Covid day 11 (again): auto-test still positive, exhausted, aches all over, stuffed up. I don't even want to think about what this time around would be like if I weren't fully vaccinated.

Are there any for-profit academic publishers making normal or normal-ish profits?

For all my students new to the command line, to quit vim, type ":!killall vim"

I wish we lived in the universe where HyperCard still existed and had continued to evolve.

The French Republican calendar was composed of 12 months, each with three 10-day weeks (with 5 or 6 bonus days added in at the end of each year).

Create the new French Pandemic Revolutionary calendar. Today is not nonidi, 29 frimaire 230, but: (your reply here).

I miss the days when you could tell what your computer was doing from the sound of the disk spinning, from the fans turning, from hum of the transistors, the pitch of the monitor, or the purr of the modem.

I want a new browser for today’s web. Tabs are fine for web pages as documents, but web apps need to integrate with the rest of the OS. Let me ⌘-tab between them, resize panes, pop them out into separate windows/palettes, tile them, organize them in the rest of my workspace.

I am so grateful to those who were so supportive as I dropped everything when I had Covid and to all my colleagues and students who have been patient with my multi-week long replies taking care of my family during daycare closures. My heart breaks for everyone who is struggling.

Trois semaines épuisantes sans crèche montrent à quel point on a la chance. On peut tant critiquer le gouvernement—il y en a de quoi le faire !—mais la France est le pays européen qui a le plus maintenu les crèches et écoles ouvertes depuis le début de la crise.