FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPapaq6y5Zk

This is an incredibly skillful and intriguiing cover of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven by a guy on a street in Vienna. His name is Valter Tessaris an Italian


He has more recordings on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9MQXkIilIW85O5cD-Zzq9g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6buIdQacoM

Very good explanation of various techniques to use in composition of music. The lady is very modest, but plays "Happy birthday" so well.


@besserwisser

This reminds me of something funny I noticed in German and generally Central European ways of eating these days (maybe elsewhere too, but I was not lucky enough to observe it first hand): you take something very unhealthy, like a greasy smoked red-meat sausage, and people have an idea that if they ADD a significant amount of something else what they consider healthy, the negative effects of the unhealthy food gets neutralised.

As if the same sausage _with_ veggies was somehow miraculously less harmful to your body than the same thing _without_ all the greenery around. What a fallacy! When it comes to food, apart from poisons, I guess nobody ever neutralised negative effects of one food by ADDING another - doing that you are probably making the whole setup actually marginally worse. You lessen adverse health impacts of foods only by SUBTRACTING the unhealthy item in the first place.

@pony @piggo @hj

@ic3l9

Very well. In that case: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 + 🍺 🍺 🍺

@pony @piggo

@piggo

German... Until you realise that you created there also something very similar to a traditional Dutch autumn meal: Boerenkoolstamppot met Rookworst - https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boerenkool_(gerecht)

... see, I know my sausage well 😄 .

@pony @hj

@academicalnerd Now that's a bit of an oxymoron there.
1. you need a motivation boost
2. so you imagine yourself being this guy full of "well-defined motivation"
3. .... which you don't have, as the reason to do all this is to gain it
4. ... eeeeehhhh. Anyway... What did we speak about?

😉

@piggo

This clearly is German Christmas Meal.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Gr%C3%BCnkohl+mit+wurst&ia=images&iax=images

@pony @hj

@pony @piggo @ic3l9

You are all spoiling it. I also can't wait for the Mastodon GmbH IPO. 🍿

> When you have connected with your audience, when you have connected with another human being on a deep level through what it is you are sharing, you have made something real hapen at that moment. And it's memorable. And it's something that is very precious.
>
> -- Linda Apple Monson, TEDx talk on Overcoming stage fright, https://youtu.be/sN7gTSKUxm0?t=844

> Music makes you feel feelings. Lyrics make you think thoughts. _Songs make you feel thoughts._
>
> -- Ben Levin citing Yip Harburg in Adam Neely's YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/epqYft12nV4?t=940

> A man wishing to be unhappy finds many ways to prove his course.
>
> -- Hundred Eyes (Marco Polo series, S2:E3)

@pganssle

Why don't you look at "baby names" websites? They have all that. E.g., https://www.behindthename.com/. Although it's probably not free to scrape... But they list also some sources at https://www.behindthename.com/info/copyright

@mazieres @eumiro@fosstodon.org

@brainwane @olamina Thanks a lot. This seems to fall somewhere into the category "slow journalism", I guess.

## Some Answers

There are more of us who want this, even if it's a relatively smaller group of people. Since a couple of years I am exploring answers to this problem. Let me summarise what I found so far and what I am using myself. Maybe others who care about this have other set of tidbits and we might help each other there.

### Slow journalism

One interesting direction here is "slow journalism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_journalism). One of really good sources in this realm is the Dutch outlet De Correspondent (https://decorrespondent.nl/). They however recently cancelled their English edition, so it might be difficult to read for non-Dutch speakers.

Another source in this arena I occasionally check is The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/).

One frustration I have with this department of news is the long form. Typically their stories matter, but I have a great aversion to long form and the only way I can consume it is via text-to-speech conversion and listening to it while comuting. I.e., not optimal.

This is effectively investigative journalism on subjects which (probably) matter in very long run.

### Curated traditional news

One interesting group of world news like this are outlets like Courier International (https://www.courrierinternational.com/). It's in French, but a very useful printed magazine which publishes reprints and summaries of selected important stories from major newspapers and weekly magazines from all around the world. Very useful, though again, not so much for non-French speakers. I would be interested to know about more such.

Another interesting on-line source for European news is VoxEurop (https://www.voxeurop.eu/). These are translations of major news (often local) from all around Europe into other EU languages. It's a volunteer-ran effort, extremely valuable.

Somewhat similar to that, but geared towards culture news is Eurozine (https://www.eurozine.com/).

The value of this kind of news is the selection. They give you only what really matters globally. Besides Courier International, I would be interested in other magazines like this.

### Open source intelligence & foreign policy expertise

This is interesting area of reporting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence). If you are interested in world and foreign affairs with a tilt towards geopolitics, there are several interesting sources here:

- Stratfor (https://stratfor.com/) and (https://geopoliticalfutures.com/) - both started by George Friedman, Stratfor with a bit of a checkered past. Both expensive, but both their business models provide some free articles. I consider most of their analyses very useful, relevant and to the point.
- Foreign Policy (https://foreignpolicy.com/): *the* source of foreign policy news.

