Jeff Huang: My productivity app is a single .txt file
One file to track to-dos and have-dones.
Aaron Sorkin on his new play based on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The West Wing,” “Studio 60,” and how he’d write the 2020 Democratic primary.
How Facebook has become one of the least trusted and most profitable companies in the world.
Tech journalist Steven Levy, talks about the company’s history on Fresh Air. He’s got a new book out, “Facebook: The Inside Story,” based on interviews with Zuckerberg, other top current and former Facebook execs – some of whom share their misgivings about the company – and Facebook critics.
I’m hooked on Facebook, yet I have strong misgivings about it. Living in the world requires compromising principles, and some of those compromises are appalling. And yet every day I wonder whether using Facebook is a compromise too far.
Herod Agrippa is the Lando Calrissian of “I, Claudius.”
On the I, Podius podcast: maximumfun.org/episodes/…
Super Tuesday, Explained: I listened to this entire podcast episode and I’m still confused. Short version: Lots of states have their Democratic primaries today so it’s a really big deal.
The true story behind "You've Got Mail:" The movie was based on a real conflict between a New York Barnes & Noble and a local children's bookstore.
At that time, B&N was the big bad soul-crushing superstore chain killing indy Mom-and-Pop bookstores.
Later, Amazon beat down Barnes & Noble. Yes, the same technology that brought the characters of “You’ve Got Mail” together flattened B&N.
On the Decoder Ring podcast: slate.com/transcrip…
The reality is even more complicated than Decoder Ring portrays. B&N and Borders brought books by the tens of thousands to places that were previously bookstore deserts. Pre-B&N, if you grew up in the suburbs, as I did, or in rural America, your bookstore options were a few sad B. Dalton and Waldenbooks in malls, and that’s it, unless you shlepped into a major metropolitan area.
As a teen and into my 20s, I used to love to go to the mall to browse the four shelves of science fiction and fantasy books at the local bookstores. The B&N SF/F section was bigger than the entire previous bookstore.
And a number of factors, not just the Internet, contribute to retail decline: Retail space was overextended, retail chains engaged in fancy financial hijinks. And consumers just don’t view shopping as a recreational activity as much as they used to.
Today I voted, and spent a good chunk of time updating the local Democratic Club website and social media. Also did some publicity for the next meeting, which is Wednesday. Details here:
www.lamesafoothillsdemocraticclub.org/post/meet…
I highly recommend volunteering for politics – local politics – as an alternative to arguing about it, on social media or elsewhere. Arguing politics makes you bitter. Volunteering is far more productive – and it’s fun.
Cory Doctorow’s got a new blog. It’s Pluralistic.net.
It’s his usual mix of cyber-rights, science fiction and retro pop culture. Interestingly, he’s doing it as a daily digest rather than a series of individual posts. I like it.
The design is minimalist. No HTML, not even hrefs. I’m trying out the no-hrefs look here to see how I like it.
Cory and Dave Winer are my blogfathers; when I’m fiddling with an idea, it’s often because I saw one of them do it. Mike Elgan and Jon Gruber are former blogfathers. I’m still fans of both, but their blogging direction is different from mine now.
I don’t have plans to adopt a daily digest format. It doesn’t fit my blogging habits, which are random minutes throughout the day.
Cory’s tagline for Pluralistic.net: “Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don’t collect or retain any data at all ever period.”
Pluralistic.net is both a blog and a newsletter. Subscribe here.
Newsletters are making a comeback.
I have a newsletter too. I have had it for six years. It’s a daily digest of everything I post here. Subscribe here:
“Flarn” is a great domain name.
Everybody agrees that social media needs to suppress harmful content while promoting good content, but nobody can agree on what falls into which category. Many people are not acting in good faith, and will knowingly claim that bad content which should be suppressed is actually good.
None of this seems particularly insightful to me, but public policy discussions about social media tend to assume that there is some good faith arbiter somewhere who can absolutely separate good from evil.
That’s one of the reasons why the big social media platforms need to be broken up to eliminate their monopoly powers. Because that kind of power should not be centralized. This is a very old, solved problem; it’s why we have free speech.
What Happened to the Company That Raised Minimum Wage to $70k/yr?
Business is better than ever.
But will the carriers just look at this as a slap on the wrist?
