Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

A quote highlighted by Colleen: By the time he entered university, Saeed’s parents prayed more often than they had when he was younger, maybe because they had lost a great many loved ones by that age, or maybe because the transient natures of their own lives were gradually becoming less hidden from them, or maybe because they worried for their son in a country that seemed to worship money above all, no matter how much other forms of worship were given lip service, or maybe simply because their personal relationships with prayer had deepened and become more meaningful over the years....

June 8, 2022 · 2 min · Me

Quotes

From Maclean’s article: Averages don’t capture the steepest declines, a point made colourfully by the head of the New Hampshire-based Center for Assessment. “We have a saying in New England,” Scott Marion told Education Week. “You can have one foot on a wood stove, and another on a block of ice, and on average you’re pretty comfortable.” Kevin Morby on his album, This is a Photograph: to free the flame from burning up inside to thunder like a motorcycle headed down the line to eat to weep to lay me down so sweet to sow to reap oh to let our glasses clink to time to time to time to time to time to time to time to time...

June 8, 2022 · 1 min · Me

The World Ending Fire, Wendell Berry

This book really pits two of my beliefs against one another. On the one hand, I believe the value of specific, physical places and our relationships with them is vastly underrated. It provides meaning, connects us to the past and encourages a deep respect for people and places that is a necessary counterweight to the obvious trends of the ephemeral, impersonal nature of our modern digitized lives. It is the place from which all efforts at conservation should begin....

June 8, 2022 · 2 min · Me

2022-05-30

Podcasts On existential risk and climate change 80,000 hours: Toby Ord on existential risk Volts podcast Elizabeth Popp Berman Noah Smith Paulina Jaramillo These are all just loosely related, but I listened to them all around the same time and found it very interesting to hold the arguments and implications in my head together. Putting climate change in perspective (before the 80,000 hours podcast I had just default assumed climate change was a major existential risk) while still acknowledging the extremely destructive impacts of the warming that is likely to happen....

May 30, 2022 · 5 min · Me

git status - fatal: cannot chdir

tldr: If you make any changes to the file path of a git submodule, you need to also update all of your config files accordingly. Background I use the Papermod Hugo theme for my personal website. One of the ways to use Hugo themes is to install them as a submodule inside your project’s ./themes directory. I wanted to update the module today as there have been a number of changes since I set it up....

May 26, 2022 · 3 min · Me

The English Patient

7% : The winds of the world known by the patient. It’s a lovely passage. The Wikipedia page on the winds of the world is not nearly as beautiful, but also very cool. 30% : The sapper. The man who defused the landmines left behind by the retreating German military. Kip. 42% : Their distance gives them a private energy. Was this the inspiration for the Helado Negro album?

May 20, 2022 · 1 min · Me

Git

Pull changes in from master that have happened since making changes on feature branch git checkout feature git rebase master Merge feature branch into master To merge a feature into master, first commit changes to your feature branch, then: git checkout master git pull origin master git merge feature git push origin master See history git log to see all. Include file if you only want to see history for that file: git log [filename]

March 22, 2022 · 1 min · Me

2022-03-21

Articles Nadia Eghbal’s new work sounds really interesting. Hannah and I have been talking recently about a mutual desire to do more “giving”. I don’t think either of use really knows what that means to us. This is a really interesting frame for what giving is. Philanthropy, then, can be understood as a form of self-expression. It is complementary, not competitive, to government: citizens have the right to use their private assets to experiment with new ideas, and government has the size and longevity to scale and maintain them....

March 21, 2022 · 5 min · Me

bash

At the moment, this is just a dumping ground for useful tidbits I find / need in my daily work. At some point I will get around to organizing and formalizing. Parameter Expansion Bash reference manual Slice a string a="teleport" b=${a:4:7} echo $b > port Replace a portion of a string The pattern is ${parameter/pattern/string} to replace the first occurence of pattern with string or ${parameter//pattern/string} to replace all occurrences....

March 10, 2022 · 1 min · Me

vim

At the moment, this is just a dumping ground for useful tidbits I find / need in my daily work. At some point I will get around to organizing and formalizing. File formats (carriage returns) If you ever diff two files that look identical, but they display as completely different, you may be dealing with a file format issue. This may happen if you are sharing files between different OS. To display the file format of your current file type this:...

March 10, 2022 · 2 min · Me