Ricky de Laveaga

Advanced Data Protection Vaporizes Shared Albums

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 18:07:00 GMT

Let's talk about Advanced Data Protection for iCloud.

The upshot of this sentence in the “Security implications of sharing and collaboration” section:

iWork collaboration and the Shared Albums feature in Photos don’t support Advanced Data Protection.

…for me, was that my wallpaper on my phone immediately disappeared and I was unable to access years of “photos added to Shared Albums.”

Not only on my phone. Those years of “photos added to Shared Albums,” were now inaccessible on any of my devices because they “are stored with standard data protection, as the feature permits albums to be publicly shared on the web.” Does anyone know if this is expected behavior or something I should try to report?

If it is indeed expected behavior to vaporize all shared albums until Advanced Data Protection is disabled (the albums and photos do return, once ADP is disabled), that’s huge bummer that I suspect will make this urgently needed protection a dealbreaker to most who attempt to enable it.

Also beyond shared albums, which are already widely used, if Apple wants iWork collaboration to find traction, making it work for people who want “their trusted devices [to] retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of their iCloud data” would seem to be wise.

A Bit of Cheer

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 23:18:03 GMT

Cheer via PxHere

These are dark days, and I expect darker days await. So much to feel despondent about, but these three videos cheered me up a bit today.

The Floppotron 3.0 - Computer Hardware Orchestra

When you forget your password

Verifying that you're not a robot

Found the top two on Kornel’s Mastodon and then the third on Stevie Martin’s channel. Both recommended. Toot toot 📯🐘

Guardian Promoting Putin’s Fear

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 19:36:40 GMT

Source Photos clockwise from top L: Diana Berg/Sergey Korovayny, Yulia Tymoshenko/Anadolu Agency (Jeyhun Aliyev?), Anastasiia and Natasha Doroshenko/Sergey Korovayny, George Soros/The Guardian, Boris Bondarev, Ksenia and Tetiana Ivanov/Sergey Korovayny, unidentified woman/Aris Messinis, unidentified soldiers/Gleb Garanich

Looking at the Guardian US site this morning, I was dismayed to see these two Opinion pieces featured so prominently with no counterpoint.

It is in the best interests of Ukraine, and the west, to end this war as soon as possible

Christopher S Chivvis
The west’s calls for a total victory in Ukraine can lead only to ruinous escalation

Simon Jenkins

Both articles display a wild misunderstanding of the reality of Russia’s aggression and Putin’s ultimate goal, which is the restoration of the Soviet empire. Appeasement will not work this time any better than it did in 2008 and 2014, and by promoting these Putin-friendly viewpoints so carelessly (that contradict so much of its own valuable reporting) The Guardian has lost my trust and has me considering canceling my yearly digital subscription.

For counterpoints that demolish the arguments made in the two dreary, misguided articles above, see:

Yulia Tymoshenko on war in Ukraine: ‘It’s a chance for the free world to kill this evil’

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv
‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, Putin will come’: the 2014 Ukraine refugees forced to flee for a second time

Photojournalist Serhii Korovayny has twice uprooted his family because of Russian invasion. He talks to others with the same experience
by Sergey Korovayny
Ukraine invasion may be start of ‘third world war’, says George Soros

Veteran philanthropist tells World Economic Forum civilisation ‘may not survive’ what is coming
Larry Elliott Economics editor
‘Warmongering, lies and hatred’: Russian diplomat in Geneva resigns over Ukraine invasion

Boris Bondarev issues public statement saying: ‘Never have I been so ashamed of my country’
Andrew Roth, Moscow correspondent

If all of this is depressing you, as it should, I invite you to read Virginia Heffernan’s excellent Volodymyr Zelensky and the Art of the War Story for Wired, that contains this refreshing passage:

Zelensky’s first video of the war appeared on February 23, the eve of the invasion. In Russian, he addresses “grazhdanam Rossi”—the citizens of Russia—as a “grazhdanin Ukraini”—citizen of Ukraine. The word citizens and not people reminds listeners that they’re members of a modern nation and not infantry in a holy war for an ethno-state. Zelensky also notably zeroes in on a Kremlin talking point that vexes him. He says, “You are told that we hate Russian culture. But how can you hate culture? Any culture?” In that moment of incomprehension, Zelensky dexterously clarifies for all the world the absurdity of a “culture war.”

Let’s slow it down. Broadly speaking, a culture is a patchwork of dialects, customs, habits, music, arts, mores, ways of living. In Russia, culture might include everything from forest folklore to vigorous strolling to the rave band Little Big. Deeper in, you might find Chagall, Turgenev, Anatoly Karpov, the Bolshoi, Lyudmila Ulitskaya. How can a culture be hated?

