The occasional scrivener

Since around a month back, I’ve backported my public Flickr images to a new self-hosted setup: Curator.

The content is managed by software created by my friend Thomas, and the code is hosted on Github. Fair warning, generative AI is involved, so if this is a dealbreaker for you, look somewhere else.

It’s also proudly nerdy. You run a local service on your machine which handles the creations of galleries, uploading photos etc. Then you publish the result as a static website. If all this is Greek to you, you’ll have to look somewhere else again 😊

Thomas and his agents are super responsive, so if you feel this is something you’d like to try, I encourage it. I can also be hit up on for tips on Fedi.

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I got a Z6 here.

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An entertaining review of the various strands of right-wing, Soviet nostalgia and other weird strands in Russian popular culture. This was published before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and has the author’s own interpretation of Putin’s view of the Ukrainian people — something shared by many other Russians of course.

Skådespelaren läser själv upp ljudboken av sin självbiografi. Mycket skrönor och skryt och skvaller. Brost framställer sig själv inte utan fel och brister, vilket hedrar honom. Hans påtagliga stolthet över en sentida Guldbagge är rörande.

A review of some weird Russian fiction and media extolling the virtues of the USSR and the dream of bringing it back.

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Today is the last day of this year’s Advent of Code, cut from 24.5 days to 12[1]. Overall I think the reduced scope is a good thing, both because it reduces stress coming up to the holidays, and it hopefully keeps the creator Eric Wastl’s motivation up so he can continue with this project.

We missed a few “favorites” this year. There was no game of life, nor any register rodeo. Maybe that will be a theme in the coming years.

The elimination of the global leaderboard has not affected me, as I have never even tried to compete. It was many years ago when I had the ambition to be even among the first 10,000 solvers of a day. Even so, I believe it has removed a lot of stress for everyone, not just the creator, but also from those who felt that the leaderboard was “the thing” that mattered.

Its elimination has also cut down on the heat around GenAI solutions. Previously, someone could credibly state that they got a place on the leaderboard by asking ChatGPT or Claude or whatever was the hot model du jour to solve a problem, setting off a big round of recrimination and angst. Now, those people can only boast on the subreddit and be exposed as the sad losers they are.

I certainly hope that this contest continues for many years to come!

[1] if you solved all previous year’s puzzles, the last star is given “for free”.

Repo README.

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I think this book is required reading for anyone interested in the French Revolution, but it should not be the only book they read about it. For one thing, it assumes the reader already knows the timeline of events.

Schama basically dismisses all the classic explanations of why the Revolution broke out, like class tensions or economic conditions. In the end he has only Violence, which seems to inevitably spring from Enlightenment universalism. But I don’t think he adequately explains the staying power of the French Republic, and the immense power of the idea of national (as opposed to royal) sovereignty.

Update 2025-05-06: I’ve since read E. J. Hobsbawn’s Echoes of the Marseillaise, which deals with the historiography of the French Revolution, and he has this to say to Schama and other revisionists:

In fact, the paradox of revisionism is that it seeks to diminish the historic significance and transforming capacity of a revolution whose extraordinary and lasting impact are utterly obvious, or that can be overlooked only by a combination of intellectual provincialism and tunnel vision; or by the monographic myopia which is the occupational disease of specialist research in historical archives.

En klassiker som jag har missat av någon anledning. Den ansågs väl vara lite väl ”vuxen” för gymnasiet och när jag läste litteratur i Lund fanns inte Stockholmsförfattaren Söderberg med på kartan.

Trots det gammalmodiga stavningen i min upplaga (från Litteraturbanken) så är språket lätt och ledigt. (Dom första 3 fjärdedelarna lyssnade jag som ljudbok med Emil Rehnström som uppläsare - han gjorde ett utmärkt jobb).

An overview of the events that lead to the Terror. Not as good as Andress.

A memoir of WW2 in Burma by the author of Flashman (which I’ve never read). Unlike a lot of Brits of his background he fights as a private and the books is an affectionate look at his squadmates - salt of the earth Cumbrians to a man.

Ongoing. Check progress at the repo.