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Jeremy Cherfas

A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.

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Jeremy Cherfas

Currently reading: The Amateur: The pleasures of doing what you love by Andy Merrifield, ISBN: 9781786631060



-fiction


Jeremy Cherfas

This is madness. I have 653 different tags on my ~4000 bookmarks in linkding. Fully 267 of them have a single entry. Clearly I urgently need to procrastinate by cleaning everything up.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-11-26

rabbit_quest #geohashing 20241126-W-AY680D

1 min read

Composite image. On the left a map showing the location of the quest and my position. On the right, a pale cream coloured wall with some palm fronds intruding from left and right and ferms and a colocasia on the bottom. There is a yelloqw hosepipe coiled up on the wall.

 

* On foot
* 41.882431, 12.455121
* 26 November 2024
* 424.57 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap

Just across the road from my barber, whom I had planned to visit in any case.

Jeremy Cherfas

Bennett's Law says that as poor people have more money they shift from coarse grains to fine and then to animal proteins. But it isn't really a law, more a regular occurrence. Today, the first empirical test of Bennett’s Law, with researcher Marc Bellemare.

https://eatthispodcast.com/bennetts-law

Jeremy Cherfas

Trawling around after briefly noting Cooklang as a way of marking up recipes, I came across a recipe for gnocchi sauce that called for 300ml of cream as well as a burrata cheese and thought to myself, talk about gilding the lily.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-11-20

1 min read

Links are powerful — that's why Instagram and Twitter and Threads punish and limit them, and why Substack tries to take credit for them. And that's why "wherever you get your podcasts" is such a radical concept — like email, it's a medium that the tech tycoons don't, and can't, own. People can read your writing "wherever they get their email".

Anil Dash lays out the future of S*bst*ck https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-11-19

1 min read

Needless to say, it was hard to glean any of these alleged meanings from the works themselves. Rather, they could be discovered only from the descriptions on the wall, which read like the everything-is-connected code-breaking ravings of an overeducated cabal convinced that a hidden semiotic language of resistance lies below everyday objects, camera angles, orientations, and gestures made so very many times before.

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/12/the-painted-protest-dean-kissick-contemporary-art/

Much to agree with, much more to be bemused by.

Jeremy Cherfas

After years of using it for spices, I put my coffee grinder to work grinding, er, coffee because a friend gave me some French Roast beans from The Philippines. The coffee is good, with more than a hint of cumin.

Jeremy Cherfas

Long reads from Eat This Newsletter. Modern industrial production for better and worse. A review on dietetics so you don't need to read the book. UK farmers sharpening their pitchforks; I'm not convinced. And more.

https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-256-lengthy/

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-11-10

#rabbit_quest #geohashing 20241110-W-AY680D

1 min read

Composite image. On the left a map showing the location of the quest and my position. On the right, a vintage black Raleigh road bike leaning against a heavily graffitied wall with a men at work sign in front of it.

* On bicycle
* 41.884605, 12.475028
* 10 November 2024
* 423.74 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap

I went out for a long bicycle ride this morning, having vaguely noted that there was a Rabbit to be bagged not too far from the route. On the way back I dismounted, got as close as I could and took the picture. It was a great ride.

Jeremy Cherfas

Very cool. A new website dedicated to taking your bicycle on a train (in Europe). Sort of The Person with a Saddle in Seat 61. There's mention of it being crowd-sourced, which would be interesting. Instant follow.

https://cycling-on-rails.com/blog/2024/11/05/train-bicycle-guide-started.html

Jeremy Cherfas

Eat This Newsletter today ranges from big stories in India and Europe to little gems about candy floss (aka cotton candy) and asparagus.

Oh, and a titan of industrial food calls for mandatory nutrition labels.

Read it at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-255-gamut/ and while you are there, consider subscribing.

Jeremy Cherfas

Replied to a post on xoxo.zone :

Almost identical to my own journey, although I haven't scoured ALL the places I might have left a bookmark. I should watch the tagging video, because I know I am too lax about tags, and have too many tags with only a single item. AI could fix that, right?

Jeremy Cherfas

I've often dreamed of handing headphones to people playing their shitty phone-based noises out loud, but never taken it beyond a dream. Terence Eden could be living the dream with his two quid shitty earphones.

Jeremy Cherfas

Current me thanks past me for due diligence.

[Unable to login to Monocle](https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/unable-to-login-to-monocle)

Jeremy Cherfas

New episode: How the Spanish learned to love anchovies

For hundreds of years, the people of Spain wanted nothing to do with anchovies, except perhaps as fertiliser for their fields. Today, they eat more anchovies than anyone else. How did that happen?

https://eatthispodcast.com/anchovies-spain

Jeremy Cherfas

After a week away seeing family and mostly ignoring the online, it is very good to be back home and online.

