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links for November 13 (2020-11-13 08:00:01)

• Quote of the day

  When the system doesn’t respond, when it doesn’t accept what you’re doing—and most of the time it won’t—you have a chance to become self-reliant and create your own system. There will always be periods of solitude and loneliness, but you must have the courage to follow your own path. Cleverness on the terrain is the most important trait of a filmmaker.

• My beliefs updated

• ProPublica experiments with ultra-accessible plain language in stories about people with disabilities

  There’s a lot of talk in journalism today about bias, with the assumption being that reporters who believe something can’t write about it fairly.

  Of course, there is some truth to that idea — we would not let our education reporter advocate for school choice, for example. But it’s not realistic to believe that journalists are robots without opinions. We have lives and experiences that make our reporting richer, provided we remain vigilant about keeping our opinions out of the stories we publish.

  The project happened because of Amy’s quest to provide a bigger and broader life for her daughter than society told her was possible. Did she come to this project with preconceived notions? Probably, just like the ones we all hold. Did it damage the integrity of her reporting? Just the opposite.

  Versus

  Some people worry that reporters have bias. They think reporters shouldn’t write about things they care about. They worry the reporters won’t be fair.

  We think writing fairly is important. But reporters are people. We all have things we care about. We think knowing a lot about the things we care about makes our writing better. We make sure not to write our opinions though.

  We started writing this story because Amy cares about it. She cares because it affects her family. We don’t think caring makes the story less fair. We think caring makes it better.

links for All Souls' Day (2020-11-02 21:38:00)

• La vendetta delle lumache assassine:

  Ma poverine cosa, poverine chi, poverino quel minchia dell’allevatore, poverino! Non era tutto perfettamente in linea con Genesi 9,3? Non era quindi permesso, anzi a ben guardare comandato, buttare le lumache vive nell’acqua bollente? Che poi se le lumache non ti piacciono fai azione ancor più meritoria.

• An unplanned picture and its story (super!):

  Coming back from vacation, on the large monitor, it turns out that the first 28 out of the 30 pictures were either blurry or not well focused (as I was focusing manually), and the 29th was almost OK but still not very good. Only the last, the really last picture, was technically good and also composition-wise OK. Luck? Foresight? Don’t know, but it was worth deleting 28 pictures to get this one. One of my best night shots, despite being so unprepared…

• Waiting for the election:

  By this time next week maybe we’ll know who the winner is. I sure hope we will. The waiting might be over after four endless years. I find it hard to stop thinking about it.

  Today I needed an escape. So I took my camera outside into our backyard and driveway and shot some pictures of whatever I happened to find out there. It was sunny and warm, but not too sunny and not too warm. Just right.

  To start, here are some close-ups of a fence.

• Painting: Around the world with Robert Elwes ⧫ Eye Candy for Today: Lars Hertervig landscape.
• Essay: How close is England to Covid herd immunity?.

links for October 18 (2020-10-18 08:18:00)

• art: Meet the Great Belzoni, the Italian Indiana Jones ⧫ Artists’ views of Venice;
• essay: (eo) Vortotrezoro trovita en la malantaŭo de aŭto ⧫ Working Off-Grid Efficiently ⧫ Beware the trappings of power.

link time (2020-10-12 20:31:00)

• Dispatch from Flyover Country (via p1k3):

  Many of our friends who grew up here now live in Brooklyn, where they are at work on “book-length narratives.” Another contingent has moved to the Bay Area and made a fortune there. Every year or so, these west-coasters travel back to Michigan and call us up for dinner or drinks, occasions they use to educate us on the inner workings of the tech industry. They refer to the companies they work for in the first person plural, a habit I have yet to acculturate to. Occasionally they lapse into the utopian, speaking of robotics ordinances and brain-computer interfaces and the mystical, labyrinthine channels of capital, conveying it all with the fervency of pioneers on a civilizing mission.

• art: inktober 2020, aon, Cristina Campo (it), Lacock Abbey.

• 100 things:

  This year, I have moved to a new country two times. This sharply brings to attention the pain and cost of owning things. It is not just when carrying maximally filled suitcases across airports that things are bothersome. The more things you have, the bigger a home you need, and the more effort you need to spend on cleaning things and home.

il reggimento parte all'alba (2020-09-20 20:51:00)

• Six pieces by Dino Buzzati

  He seemed educated and discreet. I invited him into the living room. Yet I was suspicious. “Is this,” I asked, “about insurance by any chance?”

  He started to laugh. I looked him over. He seemed athletic; he was tanned. “No, no, please,” and he sat down. “I rather think I can be of some use to you, with the regiment. . . .”

  “What regiment? Do you mean my regiment?”

  He nodded in agreement. “But don’t be alarmed, please. I’m not carrying any order for you to report for duty.”

  (originale italiano: Il reggimento parte all'alba).

