Eschaton: What Will We Call The New Tea Party

On By Paul HubbardIn PoliticsLeave a comment

It was a neat trick that for 4 years ‘Trump supporters’ were somehow distinct from ‘Republicans,’ and now we will inevitably have some other exciting new political movement that isn’t precisely associated with either of them, but they love America and freedom and are skeptical of Democrats but could be persuaded (but never are).
They will be the protagonists of our politics story, as they always are. Angry, racist, relatively affluent white people who are covered obsessively by our political press who somehow never manage to convey who they actually are, who is funding them, and what they actually want
— Read on www.eschatonblog.com/2021/01/what-will-we-call-new-tea-party.html

A good kickoff for the presidential transition.

Internet speed tests

On By Paul HubbardIn recommendations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

So you’re online and you wonder how your network is doing. How do you measure it? I’m here for you.

  • (Updated 11/2021) Ubiquiti’s oddly named http://wifiman.com is my new standby – cleanest UI, most consistent at measuring up to gigabit.
  • Fast.com is my go-to for quick checks. It measures using only Netflix connections so bypasses some ISP fuckery with DPI and slowdowns. Elegant UI.
  • Speed.cloudflare.com is excellent. Detailed and capable of saturating my 1 gigabit downlink. Lots of details.
  • Testmy.net is decent but uglier.
  • Speedtest.net is ad laden.
  • Sourceforge.net/speedtest is ok and used to be my favorite. Lots of ads now.

As explained in my series of gigabit posts, making a fast, reliable network takes time and effort, and these sites don’t magically make it happen. However, having a way to measure your changes is super helpful, and I probably use these weekly.

I got an email 11/28/2021 – if you’re having WiFi speed issues, sometimes you need to change the frequency or band used by your access point/router, and Bill Hess wrote this nice how-to here, for both Mac and Windows.

130 Degrees | by Bill McKibben | The New York Review of Books

On By Paul HubbardIn climate, WeatherLeave a comment

In places like Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas, peak temperatures each year will be hotter than the 120s one now finds in Death Valley, and three quarters of the globe’s population will be “exposed to deadly heat more than 20 days per year.” In New York, the number will be fifty days; in Jakarta, 365. A “belt of uninhabitability” will run through the Middle East, most of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and eastern China; expanding deserts will consume whole countries “from Iraq to Botswana.”

130 Degrees, Bill McKibbin, NYMag

Via the excellent Adventure Journal, McKibbin’s essay is gripping, terrifying and must-read. Please. There is very little time.