justing.net/interesting-links

The Neighborhoods

2025-02-15T07:30:00-08:00

This newsletter has everything. It takes on a single topic: an ongoing photo survey of the whole big apple, one neighborhood at a time. Check out this recent edition of Averne in Queens. The photos, those are where it’s at for me. There are words and historical exploration too. It forces the author to find the interesting and relevant in the random collection of scenes that make up a particular place. The photos engage in close looking, turning these everyday details into fascinating subjects. It’s an inspiring project: the scope is hugely ambitious and the author’s regular updates make the effort required visibly accessible. And it’s got a back catalog–reference photos from a decade ago. The author has been putting in the work for quite some time. Can’t wait for the book; I assume there is a book. Please, let there be a great big book!

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

CalFire Incidents Page

2025-01-14T07:15:00-08:00

Due to the recent massive wildfires in LA, I found and am adding the CalFire Incidents Page.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

NASA Blog for Artemis

2024-09-27T19:50:00-07:00

NASA’s plans to send people to the moon again still boggle my mind. It feels like this just doesn’t get enough coverage in the mainstream media. Progress toward this goal has some amount of the air of slow inevitability, it’s happening and it will take time. Every day is a day closer. I follow NASA’s own feed so I don’t miss out on the minutia of progress.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Spaceflight Now

2024-09-24T07:00:00-07:00

We are entering a golden era of spaceflight, there are so many launches now. What an exciting time! Spaceflight Now has good coverage. Also check out the YT livestream: Launch Pad Live.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Space Weather Live

2024-09-17T07:00:00-07:00

This one is pretty focused on only one topic: space weather. During period of high solar activity that can mean aurora borealis at lower altitudes. Right now we’re in the part of the solar cycle when the chances are higher that the sun will produce solar flares. That period will likely continue for the next few years, and then there will be years of quiet time for the sun. I added several other related links back in May, but those webpages don’t check themselves; this one does.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Geostationary Banana Over Texas

2024-09-13T07:00:00-07:00

It’s Friday, why not have a little fun. I forget why I was thinking about this, maybe it’s because I was at KSC last month. So, in keeping with the space theme, here’s another internet space thing. The link at the bottom is to an article about that plan, er “plan”, to put a giant banana in the sky over Texas. It would have been so cool if this was ever real.

This gag is from the early days. I don’t remember exactly how early (the tab at the top suggests 2006, but I feel like it was earlier than that). Thankfully the Wayback machine has a copy. Enjoy!

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Folks Be Programming

2024-09-12T12:00:00-07:00

Folks doing programming and they don’t even know it! I had a couple of reactions to this article^a.

First, a lot of our interaction with computing and programs has a puff of the air of mystery¹ at times. From the interfaces to the software to the hardware to the connections beyond. We don’t know what we’re doing when we make it. We don’t know what we’re doing when we use it. We don’t know who else is using it, or how they’re using it. We don’t use the manuals that aren’t provided with the computers or software we buy. It’s all so new, and also just so so vast. Maybe some practitioners do know in their narrow domain of expertise, but knowing enough is not something we can claim in general.

Second, as this article points out, there is the intended use of the system presented, and then there are the affordances that it actually offers.² We can usually do something else than what the original authors intended. Maybe even the system is so large that our uses may go undetected for a time. Or for a very long time. Or not. These off label uses aren’t very discoverable; they exist as little niches in the desert that you might wander into.

Third, a lot of our current computing systems have a serious discoverability problem.³ How is it supposed to be used? It can be really hard to find that out by looking at it. Sometimes it is even difficult to know what to search for to find out. There is no common keywords or language to describe it. Everything is jargon. At times there is just an unending wash of these unknowable interface questions and you just give up and move on with your day. Maybe you discover a new hidden user interaction and share it with a friend. Maybe you’ve known some of these since forever and are shocked that your friend hadn’t a clue. We’re all little lost tribespeople wandering around the computer wastelands knowing our little pieces of discovered computer knowledge.

Fourth, you see, I thought the author of the article was going the direction of this oral tradition of collectively collected how-to-use-its. The modern folklore of computing. Maybe some of the myths of what you could or couldn’t used to be able to do. Things are still a little too churny right now, the broth is always mixing, so we haven’t really got a solid traditional base to build on yet. Maybe we never will get there for one reason or another. I don’t know. One reason: our great wave of culture recedes before we can establish a stable priesthood of the tablet. Another: it’s not in the interests of the corps to allow their product to stagnate, it must always be new, always novel. But maybe we’ll reach a time when we share common compute practice in the ritual uses of our pocket computers.

