According to Google’s own Page Speed Insights audit (which Google recommends to check your performance), the AMP version of articles got a performance score of 80. The non-AMP versions? 86. Mind you, the AMP versions are hobbled - unauthorised javascript interaction is forbidden by Google, so you can’t vote or comment in place - it’ll kick you to the full version of the page. This is the fruit of weeks of labour converting the site: a slower, less interactive, more clunky site.

I have just learned that a song from my music side project Wretched Saints, which doesn't even have a website yet, is now out on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/track/5x2uix7nbFyuBVf9az8PyE?si=Wx-6J3Y5SaWQFYZMSkwimw

If you're not a Spotify user, here's an older version of this song on Soundcloud:

They tell me the song is also available on Itunes and Deezer but I don't use those services so what do I know.

This is the jazz piano site of Doug McKenzie. It contains many downloadable video files in WMV format and midi files of live played songs.

The reason why purple and violet look similar to us is because they stimulate our cones in a similar way, but most other animals don’t share the same types of cones and “post-processing”. This means that to other animals, purple and violet may look completely different!

Now imagine a violet flower petal with a purple pattern on it. Depending on the particular shades, this pattern might be completely invisible to us, while many other animals could see it as clearly as we can see an orange pattern on green background.

Control any MIDI enabled hardware: syntesizers, drum machines, samplers, effects.

Create custom interfaces.

Host them as VST or AU plugins in your favorite DAWs.

Edith Sheffer argues in Asperger’s Children that, regardless of the science, and regardless of whether autism is one condition or several, it remains steeped in the cultural values of its Nazi origins, and in the idea of a model personality: obedient, animated by collective bonds, socially competent, robust in mind and body. Rooted in years of meticulous archival research, Sheffer’s book has already had an impact on activists who have called for the burial of Asperger’s syndrome along with statues honouring racists. But that’s too easy. Her book does not offer a univocal message. It explores the various ways in which, over time, cultural ideals shape ‘scientific’ diagnoses, and vice versa. It’s about the way words like Gemüt create models, and the way these models help create ‘defects’. It’s about conscious and unconscious complicity, in-the-moment improvisation, and the moral grey areas where so much human action takes place.

So where does that leave us in terms of using it for cooking? In the end, it seems that the subgroup sensitive to MSG is small enough and the adverse reaction rare enough that in all likelihood you’re gonna be just fine using it in your own food, especially if you make sure to eat a little MSG-free stuff to lay down a bed in your belly before getting to the goods. Moreover all evidence suggests that the effects are at worst a short-term discomfort with no long-lasting consequences.

In a paper from 2012, Vanguard found that 66% of the time it is better to invest your money right away (“Lump Sum”) rather than buying in over 12 months (“DCA”). I don’t disagree with Vanguard’s results (my results were strikingly similar), but I don’t think they went deep enough in explaining why this is true.

The main reason Lump Sum outperforms DCA is because most markets generally rise over time. Because of this positive long-term trend, DCA typically buys at higher average prices than Lump Sum. Additionally, in those rare instances where DCA does outperforms Lump Sum (i.e. in falling markets), it is difficult to stick to DCA. So the times where DCA has the largest advantage are also the times where it can be the hardest for investors to stick to their plan.

Yet today, the US continues to hold overseas territory. Besides Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and a handful of minor outlying islands, the US maintains roughly 800 overseas military bases around the world.

None of this, however – not the large colonies, small islands, or military bases – has made much of a dent on the mainland mind. One of the truly distinctive features of the US’s empire is how persistently ignored it has been. This is, it is worth emphasising, unique. The British weren’t confused as to whether there was a British empire. They had a holiday, Empire Day, to celebrate it. France didn’t forget that Algeria was French. It is only the US that has suffered from chronic confusion about its own borders.

It’s especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they’re young. That it not be considered “a problem” to be avoided or eradicated by the higher-ups, but instead something kids grapple with on their own.

We’ve stopped training children to do this. Rather than teach them to absorb material that is slower, duller and decidedly two-dimensional, like a lot of worthwhile information is, schools cave in to what they say children expect: fun. Teachers spend more time concocting ways to “engage” students through visuals and “interactive learning” (read: screens, games) tailored to their Candy Crushed attention spans. Kids won’t listen to long lectures, goes the argument, so it’s on us to serve up learning in easier-to-swallow portions.