We are done with the snow but not the cold. Lots of people without power. More snow than I’ve ever seen.
Snow Day
Zappa Documentary
i suppose I’m a Frank Zappa fan. I have a few of his albums, saw him live, front row, when I was in high school. I can’t say I completely grasped his fusion of modern orchestral and do-wop rock and roll music, but I did appreciate that there was something interesting going on there, and I wanted to understand it. Alex Winter has a great documentary out called Zappa. I saw it a few weeks back and can recommend it to everyone, even non-fans. A good article on the film from the Sydney Morning Herald.
Brilliant, broke and wilfully annoying: the sad legacy of Frank Zappa
More Adam Curtis
I’m not a huge fan of his films, but I am enjoying his BBC blog.
Adam Curtis – The Medium and the Message
Social Media is a Scam
I’m not so sure about his videos / movies, but I’m starting to like this guy. From the Idler.
ADAM CURTIS: SOCIAL MEDIA IS A SCAM
More Hot Raspberry Pi
My desktop Raspberry Pi 4 used a USB HDD disk. Old fashioned spinning platters. It was 4TB and much cheaper than SSDs. Turns out this was probably a mistake. Even with a nice metal heatsink case the Pi was always hot to the touch. I recall about 140F. I sprung for a new 1 TB Samsung USB SSD and (after the usual hassles) got it all set up yesterday. The Pi was noticeably cooler, just over 100F. I suspect the power drawn by the USB HDD drive was enough to heat things up, but probably not enough to cause failures.
Now I wonder if some of the early problems I had getting things like WiFi and Bluetooth to work were heat / power related. Anyway, now I have a proper backup drive (the old HDD). Will be able to organize my files now (really :^)
Word of the Day: Autoglope
From the Brookings Institute:
No, it’s not a coup — It’s a failed ‘self-coup’
New China COVID-19 Testing
And people complain about wearing masks.
China using anal swabs to detect COVID-19: report
Look at Me!
A good read from the NYT about one of the earliest people to recognize the toxicity of group communication on the internet and the reasons why it always evolves the way it does. I’ve been on the internet since the late 1980s. I’ve seen the same pattern across many communication platforms, starting with the old USENET discussion groups. Domination of the conversation by small numbers of people, ratcheting up incivility (“flame wars”), eventual distruction of the platform. I remember this all being described quite accurately in the Douglas Coupland novel Microserfs.
Saucerology
When reality hits a cult. From London Review of Books.
