Nelson's Linkblog

about • archive • mastodon • twitter • feed

Mastodon in 6 static files

A very simple demonstration of federating via ActivityPub with the simplest possible thing

2022-12-06 activitypub • mastodon • code • server • socialmedia

danah boyd on Twitter

Thoughtful media researcher shares insights about failing social networks

2022-12-05 twitter • danah • socialmedia • myspace • research • via:metafilter

Proud Boys in Columbus

Details from the fascist attack on a children's story hour in Ohio. Masked, armed men show up with weapons.

2022-12-05 fascism • lgbt • proudboys • terrorism • gay • accelerationism

European power grid

Nice interactive story explaining power exports and the energy crisis in Europe

2022-12-03 energy • politics • electricity • grid • visualization • via:benfry

Some stats on where people are going and how fast now that Twitter sucks

2022-12-02 mastodon • socialmedia • twitter • hive • post • tumblr • data

Same sex couple US census

Update from the census survey about same sex households in the US

2022-12-02 census • lgbt • gay • civilrights • america • usa

When a video game has romance options where someone is attracted to you no matter what gender your character is.

2022-12-02 funny • gay • lgbt • games • romance • lazy

A list of stylesheets that make ordinary HTML look better

2022-12-01 design • css • web • simple • minimal • reset

Pattern Collider

Neat interactive tool for generating quasiperiodic tilings

2022-12-01 via:metafilter • tiles • tesselation • penrosetiles • art • geometry

A Unix tool to redirect network connections; sort of like ssh tunnels but much simpler

2022-12-01 networking • ssh • tunnelling • portforwarding • cgnat • nat • isp • internet

Starlink speeds fall

New data from Ookla

2022-12-01 starlink • congestion • spacex • isp • internet

FTX was a crime

Crypto industry publication hits back at the narrative FTX was just a victim of bad luck or something

2022-11-30 ftx • scam • crypto • cryptocurrency • fraud • sbf

Gay life in Tehran

Details of gay men living their lives despite an oppressive society

2022-11-30 gay • lgbt • resistance • tehran • iran • cruising

Eli Lilly parody

The guy behind the hoax tweet explaining how his effective parody tweet was created and giving more context

2022-11-30 elililly • twitter • medicine • parody • politics • diabetes • insulin

DNS signing ceremony

Details of how the root keys are kept safe; multiple actors required, locked rooms, safes...

2022-11-30 dns • security • ceremony • ritual • cryptography

FTX Republican donations

Sam Bankman-Fried gave more money to Republicans than known before, he just hid it

2022-11-30 politics • sbf • ftx • cryptocurrency • crypto • scam

home sweet homepage

An endearing web comic about a girl growing up and her Geocities page

2022-11-29 comics • amy • sailorhg • computing • life • geocities • web

Nemik's Manifesto

Spoilers: Andor's Trotsky-like character's political texts in a very nice little edit

2022-11-28 andor • starwars • tv • trotsky • revolution

Boring Company failure

Another Musk company with a string of unfulfilled promises

2022-11-28 elonmusk • transport • transit • tunnel • lasvegas • scam • transportation

Island of Hawai'i map

An excellent USGS map from 1995

2022-11-28 maps • hawaii • geology • orange

Remarkable roundup of a map data visualization technique

2022-11-28 visualization • maps • cartograms • data

against post.news

Some relevant if cranky criticisms of post.news

2022-11-27 socialmedia • postnews • post.news • pmarca • web • opensystems

Another Twitter / Mastodon migration tool. This one has very nice UI

2022-11-27 mastodon • twitter • socialmedia

Lot of buzz for this package / system management tool. It's a fancy package manager that lets you do a lot of things you'd otherwise use a container like Docker for

