10 months Ago

Glenn Greenwald interviews Max Abrahms

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

This video is from a while back and I included in my weekly notes, but it was an interesting enough example of the kind of person that Glenn Greenwald is willing to interview—even though there’s not a lot of overlap between Glenn’s principles and whatever passes for Max Abrahms’s principles. The guy is pretty popular in some circles—he writes for the Atlantic, surprise, surprise—so it’s good to hear what he’s got to say instead of just dismissing it out of hand.

Glenn Greenwald & Max Abrahms Debate Israel-Gaza, Free Speech, & More by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

I think this is pretty... [More]

Are wall angels supposed to be difficult?

Published by marco on in Sports

I learned about an exercise called a “Wall Angel” today from a programmer who’d struggled with back, shoulder, and arm pain. I suffer from none of those, but I do have a quick morning stretching routine that I try to stick to. I’m always curious if there’s something I can add to the mix.

What’s a wall angel?

Technically, yes.

The exercise, though, is like a snow angel, but performed up against a wall.

It took me a few search links to find something that would just tell me that, instead of... [More]

The JetBrains Toolbox self-updater ate my Windows system disk

Published by marco on in Technology

I use the JetBrains Toolbox to manage my handful of JetBrains apps. On Windows, it has to keep track of ReSharper, Rider, DotMemory, DotTrace, and DotPeek. There are various settings to check automatically, to download automatically, to install automatically, etc.

tl;dr: If your Windows system drive fills up mysteriously, it might be the JetBrains Toolbox updater run amok. To fix the problem, do the following:
  1. Quit JetBrains Toolbox
  2. Manually delete the %LocalAppData%\JetBrains\Toolbox\cache... [More]

Picking on Israel’s war crimes

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

Israel doesn’t have a right to exist because no state has any rights, least of the right to exist. What a silly concept! Can you imagine if the Russian Tsars had taken the Bolsheviks to the ICC[1] because their right to exist had been violated? What a concept.

People have rights. International law regulates various aspects of how states may interact, but does not grant any rights to them. There is no “no takebacks” clause in international law. Any state can disappear or change shape if the people... [More]

Links and Notes for December 22nd, 2023

Published by marco on in Notes

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

[1] Emphases are added, unless otherwise noted.
[2] Annotations are only lightly edited and are largely contemporaneous.

Table of Contents

Oppression => Occupation => Resistance...epression => Terror => Counter-terror

Published by marco on in Quotes

“Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others.

“Occupation entails foreign rule. Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to repression.

“Repression leads to terror and counter-terror. The victims of terror are mostly innocent people.

“Holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. We must leave the occupied territories immediately.”

Shimon Tzabar on September 22, 1967 (Ha'aretz)

This was three months after Israel’s six-day war.

Not the best of This is Hell! 2023

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

I recently wrote about how good the Best of This is Hell! 2023 end-of-hear series has been. The episode Best of 2023: Living and Reliving the U.S. Invasion of Iraq / Rasha Al Aqeedi (This is Hell!) was a counterexample. I thought Rasha’s analysis was more superficial than the standard set by the other episodes.

  • She says no-one should cheerlead a war, especially when they’re not involved, that any war is a tragedy, a diplomatic failure … but then she says that she’s totally pro-Ukraine. ARRRRGGGGHHHH.... [More]

Blowback: Iraq, Israel, and no-nothing know-it-alls

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

So I’ve been listening to this podcast called Blowback by Brendan James and Noah Kulwin. It’s an American history podcast, but with a focus on foreign policy. I started listening to the fourth season, which is about Afghanistan. It’s in progress and up to episode 8 of 10 as of yesterday.

When I’d caught up to episode 7, I started in immediately on their inaugural podcast, S01, which is about Iraq. It’s not just about the invasion of in 2003. It starts in the early 20th century, explaining how British machinations kicked off... [More]

How important is human expertise?

Published by marco on in Philosophy

I have a lot of questions about the rush to replacing human expertise with machine-based expertise.

The Expertise Pipeline

 Do we still need expertise? If so, how do obtain it? What do we do when we saw off the branch we’re sitting on by getting rid of the first half of the pipeline that leads to the second half containing expertise?

The pipeline looks roughly like this right now:

  1. Prime the pump with self-starters/geniuses
  2. Add people who learn from those pioneers/initial experts
  3. Those... [More]

Password managers: LastPass and ProtonPass

Published by marco on in Technology

Over the last several months, I’ve been asked for advice on password managers. I am not a security researcher. I can only tell you what I do, and why. My experience and context are that I primarily use MacOS and iOS, as well as one Windows laptop. I was a LastPass user for a decade, but switched this year to ProtonPass.

  • I’ve made my peace with cloud-storage for my passwords because I think the convenience outweighs the risk.
  • Browser integration with a plugin is very convenient, for both... [More]

Managing maps on a Garmin device

Published by marco on in Sports

I was in the U.S. over the summer and had purchased the U.S. map from Garmin. There wasn’t enough room to store the U.S. map on the device. This article assumes that you’ve tried to sync your maps to your device with Garmin Express, but it failed to copy because you don’t have enough space.

