Top 10 Songs That Tell Stories Better Than Books
Some songs are more than just a catchy hook or a beat you can nod along to. They’re stories—self-contained, vivid, and often more emotionally effective than the 400-page novels gathering dust on your nightstand. In just a few verses and a chorus, the right songwriter can conjure entire worlds: doomed lovers, forgotten heroes, apocalyptic visions, […]
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** Franconia Notch **
We went to the Franconia Notch, which is on objectively funny thing to name a region. It was beautiful and the weather was wildly clear. Even on top of Mount Washington, the highest peak in the entire north eastern United States, it was sunny and calm. We could see all the way back to Maine…supposedly…it all looks kinda like green lumpy blurs to me.
While there I started to read two books, Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, by Haruki Murakami.
_Kata … ⌘ Read more
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i went to a rilo kiley concert the other day and it was so special to me... i teared up at some of the songs but when "a better son/daughter" came on, i full on cried. what an amazing experience.
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@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Ten stories or more are already very tall in my books. Not sure at which height I would start calling high rise buildings sky scrapers, but Wikipedia suggests around 150 meters, depending on region.
Oh, I just found https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Pier_17_2018-03_jeh.jpg and this really does not look all that high. I thought that this would be at least 50 or 100 meters up. I was completely wrong. :-D
** A week notes to round out the summer **
I haven’t posted anything remotely resembling week notes since the middle of June! Since then many things have happened including, but not limited to: a trip to Minnesota to visit Isaac, a couple trips to New Hampshire for work, a family trip to Mount Desert Island to revisit our old stomping grounds, a whole heap of bicycle riding, I finished a couple great books, played some games, made some games, and wrote what is probably an unhealthy a … ⌘ Read more
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Speaking of manpages:
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@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz On the one hand, all these programs have a very long history and the technology behind manpages is actually very powerful – you can use it to write books:
https://www.troff.org/pubs.html
I have two books from that list, for example “The UNIX programming environment”:
https://movq.de/v/c3dab75c97/upe.jpg
It’s a bit older, of course, but it looks and feels like a normal book, and it uses the same tech as manpages – which I think is really cool. 😎
It’s comparable to LaTeX (just harder/different to use) but much faster than LaTeX. You can also do stuff like render manpages as a PDF (man -Tpdf cp >cp.pdf) or as an HTML file (man -Thtml cp >cp.html). I think I once made slides for a talk this way.
On the other hand, traditional manpages (i.e., ones that are not written in mandoc) do not use semantic markup. They literally say, “this text is bold, that text over here is italics”, and so on.
So when you run man foo, it has no other choice but to show it in black, white, bold, underline – showing it in color would be wrong, because that’s not what the source code of that manpage says.
Colorizing them is a hack, to be honest. You’re not meant to do this. (The devs actually broke this by accident recently. They themselves aren’t really aware that people use colors.)
If mandoc and semantic markup was more commonly used, I think it would be easier to convince the devs to add proper customizable colors.
HTTP referrers are quite broken, aren’t they?
Because of that recent storm on my blog, I had a peek at them. There’s a lot of garbage in there. For example, https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/disks-virtual.html is supposed to refer to one of my blog posts …
What’s going on here?
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1935344122103308748.html Interesting article on how ChatGPT is rotting your brain 🤣
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About ChatGPT rotting people’s brains, similarly could be said about search engines, and reference books. Oh, also doom scrolling, and mobile devices, and the Internet… :-P
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — First Woman — Dream to Reality https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/21/first-woman-1.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Tag Team https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/14/tag-team.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — The Pink and Black Album https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/07/pink-black.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Movies That Missed the Point of Their Source Material
When adapting books and comics into movies, certain changes must be made to accommodate the new medium. While fans sometimes bristle at plotlines and characters being altered—or even cut out completely—there’s no way for adaptations to be entirely faithful. However, some film adaptations seem to entirely miss the point of their source material. That isn’t […]
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On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Meteorite https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/31/meteorite.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Secret Abilities of Well-Known Animals
As kids, we all learned about the world’s most famous animals from books, TV, video games, or the Rainforest Cafe and its incredibly biodiverse gift shop. However, Big Animal is keeping certain secrets from you, and the animals you’ve known and loved since childhood harbor some weird and obscure secret abilities, features, and effects. Read […]
The post [10 Secret Abilities of Well-Known Animals](https://listverse.com/2025/05/30/10-secret-abilities … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Sówka w świecie dnia https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/24/owl-world.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Groundbreaking & Historical “Firsts” We Witnessed in 2025–So Far!
While we typically perceive history as something we only read about in books, 2025 has already proven that history is happening right before our eyes. Despite economic, political, and social conflicts, this year has brought about incredible events and discoveries unlike anything the world has ever seen. Some leave us hopeful, others uneasy—but one thing […]
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10 Times Governments Banned Colors for Bizarre Reasons
When we think of banned things, we tend to imagine books, political speech, or the occasional controversial cartoon. But throughout history, governments have cracked down on something far stranger: colors. Whether tied to class, ideology, or sheer paranoia, certain shades have been restricted, outlawed, or made dangerous to wear—all because they said too much without […]
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On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 4 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/17/pilogy-4.html #freeculture #bookclub
** My not so pragmatic guide to running background services on macOS **
I self host a lot of stuff — these days, mostly weird little utility scripts and toys that run in the background, but also some web apps like plex, calibre, and a suite of irc things. For a long time I ran such things on a VPS, but being incredibly cheap, and hardly ever leaving my house for realsies, during the height of the pandemic I brought everything on to an aged mac mini I keep on a shelf behind some books.
