Jeremy Cherfas

ETN 288: Adverse

Those Lancet UPF papers, the cost of lying about beef, and the much misunderstood tonka bean. It isn’t often that the US is more cautious on food safety than the EU, but the tonka bean’s coumarin is one exception.

buttondown.com/jeremyche…

A jumpers-for-goalposts post about the origins of WordPress that contains this gem

“Then the little blogging tool did what software does best: it quietly turned into something much bigger.”

Which is what is wrong with so many little software tools. They can’t leave well enough alone. And I get it, but sheesh.

Top albums for the week ending 20 November from last.fm

1. Miss Perfumado Cesária Évora 14
2. Clarinet Piano: Selected Works, Vol.1 8
3. Didn’t It Rain 6

Fascinating story of the unintended (?) consequences of drug regulation, though disappointed obviously to see no mention of my own pioneering work. :)

Took the plunge and installed first Docker and then Uptime-Kuma on my resuscitated Pi, and I am both impressed and happy. Tomorrow I will think about how to notify myself if there is a problem. For now, touch wood, no need.

#IndieWeb

And that was fine and dandy, except for re-using the old 8GB card, which didn’t let me do anything else. Finding it hard to believe that a 32GB card was only €13, but it was, and so here I am again, starting from scratch. And maybe I won’t even need VNC Viewer with the new stuff.

After two days of futility, trying to upgrade my Pi OS in place, I finally bit the bullet and decided to start with a fresh image of Trixie, the latest. I didn’t have that many customisations and in the end I think reconstructing those will be the saner option.

First baby steps towards a home server, I now have a 16GB drive hanging off my Raspberry Pi and remounting when it has to. Next, LAMP.

Let’s mix it up here with top albums to 6 Nov instead of top artists from last.fm

1 Celtic Keyboards: Duets by 19th and 20th Century Irish Composers 15 scrobbles 2 Lester Young With The Oscar Peterson Trio 14 3 Piano Music, Volume 1: Nocturnes and Sonatas 13 4 Impromptus 8 5 M’Bemba 7

Eat This Newsletter 287: Cynical

Some stories that on the surface seem like all good news, although I can’t help feeling that there’s not much below the surface.

buttondown.com/jeremyche…

Maria Fedorova’s new book looks at how the Volga famine of 1920 catalyzed exchanges of food aid, technology, and agricultural ideas. Humanitarian, yes, and also deeply political.https://eatthispodcast.com/usa-ussr

The bit that really made me sit up and take notice in Peter Molnar’s account of his new listening set up was the 2TB micro-SD card. For less than $200. Truly, the future has arrived.

“It sounds crazy to say that Republicans are making children go hungry to protect pedophiles, but it’s actually a reasonable interpretation of the situation.”

• On foot* 41.8811, 12.4673* 27 October 2025* 425.11 ppm CO2* OpenStreetMapI’m glad Rabbit Quest was there to prompt me to get out of the house today, even if it was a very familiar urban circuit. I needed that. Interesting discrepancy in localisation. The image suggests I was between the tram tracks. I was not. I was on the side of the road looking at the marked spot.