I just heard that Switzerland is thinking of banning RT.

Europe has done it. Great Britain has done it. The U.S. has de-facto done it (it’s not by government decree, but by the corporations that de-facto run that country’s media).

Viola Amherd of Switzerland said something about following their lead.

So, let me get this straight: Viola’s principles allow her to buy JSF35 jet fighters from the U.S. and have no problems running U.S. state propaganda (CNN everybody; pay attention), but she has... [More]

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

Table of Contents

• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism... [More]

The article When to Avoid the text-decoration Shorthand Property by Šime Vidas (CSS Tricks) makes a couple of interesting points. Basically, you have a lot of control over how underlines are drawn on text.

• Modern browsers allow you to tweak the text-decoration: underline (MDN) with text-decoration-thickness (MDN) and text-underline-offset (MDN)
• Use the :any-link (MDN) to select links that actually have an href attribute rather than selecting all links.
• The CSS property text-decoration is a shorthand property, which means that setting it... [More] (MDN)

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

Table of Contents

• COVID-19
• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism... [More]

From the Intervention Plenary 7.2.2022 by Mick Wallace (Twitter),
some backbone and real talk from Mick Wallace of Ireland, in the European Parliament. The video is 62s; transcript is below.

Mick Wallace

“The current crisis in Ukraine has been used by the Irish media class and a handful of politicians to make the case that Ireland should relinquish the neutrality enshrined in our Constitution and even commit to joining NATO.

“Naturally, these jingoistic sentiments are from those too old to enlist, their children and... [More]”

Some backbone and real talk from Clare Daley of Ireland, in the European Parliament. The video is 87s; transcript is below.

Afghanistan crisis by Clare Daley (YouTube)

“There’s no doubt about it. We’re living in times of catastrophic crisis, where the lives of innocent civilians are sacrificed in the wars of their masters. Yes, in Ukraine, but not only.

“Since the last plenary, tens of thousands of Afghani citizens have been forced to flee in search of food and safety. Five million children face famine—an agonizing and painful... [More]”

The article Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (Babylon Bee) shows a sign outside a restaurant that reads,

“Notice: Proof of Ukraine Support Required

“Patrons must show proof of Ukraine support to enter this restaurant. Please have your social media profiles open and a photo ID ready. Thank you for helping us defeat the Russian menace.”

Just be clear—because the world has largely lost its sense of humor and sense of irony—The Babylon Bee is a satirical newspaper.

“That’s a nice little town you have here. It’d be shame if something were to happen to it.”

Imagine we live in a small town. We’ve got a neighbor who’s a bit of an asshole. It’s complicated. This neighbor tells everyone how great he is, and he’s done some good things for the town in the past—quite a while ago—but he’s really been a pain in the ass lately. Like the last 50 years or so. He’s pretty rich and he owns a lot of the local stores—or buys from them—so it’s kind of hard to... [More]

I upgraded by by-now 5.5-year-old iMac 27" with MacOS Monterey. It went very, very smoothly. For once, it didn’t even offer to have me connect my Apple account before just loading my user. It just upgraded, rebooted, logged back in, and TADA! all set. 😀💪🏼🎉

My M1 MacBook Pro, on the other hand, was a good deal more annoying about it. As on the iMac, I have two accounts on the MacBook: my standard user and an “Admin” user. Unlike the iMac, the disk is encrypted on the MacBook. Will I... [More]

I got this pretty awkwardly phrased inspirational notification from DuoLingo the other day.

DuoLingo is getting quite forward

DON’T STOP NOW IT’S SO GOOD!

Um, ok.

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.

Legion S02 (2017) — 9/10... [More]

I took a look at the Full Transcript of Biden’s State of the Union Address by Joe Biden (New York Times) and took some notes. As these things go, it wasn’t the stupidest State of the Union I’ve heard, but it was pretty stupid.

“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos.”

This is 100% true. It was also delivered without irony or shame.

“Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and totally unprovoked.

“He rejected repeated,... [More]”

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.

Table of Contents

• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Technology... [More]

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.

Table of Contents

• COVID-19
• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism... [More]

I’m very open to the possibility that it’s just me, but this kind of stuff happens to me all the time. I approach an app that the entire rest of the country manages to use every day and fail to make it work for me, even for the simplest tasks.

In the screenshot below, you can see what happened when I tried to run a simple search for a route from “Kempten” to “Basel”.

SBB can't even make a simple form

I’m mystified as to which field the form thinks should be filled out.