I’d never thought of it that way, but of course. A culture has no budget, no government, no army. It collects no taxes; it has no CEO, bible, or headquarters. If it can’t be precisely identified, how can a nation’s whole culture, which is made up of innumerable artifacts and practices, be loathed? And yet the constant warning of the far right in Russia—and France, and the US—is that someone, somewhere, hates your culture and thus deserves to die. No one but Zelensky has ever dissolved this hollow alarmism with such dispatch.

“Europe must wake up now,” Zelensky says in a video from March 4. Where he’d been in a funereal black suit and necktie a week earlier, now he wears the olive-drab that has become his trademark. “Russian troops are firing upon the nuclear power plant in Ukraine.” He again calls his audience into being and reminds us who we are: citizens with rights, not serfs with superstitions. Specifically, he addresses “all people who know the word ‘Chernobyl.’”

I dare you to read that and not call to your mind’s eye the story of Chernobyl (in the news in 1986 or on HBO in 2019) and however you understand that nuclear disaster. This is shrewd. Comprehension of this byword does indeed mark a person as informed, familiar with the dangers of nuclear tech, and mindful that lethal catastrophes are never merely local. Our understanding of history has now been both flattered and enlisted in the fight.

The other video from that day serves as Part II, and it’s aimed at Russian citizens. Again Zelensky is in army green. But this time he doesn’t expect his audience to startle at the mention of Chernobyl, so he issues a stern, scolding, vivid reminder of 1986 and how Russians and Ukrainians fought together as Soviets to contain the meltdown. “You have to remember irradiation,” he says, seemingly hoping the video will find its way to those who have been denied an education in history. For them, he issues a more primordial threat: “Take to the streets and say that you want to live, that you want to live on Earth without radioactive contamination. Radiation does not know where Russia is, radiation does not know where the borders of your country are.”

These videos lay out two significant ideas about Russian culture. First, there’s nothing to hate in it. A culture is grounded in sensory-emotional experience; it is too vast, multifarious, and shape-shifting to be hated as a monolith. Second, Russia as an authoritarian kleptocracy is a matter of utter indifference to the planet Earth, which is the source of our shared humanity. To poison Ukraine is to poison Russia. Say that you want to live, that you want to live on Earth.

🌍🌏🌎

Imagine

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 01:22:59 GMT

Source Photos L to R: Pavel Golovkin, Lam Yik Fei, Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

Imagine Russia, China, and the USA suddenly became radically open-minded and loving to all of their inhabitants, embracing and accepting each other, practicing abolition of all forms of oppression and enslavement, upholding egalatarian principles, and recognizing the intersectionality that makes us whole.

When you hear the speech Ravyn Ariah Wngz gave at Ryerson University, you know it is the truth. You may be in various states of denying that truth, avoiding it, but it is still the truth.

A majority of people in Russia, China, and the USA support that truth, and fostering it into being is simply a matter of triggering the conditions that allow that transformation, that transcendence, to take place.

Fever Dreams

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

An artist’s rendering of the Mars Ice Home concept
(Credits: NASA/Clouds AO/SEArch)

🧵 Should Humans Colonize Other Planets? […] 🔗

💭 Why wouldn't we? 🔗

💬 If we cannot survive here where we evolved for billions of years in adaptation to the environment why would we fare better anywhere else? ¹

💬 So the argument is to just give up? 🔗

💬 Resolve not to give up or give in to escapism. To focus on repairing our damage instead of exhausting crucial resources further to chase fantasies of permanently existing elsewhere. Exploration and observation are science; exploitation and colonization are fever dreams. ¹

I delete older tweets, and decided to stop using Twitter due to Twitter’s utter failure at content moderation.↩↩

Bora Bora Nui

Mon, 04 May 2020 06:16:55 GMT

Taken 12 February 2019
Apple iPhone XS
f/2.4 | 1/1199 sec | 6 mm | Satellite Map

Turquoise water leads up to the beach and a lush green hill above the overwater bungalows at the Bora Bora Nui Resort in French Polynesia, with puffy white clouds in the sky over Motu Toopua. Mount Otemanu can be seen in the distance rising over the bluffs on the left.

target=_bunk

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 21:44:55 GMT

Every time you hijack a tab, a monkey gets locked in a cage.™
(Photo source: Lance Cpl. Suzanna Knotts/U.S. Marine Corps)

Often, while building a website, clients and designers will ask something like:

Will you make the links open in a new tab so we don’t take people off the site?

