2021 archive
Stray Thought 0
I don’t like this new-fangled algebraic chess notation.
Give me the kind I grew up with, darnit.
Grumble grumble grumble.
(I’m trying to get my chess legs back and enjoying playing with someone on a whole nother continent via PMs at LQ. Fortunately for me, he also favors the old style.)
Facebook Frolics 0
The EFF weighs in the inimical implications on Facebook’s decision to wall off its garden from legitimate academic research. A snippet:
Revealing the secrets behind this surveillance-based ecosystem to public scrutiny is the first step in reclaiming our public discourse.
The Zuckerborg is the fast lane of the disinformation superhighway.
Maskless Marauders, Reprise 0
Yet another marauded school board.
I used to think I lived in a civilized (and civil) society.
No more.
Hotel California Redux 0
Instead of not letting you leave, this one follows you around: David Curran tells of taking his family to a vacation rental only to discover afterwards that the landlord had left surveillance cameras in place.
(At the end of the article, he offers some hints as to how to protect yourself against intrusive landlords.)
Maskless Marauders 0
Marauders at a school board meeting want to suffer the children.
Kudos to the school board for making the right decision, but, really, the stupid . . . .
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
Rebecca Watson reads the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change so we don’t have to.
She fears that our (initially inadequate and, in some quarters of our polity, inimical) response to the COVID pandemic provides a preview of our response (or lack thereof) to global warming.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
PolitialProf sees parallels between the conclusions of two of America’s Great and Glorious Patriotic Wars for a Lie, one coming to a close today and another that ended half a century ago. A nugget:
This argument has a very real appeal. It is undoubtedly the case that what the Taliban are going to do to Afghanistan’s women is beyond brutal. Whatever else US intervention did, it changed the status of lots of Afghani women for the better. What’s coming is almost certainly beyond imagination.
The thing is, you know what twenty years of US intervention did towards building a stable, non-Taliban Afghan government? Virtually nothing.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to a Sherlock Holmes OTR radio show from the Old Time Radio Theater with the QMMP media player on Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager. Shaded in a tabbed window are Thunderbird, Firefox, and Konqueror. To the right are Xclock and GKrellM. The wallpaper is from my collection.
