< Notes...

I took Ammu yesterday to buy a couple of chickens. This market place lets you select a live bird, and the vendor then kills and cleans it for you. It felt odd, especially for someone who eats chicken as much as I do, but I found it abhorrent.

It’s easier for me to accept the practice when I don’t see it happen or think about it too much. Instead, I like to picture the chickens we eat as dying of heart attacks after being pitted against one another in a marathon. Chickens are naturally competitive, often pushing themselves to their limits, and that can be the cause of their death. At least that’s the story I tell myself, and I will stick to it.

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

That quote from Futurama’s “Godfellas” episode resonates so true, specially after being asked for week’s accomplishments, or anything relevant, and otherwise noteworthy. More often than not “things worked, no complains were heard” is a supreme achievement.

They push “120B” without explaining active parameters. They advertise 80GB without clearly explaining the split pool. They quote impressive local compute numbers while avoiding the architectural bottleneck joining the two halves of the system. They lean on academic research they did not originate. They present as a U.S. startup while the visible technical and operational trail runs heavily through China and Hong Kong. And they ask backers to fund all of this without clearly naming the people responsible for delivering it.

Yeah, no, I will pass, thank you. I saw their Kickstarter a couple of weeks ago, and it read as an April Fool’s (not that it is, it just left me kind of feeling that way).

By submitting Your Content on or through the Services, you grant Vercel a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, display, publish, store, perform, and create derivatives of Your Content to provide and improve the Services, develop new products and services, secure and protect the Services and third parties from fraud, abuse, malware, malicious files or content, viruses and the like.

Wow! I wonder why people still uses this, with such draconian terms.

I recently came across Donohoe photo albums, and have since gone through all their photos with delight, and a bit of jealousy. Such beautiful photos, so many interesting places, and all so well presented! I am certainly a fan, I can say. Oh, and you could run a similar site too!

Defuddle extracts the main content from web pages. It cleans up web pages by removing clutter like comments, sidebars, headers, footers, and other non-essential elements, leaving only the primary content.

Kepano’s defuddle is a handy little thing that I am going to be using often when saving knowledge as Markdown. It really does a very good job at bypassing sidebars, leaving only the main content.

Figure 81 indicates the general character of the results that might be expected from practice with the pencil,—not from a few moments of playful practice, but from several hours of thoughtful study.

From the book “Design in Theory and Practice” (page 157), by Ernest Allen Batchelder. I find the “scribbles” fascinating.

Was just telling Horsie about a program I listened to on NPR, which related to horses, and their whinnies. They theorised that the high sound isn’t coming from the vocal cords, but from just above the larynx, being similar to a whistle (in human terms) instead. Horsie told me they don’t use it to communicate anymore because for that they have “Horsemobile”, a portmanteau, so to speak, similar to “T-Mobile”. 🤣

Well, lots of noise around the neighbourhood about this now. Maybe there is hope, after all, and enough of us will show up at the meeting to stop the change.

“Special Assessments. In addition to the Annual Assessments authorized above, the Association may levy, in any assessment year, special assessments applicable to that year only for the purpose of defraying, in whole or in part, the cost of any construction, reconstruction, repair or replacement of a capital improvement upon the Common Areas, including fixtures and personal property related thereto, and/or for any other purpose deemed necessary by the Board, including to fund a deficit in the annual budget, provided that any such assessment shall have the assent of two-thirds (2/3) of the members of the Board of Directors.”

Our upcoming Home Owner’s Association (HOA) annual meeting is going to be difficult, to say the least. That proposed change above takes away home owners’ financial decision making, and places it solely on the Board of Directors. A no-no, in my opinion.

“Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.” — George Eliot

Hi, I’m Mark Pilgrim. You may remember me from such classics as “Dive Into Python” and “Universal Character Encoding Detector.” I am the original author of chardet.

I was so genuinely and happily surprised to read the above! See, I have been a long time fan of him, and this online appearance was a small gift; he seems to be doing well and, well, that makes me happy.

➝ Via Hacker News.

If that MacBook Neo advertisement isn’t incredibly well done, I don’t know what is! Horsie needs a laptop of her own, maybe one of these awaits her?

Today I was made aware of 𒀯, which is pretty cool! It is a cuneiform sign, preceded by 𒀮 and 𒀭. Pretty neat, eh? I can think of the uses already…

I want to nap, but it is almost 17:00, and tomorrow is back to work, so I feel the need to use my time in something more useful than sleeping. Then again, sleeping is useful, right? Yeah, here I am, seeking a justification.

Because staying hydrated is something that’s recommended (by doctors and whatnots), drinking water when not thirsty has become sort of a norm. We are missing so much! I kid you not, the best water ever is the one you drink when extremely thirsty. Such a delight!

“New York City has a clean-air program that allows people to report commercial vehicles that are parked and idling for more than three minutes, or one minute outside a school. Those who report infractions by submitting a video can collect 25 percent of the fine collected by the city — $87.50 on a $350 fine.”

NYC has a very interesting clean-air program that has created an opportunity for business. Such program would be very lucrative in Florida, as idle parking here is endemic.

