Linked List: December 23, 2017

Saturday, 23 December 2017

Eero 

My thanks to Eero for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Through December 25, save $50 on eero Home Wi-Fi Systems and give the gift of never having to deal with bad Wi-Fi again.

Eero is easy to set up, and blankets your entire home with fast, super-stable Wi-Fi. I replaced my Airport Base Station with Eero over a year ago and couldn’t be happier. Visit eero.com to learn more.

PCalc Turns 25 

James Thomson:

25 years sounds like a really long time. A quarter of a century sounds even longer. Yet, that is how long it has been since PCalc 1.0 was released.

For a limited time, PCalc is available at 90 percent discount. I don’t remember exactly when I first started using it, but it was early. 1-point-something for sure.

Update: Also, what a great domain name.

Trump’s Presidential Coin 

David Nakamura and Lisa Rein, reporting for The Washington Post:

For two decades, the commander in chief has doled out distinguished-looking coins as personal mementos. Now, the presidential “challenge coin” has undergone a Trumpian transformation.

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump’s signature. The eagle’s head faces right, not left, as on the seal. The 13 arrows representing the original states have disappeared. And the national motto, “E pluribus unum” — a Latin phrase that means “Out of many, one” — is gone.

Instead, both sides of the coin feature Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

The changes don’t stop there. In addition to his signature, Trump’s name appears three times on the coin, which is thicker than those made for past presidents. And forget the traditional subdued silver and copper: Trump’s coin, a White House aide marveled, is “very gold.”

After linking to this on Twitter yesterday, someone asked if I actually thought this was important. The coin in and of itself? No, of course not.

Do I think this coin is emblematic of the fact that Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder? Yes. And that is a profound problem — and one that our nation, collectively, is in denial about. I mean just look at the fucking thing. Trump’s name is on one side of it three times, using a bigger font than for “President of the United States of America”.

The item I posted earlier about Trump’s reportedly racist remarks about Haitians and Nigerians is outrageous and makes me angry. I’m not outraged or angry about the coin. I actually think it’s an honest and accurate reflection of Trump — but that reflection is of a self-obsessed narcissist. His mental unfitness is a bigger problem than his racism.

Trump, Behind Closed Doors, on Haitians and Nigerians 

Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, reporting for The New York Times:

According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.

Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.