nikhil.io

And the answer to my prayers. Activate a ‘multi-clipboard’ with a very simple and memorable ⌘Shiftc

brew install maccy but please get it via Gumroad or the App Store.

Saw with the wife. Three hours long, utterly engrossing, takes its own sweet time, not a moment wasted. Features some big names and incredible performances throughout (Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich… and a young Shatner!). But, and in order, Montgomery Clift and Maximilian Schell steal the show. The former’s only on screen for about 15 minutes or so and is so utterly innocent and vulnerable he makes you feel like you want to reach into the TV and hug him. The latter won an Academy Award for his intense role as a defender of monsters. One of the best court dramas I’ve seen.

This is also a very necessarily sad subject. There is so much in the movie that gave us a Rusty Cohle “Time is a Flat Circle” vibes. There isn’t much we felt and discussed that’s new under the sun. We need to remember history and speak the Truth (and to power) no matter how difficult it is. My attorney buddy told me that Burt Lancaster’s¹ character, Dr. Ernst Janning - Reich Minister of Justice - was one of his favorite characters. His climactic monologue will make you wonder why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

You can and should watch the movie for free.

I photographed these at a 2015 exhibit in Chicago and saved them to perhaps use as funky webpage backgrounds. I still remember them being so beautiful and absolutely hypnotic in person. They were designed in Austria, Paris, Munich, and Russia.

As told by Dr. Mihaly Mezei, Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, at a seminar at my department.

It reminded me of an old joke […] Khruschev and Bulganin, at that time when there was a Soviet Union, were visiting the Queen of England. And so Khruschev notices that Bulganin puts a silver spoon in his pocket during the dinner.

So Khruschev said, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want to show you a magic trick. Here is a silver spoon. I put it in my pocket. Bulganin, take it out!

I really need to read this book and soon.

Cached.

A reasonable and normal human being would prepare to clean their laptop’s keyboard by getting together a cleaning cloth (e.g. microfiber) and solution (e.g. isopropyl alcohol). They would then power down their laptop and clean their keyboard (and maybe trackpad and screen) before pushing the power button on again.

That last part would not get you promoted at Apple. When your MacBook is shut down, any key is the power key. Because fuck you and your reasonable expectations.

The official guidance is to employ a can of compressed air. Make sure it’s really compressed so it gets rid of both debris and grease.

You can also issue terminal incantations, and hold down several keys and the power button in the shut down state (which is not guaranteed to work on newer laptops)¹.

In your (unreasonable) frustration, you can make a lovely, free, & helpful little utility that addresses this problem and attempt to publish it to the App Store. It will be rejected as being “not useful” because Apple, run by visionaries who care deeply about design, knows better and would really love it if you shut the fuck up.

Also:

Like Charles Bukowski said: “People think I’m down on 5th and Main at the Blarneystone throwin’ back shooters and smokin’ a cigar, but I’m on the top floor of the health club with a towel in my lap, watchin’ Johnny Carson.”

A play on Mr. Lovenstein’s original by Dorsa Amir.

The Ashes, one of Cricket’s most hallowed tournaments held every two years between archrivals Australia and England since 1882, proved to be yet another theater of the ongoing embarrassment of English Cricket and its obdurate affection for a strange and ineffective philosophy, many notable individual heroics aside. I sincerely take no joy at all in this: everyone enjoys a nice and tense set of games between evenly matched opponents in any sport.

No pundit so of course here’s a trenchant analysis. Evident home advantage aside, Australia just played meat-n-potatoes Test Cricket: Bowlers suffocated with near-perfect line and length. Batsmen didn’t indulge in outlandish heroics (“Vibe Cricket”). And critically, every person responsible for catching a ball (you know, to get the other team out) made sure to wash their hands of any butter from breakfast. And there was, at the minimum, a ‘concept of a plan’. That’s all. Small things, great attention, done to perfection.

England managed to talk a big talk and do little else. All the dropped catches aside, I will not forget how their spearhead fast bowler, a very talented fella, got mouthy with and punished by the greatest Test batsman in a generation, all while dressed like a recently promoted minor henchman in a Guy Ritchie movie: “Bowl fast when there’s nothing going on Champion.” I cannot think of a more symbolic summary of both the series and the state of English Cricket than the minute and thirty seconds of that video.

Since 2013 England has won 10 and drew 6 of 38 Test matches against Australia.

