I will be releasing a beta version of Intergrid in the near future, before New Year.

The first thing I need is someone to buy a domain name from.

I'm looking for a reasonable yearly price for the common generic TLDs ($10~$20), combined with reliability of support.

The only previous experience I had was with GoDaddy, and I had no issues with them. I have, however, heard stories of terrible support service (which I never used, for lack of need), and I'd rather not support a company of that level of service. (Nevermind that I bear strong dislike for post-service spam.)

The second thing I need is someone to host it.

Ideally, I would host it on a personal server, which would probably be a Pi-like platform, because I like the idea of owning the host as far as personal projects are concerned. I have little idea of how viable it is, or whether it's a better option for me than renting server space at the moment.

Lacking that, I'd like to have a EU-based hosting provider with reasonably-cheap ($10~$15) basic-level plans. Since the beta of Intergrid is local-storage-only, having a database hosted or supplied is not an issue at the moment. Low time-to-connect is important.

From GiveDirectly's blog:

In 2014, GiveDirectly partnered with academic researchers to launch our largest study ever in Kenya. The ultimate goal: find out how cash transfers affect local economies, including nearby non-recipients, enterprises, and markets. Now, in 2019, the results of this research have been released.

Abstract of the paper:

How large economic stimuli generate individual and aggregate responses is a central question in economics, but has not been studied experimentally. We provided one-time cash transfers of about USD 1000 to over 10,500 poor households across 653 randomized villages in rural Kenya. The implied fiscal shock was 15 percent of local GDP. We find large impacts on consumption and assets for recipients. Importantly, we document large positive spillovers on non-recipient households and firms, and minimal price inflation. We estimate a local fiscal multiplier of 2.6. We interpret welfare implications through the lens of a simple household optimization framework.

Some interesting tidbits from the paper:

Interestingly, sales increased without noticeable changes in firm investment behavior (beyond a modest increase in inventories), and sales do not increase differentially for firms owned by cash recipient households relative to nonrecipients. Both patterns suggest a demand-led rather than an investment-led expansion in economic activity.

[...]

We next examine how these changes affect untreated households. Despite not receiving transfers, they too exhibit large consumption expenditure gains: their annualized consumption expenditure is higher by 13% eighteen months after transfers began, an increase roughly comparable to the gains contemporaneously experienced by the treated households themselves.

(Emphasis added.)

[...]

Average price inflation is 0.1%, and even during periods with the largest transfers, estimated price effects are less than 1% and precisely estimated across all categories of goods.

[...]

Real output increased, and yet there is at most limited evidence of increases in the employment of land (which is in fixed supply), labor, or capital. One plausible, albeit speculative, possibility is that the utilization of these factors was “slack” in at least some enterprises (Lewis 1954). This seems plausible because in the retail and manufacturing sectors, where output responses were concentrated, the typical firm has a single employee (i.e. the proprietor), suggesting that integer constraints may often bind. In addition, many enterprises operate “on demand” in the sense that they produce only when they have customers, and the average non-agricultural enterprise sees just 1.7 customers per hour. In addition to retail, much manufacturing in this setting is “on demand;” for example, a mill owner waits for customers to bring grain and then grinds it for them. The existence of slack may help account for the large multiplier we document, as has also recently been argued in US data, especially in poorer US regions (Michaillat and Saez 2015; Murphy 2017).

Givedirectly blog - Full paper (pdf)

From the transcript:

By 1988, for the first time, more fast-food orders were taken at a drive-through window than at the restaurant. And this was a problem for the wimpy french fry because by the time you got home from the drive-through, the fries were no good.

[...]

So back then - almost 20, 25 years ago - Lamb Weston invented a coating called Stealth, which was their secret coating that you couldn't see and you couldn't tell was on the french fry, but it lasted - it was crispier longer, up to 12 to 15 minutes.

[...]

But this potato company has a new problem now - delivery. And a 12- to 15-minute lasting Stealth french fry isn't going to cut it because delivery takes longer than a drive-through. The average delivery wait time in a busy city is 20 to 30 minutes because drivers pick up multiple orders and make multiple stops.

[...]

