April 2021

Vacas flacas

La sequía que azota México es un fenómeno recurrente que con cada visita deja una estela de emergencias y daños. El 84% del territorio sufre sequía en diferentes intensidades, agravada por la falta de lluvias de los últimos meses, según se desprende del Monitor, el organismo de Conagua que la vigila. Pese a que estaba previsto y la evolución histórica del clima en el país lo contemplaba, la sequía sorprendió a Ermenegildo Martínez, un pescador de Veracruz que ha visto como en los últimos ocho meses la laguna donde pescaba se ha secado. “Medía 13 metros de profundidad y ahora apenas le quedan 10 centímetros, en menos de una semana la habremos perdido del todo”, describe. A 1.300 kilómetros de allí, en Sinaloa, el agricultor Gumaro López se contagia del pesar del pescador. Al igual que Martínez tendrá pérdidas en su producción y alerta de que subirán los precios. Ya pasó en 2011 y 1996, los otros dos episodios de sequía extrema que golpearon a México y de los que, ha quedado claro, no se ha aprendido lo suficiente.

Source: La sequía que abrasa México, una tragedia predecible y devastadora | EL PAÍS México

Every Mexican president ignores the lessons learned by their predecessors. This drought will likely drive migration north, which is already a flash point due to the pandemic.

The Water Wars might start much sooner than anyone thought and that is worrying.

Vacas flacas Read More »

For those concerned about the previous post, know that I like blowing things out of proportion, just like you’re doing now.

See you around.

Read More »

Of pitchforks and torches

When people decide to go Dumb on the web it really shows. Case in point, this tweet by @CanPanicNow:

I did NOT come to law school to do math
@CanPanicNow

Is it a dumb take? Maybe, maybe not. We know many lawyers who complain about math. We also know many software developers who complain about math. We’ve heard mathematicians complain about math.

But like Homer Simpson says, it’s funny because it’s true

This started an entire fucken chain of Internet Stupidity™ on the twitter derp corn, but the one that people really took offense with was this reply from @VampWriterGRRL:

@CanPanicNow I went to college and got a degree in Paralegal Technology. Then I was hired by an attorney who specialized in bankruptcies. I recommend setting the attitude aside because, well, it’s immature, and you don’t know where you’ll end up working right out of law school.
@VampWriterGRRL

My fucken gods you’d have thought she went and personally spit on everyone’s faces. This started an entire weekend of stupidity that just keeps going and going cos some people can’t let it go. It’s a bad take? Dunno, possibly, We’re not able to judge how other people go about their lives, it’s already been hard enough with the pandemic to worry about other people’s lives when your own is already hanging on the balance.

#lawtwitter folk people started dogpiling on her. Whether it’s deserved or not it’s up to the reader to determine. Just go and look at @VampWriterGRRL’s replies to see what people are saying, or not, we’re not the boss of you. Recommend you don’t cos then you’d be reading the comments. We have our own opinions about how she’s bringing work into her own personal life and how her policing of others opinions feels.

In her case, she went on and is still currently defending her position on the matter as of this blargh post. This is where we come in with a few tweets of our own.

@WimminsRea @AKBrews @ResJudiGator @MotiontoLit @AnnaLovesVoting @VampWriterGRRL @subnomnomnom but on that… eh, just let her be. At this point it’s just y’all piling on
@nullrend

The kind of #lawtwitter dogpiling happening right now will probably result in vamp leaving, same as it has happened in the past. I haven’t interacted with @VampWriterGRRL
but I’m sure there will be people who will miss her, just like I miss people driven away over time.
@nullrend

if you don’t like her opinion, that’s fine. Do a tweet or two and leave it at that. Same if you do like her opinion. Y’all in #lawtwitter already devolved into cliques, make your peace with that and let others be.
@nullrend

There is a missing tweet here, which multiple people advised me to delete, in which we used the word “lynching”, given its racial connotations in the US. Quick reminder of the definition:

Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often in the form of hanging) for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in every society.