I am super against this for various reasons, the main one being that target=_blank breaks the back button, the only browser feature most people understand.

Jakob Nielsen in 2005:

Since 1999, it’s been a firm Web usability guideline to refrain from opening new browser windows for several reasons:

When new windows appear that users didn’t ask for, it’s both confusing and disruptive.

If the new window completely obscures the old one, many users don’t even realize a new window has opened.

Less-technical users can’t manage multiple windows.

New windows can defeat users who are blind or have low vision, as, for example, when a new window opens outside the part of the screen that’s magnified for a low-vision user.

The common rationale designers have for opening new windows is “to keep users on our site,” but that’s bogus reasoning. If people want to leave, they’ll leave. And if they just want to look at the other site, they’ll return to your site by clicking the Back button—the second most used feature on the Web (after hypertext links). In fact, one of the usability problems of opening new windows is that they alter the expected behavior for returning to the previous location.

There are also associated security issues, the upshot being that if you do ever decide to use target=_blank you need to also include rel=noopener always, and possibly rel=noreferrer for older browsers.

Mathias Bynens:

Don’t use target=_blank (or any other target that opens a new navigation context), especially for links in user-generated content, unless you have a good reason to.

That last link is to a solid article on CSS Tricks about possible reasons to use it legitimately, like when someone might lose work in progress or there is media playing. Marco Arment provides another example in his 2014 article, Forcing links to open in new windows: an argument that should have ended 15 years ago.

For more background on the security issue:

So if you do use it anywhere, the link should look like:

<a href="https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Example domains</a>

Evitten Twice Shy

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Derived from Evite’s Party Ideas DIY Jack-O’-Lantern Balloons social images

UPDATE 22 November 2019: Thanks once again to Troy Hunt and Have I Been Pwned, today I found out I my email address was among over 622 million unique email addresses exposed in a data breach of an index indicating it was sourced from People Data Labs (PDL). This section really resonates with me:

The recurring theme I'm finding with exposed data of this nature is increasing outrage that the data aggregator obtained and used personal information in a fashion the owner of the data (i.e. me) didn't consent to. It's not about how public the data might be through the channels people choose to publish it, rather it's about the use of the data outside its intended context. […] And this is the real problem: regardless of how well these data enrichment companies secure their own system, once they pass the data downstream to customers it's completely out of their control. My data—almost certainly your data too—is replicated, mishandled and exposed and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Well, almost nothing…

After reading Troy’s post, I wrote the following to support@peopledatalabs.com

Your privacy policy states that people may “access any information we have on them” and that you will “reply to a person’s request within five business days” or delete it outright.

Today I found out [my email address] was exposed in a data breach of an index indicating it was sourced from People Data Labs (PDL) along with over 622 million other unique email addresses. https://www.troyhunt.com/data-enrichment-people-data-labs-and-another-622m-email-addresses/

I would like to know exactly what data you have associated with the email address above or [my name]. Secondly I want confirmation that my data—that I never gave you permission to obtain, collect, or pass along downstream to customers—has been deleted from your systems and will not be shared, bundled, packaged, or sold again.

If your data is in the breach, I suggest you do the same. Visit HIBP to check. Here is the breach summary on HIBP:

Breach date: 16 October 2019
Date added to HIBP: 22 November 2019
Compromised accounts: 622,161,052
Compromised data: Email addresses, Employers, Geographic locations, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers, Social media profiles

– Pwned websites - Data Enrichment Exposure From PDL Customer

Along with Evite, PDL joins the ever-growing list of companies who have leaked my data, in my personal HIBP wall of shame: Dropbox, Tumblr, Adobe, 500px, and Verifications.io.

Did you have an Evite account as of August 2013?

‘Why August 2013?…’ you might ask. Well it seems Evite’s systems were breached sometime around February 22, 2019, and that they became aware of this “malicious activity” in April 2019, apparently when ZDNet notified Evite the data was for sale on the dark web.

In this compromise, the attackers made off with a database archive, old data from 2013:

On May 14, 2019, we concluded that an unauthorized party had acquired an inactive data storage file associated with our user accounts.

– FAQ #1 from Evite’s “Data Incident” notice

There is also a notice at Have I Been Pwned (which is how I found out about the breach on July 14) which lists:

Compromised data: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses

HIBP’s summary is:

In April 2019, the social planning website for managing online invitations Evite identified a data breach of their systems. Upon investigation, they found unauthorised access to a database archive dating back to 2013. The exposed data included a total of 101 million unique email addresses, most belonging to recipients of invitations. Members of the service also had names, phone numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth, genders and passwords stored in plain text exposed.

