onfocus

The Our Fake History podcast tells the true stories behind untrue things we believe about history. I really enjoyed this episode about the absurdist secret society The Clampers and a hoax they accidentally (?) perpetrated involving an artifact Sir Francis Drake left in California in 1579.

Henbane will be the name of my next metal band.

DARN, prior art.

I am guilty of using this word as filler or an intensifier all the time. This is a public note to myself to cut it out.

"Am I allowed to strike? If you work in the private sector, definitely. It doesn’t matter if you are part of a labor union or not. For government workers, though, it depends."

This explainer from Vox sure is timely for me. The union I’m in is about to strike.

I recently wanted to set up some "internet free" time for certain devices on my wifi (sorry kids) and this python library did the trick. I used it to set up a script that blocks or unblocks devices by mac address and I run it on a regular schedule with cron. Netgear should offer a consistent, well-documented API for its routers. Until then, pyNetgear can help automate a few tasks. Which is nice.

Have I mentioned how much I like the Micro.blog layout? This is their discover page that shows recent updates. So clean. No like counts. No ‘share this’ button. No ads. No calls to add a comment or sign up or subscribe or download the app or turn on notifications. More like this please.

In this podcast episode screenwriter Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame explains how he approaches writing scripts. His idea about having the main character push backwards on the theme until believing the truth of the theme is a great way to understand how character arcs work. You might expect high drama examples but Mazin uses Finding Nemo as the prime example throughout.

How many sorcerer spells overlap with wizard spells? Which spells are unique to rangers? These questions and more are answered in this nifty visualization.

"In other words, we have changed our relationship with photography and photographs. It used to be that, photos served as a portal to our past. Now, we are moving so fast as we try to keep up in the age of infinitesimal attention spans."

Nice thinking here about the future of cameras as our relationship with photography changes.

"Shockingly, they found a positive and statistically significant relationship between the amount of coverage dedicated to mass shootings and the number of shootings that occurred in the following week."

I wish more people knew about the media contagion problem—especially people in the media.

I’ve been having fun with this 3D animated dice-rolling app. Seems like it’ll be good for all of my RPG needs especially those rare times I need to roll a bunch like 10d6 or 12d8. (This is a picture of a roll with advantage—a nice built in feature.)

Cory Doctorow on the legacy of Internet pioneer John Perry Barlow: “...treat the internet with the gravitas that it is due, as a system that could be a force for great human flourishing, but only if we ensure that it isn’t used to snuff out human dignity and agency.”