Events

I cracked the code on an application rewrite I last attempted in 2010, so I've spent a lot of my copious free time the past week working on it. I hope to have more to say soon, but software takes time. And when I'm in the zone, I like to stay there. All of which is why it's 9:30 and I have just gotten around to reading all this: The president stomped out of a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, and for reasons passing understanding, has threatened to release it himself. Pope Francis has officially...

After finishing a sprint review, it's nice to reset for a few minutes. So after working through lunch I have some time to catch up on these news stories: Faced with rising Covid-19 infections and deaths, Governor JB Pritzker has ordered suburban Chicago bars and restaurants to temporarily cease indoor dining. The Verge has an analysis of how Foxconn conned the people of Wisconsin (with the active complicity of former governor Scott Walker). Steven Pearlstein points out that, should we win the Senate and...

I did a lot today, so I've just gotten around to these stories: The Commission on Presidential Debates announced a rule change (that, of course, the president hated) for Thursday's debate: only the person who should be speaking will have a hot mic. Franklin Foer believes Biden "is preparing for a transformative presidency." Rachel Monroe explains how to spot a military impostor. The Economist points out that peaceful transfers of power happen less often than the not-so-peaceful. Meredith Shiner blames...

I stumbled upon this commercial from the 1980s that ran in the UK: Definitely John Cleese. (And what the hell has 4.1 megabytes?)

Also known as: read all error messages carefully. I've just spent about 90 minutes debugging an Azure DevOps pipeline after upgrading from .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 5 RC2. Everything compiled OK, all tests ran locally, but the Test step of my pipeline failed with this error message: ##[error]Unable to find D:\a\1\s\ProjectName.Tests\bin\Debug\net5.0\ref\ProjectName.Tests.deps.json. Make sure test project has a nuget reference of package "Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk". The test step had this Test Files...

Tom Scott explains why Denmark's cell phones do not display the legal time in the country: In an earlier video, he explains the hell of writing time zone software. (I've already done this, and it works pretty well.)

Science-fiction author John Scalzi (Red Shirts, Old Man's War) lives in Darke County, Ohio, population 52,000, 97% of them white. He does not exactly fit in with his neighbors politically, as he describes: Four years ago in Bradford, the town where I live, there were Trump street signs, like the one in the picture above. Here in 2020, there are multiple signs per yard, and banners, and flags, not just with Trump’s name on them, but of him standing on a moving tank whilst screaming eagles fly alongside...

McSweeny's gives you the person "in charge of the deck chairs on the Titanic, and they absolutely did need rearranging:" I am aware that the phrase “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” has become shorthand for “a task rendered useless in the face of overwhelming circumstances.” Well, here’s another phrase for you: “how you do anything is how you do everything.” And if I was willing to die leaving a bunch of chairs sloppily bunched together with no thought to view or most pleasant sea...

It could be worse. It might yet be: Covid-19 cases have started to climb once again in the US, passing 8 million just three weeks after passing 7 million. In Illinois, we hit a second consecutive record, with 4,554 new cases today. (There were a record 4,015 yesterday.) TNR's Alex Shepherd says NBC did the Biden campaign a huge favor by booking the president, forcing a direct comparison between the two candidates in real time. The Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance compares the absurd conspiracy theory QAnon...

Variety reported this morning that Joe Biden had higher ratings than the president last night: Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. time slot on NBC. Across the entire runtime, the Biden town hall averaged 12.3 million viewers. In terms of the fast national 18-49 demographic, Biden is comfortably on top with a 2.6 rating to Trump’s 1.7. (I wonder if anyone has told him yet? Oh, to be a fly on Pence's head during that...