– Have I Been Pwned: Pwned websites - Evite

If you are asking yourself, ‘OK but what am I supposed to do?…’ your best bet is to check your Evite password. If you know that you have reused that password elsewhere, particularly on financial or email accounts, change those passwords now. Likely damage would have already been done, since apparently the stolen data has been for sale since April, but better late than never when it comes to protecting yourself. If you are unsure whether you still have an account, go to evite.com/login and, if needed, request a password reset email with the “Forgot Your Password?” link at the bottom of the form to determine if your email address has an associated account.

If you have any further questions or want help, feel free to get in touch using one of the links below.

Om Tare Tam Svaha

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 11:08:11 GMT

Om Tare Tam Svaha Tee Available NOW

A Famebot experimental clothing offering.

Excerpted from Sounds True’s Songs of Tara:

Tara is venerated by Hindus and Buddhists alike, and seems to predate Tantric Buddhism in India as a Hindu deity. Scholars note many links between her and ancient forms of the goddess Durga. Her Indian name, Tara, means “Star,” but it is also a form of the word that means “to ferry" or “to carry across,” which relates more closely to the literal meaning of her Tibetan name. […] Tara’s “seed syllable,” a single, untranslatable sound that expresses her entire essence, is Tam. The mantra Om Tare Tam Svaha (or, in Tibetan pronunciation, Soha) is thus know as her “heart song” and is sometimes associated with the more wrathful form of Red Tara, whose practice brings wisdom and awareness of our ultimate nature. […] A Tibetan nun [Jetsun Ani Rinpoche] with a voice straight from primordial space pierces our hearts with the mantra Om Tare Tam Svaha.

Om Tare Tam Svaha Jersey Available NOW

50% of proceeds go to Tibetan Nuns Project. The shirts are GM free organic cotton, not tested on animals, do not contain animal-derived products, and are printed in the UK with low waste printing tech. Made in a renewable energy powered factory audited for a wide range of social and sustainability criteria.

Jetsun Ani Rinpoche

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 10:08:00 GMT

Jetsun Ani Sherab Chotso Rinpoche

I translated the text below from the Vajrayana.it article Jetsun Ani Sherab Chotso Rinpoche, which was the source of the image above as well.

Jetsun Khacho Wangmo, also known as Ani Sherab Chotso Rinpoche, is one of the few Lama women in Tibet and is authorized to give initiations and teachings. She has been recognized by many as a living emanation of Tara—female representation of enlightenment and compassion in Tibetan Buddhism—of Samantabhadrī, Yeshe Tsogyal and Machig Labdrön.

In her previous incarnation, Jetsunma was Chimey Wangmo—a physician and accomplished yogini—daughter of the great Adzom Drukpa (1842-1924). Pema Wangyal, her brother in the previous life is still her brother, Adzom Rinpoche, in this life. Together they continue their Dharma activities for the benefit of all beings and to continue propagating the teachings of lineage.

Born in eastern Tibet in 1975, Jetsunma entered a monastic college when she was 7 years old and began a rigorous study of Buddhist texts. At the age of 13, she took monastic vows. In 2001, at the age of 26, she had to interrupt her studies for a year to obtain the qualification of Khenpo by SS Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche. Only her recognition as Tulku allowed Jetsunma to receive a complete education, and both she and Adzom Rinpoche are deeply committed to transmitting the teachings to nuns in Tibet. Jetsuma also works tirelessly to support the practice of nuns by improving their health and living conditions.

Although she usually works “behind the scenes” during the teachings tours of Adzom Rinpoche, Jetsunma has often officiated the initiations of Green Tara and Chenrezig. Her initiations of Green Tara usually lead to a significant number of practitioners crying with emotion. Many report being confused by her inner and outer beauty and claiming they can not stop looking at her.

The purity of Jetsunma’s voice has the same effect of inspiration. In Tibet she is invited to sing on the occasion of the most important monastic rituals and initiations, in the presence of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of monks seated in prayer. Those who have been lucky enough to hear the sound of her voice can not forget her radiant purity. Her presence shines in the same way and this is the reason why everyone loves her.

Grody

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Grody, Gritty’s evil twin

Grody 🥀

Gritty 🌹

Image Sources:

Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Bizarre New Mascot, Is Antifa Now

What if Satan and Hitler Opened a McDonald's in Hell?

Cross-posted on:

Mastodon

Pixelfed

Tool Shaped

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 11:27:26 GMT

“We Shape Our Tools, and Then Our Tools Shape Us”

Artwork by Tashi Norbu Posted by United Nations For a Free Tibet on 13 January 2016

What is the form of one tool shaping?