Maybe I’m in some A/B test where I’m the only person... [More]

I use LEO quite a bit, both to learn new words and to check word genders in German. Over the years, I’ve become quite used to German having only a single word where English has several.

For example, “die Schande” in German translates to “obloquy”, “opprobrium”, “infamy”, “scandal”, “dishonor”, “disgrace”, and the most common one, “shame”.

Translations for schande in English

The other day, though, I found a good example in the other direction. The word “joist” in English translates to “Balken”, “Träger”, “Dachträger”,... [More]

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.

Table of Contents

• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Art & Literature
• Philosophy... [More]

The following comes from a self-indulgently expansive footnote in the preceding article Superpowers are hypocrites.

After publication, I read Socialists Fight for a Future Without War by Ronan Burtenshaw (Jacobin), which seems to hit many of the same points I made above, while being simultaneously more eloquent and informative.

“We hear very little today about Britain’s role in the NATO-led war in Libya in 2011, which demolished that state, left its people in the hands of warlords, and pushed thousands to flee and drown... [More]”

Let’s think a bit about the stories that we’re told about the world.

These stories show up individually, without context.

Mostly we don’t get context for the story itself, but we almost certainly don’t get context about the story relative to other, similar stories.

When the U.S. and NATO[1] cried “that’s enough” and bombed the former Yugoslavia[2] nearly flat, for humanitarian reasons—because of a “genocide”[3]—and then created and quickly internationally recognized the country of Kosovo, that... [More]

According to the article, Verdi’s Macbeth at La Scala in Milan: The opera of the year—an inspirational experience for millions of viewers , the Opera is made for viewing via video:

“Even more significant is the fact that the director employed pioneering multimedia technology to bring the topicality of Verdi’s Macbeth to life and turn it into an inspiring experience for millions via cinema and television outlets.”

In fact, they claim that video is better:

“Only the “distant” audience... [More]”

I got a message from a friend yesterday morning (one with whom I occasionally discuss politics). It read,

“I guess the Guardian et al were right…..”

They were referring, of course, to the Russian escalation this morning in the Donbass.

I wrote back:

Sure they were. I’m not going to be so quick to believe everything I’m hearing right now the way they’d like me to hear it. Fool me once, shame on you, etc. Deep breath and wait to see how it shakes out.

If they do get their war, then they did... [More]

I can well imagine that the article following Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo by Stuart A. Thompson (NY Times) will be “DuckDuckGo is a right-wing web site”.

C’mon New York Times. Do better.

Just the fast that this joke must resonate with a good portion of this site’s audience suggests to me that this actually happens. What kind of a person would actually do this? What kind of society would actually allow this?

Babylon Bee on Leafblowers

For reference, the building where I live here in Switzerland has had a grounds crew for the last couple of years. They do use leafblowers, unfortunately. They never start before 09:00 or 10:00 or so.
 

Before I quote from any terrible articles below, I’ll give my take on the women’s figure-skating finals (long program).

Trusova was an absolute physical powerhouse, nailing jump after jump after jump, but not exactly linking it all together with very much style. Sarah Van Berken neé Meier, moderating for SRF in Switzerland, said that she would have been in the top 10 for men with those jumps. It was an exciting program, but my viewing partner said it was “ugly”, compared to Sakamoto, who is a... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

The Boys is a story about a world with super-powered beings (“supes”). This is not unusual for comic books, or graphic novels. The distinction is that this story doesn’t make a distinction between superheroes and supervillains. It doesn’t believe that superheroes exist. Or it grudgingly concedes that some super-powered beings seem not to take advantage of their powers for personal gain. The only example of a high-level super-powered being who does so is Annie.

The story... [More]

Since the list of books and reviews and notes for the last couple of years got a little bit out of hand, I’ve only included partial notes and review of each book in this article. This year, the separate article for each book generally includes many more notes and review material, as well as citations and rough notes.

Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur (1907)

by Maurice Leblanc

This is a collection of stories about Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief.

• L’Arrestation d’Arsène Lupin: Lupin... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

Eva Grjdic works at Cosmos, a grocery-store chain à la Migros.

The art style reminds me very much of my well-worn and beloved Mad magazines that I spent my youth reading. It is, perhaps, closest to Mort Drucker, with a bit of Sergio Aragones mixed in. The text is brilliant. It’s subversive, it’s so very Swiss. The context is so very Swiss. You won’t be able to really get this comic unless you live here or lived her at that time.

Eva is dirt poor and barely makes ends... [More]