• music: Across The Universe / Strudelsoft.
• game: I wasn’t sure what to make of my new flatmate.
• other: Proposal for computer game research, Exactitudes.

open-source decision making (2020-09-13 07:44:00)

The abc notation community needs to find a new mailing list, since Yahoo Groups is discontinuing support.

Step one: when to vote? And on what text? Which option to include in the poll? Let’s have a look at the current discussion-tree:

150   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 11K) [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
151 r .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 14K) └─>discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP), was: Re: [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
152   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 15K)   ├─>
153   .  Sep 08  To abc users gr ( 26K)   │ └─>[abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
154   .  Sep 08  To abcusers     ( 26K)   │   ├─>
155   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 27K)   │   │ ├─>
156   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 28K)   │   │ │ ├─>
157   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │ │ │ └─>
158   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 30K)   │   │ │ └─>
159   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │ │   └─>
160   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 10K)   │   │ ├─>
161   .  Sep 08  To Rob Lindauer ( 28K)   │   │ └─>
162   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 39K)   │   │   └─>
163   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 40K)   │   │     └─>
164   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 46K)   │   │       ├─>
165   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 47K)   │   │       │ └─>
166   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 14K)   │   │       └─>
167   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)   │   │         └─>
168   .  Sep 09  To abc users gr ( 14K)   │   │           ├─>
169   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 18K)   │   │           │ └─>
170   .  Sep 10  To abc users gr ( 30K)   │   │           │   └─>
171   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 31K)   │   │           │     ├─>
172   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 32K)   │   │           │     │ └─>
173   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 34K)   │   │           │     │   └─>
174   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │           │     │     └─>
175   .  Sep 10  To abc users gr ( 12K)   │   │           │     │       └─>
176   .  Sep 10  To abc users gr ( 16K)   │   │           │     │         └─>[abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording, 3rd Draft
177   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │           │     │           ├─>
178   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │     │           │ └─>
179   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │           │     │           └─>
180   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │     │             ├─>
181   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 10K)   │   │           │     │             │ └─>
182   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │           │     │             │   └─>
183   .  Sep 11  To abc users gr ( 19K)   │   │           │     │             │     └─>[abcusers] Time to move on?
184   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │     │             │       ├─>
185   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 17K)   │   │           │     │             │       │ ├─>
186   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 18K)   │   │           │     │             │       │ │ └─>
187   .  Sep 11  To abc users gr ( 21K)   │   │           │     │             │       │ ├─>
188   .  Sep 11  To dev.music@fr ( 12K)   │   │           │     │             │       │ │ └─>
189   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │           │     │             │       │ └─>
190   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 14K)   │   │           │     │             │       │   ├─>
191   .  Sep 11  To abc users gr ( 14K)   │   │           │     │             │       │   └─>
192   .  Sep 12  To abcusers@yah ( 10K)   │   │           │     │             │       │     └─>
193   .  Sep 12  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │           │     │             │       │       └─>
194   .  Sep 12  To abc users gr ( 19K)   │   │           │     │             │       │         └─>
195   .  Sep 12  To Peter Yarens ( 20K)   │   │           │     │             │       │           ├─>
196   .  Sep 12  To abc users gr ( 23K)   │   │           │     │             │       │           │ └─>
197   .  Sep 12  To dev.music@fr ( 13K)   │   │           │     │             │       │           └─>Re: [abcusers] Time to move on?
198   .  Sep 12  To abc users gr ( 15K)   │   │           │     │             │       │             └─>
199 r .  Sep 13  To abcusers@yah ( 10K)   │   │           │     │             │       │               └─>
200   .  Sep 13  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │           │     │             │       │                 └─>
201 r .  Sep 13  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │     │             │       │                   └─>
202   .  Sep 13  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │           │     │             │       │                     └─>
203   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │           │     │             │       └*>RE: [abcusers] Time to move on?
204   .  Sep 11  To abc users gr ( 14K)   │   │           │     │             │         └─>
205   .  Sep 12  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)   │   │           │     │             │           └─>
206   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 14K)   │   │           │     │             ├─>Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording, 3rd Draft
207   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │     │             │ └─>
208   .  Sep 11  To dev.music@fr ( 11K)   │   │           │     │             │   └─>
209   .  Sep 11  To abcusers@yah ( 14K)   │   │           │     │             └─>
210   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │           │     └─>Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
211   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │           │       ├─>
212   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)   │   │           │       └─>
213   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 18K)   │   │           └─>Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
214   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 12K)   │   │             ├─>
215   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │             └─>Question: Beginning the Poll Sept. 15 12:01am?, was: Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
216   .  Sep 10  To dev.music@fr ( 13K)   │   │               └─>
217   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   ├*>Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
218   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │ └─>
219   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   ├*>
220   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │ └─>[abcusers] What does a future solution need?: About local copies of postings
221   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │   ├─>
222   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │   └─>[abcusers] Re: What does a future solution need?: About local copies of postings
223   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 18K)   │   │     └─>
224   .  Sep 10  To abc users gr ( 23K)   │   │       ├─>
225   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │       │ └─>
226   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │       ├─>
227   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │       │ ├─>
228   .  Sep 10  To abc users gr ( 16K)   │   │       │ └─>
229   .  Sep 10  To dev.music@fr ( 14K)   │   │       └─>Re: [abcusers] What does a future solution need?: About local copies of postings
230   .  Sep 09  To abc users gr ( 23K)   │   └*>
231   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 11K)   │     ├─>
232   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │     ├─>
233   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah (6.2K)   │     └─>
234   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah (4.5K)   │       └─>CORRECTION Re: [abcusers] Proposed Poll Wording
235   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │         └─>
236   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 18K)   ├─>Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP), was: Re: [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
237   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 20K)   │ └─>
238   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   ├─>
239   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 17K)   │ └─>
240   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   ├*>
241   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │ └─>
242   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)   ├─>
243   .  Sep 08  To abc users gr ( 21K)   │ └─>
244   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 22K)   │   ├─>
245   .  Sep 08  To abcusers     ( 28K)   │   │ └─>
246   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 26K)   │   └─>Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP), was: Re: [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
247   .  Sep 09  To abc users gr ( 30K)   │     └─>
248   .  Sep 08  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   ├*>Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP), was: Re: [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
249   .  Sep 08  To abcusers     ( 13K)   │ ├─>
250   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 15K)   │ │ └─>
251   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │ ├─>
252   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 15K)   │ │ └─>
253   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 11K)   │ ├─>
254   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │ ├─>
255   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │ └─>
256   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   ├─>
257   .  Sep 09  To abcusers     ( 14K)   │   │ ├─>
258   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 17K)   │   │ │ └─>
259   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │ │   ├─>
260   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 14K)   │   │ │   └─>
261   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 17K)   │   │ │     └─>
262   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 11K)   │   │ │       └─>[abcusers] Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP)
263   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 15K)   │   │ │         └─>
264   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │ │           └─>
265   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │ │             └─>
266   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   │   │ │               ├─>Re: [abcusers] discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP)
267   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)   │   │ │               │ └─>
268   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 15K)   │   │ │               └─>Re: [abcusers] Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP)
269   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah (1.1K)   │   │ └─>Freelink? Re: discuss a poll about the personal preferences (PPP), was: Re: [abcusers] The great Mailing List migration debate
270   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 13K)   │   │   └─>
271   .  Sep 09  To dev.music@fr ( 12K)   │   └─>
272   .  Sep 09  To abcusers@yah ( 12K)   └*>
273   .  Sep 10  To dev.music@fr ( 18K)     └─>
274   .  Sep 10  To abcusers@yah ( 16K)       └─>

