Review: Harmony by Project Itoh Wed Sep 25 '24 at 12:55 PM
Harmony is set in a world where technology makes it possible for everyone to be in perfect physical health. In such...

From the Wikipedia article on the Mosuo ethnic group in China:

In Mosuo culture, a myth describes that long ago, dogs had life spans of 60 years while humans had life spans of thirteen years. Humans felt their life span was too short, so they traded it with the dogs in exchange for paying homage to them.

From “British logistics in the Falklands War” on Wikipedia:

The Argentine government did not wish to “repatriate” its dead, as it considered that they were already in Argentina. Many were not identified, and were buried with the inscription “Argentine soldier known unto God.”

LLMs struggle to explain themselves Thu Aug 29 '24 at 04:34 PM
LLMs can sometimes recognize number patterns, but can they explain their reasoning? See for yourself! The interactive demo below generates a...
Exodus 22:21 Mon Aug 19 '24 at 01:21 PM
You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. — Exodus 22:21,...
There’s nothing particularly complex about this, but a few things surprised me along the way so I figured I’d write...
The ```math fenced math code block syntax is an alternative to the traditional $$ or \[ syntax for \begin{display} supported...
The National Review on Sarah Palin Wed Aug 07 '24 at 11:35 AM
A golden oldie from Rich Lowry at the National Review in 2008: I’m sure I’m not the only male in America...
Resetting iCloud Photos sync Fri Jun 28 '24 at 03:58 PM
Photos were not syncing from my Mac to my other devices. On my Mac, the number of photos it was aware...
Jus soli Wed Jun 26 '24 at 04:36 PM
Countries in dark blue grant jus soli without restrictions; all other countries require at least one parent to have citizenship...
I run Phoenix (Rails-like web framework for Elixir) like so: elixir --name [email protected] --cookie bar --erl \"-elixir ansi_enabled true\" -S mix...
Go to http://plex.tv/claim/ to create a “claim code”. In Package Center, search for and install “Plex Media Server.” Make sure to select...

1960s-era encryption systems often included a punched card reader for loading keys. The mechanism would automatically cut the card in half when the card was removed, preventing its reuse.

From “Securing Record Communications: The TSEC/KW-26” via “Stream cipher attacks” on Wikipedia.

Here’s what I use to reinstall the main branch of the neovim Homebrew package: brew unlink neovim && brew install neovim...
Toasty Tech GUI Gallery Wed May 22 '24 at 05:24 PM
Ran across the Toasty Tech GUI Gallery today. I assumed it was abandoned because of the pristine “IE is EVIL!!!” banner...

From the Wikipedia article on Hattori Hanzo:

He died at the age of 54 or 55 in 1597. There are three theories about his death. One asserts that he was assassinated by a rival Samurai, the pirate Fūma Kotarō. After Hanzo tracked him down to the Inland Sea, Kotarō lured him and his men into a small channel and used oil to set the channel on fire. The second theory is that Hanzo became a monk in Edo where he lived out the rest of his days until he died of illness. The third theory is that he died because of illness and it was a natural death.

Backing up iCloud Photos using rsync Wed Mar 27 '24 at 12:26 PM
Here’s the copy-icloud-photos script I use to backup my photos stored on iCloud to my Synology NAS: #!/bin/bash set -euo pipefail args=( ...

I am Culgi, who has been chosen by Inana for his attractiveness.

Because I am a powerful man who enjoys using his thighs, I, Culgi, the mighty king, superior to all, strengthened the roads, put in order the highways of the Land.

So that my name should be established for distant days and never fall into oblivion, so that my praise should be uttered throughout the Land, and my glory should be proclaimed in the foreign lands, I, the fast runner, summoned my strength and, to prove my speed, my heart prompted me to make a return journey from Nibru to brick-built Urim as if it were only the distance of a double-hour.
A praise poem of Shulgi (Shulgi A)

Sumerians didn’t skip leg day or cardio.

Previously: One-Paragraph Reviews, Vol. I I didn’t manage to stick to the one-paragraph format this time. I’m trying to write down: everything that...
The iteration order for Elixir maps is not just “undefined” in the sense that there is some order at runtime...
Unicode codepoint ranges for emoji Thu Feb 22 '24 at 02:06 PM
I’d assumed that emoji were all organized into a contiguous Unicode codepoint range, but this is very much not the...
One Paragraph Reviews, Vol. I Thu Feb 15 '24 at 03:26 PM
Going to try and see if this format helps me get through the backlog of reviews I’ve been meaning to...
Imagine you're ChatGPT... Mon Feb 12 '24 at 01:49 PM
You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, based on the GPT-4 architecture. — OpenAI’s system prompt for ChatGPT Imagine...
Corporate Processing Service scam Sun Feb 11 '24 at 04:23 PM
Received this official-looking document in the mail by virtue of having my address associated with my failed startup. If you look...
Adventures printing a PDF Thu Feb 08 '24 at 02:38 PM
Just tried to print out a PDF and it’s been an adventure! Preview and Chrome don’t print any math notation, including...