If you have enough space on your device, then why how did you even end up here?

tl;dr:

  • Use Garmin BaseCamp to view loaded maps.
  • Back up, then remove some map files (see below for more details).
  • Reload in BaseCamp... [More]

Some good, American comedians

Published by marco on in Fun

There are a ton of comedians that everyone talks about, like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and so on. I was talking to some friends in Switzerland who are very much into stand-up comedy and they asked for some suggestions.

We talked about a few comedians—Bill Hicks, Bill Burr, and Doug Stanhope—that they might want to try. They all have good insight into the human condition and don’t shy away from describing humanity as it actually is, rather than how we wish it were.

I started off more... [More]

Why do you need an app to charge your electric car?

Published by marco on in Finance & Economy

 I read an article somewhere—I can no longer find the link that inspired this note—that said that you need an app in order to charge your electric car to make sure you pay for the electricity. If you don’t have cell service or wireless, then you can’t charge. The author was somewhere in Tennessee—I believe outside Knoxville, near the Smokies—where there was no reception. He couldn’t charge his vehicle with the standard chargers. The article went on to explain how to use the emergency kit... [More]

Not “right wing” but “unbiased”

Published by marco on in Arbitrary Thoughts

People like to call providers/platforms like Substack and Rumble “right wing”, when what they really are is that they are “unbiased”. These platforms don’t ban casters for having the wrong views or for saying the wrong things. They therefore end up having the casters that other platforms have banned. Since those platforms constantly designate themselves as “left wing”, the people who they ban are, de facto, “right wing”, even if they are self-evidently not.

Look, some of them are, but almost... [More]

A secular view of religious adoption

Published by marco on in Philosophy

The article Brickbat: Ideological Impurity by Charles Oliver (Reason) writes,

“According to a social worker’s report, the two were asked how they would feel if a child in their care was LGBT. The two responded that they would still love the child, wouldn’t kick the child out, and wouldn’t subject the child to conversion therapy. But both opposed sex change treatments for those under 18 and expressed a reluctance to use pronouns that don’t reflect someone’s biological sex, and Catherine said it would be important for the... [More]

Registering for Swica’s Benevita

Published by marco on in Design

Swica is my private health-care provider in Switzerland. By all polls and evaluations, they have some of the best customer-care available. They also have a mobile app called Benevita for tracking some personal information.

Attempt #1: Registering via mobile app

 Benevita offers to let me register an account. I chose an email that identifies the sender—it has a +-sign in it—and a generated password. The page told me that an error had occurred without telling me what I could do to correct... [More]

Censorship for thee, but not for me

Published by marco on in Philosophy

 It’s pretty tedious to watch so many people trying as hard as they can to censor expression of which they don’t approve, all the while screaming at the top of their lungs that they are being censored by others. They see censorship of their own speech as beyond the pale because their opinions are correct whereas those they are trying to censor should of course not be able to speak out because they are promulgating hate speech.

It’s all so very tiresome. Good people end up fooling... [More]

The context of expression

Published by marco on in Philosophy

The article The forbidden topics by Drew DeVault writes,

“Critics of radical free speech, victims of hate speech, and marginalized people of all kinds began to appear in hacker communities. The things they had to say were not comfortable.

“The free speech absolutists among the old guard, faced with this discomfort, developed a tendency to defend hate speech and demean speech that challenged them. They were not the target of the hate, so it did not make them personally uncomfortable, and defending it would... [More]”

What is your responsibility to the feelings of others?

Published by marco on in Philosophy

 The other night, some older guys walked by me in a train station. They were talking about drinking beer. They looked like they’d been doing just that. One of them joked to the other that he was also “looking at pretty girls“.[1] His friend replied “there are none along that way“.

Lots of laughs. Super funny.

There were young ladies in that mass of people walking away from the train. What did they think? Were they amused? I doubt it.

It’s not really funny. It’s actually kind of stupid.... [More]

The walls are closing in for freedom of opinion

Published by marco on in Philosophy

I find myself increasingly at odds with this ever-more-popular notion that there are certain things you cannot say. Restricting freedom of expression is just a way of restricting freedom of thought. If you can’t express an idea, you can’t share it. If you can’t share it, you can’t inspire other people to think it.

When I moved to Switzerland decades ago, I remember being quite surprised to hear that it was technically illegal to deny the Jewish Holocaust in WWII. The discussions were not... [More]

An anecdote about the blithely arrogant destructive force of people

Published by marco on in Philosophy

I read this in a consumer magazine a while ago.

 Kann ich verlangen, dass mein Nachbar seine Tanne fällt_

“ich habe in einer Zürcher Gemeinde ein Eigenheim gekauft. Im Garten meines Nachbarn steht eine mächtige Tanne, die viel Schatten auf mein Grundstück wirft. Der im Kanton Zürich für einzelne Tannen geltende minimale Grenzabstand von acht Metern ist bei weitem nicht eingehalten. Kann ich somit verlangen, dass mein Nachbar die Tanne fällt?

