| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3736 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Technology & Engineering
Apple keeps coming up with new things to mess with my typing. I long ago turned off auto-correct, but was surprised to see that my MacOS Sonoma Notes app started not only predicting text, but also auto-correcting it. I do not like this. I turned off auto-correct system-wide for a reason. I would rather correct my typos on my own. Just underline the errors and I’ll get to them. That’s my workflow.
These are my OS-level settings. I know I seem ungrateful to be turning off all of the assistance... [More]
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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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.
Published on in Technology & Engineering
A recent experience at work led me to conclude that the AI revolution will pass most of us by. In mid-December, I fell ill with COVID. I’d updated my status in Microsoft Teams accordingly.
About six weeks later, a co-worker wrote to me, asking whether the status still applied? He hoped not?
I’d forgotten about it, but nothing had reminded me. It’s interesting that I get five mails a week about MS Viva and about Sharepoint Stuff I Might Have Missed, but I don’t get a single hint that my status... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article The US/UK attack on Yemen and the global eruption of imperialist war by WSWS Editorial Board (WSWS) describes how the U.S. and UK opened a new front in their war on the middle east.
“[…] supposedly it is Yemen that is the “aggressor,” carrying out “unprecedented attacks” on US military forces deployed in the Red Sea, thousands of miles from the US border. American imperialism, which has a military larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, claims to be waging a “defensive” war on the other... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article When META Met Society by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) writes about the evils of META (Most Effective Tactics Available). The author cites an essay by Megan McArdle. Neither one of these fools can think of an example of META that corresponds to actual power. That perennial dipshit McArdle thinks that a 17-year-old swatting hundreds of people is a good example. Greenfield sticks to the obvious, as cited below.
“If you were big and strong, you could beat up someone small and weak. You could steal their wallet, watch... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Jeremy Scahill was absolutely en fuego in this 90-minute interview. I’ve cleaned up the YouTube transcript—it gets most of the words, but includes verbal tics, has no punctuation, has a very cavalier attitude toward capitalization, and simply will not transcribe certain words correctly. Anyway, Jeremy and Briahna had a great conversation about terrible, terrible topics.
IDF Soldiers DESECRATE Gaza Cemetery and Other Israel BOMBSHELLS (w/ Jeremy Scahill) by Bad Faith (YouTube)
At around 24:00 they talk about the circumstances surrounding the recent defunding of UNRWA.
“Jeremy It’s hard to shock... [More]”
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
I really liked a recent interview with Samuel Moyn by Doug Henwood in 04.01.2024 (Behind the News), so when I saw his name again, I figured It’d check out the video below. It was reasonably interesting, but not really worth noting, except that I noticed that it exhibited some core fallacies evident in the so-called liberal project.
'What Happened to Liberalism?' Samuel Moyn in conversation with Becca Rothfeld by The Philosopher (YouTube)
At 34:00, Becca Rothfeld says “Biden is pretty leftist in some ways.” In which ways? I’m honestly interested to know because I can’t think of anything that wasn’t just something he said once or twice, or things... [More]
Published on in Finance & Economy
The article Javier Milei Tells World Leaders: ‘The State Is Not the Solution’ by Katarina Hall (Reason) start off with this sentence,
“Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei praised the virtues of free markets and warned political leaders about the dangers of collectivism in a speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.”
Talk about red meat for Reason magazine. I’ve been following this magazine for a while and I appreciate some of their content, but man they just can’t resist this bullshit. This obvious... [More]
Published on in Sports
The article Israel and Russia Have No Place in the 2024 Paris Olympics by Jules Boykoff & Dave Zirin (Jacobin) writes,
“In November, an IOC spokesperson insisted that Russia presented “a unique situation and cannot be compared to any other war or conflict in the world.” The statement beggars belief. Both Russia and Israel are engaged in asymmetrical warfare, attacking civic infrastructure and private residences and leaving a long trail of civilian deaths and casualties.”
The authors’ statements beggar belief. Did they write this... [More]
Published on in Programming
The article The web just gets better with Interop 2024 by Jen Simmons (Webkit Blog) writes,
“
The Interop project aims to improve interoperability by encouraging browser engine teams to look deeper into specific focus areas. Now, for a third year, Apple, Bocoup, Google, Igalia, Microsoft, and Mozilla pooled our collective expertise and selected a specific subset of automated tests for 2024.
“Some of the technologies chosen have been around for a long time. Other areas are brand new. By selecting some of the highest priority... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The more I listen to the Blowback podcast, the more it’s clear that the U.S. has never been ruled by good people—or by smart people. They may be intelligent but their ideology makes them stupid. Or they’re just stupid. Either way, none of them are good. None of them have anything approaching universal principles. They are nearly all at least self-serving hypocrites. They are nearly all raging egos, bastards who don’t take the blame for anything. They are more than occasionally actual... [More]
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
In the podcast Episode 345: Naughty List (Patreon), Brace and Liz called Kevin Spacey a “child rapist”, then an “alleged child rapist” and finally settled on “ex-alleged child rapist”. Just using the epithet “child rapist” suggests that Spacey preyed on very young children, when the only accusations that actually went to trial were from someone who claimed that they’d been assaulted when they were 14 years old.
