new metheny

He's still at it. Pat Metheny's latest album, recorded live before the pandemic: Pat Metheny - Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV).

A couple of reviews:

Pat Metheny: Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) review – new talent and wily reinventions

Pat Metheny: Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) (Modern) - A review of the guitarist's live album showcasing two gifted rising stars: James Francies and Marcus Gilmore

too many, too much

There's too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see this is a land of confusion?

-- Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

My personal view is that climate change is occurring. But the primary driver is population and consumption. When my grandfather was born, the world population was about 1.3 billion. When I was born it was 2.2 billion, and today it is 7.5 billion. The UN predicts a population of about 10 billion by 2055. In my opinion this is the primary driver of everything relating to our worsening environment.

-- Ken Croasdale, 82, researcher and engineer at Imperial Oil from 1968 to 1992, as quoted in the article "The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long ago"

a nice idea

So, I am calling for a new national holiday – American Interdependence Day – a celebration of the “us” in the U.S. and acknowledgement of the fact that our individual fates are inextricably linked.

-- Peter T. Coleman, in "Divided States of America: Why we need an Interdependence Day to restore national unity"

a hot and dry future

The writing's on the wall. Article: The drought in US south-west is the worst in 1,200 years. It might be here to stay by Kim Heacox.

Heacox writes:

John Wesley Powell, the one-armed US army civil war veteran who led the first white expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon – a daring boat run in 1869 – later became an ethnographer who wrote a prescient 1878 government paper titled: Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States. In it, he unflinchingly described the scarcity of water, and summarized that much of the American south-west, if it must be settled, should be settled lightly and modestly. Overpopulate it, and it will be unforgiving.

People came anyway:

Decades later, the US Bureau of Reclamation oversaw the construction of two massive arch-gravity concrete dams on the river: Hoover Dam in the 1930s that impounded Lake Mead; and Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, that impounded Lake Powell.

And:

When the Bureau of Reclamation planned and designed the dams, they were warned that their data sets were too small; that the desert has moods, that rivers fluctuate, water comes and goes, and the bones of previous civilizations are everywhere.

"secret" ff tips

Article: 11 secret tips for Firefox that will make you an internet pro

The two tips that I think will be most useful here:

4. Reopen a closed tab - Type Ctrl+Shift+T for PC, or Command+Shift+T for Mac.

7. Sample any color with the built-in eyedropper - This lets the user sample colors from web pages and copy the HEX value to use elsewhere. Click the main menu in the upper right corner, scroll to "More Tools", and then select "Eyedropper".

Yay!! Thank you for these!!

 

firefox 89.0 fixes

This webpage has some tips for dealing with the newly released Firefox 89.0, for those who aren't happy with the changes: https://www.askvg.com/tip-restore-compact-mode-density-option-in-firefox-customize-window/

My favorite is to simply use the following about:config fix to set the Firefox window to "compact mode", getting rid of some wasted space at the top:

browser.uidensity = 0 -- change to 1 (for "compact mode")

 

 

For Fluxbox users, if the Firefox window doesn't render correctly in Fluxbox (happened to me in one of my Arch installations), the Restart Fluxbox tool fixes it for the current session only. For a more permanent fix, use the following about:config settings:

gfx.webrender.all = false -- this was the default

gfx.webrender.force-disabled = false -- toggle to true to fix window in Fluxbox

To completely disable the new "Proton" look, toggle the following from true to false:

browser.proton.enabled

browser.proton.modals.enabled

browser.proton.doorhangers.enabled

browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled

 

browser.proton.places-tooltip.enabled

Then restart Firefox.

 

parallel

Article: Enable Parallel Downloading In Pacman In Arch Linux

See man pacman.conf, under the OPTIONS section:

       ParallelDownloads

           Specifies number of concurrent download streams. The value needs to be a positive

           integer. If this config option is not set then only one download stream is used (i.e.

           downloads happen sequentially).

The article linked above describes how to easily enable parallel downloading in Arch Linux. This is kinda cool; I'm trying it in one of my Arch installations. Not sure if it speeds things up or not, or if it's really helpful to me in any way. I think I like it anyway. Found an interesting discussion on the topic at the Arch forums: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=266854

The options I'm currently using in the /etc/pacman.conf file are summarized below:

[options]

HoldPkg     = pacman glibc

Architecture = auto

# Misc options

Color

CheckSpace

VerbosePkgLists

ILoveCandy

ParallelDownloads = 5

# By default, pacman accepts packages signed by keys that its local keyring

# trusts (see pacman-key and its man page), as well as unsigned packages.

SigLevel    = Required DatabaseOptional

LocalFileSigLevel = Optional