My part of the internet is abuzz with the departure of an Apple Exec named Alan Dye who just may be responsible for all the dogshit UI/UX decisions at the company over the last decade or so that heavily favored looks over functionality to a lot of unheeded frustration and dismay. John Gruber offers a fascinating account of his seemingly ill-deserved accession and shittiness as an design leader. Here’s a zinger from the footnotes:

I have good reason to believe that Ive, in private, would be the first person to admit that [he made a mistake promoting Dye]. A fan of Liquid Glass Jony Ive is not. I believe he sees Dye as a graphic designer, not a user interface designer — and not a good graphic designer at that. I don’t think Alan Dye could get a job as a barista at LoveFrom [Ive’s design shop].

Oof. Here are two other posts on the drama.

The absolute nuke is an encore by designer Juan Buis of “Liquid Ass” fame.

Now I’m told it gets better:

Really hoping I smile at my nerdrage over “bullshit visions borne of arrogance, fart-sniffing, and desperation” a year or two from now.

It’s always The Hitchhiker’s Guide. I don’t think this man has read the book or the series in its entirety. If he has, I suppose it must be “being on the spectrum” that would explain his abject inability to see that Adams is ridiculing (and would mercilessly ridicule) people exactly like him.

Oates appears to have stirred him into critiquing film (source). Can’t wait for him to be the most trenchant presence here as well.

I go to a pizzeria at around 2:00AM.

“Hey man can I get a slice?”
“No man only burger.”

Turns around, gets back to putting trays away.

Think before you speak, don’t waste peoples’ time, this most certainly ain’t Kansas.

I ♥️ NY 🍕

(Two large slices, cheese and pepperoni.)

And why it was very silly of me to think of them as mere adornments:

The larger fur liner creates a larger boundary layer [a thin layer of air created by molecules bumping into each other].

(Cached: fur, no fur)

And LLMLingua (Microsoft) will compress things for context windows.

Thank you, Almighty Algorithm, for this absolutely hypnotic piece of music, choreography, and camerawork.

More videos by the conservatory. Song by Il Est Vilaine, choreography by Martha Nichols, and camerawork by Devin Jamieson.

And here’s the Dancer in the Blue Shorts.

I was tickled to try out the Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows 7 ones. Simpler, purer times.

Covers testing/mocking, databases, Redis, performance. For engineers at Stream. Cached.

Was looking for an alternative to my trusty “10 Hours of IceBreaker Idling in the Arctic” and found this.

over the last couple of years i’ve been making really really really quiet music to listen to when i do yoga or sleep or meditate or panic. i ended up with 4 hours of music and have decided to give it away.

it’s really quiet: no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pretty chords and sounds and things for sleeping and yoga and etc. and feel free to share it or give it away or whatever, it’s not protected or anything, or at least it shouldn’t be.

thanks,
moby

via OpenCulture

Advice from an eminent scientist I worked for and looked up to (and still do) at my very first job after college.

Just showing up – on time, rested, clean, appropriately dressed, and well fed – is half the battle (50%).

Having enthusiasm and maintaining a patient and positive attitude despite adversity is half of the remaining half (75%).

Knowing your likes and dislikes (and your strengths and weaknesses) accurately enough that you can formulate some clear life goals that are well aligned with who you really are is half of the remaining half (87.5%).

Using the clear image of these goals to guide your decisions in such a way that you spend most of your time doing things that you enjoy and are good at is half of the remaining half (93.75%).

Surrounding yourself with people who are honest, optimistic, and who like you for who you are, is half of the remaining half (96.875%). Being honest with yourself and others – and obeying the ethic of reciprocity in everything you do – is half of the remaining half (98.4375%).

If you do all of these things most of the time, it has been my experience that good fortune can be counted on to fill in any gaps that occur and to carry you well beyond your original dreams and goals.

I read “iPhone Pocket” and got very excited about the prospect of an updated iPhone Mini (the best phone I’ve used). But lo, a $230 mankini for your fucking phone from a very unserious group of people at Apple:

“Courage” indeed.

Saw with the wife. Phenomenal cinematography, set and costume design, and suspense-building. Hugh Grant and Chloe East are just excellent. Very promising plot that was underserved by ill-informed, incomplete, and sophomoric arguments against Abrahamic traditions and religion writ large.

