New Macbook Air

hello, handsome.

(the last of the Intel Macs; if it serves me well for 2 years I'll be pleased.)

Now, two hours of set-up fiddling! App downloads! Key-speed tweaks! Shell aliases! Weird terminal font selections!

A bit of CSS

n.t.s./reminder to use this CSS bit from Monica D. the next time I make something.

* {box-sizing: border-box}
[hidden] {display: none !important}
[disabled] {pointer-events:none; opacity: 0.3}
.horizontal {display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: space-between}
.vertical {display: flex; flex-direction: column}
.center {justify-content: center; align-items: center}
.flex {flex: 1}
html {
  --spacing-xs: 8px;
  --spacing: 24px;
  --spacing-s: 12px;
  --spacing-m: 36px;
}

Ubuntu audio-out picker

Another little note-to-self that might help a web search. Ubuntu 20.04 (and previous, I gather) has no quick way to switch audio outputs (e.g., speakers to headphones.) You have to drill 3 layers down into settings. Irritating!

There are tons of Gnome shell extensions that purport to fix this but none of them could see any outputs other than the built-in speaker on Mac mini. (Yes.)

But wait! This one did!

That's it, that's the post. Use that extension. I tried to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review but I'm locked out of whatever account you must have, to leave a review... because of course.

[UPDATE: An hour later I've realized I linked to one of the crummy ones, not the good one. Fixed.]

Apple Trade-In Program

I couldn't possibly have less faith in a trade-in program than I do in this Phobio company's scheme.

Right from the imprimatur of the apple.com domain, I'm linked to a seriously dodgy experience. They sent an email with a link. I clicked the link and they sent a box. I did the required resetting (a separate post I won't get around to) and dropped the box off at FedEx. Whereupon they sent me an email saying they were going to send me a box.

Only after my machine is gone into the FedEx whirlygig do I think, "I should research this company." google google Oy. Apple does business with this crew?

Girding for battle...

gaming spotify?

This kicks off my Release Radar, this week. A track called "Save a Life" by "Rachel Blocklgth" (not a typo?) and, allegedly, Midnight Oil. I play old Oils albums sometimes, so, sure.

But this track is an instrumental, no reason to think that's them, playing. The copyright is just "Rachel Blocklgth" who is, other than this track's appearance on Spotify and YouTube, totally un-google-able.

Feels like a con, but I can't figure out what that con is, other than just trying to collect spins? Is it worth it? How did she sneak Midnight Oil's name into the mix?

On declaring a sudden meritocracy

I started following Derek Lowe's pharma-industry blog In The Pipeline a few months before the pandemic kicked in. I don't remember how I first found it; someone on MetaFilter or similar must've linked to it. I don't know anything about chemistry but I liked his writing. (This is the same reason I follow "Money Stuff" @ Bloomberg. A mostly bewildering subject, made bleakly humorous by Matt Levine.)

He's had a lot of interesting opinion about the current virus and insight into various tests and trials -- this is his field of expertise, after all -- but I didn't expect a concise 3-sentence statement neatly explaining the civilization-sized issue of racism/sexism and the problem with just declaring "that's over, we're a meritocracy starting... NOW."

Out here in [the real] world, minorities of many kinds and women in general have had a raw deal – not only in chemistry or in the other physical sciences, although most definitely there – and it’s impossible to act as if this can suddenly vanish with no one hereafter paying attention to such categories. I actually think meritocracy is an excellent thing, but if you just declare “meritocracy in place” as of this moment, you preserve an existing order that has treated a lot of people like second-class citizens and second-class scientists. Worse, it’s an order that has, over the many years, forced many of them unwillingly into those second ranks because the first ranks were closed off to them.