via @chipotle – good, well-considered post from the Duke University Libraries: Why We’re Dropping Basecamp

We are not in the habit of running “ideological enforcement” to ensure “quick compliance” from beleaguered corporate executives or whatever it is that [DHH is] talking about in his posts. We simply have our own opinions and our own blogs, and in some cases, we have good choices available to us regarding the companies to which we give our business.

I made a thing: txt2mary, “A Twilio-to-Micro.blog-(and-Twitter) server”

This app is a special-purpose server that accepts SMS text-messages, via webhook calls from Twilio, and posts those messages to Micro.blog (and Twitter (reluctantly 🤢))

p.s. still enjoying Go

Saturday’s beer: Goose Island Brewing’s Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout ​(2017)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
you can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant… though maybe not a beer as silky & strong as this (another one from Mike’s basement stash) 🍺

ok, this is pretty funny: Scomo

we’re leveling the playing field and upholding the Supreme Court’s proud tradition of accepting ethically questionable financial influence. Now, you too can bribe Clarence Thomas just like the billionaires, CEOs, & lawyers with pending cases before the court

just starting it, but the newest Atlantic (Dec. ’23) is really something. it focuses almost entirely on Reconstruction, including an annotated reprint of an 1866 article by Frederick Douglass, & an actual, full play, printed on different paper in the center of the magazine. print ftw

a few of my officemates

looking for a Bluesky invite if anyone has extras piling up 🙏

happy 10th anniversary to An Unicks Bestiary! this comic, medieval-themed collection of *nix tips interspersed with actual illuminated images & real text from 12th-century manuscripts is almost as popular now as it was when I first made it (i.e., not at all)

the amazing UX work continues over at Amazon dot com

I’m intrigued by this new print-only newspaper and wish it all success. I would like to point out, though, that if you find “the printed page an immersive experience without constant distractions” (which I do!), and although they are also online, print magazines do also still exist!

Jen Myers: It’s Not Okay to Start Late

Now when you make art, you can put the whole of your beautifully, painfully created selves into it, and it will be something unprecedented and vital. It’s not “okay” that you started late. It’s powerful.