Ariel is so talented! I mean, browse to her website and experience her exquisite taste and design skills. I browse around her website, and get the feeling to be experiencing Japanese aestetics: minimal, yet extremely tasteful.
I can’t pretend; I am a fan! I mean, take a look at this, and you will have but a glimpse of what I am talking about.
Calling a night with a couple of notes holding Asian wisdom. The previous from Japanese Matsuo Bashō. This one attributed to Chinese Laozi.
“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” — Matsuo Bashō.
This I like quite a bit. It is a good philosophy to follow!
“If I had to describe my philosophy toward technology, I’d say I aim for the crux of whatever works the best with the least amount. You add things until it starts sucking, take things away until it stops getting better.”
I have never had to do a presentation—yes, I am that lucky. Yet, if I ever needed to do one, I would opt for the Takahashi Method.
“Unlike a typical presentation, no pictures and no charts are used. Only a few words are printed on each slide—often only one or two short words, using very large characters. To make up for this, a presenter will use many more slides than in a traditional presentation, each slide being shown for a much shorter duration.”
➝ Via 47nil.
From one of my favourite books, “Through the Looking-Glass”—together with “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”—which I read over and over as a child.
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
No, I am not going to disable my ad-blocker for your website. No, I am not going to make an exception by adding your website to an allow list, to let the adverts you are running go through. Yes, I care about independent journalism, but I can’t donate to everyone, nor donate multiple times a month to the same news site.
When forced to chose between allowing ads, or not being allowed to your content, I will simply browse away.
Had pad Thai at Thai House restaurant today. It didn’t come with crushed peanuts in it. Is it only me, or crushed roasted peanuts are a must have for pad Thai? Also, the noodles where way too wet, to the point they were sticking, kind of lumpy. For me, another no no. Am I becoming too picky?!
Watched all “Secret Level” (★★★½) episodes last night. Just like “Love Death + Robots”, I was left wanting to see more. My favourite episodes, S1E2: “Sifu: It takes a Life”, and S1E11: “Exodus: Odyssey”.
George shared something attributed to Anthropic researchers:
“Even if AI progress completely stalls today and we don’t reach AGI… the current systems are already capable of automating ALL white-collar jobs within the next 5 five years.”
To which the AI itself replied:
“While AI is transforming the workplace, it’s not realistic to assume that all white-collar jobs will be automated in five years, even without further AI advancements. The claim is overly simplified and doesn’t fully account for the complexity of human work, the ongoing evolution of AI, and the potential ethical and social implications of such widespread automation.”
Such humble, and kind masters are forthcoming! 😅
John Gruber describes fluidly why the dream of making iPhones in the United States is just sheer fantasy.
“United States doesn’t have anyone with the necessary vocational skills, who would want to work tedious factory jobs at factory-job wages, and China does. That’s part of the fever-dream mad-king fantasy of this entire cockamamie endeavor by Trump: these are difficult, low-paying, long-houred jobs that Americans don’t want. That these jobs are all in China and India is proof that America is far ahead, not that we’ve fallen behind.”
Of course I agree! Asking Apple to make the iPhones in the US is rotten non-sense coming out of a necrotic mind.
These are the replies and interactions of someone who truly loves Golang. I wouldn’t know, I am not a programmer, but about the “simple, minimal syntax—master the core in hours, not months”… hmm, I don’t know mon. 😅
Here I was thinking that RFK Jr. voice was simply the result of alcohol and tobacco abuse—which would be ironic, considering he is the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services1—but I was wrong. It is related to a rare neurological condition known as spasmodic dysphonia.
Still ironic because, even though he denies being anti-vax, he has repeated multiple times that “autism comes from vaccines”, amongst others. ↵
It has always puzzled me how society expects older people to “behave their age”. Why? Why the degrading of our cells, our physical and mental decline, has to change who we are? If we saw people past their age, and let them be them, the world would be a happier place.
