Jerry Stratton's Blog, page 34

The lost tradition of unannounced visits

Once upon a time, if you were in the area of a friend, and you had extra time, you’d just drop in for a visit. You wouldn’t call first—phone calls were expensive. You wouldn’t text—there were no texts. You’d just show up. And you’d be even more likely to do this on holidays.

I have read a fiery gospel

“Be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet.” Written a hundred and fifty-nine years ago today, this rousing abolitionist song remains a fiery call for freedom from tyranny.

New, improved rcheck+ for Rainbow Magazine code

I’ve added several features to rcheck, including verifying the checksum against an expected checksum, and providing possible reasons for checksum discrepancies.

Only what Facebook wants you to see?

To spread darkness, Facebook reduces the distribution of content they don’t want you to see, about news that is very important to a functioning democracy.

The Donna Rathmell German Bread Machine Cookbook collection

Donna Rathmell German’s little cookbooks, from the Nitty Gritty collection, are a great companion to your bread machine and a great lesson in using bread machines to make bread.

Power Play 2020

Frederik Pohl shows why science fiction authors aren’t any better at being futurists than anyone else. Hubris is a powerful drug.

You can’t stop the signal, Mal linked on Editorials

“For the first, time ever, they refused to run his column. So he ran it unedited on his own blog.

“I wasn’t advising them—they tend not to ask me for my opinion—but I would have advised against such a blackout. There’s a longstanding Internet term called ‘the Streisand effect,’ going back to when Barbara Streisand demanded that people stop sharing pictures of her beach house. Unsurprisingly, the result was a massive increase in the number of people posting pictures of her beach house. The Big Tech Blackout produced the same result…

“CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted: ’Congrats to Twitter on its Streisand Effect award!!!’ Big Tech shot itself in the foot, and it didn’t stop the signal.”

COVID Lessons: How can we respond to a disease before it spreads?

How can we make ourselves less vulnerable to sudden epidemics, before they become epidemics, and without causing epidemic levels of deaths?

Cream of Jack-o-Lantern soup

Use the body parts of your hallowe’en pumpkin to make a tasty, if disconcerting, pumpkin soup.

COVID Lessons: Journalistic Delusions and the Madness of Politicians

COVID-19 was real. The crisis surrounding it was entirely manufactured. Everything we did took a manageable disease and turned it into a killer. And the very worst was believing a media we knew was lying.