“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

Cunningham’s Law, eh? Hmm, I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t that be considered trolling?

Today, the neighbour across the street messaged me that the garage door was open. I replied “Thank you! 🙏🏻”, and closed it. He reacted with the 🚾 emoji. He meant “welcome”, but I strongly believe he doesn’t know what that emoji means 🤭.

Nuclear weapons. Not nucular weapons, but nuclear ones. I don’t know from where I got to this page. I picked it up on my desktop, while browsing the iCloud Tabs (tabs open on my phone).

“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can’t get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons.”

It is a good read. I am glad I did.

The ongoing HOA drama is annoying, and fatiguing me. I don’t know for how much longer I can hold to it. The dilemma is, no one wants to be on the board, so leaving it would probably make matters worse.

Fridays, just like Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, have a certain je ne sais quoi for most of us. Each day kind of different, I am sure you know what I am talking about. Today, Friday, is missing it for me.

Rediscovering Picasso. The horrors of war as the artist decided to capture it.

Having our driveway and sidewalk pressure washed today. Saw a teenager doing it for a neighbour last week and, knowing that a “friendly reminder” is coming our way from the HOA, decided that let someone else have the fun I had had for the last 25 years. So, he was hired to do so. I think $150 USD, after 25 years, is kind of a bargain, isn’t it?

Today, after much thought and deliberation, I re-subscribed to The New York Times. It was hard to pass their $50/year offer, as I have been consuming it more and more through archive.today. One of the first things I did was to install their iOS application, and from it comes my first complaint: the amount of ads on it is distasteful. So much that I will probably mostly use the web version, as I can eliminate them fully that way.

“I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does."

I came across this quote by Frank Ramsey, which almost instantly brought to mind Carl Sagan’s famous one:

“We live on the third piece of debris from the Sun; a tiny world of rock and metal with a thin patina—a veneer—of organic matter on the surface, a tiny fraction of which we happen to constitute.”

Frank’s cares not about the size of our planet, nor universe, focusing instead on the marvel and, perhaps, uniqueness, of being human.

Thanks to Lyse for reminding me this gem exists and, as I am borrowing the movie indefinitely, I shall watch it this weekend!

Last year we placed a bowl full on candies, and left the porch light on, as an indication that Halloween was “happening”. Not a single kid, or adult, showed up. All candies were donated to work. This year there will be no candies, and light will remain off. Halloween is off.

“‘Pig butchering’ scams resemble the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter. Victims invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities before they are conned out of their money. Scammers refer to victims as “pigs,” and may leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to “fatten up” the victim into believing they are in trusted partnerships before they defraud the victims of their assets—the ‘butchering.’”

Today I learned. There are so many names given to scams, financial and otherwise, that one looses track. Pig butchering was one of those I missed.

This site is very neat. It allows you to play—albeit for a short period of time—a multitude of sounds. Amongst my many music likings is trance, and I am enjoying browsing their collection. Especially, psychedelic trance.

➝ Via @claudrod.

The sign on the road near my office reads “Men Working”, and you look carefully and find three women, and two men laboring. Is it “Men Working”, really?

Oh my gawd! This is an incident I didn’t know about, and I would have rather remained ignorant about it. Now can’t erase it from mind… I mean, it “went into passengers’ eyes, mouths, hair, and onto clothing and personal belongings, many of which were soaked”. Primordial shudders.

I have to note that Niederegger Lubeck Classic Marzipan is—though pricey in the U.S.—super delicious. I am going to look around to see if I can find the other varieties they produce, as I would love to try them all!

░▒▓ Having flashbacks to “simpler” times when Extended ASCII was used for just about everything—and yes, that included ASCII art ░▒▓

You’ve got to keep your subscription up! 😂 This cartoon from The New Yorker (one of the few sites still using “www”, I just noticed) made me laugh out loud. In a way, it reminded me of this one.

I have heard over and over that “you can eat whatever you want, as long as you burn it through exercise”. Well, well, well, another fallacy.

“We can’t outrun a bad diet. Pontzer says if we want to tackle obesity, the public health message should focus on changing what’s on our plates.”

Spotted while walking on my 10 minutes break this afternoon. A dumpster cage with the gate clearly, and boldly labeled, “Please Keep the Gate Closed”. It was fully open. Utter disregard. Not even a please does the job these days.

The Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, or NATO phonetic alphabet, was created to clearly communicate the spelling of words. So many people these days are inventing their own! It doesn’t help, at all.

• Alfa
• Bravo
• Charlie
• Delta
• Echo
• Foxtrot
• Golf
• Hotel
• India
• Juliett
• Kilo
• Lima
• Mike
• November
• Oscar
• Papa
• Quebec
• Romeo
• Sierra
• Tango
• Uniform
• Victor
• Whiskey
• Xray
• Yankee
• Zulu

Does anyone knows what the meaning of this symbol is? I have seem it on websites without explanations, nor links to anywhere. Just the SVG by itself. All my searches have been futile.

In love with the work of Max. Specifically minimator, graxel, breaklock, commitbeat, and vivus. Go browse his repositories, you will not be disappointed!