They're starting to pitch these fries to fast food chains now. So they're not in stores yet, but Deb says they could be in a couple months. You won't know it's a crispy on delivery fry just like you don't know when you're eating a stealth fry. You'll just know you had a better french fry delivery experience.

More

I wanted to write about self-forgiveness because it's such a hard thing for me to do. Past mistakes and trespasses stick in my mind for decades, and it's so hard for me to shake them. This work is an attempt at expressing that difficulty.

Down in the foothills the peak is so perfect
Covered in pure white snow
Nary a tree in sight
The peak carves a visage in the sky
In the clouds
It just is, it exists peacefully in its austere authority
Calm, serene
Impossible
Yet I yearn to climb
To ascend
Down in the foothills among the trees
The greenof the hills
I make my preparations
Breath
Training
Gear
I practiceand I meditate
I meditate upona life
A life of mistakes and triumphs
Each breath preparing and steeling

It's time to begin my climb
Each step and the air, the precious vital air, thins
Lungs emptying and muscles weakening
And yet I continue
Not quite undaunted, but I continue
The views are stunning
Yet I don't see them, eyes ever on the peak
Visualizing success, not the process
It's so cold
Bitterly, viscerally cold
There's no air
Even a yogi must stop for air
But there's no air
The ground slick with snow and ice
Snow and ice with the oxygen I need
Sealed away in the mystery of the bonds
Just as beautiful as it is inaccessible

But I continue my climb
Slipping and falling, the rocks cut and score
Gashes and bruises amass
I take a moment and reflect
Is it worth it?
Shall I ever ascend?
And as I slip into meditation, I slip down the mountain
All progress lost
The world turns around, up and down
I lose my breath
And land, dizzy and hurt, down the bottom
Even further from the peak than when I started.

Tapped out on my phone in an Uber on the way to D&D. I write about more than love, I promise!

the water laps at the dam
seeking egress, seeking progress
everyone inside so thirsty
life affirming liquid
but the dam
the wall we built to keep ourselves safe
our salvation
our condemnation
seemed a good idea at the time
but all our other crimes against ourselves did too
how are we so smart yet so stupid
it hurts
it fucking hurts
life without love may as well be an empty gift on Christmas morning
but we all do it to ourselves every day
so many boundaries and rules and norms
all because we’re too afraid to get hurt
too afraid to be ourselves
too afraid to realize ourselves
too afraid to give one another the best gift we can

This is another British comedy that I think people will enjoy. The title is weird: Peter Kay is the stand up comedian, but he's playing a character in this sitcom. IMDB calls it "Car Share", but BBC calls it "Peter Kay's Car Share". It's British, so weirdly small number of episodes: only 12 (and this includes all the specials).

The setup sounds like it's going to be unbearably claustrophobic, a series long bottle episode. A supermarket sets up a car sharing scheme, and we watch John and Kayleigh share a car as they drive to work everyday. But this creates intimacy and we get to learn about the characters. It's heartfelt and lovely. It's well acted, and I think it's very funny.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4635922/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kay%27s_Car_Share

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02n62v4

From the article:

For all that Curses entranced me, however, I never came close to completing it. At some point I’d get bogged down by its combinatorial explosion of puzzles and places, by its long chains of dependencies where a single missed or misplaced link would lock me out of victory without my realizing it, and I’d drift away to something else. Eventually, I just stopped coming back altogether.

I was therefore curious and maybe even slightly trepiditious to revisit Curses for this article some two decades after I last attempted to play it. How would it hold up? The answer is, better than I feared but somewhat worse than I might have hoped.

[...]

[Curses] was designed, like his beloved Crowther and Woods Adventure, to be a place which you came back to again and again, exploring new nooks and crannies as the fancy took you. If you actually wanted to solve the thing… well, you’d probably need to get yourself a group for that.

[...]

All of which is to say that, even as it heralded a new era in interactive fiction which would prove every bit as exciting as what had come before, Curses became the last great public world implemented as a single-player text adventure.

