µblog - archive for 2026-03 🏳️‍🌈

🔗 The Flatness of U.S. States [pdf]

In an article published as a spoof but based on actual data and legitimate algorithms, three geographers (Fonstad et al. 2003) cleverly proved that “Kansas is flatter than a pancake.” Their conclusion was widely reported by news media and accepted as proof by many people. The argument played well in a public already inclined to believe that Kansas is flat, but Lee Atchison, then Director of the Kansas Geological Survey, retorted that, by that measure, any state, even mountainous Colorado, would be flatter than a pancake. His point is readily conceived if one imagines stretching a pancake to the size of a state. The pancake measured in the article was 130 mm, and its surface relief was 2 mm. Apply that ratio to the east-west dimension of Kansas, approximately 644 km., and the state would need a mountain 9,908 m. tall in order not to be flatter than a pancake. Since the highest mountain in the world is 8,848 m. tall, every state in the U. S. is flatter than a pancake.

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🎬 The Sting (1973)

First time seeing this movie that premiered 3 years after I was born. It’s a great film but there’s a long scene where they simply miss focus on Redford’s eyes (when he first meets Gondorff) which is a bit jarring.

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Groggy after DST change and lingering cold.

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🔗 Fear and Fragility: The Glass Delusion and Its History

Charles VI, “the Beloved”, was twenty-four years old at the time. For a few years, he had successfully managed the legacy of his father: the court, the factions, the English, the perpetual problem of money. Then he began to believe his body was glass. Not as a figure of speech for fragility or for the burdens of rule. He thought his body literally could shatter, refract light.

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🔗 George Orwell: Charles Dickens

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World to Zuck after deepsixing VR: “put these foolish ambitions to rest”.

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Mark Simonson: The Day I Discovered Type Design

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🇸🇪 L gentemot SD: villkorslös kapitulation.

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🔗 N+1 mag: You Can Just Do Things

According to the principles of our Millennium Challenged foreign policy, Trump’s ostensible lack of a plan might as well be the plan. So what if the state currently known as Iran fails outright, igniting as-yet unimaginable misery and slaughter? That’ll be a problem for the MEK, the latest Pahlavi pretender, or whatever other wretched players want to compete for control and settle scores there. For the elites currently jockeying for position in our nascent multipolar global order, meanwhile, such places are perfect arenas for extracting wealth, fighting proxy wars, and testing new weapons. May a million Libyas, Syrias, and Ukraines blossom—and if those places were once your home, well, that’s unfortunate.

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🔗 Wikipedia: Plus ultra

Plus oultre, French for “further beyond”, was adopted by the young Duke of Burgundy and new King of Spain Charles of Habsburg as his personal motto

[…]

Spaniards translated the original French into Latin due to the hostility they bore for the French-speaking Burgundian advisors and ministers Charles brought with him to Spain from the Low Countries.

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The strange half-life of Sir Tony Hoare

One blog in French reports he has passed.

Wikipedia edit wars

Guess we will soon find out…

Update 2026-03-11 now the Wiki has been finally updated to confirm his passing. R.I.P.

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🔗 Wondermark #1582; Limit Your Scream Time

A webcomic about being online.

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Fact checking “Secretary of War” Hegseth is probably a waste of time, but I dunno if I can let this slide. According to Swedish public service, he states that the recent sinking of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean was the first time an enemy warship was sunk by torpedoes fired from a submarine since World War 2.

As it happens, I was reading about the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano by HMS Conqueror during the Falklands conflict, and I’m pretty sure torpedoes were involved there too. But to expect Hegseth to know anything more about history than what he’s read in coloring books is probably to expect too much.

Update 2026-03-05: during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, PNS Hangor sunk the INS Khukri which according to the wiki is the first submarine kill since 1945.

SVT: Iranskt fartyg sänkt av USA – minst 80 döda (contains video link of Hegseth’s quote)

Wikipedia: ARA General Belgrano

Wikipedia: PNS Hangor

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twenty-three years

23 years to the day since my wife and I got married.

23 years since the US and the “coalition of the willing” (who says only this admin has dumb military names) attacked and invaded Iraq.

There were 23 years between the end of WW2 and the Tet offensice in Vietnam in 1968.

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🔗 A Blog to Watch – Hands-On: Is The Smartlet One Watch Bracelet The Answer To Double-Wristing?

This looks like an April Fool’s Joke but is apparently real.

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