Plumshell:

Lately, I’ve been realizing the value of having something that excites me enough to jump out of bed for it. So, I’ve decided to fully immerse myself in whatever comes next, knowing that these enjoyable times might not last forever.

Here’s the thing: whether or not these obsessions lead to something useful in work or life isn’t the main point, although they often do. More importantly, as various monks and philosophers say, the greatest happiness for humans is to live in the moment.

Apparently, when humans have free time, they tend to stress over the past and future instead of focusing on the present.

Thus, those who discover a hobby they can deeply immerse themselves in are fortunate….

Walking the dog in the park this morning, I saw a runner wearing a Santa hat, a runner wearing a Christmas sweater, and a pack of bicyclists that included one wearing a rope of Christmas lights around his neck—the old-style, big teardrop-shaped lights.

Every once in a while, I pick up a call from an unidentified caller rather than letting it ring through. It’s almost always a telemarketer or other variety of scammer. And then I’m disappointed because I can’t think of a way to mess with them.

Maybe I should take improv classes?

BlueSky upgrade: Now you can see Profiles and posts on the web without logging in, and it also supports RSS feeds.

I want a single client for all the Twitter spinoffs: Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads all in one place. RSS and Tumblr too. This step by BlueSky is a step in the right direction.

How to draw irregularly shaped polygons, such as L-shaped boxes, using Excalidraw

This was a pain for me to figure out but once I got it figured it, it was simple.

Use the line tool. Instead of clicking and then dragging—which will draw a single line—click at the start of your shape, then click on the next corner, and then the next corner, and so on until you’re done.

To close the shape, your final click should be on the starting point. You can customize with the fill tool—if you do, then when you close the shape, you’ll automatically get a color fill.

Use the curved-line selection for wavy edges, and the straight-line selection for nice, straight edges.

If you don’t close the shape, you end up with a multi-point or wavy line instead.

Here’s a video that shows you how to use the line tool with clear written instructions in the extended caption.

I should illustrate this with screenshots but I need to move on now. Maybe another time.

Yet another example why YouTube instruction videos for software are evil and you should use written documentation instead

I needed to draw an L-shaped box for a diagram. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to draw it using Excalidraw. I found this YouTube video. I then had to figure out why the audio wouldn’t play. I had this problem yesterday and thought I had resolved it but I guess not.

After ten minutes of that, I tried a different video and the audio played just fine.

Aha, I said to myself—audio does not play because there is no audio.

I scrubbed back and forth in the video trying to figure out what they were doing. No luck.

Then I expanded the caption and discovered there are also detailed instructions in the caption. Hooray!

I fiddled for about two minutes and got a nice, L-shaped box.

That was easy! I declared to myself.

Conclusions:

  1. YouTube instructional videos for software are evil. Please, please, please just give me written documentation with diagrams, and maybe the occasional animated GIF to illustrate where to click and mouse around and so forth.
  2. That’s really weird usage of the word “easy.”

One of the things I absolutely adore about A Knight’s Tale is that it makes no pretense at historical accuracy anywhere within its length.

— John Scalzi

Another one for the to-rewatch list.

I think Democrats wake up every morning and they look at the calendar on the iPhone and it says January 6th. The date never changes. And then they get into an electric vehicle and go get an abortion.

— Kellyanne Conway

I like to have coffee first but otherwise can confirm.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’

Deborah Cohen at The Atlantic: IBM has a history of more than a century of innovation.

The company was the Watson family business for 60 years, and offered lifetime employment, though it’s recently been sued for age discrimination.

The System/360 mainframe, announced in 1964, was one of the greater products of the 20th Century, as important as the Model T. The System/360 introduced computing architecture that ran across a line of computers—some bigger and more powerful, and others smaller, meaning users could re-use their software between different models in a line.

The company’s technological accomplishments are still recognizable as the forerunners of the digital era, yet its culture of social responsibility—a focus on employees rather than shareholders, restraint in executive compensation, and investment in anti-poverty programs—proved a dead end. A mashup of progressivism and paternalism, communalism and cutthroat competition, the once ballyhooed “IBM Way” was, for better and worse, inextricably intertwined with the family at the top.

JULIE: “I’m going to try a new herb and rice.”
ME: “I don’t think I should be eating rice.”
JULIE: “Not rice. Spice. Urban spice.”
ME: “Oh, ok. Sounds good.” (pause) “What’s urban spice?”
JULIE: “Not urban spice. Herb. And. Spice.”

Julie, exhausted, fainted.

Threads is getting an API. This seems to be separate from ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to this being implemented—I haven’t been posting to Threads as much as I do elsewhere, because doing it manually is inconvenient . @manton, have you seen this?

We went to the San Diego Natural History Museum Sunday, which proved to be a personal milestone for me—my first time receiving a senior discount.

