2023s
This is what it’s like to spend your life in prison.
Listening to the men in the short Opinion Video above is like encountering visitors from another planet. They are serving life sentences at Angola prison, in rural Louisiana, with little to no hope for release. Many are elderly; they have not seen the outside world, or their families, for decades. They do not face execution, but they have been sentenced to death all the same, their lives spooling out endlessly on the cellblock and in the cotton fields, then ending in a prison hospice bed.
My essential and useful Obsidian plugins
A friend is getting started with Obsidian, making the switch from Evernote, and he asked me for recommendations on plugins—which ones I, personally, find most useful. Here’s my list:
Essential
Command Palette This is the main way I invoke commands in Obsidian. You type a keyboard shortcut (Command-P on my Mac) and a little text popup comes up. You start typing and Obsidian auto-suggests possible commands, until you quickly narrow down to what you’re looking for.
Command Palette is a core plugin. It comes with Obsidian. If you want to use it, just switch it on from the Preference settings in Obsidian. The same is true for all core plugins.
Slash Commands does the same thing as the Command Palette plugin, but you start by typing a slash into the text of your note. I often use this as an alternative to the Command Palette. (Core)
Quick Switcher. A palette for quickly finding files and documents. It’s similar to the Command Palette. The Quick Switcher is my primary way of navigating between Obsidian documents. The keyboard shortcut on Mac for that is Cmd-O. (Core.)
I’m in Obsidian all day when I’m working. Most of the time, I’m writing, but when I’m in Obsidian and not writing, most of the time I’m hitting Cmd-P or / to invoke a command, or Cmd-O to switch between documents.
Daily Note. For writing daily notes. (Core.)
Files. See the files and folders in your vault. (Core.)
Better Word Count. Obsidian comes with its own word counter plugin, but this one can count the words and characters in a text selection.
I see now that Better Word Count has a couple of useful settings I have not explored, like excluding comments from word counts, and counting pages in addition to words.
My work as a writer requires me to write to length, and Better Word Count is how I keep track of that.
Better Word Count is a community plugin. Community plug-ins are made by people in the Obsidian user community. To get Better Word Count, or any Community plugin, go open Obsidian preferences, go to the Community plugins section, and search for the plugin by name.
Pandoc Plugin. Export Markdown documents in a variety of formats. I use it to export documents to the DocX format, for sending to clients. (Community.)
Useful
Backlinks. Shows other documents that link to the current document. (Core)
Search. Searches the vault. (Core.)
Outline. Displays an outline of the document you’re working on. (Core.)
Page Preview. Hover over an internal link to view its content. (Core.)
Templates. For creating note templates. (Core.)
Auto Link Title. When you paste in a Web URL, this plugin automatically fetches the title of the page. Works almost all the time. (Community.)
Calendar. Displays a calendar. Useful for navigating between daily notes. (Community.)
Daily Notes Viewer. View your most recent daily notes in a single page. (Community.)
File Tree Alternative. Displays files and folders separately. (Community.)
Minimal Theme Settings. Customizing the look of the minimal theme. Also, Styles. (Community.)
Natural Language Dates. For example, typing @today enters the current date, @yesterday enters yesterday’s date, and so on. (Community.)
Typography. Automatically replace dumb quotes with smart quotes, three hyphens with an em dash, and so on. (Community.)
AidenLx’s Folder Note. Creates a note with the same name as a folder. You can use the folder note as an index to the folder, with notes about what’s in the folder. The folder note can either be inside the folder, or in the parent folder. (Community.)
That’s seven plugins in my “Essential” category, and 13 more in the “Useful” category. This level of complication might be holding Obsidian back from mainstream adoption.
On the other hand, this level of customizability is precisely what appeals to Obsidian’s core user base.
And there’s more:
Trying these out to see if they are useful
Properties. Manages custom metadata you can add to your file: Dates, descriptions, links, whatever you want. Uses YAML formatting, which is just plain text at the top of the file. Obsidian has supported YAML for a while, but previously you had to work with the plain text; Properties puts an easier to use and prettier face on it. (Core, currently available only to people in the Obsidian Catalyst early-access program.)