I tr … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 3 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/10/pilogy-3.html #freeculture #bookclub
Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools
Article URL: https://theorthagonist.substack.com/p/why-reading-business-books-is-a-waste
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43940747
Points: 500
# Comments: 233 ⌘ Read more
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Sometimes things go wrong when buying CDs second-hand. I bought an album quite cheap – but as it turned out, they only checked the cover, not the content, so I got something else instead which is actually much more expensive. 🤣
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@movq@www.uninformativ.de a first edition signed Superman comic book, carefully folded just to fit, but not damaged enough to have lost its value?
Guy Buys GNU Emacs Book From Amazon… Gets “Hitler’s Table Talk” in Disguise
The cover was for “The Org Mode Reference Manual” for Emacs. ⌘ Read more
Fuzzing with Grammars
Not sure if it’s good netiquette to mention them, but the book is apparently co-authored by @vrthra.
On my blog: 0M — Remixed Classrooms https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/04/30m-free-education.html #3#0#million #books #diversity #education
happy free comic book day! my store was out of freebies but i got some of my pulls and also a trade of one of my favorite reads last year!
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 2 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/03/pilogy-2.html #freeculture #bookclub
The Hacker’s Library: Uncovering the Best Books ⌘ Read more
10 Cave Explorers Who Never Made It Out Alive
We all have our hobbies. Some of us come home and go for a run, while others read a book. Still others are a bit more extreme. Maybe you enjoy BMX bike riding or whitewater rafting. But a select few do something that most people consider quite insane: spelunkers, also known as cave explorers. Spelunkers […]
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10 Surprising Legal Gaps That Let Chaos Ensue
We tend to assume that there’s a law on the books for every situation. But legal systems often lag behind reality, leaving major gaps at the worst possible moments. Whether it was due to technological change, moral blind spots, or pure legislative oversight, these are moments when people turned to the law—and the law shrugged. […]
The post [10 Surprising Legal Gaps That Let Chaos Ensue](https://listverse.com/2025/04/27/10-surprising-legal-g … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 1 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/26/pilogy-1.html #freeculture #bookclub
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A visual flow chart diagram that illustrates how two different but very related concepts can lead to system accidents 👌 Media
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These ideas are dr the two books:
- Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems by Sidney Dekker (2011)
- Engineering a Safer World by Nancy Leveson (2011)
The former I haven’t read. The later I haven’t finished reading 😅
10 Comic Book Film Characters Based on Something Else Entirely
The comic book-to-movie adaptation is far from a fine art. In this hero-centric cinematic world, moviemakers and actors are inclined to bend the rules and break away from the source material when bringing characters to the big screen. Indeed, many writers, directors, and stars have all but ignored the comics they are adapting to suit […]
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On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Secrets in the Static https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/19/secrets-static.html #freeculture #bookclub
A threat model for opposing authoritarianism
A decade ago, I published a book on privacy “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.” In the book, and since then, in articles and speeches, I have been dispensing advice to people on how to protect their privacy. But my advice did not envision the moment we are in – where the government would collaborate with a tech CEO to strip-mine all of our data from government databases and use i … ⌘ Read more
10 Great Comic Book Castings Wasted on Bad Scripts
Casting comic book characters onto the big (or small) screen is tricky. Unlike regular novels, these superpowered stories come with vivid illustrations of every plot beat. As such, fans have clear pictures of how the characters should look and act. Maybe that’s why they scrutinize these adaptations so closely. It’s painfully apparent when the wrong […]
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On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Nose Ears, part 3 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/12/nose-ears-3.html #freeculture #bookclub
This book made me a happier person ⌘ Read more
Getting the firmware of a VTech/LeapFrog LeapStart/Magibook
This is a very small blog post about my first reverse engineering project, in which I don’t really reverse engineer anything yet, but I am just getting started! A family member asked me to add additional book data to the LeapStart he bought for his son, this is the starting point here. ↫ leloubil’s blog We’ve all seen toy, child-focused computers like these, and I always find them deeply fascinating. I’m not buyi … ⌘ Read more
Standard Ebooks: liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover
Article URL: https://standardebooks.org
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43599637
Points: 505
# Comments: 106 ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Nose Ears, part 2 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/05/nose-ears-2.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Interesting Stories Behind Famous TV Catchphrases
Catchphrases are common in many TV shows—from Joey asking “How you doin’?” in Friends to McGarrett’s “Book ’em, Danno” in Hawaii Five-O. Some catchphrases have even become so popular that they’ve outlasted the show they originally came from. Being such cultural juggernauts, you might think these catchphrases were expertly crafted for maximum impact. But they’re […]
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5 self-help books that changed my life ⌘ Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net Fully agreed. I’m far more likely to buy such mediums when DRM-free. I never go near Amazon eBooks etc because of their lock-in, and I have a Kobo eReader which needs to have the books side loaded unless directly from the Kobo store. I prefer DRM-free files every time.
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Nose Ears, part 1 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/03/29/nose-ears-1.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Real-Life Crimes Inspired by Fiction
Fictional stories are meant to entertain, provoke thought, or even inspire—but sometimes, they inspire people in the worst way possible. Throughout history, there have been disturbing cases where individuals committed real-life crimes after being influenced by movies, books, TV shows, or even video games. Whether driven by delusions, obsession, or a desire to mimic their […]
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On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Sulphur Nimbus https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/03/22/sulphur-nimbus.html #freeculture #bookclub
The Compressed Book Edition
Image: The Compressed Book Edition. Image by Marie Verdeil and Hugo Lopez.
_The Compressed Edition is available in our bookshop as a [paperback](https://www.lulu.com/shop/kris-de-decker/low-tech-magazine-2007-2021-the-compressed-edition/paperback/product-jeqeevm.html?page=1&page … ⌘ Read more