My chagrin at having the word “senior” applied to me was offset by getting a discount. So, um, yay I guess?

RIP Luiz Barroso, who pioneered the modern data center for Google and made the modern internet possible. Until Barroso, data centers were populated by enormously powerful and expensive computer servers. Barroso instead used massive numbers of relatively inexpensive, disposable machines.

“… we must treat the data center itself as one massive warehouse-scale computer,” Barroso said.

Barroso was one of those immigrants that Republicans say are vermin polluting America’s blood.

Sivraj and Me. Phil Gomes created a personal AI advisor using GPT Builder, with a sarcastic personality based on Jarvis from the Iron Man movies.

This is brilliant. I’m going to try something like it.

Humans are a basically civilized species. We know not to go barefoot in restaurants, treat our friends’ living rooms like landfills or nap on the shoulder of our office cubicle mate. And yet, as soon as we step inside an airport or onto a plane, our manners seem to vanish. Perhaps it’s the delirium of travel or the belief that everyday rules do not apply to vacations, much like calories don’t count on holiday and foreign currencies aren’t real money. Or maybe there has never been a canon for proper passenger behavior — until now.

— The 52 definitive rules of flying

John Scalzi has a delightful short essay on “Die Hard," a movie that works so well because of its wonderful cast. Even small parts get their moments to shine.

And of course “Die Hard” created thousands of variations and ripoffs. My favorite “Die Hard” variation is “Paul Blart, Mall Cop.” The way I remember it (it’s been a few years), Paul Blart is a hero–and he was a hero all along: Courageous, loyal, and ingenious.

Thankfully, Scalzi spends only a little time on the question of whether DH was a Christmas movie. That was a good joke the first year it came up but enough already. Sometimes the Internet can be like a four-year-old that just wants to keep telling the same knock-knock joke over and over and over and over…..

Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon in the last scene of The Gilded Age. Oh boy.

Merry Christmas from these grizzly bears at the Natural History Museum at Balboa Park.

Jason Snell @jsnell@zeppelin.flights makes the case for clipboard managers—software that saves a history of what you copy to your clipboard.

I find clipboard managers to be essential. The lack of a clipboard manager on the iPad is a big reason why I find it difficult getting real work done on those tablets.

My earliest memory of using a clipboard manager was the late 1980s. 35+ years later, a clipboard manager should be standard on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Instead, it’s a third-party add-on for the Mac and you can’t get one at all on the iPad and iPhone.

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: How the NYPD defeated bodycams. “NYPD leadership were accountability’s adversaries, not its partners.”

Police control bodycams in New York—as they do in other cities, including Minneapolis (site of the George Floyd murder); Montgomery, Ala.; Memphis—and they use that control to protect murderous, brutal cops.

Bodycams could be a source of accountability for cops, but for that to be true, control over bodycams would have to vest with institutions that want to improve policing. If control over bodycams is given to institutions that want to shield cops from accountability, that’s exactly what will happen.

And it’s exactly what does happen.

I bought supermarket coffee beans yesterday—and like them. My status as a coffee snob is in grave danger.

At the supermarket today I was in line at the cash register behind a rotund voluble middle-aged gentleman who chatted up not one but TWO middle-aged women, also in line. He laughed “HURH HURH HURH” with every sentence. A real John Candy “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” vibe.

I also saw another gentleman, sinewy build, with leathery skin, wearing plaid shorts, a sweatshirt, a leather tyrolean hat and a small knapsack on his back. His clothes were weathered and so was he. It was a good look.

Apple buried the setting in WatchOS 10.2 for re-activating swiping to change watchfaces. You need to go into the Settings app, and then Clock -> Swipe to Switch Watch Face. And you need to do it on the Watch itself, not in the Watch app on the phone.

I’m glad to see work is continuing on ActivityPub support in Tumblr (here’s a statement on Tumblr from CEO Matt Mullenweg), and also not surprised to find there isn’t much interest in WordPress ActivityPub support.

Most people who want something with ActivityPub support just go to Mastodon. At least for now.

We brought Minnie in for a good dog wash for the first time in too long. We tried a new place. They did a good job, but they used perfumed shampoo on her, and now my office, where she sleeps at night, smells like a New Orleans whorehouse.

Bruce Schneier: It’s easy to think of generative AI as a friend rather than a service, making us vulnerable to profit-seeking corporations. “AI models, controlled by large corporations, inherently prioritize profit over ethics.”

We have seen ”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and I have thoughts

It was very enjoyable. I see fans ranking it as third of the five Indy movies. I’ll go with that.

They did a great job de-aging Harrison Ford for the opening sequence. Apparently this was a result of skilled direction as much a CGI; I noted they cut the camera away from Indy when he was about to do something too athletic, and then cut back to him when the athletic thing was complete. Often, action featuring Indy was shot from the rear.