2022-11-27 sysadmin • devops • programming • nixos • containers

Octavia Butler's life

Detailed biographical article about the science fiction writer

2022-11-26 books • novels • scifi • octaviabutler • writing • biography

Fediverse scaling

Some notes on scaling problems with popular posts and bigger instances

2022-11-26 scaling • mastodon • code

Make simple graphs of data purely in HTML and CSS, styling table data

2022-11-26 charts • carting • graphics • visualization • css • via:sebastian

Jodorowsky's Tron

An excellent AI art project imagining what could be

2022-11-26 Jodorowsky • Tron • movies • ai • gan • generative

fediverse.space

A visualization of Mastodon network stats

2022-11-26 fediverse • mastodon • activitypub • statistics • users • data

Black Twitter's future

What to do now that white supremacy is back on Twitter

2022-11-26 twitter • culture • black • africanamerican • blacktwitter • politics

Joyful moment of researchers in Papua New Guinea finding evidence of a bird thought extinct

2022-11-26 auwo • png • birds • science • joy • discovery

Trump's Nazi guest

Details of Trump's private intimate dinner with Nick Fuentes

2022-11-26 politics • trump • fascism • fuentes • nazi • racism

Guns at protests

A brightly lit sign of increasing fascism in America

2022-11-26 politics • guns • accelerationism • protest • fascism

A remarkably detailed article on a problem that affects a surprising amount of wine

2022-11-25 wine • food • alcohol • cork • contamination

Musk's radicalization

An essay tracing Musk's increasing embrace of white nationalism and anti-LGBT rhetoric

2022-11-25 musk • elonmusk • politics • twitter • radicalization

Elon Musk's first wife

Justine Musk's essay about what it was like being married to Elon. (From Oct 2021)

2022-11-25 musk • elonmusk • marriage • divorce • twitter • tirefire

Ballad of Jari and Somr

Tiny spoilers for God of War: Ragnarok. An in-game tribute to a man's love who passed away as a little side quest / small area in the game.

2022-11-25 games • godofwar • gay • lgbt • romance • spoilers

exodus Linux binaries

Copy a Linux binary and all its dependencies to a new machine, ready to run

2022-11-25 linux • programming • containers • devops • hack • software

Factorio arm64 native

Mac port to native hardware. What's interesting is how little gain they got; Apple's emulator is remarkably efficient.

2022-11-25 apple • macos • arm64 • x64 • architecture • rosetta • emulation • games

Low vibrational plate

Michael Harriot on a proper plate of Thanksgiving food

2022-11-23 funny • blacktwitter • africanamerican • thanksgiving • food • generosity • plate

Ambient 1 / Six Hours

Eno's classic piece from Music for Airports stretched to a six hour track. Compelling if you know the original piece.

2022-11-23 music • eno • brianeno • ambient

PTP at Facebook

Nanosecond timekeeping in a datacenter

2022-11-21 facebook • meta • time • ntp • ptp • gps • clock

Excellent spoof trailer if Andor were released in 1975 (mild spoilers)

2022-11-21 funny • parody • starwars • andor • 1970s • buckrogers

Named color picker

Hilarious little interactive lets you pick colors from a wheel, but only ones with CSS names

2022-11-21 funny • colors • via:hackernews • x11 • color

Raffi Krikorian

A podcast with my friend talking about his tech career and his goal of looking for high impact work. (formerly at Twitter, Uber, DNC, now Emerson Collective.)

2022-11-20 raffi • cto • podcast • socialgood • work

Cruising the Village

An anthropology PhD thesis on gay cruising in Manchester. Interesting multimedia, lots of graphic novels, etc

2022-11-20 gay • lgbt • manchester • cruising • sex • phd • academic • anthropology

For the love of DILFs

A gay dating show hosted by a woman famous for having Donald Trump as a john

2022-11-19 lgbt • stormydaniels • donaldtrump • trump • politics • gay • dating • pandering

Cistercian Numeral Demo

Javascript / browser hack for an interesting way to write numbers

2022-11-19 numbers • writing • history • plotter • cistercian • math • javascript

Many dishes are flavored artificially and have "decorative truffles" with no flavor to trick you

2022-11-19 food • cooking • scam • truffles • via:hackernews

Alito court leaks

A Alito-authored Supreme Court decision leaked back in 2014. Along with this year's leak it sure looks like Alito could be dirty.