Of course we haven’t settled on everything yet, but apparently the poll will happen via a Google Form (or email message, if you prefer not to use Google).

Misc: Sono una creatura, The rules for keeping a journal that improves with age.

sundries (2020-09-07 06:22:00)

• Super Adventures: Game Over

• taking data at face value

  This is surreal. A year ago, somebody entering data on Open Street Map recorded a suburban building as being 212 stories. A backyard shed, apparently. It seems to have been an honest typo, later corrected. It happens. No big deal, right?

• art: Emelie Preyer still life, Studying Water

free sofware wednesday (2020-08-19 08:42:00)

I have played two great little titles lately, both free software:

• Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, a space exploration/roguelite;

  

• Fire & Fondness 2, a tricky puzzle game with very good production values.

  

Art: Yoshikata Amano / Photoessay: Pilatus.

no net (2020-08-06 07:10:00)

My ISP decided to act silly, result was no net for a week; I feel weird and productive.

• Stunning Space Butterfly captured by ESO Telescope;
• Trekking through Europe: a history of hiking;
• the elephant, Sardinia (can you spot it?).

guadalupe (2020-07-23 08:36:00)

• Guadalupe:

  Here’s a story of how I tried to remove a fake story marginally related to COVID-19 from Wikipedia, and, at least for now, achieved the opposite and contributed to its dissemination and perpetuation.

• Private and public letters.
• The girl who ate cicadas, a very short story by Kelly Matsuura.

• fawkes — image “cloaking” for personal privacy:

  At a high level, Fawkes takes your personal images, and makes tiny, pixel-level changes to them that are invisible to the human eye, in a process we call image cloaking. You can then use these “cloaked” photos as you normally would, sharing them on social media, sending them to friends, printing them or displaying them on digital devices, the same way you would any other photo.