A firefly taking flight. I played with these by the hundreds when I was a kid. My child has never seeing one in real life.
➝ Via Marcio Aleksandravicius.
I have been tyring to automate the setting of lastmod on Hugo to no avail. I want to capture in a note the last modified timestamp from git, as these notes reside in git repository, and use it within a note. No dice, so far.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
Got it to work! It is not using the git timestamp, because it doesn’t really acccurately provide the modification time, but the commit time (two different things). Instead, I am setting the timestamp when the note is opened for edit.
Such an incredibly hot day! We just came back from errands, and I really don’t feel like leaving the house again today, regardless of reason.
There is no way in hell—figuratively speaking, of course—that I would find myself installing Microsoft Edge on my Mac. I’ll die with Safari. I am a vanillist—that is, I prefer and use default apps.
Similarly, if you ever see me using Google Chrome—or any other browser, but Safari—on my Mac, kindly ask me to give you $1,000 (USD). You have my word.
“You are imperfect, I am imperfect, and that’s perfect.” — Unknown. Enter Kintsugi, and how it can help with stressful situations..
“Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold—built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the “scars” as a part of the design.”
Finished watching volume 4 of “Love Death + Robots” (★★★½), and the day is still young. I would call this a good start of a weekend.
It only gets three and a half stars from me because not all episodes are good. Yet, it was entertaining, as previous seasons have been, nonetheless. My favourite episode was V4E7, “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur”.
No long ago I noted purchasing a fob key for wife’s car. Today she goes to pick it up, and the dealership (AutoNation Acura in Sanford) wants $265 to “program” it. Nobody told us about that extra cost when we ordered it! Not even the slight mention of it!
Imagine going to the hospital to have a pacemaker implanted, and receiving it in nicely wrapped box to take home. WTH?! What good is car key that doesn’t do anything?
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
I found someone we trust that will program it for $100. I think I am going to be sending my complain, and feedback, via certified mail (with a copy via email).
The Ring doorbell application for iOS—I have no reason to doubt this applies to Android too but I can’t attest it, as I don’t have an Android device—is horrible. The so called “Ring - Always Home” unintuitive interface, unreliability, and their push to be “social”, makes it an experience from hell.
I spent close to an hour configuring and fine-tuning Mum’s and Dad’s phones so that they are not constantly awakened during the night or bothered during the day with notifications and dings. In the process, I had to delete and reinstall the app, wrestle with their insistence on having MFA, and a bunch of other rubbish. Ugh!
The air we breathe is composed, amongst many other things of course, “of the previous breaths of everyone who ever lived”.
“How many molecules from Caesar’s last breath do we inhale with each breath we take? Shockingly, the answer is about one molecule—we actually do share breaths with Caesar! And, by extension, every breath we take is composed of the previous breaths of everyone who ever lived—Socrates, Lincoln, Einstein, etc. Isn’t that crazy?”
➝ Via Hacker News.
I know it is a complex relationship—just like any other big company CEO—that of Tim Cook and Trump. Yet, Tim should have never donated money to Trump’s inauguration, nor attended to it. If favours were what he was after, he failed. He should have known better.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s [sic] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” he said. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
Since when does a US president have the rights to interfere with free commerce, without congressional oversight?
I need to start my own “blogroll” page, so that I can write down the blogs I come across and like, to later re-visit. That’s something which search engines can’t help me, and it bothers me to no end trying finding that blog once again, and fail.
“We came here because of what America stands for: freedom of speech, academic freedom, a vibrant intellectual community,” Mr Gerdén said of his international classmates. “And now Trump is threatening all those values.”
This cannot be allowed to continue. It is a personal grudge against Harvard, and goes against everything American stands for—which is sadly, and slowly, being no more.
Tonight we will finish watching “Solo Leveling” (unless the kid, who has a cold, goes to bed early). I’ve got to tell you, between “Attack on Titan” (★★★★½) and “Solo Leveling”, I prefer the second 50 times.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
This has been completed. It was a truly good manga series! Thus now the wait has commenced for the arrival of the next season. Can’t come soon enough!