2022-11-19 supremecourt • politics • civilrights • abortion • contraception • corruption

A Mastodon instance for the news business

2022-11-18 news • journalism • mastodon • socialmedia

Leap seconds cancelled

At least until 2035, clocks are going to be a little simpler

2022-11-18 time • ntp • leapsecond • utc • ut1

Mastodon guide, approachable for new users

2022-11-18 mastodon • fediverse • guide • twitter • onboarding • socialmedia

Nice NYT appreciation of the fantastic sci-fi author

2022-11-18 scifi • writing • butler • octaviabutler • kindred • books

Z-Library arrest

US Government arranges for arrest of two Russian nationals for the unlicensed book download site

2022-11-17 books • zlibrary • piracy • ebooks • library • knowledge

Narcissism meets racism in this modern eugenics program from tech idiots

2022-11-17 eugenics • racism • children • breeding • population • elonmusk

What to do in Rachel, NV

Random tourist guide from a small hotel in the middle of nowhere in Nevada.

2022-11-17 nevada • tourism • area51 • aliens • nowhere

yamanote bookmarks

A new personal bookmarking system that also archives pages and allows private notations

2022-11-16 bookmarks • pinboard • linkblog • via:simonw • code • server

Groups.io engineering

A more elegant devops toolset from a more civilized age

2022-11-16 devops • engineering • servers • scaling • linode • golang • groupsio • email

A system kind of like WSL2, aimed mostly at MacOS. Launches lightweight Linux VMs

2022-11-16 linux • macos • wsl • containers • programming

Twitter new Blue data

A summary of Travis Brown's work characterizing the signups for Twitter's new disastrous not-verified checkmark

2022-11-16 twitter • verified • elonmusk • musk • debacle

Monuments to the Unthinkable

Excellent piece by an African American writer and scholar about how Germans are remembering the Holocaust with reflections on what an American version of that about slavery would be

2022-11-16 holocaust • slavery • memorial • museum • germany • nazi • america

Mormon church supports gay marriage

Major about-face for LDS; supporting a federal right to gay marriage

2022-11-15 lgbt • gay • gaymarriage • civilrights • religion • mormon • lds • politics

Twitter archive improver

A Python tool to download images, replace t.co links with real links, etc

2022-11-15 twitter • archive • socialmedia

Twitter is Going Great!

A collection of stories about problems Musk has caused at Twitter

2022-11-15 twitter • musk • elonmusk • chaos • debacle

A script to download image galleries from a bunch of different site

2022-11-15 download • scrape • archive • images • pictures • twitter

Visualization of countries' economic output; see the second image for a version normalized by purchasing power parity

2022-11-15 visualization • maps • economics • politics • gdp • ppp

Long detailed article on mistreatment of employees

2022-11-14 elonmusk • twitter • labor • spacex • tesla

Fuller Projection IP

A deep dive into some spurious claims of ownership of a map projection

2022-11-14 fuller • buckminsterfuller • dymaxion • maps • projections • copyright • patent • legal

Merino wool processing

Animated ad has some neat visualizations of how wool is processed into yarn and fabric

2022-11-14 wool • industrial • animation • fiber

Parisian street artist; geometric designs, often temporary chalk

2022-11-13 art • streetart • paris • saget • jordanesaget • geometric

A positive architectural review of seven new parks in San Francisco

2022-11-13 parks • sanfrancisco • recreation • urbanplanning • architecture

Delightful Fediverse Apps

Yet another list of projects for Mastodon, ActivityPub, etc; this one seems recently updated

2022-11-12 fediverse • mastodon • activitypub • code • socialmedia

Biggest political donors

A list of political donations made by individuals to PACs, candidates, etc. Presumably doesn't include dark money donations.

2022-11-12 politics • corruption • sbf • elections

SBF's political donations

Down to earth story on the cryptoscammer's political donations; much less than rumored

2022-11-12 sbf • fraud • crypto • scam • politics • donations • elections

SBF is bad at LoL

Deep dive on the cryptoscammer's alleged League of Legends career. He's a Bronzie, bottom 20% of players.

