Curiositry - The Autodidacts

Bothering to understand

First it makes you slow, then it makes you fast (maybe) … »

Curation and its side effects

Some fundamentals about how it works, and what to do when it doesn't … »

The butterfly effect of revenge bedtime procrastination

Wasting time isn't bad because it wastes time … »

My criteria for a good Linux developer laptop

Well-built, cheap, and fast: I pick all three. … »

Some thoughts about backing up, which occurred to me after my laptop abruptly expired

I had other plans for what to write about, and also plans for the day that didn't involve disassembling my connection to the outside world with a screwdriver … »

Israel Beer Josaphat, aka Baron von Reuter

Sheep Music & Wedding Bands

On knowledge gaps and bookworm pronunciation syndrome … »

Old site, new site bookmarklets

A small utility that’s surprisingly useful during website migrations … »

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam figured this out a few centuries before I did

Ideas Evolve in Dialogue

You can sort of have a conversation with a book. I sometimes write rude comments in the margins when I disagree with the author. But the Stoics recommend that when you’re insulted, … »

An indie blog’s directory of indie blog directories

Blogs are back. RSS is cool again. (Said the blogger to his RSS feed.) Here is a collection of small, independent directories of blogs, personal websites, and smol/indie/slow/human web sites … »

How I find the email addresses of public figures 🔒

This post is for paid members only … »

Underrated reasons to dislike AI

The big arguments for and against AI have been endlessly discussed, and I don’t feel I have much to add. AGI and existential risk; human obsolescence; power use; cybersecurity; safety + censorship; slop; … »

Autodidacts Newsletter #25

25 new human-written posts … »

We don’t know until the end, and it’s never the end

Judging a book by its content doesn’t work either … »

It’s surprisingly hard to reliably paste the current date at the cursor on Linux

Long, long ago, in a dotfiles directory far away, I had this snippet: bindsym control+semicolon exec date '+%Y-%m-%d' | tr -d "\n" | xsel -i -b && … »

Paste clipboard contents in places where you can’t paste

Use AutoKey send_keys() to put clipboard content places where it can't normally be put … »

My borscht doesn’t look nearly this nice, but it tastes good. (Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borscht_with_bread.jpg)

The Fewer Ingredients The Better

Good quality ingredients hardly need seasoning. I only need to add spices if I’ve burnt the soup. … »

Social Cache Busting

How do you ask questions that people don’t just hippopotamus? … »