I've started mounting my bike lights via shock cord.

The previously mentioned Orfos Pro LED flares ship with Velcro One-Wrap for mounting. This works well enough, but lately I’ve decided I prefer using shock cord and cord locks. The cordlocks add a little weight to the system, but this setup mounts to all the things I want to mount the lights to, and makes it very easy to tighten. After tightening the lights don’t move around at all, where with the Velcro they would move a little on a bumpy road. This system is also quick to attach and detach, which I appreciate when parking, and can be more easily manipulated when wearing full-fingered gloves.

Prepare

There’s always a prevailing mystique in any civilization. It builds itself as a barrier against change, and that always leaves future generations unprepared for the universe’s treachery. All mystiques are the same in building these barriers – the religious mystique, the hero-leader mystique, the messiah mystique, the mystique of science/technology, and the mystique of nature itself. We live in an Imperium which such a mystique has shaped, and now that Imperium is falling apart because most people don’t distinguish between mystique and their universe. You see, the mystique is like demon possession; it tends to take over the consciousness, becoming all things to the observer.

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

Link Log 2020-06-30

A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be

I don’t think we’re ever going to get to utopia again by going forward, but only roundabout or sideways; because we’re in a rational dilemma, an either/or situation as perceived by the binary computer mentality, and neither the either nor the or is a place where people can live. Increasingly often in these increasingly hard times I am asked by people I respect and admire, “Are you going to write books about the terrible injustice and misery of our world, or are you going to write escapist and consolatory fantasies?” I am urged by some to do one – by some to do the other. I am offered the Grand Inquisitor’s choice. Will you choose freedom without happiness, or happiness without freedom? The only answer one can make, I think is: No.

The Long Shadow Of The Future

It’s generally a mistake to make long-term forecasts in the midst of a hurricane, but some outlines of lasting shifts are emerging. First, a government or society’s capacity for technical competence in executing plans matters more than ideology or structure. The most effective arrangements for dealing with the pandemic have been found in countries that combine a participatory public culture of information sharing with operational experts competently executing decisions. Second, hyper-individualist views of privacy and other forms of risk are likely to be submerged as countries move to restrict personal freedoms and use personal data to manage public and aggregated social risks. Third, countries that are able to successfully take a longer view of planning and risk management will be at a significant advantage.

Punishing the Innocent

For the ones doing the mobbing, ruining the lives of innocent people is not a bug in their program, it’s an essential feature. There can be no reign of terror when only the guilty are punished.

Hardcore UFOs

In his 2018 book New Dark Age, James Bridle identifies the conspiracy theory as an essential coping mechanism of late modernity. He writes, “Surrounded by evidence of complexity, the individual, however outraged, resorts to ever more simplistic narratives in order to regain some control over the situation.” Bridle’s observation has proven especially useful lately, with even the most composed of us experiencing a prolonged sense of collective powerlessness in the face of a global pandemic.

Wireless is a trap

I want my tools to be predictable – to have consistent performance and fail in ways that I understand. Wireless protocols are inherently more complex (because many devices share the same airspace) and have more different ways to fail, so they’re much less predictable than wires. For me, the convenience often isn’t worth that cost.

So this is the famous JavaScript

Link Log 2020-06-14

Stochastic Resonance in Reading

It’s when the current environment lies outside the scope of your attention, when you neither seek nor expect any connection to it, that you make room for random resonances to form.

How Google Docs became the social media of the resistance

“Hyperlinks are the most succinct and quickest way to access things, and you can’t do that on Facebook or Twitter.”

Garbage Language: Why do corporations speak the way they do?

In an environment of constant auditing, it’s safer to use words that signify nothing and can be stretched to mean anything, just in case you’re caught and required to defend yourself.

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (Institute for Media Archaeology, 2009)

Derailleurs - an introduction

Searching Books

ripgrep-all is a small wrapper around ripgrep that adds support for additional file formats.

