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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.

I'm about to turn 75 in a few months, born in the U.S., still learning English.

Language learning never ends. At the very least, a person, even a native speaker, has to keep constantly refreshing to stay sharp. Every non-dead language continuously evolves. Because life, 'K?

Principles: (1) asset allocation (2) diversification (3) rebalancing

Investments: no-load index mutual funds/etfs (1) total US stock market index (2) total US bond market index (3) total world stock market index, excluding US

Prime resource: Bogleheads.org – Investing advice inspired by John Bogle (1) www.bogleheads.org (2) www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

Not the ideal solutions, but they work: Try https://libgen.rs/ or https://zlibrary.to/

Are you applying for a job as a staff prostitute? If not, how can any of this relate to your ability to perform the work? Avoid the place and report them.

Background...

1) Great read: "Roosevelt in the Bad Lands", by Hermann Hagedorn. Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge 1921, Copyright 1921 by Hermann Hagedorn, available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24317/24317-h/24317-h.htm

2) Some modern photos of the country there, plus my own random thoughts: "Moody, hey?" at https://ultralighter.blogspot.com/2017/10/moody-hey.html

I like the story of Roosevelt in a Montana bar. When a local cowboy came up to him with revolver drawn, mortally offended that some Fancy Eastern Dude would actually show his face in that establishment while WEARING EYEGLASSES of all things, Roosevelt stood, faced the man, KO'd him with one punch to the face, and got the upvotes of all assembled.

The advice that I follow is to take a statistical approach: Invest in everything. Let the losers wink out on their own while receiving the benefits of the winners.

Short version: Invest in (1) Total U.S. stock market index, (2) Total world stock market index, excluding the U.S., (3) Total U.S. bond market index. The principles are (1) Asset allocation, (2) Diversification, (3) Rebalancing.

For a lot more info, see (1) "Bogleheads Investing Advice and Info" https://www.bogleheads.org/ and (2) "Bogleheads Wiki" https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

This may not help directly, but at least you'll get a couple of good reads out of it. See "Maverick! The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace" (1993) and "The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works" (2003) by Ricardo Semler.

Info about him is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler

Right now I'm going through 37 Signals books just for the fun of learning..."Getting Real" (2006), "Rework" (2010), "Remote" (2013), "It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work" (2018), "Shape Up" (2019). Might be something in there.

(I'm now retired, but still trying to figure out what the right way of living and working should have been. Luckily, I'm financially OK despite a lifetime of bumping into walls and dealing with shitheads at exactly every job I've ever had. At least I knew how to live frugally and save money, so I'm free now.)

I forgot to mention "shellcheck" at https://www.shellcheck.net/ and the explanation of its error codes at https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/

This is also referenced by Shotts, and has been discussed on Hacker News -- not to be missed.

I'd say check out the work of William Shotts at https://linuxcommand.org/ His book, "The Linux Command Line" is free for downloading, and there are lots of references to style guides, good practices, and bash templates in the book.

There is also a shorter, HTML version at the same site: https://linuxcommand.org/lc3_learning_the_shell.php

I'm trying to get a little proficiency in all this, and just yesterday I went through the "Further Reading" sections at the end of each chapter, and captured all the likely URLs for further investigation.

One that looks really good is Dylan Araps' "Pure Bash Bible" ( See https://github.com/dylanaraps/pure-bash-bible ) Confession: I found a PDF copy at Libgen, but don't tell anyone. This and the Shotts book have also been thoroughly discussed on Hacker News in the past. (I.e., search on the two titles and you'll probably get all the opinions that you can stand, plus maybe some more hints.)

Bash is profoundly weird, but if/when you can make it work, it's slick.

Then he says "If you have found this article worthwhile, please share it on your favorite social media. You will find sharing links at the top of the page."

[Facebook] [Twitter] [Reddit] [Linkedin] [Hacker News]

Overall, the best strategy is to invest in everything. You get some winners and some losers. The winners increase your value and the losers vanish. Over time, you win.

Four principles: (1) Asset allocation, (2) Diversification, (3) Rebalancing, (4) Time.