This Obsidian’s upcoming core plugin will be a game changer. Right now you can do similarly with Dataview, but Bases seems simpler, while remaining powerful, and future proof. I might even become a Catalyst member!
“Bases is a core plugin that lets you turn any set of notes into a powerful database. With bases you can organize everything from projects to travel plans, reading lists, and more.”
“I went to a show in November of last year (it’s May right now) and ever since, I have tinnitus. I don’t recommend it.”
I do, too. And I, too, do not recommend it. I don’t know what it feels to be in silence. I have gotten used to my “new” silence, and learned how to enjoy it, but it is nothing like the silence I experienced before tinnitus started.
Talking about price tags, $77,000 for one fibre channel switch, with zero return policy, and a minimum of six weeks lead time is a first timer to me. Tariffs anyone?
I can’t help but fearing these kind of acquisitions. My concern is that it will translate to price increases, with the price tag they are paying for it.
“AT&T has clinched a deal to acquire Lumen Technologies’ consumer fiber operations for $5.75 billion in cash, the companies said on Wednesday, as the wireless provider adds further scale to its national fiber footprint.”
I know it happens, of course, but still stumping to me: how in the world someone manages to bankrupt a casino? Furthermore, who trusts a “businessman” with a history of bankrupcies? What to do? Ah, yes, you elect him president of the country, of course. 🤦🏻♂️
I played a little bit of Diablo IV yesterday. This season 8 is rather unfun, mostly for a few reasons: bosses one-hit kill attacks, only one boss having a 3% mythic gear drop, and the summoning materials for it “discovered” randomly, and runes extremely low drop rate. Runes are used to create targetted mythic gear.
The US House of Representatives (controlled by the GOP) approved Trump’s “one, big beautiful bill”, which “will add about $3.8 trillion to the federal government’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade”. In case it wasn’t noticed, that’s trillions.
“The bill also slashes spending in other areas, including hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while rescinding a series of clean energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022. And it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.”
— NBC News
Chetan—whose blog I have read since, well, its very beginning—provides an elegant solution on his Text enclosures post that I wish it was built-in everywhere. VS Code, Obsidian, and Logseq, to mention a few, has it. It is so useful! What is it? Select, and add single, double quotes, brackets, parenthesis, asterisks, etc. to both sides of the selection.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
The post I referred about on this note has since been removed. I will need to start using the Wayback Machine to save, and refer to posts from Chetan, as they seem ephemeral quite often. 😅
OpenAI is buying Jony Ive’s AI device startup (I have no idea what Ive’s company does, haven’t been able to find its website, but search engines agree on it being a “hardware” company), and Apple’s stock goes down a bit. What is wrong with you people? Really?!
You will notice that this note’s font is different. Not only is a little bit bigger, it is Ubuntu Sans (not Open Sans, like that rest). Which is more legible? Well, let’s see.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Hmm, I need more. I, in capitals, and i. L, in capitals, and l. 1, and l. O and 0. I am growing to like it.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
Well, I liked it so much that I have changed to it, for now. I think that getting tired of fonts, colour themes, cars, etc., is just part of being human. I really like Open Sans, I just feel like using Ubuntu Sans for a while. I think seeing it each day while working (running Ubuntu Linux on work machine, and that’s the default font) has something to do with it.
Well, well, well. This just keeps getting “better”, eh? But “criticism of Waltz”, according to Trump, was “unfair”. 🙄
“A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.”
I just paid $283.71 for a key fob for wife’s 16 years old car. This is a need; it is either paying for it, or having a 2 tons vehicle sitting on the driveway. Of course that’s not an option, she also needs it for work. Because, unlike on other cities, public transportation here doesn’t truly exists.
I am, suddenly, feeling the desire to watch the “Shogun” series once more.
“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”