I discovered it while looking for a program that would allow me to search my e-book library without needing to open individual books and search their contents via Calibre. ripgrep-all accomplishes this by using Pandoc to convert files to plain text and then running ripgrep on the output. One of the numerous formats supported by Pandoc is EPUB, which is the format I use to store books.

Running Pandoc on every book in my library to extract its text can take some time, but ripgrep-all caches the extracted text so that subsequent runs are similar in speed to simply searching plain text – which is blazing fast thanks to ripgrep’s speed. It takes around two seconds to search 1,706 books.

$ time(rga -li 'pandemic' ~/library/books/ | wc -l)
33

real    0m1.225s
user    0m2.458s
sys     0m1.759s

Link Log 2020-06-07

Changing Stripes: a History of Tiger Stripe Camo

While it has been called “tiger stripe camo” unofficially, as the name derives from its resemblance to the stripes on the big cats, it is unique in that the pattern has no name. And unlike OCP, UCP, or the other official camouflage patterns, tigerstripe camouflage is also not really one specific pattern.

The Overmilitarization of American Foreign Policy

U.S. policymakers have many nonmilitary tools at their disposal. But those tools will remain inadequate for the challenges ahead if Washington does not overhaul its outdated national security apparatus. The current structure, established by the National Security Act of 1947—which created the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force (as a separate military service), the CIA, and the National Security Council (NSC)—has outlived its usefulness.

Judoka (Josef Reeve, 1965)

I don’t think Kimura recognizes physical limitations. He just trains us beyond any that happen to come up.

The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think

About Face: Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men.

Oster Classic 76 Maintenance

Last year I mentioned my happiness with the Oster Classic 76 clippers. One of the attributes I called out was its serviceability. Today, after five years of personal use, I decided it was time to remove the faceplate, clean the innards, and replace the grease. I followed the instructions in Oster’s maintenance video (which appears to be straight out of 1998). It’s a simple process. I only cut my hair once every 4-8 weeks, so I suspect performing the deep cleaning every five years is about the right schedule. I lubricate the blade every 3 or 4 uses.

No special tools were needed. Something pokey and scrapey is helpful for cleaning out the small crevices. I used a titanium Norton Universal Cleaning Stick because I had it close to hand, but a flathead screwdriver would work just as well. All parts appear to be in excellent condition, and when reassembled the clippers pur like an angry kitten.

Pocket Shield EDC

I’ve used the Raven Concealment Systems Pocket Shield on and off since 2014. In the past I would outfit it only in specific environments where showing a pocket clip would be inappropriate, such as night clubs and weddings. Towards the end of 2019 I decided I wanted to try never showing a pocket clip, which meant incorporating the Pocket Shield into my everyday carry. For the past few months I have been happy with a setup utilizing two different Blue Force Gear pouches: the Single Pistol Mag Belt Pouch and the Ten-Speed Single Pistol Mag Pouch.

The former pouch has a Velcro strap on the back, intended to be attached to a belt. The latter has Blue Force’s MOLLE strap on the back for attaching to any PALS grid. The pouches have other minor differences, but the attachment method is the only difference that matters. Both work equally well on the Pocket Shield.

I use the Ten-Speed pouch to hold my ASP Key Defender OC (which I carry in addition to my pack mounted OC) and a Fisher 400B Bullet Space Pen (loaded with a fine cartridge and, obviously, a clip because pens without clips are dumb).

The belt pouch is used to secure my Triple Aught Design Dauntless MK3. When attaching the belt pouch, I roll over the top of the lower Velcro loop, which causes the Velcro to stick out a bit from the Pocket Shield instead of sitting flush. This acts as a stop for the knife’s pocket clip, preventing the knife from sitting all the way into the pouch. Increasing the ride height of the knife makes it much easier to deploy than it would be if it were completely inserted. The pouch keeps the knife from wandering around, which it is wont to do when just clipped directly over the top edge of the Pocket Shield.

Lately I’ve also been keeping my Elzetta Alpha on the Pocket Shield, but I’m not entirely convinced that I like it there.