Jeremy Cherfas

Last week was National School Lunch Week in the US. The latest Eat This Newsletter wonders why there is still no such thing as a universal free school lunch.

Read it at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-254-deja-vu/ and think about subscribing there.

Jeremy Cherfas

Truly baffled by someone who has a kind of About page that links to their various online presences, and the one labelled “blog” takes me to a Substack signup. Whatever else you may think it is, a newsletter is not, on its own, a weblog. At least, not for me.

Jeremy Cherfas

For some reason, we both woke at our normal time and then slept on for another 90 minutes. TGIS

Jeremy Cherfas

Replied to a post on werd.io :

I knew most of this history, as a relatively long-time user of Known, and I contribute to the project via Open Collective. A new version of Known would be even better than a functional exporter, but I would settle for that if I have to.

Jeremy Cherfas

In the latest Eat This Newsletter

- Nutrition experts who feed off big food
- The tomato in India
- Tainted turmeric
- Cloves, with a hitch
- 陈麻婆豆腐: is the story true?

Read it at https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-253-conflict/ and please consider subscribing.

Jeremy Cherfas

Replied to a post on ruk.ca :

Yet another plea for proper micropayments that don't gouge payer or payee. Even Patreon has been going down the tubes in this regard. I still fondly remember the original flattr. Couldn't someone, somewhere, please reinvent that.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-10-04

rabbit_quest 20241004-W-AY6808

1 min read

  20241004-W-AY6808

Composite image. On the left a map showing the location of the quest and my position. On the right a mass of tangled vegetation at the edge of some woods.

* On foot
* 41.886121, 12.444012
* 4 October 2024
* 420.9 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap

After recent storms there were a few trees blocking my way, and I couldn't get that close anyway.

Jeremy Cherfas

Eat This Podcast latest episode: Crunch Time — Insects Are Not Going to Save Us

Dustin Crummett, executive director of The Insect Institute, tells me why he thinks the puffery about eating insects to save the planet is largely hot air inflating a bubble.

https://eatthispodcast.com/no-insects

Jeremy Cherfas

I find it odd that anyone who found the Gutenberg editor in WordPress “deeply frustrating “ would not switch to ClassicPress. Maybe they looked and decided it wasn’t for them; if so, I would love to know why.

Jeremy Cherfas

I've long known that the sky is polarised, but today I discovered while waking along the beach that rainbows are too. I happened to tilt my head to one side and a rainbow that had been faint and short became much brighter and extended across more of the sky. Strange.

Jeremy Cherfas

I wish there were some kind of tool that would do a diff between two audio files so I could string together all the ums and ers and I means I've cut out and send them to the person that others praise for being so eloquent and fluent.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-09-24

rabbit_quest 20240924-W-BZ422G

1 min read

Composite image. Map of rabbit quest location on the left. Photo on the right. Looking out to sea from a flat, sandy beach with white waves coming in and a blue sky above with some pale clouds.

* On foot
* 55.169166, -6.777712
* Tuesday 24 September 2024
* 420.25 ppm CO2
* [OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=55.169166&mlon=-6.777712#map=14/55.16843/-6.78612) 

I’ve been looking for baggable rabbits, but this graticulette is mostly sea, and even this one was out of reach except at low tide, which wasn’t for about another 6 hours.

Jeremy Cherfas

Ayjay and lots of other good people wish Word would die in a fire. Me too.

Jeremy Cherfas

Eat This Newsletter points the finger at

* alt-protein energetics: the sums don't add up
* breastfeeding: formula looks "less like brain damage and more like a really bad kindergarten teacher", and
* food allergies and intolerance: the immune system loses its mind.

https://buttondown.com/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-251-relevant/

Jeremy Cherfas

Is it possible, in my wildest dreams, that the latest XKCD from Randall was inspired by a recent episode of Eat This Podcast?

https://xkcd.com/2982/

https://www.eatthispodcast.com/water/

Jeremy Cherfas

Twenty years ago today, I was impressed with WordPress, the new kid on my block. https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/getting-to-grips-with-wordpress

It is still pretty impressive, if it gives you what you want.