Lynching – Wikipedia

Here’s another definition

lynch [/ lɪntʃ /]
verb (used with object)
1. to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority:
– In the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of southern African Americans were lynched by white mobs.
2. to criticize, condemn, etc., in public:
– He’s been unfairly lynched in the media.

lynch – dictionary.com

As someone who regularly listens to international news, this violent group act happens on an almost daily basis:

We used this word to describe the mobbing around @VampWriterGRRL. Was it the wrong word to use, given the racial history of the audience present? Yes, it was. We apologized for it afterwards. But by that point people wanted blood and when that happens the blood lust will not be denied!

And I thought the worst take I was gonna see all night was a tweet about how lawyers shouldn’t make jokes about math (or at all, I guess) but holy shit has that been topped
@ncurr

To which multiple people started replying. At this point Nick felt the need to actively start QTing my original tweet to others in an effort to… not sure, actually. Have more people get in line for a li’l spanking? Kinky. But that did start a little mob around the tweet to which people actively responding. At the time we felt it particularly ironic we were being taught we were lacking in American historical knowledge by a white man and a white woman.

@wellywiggles @ncurr @Lex_Discipulus @subnomnomnom mmkay, and now you guys are actively trying to get mobbing on me. I did walk it back cos Nick rightfully pointed out it was the wrong word to use given the current context.
@ncurr

Can’t use a word that accurately describes the feeling which is why “mobbing” came into play. Ever seen mob justice? Not a fun thing to be around. It’s the kind of thing that curdles your insides and leaves a mental scar that takes a long, long time to heal.

@nullrend @wellywiggles @Lex_Discipulus @subnomnomnom I am simply trying to educate you about why you should not have made that comparison, then when called out, stood by it
@ncurr

A few people told me in private my tweet was stupid and it should be deleted and that that point their advise was followed. Did they also tell me I was being stupid for tweeting a stupid thing? Damn right they did, and right they were. A few of the people who torched me for that tweet are still actively going after others cos they disapprove of their opinions. In our case we just told them to block us so they wouldn’t have to read our nonsense:

@ncurr @Lex_Discipulus @katmcmemes @subnomnomnom @wellywiggles okay, so now I have walked it back and then apologized multiple times, and yet that is not enough because obviously you’re taking this very, very personally. So… my recommendation then is that you should block me, and people of the same opinion as you should do the same.
@nullrend

A couple of people from back in the land where we were born looked at this entire fucken thing and started LOL’ing at the sheer stupidity of it. American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.

How Americans see the world

Did we say the wrong thing at the wrong time? Yes. Did others also try to actively torch us for it? Yes. Did the chain of dumb continue until maximum dumb was achieved? Also yes. Not even trying to learn something for it except for the reminder to mind my own business come hell or high water. Bunch of people are now taking a Twitter Break because people are still finding something to be Mad Online™ about.

xkcd - Duty Calls

We can’t imagine what’ll happen when they see this blargh post? They’ll probably try to nuke me off the Internet with LOICs like we used to in the olden days.

Of pitchforks and torches Read More »

Import basic contact information into Google Contacts quickly

I just fucken spent a fucken hour and a half trying to import some fucken data into fucken Google Contacts cos it’s a piece of pigshit.

There are multiple guides on the web on how to import data into it and most are fucken failures. This is what you need:

Google Contacts CSV columns

In text form, as a CSV:

Given Name,Family Name,E-mail 1 - Value,Phone 1 - Type,Phone 1 - Value,Organization 1 - Type,Organization 1 - Name
First Name,Last Name,mailbox@domain.tld,Mobile,1-000-0000000,unknown,Company Name

In a nice tabulated table. It’s in code cos my fucken markdown plugin doesn’t understand markdown tables

|Given Name|Family Name|E-mail 1 - Value  |Phone 1 - Type|Phone 1 - Value|Organization 1 - Type|Organization 1 - Name|
|First Name|Last Name  |mailbox@domain.tld|Mobile        |1-000-0000000  |unknown              |Company Name         |

And here’s an actual CSV file you can download so you can plug your data into it: google-contact-quickstart.csv: Google Contacts Quickstart CSV.

They should use their much-vaunted AI might and quantum supremacy to fix one of the most basic things companies need to do all over the fucken planet instead of trying to figure out how yoke everyone into their FLoC pigshit without having to threaten ultraviolence on them.

