Thorsten Zöller

Human beings used to witness 25,000 sunrises during their lifetime.

It’s a pity that most undergraduate physics students today are still not properly being taught about the geometrical nature of tensors.

The Elegance of Plain-Text Writing Read on Mastodon.

And for those interested in a more philosophical elaboration of the subject of walking, A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros might be for you (as well as basically everything Craig Mod writes, of course).

Read (and watch) The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi.

Nice article about the wonderful John Baez: Mathematician Aims to Keep It Simple Read on Mastodon.

Dopamine fasting is a tech fad that sounds silly – but might just work by Oliver Burkeman.

So true: Store-Brand Insecurity by Joshua Fields Millburn of The Minimalists.

The Plaintext Journal: An open project created by Geffrey van der Bos about the importance of plain text for digital communication.

Can little actions bring big joy?

I first became aware of Johann Sebastian Bach’s genius when I read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time, more than two decades ago.

Simple way to rename a hash key in Ruby: hash[new_key] = hash.delete(old_key) This employs the fact that the delete method returns the value associated with the key to be deleted.

Nice article about Turing machines: The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built.

The best science images of 2022: Stunning!

Space Elevator: Really fun, not just for kids.

Thoughts on journaling: Answering common questions by Michael Eaton.

Avoid unnecessary amplifiers by Seth Godin.

A set of guidelines for designing command-line programs based on Unix principles: Command Line Interface Guidelines

The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models: At the same time startling, intriguing, and uncanny.

Good article by Bradley Taunt: Stop Using Custom Web Fonts (also good: A rant on web font licenses by Manu Moreale, referenced in Bradley’s article).

I’ll admit it: I usually have way too many browser tabs open.

We have lost the ability to just be.

3 good things: Meditated for 20 minutes – first time in a rather long time.

Ashtanga Yoga is not about progress.

Simply beautiful: BEING by Michael Torke.

New article: Derek Sivers: “How to Live”.

Derek Sivers: “How to Live” 2023-03-05 To state it upfront: How to Live is a book which can hardly be overrated.

There are few things which are as humbling as practicing Ashtanga Yoga regularly.

New article: Running Anki inside Xephyr.

Running Anki inside Xephyr 2023-02-26 Anki is a great tool for memorizing things, like words in a foreign language you want to learn.

The importance of editing texts and refactoring code can hardly be overestimated.

“Gibs auf” (“Give it up!”)

New text: The Melancholy of the Day.

The Melancholy of the Day 2023-02-11 A new day begins, in the dark, in silence.

New note: A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at.

A Simple E-Mail Reminder System Based on cron and at 2023-02-10 Since I cannot keep everything I have to remember in my head, I need a reminder system.

A great example of seeing things from a different point of view: The short story “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges.

Since yesterday was Friday, the 13th, I was wondering how often the 13th day of a month is a Friday.

The Minimalism Life Manifesto.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is certainly one of the great achievements of mankind (in spite of the – in many cases entirely insufficient – degree to which human rights are respected throughout the world).

The digital collection of the Städel Museum contains more than 24,000 images of artworks in the public domain.

Population density world map by NASA Earth Obervations (NEO) (contains various other interesting maps of the world).

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known by Kevin Kelly: Full of insights and invaluable advice.

Turning off my phone improved my science – insightful article by PhD student Adam Weiss.

Just rediscovered this impressive depiction of depths: xkcd: Lakes and Oceans.

Relay Mail to a Remote SMTP Server With smtpd 2022-03-27 Configure smtpd(8) to relay outgoing mail to a remote SMTP server as follows: Create the file /etc/mail/secrets: $ doas touch /etc/mail/secrets $ doas chmod 640 /etc/mail/secrets $ doas chown root:_…

The Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu – an important article to which I was pointed by the article Harder, easier and more convenient by Seth Godin.

As the title of Ridgeline: 139 – Walk for the Boredom of it All by Craig Mod implies, the topic of this newsletter article is boredom, and since it is Craig Mod, specifically the boredom while walking.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Base64-encode a string from the command line using uuencode(1): $ echo -n <string> | b64encode '' | sed '1d;$d' | tr -d '\n'