Jeremy Cherfas

A lot of Mark Nottingham's post about improving feeds is plumbing and protocols I scarcely understand. The thing that disrupts my feed reading most is feeds that resend the latest 20 posts each time there's something new. Might be related to doubled images. Whatever, I dislike it a lot.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-08-22

#rabbit_quest #geohashing 20240816-W-AY68OD

1 min read

Composite image. On the left a map showing the location of the quest and my position. On the right a black Raleigh steel road bike leaned up against a white micro-rental car. The actual Rabbit is somewhere between the biccle and an apartment block in the background.

* On bicycle
* 41.861454, 12.464238
* Thursday 22 August, 2024
* 418.77 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap

Not exactly exploring. Just happened to notice this Rabbit right by my usual route for a long bicycle ride, so I had to bag it on the way home.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-08-19

#rabbit_quest #geohashing 20240816-W-AYB8OD

1 min read

Composite image. On the left a map showing the location of the quest and my position. On the right a view down a leaf-covered slope to a road. lined with plane trees and umbrella pines. Two groups of people are walking beside the road. In the foreground are shrubs, including small Ailanthus bushes.

* On foot
* 41.88934, 12.46280 approx
* Friday 16 August, 2024
* N/A ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap

Bagged this on Friday, and it had been so long since the previous Rabbit I clear forgot to take the screenshot that enables me to post a day later. Or three days later.

Jeremy Cherfas

Rain at last, and it smells … like victory.

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-08-16

Audio cleanup

1 min read

Editing audio, you accumulate so much cruft it is amazing. Out-takes, duplicates, alternative mixes etc etc. You pretend you might come back to them. But you don't. Eventually you decide to save only the final mix and the sound files it needs, and you spend about 90 minutes doing every podcast from 2014, and you reduce the size of that archive from 21.3GB to 9.1GB and that is a good thing.

2015 can wait.

Jeremy Cherfas

Seven years ago I wrote a generally depressing piece about “science communication” and how little it seems to achieve. Someone please tell me how things have changed in the interim.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/scicomm-what-is-it-good-for

Jeremy Cherfas

Maybe everybody who needs to has already seen this sound advice for Patreon — and Ernie is not the only one — but I still think it bears sharing more widely.

https://tedium.co/2024/08/13/patreon-apple-platform-risks/

Jeremy Cherfas

ETN 248: Slow

Even the internet firehose seems to have slowed to a trickle in this northern heat. Still, one or two good dribbles to share, on new chocolate species, culture and cultured meat, and the man who ate all the UPFs he could in a day.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn248-slow/

Jeremy Cherfas

The ending of Apple TV's version of Presumed Innocent is what we in the IANAL profession call "A Swizz". Nothing short of preposterous and vastly inferior to the book. Made me feel cheated after 7 3/4 fine episodes.

Jeremy Cherfas

I can write Eat This Newsletter while on holiday. Promoting it, however, is another story entirely. BLTN, the latest offers food-borne illness, conspicuous fruit consumption, and plant-based meat ... for pets.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-245-fruity/

Jeremy Cherfas

One of the questions not raised by the latest Eat This Newsletter, which drops tomorrow, is why people who clearly want to subscribe, and are real people, don't activate their accounts? Am I justified in doing it for them? Do people really not check their spam?

Jeremy Cherfas

2024-07-16

I’m not clever enough

1 min read

From An alarmingly concise and very hinged summary of what it was like to build this site from scratch

“Yes, nearly everything about the platform felt worse than it did when I first started using it over a decade ago. ... Someone with even a modicum of clout should really coin a catchy term that everyone else can repeat ad infinitum until it loses all meaning. I’m not clever enough.”

Like, er, enshittification? Or was this an example of self-deprecating humour designed to flush out a reply guy?

I’m not clever enough to decide.

Jeremy Cherfas

In the latest Eat This Newsletter, the surprisingly rapid recovery of Pacific Bluefin Tuna, more than 10 years ahead of schedule. Naturally Japan now wants to increase the quotas that enabled that recovery.

https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-244-tuna/

Jeremy Cherfas

My first thought was “false flag”. That’s what these times have done to me.

Jeremy Cherfas

20240709-W-B0O8O3

Described in more detail at https://jeremycherfas.net/blog/rabbit-quest-20240709wb0o8o3/

* On foot
* 42.759728, 12.353907
* Tuesday 9 july 2024
* 421.44 ppm CO2
* OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=42.759728&mlon=12.353907#map=14/42.7597/12.3539

Jeremy Cherfas

Interesting article on whether LLMs are writing PubMed articles, that seems to conclude that on balance they aren’t. Yet. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a linguistic analysis, says nothing about the quality of the articles, no matter who might be writing them.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=64877

Jeremy Cherfas

I wouldn’t be sad if all the mosquitoes in the world went extinct. Does that make me a bad person?