Shellsharks Blogroll - BlogFlock

Read "'Gotta be kidding me': Pentagon official reveals Hegseth's criteria for senior promotions" - Molly White's activity feed

2026-11-09T21:28:42.000Z

Read:

“'Gotta be kidding me': Pentagon official reveals Hegseth's criteria for senior promotions”.

Priya Sridhar in MS NOW. Published November 9, 2026.

A senior official exclusively told MS NOW how decorated military officers with decades of experience were withheld from promotion after Pentagon staff printed out internet searches showing they had attended official events like promoting Covid-19 vaccinations or marking International Women's Day.

Medium's new app looks a lot like an idea-sharing group chat - Werd I/O

2026-11-09T17:21:22.000Z

Link: Medium is launching a new note-taking app called TK, by David Pierce in The Verge

Medium is launching its new app, TK:

“The company is launching a new app, called TK, that combines note taking and journaling with something resembling a private social network. The app is meant to get you writing more, and help you share that writing with friends and fans. And it’s part of a much bigger idea about blogging, and a much broader thesis about the state of the internet.”

I’ve been using it for a while and it reminds me of some of my best experiences on the internet. It also contains a bit more AI than you’d expect to see in a writing app, but it doesn’t hinge on those features: for some people they’re useful ways to add more information, fill in blanks, or do some smart retrieval from notes you’ve already written, but you can get a great experience from TK without using it at all.

The Verge article notes that it’s a bit like group chat, and I think that’s right. The way I’d put it is this: if Medium (or any blog, including this one) is a magazine where complete pieces are published, TK represents the messy conversation, note-taking and idea-sharing that exists before that point. That’s an imperfect description, though, because a lot of this really is conversation: something that will never be a published thought. Some of the interactions remind me of LiveJournal at its height, which is probably the biggest compliment I can give to any new service.

That’s also why I’m not worried about it not operating on an open social web protocol. It’s intentionally closed for the right reasons, in the same way that my group chats are closed. These are ideas that I want to share with select people, not the world. And because of that, I’m more likely to be open, be wider with my thoughts, and share less-finished ideas. All of those are good things. And then, should you publish: yes, put it on your own domain, or somewhere like Medium, depending on your values and preferences.

I like it very much, is what I’m saying.

Blunt Banhammer Blocks Basic Bots Ballistically - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-11-09T12:34:00.000Z

I cut bot traffic to my site by over 80% with a simple trap.

Last month, my hobby website OpenBenches.org transferred more than 2.5TB of data to visitors. As much as I'd like to think the site is enormously popular, it looks like it is just AI bots endlessly crawling the data and slurping up the images.

So I've built B⁶ to be an indiscriminate tool to eradicate these unwanted parasites.

It is very loosely inspired by Jeff Starr's Blackhole, but works even on sites with heavy caching.

Here's the high level description of how it works.

Create a directory like /honeypot/ on your site
Put some code in index.php within the directory
Add the honeypot as an explicit "Disallow" in robots.txt
Include a hidden link to to the honeypot on every page of your site
If something accesses that page, write its IP address to your .htaccess
The .htaccess bans the IP address from ever accessing your site again.

This blog post shows you how you can build this yourself and discusses some of the problems it might cause.

Bad Robots!

The file robots.txt lives at the root of your website. It contains a list of instructions to automated web crawlers. Respectful bots will read it and refuse to look at specific parts of your site.

Add these two lines to it:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /honeypot/

That says bots shouldn't visit any page in the honeypot directory.

Bots generally check for updates every 24 hours, so either wait a day or manually submit it to major crawlers.

.htaccess

The .htaccess file contains a list of instructions for how your server should process requests.

Find the bit of your .htaccess file which looks like this:


        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteBase /

Edit it to look like this:


        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteBase /

### BLOCKED IPs
    #   TEST-NET-1
    RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} "=192.0.2.1"
    RewriteRule ^ - [R=402,L]
### /BLOCKED IPs

It is important that these rules come before any other rewrite rules.

