Picture

Name Marco von Ballmoos
Member since
Email [hidden]
Home page https://earthli.com/users/marco
Description

The (only) developer at earthli.com.

Contents

3736 Articles
113 Comments

1 year Ago

Links and Notes for January 24th, 2025

Published 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

CSS: Popovers and anchors

Published on in Programming

The article Do JavaScript frameworks still need portals? by Ollie Williams (Fully Stacked) explains a bit more about the relationship between dialog, popover, and anchor as well as how these elements have made “portal” support in frameworks obsolete. The following ~20-minute video shows how to use only CSS and HTML to position and display elements, regardless of their nesting in the document.

CSS Popover + Anchor Positioning is Magical by Kevin Powell (YouTube)

The main example uses CSS anchor positioning (MDN), position-try (MDN) and :popover-open (MDN). You can use position-try to direct the browser to adjust... [More]

Stop sucking up to The Man

Published on in Quotes

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcolm X

Links and Notes for January 17th, 2025

Published 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2025.1

Published on in Movies

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

  1. Conclave (2024)9/10
  2. The Rundown / Bienvenue dans la jungle (2003)5/10
  3. The Dead Don’t Die (2019)5/10
  4. Devara Part 1 (2024)8/10
  5. Disappear Completely (2022)8/10
  6. Sisu (2022)8/10
  7. Lumberjack the Monster (2023)8/10
  8. Dinner in America (2020)9/10
  9. Shrinking S02 (2024)6/10
  10. Taxi Driver (1976)8/10
Conclave (2024)9/10
Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is the dean of the cardinals in the Catholic Church.... [More]

Practice makes perfect

Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

 Penn & TellerThe article An Unreasonable Amount of Time by Allen Pike writes about a magic trick that seemed nearly impossible but it worked because Penn had buried 52 cards in a park and waited months for grass to grow back over them,

“Teller [of Penn and Teller] describes the underlying principle like so:”
Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

In this case, the trick isn’t dextrous hands or a nimble mind but dedication and planning.

“It can be... [More]”

Links and Notes for January 10th, 2025

Published 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

Utica’s Air Quality is Hazardous?

Published on in Science & Nature

This morning, my partner reported that Utica’s air quality was really. I checked the Real-time Air Quality Index (World Air Quality Index) and could verify that the station in Utica was signaling “very unhealthy” conditions.

You can see that Utica stands out alone as very unhealthy.

 Utica Air Quality is 243 (very unhealthy)

Whereas our initial idea was “wow the fires in California have already drifted that far? Over 5000km? Is that even possible?”, you can see that no-one else between California and Utica is similarly affected. It’s not smoke. If you look... [More]

Links and Notes for January 3rd, 2025

Published 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

Documentaries and discussions of the war in West Asia

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

What is the difference between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and Syria?

In both cases, a country has taken action to establish what it calls a “buffer zone” in a neighboring country that it finds threatening, out of what it considers to be legitimate “security concerns”. Security concerns arise whenever there is animosity between neighbors.

By dint of their respective overwhelming military advantage, Russia and Israel can force their neighbors to... [More]

Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2024.18

Published on in Movies

This simple rule for ruling works every time

Published on in Quotes

 I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon B. Johnson

According to the article Did Lyndon B. Johnson Say This About The ‘Lowest White Man’ and ‘Best Colored Man’? by David Emery (Snopes), it was a then-young Bill Moyers himself to whom Johnson said this, presumably in the 60s. Moyers quotes him as having said it in response to “... [More]”

2 years Ago

Links and Notes for December 27th, 2024

Published 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

How do you solve jigsaw puzzles?

Published on in Fun

I was recently bragging to a friend about how I’d finally just about conquered a difficult jigsaw puzzle with methodology and techniques, My friend of course asked[1] to which methodologies and techniques I might be referring.

Background

I was raised on jigsaw puzzles. We always had a Christmas puzzle at my house. When I was much younger, we did them throughout the year. As I got older, we only had the Christmas puzzle, but we always had that one.[2] Everyone in my nuclear family did it: mom, dad,... [More]

Links and Notes for December 20th, 2024

Published 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

Far Side favorites

Published on in Fun

There was recently a “favorite Far Side” topic in the comics sub-reddit. I’ve lost the link and don’t feel like searching for it. I downloaded all of the ones that I liked, so consider this article a distillation of—and vast improvement over—that post,

The Far Side was pretty formative for me. Most of these are subversion of expectations, but many have multiple layers, which makes you feel clever for figuring it out. I had a lot of the books and collections and read through them again and... [More]

Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2024.17

Published on in Movies

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

  1. Terminator Zero S01 (2024)6/10
  2. Kung Fu Hustle (2004)9/10
  3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)7/10
  4. Il pianeta delle scimmie (Planet of the Apes) (2001)5/10
  5. JFK (1991)8/10
  6. The Century of the Self (2002)9/10
  7. Last Breath (2019)7/10
  8. Farha (2021)8/10
  9. Roma (2018)8/10
  10. Another Life E01 (2019)3/10
Terminator Zero S01 (2024)6/10
As with any other Japanese animated feature, this one is... [More]

Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2024.16

Published on in Movies

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

  1. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)9/10
  2. School of Rock (2003)6/10
  3. Nuclear Now (2024)8/10
  4. Sahara (2005)8/10
  5. Glassboy (2020)6/10
  6. The First Men in the Moon (1964)7/10
  7. Dracula Untold (2014)8/10
  8. Here Comes the Boom (2012)8/10
  9. Arctic (2018)9/10
  10. Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024)9/10
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)9/10
My review from 2018 stands. It’s a fun super-hero action-movie that’s not trying to be... [More]

Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2024.15

Published on in Movies

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

  1. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)7/10
  2. Shanghai Knights (2020)7/10
  3. Cowboys and Aliens (2011)5/10
  4. Fifth Element (1997)10/10
  5. Assassin’s Creed (2016)5/10
  6. The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)9/10
  7. John Wick 4 (2023)8/10
  8. Disturbia (2007)8/10
  9. Split (2016)9/10
  10. Platform 2 (2024)3/10
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)7/10

I don’t have much to add to my review from 2017.

I watched it in German. “Die... [More]”

成語 Chéngyǔ: Chinese idioms

Published on in Miscellaneous

Chengyu (Wikipedia)

“Chengyu (traditional Chinese: 成語; simplified Chinese: 成语; pinyin: chéngyǔ; trans. “set phrase”) are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four Chinese characters. Chengyu were widely used in Literary Chinese and are still common in written vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over... [More]”

Sympathy vs. Empathy

Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

This is a long video. It’s a pretty good video, though. It’s quite soothing to listen to and there are really a lot of good movies in there, with lovingly curated clips of all of them. I like to watch these things to see if there’s something I can add to my movie list. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so everything that looked interesting to me … had also already been consumed by me. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The video has a pretty clickbait-y title, but the author is someone I’ve... [More]

Mark Blyth explains everything

Published on in Finance & Economy

 The interview below is a podcast interview of Mark Blyth by some dude named Chris who sounds like Ira Glass somehow had a child with NPR, then raised it in a box, feeding it only the New York Times for 50 years.[1] Anyway, Chris doesn’t talk a lot because Mark just can’t stop spitting the truth. I only really disagree with Blyth about Biden’s economic accomplishments but otherwise the guy was on absolute fire. Highly recommended. I have, as usual, transcribed the bits I found to be especially... [More]

Angular 19 sounds … complicated?

Published on in Programming

Some of the features described in the video below sound pretty interesting but they also sounds super-complicated, with deferred-loading, hydration, signals, and event/replay all combined with decisions about whether something loads on the client or the server or whether it’s initially built on the server but then enhanced on the client and then run independently from the server, …

I understand that a lot of this technology is for optimizing large web sites, but It’s honestly questionable... [More]

Using calc-size in CSS

Published on in Programming

The following video shows not only when and how to use calc-size(), it also mixes in advice on generating timing functions for animations, sprinkles CSS variables throughout, and even uses overflow: clip combined with an absolutely positioned element to reveal more content without disturbing the layout.

Animate and do math on things like height: auto with interpolate-size and calc-size() by Kevin Powell (YouTube)

The syntax for calc-size() is, as Kevin says, “weird”; you have to pass two parameters: the first is the name of the logical size you’d like to use, while the second parameter is a formula that... [More]

How to apply EF migrations

Published on in Programming

The picture and title are, as usual, clickbait-y, because apparently people don’t click on videos that sound educational unless you promise them ground-breaking learnings. Still, I don’t hate the player; I hate the game. But it’s the world we have.

The video is quite informative and is 90% not the guy pictured. Instead, it’s another guy called Gui Ferrera, who is quite competent.

The Correct Way to Run Database Migrations in EF Core by Nick Chapsas / @gui.ferreira (YouTube)

He starts by explaining how to deploy migrations in production—you don’t just run them, as you would in... [More]

Pornography search terms 2024

Published on in Fun

The 2024 Year in Review (PornHub Insights) is available and has some fun facts.[1] For example, the U.S. had about the same percentage increase for “sneaky cheating” as the French did for “femme a lunette” (women with glasses). This blog post is 100% worth it just to learn terms like “milf culona” (big-ass MILF) in Spanish, which, together with “culo grande” (big ass) in Italian, set a sort of U.N.-like agreement about priorities for a lot of countries. Ukraine, though, wins with a trending search for “на... [More]

ABC News buys a wing of the Trump presidential library

Published on in Public Policy & Politics

The article Given George Stephanopoulos’ Carelessness, ABC’s Defamation Settlement With Trump Seems Prudent by Jacob Sullum (Reason) writes,

“In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed... [More]”

Links and Notes for December 13th, 2024

Published 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

Links and Notes for December 6th, 2024

Published 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