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2024-11-20

Week 202: The Mystery of the Mutilated Minion

The hardest weeks to write about are the ones in which it feels like nothing happened.

The new management took over at the workspace in Peckham Levels. I decided to stay on, but as they’ve abolished the pay-by-the-day option, I had to choose a dedicated desk or nothing. I chose the dedicated desk as it’s not much more than I was paying for my frequent attendance anyway.

The bean-to-cup coffee machine is gone, but it’s been replaced with good filter coffee. I prefer filter to espresso-based drinks, so that’s fine with me. Fans of foamed milk drinks might be less happy.

I celebrated having a fixed desk by buying myself a monitor. It has a USB connection that lets me charge my laptop and connect the video with one cable. Nothing new, but it’s new to me and very convenient.

4K monitors are very cheap now. I suppose we have TV to thank. I had to set the scaling to 150% to be able to read things. Most apps are now clearer with the higher density. A couple are obviously upscaled and look a bit blurry, but in general I’ve been very impressed with how smoothly it works under Gnome, and how the scaling adapts when I unplug and switch to my laptop display.

Something has finally changed in the public image of X, the Everything App (formerly Twitter). It took two years, but the fact that Musk is Not A Good Guy seems finally to have penetrated even the most obdurately optimistic of skulls.

Of course, no one ever learns, so they’ve all gone to Bluesky, the new private platform funded by Blockchain Capital, a venture capital company who I’m sure have nothing but the noblest of intentions and who don’t expect any return on their investment.

(I’m aware that they claim it’s “decentralized” [sic] and “federated” but it’s not actually either of those things at the moment, and despite promises it’s not clear that it ever will be.)

You won’t find me there. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t be investing my time and effort in a proprietary platform again. I’m already salty enough that I can’t get around without having a phone running software from Google or Apple, and I can’t have a social life without communicating via Meta’s WhatsApp.

I picked up a vintage G Plan corner unit that perfectly matches our sideboard to use as a drinks cabinet. The house is asymptotically approaching completion.

We went to Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote on Sunday night. It was, as ever, good silly fun.

I made it through to the last few people standing in the quiz, and was knocked out only because I didn’t believe that The Mystery of the Mutilated Minion was (within the dramatic world of Murder, She Wrote) really the title of one of Jessica Fletcher’s novels.

Links:

• Wind Blowing Out of Uranus Makes It Hard to Probe, NASA Complains. Best title ever?
• European alternatives for popular services, because we can’t trust the US.
• Your CSS reset should be layered.
• I’m a neuroscientist who taught rats to drive − their joy suggests how anticipating fun can enrich human life. “Surprisingly, two of the three rats chose to take the less efficient path of turning away from the reward and running to the car to drive to their Froot Loop destination. This response suggests that the rats enjoy both the journey and the rewarding destination.”