Knock on wood: This might be the final Be update. Knock on wood. The imports and exports are ready. Four additional templates are available. The leftovers from the Rixedit Info.plist remain for continuity.
All that remains is to explain how they work. But almost all of this is self-explanatory.
You can import a config template, at any time, into an existing document. Conversely, any config for any document can be exported at any time for later use.
The config data is normally plastered on the 'backside' of a Be document. Here, as config templates, they're stored in the 'data fork' and not as extended attributes.
(They're still stored as XML binary PLISTs. You can use Rixstep's PlistEdit to view them.)
You will lose?
We're thinking of toning down that ominous message, of introducing saccharine into it, but whatever. These two screenshots are perplexing.
The Othello engine has the blue pieces. And has in each case just declared there's no way for the human reds to win.
Take a look at those boards. Can you see how that's possible in either case? (Othello has its blue move ready as soon as the dialog is dismissed - and it won both.)
ProtonMail
We use ProtonMail. We like ProtonMail. It's out of CERN. In Switzerland. One of the places rumoured to be hard for the CIA to hack. CERN's where Tim BL literally invented the WorldWideWeb.
But they're not polished programmers. Design-wise, a lot of their stuff is iffy at best. Toolbars all over the place.
One thing that's really irksome is their reply function. You receive a letter and want to reply to it, so you hit the reply button. And you get a bunch of these.
>
>
>
>
But that's not just > characters. That's > plus trailing space. Someone at CERN reckoned it'd be easier to just prepend each line with "> ".
Except ridding trailing white is easy. We do it all the time. 'Clean White' on our Format menus. It's easy.
In this case, on OS X, we use a framework convenience method. It takes the 'from' string, and the 'to' string, and can use additional switches if you want, and it returns the actual number of replaces it's done.
And what you're specifically looking for is " \n", to be replaced with "\n". Right?
And you just keep looping until the return value is zero. Right?
Right?
And it's a convenience method (function) meaning ANYONE could write it, like stdlib, except it's already done for you, so isn't that convenient, right?
So we wrote to ProtonMail about it. Heck, Google use the equivalent in Gmail. It's not rocket science. Not to us, not even to the green-haired ogres at Google. So how about ProtonMail?
ProtonMail? Nah. Too difficult. They can't be bothered.
An apt phrase to describe this all more prevalent trend is:
'The politics of low expectations'
Perhaps it's connected to the woke 135 Mensa cutoff?
Not to speak, of course, of ProtonMail's indefensible way of trashing messages in a conversation...
ANWA
Catturd and Jewels have an excellent podcast on Rumble. 'In the Litterbox'. It started by them talking to each other, venting frustrations, just talking, and now it's morphed into a broadcast with upwards of 300 K listeners each time. Highly recommended.
Last time around, Catturd mentioned he'd be out of commission for a while, as the Masters was coming up at the weekend. Not so fast - the Masters is next week, but this week they had ANWA - the Augusta National Women's Amateur championhips. And it was very good. And that Bobby Jones course is of course legendary.
Rose Zhang won, but a Swede from Gothenburg came in third. Andrea Lignell.
Here's Andrea chipping out of a bunker. That's daddy there in the frame. Andrea's enrolled at Ole Miss and her father's her caddy.
It's cool hearing them discuss strategy, tactics, winds, and clubs in Swedish. Above all you get the impression one has to be very cool when playing golf.
But can't those otherwise excellent commentators learn how to pronounce names? Zhang is not as they pronounce it. Neither is Lignell.
Ingrid Bergman was contacted by her Hollywood studio when first arriving stateside. They suggested changing the spelling of her family name to 'Berryman', because that's how it's pronounced in Swedish.
'I won't change my name', she told them. 'People can pronounce it as they want.'
Which they did. Or try on these other gems for size.
JAGUAR
ALUMINIUM
BERNSTEIN
EINSTEIN
EISENSTEIN
EPSTEIN
WEINSTEIN
Most people on the planet are bilingual or batter with at least two languages practically speaking from birth. Looking at the message boards of today, one would have a tough time arguing that people in the US are even monolingual.
Through the Warp™
Watching (listening) to the news in the US is tiresome. It's so brainwashy it's not funny. The people there have to be the biggest fools of all times. Small wonder then, when they travel overseas, they always look so lost. Because nothing looks how their brainwashers told them.
You can trust MAGA people. You may not want to live with them or ever feel close to them but you know you can trust them. They're honourable and peaceable. You can't trust a Democrat as far as you can kick one.
