| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3734 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 Fun
The hosts of the 2026 ESC are cartoon characters. The lady is a bony, large-lipped, giant-titted, shiny skeleton. What have we done to deserve this?
Spoiler alert: not a single one of these songs was worth listening to even once. It was even more of a train wreck than usual. Was it always this terrible or just since they all started using AI to “fine-tune”?
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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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 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
“Pretending to be crazy works really well until you run into someone pretending to be sane.”
In searching for the quote, I found this one in the comments,
“When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane”
It’s nice but it doesn’t actually mean the same thing.
Another comment claimed it was Mitch Hedberg but I can’t corroborate that at all. He’s one of the most quotable comics of all time and I didn’t find that quote anywhere else. It sounds good, though.
“Mitch Hedberg... [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
“Though we could become learned by other men’s learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom.”
Published on in Quotes
“He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life.”
Weird Al' Yankovic: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert From The Archives by NPR Music (YouTube)
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 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 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 Sports
A friend sent me a meme about the gold-medal Olympic men’s hockey match between the U.S.A. and Canada. I include it here with no sense of endorsement.[1]
Dumb, crude, and inaccurate tweet
I wrote back,
That hockey game went like many hockey games go: the U.S. won against the overwhelming run of play. It happens.
Canada put on a clinic and anyone watching would have been humbled by the awesome and relentless power of the hockey that they played for long, long minutes at a time, non-stop. I had to keep checking the corner of... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
Yesterday[1] Luke asked me to have lunch with him, which I almost never eat upstairs because I prefer the lake but the weather was not great and I haven’t chatted with him in a while and kind of missed him so we had lunch and were joined by Jack and this new embedded SW engineer Karl so, once they sat down and Karl’s German not being so solid yet and his Swiss German being nonexistent and with Jack smiling to himself as he eavesdropped on our conversation, we switched to English and I’m just... [More]
Published on in Design
A little story I wrote to one of my thesis advisees. I wrote it in German and leave it up to your browser to translate it for you. You all have the tools now.
Lustiges Story: Mir werden die Möglichkeiten Word Dokumenten zu verarbeiten immer weiter eingeschränkt. Ich musste folgendes machen:
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The United States and Israel murdered the supreme leader of Islam.[1]
How is that OK? How is it so OK that people can casually mention that they approve of murder in otherwise polite conversation? I guess some people just need killing? What the hell kind of a morality is that?
If you were to accept this, then you’d have to at least have intimate knowledge of the person whom you’ve condemned, no? But people don’t know the first thing about the Ayatollah; they know only that they’ve been ordered... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
These are three interviews I’ve watched with Scott Ritter, who is entirely in his element.
There is a lot of great military analysis in this video but an interesting point that Ritter and Alkhorshid make is that many, many Israelis are quite well-off and quite privileged. Many of them have options outside of Israel. These people will not long suffer the deprivation of a country at war with a real enemy, and will begin to leave. These demographic... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This is a good analysis by someone I’d never heard before. His take is mostly the same as other analysts, though his point of view is unique, in that he’s a former U.S. Army officer with Russian roots. He moved to Russia from the U.S. over 20 years ago and is fluent in Russian.
Iran War Spreading: Russia Gets Involved by Neutrality Studies | Pascal Lottaz | Stanislav Krapivnik (YouTube)
Stas pointed out that,
Published on in Technology & Engineering
This is an informative and darkly humorous 1-hour video about the insidious psychological effects of chatbot usage amongst the most mentally vulnerable members of society.
A.I. Is Messing With Our Mental Health by Some More News | Cody Johnston (YouTube)
I’ve cited some of the video below.
“A.I. chatbots have been connected to other deaths and suicides of people who were just looking for companionship, advice, or both. The big problem is that this isn’t a bug of ChatGPT, but an actual feature of it in order to retain users by appealing to a... [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 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
Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]
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
“When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”
Jon Voight as Milo Minderbinder
I don’t remember who said the line above. It was very probably Yossarian. But he could only have been talking about people like Milo Minderbinder.
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
The article The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else (Hacker News) includes the following comment that attempts to not only put the capital expenditure in AI technology into context but also describes the immense opportunity cost.
“It’s hard to comprehend the scale of these investments. Comparing them to notable industrial projects, it’s almost unbelievable. Every week in 2026 Google will pay for the cost of a Burj Khalifa. Amazon for a Wembley Stadium.
“Facebook will spend a France-England tunnel... [More]”
Published on in Movies
Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The article AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It by Simon Willison demonstrates the Overton Window of addiction pretty well. The author writes,
“This captures an effect I’ve been observing in my own work with LLMs: the productivity boost these things can provide is exhausting.
“[…] I’m frequently finding myself with work on two or three projects running parallel. I can get so much done, but after just an hour or two my mental energy for the day feels almost entirely depleted.”
If I... [More]