Change the end of this IfModule to look like:



ErrorDocument 402 "Payment Required - Access Denied."

If an IP address is in the blocked IP list, the server will send an error code and a readable message. You can add whatever plain text you like here.

Wipe Them All Out

Inside the honeypot directory, create a file called index.php (or whatever you like). When this page is visited, it grabs the visitor's IP address and the name of its User Agent. It then places them in the BLOCKED IPs section.

//  What's their IP?
$IP = get_client_ip();

//  User Agent
$UA = isset( $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] ) ? $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] : "";

//  Get the existing .htaccess file.
$htaccess_file = "../.htaccess";
$htaccess = file_get_contents( $htaccess_file );

//  Split by newline.
$htaccess_lines = explode( separator: "\n", string: $htaccess );

//  Where's our start block?
$start = "###   BLOCKED IPs";
$end   = "###   /BLOCKED IPs";

//  Exit if the .htaccess doesn't have the block.
if ( !in_array( needle: $start, haystack: $htaccess_lines ) ) { die(); }

//  This is where to start from.
$start_block = array_search( needle: $start, haystack: $htaccess_lines );

//  Add the line after the start block.
//  Include a date.
$htaccess_lines[ $start_block ] = $start . "\n" . 
    "\t#\t" . date( "c" ) . "\t{$UA}\n" . 
    "\tRewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} \"={$IP}\" [OR]";

//  Turn the array back to a string.
$newHtaccess = implode( separator: "\n", array: $htaccess_lines );

//  Save the new .htaccess file.
file_put_contents( filename: $htaccess_file, data: $newHtaccess );

function get_client_ip():string
{
    //  Adapted from https://github.com/ibericode/koko-analytics/blob/main/src/Resources/functions/collect.php

    //  X-Forwarded-For sometimes contains a comma-separated list of IP addresses
    //  @see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-Forwarded-For
    $ips = empty( $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] ) ?
        [] :
        \array_map( "trim", \explode( ",", $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] ) );

    //  Always add REMOTE_ADDR and HTTP_CLIENT_IP to list of ip addresses, if set
    foreach ( ["REMOTE_ADDR", "HTTP_CLIENT_IP"] as $key ) {
        if ( !empty( $_SERVER[$key] ) ) {
            $ips[] = $_SERVER[$key];
        }
    }

    //  Return first valid IP address from list
    foreach ( $ips as $ip ) {
        if ( \filter_var( $ip, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP, FILTER_FLAG_NO_PRIV_RANGE | FILTER_FLAG_NO_RES_RANGE ) ) {
            return $ip;
        }
    }

    return "";
}

Setting The Trap

Web crawlers look at a page, find every link on it, then visit those links. So we need to put a link to the honeypot on every page - but in such a way that normal users will not find it or click it.

This adds a link, removes it from the accessibility tree, and gives it impossible to click text (a zero width joiner).

‍

This CSS hides it from normal viewers and removes the mouse cursor from view.

#honey {
    display: none !important;
    cursor:  none !important;
}

Problems This Might Cause

It's unlikely that a human will find the link, click on it, and be banned. But if they do, consider put a message in the blocking text telling them how they can get unblocked.

Some useful bots ignore robots.txt. If they identify themselves via a User-Agent string (and they should) you can manually remove them from .htaccess. You could also code in an allow list exemption for them. But, of course, many bad bots lie about who they really are.

Conversely, not all bots crawl every link. This won't catch bots which respect robots.txt but are nevertheless problematic.

If you have thousands of different bots blocked, the performance of your server might slow down while .htaccess is parsed. There's weak anecdotal evidence that it adds a slight overhead. But, personally, I don't think that's worth worrying about.

Bots often use hijacked IP addresses. After the bot has moved, an innocent party might be blocked from your site. Each block has a timestamp associated with it. You could periodically unblock older entries.

Bots rotate through hundreds of different IP addresses. So the same bot might get blocked multiple times.

Bots might see the CSS marks the link as hidden and refuse to follow it. Instead of CSS, you could use invisible spaces or other characters which would be hard for a human to see but appear visible to a bot.

