87 entries for February 2024

Anti-JavaScript could be called “antija”.

Purism kills pluralism.

for the chronic criticizers

[When someone always criticizes you: 1) ask if was meant for you or if they just wanted to hear it out loud; 2) ask “how am I supposed to do that?” to tease out whether they have actually thought about it practically; and 3) confirm that “what I’m hearing is…” to clarify if there’s anything constructive.]

Add one and a half times as much white vinegar as water to a pot and bring it to a boil. For every four cups of liquid, add a quarter cup salt and a quarter cup raw sugar, and simmer until they dissolve. Or don’t measure anything and add salt and sugar until the brine tastes like you want the vegetable you’ve preserved in it to: potent, salty, and just barely sweet.

Pickle brine is also the best place, other than cocktails, to put leftover brine from jars of capers and other pickles. If you have any, either add them to your own brine, or simply heat them all together, taste them, then add salt or sugar or water or straight vinegar until it tastes good.

[Serve your guests something that is best cooked in advance so you can spend more time with them instead of scrambling in another room.]

[Let guests pick herbs or slice bread instead of bringing salad, so that you can offer a meal as well as receive help and turn the kitchen into a collaborative space.]

All you need is links

A hyperlink is a triple where the subject is the page, the predicate is the link text, and the object is the thing being linked to.

Using the object name as link text could be wasteful.

Subtext explorations on Hashtags

Collecting into tagged buckets is not sense-making, only a coarse-grained first approximation. Sense-making should fold into Orientation, and make it possible to expand your repertoire of Actions. That means synthesizing collected information into new knowledge. This is something linking supports, and tags do not.

Let’s talk about what an iconic photo can tell us about Border Patrol….

Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.

It’s easier to trick people when they’re socially isolated, especially from one another.

NearbyWiki

Wikipedia places nearby you on a map.

[Add garlic to warm oil in a pan, immediately salt a little, and cook it piled in one corner to draw water and steam softly.]

[Add olive oil or butter whether the recipe calls for it or not.]

[Potato in soup pr sauce can absorb salt.]

Create good problems to have

[Start using an approach with obvious shortcomings and use the flywheel of growth to improve.]

[Starting simple creates low-hanging fruit for newcomers to get involved, which helps increase traction.]

all of it.

what was it, aaron?

which atrocity drove your desperation to set your body on fire to match your burning spirit?

was it the baby starving to death on camera?

was it the children eating food for livestock?

was it the artillery shot towards children celebrating at the border?

was it the millionth mother grieving her dead baby?

or was it the silence?

Studying history is important if for no other reason that it makes it harder for people to lie to you. Most of the lies people tell are not new, and the propaganda of earlier times is always easier to see through than modern propaganda which we are always immersed in.

Showing your digital notes graph suffers from the same ‘infinitely expanding list’ problem of most ware: better to break things up around human fuzzy memory limits (maybe 5–12 things).

For my spicier content, follow me on RSS 🌶️

Link in bio 💋

When the butter is melted, add the mountain of onions, a small pinch of sugar, a big pinch of salt, and a branch of fresh thyme, and stir it all well. Cook the onions over medium-low heat, stirring them occasionally. Add occasional sprinkles of water if the onions begin to stick. If they start to sizzle, lower the heat and cover the pot, then uncover it when the cooking has slowed. This will take forty-five minutes to an hour, and the whole mass will look soggy and unconvincing until right before the onions are done, at which point they melt completely into a golden jam and all of their sugars come out to toast.

Berimbaus da Bahia: Camafeu de Oxóssi (1964)

Percussion layer with a few instruments becomes a solid rhythmic foundation for singing. Some tracks of chanting with what I call “vowels of African origin”, followed by some classic songs from the Capoeira tradition.

Collective intelligence with Conor White-Sullivan

[Your past self is another person.]

Substack’s Dilemma

“I will pelt you to death with marshmallows” is not very credible, though it might conceivably be done if one had a great many marshmallows.

How many HTTP requests does it take to read a blog post versus a thread? What does it mean when it matters? What does it mean when it doesn’t?