Yesterday I did my 3+-mile walk with the dog through a residential neighborhood up at the end of Lake Murray Blvd. No access to bathrooms. After I’d gone about 1/10 of a mile, I thought, “I think I may need to pee now.”
Later, I grew more certain. It was like the end of the Titanic by the time I got home. You may have even heard me exclaim “AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”
We did pass a port-a-potty somebody had out at the curb while they were remodeling. I got in. Minnie refused to get in with me. And the port-a-potty was wobbling. “This will not end well,” I said to myself, so I did not use it.
Also, it started to rain heavily when we were about halfway out. I did not bring my raingear because rain was not predicted for several hours after that.
Radio station ad via
California Legislature’s Battle Over ‘Gig Economy’ Shows No Sign of Ending
AB5 was intended to stop companies like Uber and Lyft from misclassifying employees as contract workers, depriving them of legally mandated benefits. Instead, it’s misclassifying legitimate contractors as employees, and depriving large numbers of people of their livelihood.
The unions and the author of the bill, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a San Diego Democrat, gave exemptions to a few categories of work. But it’s drawn criticism from artists, photographers, dancers, musicians, journalists and many other freelance workers who say it has damaged their incomes because employers shied away from giving them non-payroll work.
It’s also created great uncertainty on how it might be applied to whole industries. Could, for example, owners of fast-food restaurant franchises be considered employees of the parent franchising corporations?
The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford: Mark Twain’s Marginalia: Most of Mark Twain’s books have handwritten notes in the margins.
The Oxford English Dictionary is adding Nigerian words, which is proving controversial with some scholars. Interestingly, opponents include Nigerians.
The BBC’s Nduka Orjinmo writes from Lagos.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle = The Breakfast Club.
There’s an Entire Industry Dedicated to Making Foods Crispy, and It Is WILD - Alex Beggs at Bon Appétit
Jason Kottke spent three weeks in Asia, including extended visits to Saigon and Singapore and 24 hours in Dubai.
As promised by Kottke, this essay is relatively long, but it’s a fast, enjoyable read.
He advises taking a food tour on your first visit to a new city. That’s a great idea!
My superpower is taking an extra day on a business trip to anyplace I haven’t been often, and seeing the sites. I often just take on-off bus tours for a good part of the day. A food tour sounds like another great option.
I anticipate significantly less business travel in the future, but still a lot compared with most people. And visiting a strange city is definitely a plus. Even if it doesn’t sound like a glamorous place to visit – if I have never been there before, it’s a plus to me. I spent an excellent day on my own in Dusseldorf a few years ago.
Kottke correctly identifies the pluses and minuses of solo travel. The pluses are, of course, freedom. The minus is that it can be damn lonely sometimes. Last year after Mobile World Congress, I stayed an extra day in Barcelona and got excruciatingly lonely and depressed, and ended up dialing in to the Friday news meeting, which was 5 pm local time, just to hear friendly voices.
Here’s one of Kottke’s impressions of Saigon:
Because of the motorbikes, the process for crossing the street on foot in Saigon is different than in a lot of other places. You basically just wait for any buses (which will absolutely not stop for pedestrians) or cars to go by and then slowly wade out into traffic. Do not make any sudden movements and for god sake don’t run. The motorbike swarm will magically flow around you. It’s suuuuuper unnerving the first few times you do it, but you soon get used to it because the alternative is never ever getting across the street.
The motorbikes make walking around Saigon absolutely exhausting. It’s not just crossing the street. You literally have to be on the lookout for them everywhere. They drive up on the sidewalks. They drive into and out of houses and buildings, turning every doorway into a potential intersection. Having to look both ways every few seconds when you’re walking 6 or 8 miles a day around the city really drains the ol’ attention reserves.
Things I saw carried on motorbikes in Saigon, a non-exhaustive list: trees, dogs, tiny babies, ice (for delivery to a drinks cart, the ice block was not even strapped down), a family of five, a dessert cart, an entire toy store, a dried squid shop, and 8 huge bags of clams.
The food in Saigon and Singapore sounds wonderful.
Kottke: The secret of enduring Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) during a long winter is just roll with it. Learn to enjoy the long nights and cold weather.
