The Slap Trap Crap | NextDraft

The Slap Trap Crap | NextDraft:

Because this is an example of the same kind of asinine false equivalence that we’ve seen soil the media for the past several years. There were not two sides to Trump’s habitual lying. There are not two sides to the vaccine debate. There are not two sides to the potential upside of using disinfectant on the inside of your body. There are not two sides to the climate change debate. There are not two sides to the Jan 6 insurrection story. There are not two sides to the 2020 election results. Yesterday, Donald Trump requested that Vladimir Putin dig up and share dirt on Joe Biden’s family. At a time of war, that’s straight up treachery, the kind of anti-American garbage this criminal has been spewing for years. End of story.

Being unbiased does not mean giving lies the same weight as the truth.

[All the yes!]

Flooding the Zone – by Damon Krukowski

Flooding the Zone – by Damon Krukowski:

Summing the number of artists listed in these seven categories, we get a total of 156,700. Not exactly the same as the 165,000 “artists who have released at least ten songs all-time and average at least 10,000 monthly listeners,” but close. (Asking Spotify to be precise with numbers seems to be unrealistic.) Close enough that perhaps it’s a fair assumption these two figures are related – and the seven categories are subdivisions of the 165,000 total “professional” accounts.

[Oy.]

Source: Mark Hurst

Last man standing – All this

Last man standing – All this:

The main problem with the man command is that it takes over your terminal window—you can’t refer to it while you’re constructing a command unless you open a second terminal window first or use the control-click trick. To get around this problem, I wrote a short shell script, called bman, that opens the man page in a new BBEdit window. Since I always have BBEdit running, this works just about as fast as the regular old man command.

[Nice idea.]

Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. – by David Hoang

Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. – by David Hoang:

Iteration sparks movement, which builds momentum. It’s like pedaling a bicycle on a lower gear instead of the highest. The lower gear won’t get you as far but it requires less effort to get moving. My co-worker and friend Izzy once said, “The number one way to be productive is to reduce the iteration cycle.” This is true. If you struggle with getting something creative done, reduce the iteration. Write the outline instead of the final draft, and come back to it later. Sketch out scribbles of the app design…

[I agree with the premise. But I would point out that the examples provided (outline vs final draft, scribbles vs high fidelity render) doesn’t reduce the iteration cycle. They reduce the resolution at which you are working. The *outcome* of reducing the resolution is that you can (if it makes sense) reduce the cycle time. But the two are not linked together, and shouldn’t be. There’s a time and place for both. The trick is knowing what resolution the work should be at a given stage of designing or creation. The cycle time will flow from there. ]

My mother loves me

The disclaimer, my mother loves me, above, is something I came up with as far as I know. Here’s how you should parse it. Anticipating that you hate me for saying what I just said, or that god is going to goof on me for daring to think something will come out well, I want you to know that even though you hate me so vociferously, my mother loves me.

[A good thing to remember. And please if you had a less than a loving mother… I’m sorry. But please don’t @ me.]

Source: Scripting News

System Preferences Reimagined on macOS — Basic Apple Guy

System Preferences Reimagined on macOS — Basic Apple Guy:

As features have continued being added to macOS, Apple has opted to force new preferences inside existing ones to avoid icon overcrowding. Focus Mode on iOS is crammed into the new ‘Notifications & Focus’ tab on macOS, Night Shift is a tiny button on the bottom right under the Display settings, and the Control Centre is managed behind the ‘Dock & Menu Bar’ icon through a process of having the user individually click-through 15+ different tabs to customize their Menu Bar.

And while some settings are crammed together, others feel needlessly scattered. AppleID, Family Sharing, Internet Accounts, & Users & Groups are four different preference icons, while on iOS they are essentially all managed under a single tab. Showing the Bluetooth icon in the Menu Bar is done through the ‘Bluetooth’ settings, while changing the clock is done in the ‘Dock & Menu Bar’ settings, not the ‘Date & Time’ option.

[Yes. It’s truly a mess. I’m pretty confident that the designers at Apple know this but can’t get this work prioritized. It seems familiar and yet strange at a company of that scope and scale.]

∞ Apple Support: How to watch together on your Apple TV during a FaceTime call

∞ Apple Support: How to watch together on your Apple TV during a FaceTime call:

Another excellent Apple Support video. This one walks through the process of syncing your Apple TV watching experience with other folks on a FaceTime call.

Interesting that the Mac is not mentioned, even though SharePlay via FaceTime was introduced in macOS Monterey 12.1, as described here.

No matter, good to see the SharePlay process in action. Well done.

[Great vids!]

Source: The Loop

Here’s what actually happens to all your online shopping returns – Rest of World

Here’s what actually happens to all your online shopping returns – Rest of World:

For a fee, these companies offer to optimize the money-losing headache of returns. Adam Vitarello, co-founder of Optoro, which manages returns for companies such as Target and American Eagle, says his company’s U.S.-based clients restock 90% of their returns, and most of the rest, which Optoro tracks through its platform’s reuse rate, is diverted to secondary channels like eBay, leaving about 4% headed to the landfill. 

But they rely also on the same overloaded infrastructure that the rest of the e-commerce global supply chain runs through once a sale is made. One of Optoro’s logistics partners is UPS, which hired nearly 100,000 new workers during the holiday season to keep up with high online shopping volumes. Rest of World’s AirTagged returns appeared to travel via the U.S. Postal Service, which has experienced unprecedented delays during the pandemic, due to high volumes, worker shortages, and increased labor costs.  Shein confirmed that the U.S. Postal Service is among its own logistics partners.

[I think we shouldn’t expect to pay much low prices for clothes, and also expect that they’ll last for a long time. The “quick fashion” industry is not helping the planet.]

Source: Pixel Envy