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Further reading:

(1) "Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust", Richard Rhodes, 2002.

"Rhodes gives full weight, for the first time, to the Einsatzgruppen’s role in the Holocaust. These 'special task forces,' organized by Heinrich Himmler to follow the German army as it advanced into eastern Poland and Russia, were the agents of the first phase of the Final Solution. They murdered more than 1.5 million men, women, and children between 1941 and 1943."

(2) "Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich", Richard J. Evans, 2024.

"Through a connected set of biographical portraits of key Nazi figures that follows power as it radiated out from Hitler to the inner and outer circles of the regime’s leadership, one of our greatest historians answers the enduring question, how does a society come to carry out a program of unspeakable evil?"

And/or/but...

"Letters from an American, January 10, 2026" https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-10-2026

See "Large Language Models Hallucinate 100% of the Time" at https://scottambler.com/llms-always-hallucinate/?utm_source=...

And: https://laughingsquid.com/janus-i-flying-suitcase/

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3YdgunqnhI

The site "https://archive.is/8GCdB" can't be found (yet again).

There is a good essay with a similar theme under the title of "The Nearly-Free University" at https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-nearly-fre...

As someone with two degrees (B.A. English, followed after I caught on a bit, by a B.S. in physics and computer science with minors in math and chemistry), I can say that I would not take that route again. Mostly a waste.

"What you can accomplish in the real world will rapidly become more valuable than a credential such as a conventional college degree. The credentialing gatekeepers are protecting an 'asset'--the college diploma--that is largely a phantom asset for the vast majority of students."

I wish.

"This is the story of one of the greatest innovators of our time. He had the ability to envision new products consumers didn't even know they wanted. He would go on to build a multi-billion dollar technology company fueled by innovation. He was domineering, he drove his employees hard, and he rarely listened to other people's opinions. He was known to wear the same clothes every day. He was obsessed by design, and his products were beautiful, sleek and iconic. He was not only a great innovator, he was a great marketer. He would turn new product demonstrations into dramatic showcases that attracted endless publicity. He believed that a successful company should be composed of managers and dreamers, and it was the responsibility of the former to protect the latter. He wasn't afraid to fail. But his board of directors wasn't as forgiving, and in a palace coup, eventually ousted him from the company he founded. His name was Edwin Land. He invented the instant camera and founded the Polaroid Corporation. And he was Steve Jobs' hero."

Also: Baqpaq

"Baqpaq takes snapshots of files and folders on your system, and syncs them to another machine, or uploads it to your Google Drive or Dropbox account. Set up any schedule you prefer and Baqpaq will create, prune, sync, and upload snapshots at the scheduled time.

"Baqpaq is a tool for personal data backups on Linux systems. Powered by BorgBackup, RSync, and RClone it is designed to run on Linux distributions based on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch Linux."

At: https://store.teejeetech.com/product/baqpaq/

Though personally I use Borg, Rsync, and some scripts I wrote based on Tar.

Also from CBC.ca: "Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal, The Shepherd, dead at 86" at https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/1.6369690

There's no need to be fancy unless you really like diddling around.

My current method: Buy a can of potted meat. Do not open it. Use a utility knife to score around the circular indentation in the bottom of the can. Pop out this indented part when it finally surrenders. Scoop out the can's contents. Wash the can thoroughly and maybe dull the sharp edge where the indented part was removed. (SHARP!) Get a bit of fiberglass insulation and stuff it into the can as a wick. Done.

The stove is now usable and with the wick it will light easily even in low temperatures, and the flame will be more regulated.

What you finish with is too light to register on the scale at the post office. Can't beat that.

Fuel: Buy denatured alcohol anywhere paint is sold. (And if you are stealthy, and at a place like Home Depot, you can also get a small "sample" of fiberglass insulation to use as your wick there while you're at it. You need only a tiny bit.) Carry the fuel in a 16 oz/500 ml bladder like Platypus sells. To reseal the "bottle", squeeze out the excess air and make sure that the cap is on tight. Alcohol vapor will escape from a bottle with a push/pull dispenser cap and leave you short, especially if carried in a rigid, fixed-volume bottle. (Talking from experience.) And the little bladders weigh essentially nothing and take up no space when empty.

Measure fuel by using the cap from the bottle that carries the fuel. A cap full is about 1/4 ounce or 7.39 ml. After a while you get really good at measuring out exactly how much you need.

My free book which may or may not be a little fun: "Fire in Your Hand: Dave's Little Guide to Ultralight Backpacking Stoves" at https://fireinyourhand.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

The book needs some updating and much better illustrations, etc., etc. but I've quit backpacking now anyway. I live outside the US these days, and though I've been back a couple of times just to go backpacking, it hasn't worked well. Too hot, too wet, too dry, too expensive, disintegration of national and state parks, too much incipient violence. I've gotten death threats just for being on a public trail that someone else regarded as their own. And so on.

Be well if possible anymore.

This story is not new, eh?: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Emile+Leray

Education can never hurt.