Similarly, a smart bot might refuse to visit a path called /honeypot/ so choose a better name for it. A smarter bot would see that touching the honeypot leads to a ban - so perhaps a selection of traps are needed?

As is implied in the name, this is a blunt banhammer. It doesn't give a warning, nor does it look at User-Agent, Country, or any other signal. You touch the honeypot and you receive an instaban. No warning and no automated way to appeal.

Alternatives

There are alternative ways to do this. Some bots don't send language headers, some use older versions of HTTP, they often have severely outdated User Agent strings. Those are all reasonable ways to block something which is probably a bot. There are likely to be a few false positives though.

But B⁶ has no false positives. A normal user can't follow the link to the trap and a well-behaved bot won't follow the link.

Things like Anubis require a lot of work to set up and annoy normal users. B⁶ doesn't require a specific hosting environment and is never shown to normal users.

It Works!

Since running B⁶ a week ago, I've blocked over 400 IP addresses and seen a significant fall in traffic. I've not had any complaints yet. Sadly, none of the bots have paid to remove the paywall!

At peak, my site was seeing 216GB of data transfer per day. That's now dropped to around 25GB.

I don't claim this is the most sophisticated bot blocker in existence - but I enjoyed building it myself. I'll probably add something to records the geolocation of the IP and maybe remove any block older than a certain age.

If you'd like to use it or improve this code, I'd be grateful if you treated it as AGPL v3 licensed.

Jaffa Cake Jaffa Cam Review - Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed

2026-11-09T12:13:00.000Z

As a novelty camera enjoyer, I had to get my hands on a Jaffa Cake Jaffa cam. Just look at it.

For a penny short of seven english pounds you get the camera, the keyring, a USB A to C cable (A, really?), and a pack of Jaffa Cakes. You do have to provide your own micro SD card.

On turning it on you get a little jingle and a Jaffa Cake splash screen. Cute. I stuck in a 1GB one I had lying around and it said I could fit around 7500 images on it which gives you some idea of how low quality these photos are going to be — or maybe McVities have cracked a new compression algorithm that will change the world? Sadly, it's the former. The photos are 1920×1440.

Each of these photos, along with the other ones I took, I was as steady as I could be and the light was decent. I'm starting to think these types of cameras exist purely to disprove "the best camera is the one you have with you". I reckon I could draw better representations of these moments.

The camera also has filters, which I didn't use for any photos worth sharing, including a santa one and a beach scene but no jaffa cake one. What are they even doing here? Useless.

Interestingly the B&M camera that Ben has appears to be more or less the exact same camera based on the UI and version number formatting. You shouldn't buy that one either.

The only conclusion to be drawn is that £7 isn't enough to get a good camera. The Jaffa Cakes were good though.

2026-11-09 09:50: Just another day in Casa Quirk. 🤣 - Kev Quirk

2026-11-09T09:50:00.000Z

Just another day in Casa Quirk. 🤣

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TGIF continues to prove valuable - Johnny.Decimal

2026-11-09T05:42:45.000Z

Our review process – 'Thank God I Filed It' – continues to prove its worth in uncovering duplicate information, clarifying the purpose of our categories, and refreshing our memory.

Categories are the heart of your system. If you can deeply understand, with absolute clarity, exactly what each of your categories is and isn't for, you'll find your information more easily, with less stress.

TGIF recap

As a recap, we first had the idea of regularly reviewing our system in early 2025 [0097]. Basically, you spend a bit of your okay I'm done with work and I just need to waste an hour before I pack up for the week time on Friday by going through your system, category-by-category, according to a schedule, and just giving it a bit of love.

Also see 0170, 0199, 0212.

Because knowledge doesn't look after itself. It atrophies. There's so much of it, you're creating and modifying it all day: you can't possibly hold it all in your mind.¹

You might think that you could outsource this work to your AI. And you could – but I'd argue that now you understand less about your business than you did before. You need to do the work for it to help your brain.