All these sources are high quality, authoritative, but expensive. Not for average folk.

### Newsletters, newsfilters and summaries

Over the last few years I discovered that perhaps the best way to get brief summaries and analyses of stuff which really matters are newsletters of selected mainstream media. Depending on the area of interest, different outlets might serve you, but I am sure there are plenty in this category which I did not meet yet and would be really to the point:

- Axios (https://www.axios.com/) and especially their newsletters (https://www.axios.com/newsletters) are a pure gold. They invented and use the concept of "Smart Brevity". Check out their newsletters, it just works. Very short, to the point, context. Good.
- Euractiv (https://www.euractiv.com/): their newsletters are wjhat you need on anything related to European Union and member countries.
- I also speak Slovak and Czech, in this realm DennikN is an important daily newspaper (https://dennikn.sk/ and https://denikn.cz/) and in both countries they provide a newsletter called Newsfilter. The concept is an evening summary of only important stuff which happened put in broader context of currently evolving stories (both faster and slower) together with brief analyses. Absolutely great concept, I wish more newspapers around the world provided this.

### Wikipedia

Last but not least news source is Wikipedia. Perhaps surprisingly present in my list, but totally useful. Most people don't know, but Wikipedia provides Current Events portal(s): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_events I think this is a perfect source of breadcrumbs-style news, bits and pieces placed in larger context of unfolding stories. It's especially useful to check on latest status of e.g., slowly unfolding wars, conflicts around the world, or the pandemic.

@olamina

@niconiconi Well, such a debugger would indeed sometimes be useful, but you already have all the tooling needed:
- https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Boxes#framebox_and_fbox
- https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/using-a-luatex-callback-to-parse-typeset-paragraphs/mzbpwxtjshsj

@piggo Come on! These are plants. They are sturdier than you think. Unless it will be freezing, they'll be perfectly alright.

@kensanata I see. In the case this is all computer work, maybe you could look at one of the solutions which log window titles. Afterwards you can perform rule-based analysis of what is what. I do not know about equivalents for Windows and Mac, but I guess there are such (sometimes quite spooky) programs. For Linux some people around me use arbtt and I know ulogme is also useful:
- http://arbtt.nomeata.de/#what
- https://github.com/karpathy/ulogme
- https://github.com/abyrd/window-title

But I guess you knew about such already.

# Is Success Luck or Hard Work?

Video by Veritasium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I


Very nice explanation of something I always knew well: huge part of our successes and generally ending up where we end up (be it well off, or not so well off) is due to coincidence. You can call it luck, or just a chance.

This is true in many professions too. For instance getting a professorship and generally success in academic environment is only partially due to one's skill, I claim that besides that, perhaps the single most important factor is the choice of the mentor. Partly already an MSc. thesis advisor, but most importantly PhD. advisor. Germans call that fittingly "Doktorvater".

In essence, we shall be aware of the role luck plays in our lives. Partly this should tone down the implicit feeling of entitlement many have - it all could have been very different if not for a series of small events here and there. Sometimes they are very hard to even identify.

So you cannot "get lucky", right? Because that is the precise definition of luck:

> **luck**
> 1. events that are beyond control and seem subject to chance; fortune
> ...
>
> -- [The free dictionary](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/luck)

But the thing is, _luck can partly be engineered_. You cannot predict what exactly will happen to you in life, but you certainly can increase your chances of getting lucky. We call this sometimes "serendipity":

> **serendipity**
> 1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
> 2. good fortune; luck.
>
> -- [The free dictionary](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/serendipity)

The keyword is _aptitude_. So how can one engineer a bit of luck? Change your context! There are geographical and social localtions where opportunities are more abundant than elsewhere. Moving to a larger, more vibrant city is an obvious one. If you want to eventually bump into somebody who can help you to move where you want to be, what is the likelihood of that happening in a remote village of 600 people? And conversely, what is the likelihood that the same will happen in New York? Another idea is to constantly build one's social networking. Knowing many people, even if casually as in being on a talking basis extends ones abilities. If you mess with the world a lot, you'll develop needs to find out about something, or to get somewhere, for instance getting your next job. A broad social network is useful for this. You pull it and it tends to respond. You still need to be qualified for the next job, sure, but the network can tell you that such a job even exists. Job boards are always only second-best option to employers. Smart people tend to have smart friends. Is it fair? Perhaps not. Does it work like this? Sure.

## Other interesting tidbits from the video

I really like the initial remarks on egocentric bias: how people remember what they did, but obviously do not what others did (because they don't see it). In turn, we overestimate our share of anything: amount of chores we do at home, contribution to professional successes at work, but also the blame for the amount of arguments we have. Very to the point.

@kensanata I don't even want to know anything about your intended purpose for the time tracking app. But the way you put it makes it sound like you are trying to resolve some relationship beef with an app just to prove some point. Sounds quite aggravating in itself to me ;-p.

@kensanata Well, how about a plain spreadsheet? Worked fine for me in the past. It's all in the resolution you need. If you go 1hour-15min, spreadsheet might work just fine.

As for Toggl, there's also Clockify, but it's not offline either.