True => "I am the only one in the company that has a degree (MSc compsci). I know stuff the others never heard of." -- RamblingCTO

Learning on the job will teach you part of what others know, and none of the rest. Learning on your own will teach you what you're interested in and none of what you hate.

I'm no shining example. My whole life has been a series of mistakes, but I've been happily unemployed 20 years as of July 7, 2025, after I quit my last job (in state government) after deciding that I'd rather die than to keep working there. I'm good at saving money, so I'm OK, and living in Ecuador now, which is nice.

The advice for decades has been to get to know people, and find work through your connections. I'd say now, looking back, as a pathologically shy person, that that sort of social engineering is probably the key, along with being helpful on the job and always appearing happy and upbeat. People really like enthusiastic people who are always cheerful, and that would be good for you if you can pile it on top of expertise, especially if it's accompanied by credentials.

Education is something that no one can ever take away from you. It's a tool you can use any way you see fit. What sort of education and how much are for you to decide. Me, I spent 10 years struggling after high school before finally getting a B.A in English.

Three years later, after deciding that I wasn't going anywhere, I started over and ultimately got a B.S. in physics and computer science with minors in math and chemistry, finishing that after 12 more years (with a big break in the middle to save up enough money to continue). And pretty much did shit work in state government for the rest of my working life.

If doing it over, I would be a LOT more aggressive and not hope that I'd get rewarded for doing good work. You have to go and grab what you need or fail boldly, I think. And you are the only one who cares how your life works out, despite what you might or might not hear from anyone else, let alone an employer.

A couple of interesting posts by David Heinemeier Hansson...

Why we won't hire a junior with five years of experience. (April 8, 2025) https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-won-t-hire-a-junior-with-fi...

We'll always need junior programmers. (April 24, 2025) https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-ll-always-need-junior-programme...

Direct link: https://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/emacs/

"This work by Keith Waclena is copyright 2024 and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license."

Viewable online or downloadable as: PDF; EPUB; Kobo EPUB

I'm a US citizen, have been living in Cuenca, Ecuador for almost all of the last 12 years. I was last in the US June-August 2024, intending to do some backpacking in my old haunts in Washington state, plus a bit of sightseeing.

Too hot, for one thing, even in western WA, home of wet, gray winters and (formerly) gorgeous mild summers. Now you can't even go for a hike without registering on recreation.gov, and then also having to drive possibly hundreds of miles out of your way to show up in-person at a national park headquarters anyway. For what, I don't know -- maybe to be fingerprinted. Roads and trails have also seriously deteriorated since I lived there. Infrastructure maintenance seems to be regarded as an unaffordable luxury these days, something to be needed only by freeloaders, never the rich overlords.

The US also felt really creepy, even compared to my last visit in late 2019. These days, in Ecuador, I'm used to going everywhere on foot and dealing with people in a low-key, individual, informal way, but being in the US is more and more like finding oneself in a bad dystopian science-fiction movie.

People there are isolated from one another, it's all about driving around or standing in long lines for self-checkout at stores, or getting into a confrontation with store policy when just trying to (as a 76-year-old) prove that (1) I exist and (2) am really truly old enough to buy beer (via scanning my driver's license for the appropriate data). Yeeps.

The US is now just a crazy, lonely, assembly-line place full of discouragement and homeless people. And I'm not talking about some urban slum -- this is Olympia, WA, which used to be really pleasant.

And guns. If you look, you notice them. Back in 2019 I fended off three aggressive dogs illegally running loose on a suburban trail in advance of a horse-riding couple, then had the guy say he had a gun and had him threaten to kill me for pepper-spraying his dogs, then had him ram his horse into me, then threaten to kill me a second time. Life these days. Nope.

And even I (little old quiet invisible no-criminal-history me) worry about being hassled or even detained coming into the country, just because. I was already questioned around 10 years ago at the Atlanta airport about what I had been doing in Ecuador. None of your business, dipshit.

So, the US was my home country but, ah, no. Not any more. I'm glad to be where I am now, free of that, all of it. I'll probably never go back, definitely never for anything I can just safely read about at a distance, like a tech conference.

"I promise, America will soon be the Cybertruck of countries - uglier than you could have imagined, built for rich chuds, borderline inoperable, and on fire."

Further reading, from Richard Rhodes:

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (1986) The best book I ever read. Covers all of modern physics. Written in a "physics for musicians" style, and I don't mean that in a condescending way. It's praise. Besides the tech, there is lots on politics, espionage, international relations, and military history, including sections on the German, Soviet, and Japanese activities before and during WWII.

"Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" (1995) Great explanations of how the fission-fusion-fission process works, all in millionths of a second. I still can hardly believe how Rhodes is able to explain some of the most complicated technical concepts and processes in ordinary language. A truly amazing writer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rhodes

Several more items along these lines. Two books and one recent blog post...

"Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects", by Jared Richardson, Will Gwaltney, Jr

"The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition, your journey to mastery", by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

"The Libertarian Coder", by Adam Ard, at https://rethinkingsoftware.substack.com/p/the-libertarian-co...

Me myself, I joined a project that shipped on time. The lead developer, a contractor, begged for just three more months to make it all actually work properly.

Nope.

We shipped, and then it took two more years to finally get it functional.

And the contractor was banned from ever working there again (a WA state agency).

Yippee!

"You're an adorable little ghost..." https://jimbenton.tumblr.com/post/764044329102852096

Principles:

1) Asset allocation: Basically, how much you want in stocks, how much in bonds. Those are the two major asset classes. Go way heavier on stocks early in life and maybe trend toward 50-50 later in life when you have less time to ride out dips.

2) Diversification: What specific entities you invest in. Suggestion: Total US stock market index, total world non-US stock market index, total US bond market index. This way you don't have to pick winners. You just buy everything. Let the bad stuff drop off along the way, and let the good stuff do its thing.

3) Rebalancing: Like once a year, or every time your chosen asset allocation gets at least 5% off. Whatever feels good, but keep your asset allocation under your own conscious control.

As a note, Ric Edelman, when he had a radio show, went over the IRA to Roth conversion. Several times. According to him, it's a wash. Pay tax before you invest or when you withdraw, but either way the net effect is almost identical.

I like silexia's comment. There is a lot of information not included in the story, and, if you think about it, this whole story is one data point. One guy did some things/had some things happen at a particular time in history. Don't expect to cut and paste into your own life and get rich by next week.

Important points:

1) Start as early as you can.

2) Be religious about regular investing without fail.

3) Never break into the piggy bank to buy a house or a fancy car, or for any other reason short of a dire medical emergency.

4) Take advantage of every break you can find, and any employer matches.

5) Wait.

There is a huge amount of information at Bogleheads Investing Advice and Info ( https://www.bogleheads.org/ )

Akregator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontact#News_feed_aggregator ) for Linux.

This book is an incredibly good read: "'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' is a history book written by the American journalist and historian Richard Rhodes, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1987. The book won multiple awards, including Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The narrative covers people and events from early 20th century discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Possibly the best book that I have ever read. It deals with many of the issues raised in the comments here, and with politics, industrial development, economics, military capabilities, and the history of modern physics.

Rhodes also wrote "'Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb', which told the story of the atomic espionage during World War II, the debates over whether the hydrogen bomb ought to be produced, and the eventual creation of the bomb and its consequences for the arms race." Also impeccable

Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb

This is fun [2008]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180908103745/http://techblog.t...

"Nine ways to obfuscate e-mail addresses compared

"When displaying an e-mail address on a website you obviously want to obfuscate it to avoid it getting harvested by spammers. But which obfuscation method is the best one? I drove a test to find out."

Also: "Former CIA Operative Explains How Spies Use Disguises" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASUsVY5YJ8

You beated me!

I was just going to post this, but you already done it. Good on ya. Proves that I'm not the only one who thinks that things like this are relevant.

A couple of years back I also enjoyed reading "The Pagan Christ" by Tom Harpur. Thesis: Joshua ben Joseph, aka Jesus, did not actually exist: "early Church leaders fabricated a literal and human Jesus based on ancient myths." (Mithras, Dionysus, Osirus, et al.) A very good read. Info at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pagan_Christ

There is also the story of "Ya" v "El", two examples of the One-True-God, worshiped by competing proto-Jewish tribes, later merging into Yaweh, while letting their wives and children get scraped off and forgotten in the process.

Anyway, thanks.

I keep wondering about this, but you know what? I just keep using Blogger from Google.

It's there, it works, and it's totally simple. I don't have to do any maintenance or worry about hosting or a domain name.

Images go into my Flickr account, and I save a copy of each post's text, in case I ever want to do something else. But not so far. Been on Blogger since 2009.

See also, Andy Hunt: https://toolshed.com/articles/2022-01-22-limits_of_process.h...

And the GROWS method: https://growsmethod.com/

Take a look at www.downloadhelper.net

I keep both of these on my Firefox toolbar so they're alwasy visible and available. Takes about one second to hit the bookmarklet and clear the browser window of brain dead crap.

kill sticky: javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

disable css: javascript:for(i=0;i<document.styleSheets.length;i++){void(document.styleSheets.item(i).disabled=true);}el=document.getElementsByTagName('');for(i=0;i<el.length;i++){void(el[i].style.cssText='');}

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, best nonfiction book I ever read. Covers German and Japanese efforts, as well as giving a history of modern physics, beginning way back in the 19th century.

Did you know that Einstein was strikingly muscular, and at one point in his life had been deeply religious, until deciding that much of religion was "lies"?

There is also a frightening history of World War I, of Jews in Europe, and biographies all the scientists involved in the US nuclear effort. Totally amazing.

I also read "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", and "Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust". The latter is deeply, profoundly, sickeningly graphic, and contains more information than you ever knew existed.