That would have been awful (had it happened), but it’s somehow less awful than if they’d been 5... [More]
Published on in Movies
These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of around 1600 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let’s be honest, level of intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.
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.
Published on in Design
I use a Jabra 65 headset at work. I have both the one-ear and two-ear variants because I’m still trying to debug my way through a complete shutdown of Bluetooth functionality for the last couple of months.
I think the one-ear one is more comfortable because I can hear the rest of the office a bit. The two-ear one is extremely deadening and fits oddly on my head. It’s very noticeable and not very comfortable.
Jabra popped up a dialog today asking me how likely I would be to recommend Jabra... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
A friend asked me for my opinion on the situation in the middle east, specifically on Israel/Palestine. Hoo-boy.
I wrote something like the following, although I’ve enhanced it a bit.
Israel is interested in clearing all of the Palestinians off of that land. They will shoot them if they have to, but starving them into leaving the country is also acceptable. Once they’re finished in Gaza, they’ll finish up in the West Bank, where they’ve already increased the ferocity of the occupation. It’s... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
It’s a bizarre thing that some countries just get to fly over other countries with their militaries—with their air force, to be more precise—and just bomb them on any day they feel like it. Like Israel just up and bombs Iraq, Lebanon, or Syria whenever it feels like it and no-one blinks an eye. The article US and UK Bomb Dozens of Sites in Yemen by Dave DeCamp (Scheer Post) writes that this just happened recently. No-one really cares—not enough to even dream of doing anything about it. No country that the U.S.... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article Go Straight to Jail by Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, and Judah Schept (The Baffler) discusses the effects of jails on the communities in which they’re located.
“These numbers represent real people—hundreds of thousands of people who are directly impacted by the violence of jail incarceration and detention, millions of people who are affected by the extraction that jail facilitates, and by the violence that is perpetrated on families and communities through policing and incarceration across the varied geography of the United States.”
Jails and... [More]
Published on in Finance & Economy
The article Does Capitalism Beat Charity? by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten) does some decent analysis on the efficacy of the market mechanism for distributing societal benefits versus that of charity.
“[…] it doesn’t seem obvious that Instacart “causes” jobs. Suppose Instacart had never been founded. Then people would spend whatever money they now spend on Instacart on something else (let’s say booze and porn), which would also create jobs (for brewers, bartenders, and porn stars). There’s no particular reason to... [More]”
Published on in Science & Nature
Stop what you’re doing and learn about how clever corvids are. There is a lot of footage of them creating grub-digging sticks to quite exacting specifications. It’s quite incredible, but there you are.
True Facts: Crows That Hunt With Sticks by Ze Frank (YouTube)
“Anyway, science hippies put a camera on the crow’s tail feathers…”
The crows are capable of solving multi-step problems. There are several tubes arrayed around the crow. One of the tubes has food in it, but cannot be reached with the small stick that the crow is given. There is a... [More]
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
The article I Think You Should Be Kind by Freddie deBoer (Substack) is the first of two about genders and biology and stuff. I read with interest and took some notes. The follow-up is linked in the second half.
“Almost all vertebrate animals exhibit some sort of sexual dimorphism, and saying so does not in any way undermine the case for trans rights. The whole argument is that physiology does not dictate gender, and acknowledging that most people with penises go through life uncomplicatedly accepting a masculine gender... [More]”
Published on in Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
To think I almost shrunk away from the 150-minute runtime of this video! It was well-worth my time, felt like it went more quickly than the runtime, and was an all-around excellent conversation. I’ve included a partial transcription of the parts I found interesting and my own notes below.
Billionaire's Anti-Palestine ATTACK on Academic Freedom (w/ Norm Finkelstein) by Bad Faith (YouTube)
At 27:00 they are talking about the recent ousting of president of Harvard Claudine Gay, largely through billionaire Bill Ackman’s efforts.
“Norman: I don’t recall a single... [More]”
Published on in Design
Sometime at the end of last year, I found a coupon for one free month of TacX, a cycling service offered by Garmin that integrates with their app to provide courses, routes, maps, and head-to-head competition online. I wasn’t interested in head-to-head or in doing anything that involved watching the app, but my own custom routes had grown a bit stale, so I decided to try it.
The coupon code worked just fine—even after almost five years—and I was registered.
Then I... [More]
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.
Published on in Quotes
“I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.”
Published on in Quotes
“[…] most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you − anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”
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.
Published on in Movies
These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of around 1600 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let’s be honest, level of intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.
Published on in Quotes
“There is no secret. Just practice twice as much as you think you need to.”
Steve Vai − For the Love Of God − Live in Bristol 6-2022 by MP Music (YouTube)
Needless to say, this is pretty much always the answer. Talent makes practice rewarding; it doesn’t replace it. See Wisdom and challenging God.