Tags. I’m experimenting with switching to a very tag-heavy organizational structure for my vault. Previously I used folders. (Core.)
Tag Wranger. Rename, merge, and search tags from the tag pane. You can also create tag pages—pages with the same name as your tag. (Community.)
DevonThink. Helps to pair Obsidian with the very sophisticated Apple-only DevonThink document and information management tool. (Community.)
Very useful to many people, but I’ve never found a need for them
Bookmarks. Saves files and searches as favorites. (Core.)
Workspaces. Save and restore workspaces layouts. Frequently used for displaying multiple notes on one screen. (Core.)
Dataview. Turns your vault of text documents into a database you can query. I lack the technical chops to use this plugin. (Community.)
Templater. A powerful alternative to the Templates core plugin. As with Dataview, this seems to require more technical chops than I have. (Community.)
Canvas and Graph View are core plugins you use to visualize relationships between notes. Graph View generates maps automatically, using the links between notes. Canvases are built manually, by dragging notes and cards on a two-dimensional surface. I am an extremely non-visual thinker, so I do not find these two plugins useful. At least not yet. Maybe one day.
I’m working on an article about Snowflake Inc. and trying to get in just the right amount of puns about snow and winter.
Yesterday afternoon, I went into the sunroom to lie down for a few minutes, and found that Minnie had peed all over the daybed in there. She had been extremely difficult to potty train when we first got her 10 years ago—many, many accidents for about the first 18 months we had her—but she hasn’t had an accident in years. She has been rock solid. But she broke that record yesterday. And boy this was a big one.
We keep a canvas cover on the daybed for just such accidents as these, and also because Minnie can be a high-energy dog at times and she goes in and out of the backyard all day and we want to keep the daybed clean and unshredded. The canvas cover was allegedly waterproof. It is not—not the least little bit. Minnie’s urine soaked through the canvas cover, and into the blankets and sheets.
So, no nap for me, and Julie cheerfully pitched in and took the lead on the clean-up for which I was and am grateful.
I brought the canvas cover out back and hung it on the fence and sprayed it down with Urine Destroyer (great product name) and hosed it down and went back inside. Around nine at night, I went out back to check to see if the canvas cover was dry, and on the way back to the house, I stepped in a big pile of dog poop. I was wearing the only shoes I have that I like to wear with shorts and no socks.
This morning, I went to let the dog out and looked for the key to the backdoor. A few days ago, I decided I didn’t like the place I usually keep the key, and put it somewhere else. I didn’t like that place either, so I put it in a different place. I didn’t like that place either, so I found a third place for it. And now I can’t find the key anymore.
And how is your week going so far?
Fortunately, we have had no repeats of indoor doggy accidents. And I found another pair of no-socks-shorts shoes that turn out to be quite comfortable and look better than the ones I had been wearing.
I started reading “Pursuit of the Pankera,” which is I think the only book by Robert A. Heinlein I have not read. I am enjoying it so far. I’m finding it a pleasant surprise.
The book was initially published in 1980, as “The Number of the Beast.” The first third of “Pankera” is the same as “Number,” and then they go off in different directions. They are two different novels with the same beginning, and many of the same characters throughout. “Pankera” disappeared for 40 years, and was finally published in 2020.
So far, I’m still in the first third, which is the same as “The Number of the Beast.”
I read “Number of the Beast” when it first came out. I was 19 years old. I was and am an avid Heinlein fan–he was and is my favorite writer by far.
“Number” was Heinlein’s first novel after a hiatus of six or seven years, nearly as long as I’d been reading real books (as opposed to children’s picture books). So the availability of “Number” was a big deal for me.
Like many fans, I found “Number” very disappointing.
Now I see something I managed to miss then: The book is an action-comedy. I think many critics missed that too. The situations and much of the dialogue are ridiculous, but they’re supposed to be. Their ridiculousness is not a failure of the book.