I’d probably have spent less time importing contacts one by one but at least now I know how to do it in bulk and have it work.

Seriously google, get fucked.

Import basic contact information into Google Contacts quickly Read More »

It’s done, thank Chaos

This past week was truly a week from fucken hell. Six nights in row at sysadmin jerb, three doubles in a row , then another two doubles in a row.

I’m fucken tired but with the fucken pigs doing curfews in Minneapolis and firing off emergency alerts at all hours of the day it hasn’t been easy to actually get any fucken sleep after they killed a Black guy in Brooklin Center and protests started.

Google Calendar from April 4 until April 17

I think I only survived thanks to the free coffee I get at my barista job and napping at my sysadmin job— which we try not to do because then we’re groggy the rest of the night and when the job is thinking that leads to problems.

I’m going to bed in an occupied territory. Fuck the police.

For Third Night After Daunte Wright’s Killing, Protesters And Law Enforcement Clash Outside Brooklyn Center Police HQ

It’s done, thank Chaos Read More »

wiki.vim update

Alright so after a while we just got tired of vimvwiki and vim-pandoc-syntax fighting over syntax formatting and coloring and we weren’t using all the features available in vimwki so ended up switching to wiki.vim and it’s working out pretty good after we switched the journal configuration from daily to monthly with these settings:

Plugin 'lervag/wiki.vim'
let g:wiki_root = '~/Nextcloud/wiki.vim/' " Have wiki live inside Nextcloud
let g:wiki_filetypes = ['md']             " markdown wiki
let g:wiki_link_extension = '.md'         " markdown wiki
let g:wiki_link_target_type = 'md'        " markdown wiki
let g:wiki_write_on_nav = 1               " Write to disk when navigating from file to file
let g:wiki_journal = { 'frequency': 'monthly', 'date_format': { 'monthly': '%Y-%m'}} " Set to journal monthly

The notes are also in the vimrc file cos we know we’ll forget what each specific setting does. Also, why do vim plugin authors think the vim help file is enough? At least have the fucken decency of making it into HTML so you can link to specific bits of it. We hate reading documentation in vim itself when there are much better solutions out there.

But anyways.

We’re using the barest of features cos we don’t really know enough vim commands but we’re already plenty quick with the ones we know. Now we’re trying to figure out what would happen if we stick this wiki into a git repository and manage it that way, which would be awesome for a todo list.

So what we’ve got right now is usually two windows side by side, one for the todo.md file and the other one for the journal for that month. It’s working out pretty well as long as we remember to do a :wa to write all files to disk so Nextcloud doesn’t complain about version differences between server and clients.

Nextcloud itself is still working pretty good. The VM host it lives in will get rebuilt and I’m thinking I’ll migrate from Ubuntu to Debian when I setup a new VM for it.

Aaaah what else was there…? Ah yeah, got three jerbs now

  • Barista
  • Host
  • Sysadmin

The todo.md file mentioned above didn’t even exist until three days ago cos it wasn’t needed but now it absolutely is. Stuff is put on paper first (can’t have phone out at barista/host jobs without a manager complaining), then it goes into the file. It’s working out pretty well. Yes there are apps like Google Tasks, Todoist, Google Keep, Notion but they’re all just so slow and then you’re committed to their own specific way of doing things.

No thanks, I’ll just keep everything in text files cos plain text is forever.

Going back to the jobs… life is going to be absolute mayhem for a few months or until we break and get fired from one, which personally hope is the barista jerb— main clientele will be law enforcement and en’t nobody got time for abuse from those entities.

Ah yes! Another useful tool is barinsta. The regular Instagram app just kept giving me ads and that gets so annoying. The interface harkens back to the initial releases of touchscreen apps but the developer makes it very clear they want you to be conscious of your actions while using the app. The fact you don’t get any ads is just an extra benefit of that. Thanks to it it’s super quick to catch up on my feed instead of spending an hour and still be missing stuff. Install it from F-Droid and if you see anyone trying to put it up on Google Play, report it to the devs.

Other than that we’re also trying to post to Flickr more often. We’re paying for it, might as well use it.

Pretty sure that’s it for now.

wiki.vim update Read More »