A few project updates

Brief update on some links which I have updated:

All The Foods I Cannot Eat is a zine by Leoh Blooms which was made in 2017 and now has a proper home on the web.
On the Lab: there’s Spoiler Widget (with help from Tracy Durnell) & :root Color Properties Editor
My affirmations bot is back up and running and I’m very pleased about that: @affirmations@thisbot.day on Mastodon & thisbot.day on Bluesky.
YouTube is still where I am doing videos of CSS Battle Daily Targets. I’ve done a third of them and won’t stop until I’ve done all of them. I have done 192. I have 376 undone.
And at the Smorgasborg: Interviews with David Letterman & Douglas Adams.
Plus a revamped copy of. The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel.
Lastly, I just put up a 2006 talk by Marc Sageman which I think about a lot.

Thanks for reading and clicking!

And I updated my tilde.club/~artlung page with the above, too.

January 14 2025 misc websites Make a comment

Marc Sageman

I listened to this talk by Marc Sageman a long time ago. I’ve been thinking about the radicalization of young men and techbros as parallel to the way Salafi Jihadism grew from unhappy people. When I was in my early teens my father encouraged me to read The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. That book goes into how young people–young men–are drawn into cults and similar organizations out of dispossession, loneliness, and ignorance.

Some quotes:

Well, I come from medicine. Medicine is all about data. It does not matter what an authority tells you. It’s about what are the facts.

Now, it’s a puzzle. Why would the engineer become terrorist? Well, I’ll tell you, that’s because engineers are arrogant. They’re so arrogant, they think they can read. They think they can read the Quran without any help. Now, had they had some religious education, they might have been immunized against a fairly virulent, violent reading of the Quran.

I’ve listened to his talk many times but not in many years. Thanks to my email archives and The Internet Archive I was able to find it and use Happy Scribe to get a rough transcription.

My CSSBattle 2024 Wrap-Up & YouTube Videos

I’ve enjoyed doing the CSS Battles a great deal. I’m recording videos of each and every “Daily Target”on my YouTube channel. I’ve done about a third of them. As of this moment? I’ve done recordings covering 191 days. 376 days I have not yet recorded for. Still, 33% have videos by me. Their instructive power is debatable. Sometimes I try to explain myself, sometimes I don’t do so well at that.

Check them out in my CSS Battle Playlist.

It’s interesting to watch the videos. I will say one thing and then type a different number. I’ve been working to align what I say and what I am typing. It does seem to provide me evidence that multitasking is not really possible. Doing something, explaining something, and teaching something, all simultaneously, is a hard task. I have mad respect for those who are good at it.

January 13 2025 cssbattle videos youtube Make a comment

Who is she?

Lifeguard came to check on me today. I was out of the rip current and had given a thumbs up before he got out of his vehicle. I’m thankful for the lifeguards.

“People here in 2025???”

I listen to music. Sometimes on YouTube (an odious yet indispensable entity).

Usually the advice to NEVER READ THE COMMENTS is pretty good advice.

On my tablet, I can’t hide the comments. A “top comment” bubbles up if I’m not in fullscreen mode.

Here are a few picked from among my playlist this morning. I listened to. maybe 30 songs so far.

I would like for you to read these comments and imagine how they came to be:

People here in 2025???

Who’s here in 2024? Or 2025? 💜

Whose here November 2024

Who’s still here on 2024

Anyone in 2024? …

Who’s still listening in 2024?

someone 2025?
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

This is the same, or at least related, to receiving a mixtape from a friend across the country.

This is like sharing an earbud, listening to the indispensable track while riding the subway together.

This was being in your favorite record store and that certain track comes on over the speakers and you make eye contact with a stranger, both soaking in the song’s wonderfulness.

So much of online space is miserable and hateful and these stand out as wishes for human connection.

Are you there, friend?

“THE ALGORITHM” — a mundane combination of interfaces and databases and math — bubbles comments to the top that people click “thumbs up” on.

And people click. Somehow answering that question with:

Yes, we’re here.

I’m overthinking it. But it sure feels real to me.

In hard times, we must connect with each other.

And music can do that.

Music is the best.

January 11 2025 music sociology youtube One comment

A few project updates

Marc Sageman

My CSSBattle 2024 Wrap-Up & YouTube Videos

Who is she?

Lifeguard came to check on me today. I was out of the rip current and had given a thumbs up before he got out of his vehicle. I’m thankful for the lifeguards.

“People here in 2025???”

39 Waves.

OB Today.

What the heck is this YouTube Comment pattern?

Yesterday at San Clemente Kelly made me look cool.