Made me think of how insufferable I must have been in my early 20s, when New Atheism was in vogue, and I had killer arguments against faith and religion that were as necessary and delicate and nuanced as a loud fart in a cathedral. Not religious in the least but that me would’ve really loved Grant’s ramblings in this movie.

Thing is, I don’t think the writers would have landed the plane even if they’d consulted an actual academic or theologian and didn’t just rely on a 3-hour YouTube speedrun of the Best of Hitchens and Dawkins.

You can think whatever you’d like about Mormon missionaries and their obligations but it can be dangerous work. I remember two fellas visiting me in 2011. I gave them some water and we chatted. They were much younger than me but had a lot of stories to tell.

I get around 8-10 calls from 1-8xx numbers every single day, most of them pertaining to financial scams (I get as many text messages as well). A few leave voicemail and the GIF at the end of this note shows about two weeks’ worth. I’ve taken to silencing unknown numbers on my iPhone. The Do Not Call Registry is on a quick little break right now.

Actually doing something about a problem everyone agrees is awful would be antithetical to Free Market principles, a blot on the idea of Freedom itself, and would precipitate the demise of our thriving republic. Because all regulation is evil, I’ll just sack up and wait for The Market to sort it all out 🥰

A Sample of Laissez-Faire Blessings, Delivered Daily #

Spoilers!

A most odd thing. Can’t find who recommended it to me. It’s only around 70 pages and is a magical realist retelling of Stalin’s ascent to power and his horrible and bloody legacy due to his involvement with a very licentious¹ and decently interesting vampire coven². There’s this Dorian Gray angle to the story that was rather confusing and I think unnnecessary. I really didn’t understand the ending (or maybe just don’t want to accept it).

Régis Penet captures the hopelessness, danger, and decrepitude very well.

Pretty average cop infiltrates crime boss’ family story. Like enjoying a Burger King double (with large fries and a coke) instead of a gourmet The Wire. Nice cinematography, great performance by Maria Cordsen as Ashley. There might be a second season.

Whoever did the soundtrack deserves a giant raise. Here’s the opening track.

Obsessive organizer of things and see myself using this daily.

Short film by a young Villeneuve. One of the nicer gifts of The Almighty Algorithm. You can watch it here:

Spoilers!

I’m glad I saw it on a projector. Not sure if it’s a political statement (e.g. the chandeleir being their elite privilege (a ridiculous idea, untethered to anything ‘real’ or ‘permanent’) following them or one about the human condition and our fraught, parasitic relationationship with nature or just both. We never know how tall the building is: greed is a bottomless pit. This was years before Sicario and Dune and you can just see Villeneuve’s ease with and penchant for creating huge atmospheres and settings¹.

Spoilers!

I sincerely hope that we’re not as abjectly unprepared for some apocalyptic geopolitical event as depicted in the movie, strategically or temperamentally. People just yell at each other, crumble at the smallest setback, and don’t project the kind of professionalism and nerves of steel we assume they’d have in their position, particularly, and dismayingly, those in leadership.

It’s totally, totally different in real life.

The most shocking part of the movie was when an analyst mentions that China was experimenting with AI to manage their defense. I know nothing but hope we continue to stick to Boring Software™ (and floppy disks) in this department.

It’s trying to say something profound or drop a very challenging ‘exercise left up to reader/viewer’ but fails spectacularly with how scattered it is and how much it’s up its own ‘somber’ and ‘meditative’ arse. Tension, TENSION, tension, tension leading up to… nothing at all! And my complaint isn’t the lack of resolution. Like the tension, the monotonous and super-ominous background score befits the script by getting pretty annoying after the first 150 loops.

At least got to see Jared Harris being excellent as usual. “INCLINATION HAS FLATTENED” is a weird sentence.

Saving some snippets here but Dave Snyder’s article is worth reading, bookmarking, and meditating over (cached).

See also: “Because God Can See”

Sorry you’re too stupid for Monads bro #

This reminds me of one of the worst design decisions in React: useEffect¹. I’ve worked with it for a long while and find that I’m always doing it wrong and worse thinking about it wrong. It’s so simple! You’re just syncing side-effects bro!

It would’ve taken the kind of restraint Dave talks about for an Engineering Leader/Manager to say “I’m glad you’re high on your Functional Programming classes and ambient hype but we’re not doing it, at least not this way. It may be clever, it may simple, but it’s not easy. People who use what we make have a job to do.”

Anyway. All hail jQuery.

The words that came to mind when I saw this poster were exquisite and breathtaking. Wow.

