A Hugo shortcode used to style inline text in a post. I use it here to style Russian text in my posts.

A pervasive, but unusual feature of Russian grammar.

An AppleScript to create year and month groups in DEVONthink

Trump lawyer and all-around whackadoodle Rudy Guiliani claims he’s the most ethical person ever. Of course, his association with one of the least ethical people ever suggests otherwise. Thus, it prompts me to articulate “Duncan’s Law.” Succinctly stated, if someone claims absolute superiority in some particular characteristic, his actual performance in that characteristic is actually somewhere between average and the least performant.

Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke exploring role as Fox News contributor - sounds about right. Yes, the guy who rode into D.C. on a horse. Please find the man a sad horse to ride home.

Yes. Yes, they’ve done a fine job for “you”. But what about the rest of us? Moreover, what about the “us” in perpetuity, those who will have to deal with the erosion of civic norms?

I’m an atheist, but I’m familiar enough with the Christian canon that this photograph of “President” Trump with “journalist” Sean Hannity reminded me of a verse from the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 16, verse 26):

A couple years ago I wrote about a method for deleting cookies from Safari on macOS by employing AppleScript. Now I have a new script that works on OS X 10.14 Mojave. There are ways of surgically removing cookies, but honestly most sites leave so many cookies on my machine that I have no idea what any of them do and to what extent they use them to track me.

Safari

Here’s the script for Safari. Install it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari (or really, wherever you like.) When launched from the scripts menu in the menu bar, it will close all current tabs and delete every cookie that Safari has saved. Since it employs UI scripting, you’ll need to give it accessibility permissions when asked.

First lady says ‘I really don’t care’ jacket was meant to troll press (Source) - so says the woman who claims to be the most bullied person ever. (Source)

Hello babies…

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

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Conservative statistics

I almost never agree with Bret Stephens, but this piece in the Times in one of his more Trumpian abuses of statistics. He argues that we should take false accusations of sexual misconduct seriously because "…false allegations of rape, while relatively rare, are at least five times as common as false accusations of other types of crime, according to academic literature." In the context of false accusation of rape, who cares about the rate of false allegation of arson, for example? The relevant statistic here is the difference between the true allegation of rape and the false allegation of rape. And given that rape and attempted rape is known to be under-reported^[Source U.S. Department of Justice data], an estimate of total true allegations has to be made. His statistical sleight of hand is sadly typical of conservatives.