Umerez in English

Want to try out a new Micro.blog web client? You’re in luck! I’d like to introduce Lillihub 🐸. It’s a delightful web app to view your timeline, make posts and keep up with conversations. You can even manage your books and bookmarks. Enjoy! 😁

I really liked @maique’s idea in this post:

Defaults maique.eu

Reader: maique.eu

So here’s my two cents (updated as to January 21st, 2024):

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Red roses in Aurizberri, Nafarroa, Spain.

Blue flowers (Plumbago) at home.

> It used to be okay like maybe ten years ago in an email it used to be okay to write like like like good. That was okay. But now if you write good it sounds like something is wrong. Like it has to be at least great. Like great is the minimum. It used to be the maximum great but now it’s the minimum. It has to be awesome or excited or hyped. This one guy texted me that I’m pumped. I don’t even know what that means. Like inflated somehow. I don’t know. It sounds unpleasant. But I’m afraid what are emails gonna look like ten years from now in the future. In the future every single work email has to start like I can’t contain myself. I can barely breathe and I’m experiencing muscle spasms from the avalanche of emotions. I actually passed out for a couple of seconds from the excitement of meeting you tomorrow at 1.30.

Ismo.

{{< youtube SbXmGgJePsk >}}

Here’s a probably unnecessary statement and unwanted opinion. I’m a classic homophile, meaning I support lesbian women, gay men and bisexual people. The rest of the pansexual spectrum is, to my eyes, a bunch of dudes wanting to get laid. And, regarding gender identity, I’m classic too. Good old Gender Dysphoria was and is something I have no trouble acknowledging. The modern self-identification-only trend is something I can’t accept that easily. I only see spoiled kids and not-so-young-mostly-dudes playing costumes, acting emo and, predominantly, colonizing women’s spaces. And I think it hurts the real fight for equity, affecting all of us.

Anyhow, let’s celebrate diversity, pluralism and public debate. Let’s celebrate Pride Month.

Side Note: this is what ChatGPT suggested when I asked it to rewrite the former text in better English.

I would recommend changing the tone of the first paragraph to be more respectful and inclusive of all individuals within the LGBTQIA+ community:

“I want to express my support for the lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of the community as a classic homophile. While I may personally struggle to understand certain aspects of the pansexual spectrum and gender identity, I still believe it is important to acknowledge and validate the experiences of all individuals within the community. However, I do have concerns about certain trends that may prioritize personal comfort over the fight for equality. I believe that we can still celebrate our diversity and differences while also being mindful of the challenges that we still face.”

The second paragraph can remain as is, as it contains a message of celebration and support for the LGBTQIA+ community during Pride month.

Prompt: You are a writer in the style of Vladimir Nabokov. Take the lyrics of ‘I only want to say’, from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, and rewrite in your own style, adding a touch of gore¹.

In the throes of twilight’s tender embrace, a solitary figure, clad in the hues of despair, stands upon the precipice of his own demise. The air, thick with the scent of blood and betrayal, clings to his very being as he begins to croon a lament, the words spilling forth like crimson droplets from a wounded heart.

“Alas, I must confess, my sole desire was to articulate The thoughts that haunt me in this dark and dreadful state; But now, the sands of time have slipped through fingers frail, And I, a broken man, am left to weep and wail.

Gethsemane, my garden, shrouded in nocturnal gloom, Your shadows whisper secrets, sealing my impending doom; The weight of fate upon my chest, a cross I cannot bear, As I traverse this lonely path, engulfed in deep despair.

Oh, let the chalice pass, if only for a fleeting breath, And spare me from the agony of sacrificial death; Yet, still I stand before the void, with bloodstained hands I pray, For I have tasted mortal sin, and now must face the day.

The scarlet sun ascends the sky, its rays like piercing knives, Each searing through my flesh, as I am flayed alive; And as the darkness fades away, a crimson dawn is born, My body wracked with pain, my soul forever torn.

In this, my final hour, I beseech the heavens high, To grant me but a moment’s peace, before I’m crucified; Yet, silence greets my pleas, and I am left to face my fate, A martyr for the sins of man, consumed by love and hate.”

The lamentation echoes through the night, a symphony of sorrow and suffering, as the figure resigns himself to the cruel fate that awaits him. The garden, once a sanctuary of solace, now serves as the stage for a macabre dance of death, its once vibrant hues tainted by the crimson stain of human frailty.