Or maybe I should STFU and just use cURL…

I would be very dismayed if I spent my creative and professional energies on a half-baked abjectly unnecessary UI and UX abomination that neither adds to nor improves my users’ lives, causes confusion and squinting in many, elicits "meh"s from the rest, and leads to lengthy articles on how to disable my disruptive work so the people I purport to serve can get theirs done.

Via DaringFireball with the observation:

A useful guide for today  –  and, I bet, a useful look back at the first versions of Liquid Glass for the future.

Indeed. Looking forward to when Apple admits to making good things worse for no reason and doesn’t double-down on bullshit visions borne of arrogance, fart-sniffing, and desperation.

“iOS 26.1 Beta 4 Lets Users Control Liquid Glass Transparency with New Toggle” (MacRumors). I still think they should’ve had an option (perhaps a slider) that allowed me to turn off translucency entirely.

I saw this with my Dad twenty-nine years ago. He thought it was Hitchcock’s greatest movie. I’d forgotten all about it until Catherine and I were trying to find something to watch and consulted the AFI’s 10 Top 10 list for the best mysteries (of course). I’ve read that people love rewatching it and I can totally see why. Some assorted notes and spoilers. I’ll watch this again in a year.

Boo #

Wouldn’t have any reservations calling this a ghost story. It’s at least a reverie (to the point I was wondering if Mr. Alfred would pull a “And then he woke up” towards the end) and I’m sure this was intentional. I am 51% sure that Scottie’s actually dead or in a coma in the second half.

Scottie The Alpha #

Scottie is pathetic, weak, creepy, overconfident, and domineering and would make millions on YouTube and/or the podcast circuit.

He pines after a mirage of a woman even when he has a chance to appreciate her in her literal colorful exuberance and cannot brook her as a partner¹ just as she is. He must ‘reset’ her and turn her into a bland object, this canvas he can project himself onto that absorbs all his insecurities and faults.

Now while Judy is pliant, Midge is a strong independent woman who need no man (almost) and has this vibrant and cool apartment full of art. She has several interests, tries different careers, is funny, and likes our boy and cares a lot for him. But nope: He needs her to be devoid of color and personality and ambition to return her affections.

Even my dog appreciated Hitchcock’s self-examination as the Man Who Must Control Women in the belltower scene. Maybe the scope was “as a director” 🤷‍♂️

Falling #

There’s a lot of ‘falling’ here (well duh): in love, off buildings, into graves, into darkness, into madness. I can’t remember a single scene of our hero driving uphill and don’t know what this means but wonder if this is why they picked hilly San Francisco. Speaking of, I love me a good then-and-now and wanted to see what Scottie’s apartment looks like today. That led me to this lovely website called Reels SF maintained by someone who’s been “movie location hunting” in San Francisco for over twenty years! Here’s the Vertigo page.

Disorientation #

Quite a few to pick from but this might be my favorite shot in the movie. I’m trying to learn perspective drawing and this one’s a fantastic exercise.

The writing is beyond excellent and the show is perfection. Reminds me of a perfectly built and tuned watch movement. Goes through a lot of hands but each person handling it knows their place in the overall scheme and is world-class at what they do. Consider, for example, how much you learn about the Ghorman people and their pride and persuasions in just a few episodes. Consider how much is embedded in this important exchange:

MOTHMA
You realize what you’ve set in motion?

LUTHEN
It’s time for that as well.

MOTHMA
Palpatine won’t hesitate now.

LUTHEN
Exactly! We need it, we need the fear, we need them to overreact.

MOTHMA
You can’t be serious.

LUTHEN
The Empire has been choking us so slowly we’re starting not to notice. The time has come to force
their hand.

MOTHMA
People will suffer.

LUTHEN
That’s the plan. You’re not angry with me. I’m just saying out loud what you already know. There will
be no rules going forward. If you’re not willing to risk your conscience then surrender and be done with it.

The show’s fierce with its experimentation and appears to have no regard for political neutrality and corporate oversight (even in spite of a staggering budget of $650M); it’s an examination of of how authoritarian regimes evolve and behave, and how they need to destroy our humanity to survive, including that of the people who uphold them because of blind ambition, greed, or rent money. Anyone who kvetches about getting politics out of Star Wars (or Sci-Fi in general) is a prize idiot.

I wonder how many years we’ll have to wait for something like this.

