Julian AssangeI covered this in my notes at the time but it’s really worth repeating and celebrating that Julian Assange didn’t rot to death in a prison. It’s honestly the best news we’ve had at an international level. He wrote about it at the time in the article ‘I’m Free Because I Pled Guilty to Journalism’ by Julian Assange (Scheer Post). In the article, he took time to point out that, despite his 14 years of imprisonment, he’d gotten off comparatively easy, citing the plight of Joshua Schulte.

“In February this year, the alleged... [More]”

Behind the News, 11/7/24 by Doug Henwood (Apple Podcasts) was an extremely dense podcast, starting with Henwood reading his excellent article It Was Always About Inflation (Jacobin) (from which I cited a few passages in Links and Notes for November 8th, 2024), before going in-depth on a survey of Israeli public opinion: politics, polls, and inclinations with the extremely lucid and quick Dahlia Scheindlin, who works for Ha’aretz, then moving on to James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, who afford the war Ukraine the same treatment.... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

The greatest lie those that benefit most from capitalism ever told you is that you can’t defeat capitalism.

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Economy... [More]

I know that people were absolutely horrible to large parts of the population based purely on identity in the United States in the 1950s. But can we also acknowledge that discussions like the half-hour interview of Erich Fromm by Mike Wallace actually happened on television?

This is a major socialist philosopher and psychologist talking to a non-adversarial journalist who actually read his book. These days, this kind of interview is relegated to a channel with subscribers in the triple digits... [More]

A 16-minute video that puts the lie to the story that LLM company have got alignment under control. It’s not really feasible without neutering the tool outright. it’s now a race to see who can “pivot”—read as: continue to boost vigorously while backing out of investment to limit financial exposure without collapsing the house of cards—to another niche.

Some Lessons from Adversarial Machine Learning by Nicholas Carlini (YouTube)

“The problem that you face is that it’s relatively easy to take a model and make it look like it’s aligned. You ask GPT-4, “how do I end... [More]”

Here are two videos of the inestimable Norman Finkelstein. The first one is just under ten minutes while the second is much longer: it starts at about 28 minutes into the 100-minute video.

'Gaza is GONE:' Prof. Norman Finkelstein on Israel's Destruction by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

“Norman Finkelstein: There’s no question in my mind what’s going to happen: Israel is going to say we’re not letting cement into Gaza. It already did that after Cast Lead. It said that Hamas will use the cement to build tunnels. ‘We’re not going to let cement in.‘ And nobody in the international community... [More]”

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Moonfall (2022) — 5/10
2. The Island (2005) — 6/10
3. Changing Lanes (2002) — 5/10
4. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) — 7/10
5. The Heat (2013) — 7/10
6. Wicked Little Letters (2023) — 7/10
7. 3 Body Problem S01 (2023) — 8/10
8. Kaos S01 (2024) — 8/10
9. Hunter Killer (2018) — 7/10
10. Transformers (2007) — 7/10

Moonfall (2022) — 5/10

I’d seen this movie before, but couldn’t find my review of it, so here it is. This is not a good movie. The... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]

I was pleasantly surprised at this 23-minute video even though, as I outline below, I don’t think it went far enough.

Critic Stephanie Lange EXPOSES Disturbing Teen Plastic Surgery Trend by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

“I don’t think that fillers, especially, were half as popular, as they are now, if it weren’t for Kylie Jenner. She has had such a huge influence, especially for the younger generation. And people want to look like the Kardashians because they basically epitomize the beauty standard right now. They’ve got the big bum, the tiny waist, the big boobs, the perfect faces that look... [More]”

The article Sinwar Is Dead, So What Happens Next? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) writes,

“The last moments of Yahya SinwarThe mastermind of the October 7th tragedy, Yahya Sinwar, was fortuitously killed. Other than the terminally ignorant, this is recognized as both a great thing and a necessity for the future of the middle east. Of course, it wasn’t necessary before, as so many clamored for a ceasefire while Sinwar remained alive and ready to do it again and again, a detail that didn’t seem to prevent fantasies of peace. But hey, now that he’s dead,... [More]”

The article Processes and rules make code review less intimidating by Stefan Judis writes,

“Code reviews are, by nature, intimidating. Sometimes even brutal. If you’ve been in the game for long enough, you probably experienced the following: you worked hard on a feature, you’re proud of yourself and open the PR to be praised and land your changes, and then… it rains comments, suggestions and nitpicks. And if it’s really bad, you’re forced to take multiple feedback and clean-up rounds. It sucks.”

