Category: Miscellaneous
The Girl from Ipanema
It’s sort of crazy how quickly I’ve become addicted to using Easy Diffusion. Just a few days ago I found out about it and less than a week later I’m able to turn out images like this one. Reading about the passing of Astrud Gilberto a few days ago, I used the first verse of…
Read More
Business continuity planning
For the past 20+ years I’ve worked at a large public university in the American Midwest, and over the years I’ve picked up “other duties as assigned.” These are duties that don’t take up all of my time, but are good to work on when things are slow. One of these duties is business continuity…
Read More
Read all about it
A few days ago, for some reason, I was looking for news on Czechia. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but had a vague idea that I might collect a list of English language news sources in non-English speaking countries. Turns out it’s already been done. I found a site called NewsNow. It’s basically…
Read MoreMax Social
Reading this article about how the “short-term, dopamine driven feedback loops” created by social media giants are killing normal discourse, it makes me wonder how to fix it. Maybe if Facebook, Twitter, etc limited people to a maximum number of friends/followers, it would introduce a check in the system. I normally use Twitter, so I’ll…
Read MoreLive Below the Line
A year or so ago I read about a challenge where some people in the UK tried to live on £1 a day for five days. This is the level the World Bank sets as the level of extreme poverty. Nearly 1.2 billion people around the world live in conditions of extreme poverty. In the…
Read MoreRude awakenings
今天早上我被火警起床了。今天是星期天，所以我要了睡懒觉。不但我听了人人聊天在走廊外面我的房子，而且我闻到烟气了。我起床了，穿了鞋和冬天上衣，拿了手机，和出去外面了。我看了很多救火队。我的胳臂的房子大门开了。我知道了我不能回家一是，所以我走路了星巴克。 This morning I was awoken by a fire alarm. Today is Sunday, so I wanted to sleep in. However, I heard people talking in the hallway outside my apartment, and I smelled smoke. I got up, put on some shoes and a winter jacket, grabbed my cell phone, and went outside. I saw many…
Read More＃我是查理
我是查理 (wǒ shì Chálǐ) means Je suis Charlie or I am Charlie. While I never heard of Charlie Hebdo before yesterday, I believe freedom of the press is a requirement for a vibrant democracy. My thoughts and condolences got out to the family and friends of those killed in Paris yesterday.
Read More