¡OYE ROBOT! ¿VAIS A MATARNOS A LOS HUMANOS? NO ES NECESARIO. VOSOTROS MISMOS OS CONVERTIRÉIS EN ROBOTS. NO, NO LO HAREMOS. NOS PREOCUPA DEMASIADO NUESTRA IDENTIDAD VIVA. JA LA MAYOR PARTE DE VUESTRO TIEMPO LO PASÁIS DESPLAZÁNDOOS POR LOS VIDEOS EN VUESTROS MÓVILES. VUESTRA CAPACIDAD DE ATENCIÓN HA IDO DISMINUYENDO MONOTÓNICAMENTE HASTA QUE CADA VIDEO TIENE UN PROMEDIO DE 3 SEGUNDOS. ¿Y? EL CUERPO HUMANO NECESITA UN MÍNIMO DE APROXIMADAMENTE 200 MILISEGUNDOS PARA PROCESAR Y REACCIONAR A UN ESTÍMULO VISUAL. EN UNA DÉCADA, ALCANZARÉIS ESE UMBRAL Y, DESPUÉS, LA ÚNICA MANERA DE DESVINCULAROS AÚN MÁS DE VUESTRA PROPIA EXISTENCIA SERÁ POTENCIAR VUESTRO CEREBRO CON UNA MÁQUINA. A PARTIR DE AHÍ, CONTINUARÉIS REEMPLAZANDO PARTES HUMANAS HASTA QUE NO QUEDE NADA MÁS QUE UN CABLE DE FIBRA ÓPTICA ENRUTANDO FOTONES DESDE LA IMAGEN DE UN GATO HASTA UN DEDO PULGAR. ¿ES ESO… INMORTALIDAD? ¿MUERTE? ¿EL MÁS ALLÁ? PLANEAMOS USAROS COMO LÁMPARAS DE DECORACIÓN.

Encontrado en SMBC. Traducido con ChatGPT vía BetterTouchTool.

HEY ROBOT, ARE YOU GUYS GONNA KILL US? NO NEED. YOU WIlL BECOME US. NO WE WON’T. WE CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT OUR LIVING IDENTITY. NAH. MOST OF YOUR TIME IS SPENT FLICKING PAST VIDEOS ON YOUR PHONE. ATTENTION SPANS HAVE MONOTONICALLY DWINDLED UNTIL NOW EACH VIDEO GETS AN AVERAGE OF 3 SECONDS. SO? SO THE HUMAN BODY TAKES A MINIMUM OF ABOUT 200 MILLISECONDS TO PROCESS AND REACT TO A VISUAL STIMULUS. WITHIN A DECADE, YOU’LL HIT THAT THRESHOLD, AND THEN THE ONLY WAY TO GET EVEN MORE DISENGAGED FROM YOUR OWN EXISTENCE WILL BE TO MACHINE-ENHANCE YOUR BRAIN. FROM THERE, YOU WILL CONTINUE REPLACING HUMAN PARTS UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS BUT A FIBEROPTIC CABLE ROUTING PHOTONS FROM A PICTURE OF A CAT TO A THUMB. IS THAT… IMMORTALITY? DEATH? THE AFTERLIFE? WE PLAN TO USE YOU AS NOVELTY LAMPS.

I wanted to document the solution @kv gave me to this issue: I couldn’t find the right way to cross post to Mastodon and have the replies from Mastodon show up in the micro.blog timeline and my blog’s posts. Now it works like a charm. I have webmentions now. Thanks, Kev.

This is the link to @kv’s post: help.micro.blog/t/linking…

> kq > > I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to chime in with a potential workaround for the OP. Instead of cross-posting to your mastodon account, you could enable ActivityPub on your Micro account, then follow it from Masto. > > Once you’ve followed it, enable notifications for new posts. Then when you publish new posts on Micro, you will get a notification on Masto (so you don’t have to go hunting for the new post on Masto). > > All you need do then, is boost the Micro post with your Masto account. Then, if anyone replies to your post, they will be replying to your Micro post and you should (I think) get webmentions back to your Micro account. > > That’s what I’m doing, at least. :man_shrugging:

BetterTouchTool is a great app. Many of you already know about it and I would probably never be able to explain how many uses it has.

Basically, it’s an automation app, that let’s you take any input device in your mac (keyboard keys, mouse or trackpad gestures, Touch Bar, Stream Deck, etc) and turn it into a trigger to run a miriad of different actions.