🧿💠☸️🕉💜⚫️♾🔗⛓⚙️🛠⚒📐

Bokeh Xmas

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 09:46:42 GMT

Taken 9 August 2010
Canon PowerShot S80
f/2.8 | 1/2 sec | 5.8 mm

Just dug this up from the archive to add to my Mastodon header. Viva el fediverso…como Pixelfed y Mastodon.

Abandon Your Face

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Abandon Your TV

I am on a Facebook and Instagram hiatus. I deleted all the Facebook-owned apps off my phone and imported all my Instagram photos here to my site, thanks to Gatsby for making that breezy. The pic above is the first one to go up here exclusively. Feels stupendous. I need to manage pages and video for projects, but I cannot help them harvest data or contribute personal content to their dumpster fire any longer.

The irony of it all is while Facebook is being called out for “fake news” on its platform, the internal response to accusations is often to dismiss them as fake news. The blind loyalty to the company is staggering.

– Mark S. Luckie

It’s a company whose CEO used to close all-hands meetings by raising his fist and saying, “Domination!” A company where a top executive wrote an internal memo making the case for prioritizing growth at all costs—even at the cost of human lives. A company whose staff broke out in cheers at a meeting when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he had tracked down and fired an employee who leaked word of a secret A.I. product to the press. As one anonymous Facebook employee explained to Recode’s Mark Wagner afterward: “You don’t betray the family.”

That cultlike loyalty helps explain why, when Facebook was under fire earlier this year for having allowed shady app developers to harvest users’ profile information, the word out of Menlo Park was that Facebook employees were rallying around their chief. There were rumors of employee anger after Facebook’s top policy executive, Joel Kaplan, turned up to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at the Senate hearing in which he was accused of sexual harassment. But even then, no one dared speak up publicly.

The silence held even after the Times reported that Kaplan, along with COO Sheryl Sandberg, had systematically downplayed evidence of Russian interference and misinformation to avoid upsetting conservatives on Capitol Hill.

Facebook’s leaders and many of its employees may feel that Luckie betrayed the family. But when the family is hurting people, the real betrayal is to remain silent.

– Where’s the Facebook Walkout? It’s time for employees of the social network to speak out.

Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

In Washington, allies of Facebook, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, intervened on its behalf.

In at least one instance, the company also relied on Mr. Schumer, the New York senator and Senate Democratic leader. He has long worked to advance Silicon Valley’s interests on issues such as commercial drone regulations and patent reform. During the 2016 election cycle, he raised more money from Facebook employees than any other member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Zuckerberg speaking with Senator Chuck Schumer in July. The lawmaker, whose daughter works at Facebook, has intervened on the company’s behalf.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Mr. Schumer also has a personal connection to Facebook: His daughter Alison joined the firm out of college and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office, according to her LinkedIn&nbsp profile.

In July, as Facebook’s troubles threatened to cost the company billions of dollars in market value, Mr. Schumer confronted Mr. Warner, by then Facebook’s most insistent inquisitor in&nbsp Congress.

Back off, he told Mr. Warner, according to a Facebook employee briefed on Mr. Schumer’s intervention. Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it. Facebook lobbyists were kept abreast of Mr. Schumer’s efforts to protect the company, according to the employee.

A Senate aide briefed on the exchange said that Mr. Schumer had not wanted Mr. Warner to lose sight of the need for Facebook to tackle problems with right-wing disinformation and election interference, as well as consumer privacy and other issues.

– Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

While a Facebook spokesperson maintains that Sandberg did not direct Definers, it now acknowledges that she did in fact request research on Soros following comments he made at the World Economic Forum in January. During a speech, the billionaire said that Facebook and Google were a “menace” to the world and that the “internet monopolies” did not have the will or inclination to protect society.

In an interview with CBS This Morning two days after the Times story revealed Definers’ work for Facebook, Sandberg doubled down on her earlier denial, noting that Definers was one of “lots of firms” hired by the social networking giant.

Last week, Facebook’s outgoing head of communications and policy Elliot Schrage published a note taking blame for the hiring of Definers in 2017. In it, Schrage also confirmed that Facebook had hired Definers to investigate Soros and its competitors, noting that the firm “helped us respond to unfair claims where Facebook [has] been singled out for criticism.”

In an addendum to that note, Sandberg also had a small update, noting that while she “didn’t remember a firm called Definers,” her team later found evidence that its work was “incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced.”

Eddie Vale, a spokesperson and consultant for Freedom From Facebook, said that in light of Sandberg’s shifting positions, Facebook could not be trusted on the matter. He also told BuzzFeed News that no money from Soros directly or indirectly had been used to fund the coalition’s work.