Fifth, I think I would have chosen the word “vernacular” instead of folk for the idea here. But maybe that’s just because I’ve seen it used that way, e.g. vernacular architecture, or vernacular photography, or maybe even vernacular culture which I just found but am still a little skeptical of. I suppose contrariwise there are folkways, folk songs, folk dancing, and even folk etymology. Syllabically, I think you’d want a word like folk to pair up with some other short word if you want it to catch on, and neither program or computer is that. I think they’re not even in the same linguistic family, but I’m no expert.

Sixth and last for now, as the user of these programs and devices, we have the option to use them in any way we can think of. Provided we can think of those ways. And those unexpected ways, the creative divergent sideways thinking ways, are out there for us all to find and use. The surface area of program interfaces is enormous and growing as fast as we can develop new interfaces. So keep plugging away, exploring and discovering the human uses of these machines. Whether you want to call it folk programmers or vernacular computing, it doesn’t matter what you call it. Just use it to be good humans. Please.⁴

Nietzche (caveat emptor on that guy): “We once more behave as we have always behaved, namely mythologically.” Note the context is a bit different, he was referring to our explanations of why something happened. Only some overlap with my point here which is about how we work with these still relatively new and under development computing devices. The Syntopicon, Vol. 1, 2nd ed., p 127(d). The corresponding page in the 1st ed., 162(b), is missing the quote but otherwise the same. The (d) and (b) indicate which quadrant of the page the quote appears in. ↑
I know it’s not the topic here, it reminds me of Gwern’s article on Seeing Through, which I got via Henrik’s article on being perceptive. I didn’t find either of those article to be very helpful to me in particular. Maybe someday I’ll write my own version in response so we can have a dialogue instead of my random footnote complaining about it. ↑
Here is an example of exactly what I mean. Hidden stuff secreted behind every corner. I’m not really sure what this guy is talking about with “continuity”, the only reference I could find that in settings was about the camera and tv. But, I happen to have learned about the universal clipboard in the late recentness, and there is a findable manual for that, if you know where to search for it. Hint: it’s not on the device itself. I used the feature to get all these links into this page right here! ↑
If you are introducing some of your knowledge to someone you know, make it fun and special. One of today’s lucky ten k. No one should feel bad for getting to learn something new. ↑

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Ars Technica Science Coverage

2024-09-10T07:00:00-07:00

Ars Technica has good science coverage that includes NASA and other spaceflight missions. I appreciate that they keep it pretty focused on only the bigger news items that are credible. For example, the Polaris Dawn launch earlier today. So, there are only a few updates per week instead of multiple catchy but less likely posts per day.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

NASA Blog for the ISS

2024-09-03T07:00:00-07:00

NASA has some cool blog posts about what’s happening up on the ISS. It turns out they have a feed for only those topics, and this is it. There are lots of pictures and science updates, as well as details about crew changes. For example, the Boeing Starliner issues.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

ISS Photo

2024-08-24T07:30:00-07:00

Mostly I’m sharing it for the very cool image of the space station taken by another satellite.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Iphone Photography Awards

2024-08-23T08:00:00-07:00

It’s been a minute since I’ve shared a link. iPhone pictures have the potential to be quite democratic, or at least more democratic than specialized cameras. Also, they’re good pictures in there. Check the past 17 years of winners.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

CDC Waste Water Covid Trends

2024-07-18T14:45:00-07:00

I’m adding the link to the CDC Waste Water Covid Trend data page because we’re currently in the summer wave, and I had Covid. Waste water is best indicator because a lot of tests are not reported. Via Your Local Epidemiologist.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Hurricane Monitoring and Forecasts

2024-06-19T22:00:00-07:00

Adding in the National Hurricane Forecast Center website, because it’s going to be an active season this year.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Adding More Fire Related Links

2024-06-16T21:00:00-07:00

Two useful links for fire season this year:

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Beaches

2024-05-17T17:00:00-07:00

The California Coastal Commission has produced two very useful resources: an app (also available as a web app), and the guide books. Unfortunately, the app is iOS only, and looking a little out of date. It is still functional and the information is current, just a little bare-bones and kind of old fashioned; it could use a refresh. Perfection functional still though, for now.

As a back up, the Commission has added scans of the guidebooks to the Internet Archive! And, those are deep linkable.

One other feature is the GIS California Coastal Trail (CCT) Map Viewer.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Adding Space Weather Link

2024-05-10T20:30:00-07:00

Add a link to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center main page, where you can find updates about the aurora and other interesting spacey things.