I must have been 12 or 13 when the phone rang on a Sunday. My mum answered, mumbled something, then offered me the receiver. 'It's for you.'
'Who is it?'
'I don't know.'
I took the receiver.
'Hullo?'
'Hi! I'm Beverly-Shirley-Tiffany-Blah-Blah and your friends told us you'd be keen on joining the Young Republicans!'
'Friends? Oh fuck off.' I hung up.
I hate politics, hate partisan politics even more, party members are the dumbest and dullest of the lot, but I get pissed off when bullshit artists in politics try to fuck with us and our lives.
Tulsi's right. The government in the US is the enemy of mankind. The others in the other corner - China, Russia, Brazil, India, BRICS, SCO, and so forth - they're our liberators. You can't end the Empire of Lies too fast.
Some of the TV girls in the US are cute. Then they open their mouths. And you hear those terrible squawky voices. You'd think they'd learn how to speak properly.
Remember 'trans-atlantic'? That was a way of speaking in Hollywood and the West End. Cary Grant. Grace Kelly. Grace's voice was nectar. Off the petals of a plant in a gentle rain. Her voice was perhaps the sexiest thing about her.
(The aim of 'trans-atlantic' was to be intelligible and palatable on both sides of the Atlantic, not as the above link erroneously suggests.)
But they ended 'trans-atlantic'. Gee thanks. Oops - what buzzed by? That was your international dignity and respect. Of course to keep that dignity and respect you'd have to also THINK better, and get rid of that schoolyard bullshit attitude.
You're in another hemisphere. Perhaps you're too far away. But, if that's the case, how come you stick your nose in everybody else's business half the planet away? 800+ military bases AROUND THE GLOBE - OUR GLOBE - and your so-called citizenry don't know SHIT about any of that?
Go home. Stay home. Do not fuck with your own 'natives'.
The BMW Story
It was never something pressing on my mind, but I finally gave it some thought.
I joined Mensa, as an adult, years ago. It proved very beneficial in many ways, such as in international travel.
And it was fun back then. The British publication out of the HQ in Wolverhampton: it wasn't good enough even for toilet paper.
But the unaffiliated 'Isolated M' out of Louisville was gold. Printed on a stencil machine. Lovely stuff. One edition dug into why Mensans so hate telephones. (I fucking hate them - and reading that made me feel a lot better.) They also had four very cool brain teasers each time. I won an 'honourable mention' for submitting two answers to two of the riddles once - they were maths-based that time and I preferred the maths ones. I can include them at the end. I turned one of them into an application for Windows. I totally pissed off Honeywell-Bull's chief software dude with one of them - didn't talk to me for years afterwards.
I returned to Sweden briefly before scooting over to the US. Whilst staying with family, I signed up again for the Isolated M. I wanted their puzzles!
What a disappointment to find that they'd replaced the puzzles with - TRIVIA? This coincides with something many of us have noticed for decades. Namely that people are getting STUPIDER. Researching swiftly I found that the Mensa cutoff - the top 2% - was now at 135, down from 146 years earlier, a level I'd formally achieved by eighth grade.
(IQ rises swiftly after birth until the age of about 27, whereafter it gently tapers off.)
This was also mentioned in a recent Tucker Carlson open. People - at least in the US - are indeed getting stupider. Is it the drinking water? Or pollution, as Saul Bellow suggested?
I looked at the trivia section in the Isolated M...
It also turned out that the geniuses had opened a page at Geocities. It was locked with a PASSWORD. Which they of course sent along. But the password was also fully visible in the source. So not geniuses actually.
Onto the trivia. One gem stood out. It was simple and straightforward.
* * What does BMW stand for? * *
That's easy to look up today. It wasn't as easy in 1999. They had an email method to respond, so I sent:
* * Bayerische Motoren Werke * *
And I quickly got a reply from Mr Trivia.
* * Wrong answer, it stands for Bavarian Motor Works * *
I managed a response. I asked if the gent at the other end seriously thought a German company founded 84 years earlier - before the advent of commercial aviation - would want a name in English.
The response was unparalleled.
'OH ALL YOU EUROPEANS YOU THINK YOU'RE SO SMART WELL LET ME TELL YOU WE CAME TO YOUR RESCUE IN THE 1940S WHEN GERMANY THREATENED AND IF THAT EVER HAPPENS AGAIN WE'LL HELP YOU AGAIN!'