“In light of Sandberg’s continuously changing story on the Soros research there’s no way their denials about attacking other critics can be taken at face value,” he said. “Facebook must immediately release any emails about, and the research itself, targeting the Freedom From Facebook coalition or any member organizations.”

Sandberg, who manages Facebook’s communications team among other responsibilities, has come under immense pressure since the Times story, which depicts the 49-year-old as a fulcrum for poor decisions and infighting. In a Bloomberg News report, unnamed sources placed the blame for Facebook’s recent woes at the feet of Sandberg, who they say prioritized her own personal brand and entrusted the wrong people, among them Schrage and Facebook vice president of public policy Joel Kaplan.

– Sheryl Sandberg Emailed Staff To Conduct Research On Billionaire George Soros: While Facebook maintains that Sandberg was not directly involved in a public relations firm’s opposition research on Soros, it now acknowledges that she did in fact request research on the billionaire.

[H]ours ago I sat in a meeting with this woman and said “I don’t believe that the Definers went rogue, someone in your department knew something.” And the whole time it was her.

– Brandi Collins

Drunken Stick

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 01:38:17 GMT

Árbol de lana, the silk floss tree, also known as palo borracho, drunken stick
🦠🌵🌴

In Bolivia, it is called toborochi, meaning “tree of refuge” or “sheltering tree.”¹

Legend of the Toborochi Tree

When the world was still very new, the Aña, or spirits of the darkness, liked to abuse and murder humans. Then they found out that Araverá, the beautiful daughter of cacique Ururuti, who had married the god Colibri (Hummingbird), was pregnant and would give birth to a son. The spirits believed the son would punish them when he grew up, so they decided to kill Araverá.

With the help of a flying seat her husband Colibrí had given to her, Araverá fled from the village, but the evil spirits followed her and harassed her wherever they found her hiding.

Tired, she decided to hide in the trunk of a Toborochi tree where she gave birth to her son in peace. The boy grew up and fulfilled the prophecy, killing the spirits and avenging his mother, who had to stay inside the tree until she died.

Forever buried in the amphora-shaped trunk of a Toborochi, Araverá likes to come outside in the shape of a beautiful flower that attracts hummingbirds, that way, she keeps contact with her husband. This legend is from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

– BoliviaBella.com

Thanks to Karen Clark’s excellent article for SF Gate Home Guides on trees “with the spiky bark,” I was able to track this one down. I searched “tree spiky bark.”

BoliviaBella.com via Ceiba speciosa on Wikipedia, see also Ceiba chodatii on Wikipedia, which is what I believe this specimen in the photo to be: “Another tree of the same genus, Ceiba chodatii, is often referred to by the same common names.” – Ceiba speciosa on Wikipedia ↩↩

Urban Buddha

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 06:50:06 GMT

Urban Buddha by Tashi Norbu, a sculpture made of plastic waste reclaimed from the Ocean.

Front side of brochure from Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art

Back side of brochure from Museum of Contemporary Tibetan Art

Earth’s Elements flyer for Tashi Norbu event

Earth’s Elements sticker

Stumbled on this in Encinitas and had to document it. Together we can save our oceans, seas, and the rest of the planet. Ditching plastic by using as little as you can is a start.

🕉☸️💠🗑🌊

Video in this Facebook post from United Nations For a Free Tibet shared by Tashi Norbu

Happy Rock

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 06:14:32 GMT

Uses the B&W Antique filter from Flare Effects

Kiefer

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 06:03:09 GMT

Kiefer (plushie, book) from Naughty Naughty Pets

Ayanna Pressley

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 23:23:00 GMT

Rep.-elect Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., listens during a news conference with members of the Progressive Caucus in Washington, Monday, Nov. 12, 2018.
(Photo source: Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

After the interview, Pressley was asked about the role of identity politics in the race. Her reply, which she has often repeated on the campaign trail, is that it's a charge that only seems to be lobbed at women and people of color. “It’s right out of the GOP handbook,” she said. “Yes, I am black and a woman, and unapologetically proud to be both. But that is not the totality of my identity.”

– Nicole Werbeck, ‘Nothing Was Off Limits’: Intimate Photos From Ayanna Pressley’s Campaign, NPR

In the car headed to her next event, Pressley pulls an old silver dollar out of her pocket. “A gentleman just gave this to me and told me it brought him a lot of luck in his life and that he wanted to pass it on to me in the final stretch of our campaign,” she said.
(Photo source: Meredith Nierman/WGBH)

Pressley greets a small group of residents at Leventhal House, a senior living center in Brighton.
(Photo source: Meredith Nierman/WGBH)

“Activists and agitators have brought us to this very moment,” Pressley told cheering supporters Tuesday night. “None of us ran to make history. We ran to make change … and change is on the way.”