TGIF helps you to clarify purpose

Our business is a bit funny in that we use Johnny.Decimal to manage it, while at the same time being Johnny.Decimal, producing the system itself. It's very 'meta', which leads to some interesting decisions about how we manage our own data.

Lucy's TGIF revealed a discrepancy which led to us making a decision: category 24 Processes & procedures is for our internal processes & procedures. One of those is my 24.18 Email-sending checklist.²

'How I think about managing email' isn't here

I spend a lot of time thinking about how we – all, society – should manage email. This is something I've given hundreds of hours of thought to. It keeps coming up. Books are written. I don't think it'll ever be solved, because technology and our use of it continuously evolves.

So how I think about email is something that I consider to be part of our 21 Products & services. My thoughts on it, and the associated output, are one of the reasons you might follow me, and sign up. One of the next videos in the member's feed – likely a short series of them – will cover this topic.

I manage this at 21.53 Email, your opinions of and advice thereon.

What's important is the review

These details about my business won't be relevant to yours. What's important is the point that reviewing them – questioning them, giving them a poke, testing them this way and that way – this is what's going to give you a clearer mental model of your business.

It's unglamorous work. But I think it's really important.

I just did a word count on our business JDex: more than a quarter of a million words. ↩
Categories in this post are from the Small Business System. ↩

Weeknotes W4 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-09T00:00:00.000Z

Last weekend was so busy that I was too sleepy to write my weeknotes at my normal time. Thus, herein is a condensed version of my weeknotes.

Editorial note

In Weeknotes W1, I said that weeknotes would be a four-week-long experiment, with my writing one weeknote every week for four weeks. I have been enjoying the process, and so I think I am going to keep this going. I am not setting another goal, but will continue with this format for as long as I find it interesting.

Highlights of the week

Last week I:

Attended an academic conference online for the first time. I don’t think I was completely the target audience – there were so many words used that I have not yet encountered in my studies – but I enjoyed almost all of the talks to which I listened. The event was two days long. The only downside was that lunch was 30 minutes, and there wasn’t really another break between the rest of the talks.
Went to the Edinburgh Zine Fair. There were at least 20 vendors, collectively selling the widest variety of zines. I bought one zine that lists supermarket reviews of sardines, another on the introduction of Britain’s decimal currency, and a few more miscellaneous ones. The highlight of the event was getting to talk with other people who make zines. I asked one person how they made zines so small, and they shared that they like to use the pieces of paper left over. I love this concept, and feel inspired to try and make a few smaller zines.
Decided that I would participate in Writing Month. I am setting myself the goal of publishing one poem on my website every day this month. It has been going well so far. A side effect of this goal of trying to publish a poem every day is that I have many drafts of things that intrigued me but are not ready for publication. For the last few days, my poems have been haikus, a format I may write about in the future.
I made a few changes to Artemis:
- I moved to use the “lingua” Python package for language identification, which is being used to add the country code before a post title in Artemis if the post’s language is not my primary language. See “Brainstorming the multi-lingual reading experience for Artemis” for a write-up with background. This is only implemented for me right now, but I would like to roll it out to more people. To do so, I will need to add a feature for people to be able to set their default language, and a feature flag so people can toggle this on and off.
- I am working on code to turn words in a post title that appear all in upper case to sentence case, while trying my best to ensure abbreviations are not affected. I think it is going to take some time to get this right.
- I fixed a bug in the reading interface, and then fixed another bug introduced by my fix.
Visited a free exhibition at the Royal Academy of Scotland. I liked Paul Furneaux RSA’s “Sound of Water” (no date) and Waller Hugh Paton RSA’s “Ardentinny on the Clyde” (1872). The latter painting used colour in a way that reminded me vaguely of Seurat, although the ground was much more real than that in Seurat’s pointillist renderings.

This week I plan to focus on my upcoming art history assignment, look through as many of my notes as I can, and read some of the zines I got at the weekend.

Thoughts, wandering

Many of the notes below are copied from my notes this week, or are inspired by them.