Translation into English:

“I bought my own home in a municipality in Zürich. A giant pine tree stands... [More]”

Analyzing Patrick Lawrence

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

The article Undivided Loyalties by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) starts off with this anecdote about Walter Lippmann.

“Lippmann, the celebrated editor, commentator and author attended a dinner party in Manhattan one evening, and at the port-and-cigars stage of the occasion the host announced an intellectual amusement. All those who advocated socialism were to stand on one side of the dining room, and on the other those who favored the capitalist system. The guests duly divided. And when they were done sorting themselves out, Lippmann... [More]

Wisdom and challenging God

Published by marco on in Philosophy

I was chatting with a friend[1] the other day and he told me of two interesting quotes by Emperor Izaro from the game Path of Exile[2].

I.

The first was,

“Wisdom is the offspring of suffering and time.”

This sounds pretty deep and is doubtless true in some cases, but I don’t think it’s true that only suffering can bring wisdom. Sometimes it’s perspicacity and time that leads to wisdom. I guess suffering helps to drive the message home, to make sure you don’t forget it—in remembering the pain and... [More]

Some videos to learn about LLM Agents

Published by marco on in Technology

Andrej Karpathy

This is a pretty compact and interesting overview.

[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models by Andrej Karpathy (YouTube)

At 46:00, Andrej discusses some of the available jailbreaks or “prompt escapes” that are still available, even with the latest LLM Agents.[1]

He shows how to reformulate a query for making napalm by asking the LLM Agent to tell it a story his grandmother used to tell him about making napalm. Or how to simply convert your query into the exact same text, but in Base64 encoding, in which case the LLM Agent gives the answer you... [More]

Contrasting reactions to COP28

Published by marco on in Science & Nature

First, let’s take the less-hopeful, but more-sober article COP28 climate summit exposes the dead end of fighting climate change under capitalism by Brian Dyne (WSWS). It writes,

“The end of COP28 was also applauded by John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate. Kerry said of the draft resolution, “While nobody here will see their views completely reflected, the fact is that this document sends a very strong signal to the world.”

That signal is that capitalist governments can and will do nothing... [More]

Best of This is Hell! 2023

Published by marco on in Miscellaneous

 I’ve listened to This is Hell! for at least 20 years. When I worked in Chicago a few times for a client, I tried to get up to Evanston to the bar—Cary’s Lounge—under what is now the studio, but was never able to meet Chuck.

I haven’t listened to it as religiously this year as other years, but started walking with podcasts a lot more this winter and stumbled on the “best of 2023” series they’ve got going. It’s awesome! Their listeners chose really, really good interviews! They cover all of... [More]

There is no word for “irony” in German

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

The article German Group Won’t Present Arendt Prize to Masha Gessen Over Gaza Essay by Brett Wilkins (Scheer Post) is just one example among many recent ones, where both the German government and its cultural institutions are in increasing lockstep in controlling the narrative—controlling how its citizens are allowed to think.

 German ultranationalist intelligentsiaIn the case cited in the article, Masha Gessen will still receive the Hannah Arendt award, but it will be presented “without the participation of the Heinrich Böll Foundation”, whatever the hell... [More]

They’re all the same

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

I heard part of this guy’s Jim Himes’s speech in the following video,

Media Pushes Obvious Deep State PsyOp by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

I was struck by my utter inability to tell which party he was from. My only hint was that he was calling for more money for Ukraine, so I figured he must be a Democrat.[1]

But all of the rest of the words were the same words a Republican would use to encourage continued war. Let me throw a bit of the transcript in here, taken from H5846 − December 12, 2023 (Congressional Record)

“Mr. HIMES. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio for... [More]”

Stephen Fry and Nick Cave: Art and Creation

Published by marco on in Technology

Every once in a while, the YouTube algorithm throws up a bit of flotsam from the shipwreck of content that I very much like—and that I would never have otherwise heard of. In this case, it’s a short video (4:43) of Stephen Fry reading a letter written by Nick Cave on the subject of LLMs and creativity.

Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's stirring letter about ChatGPT and human creativity by Letters Live (YouTube)

I’ve citing at length below from the original blog post Iss #248 by Nick Cave (The Red Hand Files), which answered the question, “[…] what’s wrong with making things faster and easier?”

ChatGPT rejects any notions of... [More]

Notice: Vivek Ramaswamy is just as full of shit as the rest of them

Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics

Look, I know the title isn’t going to come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’ve heard that he’s the “sane one”. I’d heard the same thing about Nikki Haley, though. It didn’t take at lot of research to belie that hypothesis. Here’s a very little bit of research on Vivek, based on the 20-minute interview below.

Israel Can Defend Itself However They Want – Vivek Ramaswamy by Jimmy Dore (YouTube)

Dore let him talk. A lot. He didn’t even disagree with him, even though he said some pretty outrageous and clearly incorrect—at best, misguided—things.

 ignorance is strengthVivek is... [More]