I found the name of their temporary chief of ops in the US and wrote to her. Asked her if she knew this trivia twit. 'Oh I've met him and he seems a nice guy!' was her reply.
135 today? 135 is kind where they're concerned. Really really kind.
But intelligence is more than hereditary (if it's that at all). It's a matter of good upbringing and good attitudes. Dig into Dunning-Kruger. Those who shout the loudest, those who often say the most, are those who ultimately have nothing to offer, to anyone, at all.
A body who knows he's stupid is infinitely smarter than a backside of a horse who is too arrogant to understand anything.
Americans
A comment popped up on Rumble yesterday.
United States of Mexico - Mexicans
United States of America - Americans
Perhaps that should be left without comment.
Americans. Hershey bars. Nylons. GIs after WWII. Welcomed throughout Europe.
Things have changed. No one wants their shitty chocos anymore. We have Swiss, even better Belgian. Where you can get 1,400+ of the finest beers in the world. No one drinks beer from the US. Tastes like club soda. Or, as Monty Python put it, 'fucking close to water'.
This is one of two great brands. As in 'really really great'.
This is the other. This stuff is out of this world for those who don't like beers that much (and I'm one of them).
But you go drink your Bud, cowboy.
And, did you know, they water down all good beers before exporting to the US? Bishops Finger, Old Speckled Hen, Guinness? Water down to 3.3%. Which is just above 'near beer' over in YURP.
Stick with cream soda.
PS. Says here Leffe was founded in 1240. How old's your Bud? When did CC sail out?
The red one is called 'Ruby'. It's low in alcohol - only 5%. Its aroma is described as 'spicy (clove), fruity (raspberries, strawberries, citrus), floral, with woody notes'. What's your Bud aroma?
Affligem is founded in 1074.
'Affligem Red Fruit: fruity flavours, natural aromas of strawberry, raspberry, cherry. 5.2%.'
Finian with Pepe
Finian with Evan on Rosie
Nazi Roots of EU's Führer Ursula von der Leyen
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has some disturbing skeletons in her family wardrobe.
Her political roots in Nazi Germany account for the insane war-driven agenda of the EU toward Russia under her stewardship and her total subservience to the US imperialist objective to defeat Moscow.
Author Evan Reif explains how her politician-father Ernst Albrecht packed his regional government with unreconstructed Nazis and former Wehrmacht officers when he was governor of Lower Saxony in the 1980s.
Ursula von der Leyen's family derived much of its industrial wealth from working closely with Hitler's Third Reich. Her 'aristocratic' family were also married into slave-owning cotton planters in the southern US.
That legacy of inherited wealth not only benefited Ursula's elite education but also her precocious rise in German politics. She became the German defence minister from 2013-2019 despite having no formal background in the military. Under her watch, the German army was massively rearmed and she also became mired in corruption scandals.
At the end of 2019, she was appointed President of the European Commission, the top political post in the European Union. This was done without a vote from the German parliament, such was the lack of confidence in her eligibility.
She has spearheaded the US-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia with remarkably hawkish anti-Russian rhetoric. Her zeal for pursuing hostility toward Russia is consistent with the Nazi ideology her father indulged in.
Ursula von der Leyen has shown an astounding 'ability' to 'fail upwards', as Evan Reif wryly points out. The only explanation for such undue political ascent, despite her incompetence, plagiarism, and corruption, is the help of a powerful network - the transatlantic US-led NATO alliance and its intelligence agencies.
The disturbing upshot is that Europe is being led into a disastrous war against Russia in the service of US-European imperialism - euphemistically called 'Western values' - by a person who is a scion of Nazi legacy and politics and who does not have a democratic mandate.
Eight decades after the end of World War II and the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich, the imperialist objective of conquering Russia is alive again. Should we be surprised though, when we look at the odious political background of the European Commission's president?
Ukraine Hawk Who Heads European Commission Has a Nazi Pedigree She Does Not Want You to Know About
'It is not at all unfair to ask where Ursula von der Leyen's family's money and power came from, and what they did to earn it, especially given that Ursula has benefitted enormously from her family's wealth and connections to further her own career, which can stand on its own as an example of corruption, severe scandal, incompetence, and possibly even outright treason. Her time as a politician shows that Ursula's apple has not fallen far from the Albrecht family tree.'
Finian on the US
Ukraine is the full manifestation of the end to impunity for the US.
For nearly eight decades after World War Two, the US was relatively free to run amok, trashing international law and national sovereignty, racking up death tolls in the millions, and terrorising the planet with its 'benign' narcissistic tyranny.