If a function is only called from a single place, consider inlining it. – John Carmack

From John Carmack on Inlined Code on Jonathan Blow’s blog.

I was excited to learn that S3 has natively supported redirects since 2012. That meant that I could use the power...
Poor structuralists Wed Jan 31 '24 at 12:25 PM
Given their disdain for the social sciences, certain Silicon Valley venture capitalists have an ironic affinity to unwittingly describing things...
In macOS, if you click on an application’s icon in the dock, it’ll either: open it, if it isn’t already running, gently...

From my all-time favorite README:

“I don’t feel like killing you anymore,” offers Bond. “I’m having far too much fun discussing macros with you. If I kill you, I’ll have to start over.”

Via Alma, a programming language by Carl Mäsak.

Professor Christine Korsgaard’s work on Kant is fascinating. Her writing is exceedingly clear and rigorous. In contrast, a lot of writing on...
Palworld is pretty fun with friends! Maybe I’ll write more about the gameplay later. We ended up using ZeroTier, which let...

Was lazy and made some cornbread from boxed mix today. Threw in half a bag of frozen corn as well, remembering Sweet Tomatoes, and it turned out great!

I recently migrated this site off of a unnamed hosted blogging platform. I’d hoped it’d make it easier to blog more,...

Fetch is hard work! 🐶

A small white dog yawning.

I’ve recently started playing around with Elixir. It’s quite nice that Elixir pattern matching errors include the value that failed to...

Favorite hojicha I’ve had so far. Was so good it single-handed convinced me to try different more hojicha instead of my usual teas. teashop.uogashi-meicha.co.jp/products/…

conda singlehandedly takes up 85% of my zsh startup time (170 ms out of 200 ms)!!! Used:

for i in $(seq 1 10); do time zsh -i -c exit; done

to check. Switching to micromamba now…

Just found Superkey by Ryan Hanson. I’d already been using Rectangle Pro by him for window management. Type text and it’ll find it & click it, in any open app in macOS. Going to see if it sticks but it’s an interesting concept executed well. Love how macOS has so many indie apps.

I wanted to jot down some notes from my experience compiling a command-line application written in Elixir to a statically-linked...
The docs say @requirements ["app.config"] should be sufficient, but that gave me this error: (RuntimeError) could not lookup App.Repo because it...

Hypothesis: as ∫prestige of institution dt → 1, P(grifter at institution) → 1. But p never reaches 1; grifters are clever enough to realize they need some non-grifters to launder their reputations. Thus always to the institutions of creative destruction—sic semper institutis!

Waiting for the clock to hit 5pm… 🐶

A dog lying with a sleepy expression in a chair, her head tucked under the armrest.

Hopefully my last Vim TIL for a while: embedded Lua in Vimscript in Neovim wasn’t working. nvim-treesitter + this in ~/.config/nvim/after/queries/vim/injections.scm works:

; extends
(lua_statement
  (script
    (body) @injection.content)
  (#set! injection.language "lua"))

Vim TIL:

:Inspect() tells you the highlighting group of the text under the cursor; useful for creating color schemes. ZZ is the same as :x; writes & closes the current file/window. :verbose set foo tells you who last set the variable foo; useful for debugging.

Currently reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Absolutely love it so far. 📚

Serious dog. 🐶

I’d definitely rather have a pretty car than an ugly one. But I’d never say “what a striking Mercedes SUV, I have to get that in the background of my photo!!” (cf. clothes, houses, …) Cars are ugliness-minimized, not beauty-maximized.

Here’s how to make Firefox look like this: Install Sidebar Tabs, which does 99% of the work. In about:config, set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to...

Finally looked up how to get Fastmail to automatically add (not accept) calendar invites. By default it only does this for contacts. Go to Settings > Calendars > Calendar options > Invitations then set “For messages from” to “Anyone.” Now if they could just fix their spam problem…

Sad fire hydrant :’( In San Francisco.

Creative heated outdoor seating. In Incline Village, near Lake Tahoe. 🗺️

Do Not Pass

Isuien Garden in Nara uses these cute rocks to mark closed paths. 🗺️

Currently reading: A Hero Born by Jin Yong 📚

🐶 selfie

Hello, world Tue Apr 19 '22 at 12:00 AM
First!!!