“Can a congresswoman wear her hair in braids? Rock a black leather jacket?” she added — and the crowd roared.

Democrat Ayanna Pressley gives her victory speech at an election night party after being elected to represent Massachusetts’ 7th congressional district, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Boston.
(Photo source: Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)

From the outset, Pressley made clear that she meant serious business, telling voters before she sent Capuano packing that she viewed the race as “a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our democracy.”

– William J. Kole, Pressley officially Massachusetts’ 1st black congresswoman, AP

Happy 25th BBEdit

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 22:11:00 GMT

Update 4 April 2019: The title of John Gruber’s roundup post, BBEdit Returns to the Mac App Store, says it all. Includes links to @pschiller’s tweet and the App Store features on BBEdit (my fav: “BBEdit: A Writer’s Secret Weapon”).

Update 4 December 2018: 25th Anniversary BBEdit merch has landed!

Hey, how about a new T-shirt? We've got a 25th Anniversary design, a refresh of the classic, and more goodies for you on the brand new store: https://merch.barebones.com

– @bbedit 9:04 4 Dec 2018

BBEdit: Friend to Markdowners Everywhere

Live Preview
- “Preview in BBEdit” command to preview your HTML, Markdown, and Textile code under construction. Automatically updates as the code is changed! You can also use a local preview server for preview of code generated by PHP, Perl, includes and so on; and select alternative page templates and CSS when previewing document fragments
with WebKit Inspector
- New in BBEdit 12: BBEdit preview windows now include access to the powerful WebKit Inspector, so that you can inspect the runtime behavior of your page, debug JavaScript on the fly, and more. ¹

🅱️🅱️✍️

BBEdit <3s ✍︎

It (still) doesn't suck.™

The professional’s choice for over twenty-five years (and counting).

In addition to its unmatched ability to process and operate on insanely large files smoothly, without missing a beat, BBEdit comes well-configured out of the box and is easy to customize to your liking. I also like Sublime Text and VS Code for general text and code editing, and am digging Slugline and Highland 2 for screenplays.

Current version is BBEdit 12.6.3 (412068, 2019-04-04). BBEdit 12 is 64-bit ready and offers over a hundred feature additions, changes, and refinements. Head over to the Release Notes Archive for copious detail.↩↩

Ascomycota

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 02:38:26 GMT

Truffles

Familiar examples of sac fungi include morels, truffles, brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast, dead man’s fingers, and cup fungi.

– Ascomycota on Wikipedia

Literal Streetart

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 05:44:37 GMT

Prescolite

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 01:42:48 GMT

Antisocial Media

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 16:33:47 GMT

Can we all just start calling it antisocial media?

Maybe terminology matters. Maybe words still mean something.

Tomatillos?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:49:20 GMT

Eagle

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:37:44 GMT

Hotcactus Cooler

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 22:11:20 GMT

Shot at Cactus Store LA

Being Awake

Sat, 18 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Jenny Sowry’s 22-month-old daughter proudly displays the sign she made at the Women’s March in Charlotte, North Carolina on 21 Januany 2017.
(Photo source: Jenny Sowry)

Deep down people know some aspects of the way they are living are wrong. As we go about our business we have moments where an acute awareness of the distateful nature of the activity or behavior takes hold. Moments that in their most benign form amount to a psychic wince, a mental flinch over whatever malevolent impulse we have succumb to. The way people use the word mindfulness seems intended to contradict the willful blindness to these moments of acute awareness. That one might avoid malevolent impulses altogether by describing and practicing focused concentration, contemplation, and introspection.

Literal and semantic meaning of mindfulness work both for and against this noble interpretation of the admittedly imperfect term. Positively, we have connotations of fullness of mind, psychic wholeness, mental completion, the state of having traversed the inner void. Negatively, we have the state of being full of mind, suggesting a cacophony of the kind of nagging inner voices meditation and attention to spirit quiet and quell.

Maybe “being awake” is a more apt way to verbalize the positive side of mindfulness. People already use “woke” to signify an awakened sense of compassion for all, an alert recognition of our obligation to defend and support our fellow beings.

One Cool Cat

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 07:24:23 GMT

🌭🍔✌️😸🕶

Geeks Bearing GIFs

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

(Image source: Belarr)

From phrases.org.uk

What’s the meaning of the phrase ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts?’