  The difference, however, is that if and when someone tries to use these photos to build a facial recognition model, “cloaked” images will teach the model an highly distorted version of what makes you look like you. The cloak effect is not easily detectable, and will not cause errors in model training. However, when someone tries to identify you using an unaltered image of you (e.g. a photo taken in public), and tries to identify you, they will fail.

cats (2020-07-08 07:14:00)

• Watercolour cats by Yutaka Muramaki.

• Shopping Diet Retro June 2020

  I strive to be grateful for my material possessions and not fall into the trap of consistent consumption. For the last several years I limit my purchases to consumables and replacing items that wore out for most of the year. Think of this has intermittent fasting for purchasing.

• Before Braille: raised type in Europe.

statistical power (2020-06-21 07:35:00)

I have finished yet another statistics article which might be of interest to everyone who reads studies now and then: quick statistical power estimate.

Otherwise: A week with Grizzly.

please print (2020-06-19 08:31:00)

• Please Print (A Journaling Rant):

  Yes. Print. On paper. Why? Because, unlike your app, paper has a proven track record for lasting thousands of years if the conditions are right.

• Street Literature: Welsh Almanacs;
• Linhof 220 test (1, 2);
• Richard There: Love.

who cares if I listen? (2020-06-14 20:21:00)

After some labiorious days, I finally completed it: Who cares if I listen? A study of dodecaphonic music enjoyment.

Thanks to everyone who helped, it is an article I have wanted to write since a long time.

acuarelas (2020-05-11 08:21:00)

• Geoffrey Wynne Acuarelas.
• Fodamenti di accordatura e temperamento: very interesting, enjoyable and easy to follow video on tuning and musical intonation. It is in Italian, but subtitles work fine!

• I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough:

  Rilke taught us not to seek the answers but to love the questions. Good advice. Now I’m stuck in my house muttering, “Stage IV cancer during a pandemic! Could it get any—oh, never mind.”

• Libertà, un racconto di Giovanni Verga:

  Non importa! Ora che si avevano le mani rosse di quel sangue, bisognava versare tutto il resto. Tutti! tutti i cappelli! - Non era più la fame, le bastonate, le soperchierie che facevano ribollire la collera. Era il sangue innocente.

typewriter maps (2020-04-21 08:42:00)

I spilled milk on my laptop, I had to buy a new one.

• Typewriter Cartography:

  After a little experimentation, I decided that if I wanted to draw linear features, there were three characters that were best to use: ! / _. Together, I could create rudimentary lines that roughly connected together in a pseudo-vector style, even if the typewriter grid itself is basically a raster.

• Aisle

  Aisle started out as a game which would not need the usual meta-verbs… i.e. a game with only one turn. The initial idea was: How do I make a game with only one turn interesting?

• photo: Black Birds at Butler Lake / Broadview & Queen.

hamsterkauf (2020-03-23 07:44:00)

SARS-C0V-2 musing:

• hamsterkaufing knowledge. My notes file (named cannocchiale.txt) is 31685 lines long. If my laptop dies, I am screwed. I am trying to think of a solution.
• I like to exercise in open air and the most recent quaratine rules forbid it. No pull-up bar at home, so isometrics provided a weird (but fun= ctioning!) way to work around it.

Anesthetic art:

• Ksenia Laginja;
• A real-life stereogram image: Edera;
• L'albicocco del mio giardino.

Miscellaneous:

• Can crimes be discussed literally?

  In American medicine it is routine to officially certify that a standard= of care was provided, that cannot possibly have been provided (e.g. some policies as to the timing of medication and tests can’t be carried on but given how many patients each nurse has to care for, but it’s less trouble to fudge it as long as something vaguely resembling the officially desired outcome happened). The system relies on widespread willingness to falsify records, and would (temporarily) grind to a halt if people were to simply refuse to lie.

Minuet diversi (2019-12-23 07:44:00)

Recently I was procrastinating by checking out an old handwritten music volume. It is a compilation of Harpsichord pieces, authored by famous musicians for a Venetian noble-woman, Maria Venier.

The score is unpublished, and probably unperformed since the 1750s. I picked a simple minuet by Baldassarre Galuppi, here is what it sounds like:

venzone released (2019-12-08 08:07:00)

Venzone, an ASCII platform/adventure made by me.

Grab it while it is hot; if you like it, spread the word!

Gatekeeping (2019-11-18 07:35:00)

<brewton> San Diego is the world centre of taco gatekeeping.

• North Star Nature, Whose home is it?
• Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie, a little gem of a programming book. Do not let the “Forth” part of the title scare you, the ideas in it are applicable to many languages (and I would say even outside the scope of software development). Brodie highlights many tricky programming-pitfalls, gives practical remedies, his writing is clear and enjoyable. Recommended, especially if you can snatch a paper copy!
• Piccola città, bastardo posto, scrittori che hanno detestato le città dove hanno vissuto (ma che forse, senza di esse, non avrebbero scritto i loro capolavori).