They asked me to test something about notifications. Let's see how that works. Meanwhile, enjoy this Lao Tzu, as translated by the brilliant Stephen Mitchell.

America was built on beautiful principles. Reality takes its toll, of course; and the contrast with those principles may make it seem more painful than elsewhere at times. But the beauty remains and gets even sweeter in its utopic coating.

Look, for example, at this finely-crafted decision by the Supreme Court on whether it is OK to use enhanced vision for surveillance without a warrant. True elegance and style:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZO.html

(Spoiler: It's not. Can't fool the 4th amendment.)

Newsflash on the subway: "Five radical Islamists sentenced to 10 years in Bangladesh in connection with 2005 bombings"..

Never thought Bangladesh was such a hell for radical Islamists that they ship them there instead of prisons. 🤔

Hobos put their sleeping bags over subway ventilation grills in the downtown area. At -10° the warm air is steaming up visibly from the bodies scattered here and there. In some cases, the owner went away for a few minutes, leaving the sleeping bag behind – a crumpled pile.

Walking down these streets at night, I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm the guy from DOOM and recently discovered the rocket launcher. Or was it Quarantine?

Avoid News
by Rolf Dobelli
https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf

Amen.

Wanna watch a movie about Markus? Well, watch this one. Actually, watch this one even if you don't wanna watch a movie about Markus.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)
​​IMDB ▶️ Trailer 📽 Watch
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Actors: Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes

A Hollywood fixer in the 1950s works to keep the studio's stars in line.

Used to rip me to shreds, this one. Popped up on shuffle just now — to remind how good it is to be whole.

Not a single fragment of this film is original. Ironically, this also happens to be the case with many of the lives we people live. Although this meta-story does have a twist most of us will never go through (at least literally):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaKx_XzmBEw

Morphine is a nice extension that will help you stay focused on whatever you're doing:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morphine/fbnpehpbojenlldmfcopeajkichnnjpo?hl=en

- You choose a list of websites that often distract you and get in the way of getting things done.
- The extension blocks them so you can't open them just like that.

Then comes the twist:
- While you're online, you accumulate "minutes" (by default you get 1 minute per 10 minutes spent doing something different).
- You can spend your stockpiled minutes to access websites on your blacklist for a while.
- When you open a blacklisted page, you can choose how much of your "saved time" you want to spend there.
- Once the allotted time runs out, the site becomes blocked again.

Very simple, very flexible, very useful.

Bonus: This extension only requires the rights to "read your browser history," which is important. Never install extensions that can "read and change all your data on the websites you visit." (Unless you want them to post shady ads to your official social media accounts if they get hacked; happened to Telegram's Twitter once thanks to a translation extension.)

Finished "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson today.

It's funny how American authors are rarely satisfied with merely creating imaginary worlds and, having established them, immediately dip them into chaos. Dream landscapes, drug trips, visions, parallel realities, twisted time travel, collective conscience, total break down of order, civil wars, you know the drill.

Zelazny, Gibson, Stephenson, Herbert to a degree, and Philipp Dick above all else, the devourer of his own worlds. A strange culture-wide fascination with dismantling systems once they've grown past a certain point rather than seeing them unfold, and grow, and bloom. A pessimistic trait, if not outright paranoid.

Doesn't mean I didn't like the book though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

Just in case you missed the news last week:
http://telegra.ph/whatsapp-backdoor-01-16

How terrorists can use encrypted messaging apps and what all of us can do about it:
http://telegra.ph/Dont-Shoot-the-Messenger

Read this when you have a moment. Then read what's in there when you have a month or two. They're good.

http://telegra.ph/Recommended-Reading-01-31

If there's a hell and I ever get there, the first thing they'll ask of me will be to come up with a list of rules for who gets in and who doesn't. And then with another list of clarifications for an infinity or two of borderline cases.

As seen on an elevator wall:
YOU ARE A SLAVE OF THE (SYSTEM is already crossed out and FIRE ALARM written instead)

Finding imperfection is easy – and sometimes useful, inasmuch as it helps you discover how you could do better.

But practice also finding the good in even imperfect objects. Learning to salvage beauty from everything that surrounds us is as much harder, as it is more valuable.

(This skill also makes you a better conversation partner – after all, grumbling is only fun when you’re the one who’s grumbling.)