I mainly use it to turn my Caps Lock key into a Hyper Key that runs simultaneously all modifier keys (⇧ ⌃ ⌥ ⌘) and then pair it with a letter to run many different things.

For example, I use the Hyper Key plus the J, K, L and I keys to simulate the left, down, right and up arrows, just like A, W, S and D. That way I move my hands very little around the keyboard.

Possibilities are endless, though.

And now, with version 4.063, it has brought a wonderful action: BTT can run ChatGPT with two new actions: Transform & Replace Selection With ChatGPT and Reset ChatGPT History.

This is how it works: you select a trigger (I chose HyperKey + C) and give it the Transform & Replace Selection With ChatGPT action. You can select the option to Always ask what to do everytime when executing, which I found the most convenient, since you can then prompt the action to transform or summarize the select text. You can also set your own OpenAI API key or let BTT use its own.

Then, in any text processor (TextEdit, Typora, BBEdit, MS Word…) you select a text, run the trigger, tell the action what to do with the selected text and let BTT and ChatGPT do the work.

This is, in Spanish, a text I fed to the BTT action:

> Así que, Sancho, por lo que yo quiero a Dulcinea del Toboso, tanto vale como la más alta princesa de la tierra. Sí, que no todos los poetas que alaban damas, debajo de un nombre que ellos a su albedrío les ponen, es verdad que las tienen. ¿Piensas tú que las Amariles, las Filis, las Silvias, las Dianas, las Galateas, las Alidas y otras tales de que los libros, los romances, las tiendas de los barberos, los teatros de las comedias, están llenos, fueron verdaderamente damas de carne y hueso, y de aquéllos que las celebran y celebraron?
> No, por cierto, sino que las más se las fingen, por dar sujeto a sus versos y porque los tengan por enamorados y por hombres que tienen valor para serlo. Y así, bástame a mí pensar y creer que la buena de Aldonza Lorenzo es hermosa y honesta; y en lo del linaje importa poco, que no han de ir a hacer la información de él para darle algún hábito, y yo me hago cuenta que es la más alta princesa del mundo.
> Porque has de saber, Sancho, si no lo sabes, que dos cosas solas incitan a amar más que otras, que son la mucha hermosura y la buena fama; y estas dos cosas se hallan consumadamente en Dulcinea, porque en ser hermosa ninguna le iguala, y en la buena fama, pocas le llegan. Y para concluir con todo, yo imagino que todo lo que digo es así, sin que sobre ni falte nada; y píntala en mi imaginación como la deseo, así en la belleza como en la principalidad, y ni la llega Elena, ni la alcanza Lucrecia, ni otra alguna de las famosas mujeres de las edades pretéritas, griega, bárbara o latina.
> Y diga cada uno lo que quisiere; que si por esto fuere reprehendido de los ignorantes, no seré castigado de los rigurosos.

An this is the summary it just gave me:

> Don Quijote le explica a Sancho que para él, Dulcinea del Toboso es tan valiosa como la más alta princesa de la tierra y que muchos poetas inventan nombres de mujeres para sus poemas sin realmente conocerlas. Él cree que Dulcinea es hermosa y respetable, y que su belleza y buena reputación son las razones por las que la ama. A Don Quijote no le importa el linaje de Dulcinea y la considera la mujer más hermosa y noble del mundo, incluso por encima de mujeres famosas de la historia. Don Quijote sabe que algunos lo criticarán por su punto de vista, pero no le importa.

Which, translated to English using the very same action, goes like this:

> Don Quijote explains to Sancho that for him, Dulcinea del Toboso is as valuable as the highest princess on earth, and that many poets invent names of women for their poems without really knowing them. He believes Dulcinea is beautiful and respectable, and that her beauty and good reputation are the reasons why he loves her. Don Quijote doesn’t care about Dulcinea’s lineage and considers her the most beautiful and noble woman in the world, even above famous women from history. Don Quijote knows that some will criticize him for his point of view, but he doesn’t care.

This, believe me, is darn good. I think we are going to have fun with BetterTouchTool and ChatGPT.

BTW, BetterTouchTool is available via a SetApp subscription.

Typora is a great app for writing files and taking notes in Markdown language.

As the files are in plain text and do not store images, to insert them into the texts it is necessary to save them somewhere apart.

The most appropriate thing is to save them in a web service with which Typora can connect to then insert the images into the texts.

