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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the second of three novels in the MaddAddam trilogy. The events in this book cover the same time frame as the first novel, but from the points of view of different characters. In that novel, we read about a girl named Bernice that Jimmy knew at the Martha-Graham Academy they both attended. She was a God’s Gardener. In this book, we learn more about her and much more about the Gardeners.

The mythology of the Gardeners is quite scientific. They are highly... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the first of three novels in the MaddAddam trilogy. This one tells the story of Snowman, a lone, somewhat mad, man living on his own in a post-apocalyptic world, nearly bereft of other human life. The only other “people” around are a tribe of pleasant, but simple humanoids that Snowman calls Crakers.

Snowman remembers a time when there were more people than just the Crakers. He remembers a time when the planet was controlled by supra-national corporations that ran... [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
• Philosophy & Sociology
• ... [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
• Science & Nature
• Art &... [More]

What do we do when everyone’s consuming content and no-one’s producing it? The quality drops precipitously.

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the sixth book of the The Expanse series. It starts with Marco Inaros and his Free Navy in charge of the Slow Zone and Medina Station in it. Michio Pa is at the heart of the small group of higher-ups in the Free Navy who are beginning to seriously doubt Marco’s qualifications and goals. Those goals always seem to change whenever Marco would have had to admit that he’d failed. He managed to destroy billions on Earth, but the blow strikes simultaneously at Belters... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the fifth book of the The Expanse series. The book starts with a Belter raid on a Martian base on Callisto. A 15-year-old named Filip leads the raid. He is forced to leave a man behind, but the mission is otherwise a success. They’d managed to capture the stealth shielding from the Martians and made it look like a botched raid on a different warehouse.

The Rocinante is back at Tycho Station, this time for a half-year of repairs and upgrades. Amos heads to Earth to... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This story takes place after Abaddon’s Gate. It tells the story of Paulo Cortázar, who started life as a somewhat gifted, but lazy student. He gets hooked on amphetamines during his latter years at university and manages to get his degree. He has some money set aside, but he also now has a pretty big monkey on his back. He seems to be chronically incapable of landing a job, so he sets up his apartment for a cleansing—he’s going to kick the drug habit that he, in a... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

To no-one’s surprise at all, this novel by Roth tells the story of a senior literature professor. His name is David Kepesh, but that doesn’t really matter. This is, apparently, the third in a series that started with The Breast. At least Roth is dead-honest about what he considers to be the most worthy literary subject of all time. It’s really hard not to feel that this is autobiographical to some degree.

A Cuban-American named Consuela Castillo is taken one of his courses... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the fourth book in The Expanse series. It follows the Rocinante to a planet called Ilus (colonists) or New Terra (U.N.). The Roci is sent there by Avasarala and Fred Johnson to settle the dispute between colonists and the official science and security team sent by the U.N.

Basia Merton is a colonist, there with his wife Lucia, the colony’s doctor and their daughter Felcia. The colonists are mainly Belters, who arrived on the Barbapiccola. They’d managed to convert... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This book argues that the paucity of good jobs these days is due not to a rise in automation, but to a massive decrease in manufacturing output. That is, slow growth rates coupled with a system-wide overcapacity are a much better fit for explaining how we got to where we are today: economies in the west with ostensibly very low unemployment, but largely in the service industry with a much different benefits structure than past jobs.

Benanav sees a UBI as a means to an end,... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is the seventh novel in The Expanse series. It picks up the story nearly three decades after the end of the last book. The Transport Union manages traffic between the Ring Colonies, led by Camina Drummer. She is comfortable in her role, but laments the hidebound nature of bureaucracy.

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 & Media
• Technology
• Programming... [More]

Standard disclaimer[1]

This is a 114-page document about various features of processor architectures and of programming languages and techniques that affect performance. It starts with a discussion of how memory (RAM or cache) even works, on an electrical level. How much maintenance overhead does a capacitor in a memory unit need in order to maintain its value? That is, there are cycles during which the RAM is refreshing its capacitance and cannot be read. If a processor request for that data... [More]