This quick-cutting was also done in scenes where 1969-Indy is being athletic. For example, in the scene where Indy steals a police horse, we see him standing next to the horse, then we see him on the horse, but we don’t see him getting on the horse. Presumably octogenarian Harrison Ford understandably had a little trouble there.

Still, Ford is in fantastic shape for an 80-year-old. He’s in good shape for any age.

When we watched the second “Ant-Man” movie, where they de-aged Michael Douglas for flashback scenes, I noticed that Douglas looked young, but moved like an older man, a little stiff, like his joints bothered him. Ford doesn’t have that stiffness.

In another instance of casting an older man in an action movie: The 1996 “The Rock” starred Sean Connery, then 66 years old. I noted at the time that the camera cut away whenever the action called for Connery to run.

They had the right amount of pathos at the beginning. A friend who works in Hollywood said Hollywood writers eventually come to hate their characters, and start to torture them, which often makes long-running TV shows hard to watch. Similarly, at least one of the Tobe Maguire Spider-Man sequels was a downer, featuring depressed Peter Parker. “Dial of Destiny” could have gone that way, as we open the 1969 sequence with washed-up sad lonely Indiana Jones. But the movie spent just the right amount of time on that bit, before launching into the action, where Indy perks up.

They had the right amount of fanservice. Sometimes it seems like you need to take a college class to appreciate the Marvel movies, or Star Trek, or Doctor Who, what with all the references to events and characters from previous movies and TV. “Dial of Destiny” had just the right amount of that kind of thing. Hey, it’s John Rhys Davies, and there’s Indy’s fedora, bullwhip and leather jacket. Cool.

Harrison Ford does a great oh-shit face. I feel like this is a formula in every Indiana Jones movie. Indy does something swashbuckly and sneers at his enemies. He enjoys the triumph for a moment and then realizes he’s badly outnumbered and outgunned. Oh, shit.

I was surprised by character development and feelings at the end. Didn’t expect quite so much heart.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge almost stole the movie. And stealing an Indiana Jones movie from Harrison Ford is something. I could absolutely watch a series of Indiana Jones sequels featuring Waller-Bridge. There’d be a scene at the beginning of each movie where her character consults with Indiana Jones for a few minutes, but that would be the extent of Indy’s involvement in the movie.

I could also watch a series of movies featuring Archimedes as Bronze Age Indiana Jones. I don’t think the ancient Greeks or Romans had giant arrows that could be used to shoot down fighter planes. I don’t think they had much in the way of artillery at all, unless you count catapults as artillery. Did they even have catapults? Idk. But the Ancient Greece bits were fun.

The movie did a great job recreating 1969 New York. I grew up on Long Island, and spent time in New York in in the mid-late 1970s, and it was like that.

Jim Geraghty at National Review: “Hunter Biden’s entire life, so far, has been a bold, defiant, shameless declaration that laws are for the little people, not for the Bidens.”

I will gladly support Joe Biden against any plausible Republican candidate. I think he’s done a pretty good job as President. Not great, but pretty good.

However, let’s not kid ourselves: If Hunter Biden came from a different family, he’d be doing prison time by now. And it remains to be seen how much Joe Biden knew.

Everyone and everything is pissing me off today.

Not you. You’re awesome.

Back to Reddit

After a recent discussion with friendly fellow journalists, I started using Reddit again. I’d dumped Reddit after the whole dustup this summer between the Reddit CEO and the developer of the Apollo client. It left me feeling like the CEO was a petty jerk, and I didn’t want to support him.

But after Friday I decided to give Reddit another try, and I find I like the discussion there. And call me a sucker but I like watching the karma points rack up.

And it’s a good opportunity to promote articles.

But I miss Apollo. Reddit is barely usable on the iPhone and iPad without Apollo.

On a private discussion group, a friend asked what we use to clean our computer screens. I said I cover mine with peanut butter and let the dog lick them clean. I enjoy opportunities like that to share my deep technical knowledge with the less-informed.

I’m trying the Spark email app for Mac and iPhone. Impressive but confusing.

Lucid dream startup says you can work in your sleep.

Despite the linkbait headline, the article itself is very interesting and goes into claims by the startup that they’ve created technology to induce lucid dreaming at will.

What would be the ramifications of something like that, where most people were able to lucid dream at will? Would it be like the movie “Inception?”

Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems are finding and promoting blatant pedophilia

WSJ: Meta Is Struggling to Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook and Instagram

The headline and deck on this article are too kind to Meta. The companies do not seem to be “struggling” to get rid of this content. They don’t seem to be trying very hard at all.

More from Casey Newton (paid sub required I think) who points out the difference between “Internet problems” and “platform problems.” “Internet problems” arise from the fact that we live in a world where evil exists, and will inevitably find its way onto the Internet. “Platform problems” are unique to a particular platform.