Maybe also of interest is spaceweatherlive.com which also has an RSS feed.

And this, realtime aurora photos.

Amendment, after the storm

Added 24MAY12SUN

The main SWPC page was, at one point, hugged to death, so I did find it useful having the spaceweatherlive.com page. So, I’m making ~~two~~ three changes:

Adding the swl link to the Interesting Links page.
Also adding the Aurora Forecast SWPC page too.
Additionally adding the Solar Dynamics Observatory data page with the latest views of the sun.

This is relevant because we’re entering the ~4 years of maximum activity in the solar cycle/live.

Just some reminder context: forecasts for Friday night’s aurora were for them to extend as far south as central Oregon latitudes. But in the morning, they had been reported as far south as Modesto. Here are some pretty from around the world.

Info on the colors of aurorae.

Added 24MAY18SAT: Aurorasaurus.org looks pretty useful for getting the most up to date and latest status of the aurora in the night sky right now.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

NASA's small solar sail mission

2024-05-06T08:00:00-07:00

In my April Facts and Ideas post, I mentioned NASA’s solar sail demonstrator had launched. I got rather fed up with the coverage being intentionally sensational, saying things like “it’s deployed” in the headline and then reading on to find that the event was separation from the launch vehicle. So I went to the source, and so can you.

Note that this feed is for all of NASA’s small satellites, so there may be some other interesting things that aren’t about solar sails included as a bonus.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Beautiful Marine Species

2024-04-13T08:50:00-07:00

Colossal shared (source) some cool new photos of recently discovered marine life down in the deep. I’m impressed with the clarity of the water in these photos, or maybe I’m a little sus that there has been some editing to remove all the floaties. Anyway, why I am sharing it here: the patters and shapes are really cool and are something that I would like to include in some future artworks.

Additional links:

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Forest Fire Outlook

2024-04-11T00:00:00-07:00

I’m adding a link to the NICC’s Forest Fire Outlook (forecast) Page in a new National section.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Upcoming Eclipses and Locations

2024-04-09T07:30:00-07:00

Atlas Obscura has kindly curated a list (Internet Archive, just in case) so we can make our future travel plans now.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

APOD

2024-04-08T07:30:00-07:00

I’ve followed the Astronomy Picture of the Day blog and site since, well since I don’t remember when. Recommended just for the pictures. Recommended for the text too.

Be safe looking at the eclipse today.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Craig Mod's Newsletters

2024-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve followed Craig’s newletters since before it was cool. Well, I always thought it was cool. I find, a little bit, that early on I possibly wouldn’t want to admit that I read them for the text, just the photos. They’re that sort of exotic but mundane slice of life document stuff that I particularly like. Not so flashy but still full of visual interest. The text, to me, and I don’t know how much of this is me and how much is some objective truth, was kind of precious? I’m not sure. Nowadays I read and enjoy the honesty, the truth that Craig conveys.

I’m happy to share this with you all.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Daily Reports from Unknown Places

2024-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

I think Ninn Salaün’s daily reports from unknown places is my new favorite blog. I can’t wait for each day’s beautiful painting and text to show up in my feed. On the one hand I hope they’re not AI generated, either text or images. But on the other hand, they’re so good (for me anyway) that it would be quite impressive if they turn out to be.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Simple Sites

2024-03-09T00:00:00-08:00

I’m always drawn to these simple plain site designs. Here are some sources of inspiration that I recently came across.

Via hackernews ↑ ↑²

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Earth's full disk

2024-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

I’m adding the GOES-West page to the weather section. Note that there are many other weather related satellite links at at the top.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Adams' Absurd Tech

2024-02-21T00:00:00-08:00

This resonated. The idea is that today’s tech makes more sense when considered from a Douglas Adams universe than it does from a Star Trek one. Adams world is both more ridiculous and a bit sad, a bit more out of our control. That feels much more accurate, and that feeling has been building for a while now.

A friend of mine and I¹ have both noted this absurd or weird or ridiculous feeling for some time. I don’t think that’s an original observation, and even some rather old tech can give that feeling. But lately things have escalated, and I’m not really talking about the latest trends in AI.² Just off the top of my head: mysterious bulk items from Amazon,³ unending robocalls,⁴ even flashes of the total perspective vortex.⁵ The list could go on. It probably should go on.

Anyway. It’s Douglas Adams’ world now.

