Category: unkategorisch

number of dead people make you look bad?

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Simple: just take control of the accounting part. Deaths go down, economy booms. Everybody happy, except for the ones who died a horrible death (Covid is not gentle in that respect), and those who miss them.

It is extremely disconcerting when infection numbers become a subject of spin. If dead people are become an operation field for alternative facts. It started with the number of attendees to his inauguration. Now it is about dead people. Not good.

Specially since if you don’t have good data actually more people die. Data is one of the few weapons you have against that virus right now. It was not necessary to shut the entire country down. If the US would have had tests and data to figure out where the outbreaks are.

Contract tracing and masks is what helps. All over the world. Where it happens numbers are tiny: Taiwan, Japan and Korea have together more than 200 million people. Around 1300 people died there. In total. 9 of them in Taiwan.

exif image description in WordPress Gutenberg

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TIL that if you have a jpeg with an EXIF image description Photoshop will hand this through and WordPress will auto caption the image when it gets used as a “Featured image” on a post.

Using a png file instead of a jpeg avoids this.

75 years ago

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It probably is apocryphal that scientists were not sure if the atmosphere would catch fire in a chain reaction when they would ignite the first nuclear explosion. It did not.

2 bombs were used in a war. 2 because there were two competing technologies, and the idea was to test both of them. Out of todays perspective it is strange that the US did not just demonstrate a bomb somewhere for the world to see without killing all those people. Around 100,000 people died in each incident. About the same died in Tokyo from firebombs. But many more airplanes were involved.

It is noteworthy that mankind managed to control this part of their capabilities so successful. When the Soviet Union dissolved I felt that there would be a 50/50 chance that the weapons would fall in the wrong hands. Even Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa had them at some point.

In 2020 I would think that enough submarines with ICBMs would be beneficial for the European Union: They are the perfect deterrent, and would alter the need for US ‘protection’ from a Russia that starts talking about reparations for WW2 on its political fringes.

July 14th, Rose garden

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“The European union was formed in order to take advantage of the United States. They formed and they take advantage of the United States. And I know that, they know I know that, but other presidents had no idea.”

Why did other presidents have no idea? Well, probably since their level of sanity was greater. It is easy to find supporters who also will defend utter nonsense like this.

Once you wade neck deep in bs you probably no longer notice.

Question is just how / if one should engage with people that operate in a made up world like this.

I miss SoCal

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And then again I don’t miss it at all. And I have the feeling that that aspect will grow stronger in the next months.

CS6 starts with the same file

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Photoshop CS6 started to launch with a specific file open. Turns out there was a .psb file in 

Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS6/AutoRecover

Removing it while PS wasn’t running fixed it.

book arbitrage

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So, I saw John Green talk about art that was never finished a few days after it came out. The book he referenced titled “unfinished” seemed interesting. It was available on AMZN for around $50 in the US and about the same in EUR. So I ended up buying it over here. Turns out the seller didn’t have it. So I thought I buy it in the US and pick it up the next time I am there. Books are valid for a while. No need to have it now, just nice to have it eventually. When I looked today I can still buy it. But for a price that is more like: “So, you really want to have this, huh?”

Long story short: Impulse buy books! This was not the first time. Specially if something gets featured somewhere it is good to be fast.

Golf 7 and bluetooth

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Bluetooth is everywhere. In all sorts of flavors and configurations and capabilities. Our Golf 7 is the absolute nadir of the my user experience though. With Apple and Android handys alike connection is super slow to establish and sketchy.

We tried to update the car software. Kind of makes sense: After a couple of years and millions built, sold and driven it might be that ‘new shit came to light’ as the Big Lebowski would have said it.

The latest software took a while to download and install. Did not change anything. We asked Volkswagen (this was early 2019, but bluetooth still is troubling) and they told that everything would be in perfect harmony and there would be no updates.

Not surprisingly VW canned the head of their software division with the rather strange name car.software.org

Not over bluetooth. They have bigger fish to try. But the attitude that the company seems to have towards software is not surprising, given how they handle software updates for mundane but also frequently used things like bluetooth.

gerne GEZ gezahlt

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Patrizia Schlossers “Spannervideos – das heimliche Verbrechen” wurde gerade auf der ARD ausgestrahlt. Ich habe nur die zweite Hälfte gesehen. Mir hat die Sendung sehr gut gefallen. Das Thema geht vielen nicht so einfach und klar von der Hand. Angenehm war die Abwesenheit von Bildanteilen die Frauen darstellen. Leider ist das nicht immer in gut gemeinten Stücken so. Auch hilfreich war die klare Herausarbeitung eine verbesserten juristischen Lösung.

Täter werden gerne in diesem Genre in the Tonne getreten, manchmal dann 5 Schnitte nach halbherzig verpixelten Szenen die eigenartig unmässig lang den Bildschirm füllten. Das war hier nicht der Fall. Die Situation der Opfer klar zu machen gelang ebenso wie die Situation der Täter. Natürlich ohne dabei für Verständnis oder Toleranz auf der Verbrecherseite zu werben. Das geht. Und Frau Schlosser hat klar gezeigt wie.

Für solchen Journalismus zahle ich wirklich gerne Rundfunkgebühr. Die öffentlich rechtlichen Medien weiß man vielleicht erst richtig zu schätzen wenn man 23 Jahre im medienumsatzreichsten Staat der Welt lebte. Vielleicht ist der NDR doch das beste am Norden? Ne. Der Marketing Spruch ist immer noch blöd. b

TSLA

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Today Elon Musks car company was “worth” more worth than Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda combined. Those three together made 67 times more cars than Tesla does. Since stocks are not about cars but about future profits, the people seem to think that with each car 67 more profit can be made if it sports the T emblem on the hood.

THAT is NUTS