Don’t trust your enemies.

What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts?’

An allusion to the story of the wooden horse of Troy, used by the Greeks to trick their way into the city. It is recorded in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 2, 19 BC:

Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.

Of course that English version is a translation. Another translation, by John Dryden, has “Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.”

The same thought was also recorded by Sophocles (496 - 406 BC), in Ajax:

Nought from the Greeks towards me hath sped well. So now I find that ancient proverb true, Foes’ gifts are no gifts: profit bring they none.

The Classics are no longer widely taught or read, so this phrase is now little used, although it was resurrected in a sideways reference during a 1990s copyright dispute. There was considerable discussion then, in Internet chat rooms etc., regarding the company Compuserve, which owned the copyright to the GIF image format, and their possible intentions to restrict its use. Some people feared that they might be taken to law by Compuserve if they received and viewed GIF images without permission. The phrase “beware of geeks bearing gifs” was coined to sum that up.

Netlif-Yeah

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

(Image source: Press | Netlify)

Update 25 February 2018: If you are having trouble with Netlify the answer is very often “Retry deploy” with “Clear build cache” checked.

According to the web UI, I have been publishing projects from GitHub with Netlify for 4 months now (since 24 Oct. 2017), including this site.

Odds are high I will write more about this soon. At this point, I can recommend them to anyone looking to host static sites with them, whether open source or private repos:

This free plan can be used on personal and commercial projects (even with private code)

some of the features included in the new, free Bronze plan:

HTTPS with Custom Domains and Domain Aliases

Let’s Encrypt and Custom HTTPS certificates

Continuous Deployment

Instant Cache Invalidation and Atomic Deploys

Deploy Previews and Deep Git Integration

Branch-Based Split Testing

CDN-Level Proxying

GeoIP and Language-Based Redirects

Integrated DNS hosting

Prerendering

Asset Acceleration

JavaScript Snippet Injection

Form Processing

Redirect and Rewrite Rules

Custom HTTP Headers

Client-Side Routing Support

Teams

full details […] plans and pricing page

To the entire Netlify (OSS) crew, thank you.

Credits

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

In happy far-away land (1902)
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Welcome to the new rdela.com. I will be your host, Ricky de Laveaga.

I began developing this site with GatsbyJS by running a:

git clone

…of gatsby-starter-blog¹, the Gatsby starter for creating a blog (demo), which has Typography.js bundled, whose demo playground is a fun way to noodle out a prototype design.

Anyhoo, as of this post I am using a modified version of the GitHub theme. After much staring at the screen and tweaking CSS, had to include the inimitable trio of Source Serif by Frank Grießhammer, Source Sans by Paul D. Hunt, and Source Code Pro by Paul D. Hunt and Teo Tuominen. All 3 are part of the Adobe Originals series.

Typefaces makes including NPM packages for open source typefaces and self-hosting webfonts significantly easier. Library author Kyle Mathews explained the motivations in January 2017.

Though the git clone example above hardly does it justice, gatsby-remark-prismjs (docs, on GitHub) makes adding “syntax highlighting to code blocks in markdown files” using Prism a drop-in affair with a line in gatsby-config.js and another in layouts/index.js. I have settled on a slight variation the “prism.js tomorrow night eighties” theme, itself based on Tomorrow Theme.

I cannot neglect to issue a hearty thanks to all of the Gatsby GitHub people along with all of the reactjs.org authors and contributors. For solid examples of common patterns in Gatsby and React, the reactjs.org repo and gatsbyjs.org code are both superb open learning resources in the wild. bricolage.io by Kyle Mathews (repo) is maybe less generally useful while also being more approachable and especially helpful to me in putting this together.

UPDATE 20 November 2019: I have been using Algolia search since 24 July 2019 via gatsby-plugin-algolia, thanks to the excellent example by Janosh Riebesell that has become part of the Gatsby docs. I don’t think either article has been updated for changes React InstantSearch made in v6 to adopt React 16.3+’s Context API, but Janosh’s repo and this one have been updated, in case that helps intrepid folks trying to make the switch.

As an instant bonus for reading all the way down, I give you the…

Links Page 🔗📄

Having already installed gatsby-cli, One could run: gatsby new mySite https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-blog …in the terminal instead of a git clone of the gatsby-starter-blog repo like I did, which then needs to be followed by a yarn or npm i before running gatsby develop for the first time. The Gatsby Docs start with the gatsby new command which takes care of this initial package install. (For more on git and cloning, see git-clone docs.) The source of the gatsby new command is split between create-cli.js and init-starter.js in the Gatsby repo.↩↩