The Life I Never Intended to Love: Dog Owner. Katherine Bindley: “During the pandemic I chose a breed often compared to a velociraptor. It ruined my life–until I discovered that he’s the best dog who’s ever lived.” www.wsj.com/articles/…
I can absolutely relate. Minnie is a high-energy dog. She’s mellowed now, but in her first few years she ran us ragged. Even today, I walk her for more than 90 minutes a day and she’s ready for more. Many times when we get home from walks, she does zoomies just for the heck of it.
And she’s 10 years old. In dog years, that’s the same age as I am. I do not do zoomies.
Also, Minnie is a hybrid between a german shepherd and basenji. German shepherds are highly trainable, which is the reason why so many of them are working dogs. Basenji are among the most stubborn, hardest-to-train breeds. You might think that would even out and make Minnie average in trainability. But no, she swings wildly from one extreme to the other. Sometimes it seems like she can read my mind and does exactly what I want as soon as I think it. Other times we give her commands and she knows exactly what we want, and she says nope.
So yeah in several ways Minnie was a poor choice for us as sedentary first-time dog owners … but we would not part with her. There’s a lesson about life decisions in there.
The Criminal podcast: A Glamour and a Mystery.
In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken – and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century.
The girls' photos appeared to show them interacting with fairies: winged humans a few inches tall. Spiritualists worldwide, including Arthur Conan Doyle, were fascinated. More than a half-century later, one of the girls, now an old woman, admitted the thing was a hoax (although she said one of the five photos were real). She said the girls only intended to fool their family for a couple of hours.
The Cottingley Fairies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cott…
Related: The Fox Sisters were three sisters from Rochester, New York, who became worldwide celebrities when they claimed to be in communication with ghosts in 1848, launching the spiritualism movement. In later life, the Fox sisters said they made it all up. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_…
When posting memes, is it a good idea to put the text of the meme in the alt-text of the image? Can screenreaders read the text of a meme, if the text is in a simple, legible font?
Things I saw walking the dog this morning. I like the lines of that building, and the stone facade. There was a shopping cart in the way of the shot, so I moved it.
A surprising number of you seemed to enjoy the video of Minnie walking down stairs. Here is another.
You are Atlas. You hold up the sky. If no one is on this page, the sky will fall. youareatlas.com via waxy.org
The San Diego Human Relations Commission is a safe space for anti-semitism and transphobia. Or it was—the Human Relations Commission is losing humans, as three commissioners resign in protest over the bigotry. www.msn.com/en-us/new…
Things I saw walking this morning: That lawn has a lot going on. And Purple Snoopy does not live up to his publicity.
Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: 'The machines we have now are not conscious'
Chiang is the author of brilliant stories which explore themes of consciousness and free will, including “The Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the Hollywood movie “Arrival,” starring Amy Adams.
Chiang says machines learn language differently from human children, which leads journalist Madhumita Murgia to talk about how their “five-year-old has taken to inventing little one-line jokes, mostly puns, and testing them out on us. The anecdote makes [Chiang] animated.”
“Your daughter has heard jokes and found them funny. ChatGPT doesn’t find anything funny and it is not trying to be funny. There is a huge social component to what your daughter is doing,” he says.
Meanwhile ChatGPT isn’t “mentally rehearsing things in order to see if it can get a laugh out of you the next time you hang out together”.
…
… he asks me if I remember the Tom Hanks film Cast Away. On his island, Hanks has a volleyball called Wilson, his only companion, whom he loves. “I think that that is a more useful way to think about these systems,” he tells me. “It doesn’t diminish what Tom Hanks’ character feels about Wilson, because Wilson provided genuine comfort to him. But the thing is that . . . he is projecting on to a volleyball. There’s no one else in there.”
In the 1970s, a Soviet journalist named Valentin Zorin made a series of documentary films about the United States. At a time when few Russian journalists came to the U.S., Zorin traveled all across the country, and gained access few American journalists had. The Cold War was a battle of ideas, and Zorin saw himself on the front lines. He was on a quest to unmask the United States by spreading doubt, conspiracy theories, and a strange cocktail of truth and misinformation.
— Children of Zorin, on the Last Archive podcast www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/…