Info: Bogleheads.org, Investing Advice Inspired by Jack Bogle: https://www.bogleheads.org/

Pacific Northwest lunacy is a tradition: "Welcome to The Church of Tina Chopp" https://tinachopp.church/menu.html

I used to see graffiti proclaiming "TINA CHOPP IS GOD" all over Bellingham, WA in the early 1980s (and it later spread to Seattle).

Still with us...

Gastropod has two excellent podcasts on the subject...

(1) "Grounds for Revolution: The Stimulating Story of How Coffee Shaped the World" at https://gastropod.com/grounds-for-revolution-the-stimulating...

(2) "Déjà-Brew: How Coffee Got Bad, Then Worse, and, Finally, Good Again" at https://gastropod.com/deja-brew-how-coffee-got-bad-then-wors...

Might be interesting: "What is Stoicism and How Can it Turn your Life to Solid Gold?" at https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-...

From sometime in the past: "Leaders lead people. Managers manage things."

Etc: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Leaders+lead+people.+Managers+mana...

Thank you. "If this helps you, enjoy it. If it doesn’t, use something else." is a sane, humble, and adult attitude. You have my respect.

More Karl Voit: (1) "Managing Digital Files (e.g., Photographs) in Files and Folders" at https://karl-voit.at/managing-digital-photographs/

(2) "TagTrees: Improving Personal Information Management Using Associative Navigation" at https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/en/papers.shtml

(3) "TagTree: Storing and Re-finding Files Using Tags" at https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/downloads/Voit2011.pdf

From the Penguin Sales email I received this morning...

I believe you inquired about our laptops some time back as we literally had nothing the laptop section and were told that we were working on replacing an older generation when you reached out.

We probably told you industry norms were working against us. Basically the industry has migrated to design choices that are pretty terrible and while we could get around them it would take more energy and capital to do deviate from those bad choices.

For instance the wireless antenna on most newer laptops is placed under the laptop rather than in the screen. This interferes with the reception so using the laptop at a distance from the access point can be problematic.

Touchpads that are designed to look good, but don't function well. Well, we've got a model with physical buttons now alongside multi-touch support so you can get the best of both worlds. At least in terms of functionality and usability. Though I'll admit it might not look quite as pretty- at least the laptop is still a very thin portable awesome looking unit.

There will probably be a video coming out this week demonstrating the new model.

Interview (audio file) about 25 minutes into CBC Radio's "The Current" from June 7 at https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/1...

Try this: "What is Stoicism and How Can it Turn your Life to Solid Gold?" at https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/02/what-is-stoicism-...

The real killer feature for me is Firefox's bookmark handling.

Bookmarks are easy to create, use, edit, reshuffle, and export.

I create bookmarks in Firefox and use them natively there, but also export them to HTML for use in other browsers.

I have a self-made, HTML "fast dial" that I use as my home page, and it has a link to the HTML version of my Firefox bookmarks, so I can easily use the same bookmarks in the same groups in Firefox, Vivaldi, and Brave, and that process is only a little clunkier in Brave and Vivaldi than in Firefox, so it works for me.

So far this is the best arrangement that I've found.

Vivaldi is an interesting but confusing beast, one I've tried and given up on many times since it first came out, but overall it's too complex for me to use as my main browser. And really slow to load.

Brave is fast to start up, and I do often use it for quick lookups, but it does some things I often do in its own goofy, awkward way, things that are trivial and much more intuitive for me in Firefox, so I'm sticking with the big F for now.

Yeah, so really, this is lightweight, not technical, and probably the sort of thing that's at least frowned on here, if allowed at all, but I saw this published in a post on Bored Panda and couldn't help but wonder about it, having suffered through way too many years of government work, which is basically the same thing, except there you're supposed to show up, eat shit and smile, not really do anything, and be underpaid. This guy seems to have found magic.

Has been posted before: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fopentaxsolver.source...

This isn't advice for anyone, but I quit my job when I decided that I'd rather die than keep working there (state government). That was July 7, 2005. I haven't worked since either. Somehow it happened to turn out OK.