Relevant to me personally because Julie and I often talk about moving to Columbus, Ohio, where she grew up and where she has family. I’ve been there more than a dozen times and I like it but oh, those winters.
Funny thing, for most of my life I was an indoor mole, but in the past dozen years, since I started getting fit, I’ve gotten used to spending extended periods outside every day.
I like San Diego. I like the weather.
But the cost of living here is prohibitive. So much less expensive in Columbus.
Renowned Mathematician And Physicist Freeman Dyson Has Died At Age 96
His daughter Mia Dyson, a nurse and pastor who lives in Freeport Maine, says she fondly remembers her father being stumped by practical things, such as how to operate a soda machine, while contemplating the brilliance of the universe.
“Age of Treason” was a 1993 TV movie about Marcus Didio Falco, a threadbare private investigator working the mean streets of Rome, 2000 years ago.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I read and enjoyed several of the novels, by Lindsay Davies, that the movie is based on.
Bailing on Afghanistan will be a disaster but staying will be worse. 20 years of the War on Terror has gone a long way to destroying America. We still have ample time to recover. Getting out of Afghanistan is the first step.
Now. Just go.
On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years – Min Jin Lee: A moving essay about an ex-attorney’s 11-year struggle to get her first novel published while dealing with financial difficulties, raising a child, helping her extended family and grappling with health crises.
Underscores my belief that creative writing programs are a scam.
The last time Elyse saw her father was at her college graduation. They’d been close growing up, but then he disappeared, other than a few short emails every year. She learned he moved from their home in Tennessee to the Philippines, where he started a new family, including a daughter he named Elyse.
Sansar, Linden Labs' follow-up to Second Life, was a victim of VR hype & failure to learn from SL mistakes – Wagner James Au
See Newly Digitized, "Super Detailed" Photos Of Old Greenwich Village
The turn of 20th century found Greenwich Village in the midst of a transformation – as affluent residents largely decamped uptown closer to Central Park and 5th Avenue, a bohemian enclave took shape in their wake. Residences were subdivided, housing became affordable, immigration was still on the rise, and “radicalism and nonconformity” were embraced, according to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation….
Robots aren’t taking our jobs — they’re becoming our bosses- Josh Dzieza at The Verge:
On conference stages and at campaign rallies, tech executives and politicians warn of a looming automation crisis — one where workers are gradually, then all at once, replaced by intelligent machines. But their warnings mask the fact that an automation crisis has already arrived. The robots are here, they’re working in management, and they’re grinding workers into the ground.
The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to call center workers, telling them what to say, how to say it, and keeping them constantly, maximally busy. While we’ve been watching the horizon for the self-driving trucks, perpetually five years away, the robots arrived in the form of the supervisor, the foreman, the middle manager.
AI supervisors drive Amazon warehouse workers to injure themselves and gobble company-supplied painkillers to keep going. AI determines whether call-center workers have enough empathy in their voices. And home-office telecommuters have their keystrokes measured and are required to turn on their webcams to be sure they’re at their desks.
How to delete all your saved articles in Instapaper
I wanted to delete all my saved Instapapaper article and make a fresh start, but had trouble figuring out how to do it. Here’s how:
From the web, find your account name on the top right, click the dropdown, and click Archive All. Then switch to the Archive folder, click the account name again, and select Delete All.
This can’t be undone.
Charlie, the store manager, 1968
“Mine’s bigger. My cucumber. It’s bigger. I think vegetables can be very sensuous, don’t you?”
One, two, and three years ago today I was in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. Four years ago today was our nieces' Carly and Emma’s B’Not Bitzvah.
Mayor Pete says it’s ok to mix ranch dressing and salsa.
I’ve never tried this combination, or even thought of trying it. Gotta admit, it sounds tasty.
“My Ex-Boyfriend’s New Girlfriend Is Lady Gaga” - Lindsay Crouse:
Social media in 2020 is so ingrained that it’s no longer a supplement or even an addiction. It’s just an accelerated extension of the way humans have always behaved. We live in a culture of constant updates. You want to unsubscribe? Well, you can’t.
Facing Anger from Journalists, Assemblywoman Gonzalez Offers AB 5 Changes
Good news for freelance journalists, but not other independent contractors.
Do you watch scripted TV and movies, such as dramas and comedies, on a tablet, phone, or strictly on the TV? Do you watch a few minutes at a time, or a whole episode or episodes at once?