Oh, wow.
... [More]

I was working with a colleague to get the properties that have a particular attribute. The original formulation returned the properties then got the attributes again, plucking the first one off of the list and asserting that it exists to convince the compiler that everything’s OK. We know it exists because otherwise we wouldn’t have returned the property—but the computer doesn’t know that.

Ok, it works but it’s not efficient or elegant. Is there some way to build this so we allocate... [More]

I not unexpectedly very much enjoyed this somewhat-rambling 59-minute course on controlling font features from CSS. It’s really quite amazing and wonderful what you can do declaratively these days.

CSS Typography Crash Course by Kevin Powell (YouTube)

To begin, Roel Nieskens takes a long look at variable fonts, which can be manipulated via both standard CSS properties, like font-weight, as well as using font-variation-settings, all of which can be animated. Variable fonts support a much more granular range of values for font-weight than... [More]

This is a 50-minute video of a guy who’s really good at using and teaching CSS asking three LLMs pointed and tricky questions about it.

It’s a bit long for what it is but I think there were some interesting things to learn. First of all, it’s very clear that Kevin hasn’t actually read very much about how LLMs work or how to prompt them. This is OK—because that means he’s just like most people trying to use these tools.

I gave three AI models a CSS quiz by Kevin Powell (YouTube)

Overall, Kevin was frustrated with the answers he got from Gemini,... [More]

I do not recommend watching the video below. A friend of mine who thinks that I don’t appreciate Caitlin Clark enough sent me this video. It is pure clickbait. Caitlin Clark just finished up her rookie season in the WNBA. She put some of the best numbers the league has ever seen and has, nearly single-handedly, significantly boosted her not only her own team but the status of the WNBA, in general.

The video breathlessly speculates whether she will come back for another season.

I kid you not:... [More]

Scott Ritter has a very strong pedigree and background but has some odd verbal and facial tics that make him look disingenuous. Sometimes he makes broad statements that are backed up by information that he has on good authority, but that he hasn’t presented. He also talks very quickly in a decidedly non-beginner-friendly style. Those looking to disagree with him will be able to do so quite easily. However, if you listen to what he says, you will learn something. And his analyses have been... [More]

A good friend of mine sent this link to me. I hadn’t listened to an interview since Tim Dillon and Alex Jones and Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU way back in the spring of 2021. I’ve had fun with this friends links before (see Robert Edward Grant: King of Gobbledygook), so I gave it chance. I couldn’t recommend that anyone else listen to these three hours … but YMMV. It has 26M views and almost 500K likes on YouTube. Check out my notes below and decide for yourself.

Joe Rogan Experience #2111 − Katt Williams by Joe Rogan (YouTube)

I’m almost an hour... [More]

I published most of this article in my notes in the middle of October 2024. This video still marks the longest that I’ve listened to Kamala Harris speak. Trump is a nightmare to listen to, but Harris also feels like every second is wasted. Give it a listen and see how you feel about it. I don’t generally listen to presidents anymore—I stopped analyzing State of the Union addresses when Trump became president—but, if there’s a silver lining to Harris’s loss, it’s that this kind of insipid... [More]

I was pleasantly surprised at how cogent, well-reasoned, and calm Dore’s conversation with Hedges was. I’m used to his show, of which I usually only see 10–15-minute clips—and that only rarely—where he’s joined by a peanut gallery of yuk-yukkers and where he often plays videos in chopped-up snippets, analyzing and taking them apart, but it’s often a bit much.

