Author: Ezra S F


  • (I should have recognized this in my Shortcuts series of posts. Intro > 1. Illusions > 2. Labeling > 3. Math > 4. Multitasking > 5. Rules) Rules exist to help reduce the friction of society so that we can more easily work with strangers. Without rules, we need to have potentially damaging interactions with individuals, establish a series of data points about them…

  • Totally flubbed the reading strategy. I have a Kindle Paperwhite for reading in the dark. It is for when lights are out, so I can read for a bit. I have a book or two in the car for reading when I go to lunch alone. October to March, it can be a hardback because…

  • Like the Boondock’s N-word moment, but you know, hopefully productive. The teachable moment is an expression of how what someone said can be a mine field they are unaware of. I should have gotten my PhD, because “Doctor Freelove” has a nice ring to it. But more than that, I love explaining things. New server…

  • Back in 2016, I did a post on the podcasts to which I was listening. About six months ago, I lost everything due to my cloud-based podcasting app becoming unreachable. It is weird to me how talking styles for radio news shows I listened to 15 years ago are unlistenable today. It makes me think…

  • Steven Johnson wrote in Everything Bad Is Good For You about how in video games we have to figure out the rules of the built world. We are not just exploring a virtual space but build a mental map of cause and effect. The humor of memes about video games having prepared one when finding…

  • When people post a link, a Facebook bot looks at the content and finds the content of the <title> tag and creates a summary. My modest proposal is that it also locates the post datestamp to include here. Every Facebook post has the name of the poster with when they posted it. It might be…

  • When presenting two values, I prefer to use the same scalar. I think this came from my Chemistry teacher, who is my idol. That had to do with how many decimals for calculations. An article about the state budget made the point that cutting a sales tax on tampons would remove $9 million of a…

  • I generated some text files working with Get-Acl Powershell, but I did not know how to get Powershell to do some advanced features. (Basically, I wanted to the Select-String to include the next 2 lines and see whether a specific group was in that list. And maybe some exclusions.) So, I copied the files over…

  • The Flynn pushed to share nuclear tech with Saudis story seems like something people are likely to overlook. The story is about: Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns that Saudi Arabia could develop nuclear weapons if the U.S. technology were transferred without proper safeguards. But, why? The Middle East turmoil is in part over…