Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.

Category: Aux

A note on impartiality in reporting on the 8th Amendment

And a fair point, too. The 8th doesn't recognise a natural 'right'; it creates and enshrines recognition of a social construct, flying in the face of best medical practice. But in a country where only arseholes tend to be litigious (or can afford to be), RTÉ may not be particularly worried about offending people who can't or won't sue them. #link

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The most incredible Chinese cities you've never heard of

A few quibbles with this piece: I think Shenzhen, Harbin and Qingdao are as familiar place names as Shanghai and Beijing in the west these days. But I’ve thought about the general notion a lot this year: cities around the world, cities with millions of people, that I’ve never heard of before. You don’t need to think about the cosmos to make yourself feel small. #link

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The best homemade cacio e pepe

Experienced some serious Baadher Meinhof with this dish, or the title of it anyway, in 2017. So I’ll have to try making it, won’t I? #link

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Luas Cross City augurs change in Broombridge

From last year, about a year after we moved to Dundalk and my commute, whether by rail or bicycle along the canal, no longer took me past the least loved station in the Irish Rail network. I’ve been wondering about the security situation at a stop that had no Leap card readers for months due to vandalism. (Oh, and there was that time some scumbag bricked a train window we were sitting next to. The area itself isn’t that rough, though.) #link

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A few technical words about Upsideclown, and some thoughts about audiences and the web

Matt Webb on the return of his communal short fiction blog, and how it fits on the internet today: “It seems to me that, sometime in the last 17 years, the web forgot the simple pleasure of making, and appreciating what’s made, together.” (Cynical old me thinks that’s because ‘the web’ isn’t a thing anymore; it’s all smartphones and social media and clickbait and humanity’s worst tendencies laid bare. Sigh.) #link

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I’m not one for conspiracy theories…

…I believe the wrongs of this world are much more banal than we often allow ourselves to accept.

At the same time, I can’t help but see a connection between Fianna Fáil’s no-confidence motion against the Tánaiste, in the midst of an important Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment, and the notion that their TDs represent this country’s most staunchly anti-choice political movement.

(Not that Fine Gael are any better, mind, as they’re two sides of the same coin, but how and ever.)
More…

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Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age

It’s only to an extent, but I can identify with this; I don’t care so much about how others perceive me, but I know I would feel better, holistically, if I can get my head right. And for me, managing what I eat really is all in the head. #link

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How Checkers Was Solved

“For Tinsley, the spiritualist, the metaphor of checkers as a well without end was both poetic and true. But Schaeffer, the engineer, knew that no well is bottomless. And humans will always sound the depth.” #link

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The age of banter

When you combine the refusal to take anything seriously with the refusal to take responsibility, this is what you get. #link

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Black holes could delete the Universe, apparently. But they’re also the ultimate hard drive. My head is spinning. [c/o Kottke.org] #video

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The people GoFundMe leaves behind

“More than 90 percent of GoFundMe campaigns never meet their goal.” And for those who are successful, it’s as much a matter of luck as careful planning — even more so for those raising crisis funds, to pay for medical bills and the like. #link

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A Brief History of SETI@Home

Who didn’t have this on their computer around the turn of the century? And the project is still going! Best of the web, no doubt. #link

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Utility OpenType

A set of CSS classes for advanced typography, like ligatures. Overcomplicated for most users, but would probably be handy if such fine control over appearance is ever required. #link

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History (1453–2001)

On a related note to my last post, here’s Mishaal Al Gergawi’s digest of what he learned from reading modern history. (The thing he notes about people from a distance being less compromising rings true for me, as an Irish person who sees Irish-Americans venerate the Republican armed movement without ever having to face the consequences up close.) #link

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Bill Wurtz covers the history of the entire world in under 20 minutes. [c/o Kottke.org] #video

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When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far

This brand of obsessiveness is nothing new, but the way the internet breaks down so many barriers — between online celebrities and their fans; between private data and, well, anyone who wants it bad enough — lends a far creepier edge than ever before. #link

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Happy Scribe

Another automatic transcription service (not that I’ve tried the others I’ve linked here yet) but this one’s based in DCU’s start-up incubator, where they’ve got some top notch machine learning talent. Also they charge, about €5.40 for an hour of audio, so the quality had better be good. #link

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Time claustrophobia

“…the feeling of anxiety cast by an impending appointment over the free time that precedes it.” Yes, I know this feeling well. #link

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Bethune Park VIII, by Paul Regan

I like art with an eye for the uncanny in the mundane, and the work of London-based painter Paul Regan fits that bill to a T. #image

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Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria

It’s a maddening catch-22 situation. Such mass preservation of knowledge is the kind of thing governments should be doing, but they can’t justify the expense. Private enterprises like Google can, but the fear of proprietary ownership of knowledge shuts the whole thing down. Gah! The best we can hope for is that Google (or someone else) continues the project for a future generation that will see its value to the whole over the objections of the few. #link

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Maciej Cegłowski on how to ‘build a better monster’

“This year especially there’s an uncomfortable feeling in the tech industry that we did something wrong, that in following our credo of ‘move fast and break things’, some of what we knocked down were the load-bearing walls of our democracy.” The collateral damage of building for the reality we hope to create, rather than the one we live in, to paraphrase my previous link. But Cegłowski goes a lot deeper that that in this tech conference talk from earlier in the year. And it doesn’t get more damning, more cyberpunk dystopian than this: “The algorithms have learned that users interested in politics respond more if they’re provoked more, so they provoke.” #link

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Mat Honan for Buzzfeed on Facebook’s ‘reality hole’

“The problem with connecting everyone on the planet is that a lot of people are assholes.” That’s it right there. I don’t subscribe to the notion that people in general are fundamentally decent; there’s too much evidence to the contrary. Social media — in ushering in an era where everyone is online, not just a self-selecting proportion — reveals that much. Does Facebook care about that? It’s a different kind of caring, to be charitable; rooted in head-in-the-sand techno-utopianism that strives for solutions to problems no one really has, while ignoring the actual problems people have right now. As Mat Honan writes: “You have to build for the reality we live in, not the one we hope to create.” #link

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