Sarah Miller: The Diet Industrial Complex Got Me, and It Will Never Let Me Go “I did not see the body positivity movement coming, not at all.”
I just spent 15 minutes shopping for dental floss on Amazon. Sometimes choice is not a good thing.
Copied is a heck of a fine application for saving and managing multiple clipboards, particularly on the iPhone and iPad.
My favorite feature is the way it uses an external keyboard to let you do text transformations while keeping another app open – multitasking even on the iPhone.
I’m looking into Copied as a TextExpander replacement. Just save snippets to a list in Copied, and search for them as needed. By adding titles to the snippets, you can search for text that does not appear in the snippet itself. For example, title the snippet “address” and search for that word, and copied will find that snippet, even though your address doesn’t contain the text “address.”
Copied hasn’t been updated for a year, and hasn’t seen a major update in much longer than that. I expect any day now we’ll get an iOS update that breaks it, and there won’t be an update, and that’s that. That will be a sad day.
Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s slave and companion for many years, with whom he fathered multiple children, whose descendants are alive today. She won many concessions from him, including a comfortable life and freedom for her children.
Some historians, including some of Hemings' descendants, frame their relationship as a love affair. Others point out that Hemings really didn’t have a choice in the matter, which makes the relationship look a rape victim who has managed to negotiate an arrangement with her rapist. And that’s not even thinking about the big age difference between the two; Jefferson was a grown man when their relationship started, while Hemings was only 14-16 years old.
And yet to simply paint Hemings as a victim does not take into account that she negotiated a pretty good deal for herself within the constraints of slavery. She was relatively powerless, while Jefferson was one of the most powerful people in the new United States, and yet she got a good treatment for herself and her children, which is an extraordinary accomplishment.
And maybe they did love each other. We don’t know.
Also, remembering Ernest Hemingway biographer and friend A. E. Hotchner, who died Feb. 15, age 102. Hotchner spoke with Terry Gross in 1999.
Forget passwords: Secure yourself with a passphrase and these tools - Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
THIS SUMMER MORE WOMEN ARE TURNING TO MEDS! (1944) via
Lucky Skull Ring - made of genuine eternium! - 1950 https://advertisingpics.tumblr.com/post/611084434228346880/lucky-skull-ring-made-of-genuine-eternium via
The Pat Boone & Family Christmas Special (1979) via
New Viking Stereo Compact, 1960 via
“I’ve Done It!’ MARTIN KLASCH via
‘People don’t get it’: inside the world of hyper-realistic baby doll collecting
… a doll “doesn’t turn into a teenager who wants an iPhone 11”.
Where Medicare-for-all is real Today, Explained]
Looking at the healthcare systems in Taiwan, which has universal public healthcare and the Netherlands, which offers universal private health insurance. Two very different approaches, same goal.
Why liberals keep losing: We confuse slacktivism for activism
Eitan Hersh’s Politics Is for Power explains why liberals keep losing
Sean Illing at Vox:
If you spend a lot of time consuming news, there’s a good chance you’re doing politics wrong….
This is the thesis of a new book called Politics Is for Power by Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University. …
He coins the term “political hobbyism” to capture the problem. “We participate in politics by obsessive news-following and online slacktivism, by feeling the need to offer a hot take for each daily political flare-up, by emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens,” Hersh says. Many of us think we’re politically active — but in fact, we’re doing little more than signaling who we are to other people. We may be emotionally invested in politics, but we’re not actually committed to solving problems….
Hersh argues you need to get out in the community and engage with other people to make change. Work locally, where individuals have an impact, not nationally, where our voices barely matter. Bottom up, not top down.
Conservatives get this, which is why they’ve been winning, Hersh says. Liberals are mostly clueless in this area.
Yep.
Why America Is Losing The Toilet Race
It’s a race to the bottom.
She didn’t die eating a ham sandwich. The ham sandwich on her nightstand the night she died was untouched.
It probably wasn’t obesity that killed her. She weighed 220 pounds at the time of her death. That’s fat, but likely would not have been fatal at her young age. More likely it was years of yo-yo crash diets that was fatal.
Broughton worked “as an assistant at a porn studio during her early college days.” Part of her work involved cleaning the sets at night.