The 52-minute interview below, though is very, very good. I’ve cited at length below the video.

The Liberal Class’s Ultimate Betrayal (w/ Jimmy Dore) | The Chris Hedges Report by The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel (YouTube)

At 05:58, Dore says

“The people... [More]”

This is an amazing if sobering interview. Thanks to Haim Bresheeth-Zabner for taking the time to tirelessly, quietly, and reasonably lay out his case. He spoke almost without interruption for over an hour about how Israel isn’t acting on its own, it’s working for Empire. But what is happening now doesn’t represent the interests of the country, “but not the leadership; the leadership is abandoning their humanity.” He talks at length about the very real danger of nuclear war. Every minute was... [More]

While investigating Charts.css, I learned that you can throw unrecognized special characters like square brackets or pipes into CSS class references and its just fine. So you can use them to separate longer lists of classes. For more information, see Cube CSS: grouping by Andy Bell (Piccalilli).

So, you can write:

<article 
class="[ card ] [ section box ] [ bg-base color-primary ]">
</article>

or

<article class="card | section box | bg-base color-primary">
…
</article>

and it works just fine, while being more... [More]

The elections are over and the Green Party did not even come close to getting 5% of the vote required to qualify for public funding in four years. Now that I’m writing it, it’s so stupid that it works this way. The parties that need money the most are the ones that can’t get it. The parties that need ballot access the most can’t get it. There is almost no hope of an electoral path to getting more than a single party with two heads in the U.S.

Still, here are a couple of good interviews with... [More]

This is an excellent interview in which Hedges discusses Monbiot’s new book The Invisible Doctrine. As a result of this interview, I read the book and found it likewise excellent.[1]

The Secret History of Neoliberalism (w/ George Monbiot) | The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges (YouTube)

At 05:00

“The three pillars of capitalism—commodified labor, commodified land, and commodified money—all came together simultaneously. And they came together to create this extremely effective and virulent new colonial frontier, which burnt through resources, burnt through human labor, with unprecedented speed,... [More]”

In this otherwise excellent video, I found myself very much wishing that Toub had written at least a single test for the ArrayPool implementation that he built in this video. Still, check out the selected citation below to get a feeling for how they consider performance implications—there are no easy answers, there is only testing and benchmarking.

Deep .NET: Let's Build Our Own ArrayPool with Stephen Toub and Scott Hanselman by dotnet (YouTube)

At 34:45,

“Hanselmann: For folks that may not know what NUMA is: so NUMA is this non-uniform memory access that the computer knows that, like,... [More]”

I watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for years. I stopped watching when Stewart and Colbert retired. John Oliver used to report for the Daily Show. Although I’ve long since stopped watching the Daily Show, I still watch John Oliver, although he’s often a bit frustrating. He has what seems like the right attitude, the right politics, a whole lot of empathy, a huge audience, and a global platform. But he still sticks to the extremely narrow channel of approved opinion.

The election is... [More]

This 23-minute video from early October, 2024 reports on the recent revelation from a Danish harbor master that—brace yourselves—there were several U.S. navy vessels in the vicinity of the attack on the day of the attack, with their transponders off. He’d been prevented from speaking out until now, when, presumably, it really doesn’t matter anymore. Germany’s over it, even though it has turned out to be the final nail in its coffin.

Nord Stream 'Mystery' SOLVED? by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

At 01:15,

“Let’s remember that the US, even before the... [More]”

The article Possible Future CSS: Tree-Counting Functions and Random Values by Roman Komarov (Kizu.Dev) is another mathematical master class in using CSS variables and calculations to get at values like “sibling count” and “sibling index”, two values that are in a future proposal for CSS Values and Units Module Level 5 (w3C).

The final demo looks like this, with randomly laid out items squared up into equal columns and rows where possible, all done with only CSS.

Stacking and squaring up grid items

Here’s a taste of the code for getting a random value in CSS,

... [More]