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Like a lot of you I first got interested in technology through audio equipment. More specifically, my Walkman. Growing up in a rural village being able to slip on some headphones and instantly transport myself to another world was magic. I was hooked as soon as I tried my mum’s Walkman. My parents gave me a cheap model of my own for my eighth birthday, and from that point I’ve …

Christina Lee's The Method is a Riso comic done in the style of a People-magazine style magazine mixed with scandal sheet sensationalism. The result is three separate stories that focus on the concepts of appearances, internalized & externalized pressure, and above all else societal expectations of women. The Method utilizes a typical Riso color pallette, with a focus on pink & blue for the first story, green & yellow for …

Altitude 56.153 ft Nicholls, GA 92°F (feels 99°F) Sunny (wind 3.9 mph) An old farm that was given to the state and turned into a living history park replete with beautifully restored historic buildings. (Reply or view comments)

Why is a Declaration important? The challenges that countries and people around the world are facing show that current governance mechanisms are not fit for purpose – at national or global level. The Declaration on Future Generations is a set of commitments on how governments will take a longer-term approach in national and global decision-making. What has happened so far in negotiations? The Declaration on Future Generations is in the …

Few alliance nations would ponder how the cadence of Netanyahu’s speech inside Congress put them under the spell of denial. This is akin to the Khmer Rouge (government in exile) that was invited to hold a seat in the United Nations until 1993. Continue reading »

Whether you're developer, DevOps engineer, SysAdmin, QA or in any other technical role, you're surely familiar with cURL - the command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs (as described in docs). Most of the time however, we all really only use curl for simple tasks, such downloading a file or checking if website is accessible, yet there's some much more curl can do! And in this article …

Making music on the Polyend Play+ with my new sample pack! TOY BOX - my sample pack!Check it out at polyend.com!

Programming note: I recently launched a weekly podcast, Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie. About 50% of the conversations cover Bits about Money's beat. The remainder will be on other interesting intersections of technology, incentives, culture, and organizational design. The first three episodes covered teaching trading, Byrne Hobart on the epistemology of financial firms, and the tech industry vs. tech reporting divide. Subscribe to it anywhere you listen to podcasts. If …

Asymmetric vices and the unity of virtue Published 2024-07-31 I was trying to find a post I’d written about this and then realised it was a Twitter thread. This post is just me copying out that thread and lightly editing it for format so I have somewhere more stable to refer to it. Aristotle’s conception of “virtue” is as a golden mean between two vices: One of deficit, one of …

After 150 days and 3074.5 km of hiking (and also canoeing and cycling), I reached Bluff, the southern terminus of Te Araroa. Today was, I think, the first time daylight saving time changed for me on the trail, shifting sunrise (and sunset) an hour “earlier” than it was yesterday. Of course, when your day is driven by sunrise and sunset, and not the clock, this doesn’t have much practical difference. …

France, 1927: A rustic little cottageA 1.5-story house with a living/dining room, kitchen and a toilet on the first floor. The second floor contains two bedrooms.Maisons Pour Tous Vol. II - No. 12, 15 January 1927. (Paris, France) —from my library

Schrödinger’s speed limit Here’s a problem. In 2022, Manchester City Council say they reduced the speed limit on the Mancunian Way to 30mph. But it’s not clear if they have. It’s not even clear if they can.Fair warning: this posts plumbs the depths of pedantry in the areas of legislation and signage, so if that isn’t your thing look away now. On the other hand, it does also have some …

Online readingMark Rosenthal’s blog is always great. I recommend his recent post called “Boeing: The Turning Point(s).” He connects Boeing’s ongoing difficulties to two attempts to change company strategy twenty years ago. I enjoyed Mark’s detailed reminiscences from the time:There were actually two lines running parallel, each one on a two day cycle. … Each time the line was indexed, it generally took a shift to, in succession, pull each …

I rarely ever use the date command, but when I need it I almost always struggle to get the right incantation. So, I'm just going to record such examples in this blog post (and some good to know features). There'll also be learning resources linked at the end of the post. Really basic examples The date command by itself shows the current time. But that's rarely what I need, since …