More

(1) This works okay:

typedef struct metres metres_t;

int       metres_get_value(metres_t *x);
metres_t *metres_add(metres_t *x, metres_t *y);
metres_t *metres_new(int value);
void      metres_delete(metres_t *x);

(2) This works badly:

• typedef struct metres metres_t;
  int       metres_get_value(metres_t *x);
  
  metres_t *metres_add(metres_t *x, metres_t *y);
  
  metres_t *metres_new(int value);
  
  void      metres_delete(metres_t *x);
  
  

(3) This works slightly better, but the list bullet is weird:

• typedef struct metres metres_t;
  
  int       metres_get_value(metres_t *x);
  metres_t *metres_add(metres_t *x, metres_t *y);
  metres_t *metres_new(int value);
  void      metres_delete(metres_t *x);
  

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

Anticipating their new album that came out today, I've been on something of a Nits trip lately. (It's more pleasant than it sounds, I promise!) Since I think these guys should and could be better known, I thought I'd spread the gospel a little bit.

Throughout their almost five decades of existence, Nits (or The Nits) have been critically acclaimed, yet have never really conquered the charts. There are various likely reasons for this. For one, they exist in that difficult-to-market realm of "art pop" and have continued to reinvent themselves and their sound from album to album. As a Dutch band, they have also never had the backing of a major British or US label, and although the songs are primarily in English, perhaps the singer-lyricist Henk Hofstede's accent has also sounded too non-native for the masses.

If you do know Nits, you most likely know them from their minor 80s hits Nescio (1983) and In The Dutch Mountains (1987). Those two songs capture their 80s style pretty well in terms of their sound and lyrical content, and the videos are also great examples of their visual style.

These two songs came out during what was actually their second distinct musical period. Their first four albums, released between 1978 and 1981, were riding the new wave wagon, a good example of which is the song Tutti Ragazzi (1979). But I would say that it was with 1983's Omsk where Nits really started to display their full potential and began to solidify into a core three-man unit of the aforementioned Hofstede, drummer Rob Kloet, and keyboardist Robert Jan Stips who had produced their earlier albums but now joined the band fully. There have been other members over the years, but these three are the main contributors; Hofstede with his voice and story-like lyrics, Kloet with his wide range of beats and rhythms that cross musical genres, and Stips who brings in a particular depth and space in which the songs can breathe freely.

In addition to the two tracks I mentioned earlier, other songs from their 80s and early 90s output that I would recommend as an introduction include A Touch of Henry Moore (1983), Sketches of Spain (1986), Radio Shoes (1990), and Giant Normal Dwarf (1990).

There has always been an undercurrent of melancholy to Nits's music, but it tends to be balanced with their quirky sense of humour. In the 90s, however, the melancholy started to take over, and Hofstede's lyrics became increasingly focused on the human condition while the music dropped some of its overt playfulness. Some wonderful pieces from this period include Cars & Cars (1992), Mourir Avant Quinze Ans (1994), Three Sisters (1998) and Ivory Boy (2000). This period also witnessed a major change in the lineup, as Stips departed the band in 1996. He joined back seven years later, from which point onwards they have been a three-member band.

While the evolution of their style has been gradual, I would say that by the late 2000s, Nits had moved into their fourth major period. Whereas their influences have always clearly included artists like the Beatles (the band's name is sort of a nod to them), Talking Heads, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, I feel Nits have more recently toned down some of their earlier experimentation and focused more on the qualities that made their influences such great songwriters. From this latest period, take a listen to The Flowers (2008), Distance (2009), Love Locks (2012) and Flowershop Forget-Me-Not (2017).

This brings us to today's album, Knot, which is something like the group's 25th studio album. Or maybe 26th. Or something else, depending on your definition of a studio album. In any case, as I understand it, this new work was largely parsed together from hours of improvisation, and it does sound like that. The eleven tracks feel like mood pieces, fairly static paintings, captured moments. But I have of course only given the album a handful listens so far, so this is an early impression still. In any case, here's the album opener Ultramarine (2019).

I hope this little write-up will be of interest to some of you and that perhaps the linked music speaks to you on a level that pushes you to dig in deeper. If you use Spotify, the "This Is Nits" playlist is a pretty good next step to take.

If you do take a listen, I'd be curious to hear what you think of the music. Or if you knew Nits before, I'd love to hear what you think my little introduction here missed, misinterpreted or should have emphasised more. And what's your view of the new album?