Yeah, I blog too
Nick Cave about ChatGPT and AI, in the voice of Stephen Fry
Typora supports Mermaid diagrams and charts in Markdown
Opinion | Would Trump be a dictator? And can he be stopped? - The Washington Post
Robert Kagan in a harrowing article:
Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.
Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.
This essay is really scary. It might be spot on, though. It’s worth reading through it all and keeping a copy for future reference. What are we going to do in Europe with our own wannabe Trumps?
Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court, dies : NPR
You can follow me on my Mastodon account @eumrz@esq.social or you can subscribe only to my blog @eumrz@umerez.eu #tech #eng
Trying out the Set Date feature in MarsEdit to schedule the publishing of posts. If this works correctly, it should show up at 18:15 (I’m sending it at 18:10).
I did what @sod told us not to do, so you don’t have to. Now you know, you don’t have to and should not click here.
Hiro Report
We will always love you, Freddie.
Farrokh Bulsara (5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991).
I just updated my blog’s header with Font Awesome icons following this tutorial by @manton and I love it.
Shortcut to open Lillihub
I made a very simple Shortcut to open Lillihub in Safari on my iPhone. It looks for a previously existing tab that may have Lillihub open and, if that’s the case, goes to that tab. If there’s none, it opens Lillihub. Once again, thanks so much to Loura for building such a nice service. #tech
You can install and try it here;
Painting on the edge: Overview and contents – The Eclectic Light Company
I can actually post from Lillihub, just as easily as micro.blog.
It shows my categories and crossposting choices. This is great.
Regarding crossposting, I noticed that it only shows the first of the feeds I have in my Account settings, and in my case is not my main feed. So I changed the order of my feeds so that the main one is the first in the list, and now Lillihub shows the correct crossposting choices for me.
Thank you so much, @loura
Want to try out a new Micro.blog web client? You’re in luck! I’d like to introduce Lillihub 🐸. It’s a delightful web app to view your timeline, make posts and keep up with conversations. You can even manage your books and bookmarks. Enjoy! 😁
Oh, dear.
I was going to say I'm burning the midnight oil but it's 4:21 already and I'm not halfway through my task yet, so I guess I'm going to be welcoming the morning lights, or whatever idiom you prefer for an all-nighter.
Read and sign the manifest on the respect for Rule of Law in Spain, statement drawn by Spanish scholars, lawyers and magistrates about the risks of the PSOE-Junts agreement for Pedro Sánchez’s presidency. Available in English. #law #lawfedi #spain #catalonia #democracy #ruleoflaw docs.google.com/forms/d/e…
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The settlers look like soldiers. They come at night, but sometimes during the day, wearing army uniforms. They execute operations against Palestinians, beating us, taking our phones and smashing them to prevent us from documenting their terror. The settlers steal things from our homes and take our money. And in the end, their message is always the same: “You have 24 hours to flee, or we will shoot you.”
[…]Over the last three years, settler violence steadily increased day after day. Those of us who live in villages near the settlements know these settlers, especially the violent ones who assault and try to expel us. Four days ago, they came to my village at night. They forcibly entered my neighbor’s home and detained all the men and held them at gunpoint. Then they took them outside the house, and with an M16 gun pointed to the head of the house owner, they told him he had two options, and there wasn’t a third: “Leave or die.”
Things have never been scarier for us. We tried to call the Israeli police to tell them what their citizens are doing to us. They told us we are in a state of war, and that they are powerless to do anything. But even last year, my home was raided in the night by the IDF. They blindfolded and arrested me, terrifying my family, only to release me later without charge but with a stern warning: Stop “causing all the trouble in the area.” Since the beginning of the war to the south, settler violence has increased, but for us, it did not begin on Oct. 7.
[…]None of us are able to so much as disagree with the settlers, let alone fight back, because killing a Palestinian today is very, very easy. If anyone so much as objects to the settlers, they will shoot them immediately. The settlers tell us there is no law because we are at war, and that our land is now forbidden to us, and that it now belongs to Israel. And if we stay, we will die.
[…]There is no solution for us. In light of war and what is going on, the future is very, very bleak for us Palestinians. I don’t see a future. But even so, we are living on the hope that the conscience of the free world will change this situation, and give us a small ray of hope for the future.
This has to stop. Israel has every right to defend itself, but has no right whatsoever to illegally occupy and colonize, nor to terrorize and kill people in order to rob them off the land where they live. Shallom 🇮🇱 Salaam 🇵🇸
This guy’s Spanish accent is delightful. Unapologetic (not thad he needed to apologize) and inspirational for self-aware people like me. And the clock that he builds is astonishing. Give it a watch (not pun intended).