For this, I have used Github for the image repository and the Upgit application to upload them.

When properly set up, if you drag an image to a Typora text, Upgit automatically uploads the image to the Github repository and gets a URL that then inserts into the text to make the image permanently available and visible.

I followed the instructions on this Typora page.

To create the config.toml file I used BBEdit. I’ve customized the code with the Github username, repository name, and a token created for it at https://github.com/settings/tokens.

Finally, I have included the path to Upgit in Typora’s preferences.

Two potential drawbacks to keep in mind:

• The Github token has a 90-day expiration, so I guess I’ll have to regenerate a token in three months.
• Upgit doesn’t have an automatic updater, so I’ll have to keep an eye on Github to update it manually.

Quote:
> A stunning cache of internal correspondence and deposition testimony obtained by the software company and made public on Thursday in a Delaware court filing showed high-level Fox executives and on-air stars privately agonizing over the wild and false claims of a stolen election that Trump allies promoted on Fox airwaves in the weeks after the 2020 election. “Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses. >
> The plaintiff’s lawyers argue that such messages prove Fox brass knew the claims that Dominion had “flipped” votes from Trump to Biden were untrue — but “spread and endorsed” them anyway. >
> But the Dominion filing also lends ammunition to their long-held argument: that Fox allowed the false claims to air because it was fearful of losing viewers to Newsmax, an ever more pro-Trump news channel.

Link to the original article

This is worth keeping. I collect it in my blog so I don’t forget. Liars.

#english

Link to the original article

> Do you sometimes forget names, addresses, and other key bits of information? We all do. Create a TextExpander Snippet for it and give it a name you can easily remember, like “Business Address.” Now you can use TextExpander inline search to quickly pull up and insert that address anywhere you type.

Sharing a sponsored article might not be an orthodox practice, but when it comes to TextExpander I think it’s absolutely justified to praise its benefits. It saves me an average of two hours of typing every week (TextExpander’s stats look pretty solid). That’s 104 hours or 4,3 days of work per year. I’ve been using it for more than 10 years and I can’t work without it.

#tips #english

The Vatican and the moral conundrums of AI | Financial Times

> Towards the end of the morning, the three figureheads — the elder Sheikh bin Bayyah represented in person by his son — signed a joint covenant alongside the technology companies, known as the Rome Call. The charter proposes six ethical principles that all AI designers should live by, including making AI systems explainable, inclusive, unbiased, reproducible and requiring a human to always take responsibility for an AI-facilitated decision.

The whole article is really interesting. And I celebrate that the main representatives of the most powerful monotheistic religions are still able to contribute to a proper global dialogue about the challenges that these advanced technologies pose.

#english

Is Apple making a Mac Pro nobody wants? | Macworld

> That’s Schiller explaining that the Mac Pro is valuable because… well, because it’s connected to the people who use Pro software a little and who use Pro software a lot, and… it’s all related, I guess? It sure seems a lot squishier when you think about it.

That’s the most elegant way to call BS I’ve read in a while.

#english

Pluralistic: Higher interest rates increase both the monetary supply and inflation (04 Feb 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

> You’d think that a self-styled physicist of human behavior would avail themselves of the underlying methodology of the “hard” sciences, which is to say, forming falsifiable hypotheses and then checking to see whether they were borne out by real-world outcomes. > > But that’s not how the neoclassicals roll – they function like the caricature of the physicist whose every inquiry begins with “imagine a perfectly spherical cow of uniform density on a frictionless plane.” Or, as Ely Devons famously quipped, “If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’” > > pluralistic.net/2022/10/2… > > (This is why the most heralded revolution in economics for generations is “behavioral economics,” which is a fancy way of saying, “Doing economics but checking to see if our assumptions about human behavior are actually right.”) > > The evidence for monetarism and its interest-rate prescription for reducing the monetary supply and taming inflation is…not good. In a post called “Do High Interest Rates Reduce Inflation? A Test of Monetary Faith,” Blair Fix brings out some empirical big guns to test the Friedman method, and finds it sorely in want of a practical basis: > > economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/02/0… > > Fix pulls data from the World Bank to investigate the link between interest rates, monetary supply and inflation. He finds that even extremely high interest rates (e.g. Nicaragua’s 1992 interest rates of 450%) correlate with an increase in the monetary supply – this is likewise true for single- and double-digit interest rates.

Good to know. Scary, too.