The joy of the first smell of coffee in the morning.
I made things with paper before I made things with computers.
How a story or a song can hold us — the suspense of waiting for the next line in a song.
I visited a cafe with an old, red, telephone on the wall. The coffee was great. I wonder if that telephone works.
Baristas talking about Tumblr made me smile. It’s nice to hear people chatting about Tumblr. The cafe had matcha white chocolate cookie, chocolate tahini, chai loaf, jamaretti (TIL!) among other delicious treats. I got a matcha white chocolate cookie. It was so good!

Also:

Me: I have an idea for something I want to add to my website. Also me: Where do I begin? Still me: I have no idea where to begin. Now: It's TV time.

Miscellanea

Send in the clowns! Dreamlike images – in pictures is a wonderful collection of photography. I especially like the “New York City, 2018” photo with the lady walking across the street, the “Brussels, 2025” photo with the lady at the bar, and the “Brussels, 2022” photo that is an “homage to Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks.”
I thought this video on “Dimensions of Programming” (14 years old now) was interesting.
This week I learned that there is a commercial history to Captain Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition. I haven’t read the linked paper, but watched a presentation on the topic at the aforementioned academic conference that referenced this paper.
I love the calendar on the Action for Happiness website (which I think I learned about via Frances’ website).
Jane Eyre has been translated more than 618 times. Prismatic Jane Eyre uses this as a basis for academic inquiry. (I haven’t looked too much into this beyond hearing a presentation this week, but it definitely feels worth linking here.)
I enjoyed Thamara’s post “Be silly, be unapologetic, be free”.
This week I learned kitchen foil does run out.
A message I sent in the IndieWeb chat this week:
- “We’re not the only people who talk about buying domains. I’m listening to an NFL podcast and the hosts are talking about buying a domain.” Quoting from the podcast:
  - What are we doing with this domain?”
  - “We’re going to start a Sumo league, Travis.”
- The podcast to which I was listening was New Heights. I ended up listening for an hour, and learned a lot.
I liked Jim’s write-up on “Addition by Subtraction”.
Shellsharks’ Scrolls newsletter (always a great read!) linked to a web page called “Audio Description in Art and Museums”, where the page’s author, Brett, has curated links related to the topic. I haven’t explored this much yet, but suffice to say I have many bookmarks as a result of this page.
I enjoyed the episode of In Our Time on The Evolution of Trees.

Action for Happiness website Addition by Subtraction Audio Description in Art and Museums Frances’ website lingua Brainstorming the multi-lingual reading experience for Artemis Prismatic Jane Eyre Shellsharks’ Scrolls newsletter Be silly, be unapologetic, be free The Evolution of Trees Sound of Water Ardentinny on the Clyde commercial history to Captain Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition Send in the clowns! Dreamlike images – in pictures New Heights Dimensions of Programming

Some thoughts on restaurant menu QR codes - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-11-08T12:34:01.000Z

Is anyone else SICK AND TIRED of the way hotels now foist plastic "keycards" on guests?

No! I don't want tap to open my door!

No! I don't want to keep the card in my wallet!

No! I don't want electronics in control of my life!

What if I need to stab an attacker? Keys are great for that by flimsy plastic cards are useless

Gives us PROPER keys with big keyrings that we have to hand in to reception when we go out and then ask for when we come back.

That is exactly what you sound like when you complain about restaurant menus now being available by QR code.

My wife and I took a 7 week Interrail through Europe. While most places still had boring paper menu, a decent number had QR codes which allowed us to see the menu and order food. And they were brilliant!

An electronic menu offers so many advantages. Being able to instantly translate any terms by selecting the text is much easier than pointing a camera and trying to focus on a laminated bit of card.

That said, most of the online menus were already fully translated. They had all the legally mandated allergen information. Many of them showed when something was out of stock. We had much the same experience visiting Japan - getting to see a photo or video about the dish you're going to order is surprisingly useful.

The ones which allowed you to order were even better. So easy to select the right thing - no hoping that the waiter didn't mishear "no cheese" as "extra cheese". Notes to the kitchen about allergies were often supported. Oh, and no trying to catch the waiter's eye to let them know you're ready to order.