Pedophilia content on Meta platforms isn’t an Internet problem. Facebook and Instagram are actively promoting that content to pedophiles.

I’m not feeling good about being on Facebook right now.

“Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.”

The number of supercentenarians in an area tends to fall dramatically about 100 years after accurate birth records are introduced.

Ukrainian defenders print out giant 1:1 life-size aerial photographs of damaged airfields. Once the site is repaired, they hang the images over the sites so they look damaged and not worth attacking again.

and 49 other things Tom Whitwell learned in 2023

I’m going back to cross-posting from mitchw.blog to @mitchw@mastodon.social. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse (of course), but it’s not one with the fediverse.

This system may need further adjusting later today or this week, and almost certainly need adjusting in the near term as the fediverse evolves.

“I reversed my type 2 diabetes. Here’s how I did it”

Neil Barsky at The Guardian:

One gray Sunday in the middle of the Covid lockdown, I received an unwelcome call from my family doctor. Until then, for virtually my entire life, I had managed to stay out of a doctor’s office, except for routine checkups. My luck had run out.

“I am sorry to disturb you on a weekend,” she said. “But your tests just came back and your blood sugar levels are alarming. I am pretty sure you have diabetes.”

Barsky controls his diabetes with lifestyle changes.

I did the same more than 10 years ago—diet, exercise, and losing 100 pounds of weight.

My diet is different than Barsky’s. I do eat carbs—pizza on Fridays, plenty of fruit every day, and 4-6 cookies as a bedtime snack.

But I eat a lot less carbs than I did in my pre-diabetes life.

I rarely eat sandwiches anymore, or potatoes, nachos and other chips, or rice.

I almost never have a burrito anymore, even though I live in a Mexican-food capital of America,

I do miss that Mexican food.

I question the advice that the author initially got from his doctor. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, 20 years ago, my doctor told me that both lifestyle changes and medication were the answer to managing the disease. Barsky’s doctor seemed to brush off lifestyle changes and focus just on meds.

Notes toward a theory of the Dad Thriller

Max Read:

.. you know the kind of movies I’m talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. … Movies that dads like. I love these movies pretty unreservedly and only somewhat ironically.

This essay starts great and just gets better.

I have seen most of these movies and enjoyed every one. These are the only movies I need to see for the rest of my life.

The way we live in the United States is not normal.

Kirsten Powers:

I began to notice a learned helplessness in the United States, where people don’t revolt at the notion of a college education costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wondered why so many people treat it as completely normal that we have GoFundMe campaigns to help people pay for life-saving medical care that their health insurance won’t cover.

I watched as people on social media claimed it was “pro-labor” to tip a person for ringing up your order at a food or coffee chain rather than demanding the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) owner of that company pay their employees a living wage (as is the norm in Europe, where tipping is not expected and the owners of the restaurants and stores are typically not among the uber-wealthy).

I realized there are other places in the world (not just Italy) where life isn’t about conspicuous consumption and ‘crushing’ and ‘killing’ your life goals, where people aren’t drowning in debt just to pay for basic life necessities. There are places where people have free time and where that free time is used to do things they love — not to start a side hustle.

Ends on a hopeful note. The United States can—and should—do better.

Raycast has a new feature where you can activate your Mac camera and look at yourself before jumping on a video call. I tried it out as soon as I got to my desk this morning, before having my first sip of coffee. That was a mistake.

So it begins. My Tumblr blog, formerly known as “Atomic Robot Live,” is now “Mitchipedia.” Now to discover the inevitable breakage! Let the wild rumpus of error messages begin!

Hollywood Goes Home: How Celebrity Endorsements Are Helping Dems Win Down Ballot. “In towns across the nation, there is _that _person — the kid who made it big, starred in some movies, became an action hero, maybe even won some awards. What if that person told you about an upcoming local election? Or a candidate who you should consider supporting? They are famous, sure, but they are more than that: They are _your town’s _famous person, someone with local credibility because they know what it’s like to grow up where you did. That’s the theory behind The Hometown Project, an progressive effort that looks to pair celebrities with candidates for state legislature, school board, or other local offices from the areas they grew up in.”

I will gladly endorse any Democrat running for office in my home town of East Northport, N.Y.

I’m having a couple of mandarin oranges with lunch. They’ve been sitting around the house a while. I think I will use the remaining fruits as billiard balls.

I recently discovered the power of not having opinions about things. Was Henry Kissinger a war criminal whose death we should celebrate? I don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll learn some things about him and come up with some conclusions. I have other things to do right now.

I registered the domain mitchipedia.org and now I love it so much I’m thinking about going to the hassle of changing alllllllll my social media accounts and my blog domain to that.

Before I upgraded to Sonoma I heard people saying the screensavers were great and I thought that was ridiculous. How great can screen savers be, I thought. But damn those are nice screensavers.