Actually a few friends. ↑
The latest is Sora. But I think Rene has it more right: where’s the feeling. ↑
It’s been a while, but I’ve received these. My one weird theory is that it’s distributed garbage disposal. Can it really be cheaper to ship it out than to dispose of it themselves? Are they shipping tracers? ↑
I get these too. Who doesn’t? ↑
Aka the internet. Sort of. But also totally not. ↑

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Vesuvius Scroll Grand Prize Awarded

2024-02-05T00:00:00-08:00

As promised in December, the grand prize has been awarded, and the winning entry over delivers! I’m so excited for this!

The text that was revealed is approximately Epicurean, on enjoying life. It’s never before seen ancient text! That’s amazing!

The next prize at the end of this year is now sketched out to be about revealing 90% of all four scrolls that they have scanned, details to be revealed in March. And if that’s successful, they can continue onto the remaining 800 more scrolls. If the 1% estimates are right, almost all of these text will be unknown to us, perhaps not even mentioned in the text we do have.¹

Outside discussions

This, unfortunately, does not imply that they will all be great works. Hopefully not too many will be of the customer complaint variety. ↑

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Mark Horn's Photographs

2024-01-31T00:00:00-08:00

I enjoyed stumbling across Mark Horn’s China photographs via Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr today.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Beautiful Mars

2024-01-22T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve been following the Beautiful Mars tumblr for years and years and years. More than 10 years ago I picked one particularly beautiful image, downloaded the raw tiff, cropped a good section, and sent it to a printer. It came back amazing, so I had it framed and it’s been on my wall ever since.

I should print and frame a couple of more so I can rotate the stock.

Enjoy!

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

News Section Gets Fact Checking Links

2024-01-20T00:00:00-08:00

I added several well known fact checking sites:

FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, begrudgingly included because politics will be especially important this year.
Snopes, ‘a “well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors” on the Internet.’

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Fiber

2024-01-17T00:00:00-08:00

I was recently told by my doctor to eat more fiber. I’ve never considered my fiber intake to be particularly low, but nor have I counted it. So, I found a few USDA sites with good info that’s easy to read. The dietary guideline is 30 g for men my age.

Food Sources of Dietary Fiber is a list of some common foods in two different portion sizes, standard and small. The list is not exhaustive.
PDF Abridged List Ordered by Nutrient Content in Household Measure is 89 pages and doesn’t feel abridged at all. It’s ordered by the amount of nutritional fiber per 100 g, from most to least. “Corn bran, crude” has 79 g of fiber per 100 g, and “Sweeteners, tabletop, fructose, liquid” is tied with about 4 pages of other things for last with 0.1 g of fiber. Popcorn is ranked pretty high with about 14 g per 100 g.
Food Data Central Search

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Bolides and Fireballs

2024-01-15T00:00:00-08:00

I’m adding three new links to the space section related to atmospheric phenomena: meteors and their brightest versions bolides. Some of you may remember the Chelyabinsk bolide over Russia in 2013. We’re coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the event. I acutely rememeber the sureal feeling while watching several of the YT videos linked in the media section of that Wikipedia article. It still feels like watching a SciFi movie today.

Fireball reports, this site compiles the observations and reports from individual spotter members of the AMS Meteor
Bolide detections & Bolides and Fireballs combined

While the AMS Meteors people do have some regular articles on their homepage, the XML document linked under the RSS icon is not an RSS or Atom feed. It would be better to find an enthusiast blog (with RSS/Atom) to follow along the significant events in this space. If you know of one, send me an email (below).

Beyond this, there is the Center for Near Earth Objects at JPL, including close approaches, which could be interesting to try and observe. Note that they have a new feed, which you can find the url of at this page.

The IAU Minor Planet Center also detects and reports Near Earth Asteroids as they are identified. It’s left as an exercise to the reader to interpret the significance of any NEA report, unfortunately.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Receipt Font

2024-01-11T00:00:00-08:00

I enjoy a unique and cooky font. The Receipt Font appears to have quite a few thermal printer fonts available for purchase. I’m a little more dubious about the rest of their web presence, I couldn’t find any about page or other usual ‘we are a real business’ indicators. So, you could say that I’m a non-negligible percent suspicious that this coulb be an elaborate phishing scheme. Or maybe the target demographic is criminals making fraudulant receipt photos? Or something. But I don’t actually know anything. I just thought the fonts were cool.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Some Web Authoring References

2024-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

There are a few things I find myself looking up while authoring this site. Here are some handy references that I sometimes use.

Mozilla CSS is a good general reference.
CSS Tricks Almanac has walkthroughs and deeper details and gotchas.
Can I Use compares browser support for “front end” (css and probably javascript).
Liquid, because Jekyll, but there is also an updated version.
HTML arrows, and other symbols
Markdown, it’s a random choice from many out there.

