TrickJarrett.com

This morning's coding project is to finally begin adding tagging. I mapped it out in my head last night into this rough "to-do" list for the devwork as follows:

• Admin UI - 70% - Mostly done, spent an hour or so figuring it out and watching tutorials online.
• Backend - 10% - I have the table structure, now I just need to make it submit the tags and then the backend to process and tag
• Admin tag suggest - 0% - Suggest as you type completion functionality of existing tags, I conceptually know how to do this but haven't done any implementation
• Modify editing post to properly handle tags - 0% - More admin-side work, if I modify a post it needs to load that post's tags.
• Templating integration - 0% - Add tags to entries, and then add tag template pages
• Going back and tagging old posts - 0%

I suspect I might get to the third item this morning, we'll see. After doing this I think I will prioritize code cleanup and organization as things like the admin javascript are getting a bit unruly.

Update: Three-ish hours of work and I'm mostly done with the first four to-dos. Next will come templating it and then going back and tagging old posts which will be arduous. But this is a good stopping point.

I have two memories I attach to Larry. First is my dad watching his show all the time while I played with legos on the floor. Second is his participating in silly Conan O'Brien sketches.

France passes law protecting the sounds and smells of the countryside

How Many Microcovids Would You Spend on a Burrito?

Far from reasonable for a lot of people, just found it an interesting idea to read about and consider.

We have vaccines now, and an end is in sight. But even optimistic projections put us at least six months from widespread inoculation. In the meantime, the pandemic is as bad as ever, and people still need to make decisions about how to behave. Even the clearest advice—wear a mask, stay 6 feet apart, avoid indoor gatherings—doesn't address many of the subtle situations in which we find ourselves. Olsson's response was to calculate her way through our collective apathy and disillusionment, treating the virus not as an abstract and unknowable risk but one that could be measured and tamed until a vaccine eliminated it.

[...]

Beginning in May, the four members of Ibasho's new Covid subcommittee began to develop a system for weighing and budgeting viral risk. Olsson called their risk points microcovids, in a tip of the hat to Howard, and one microcovid equaled a one-in-a-million chance of catching the virus. They pulled epidemiology papers from Google Scholar and gathered around the table in the hearth to go through the data. The first step was to impose a top-line risk budget that would anchor all of their calculations. They debated this question at length. Olsson floated the idea of 10,000 microcovids per person per year—the equivalent of a 1 percent chance of catching Covid. But what was the actual cost of 10,000 microcovids? By their estimations, for people their age, a 1 percent chance of getting sick was about as risky as driving, which was something they did without thinking. And besides, they figured, if other people who could stay home kept to a similar budget, the hospitals would not overflow. The virus might even disappear.

Janet Yellen Offers US Senate a More Nuanced Take on Crypto

First off, I had no idea there were articles on NASDAQ's website. Second, I agree with Yellen. Cryptocurrencies aren't going away, it is in the interest of the government to figure them out and figure out how to extend their reach into them.

"I think we need to look closely at how to encourage their use for legitimate activities while curtailing their use for malign and illegal activities," she wrote. "If confirmed, I intend to work closely with the Federal Reserve Board and the other federal banking and securities regulators on how to implement an effective regulatory framework for these and other fintech innovations."

The Pandemic Year Marked a Turning Point in Climate Change

No, it didn't. We just showed that when we do less as a planet, it does what we want it do in regards to lessening the damage we're doing on the planet.

Covid-19: Turning the Corner

I know Zvi from the realm of my career (Magic: The Gathering). He is an extremely smart guy and his blog has been devoted to analyzing the data around Covid-19 and this week's post carries some good news. He notes that there is concern to be had as we wait for data and trends to be evident from new strands, but for now this week looked promising. We'll see how it metes out in the coming days and weeks.

Antidepressant or Tolkien Character?

I did abysmally on it, 13/24. But it was good silly fun, worth 5 minutes of your time.

A Stanford survey and study published in December suggests work from home will stick

Abstract: We survey 15,000 Americans over several waves to investigate whether, how, and why working from home will stick after COVID-19. The pandemic drove a mass social experiment in which half of all paid hours were provided from home between May and October 2020. Our survey evidence says that about 25 percent of all full work days will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We provide evidence on five mechanisms behind this persistent shift to working from home: diminished stigma, better-than-expected experiences working from home, investments in physical and human capital enabling working from home, reluctance to return to pre-pandemic activities, and innovation supporting working from home. We also examine some implications of a persistent shift in working arrangements: First, high-income workers, especially, will enjoy the perks of working from home. Second, we forecast that the post-pandemic shift to working from home will lower worker spending in major city centers by 5 to 10 percent. Third, many workers report being more productive at home than on business premises, so post-pandemic work from home plans offer the potential to raise productivity as much as 2.4 percent.

Inside San Franciso's Fire Department, Where Ladders Are Made by Hand

I read this article a while ago and it was brought back to my mind as I was watching Towering Inferno tonight.

Biden orders assessment of domestic extremism risk

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue. Seriously, it's one of the most expected actions after recent events. Thank god it's actually happening.

Psaki said that, in addition to the threat assessment, the White House would build out capability within its National Security Council to counter domestic violent extremism, including a policy review on how the federal government can share information about the threat better.

An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory

I'll save you the time if you don't want to read the article: After doing your study, memorization or whatever, take some downtime. No phone, computer, chores, etc. Just sit and let your mind process and think.

It's interesting, I do meditate some. But I live my life inundated with information and stimuli. I'm known for my multitasking and need for four things at once at work. Social media, email, Teams meetings, etc. So to turn it all off and sit for even a few minutes is intimidating.

Alright, I'm calling it a wrap on development today. Probably a total of 5 hours spread over the day. But tagging is probably 80% done. The biggest feature still to do is make tags have their own templates, so people could follow the "us politics" tag or something like that. Those get complicated because long term you could end up with tags with hundreds of entries. So I'd need to paginate them, which is more complicated.

I am also working on how I go about tagging, choosing keywords and ideas. I have decided I am not going to put people's names in as tags, but I will do it for other proper nouns such as countries, etc.

I wrote the code for automated tweets to grab the tags from all of those posts and take the top 3 tags to be mentioned in the tweet in hopes of making it more interesting to people and driving more engagement. We will see how it goes.