Speaking of which, no trying to catch the waiter's eye when you want to pay! Several of online platforms allowed for payment through the Web. Most supported splitting the bill between a group - so no more trying to work out who ate what.

So let's talk about the down-sides.

"What if there's no signal?!?!?" Get a roaming SIM, chief. But, as it happens, every restaurant had fast and free WiFi. Because, you know, they understand the service they're providing.

"I don't want a bloody app!!!!" Me neither. I didn't encounter any which required me to install a one-time app.

"Online ordering tries to upsell to me and I have no self control...." Sure. But waiters often recommend the most expensive wine to go with their cheapest dish.

"How can I flirt with a waitress if everything is mediated through a screen?????" Please reconsider your life choices.

"But I hate progress and love paper!" OK. In just about every restaurant I saw people being handed paper menus. Or wait staff explained what each dish was.

"Yes, but in the worst case scenario I've constructed in my head I have no signal, no phone, and no alternatives - and now I'm irrationally angry about that!" So walk out. Seriously, you'd leave a restaurant if the waiter was rude, or you saw a rat, or the food didn't come for an hour. Do the same if you're forced to use a service that you hate.

As I've said before, I love living in the future. I can't be bothered with fully grown adults throwing a tantrum over every bit of progress.

Does Money Buy Happiness? - Kev Quirk

2026-11-08T11:29:00.000Z

Does Money Buy Happiness?

by Tuesdays Child

Tuesdays Child talks about how they think money = happiness. It's an interesting debate with people on both sides of the fence.

Read post ➡

I found this post via this reply on Bubbles. Both are interesting takes, for different reasons.

For me, money doesn't buy happiness - it buys the removal of financial stress. What actually makes you happy is the people around you and the decisions you make with whatever you have. I've kinda talked about this before in my when was I happiest post.

I grew up in a very poor home. After my mum and dad split up, our house was repossessed and we ended up living in a rough area surrounded by gangs, drug addicts, and prostitutes. My mum worked every hour god sends as a cleaner just to make ends meet, while I looked after the younger kids. We didn't know if the bills would be paid and were stuck in a cycle of weekly payday loans for years.

On paper, that doesn't sound like a happy existence, right?

But we were happy. As we settled in, we became part of the community, and watching all the street drama - like the regular fights and arrests that are common in rough areas - just became part of the entertainment, like watching a live episode of Jerry Springer.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, though. I remember one time when the addict that lived opposite us came busting into our flat screaming that her baby had died and she needed to call an ambulance. Back then there were no mobile phones, and our landline was in mum's bedroom. So mum obviously let her go call an ambulance.

Turns out her baby was fine, but she knew our phone was in mum's bedroom and she took the opportunity to steal all mum's jewellery for drug money.

Still, most of my memories from back then are good ones. I fondly remember sitting with my mum on a Friday night watching a stream of comedy shows like Cheers and Frasier. Once in a blue moon she'd say, "do you fancy a pizza?" Obviously I did! I'd jump on my bike, cycle to the local takeaway, and get us a 10" pizza to share because that's all we could afford. My god, were we happy. We were together, money be damned.

Fast forward 35 years

Today, my life is the polar opposite of how I grew up. We live in a lovely quaint village in the Welsh countryside and I earn a very good living. Having money solves certain problems - like not having to worry about paying the bills or putting food on the table - which certainly makes life easier, even if it doesn't automatically make you happy.

It still comes down to the choices you make along the way. Four years ago, we bought our dream home in the country. It's an old place that needs a ton of renovation work, which comes with big bills of its own. Had we stayed in our old house, we could have been mortgage-free by now.

Would having no mortgage have made us happier? Probably not. That house was too small for us, right in the middle of a large town, and it felt claustrophobic. Taking on the bigger financial commitment gave us the lifestyle we actually wanted.

It's a balancing act

I am happy today, but not because of what I earn. I'm happy because I'm surrounded by the people I love, living the life we want to live.