Quite a few of them are designed to confuse and/or furstrate the user into increasing Shareholder Value™ but there are many that are firmly in “confusion of ideas” territory.

By Alan Lightman, from the very lovely documentary A Trip to Infinity.

I fog up every time I see this. His smile towards the end is an emotional nuke and I’m a blubbery teary happy mess. I think of the Love I have in my life and am so very grateful. Here’s a transcript.

I was looking up at the sky one night when I was about ten years old. And I felt like my life didn’t matter. And I guess it was converting large space to large time. One star after another star after another star and wondering whether that would keep going forever.

I had this sense that the universe existed a long time before I was born, and it would exist a long time after I was dead. And I was just a speck that didn’t matter. I don’t matter. My parents don’t matter. Nothing matters. We’re all just specks. We’re just living in this brief moment.

None of us were here a million years ago. None of us will be here a million years from now. And the Universe doesn’t care. It just goes on and on and on. So, why are we wasting time, you know, going to school, having dentist appointments? All of that.

Why are we wasting our time? Because none of it matters.

And then I fell in love. And that changed everything. That mattered. Even though we might both be specks in the cosmos.

I found this short story on my laptop and have no idea who sent it to me or where I might have downloaded it from. It’s funny and I imagine it would make for a nice children’s book and/or cartoon adaptation.

The document says it’s by Kyr Bylychev. The only search result I get is a Russian sci-fi and fantasy author. It was translated by Seva Gunitsky, who appears to be an American politican scientist.

🤷‍♂️

(Cached)

I had a lot of work to do so decided to watch both episodes back-to-back.

Star Trek, unbridled TechBro arrogance, rapid and unchecked technological progress, meditations on ancient questions of consciousness, identity, and dynamics of power, gamer culture, very satisfying comeuppance for the baddies… all folded into a funny and whip-smart script, executed with fantastic production value and brought to life by phenomenal acting (Jimmi Simpson, Cristin Milioti, and Jesse Plemons especially).

What else could one want? I’d put these on my Top Ten Black Mirror episode list¹ too. I hope they make a third but the second had a pretty conclusive and satisfying ending. Fantastic stuff.

Like if you picked some familiar tropes and asked an AI to write a screenplay.

• Weary master who’s really, really good at something.
• Master is aloof, introverted, irascible. Nobody’s interesting enough.
• Enter precocious, young, raw apprentice. They meet by random chance.
• Cue training montage.
• Apprentice surpasses Master.
• Master deals with the defeat/affront poorly. Substance abuse is triggered. May be brief but must be intense.
• Reconciliation and Wisdom. May occur at Master’s deathbed.

These are all covered in this movie, which is about a Go master and his genius pupil. Based on real-life pair Cho Hun-Hyun and Lee Chang-ho. I know absolutely nothing about the game so thoroughly enjoyed the “Hmmm, his opening gambit is unconventional and rabbit-like” dialogue. In the movie, players in Go world append rank to others’ names. Not sure if that’s the case in real life.

Browsing Wikipedia led me to these quotes by world champion Lee Sedol who turned pro at age 12 (!) and retired after he felt his “world collapsing” due to AI:

Indeed.

He famously played AlphaGo and was defeated 4-1. Here’s the whole documentary. I liked it better than this movie and you may, too.

Solo act of Norwegian musician Helge Sten. Dark, like you’re witnessing an occult or preternatural thing, like a coven assembling. You can work to this or just meditate with it.

And a classic one at that (OS/2 and BeOS vibes). Amazing. Here’s how they did it. Gatsby!

Like a lot of kids I loved cutaway books (if that’s what they’re called). I would pester my parents for these and had quite a collection. Couldn’t and still can’t imagine the skill it takes to make them. So when I came by these high-res images by an illustrator from the 30s named Fred Freeman, I explored them posthaste on my iPad and saved them here to savor again at a later time.

Might be a tenuous connection but I think my deep love of miniatures might be related to my love of cutaways as 2D/flat dollhouses.

That blog’s a trove of cutaways. The folks who author it run a design agency and have published their own book on such illustrations called Look Inside.

I did like the mood (and soft-spoken narration) of the introduction but I absolutely loved that background music. It’s called Lambent Rag by Clark and is worth a listen and a watch¹.

The Air looks nice² but I’ll baby my iPhone 13 Mini, perfection as far as smartphones go, for as long as I can. It was released around this time four years ago and is still going strong.