2022-11-12 sbf • crypto • ftx • scam • lol • leagueoflegends • games

Tesla Solar cancelling

The failing solar company Musk bought from himself is now failing as a Tesla subdivision

2022-11-11 tesla • solar • musk • corruption • solarcity

CA solar rate plan

New proposal for NEM 3.0 makes solar less attractive but still viable in California, heavily encourages homes to install batteries along with solar panels

2022-11-11 solar • cpuc • pge • globalwarming • energy • nem

Twitter legal risks

Internal Slack message leaks of a Twitter lawyer being explicit about the risks Musk is taking

2022-11-10 musk • elonmusk • twitter • legal • privacy • ftc • ethics

Saturn in daytime

Remarkable amateur astrophotography

2022-11-10 saturn • space • astronomoy • photography • photos • stacking

A self hosted bookmarking service

2022-11-10 pinboard • bookmarks • web • linkblog

Rosetta 2 speed

Details of Apple's x86 emulator for ARM. They transpile ahead of time instead of JIT, lots of other optimizations

2022-11-09 via:hackernews • apple • rosetta • x86 • arm • jit • code • optimization

Social book reading and reviewing, via ActivityPub / like Mastodon

2022-11-09 books • reading • goodreads • bookwyrm • federated • activitypub • mastodon

LGP-30 computer

A 1956 computer developed at Caltech, a rarity

2022-11-09 computers • history • caltech • computing • lgp30 • reddit

War of the Worlds redone

Classic rock musical was re-recorded in 2012 with Liam Neeson and the 1980s throwback Casio Keyboard orchestra

2022-11-09 music • waroftheworlds • rockopera • rockmusical • jeffwayne • hgwells

Pinafore Wellness

Interesting UI choices "to reduce the addictive or anxiety-inducing aspets of social media"

2022-11-09 socialmedia • mastodon • pinafore • favorites • gamification

100 years ago some of the first home showers featured body sprays. AKA "rib cage shower".

2022-11-08 plumbing • shower • bathroom • 1920s

ActivityPub projects

A list of useful links for the protocol behind Mastodon

2022-11-07 activitypub • socialmedia • mastodon • federation • fediverse • code

Slave trade timelapse

Animation of the shipment of enslaved peoples from Africa to the New World

2022-11-07 slavery • history • visualization • maps • via:reddit

Alaa Abdel Fattah water strike

Egyptian software developer / blogger has been a political prisoner for 9 years. On hunter strike for 200 days, now no water.

2022-11-06 alaa • egypt • civilrights • politics • cop27

China Covid detention

UK journalist's experience in a temporary Covid isolation unit for people who were exposed but not tested postive

2022-11-06 covid • china • detention • publichealth • civilrights • healthbar

GOP Pelosi lies

How misinformation about an attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband was created and amplified by Republicans, Elon Musk, etc

2022-11-05 politics • rumor • lies • pelosi • propaganda • elonmusk • misinformation

Drag doughnut firebombing

Fascists attack a Tampa doughnut shop and leave anti-LGBT propaganda

2022-11-05 fascism • gay • drag • lgbt • politics

Simon Willison on Mastodon

Excellent data hacker tries Mastodon, likes it, has a lot of thoughtful comments

2022-11-05 mastodon • twitter • fediverse • programming • hacking • socialmedia

Starlink degradation

Details on the ISP greatly reducing service levels

2022-11-04 starlink • isp • congestion • spacex • datacap

Twitter layoff chaos

A definitive accounting of Musk's cruel and badly organized firing of half of Twitter's staff

2022-11-04 twitter • elonmusk • cruelty • employment • tirefire • tech

Hemingway Editor

A text editor that highlights overly complicated English language

2022-11-04 writing • simplification • editing • tools

Starlink terminates Ukraine Internet

1300 military Internet terminals turned off for lack of payment, despite Musk saying he wasn't going to do that

2022-11-04 musk • ukraine • starlink • politics

Cartoonist / Twitter employee with some poignant illustrations about Musk's takeover of Twitter

2022-11-04 twitter • elonmusk • cartoon • parody • funny

Z-Library mirror

Popular unlicensed book site has been taken down but someone recently made a full mirror

2022-11-04 library • ebooks • books • reading • knowledge