On the other end of the scale from my childhood, you could have a millionaire who's completely alone and tries to fill that void with things - nice watches, nice cars, a nice home. With no-one to share it with, it's all just meaningless stuff.

I think of it like a see-saw. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle: having enough money that you don't have to worry about the basics, without spending your whole life climbing the ladder and missing out on time with the people who matter. That's a big part of why I stepped down last year.

Money doesn't necessarily mean happiness. It can certainly help, though.

Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️

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the meadows, edinburgh - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

Amber triangle —
Stillness in the graceful air.
Foliage falling.

espresso - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

Cosy glass, white wisps —
Bubbling dual espressos.
Morning steams and flows.

Book Review: When the Dust Settles - Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster by Lucy Easthope ★★★★★ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2026-11-07T12:34:34.000Z

This is a difficult but essential book. I was initially put off by how graphically autobiographical it is. The disaster planning I came for was frequently interrupted with the author's loves, disasters, health issues, pains, and domestic issues. As the book wore on, I realised how vital that is. Disasters - whether natural or caused by human actions - cannot be tackled in a dispassionate way. It's all very well having a plan to repatriate bodies, strict timetables for witness statements, and a clinical approach to disposing of victims' personal effects - but there needs to be space for a humane response; not just a humanitarian response. People need space to grieve, they need a shower and cup of tea, they need to be allowed to fucking scream.

My chauvinistic biases were stopped in their tracks by the unrelenting assault of pure and righteous indignation.

Women in disaster planning and response are constantly accused of overreaction, of too much thinking and emotion. We ignore our instincts in an effort to fit in.

It is also a rallying cry against the national crime that was austerity. The hollowing out of the state's capacity to respond to trauma was a vicious and unnecessary attack on our future. Hoping that the worst never comes is in itself a recipe for disaster.

The book is necessarily grim - with occasional gallows humour - but never fails to be fascinating:

It seemed that pigeons and other birds were scooping up the smallest human bones, the finger bones or phalanges, that were still being uncovered

Every chapter contains at least one "big ooof" where you can see exactly how reality refuses to comply to with the best laid plans of disaster planners. Here's one about the difficulty in identifying people after a disaster:

[The victims] had the same kit on and, in an extra twist of fate, they had all dyed their hair canary yellow for the game.

As I said, it is a difficult and bloody book. Vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the why and the how of complex recovery efforts.

Feature: open your Bear notes by ID, not exact title - Johnny.Decimal

2026-11-07T09:10:56.000Z

If you own the LAS or SBS, this site has a link to open the current entry in your local JDex.

Figure 0264A. Life Admin System / 15.21.

Previously, this opened the exact title of the ID. So if you change that title in any way, the link will fail.

On the forum, Robert asked if this can be changed to a search instead, matching the ID only. This will help those of you who have changed your titles, e.g. by localising them.

This feature is now live. Find it at your Life Admin and Small Business settings.

Figure 0264B. Life Admin System / Settings.

Stress-free travel with an 'active trip' note - Johnny.Decimal

2026-11-07T04:04:17.000Z

This post has an accompanying video. Sign in with your Personal account to view it.

I recently found myself in an airport immigration queue, passport in hand, metres from the counter. At this moment my brain reminded me of something very important:

Yesterday, I filled in an immigration form and saved a QR code.
I need this QR code now, right now, this instant.
I've no idea where it is.¹

In these moments, it's like you're a newborn. You don't know the place, the people, or the language. Your phone probably isn't on the local network. You're helpless, and you know it.

There is also a small window of opportunity to be at the front of the line. I pay an extra $20 to sit up front so that I'm one of the first off the plane. And now I'm about to ruin it by not being organised. Me!

The shame. It hit me like a brick. Wait until they hear about this…

How to not be 'that guy' who holds up the line

So I solved it with a really simple process. I've been using it for a few months now and it works. Make this a habit and never stress again.