She says, “Dealing with the inevitable bodily fluids made me feel my own humanity and then the vulnerability of the models who had performed for the camera that day.”
Playful dog enthusiastically fails service dog tests.
Alternate title: Me on a job interview.
The Register: Firefox now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US netizens and some are dischuffed about this: Good for privacy – or an alarming move towards further internet centralization?
Also, governments and ISPs are concerned that DSN-over-HTTPS will make it harder to filter Internet traffic. That’s actually a plus, unless you need the government or your ISP telling you what you’re not allowed to look at.
Mike Dano: Mirantis co-founder targets 5G ‘oligopoly’ with private networks startup FreedomFi:
A new startup in the wireless industry has set its sights on nothing less than tearing down “the oligopoly of a few large players” by leveraging unlicensed spectrum and open source technology.
After all, “he who controls 5G, controls the universe,” writes Mirantis Co-Founder and CMO Boris Renski.
On MAGA Caps and WordCamps: The WordPress community is talking about banning red MAGA caps at its popular developer events, which are called WordCamps.
Return of the PDA. Neat!
“Like Going Out Half Dressed When you Brush Your Teeth and Neglect to Massage Your Gums,” Hemp gum massager, 1933 via
The Milwaukee - ca. 1900 Via
Mirantis co-founder leaves to create open-source 5G startup - Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
Boris Renski, co-founder of OpenStack and Kubernetes power Mirantis, is turning his attention to open-sourcing 4G LTE and 5G with his new company FreedomFi.
Business owner says millennials are spoiled because they won’t work for free and are ambitious.
I guess I’m a millennial now. How do you do, fellow kids?
Cory Doctorow: A Flat Earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory
“Mad Mike” Hughes crashed a homemade rocket he intended to ride to prove the Earth is flat.
Belief in crazy conspiracy theories is pandemic today because so many crazy conspiracies are real: climate change denialism, the opioid epidemic, Jeffrey Epstein’s pedo ring, etc.
Why do people listen to #NeverTrump Republicans lecturing Democrats on how the Democrats are on a path to failure beating Trump?
#NeverTrumpers know nothing about beating Trump, and have nothing to contribute to that conversation.
If #NeverTrumpers knew how to beat Trump THEY WOULD HAVE DONE IT.
A San Diego family cloned their dog for $50,000
“Marley,” a golden retriever, saved owner Alicia Tschirhart’s life while she was pregnant, five years ago, by jumping between her and a rattlesnake; Marley died a few months later of heart cancer. Now the Tschirharts have “Ziggy,” a 10-month-old pup, who is Marley’s clone.
Sorry, Minnie. When you go, we’re not spending $50 large to clone you. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not being cloned after I go either.
Cadillac “Magnificent Beyond All Expectations!” 1950’s Nat. Geo Magazine Via
Holiday Inn, 1976 Via
I support Sanders. My first choice is Warren, but he’s a close second.
And I’m glad to see the Republicans turn on him now, and I hope to see his Democratic rivals turn on the heat too.
Not just about his visiting Russia in 1988 and being a socialist (which he’s not), because those things are old news.
I want Sanders' opponents to dig up dirt on him now. All of it. And shout it loud.
Because if he’s vulnerable, let’s find out now, while there are still alternatives.
I don’t know if Sanders can beat Trump. But right now it looks like he’s got a better shot than any other Democrat, because those guys don’t even seem to be able to beat Sanders.
“I, Claudius” drinking game: Drink whenever a character shrieks, shouts or weeps.
Double when they do all three at the same time.
Finish the whole bottle in one draft when they do all four while begging for mercy.
ME: I’m going to have to get up and pee soon. Not right now though.
[Moments later a 15-pound cat climbs up and settles in to sleep on my lap.]
A group of ex-NSA and Amazon engineers are building a “GitHub for data”
A service called “Gretel” lets developers share data sets for building applications the way GitHub lets them share code.
You don’t know Esther Williams
Williams starred in midcentury movies featuring her water dancing and synchronized swimming. She presented an image of delicate, wholesome femininity.
In reality she was a tough athlete, who used her body as fiercely as any Hollywood stuntman and fended off sexual harassment from studio moguls and co-stars.
She had four unhappy marriages, dropped acid, and made a comeback when she was in her 60s.