You can take a look at the following (might find some ideas): www.bumfuzzle.com

"A couple of Minnesota suburban kids with a world-view that extended all of about twenty miles. It was big news when we upped and moved all the way to the big city of Chicago. Bigger news still, when we announced to the family just a couple years later that we were going to sail around the world. For four years we circumnavigated the globe aboard Bumfuzzle, our 35′ catamaran, returning a little more world-wise." And whole bunches more: "Bumfuzzle—twenty years under our keels and wheels. A life this good, we’re happy to have shared it all this time, and to have made so many friends over the years."

If I had actually been smart enough, I would have at least tried to go in their direction (starting in the 1960s, when I was young). Anyhow, me, I'm retired in Cuenca, Ecuador, living in an apartment right behind this place hotellosbalconescuenca.com/?lang=en , and things are not bad at all.

I'm spending my time learning how to think better, and studying whatever seems most interesting today.

For several years now I've been wondering about a couple of things.

One would be to come up with a simple taxation formula for individual income.

(1) No deductions.

(2) Peg the tax rate to a formula, something like tax = 1% per $10,000 of income. (These specific numbers would not work very well.)

This would be simple, absolutely predictable, and would set a maximum income at whatever the culture decided was right.

And/Or: eliminate inheritance.

This could replace a maximum income because no one could pass along a fortune to heirs, and wealth would be automatically recycled on death.

(1) Set up a citizen's commission that selects members at random for a three-year term, 1/3 of members to be replaced each year.

(2) The commission decides what entities are worthwhile. (Charitable, non-profit, humanitarian, research, whatever.)

(3) At death, any remaining funds belonging to a person are disbursed.

(4) Disbursed funds go to eligible entities selected by the deceased, or to the U.S. Treasury as a default.

(5) Wealthy individuals can support their children through college up to age 25 or so, after which the kids are on their own.

(6) Not necessarily any limit on how much wealth a person could accumulate because it would be impossible to develop a hereditary plutocratic class.

I made the switch from dual-booting in 2007 to avoid Windows Vista (I think it was). Ubuntu was great. Linux Mint was and is better, but early on it couldn't handle my graphics card. I've been using Mint since then. The Mate desktop environment appeals to me because it's simple and understandable. I really thought that KDE 3.5 was perfect, but when KDE 4 came along, I found that I couldn't understand it. I like simple and reliable above all else.

Now I'm considering an alternative to Linux Mint since the Debian ecosystem sees a significant refresh only once every two years, but I would suggest Linux Mint as a great starting point. You might also look at Zorin, which is designed to appeal to Windows and Apple refugees. MX Linux has high ratings on DistroWatch. Fedora updates twice a year, which is appealing, though I had problems back in the 1990s with Red Hat 2 and Red Hat 4 and dependency hell, and have an irrational emotional reluctance to try Fedora, though I need to.

These days Ubuntu has seen some friction, particularly with its use of Snaps for installing/updating software out of the control of the user. Back in the early 2000s Ubuntu was light, clean, and honest. And a little plain, compared to Linux Mint. These days I myself would not use Ubuntu. But it's your life, so you need to do your own research and make your own decisions. Don't forget about trial runs of Linux from a thumb drive. Genius.

Disclaimer: I Am Not An Expert. (I know nothing! Mostly.)

So far I'm sticking with FireFox. When I update my bookmarks, I save them to a JSON file, and then export them to HTML, which I use with my other, non-FireFox browsers.

I also have created a sort of "table of contents" system that allows me to narrow in on similar bookmarks. It's too high-maintenance, but it helps

Example, weekly news links...

02-WEEKLY (heading only)

02-01-WEEKLY (folder containing bookmarks)

02-02-WEEKLY (folder containing bookmarks)

02-03-WEEKLY (folder containing bookmarks)

02-04-WEEKLY (folder containing bookmarks)

02-05-WEEKLY (folder containing bookmarks)

Each of these sections (which are folders) has a different slant: Basic news, Fluff, Food & Health, Science News, Computing News, and so on. Some other categories I have go much deeper, and if I need to revise them it's a major pain.

If eventually I need to do something else, I'll probably adopt or create something with Emacs org-mode.

Example: (I just found this, have no idea if it's actually relevant...) "org-mode for browser bookmarks" at https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/bshrg0/orgmode_for_b..., which points to "org-linkz" at https://github.com/p-kolacz/org-linkz

There is more along these lines at https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=emacs+org+mode+browser+book...

It will end with a party.