Menno Finlay-Smits @menn0@mastodon.nzoss.nz

Kids these days will never know the hardships of having to overcook a fresh hard boiled egg yolk for the computer mouse. Every week you needed a fresh one, and it was super hard to perfect.

Thoroughly spooked myself

Well, it's almost 5:10AM. Gonna watch this so I can still sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khOfSVULtsU&

One thing I absolutely love about #Emacs is how easy it is to add random convenience features to it. I've just added two work-related ones in the span of 10 minutes. Each is a single line of elisp, and they both leverage a popup UI (via Hydra package) I added some year ago.

That's the nice thing. Small utilities accrue and become greater than the sum of their parts.

“It’s Terry,” said Terry. “‘Ere. That [story] you sent me. Are you doing anything with it?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I think I know what happens next. Do you want to sell it to me? Or write it together?”
“Write it together,” I said, because I was not stupid, and because that was the nearest I was ever going to get to Michaelangelo phoning to ask if I wanted to paint a ceiling with him.

—Neil Gaiman, on how he came to co-write “Good Omens” with Terry Pratchett

#terrypratchett #neilgaiman #goodomens

RT @SteveStuWill@twitter.com

Incredible visualisation: Birds migrating across Europe, tracked by GPS.

😭❤️🌱🌳

RT @hallaboutafrica@twitter.com

Super green. Ethiopia tries to break world record by planting 200million trees in one day. Ends up planting 350million. Ethiopia is determined to reclaim lost forests, which covered 35% of country in 1900 but only 4% of country in 2000. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/ethiopia-plants-250m-trees-in-a-day-to-help-tackle-climate-crisis

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/hallaboutafrica/status/1155885766494568448

circa 1980. "And we concluded that one excellent way to protect people was to collect less information about them."

We need much more of this! https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/113564439/veteran-environmentalist-tells-farmers-to-brace-themselves-for-change excellent article in which an environmentalist in the Taranaki points out that many farmers don't realise the degree to which their "profit" is currently the result of subsidised "free" water, and the ability to be a high carbon emitter and polluter, putting that cost onto the rest of society, not their bottom line. He points out that much farming will cease to be profitable when farmers bear the real cost of their production.

TIL: In the Netherlands, refugees are required to learn 3 skills: the language, swimming, and how to ride a bike.

Sounds reasonable to me.