Every week we post a new interview with someone about what software they use on their Mac, iPhone, or iPad. We do these interviews because not only are they fun, but a glimpse into what tools someone uses and how they use those tools can spark our imagination and give us an idea or insight into how we can do things better.
I’m not sure why I decided to do this, but there it is. I love my desk, my Mac, and working from home, I suppose that’s why I felt like sharing it.
Air pollution that can cause respiratory illness and other health problems was far less regulated before the EPA was founded. The EPA estimated that the Clean Air Act, which regulates pollution from industries, prevented more than 160,000 early deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, and millions of cases of respiratory illness in 2010 alone.
But sure, let’s get rid of the EPA and bring back acid rain.
I’m in St. Louis for the Strange Loop conference, and the conference kicked off last night with a party at the City Museum. I didn’t bother to look into the museum much before I came. A few friends told me a bit about it, but it wasn’t enough for me to really understand what the museum was; the City Museum isn’t a museum, its a mad amusement park.
I heard from another conference attendee who’d been there before that the museum was the product of a single person’s desire to make something out of an abandoned building. A mad genius. I describe exploring the museum like going through someone else’s code… you’re always finding things that make no sense. Why is there an airplane on scaffolding outside? Why are there two? Why is the only way to get to the plane through a maze of metal steps and tunnels? Why is the basement built to look like an underground cave? From the insect display to the collection of Italian movie posters to the human-sized hamster wheel, the City Museum makes no sense. It’s an eclectic collection of amusing things. Five stories of collected randomness.
My friend fulfilled a lifelong dream of falling into a ball pool. There was a live band playing on the first floor, board games on the second, food and drinks on the third, and mazes everywhere. There are two massive bank vault doors connected to a hall of mirrors that leads back to the hamster wheel. There are statues of whales, gorgon heads in a fountain, HO scale model train with flying dragons breathing fire, stairs that don’t lead anywhere and slides that go for several stories.
I’m not sure how “safe” the museum is, or how it manages insurance. The structures I climbed on all seemed sturdy enough, but I did wonder at times how old they were, or when the last time they were inspected was. My original plan was to walk to the museum, grab some food for dinner, and walk back to the hotel, mainly ignoring the festivities and the museum. I’m glad I stayed for a few hours.
James Dyson, the British inventor and businessman behind Dyson, has announced the company famous for vacuums and hand dryers plans to develop a battery-electric vehicle. In a letter to employees, Dyson said the company would have the vehicle ready by 2020.
Another company to keep an eye on. I love the fact that we’re living through a transportation revolution.
We’re really happy to announce that SuperDuper! uses snapshots on APFS boot volumes when copying. Copies should be much more reliable and less error prone, and (as usual) the whole process happens completely transparently to you, the user.
SuperDuper! is one of the best Mac apps out there. Does it’s job and does it well. Having a system cone is one-third of a correct 3-2-1 backup strategy. Have three backups, two local (one Time Machine, and one system clone), and one remote, like BackBlaze. Set this up and forget about it, and if (when) something happens, you’ve got three chances to get back your precious data.
In Hello Internet episode 4, CGP Grey introduced a metaphor for work-life balance as four light bulbs — work, friends, family, and health — between which one can allocate 100 watts, total. So it’s possible to shine brightly in one area at significant cost to the others, or to try to have a mediocre spread between all of them.
That’s an interesting way to think of it. I like it.
Why do people deny the science of climate change?
Mostly because of ideology. Link
Nice summary of what we know about climate change. I’ve never understood the opposition to environmentalism. Who doesn’t want clean air, energy independence, and the jobs created by the renewable energy industry? Here in Iowa, we have factories that build windmills, that are major employers in fairly rural areas. It seems to me that most opposition to climate change science is rooted in loyalty to a party, which in turn is rooted in deep-seated cultural beliefs and animosity towards highly educated “elitists”.
I once had coffee with a climate skeptic who explained that he simply believed that the science was shoddy, but in the same conversation pointed me towards creation science as an example of science he believed in. I’m not sure if he caught on to the incongruity of the two claims. I’m a Christian, I believe that God created the universe, but how he did it is a mystery to me. I don’t believe Him to be a God of confusion, so I don’t understand why the Earth appears to be millions of years old if it is not. I do however believe that the process of science, the back and forth, proving and disproving, debating and digging and testing the world we live in, is a means by which we can discover the mechanics of God. The rules He set in place that govern our lives, like gravity, like the way light travels on a wave, like the way positive and negative attracts.
Proverbs 19:20 says “Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.” It seems unwise to discard the advice of people who work in climate science about climate science, and instead claim to believe a politician with ties to the oil industry.
I’ve heard other arguments against climate change like “God is in control of the weather.” OK, true. But won’t God also allow us to experience the natural consequences of our actions? If I drop a brick on my head, it’s going to hurt! If we are poor stewards of God’s creation, I imagine He’s going to let us experience the consequences.
In Christianity, you must believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for your sins, and accept that as the only way to Heaven after death. The wonderful and terrible thing about science is that it doesn’t matter what you believe. You can believe in a flat Earth all day long, doesn’t make it true. You can claim that climate change is a hoax all you want, but the oceans are warming and rising, and the ice caps are melting, and the forests are on fire, and the weather is getting more extreme, and everything the environmentalists said was going to happen… is happening.
Handy chart.
“This is something which today people do not think is possible,” said Musk. “To think the truck doesn’t have enough power or it doesn’t have enough range. With the Tesla Semi, we want to show that, no, an electric truck can out-torque any diesel semi, and if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla semi will tug the diesel semi uphill.”
I’m afraid the days of long-haul trucking as a career field might be numbered.
From Daring Fireball: Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Target ‘Jew Haters’
Facebook has no conscience, it’s bad for mental health, and every time I’ve logged in lately I’m log out feeling worse. No more of that.
In an interesting, but not surprising note from John’s linked ProPublica article though:
Two: as David Simon noted, “I kind of love that ‘Jew hater’ aligns cleanly with the Second Amendment demographic. The algorithms don’t lie, do they.”