The conflict in Ukraine, where Russia said 'enough is enough' to years of US-led NATO aggression, is demonstrating that the days of impunity are finally over for the would-be hegemon.
The edifice of US imperial power has never before been challenged in its foundation. It is now.
'China is ready to stand together with Russia to guard the world order.'
'This is not only a chronicle of bilateral economic relations - it is part of a real system of global economic relations that is being built up, bypassing the West, which everyone is tired of with its tantrums.'
ABC US: Xi Jinping's visit to Russia destroys Western order
'Uranium dust is deadly not only for the fighters of both warring parties but also for the local population. Scientists say that the half-life of uranium reaches 4.5 billion years.'
Parts of the Ukraine have some of the richest soil on the planet. DU is genocide towards the Ukrainians themselves.
'Therefore, I will carefully express only my assumptions. It is very possible that our army will simply have to stop the delivery of tanks with uranium shells to Ukraine (in other words, to hit the legitimate military target - columns with this military hardware, while they are away from the borders of Russia). Although we have another opportunity - to 'give a sniff of nuclear dust' to the Anglo-Saxons themselves, as they say, at their place of residence. But I don't want to think about it yet. Maybe they'll have time to think better of it.'
Looney Tunes Interlude
Forbes
1. 'I Have Your Back'
2. Kennedy on Yellen
3. Rand vs Blinken
4. Nancy Mace on child abuse (and more)
Doug and Judge on China/Kirby
Sort of clears things.
Stavropol Hotter!
Forecast of the future. Totally unbelievable. What's going on here is, what they call, three 'neural networks' working together to present the 'weather' several times each day at this television station in Stavropol.
The girl is, unfortunately, completely made-up and completely two-dimensional.
'Wow. She looks so very beautiful. Like a fresh and pure sun coming out of the clouds to expel darkness and bestow radiant light on a sun-starved earth.'
'You don't need AI to create a beautiful Russian woman because Russia has a surplus.'
Rachel Never Left Home
Your heart can go out to her. She's a gentle soul, extremely likeable, and she opens herself so much here. But Rachel never immersed herself in the culture or language. She confesses she's a loner. And a girl with that much heart should have someone to love along with her - not someone she finds locally but someone she brings along to share the journey.
They say culture shock hits after about two years, but she's still on the outside. Poor thing.
So where will she work next? Take care, Rachel!
And her 'fans and followers' on IG: goodness how insensitive!
Cessation of hostilities by Ukrainian armed groups and end of arms deliveries by Western countries
Ensuring the neutral and non-aligned status of Ukraine, its refusal to join NATO and the EU
Confirmation of Ukraine's nuclear-free status
Recognition by Kiev and the international community of 'new territorial realities'
Demilitarisation and 'denazification' of Ukraine
Protection of the rights of Russian-speaking citizens, the Russian language, and national minorities
Ensuring free cross-border movement with Russia
Cancellation of anti-Russian sanctions by Ukraine and the West and withdrawal of lawsuits, termination of legal proceedings against Russia, its individuals and legal entities
Restoration of the legal framework of Ukraine with Russia and the CIS
Restoration - with the money of the West - of the civil infrastructure of Ukraine destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine after 2014
Julian Assange... Anyone visited the wikileaks.org website recently? Nothing's happening there, despite Julian's bro Gabriel stating recently he's accumulated 55 million in donations. Axeman Farrell oversaw the dissolution of the core WL group back in 2016, long before the shit hit the fan. He said something about some people being 'retrenched', though it's only one was saved. The rest were put out in the cold, despite years of loyal contribution.
Premier Premiere: Get Trump!
Wait no longer. No one's said it better than this.
About Rixstep
Stockholm/London-based Rixstep are a constellation of programmers and support staff from Radsoft Laboratories who tired of Windows vulnerabilities, Linux driver issues, and cursing x86 hardware all day long. Rixstep have many years of experience behind their efforts, with teaching and consulting credentials from the likes of British Aerospace, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Lloyds TSB, SAAB Defence Systems, British Broadcasting Corporation, Barclays Bank, IBM, Microsoft, and Sony/Ericsson.
Rixstep and Radsoft products are or have been in use by Sweden's Royal Mail, Sony/Ericsson, the US Department of Defense, the offices of the US Supreme Court, the Government of Western Australia, the German Federal Police, Verizon Wireless, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Microsoft Corporation, the New York Times, Apple Inc, Oxford University, and hundreds of research institutes around the globe. See here.