Revisions

24JAN17WED
added the CSS Tricks and Can I Use references.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Vesuvius Scroll Prize

2023-12-28T00:00:00-08:00

I’m looking forward to the update at the end of the month when the grand prize is announced for virtually unrolling ~~two~~ four tweet length passages from the Herculaneum scrolls. These scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the same eruption that buried Pompeii.

What I’m even more excited about is that if the prize is successful, it indicates that we very likely have the technology to unroll and read the other scrolls. There are more than 1800 more scrolls, and since the main library of the villa they are from has not been discovered yet, there are likely to be many many more scrolls that could be read.

This is a large library of original scrolls of ancient writing. At present only a very small fraction, perhaps 1%, of all ancient western writing has survived by copying to the present day. It is a huge deal. We may find missing works of known great authors. We may find works and authors that have only been mentioned. We will probably find wholly unknown texts and authors. It’s probably true that a lot of it will be not that exciting.

Scanning these scrolls is a lot of work, so even with these advances in virtually unrolling them, this is going to take a long time. Something to look forward to over the coming years.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

updated area ocean links

2023-12-26T00:00:00-08:00

I added links for tide predictions: Santa Cruz and Pt. Arena, and reorganized that section.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

updated waves

2023-12-26T00:00:00-08:00

While investigating the location of one of the buoys for wave height reports, I found the Scripps pages for them. They’re much better, they include a short forecast. This is right after I updated tides. Note that the wave forecast and tide forecasts aren’t in the same places for Cape Mendocino.

Santa Cruz waves, tides, & area wx
Cape Mendocino waves, Point Arena tides, & area wx

Also added the SF Bar station. The idea is that the Santa Cruz waves are in the shelter of Monterey Bay, whereas the SF peninsula coast waves are probably better represented by the SF Bar station. It makes sense to also include the area forecast too.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

The Hofmann Wobble

2023-12-24T00:00:00-08:00

A friend sent me a link to Ben Lerner’s story in Harper’s this morning, and it’s a striking complement to the Borges and AI article I linked to yesterday. I suppose I should be skeptical of this text at all levels, but I still want to quickly comment on one aspect that I think is useful. Instead of a machine putting out texts that maybe are useful or manipulative or just wrong, we have a human doing it in almost the same context of authoritative source.

It’s a lucky conjunction of ideas.

Also, it reminded me of the Chinese Wikipedia editor that made up a lot of Russian history.

Adendum: Outside Discussions

Section added 24JAN20SAT

Mefi discussion.
Hacker News discussions: first, second.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Borges and AI

2023-12-23T00:00:00-08:00

I found the Borges and AI article to be helpful for thinking about what it is that these LLMs are. Or at least one way of thinking about them, by analogy. I appreciate that the article is non-technical and short. I suppose an analogy of the analogy can be also applied to the other ML models too. It makes thoughts more specific and concrete than does just daydreaming about the space of possibilities. The stories give a literary model to push and pull on, something to conrast our reality against, something to compare the near possibilities too.

My interpretation is that, like the situations in Borges’ stories, these computer programs grant us access to arrangements of letters: texts. These texts might be fantastically useful, deviously misleading, or just gibberish in which we see what we want to see. We don’t know which of these the texts are, and can’t trust the texts to tell us honestly. We have to decide that for ouselves.

Always has been / Same as it ever was.

Via MetaFilter.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Bird Weather

2023-12-21T00:00:00-08:00

I’m not a birder per se, even if I am a fan of our feathery friends. But this is pretty cool: BirdWeather.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

added mainstream news sources

2023-12-21T00:00:00-08:00

I’m adding several sources to the news section. I made an effort in 2023 to reduce my news intake, and have been pretty successful at that.

Axios is a very current events news source. It is left leaning. I appreciate that they are very efficient and clear in their story delivery.

I expect that Wikipedia’s current events portal is encyclopedic in it’s coverage of ~significant~ notable events around the world. I haven’t quite figured out what the bar is for qualifying to be listed though. Since it’s Wikipedia, I can just search for it.

Slowernews is only updated periodically with relatively significant updates. It’s a mostly one person show, so I suspect that it’s biased in some way. But I appreciate the selectivity and broad but still kinda idiosyncratic nature of it.

I do also still occassionally check on NY Times, The Economist, or other common mainstream sources, as needed. I just don’t see the need to link to them.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Psyche mission

2023-12-20T00:00:00-08:00

Link: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/psyche.

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

added space section

2023-12-19T00:00:00-08:00

See more links on the Interesting Links page.