Monthly Archives: August 2021

Who Needs a Smart Phone?

Posted on 2021-08-31 by jcs

As long as I’m obsessing about smart phones and the choice between Android and iPhone, we might as well consider the New Luddite option: no cell phones. Over at diaspora*, Doc Edward Morbius has a post that argues that smart … Continue reading →

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Gain-Of-Function Research

Posted on 2021-08-30 by jcs

It’s been over a year and we still don’t know the origins of COVID-19. Barring the leaking or release of Chinese records, we likely never will. Consensus has converged on one thing, though. Just about everybody now admits—despite earlier, strenuous, … Continue reading →

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The Index

Posted on 2021-08-29 by jcs

What do you think about book indices? Do you think about book indices? If you’re like most people, the first question doesn’t make much sense and the answer to the second is something like “Hardly ever.” The book index is … Continue reading →

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Why Are People Apple Users?

Posted on 2021-08-28 by jcs

This whole contretemps with Apple has me pondering my computing future. I’m not ready to man the lifeboats yet but it does seem prudent to check them for seaworthiness. My ruminations got me to wondering why Apple has such a … Continue reading →

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Vim vs. Emacs (and a Little Bit of ED)

Posted on 2021-08-27 by jcs

If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know that I don’t usually partake in the Editor Wars except in a humorous way, mostly in Red Meat Friday posts such as this one. Over at Kindness City there’s a … Continue reading →

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Journaling with Org-roam

Posted on 2021-08-26 by jcs

David Wilson over at System Crafters has the third video up in his series on Org-roam. I’ve said before, I’ve found his series more useful than any other introduction to Org-roam that I’ve seen. This episode focuses on the journaling … Continue reading →

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Introduction to Dired

Posted on 2021-08-25 by jcs

Ashok Khanna has a quick introduction to the basics of Dired. It’s not even a précis of the Dired section of the Emacs manual and doesn’t mention the essential Wdired mode but it is a useful post to get you … Continue reading →

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Why The Government Should Not Be Trusted With A Backdoor

Posted on 2021-08-24 by jcs

As you all know, Apple is building spyware into iOS 15. This is ostensibly in service of fighting child pornography but will, you can be sure, be expanded to detect other illegal activities and finally wrong think™. Apple, of course, … Continue reading →

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Another Step for Open Access in the UK

Posted on 2021-08-23 by jcs

The UK is already a leader in achieving open access for journal articles but have recently taken a further step. The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a major funder of UK research, has announced that starting in April 2022, researchers … Continue reading →

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The Most Useful Emacs Operations

Posted on 2021-08-22 by jcs

The other day it popped into my mind to wonder what the most useful Emacs editing functions are. Various people—like Xah Lee—have taken actual measurements of the most used functions. The most often used function is, of course, self-insert-command, which … Continue reading →

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