This tip isn't limited to travel. Think about any situation where you find yourself needing a piece of information. Current you – un-stressed you, sitting-on-the-couch you – has easy access to it. So let's help future you – first-in-line you, holding-people-up you – by making it as easy to find as possible.

1. Create a new entry in your JDex

If you use Life Admin, there's already a place. Attach this note to the ID 15.21 Important documents & lists.²

Do that by creating a new note called 15.21+ Active trip.

2. Load it up

At the start of the trip, clear the note. Start fresh. It's not a diary.

Add your boarding passes, QR codes, train tickets, and Airbnb checkin instructions. Put them in the note in the order that you'll need them.

Add nothing else to the note. It must be a place of calm.

Good notes apps will let you add a 'widget' to your home screen that opens a specific note. Bear and Apple Notes do this.

Add a widget that opens this note.

That's it. Now all you need to remember is to open that note.

Video

In the video for this post, I show you exactly how to set this all up. And at the end I give you some tips for getting QR codes and boarding passes out of websites and your email, and into this note.

Become a Personal member to view it, and get the Life Admin System and all future Personal videos.

Of course, it was already in my JDex. I had saved it, in a trip-specific entry. Lucy was next to me in the queue and she said, surely it's in your JDex?

But in that moment what I needed was a habit. This is that habit. ↩
Small Business has this at 15.11. ↩

New standard zero for AI and small system edits - Johnny.Decimal

2026-11-07T04:03:43.000Z

There is a new standard zero at 0.05 in the Life Admin and Small Business Systems. This is a place that your AI agent controls, where it can keep its notes about the systems.

00.05 AI for the Life Admin System
00.05 AI for the Small Business System

2 IDs in Life Admin have had examples or links added.

11.22 Health insurance & claims
12.31 Motor vehicle purchase, leasing, & rental

4 IDs in Small Business have had links added.

12.41 Official vehicle documents
13.44 Fixed assets
13.45 Current assets
13.46 Intangible assets

CLI v5, .config v2, supports Bear – please update - Johnny.Decimal

2026-11-07T01:37:38.000Z

The JD CLI has been updated to v5. It now supports Bear as a JDex.

This required a breaking change to the configuration file which is now versioned 2. The jdex property is now an object.

{
  "version": 2,
  "systems": [
    {
      "sys": "P76",
      "title": "My personal system",
      "root": "/Users/you/Documents/P76 My personal system",
      "jdex": { "app": "bear" }
    }
  ]
}

Updating

git -C ~/.local/share/johnnydecimal/cli pull to get v5.
Run jd which reads your config file, causing the CLI to automatically update it to v2.
If you use my agent skills, npx skills update jdex johnnydecimal.

Now checks for updates

From v5, the CLI reads GitHub tags once/day and will notify you when there's an update. jd update will perform the update.

No telemetry is sent. Run jd update --help for opt-out instructions.

Note published on November 7, 2026 at 12:32 AM UTC - Molly White's activity feed

2026-11-07T00:32:45.000Z

Former House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry says the crypto industry "had an opportunity to legislate". Could've sworn that was Congress's job.

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2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

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Breathing space. Blooms into time —
The burgeoning light.

frosted ground - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Near-frosted ground holds —
The earnestly sleepy sky.
Birdsong awakens.

the coffeeshop - James' Coffee Blog

2026-11-07T00:00:00.000Z

Fresh golden pastries —
Early treats of the new day.
Flowing espresso.

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Feature: open your Bear notes by ID, not exact title - Johnny.Decimal

Stress-free travel with an 'active trip' note - Johnny.Decimal

How to not be 'that guy' who holds up the line

1. Create a new entry in your JDex

2. Load it up

3. Add a widget to your home screen

Video

Footnotes

New standard zero for AI and small system edits - Johnny.Decimal

CLI v5, .config v2, supports Bear – please update - Johnny.Decimal

Updating

Now checks for updates

Note published on November 7, 2026 at 12:32 AM UTC - Molly White's activity feed

blooms into time - James' Coffee Blog

frosted ground - James' Coffee Blog

the coffeeshop - James' Coffee Blog