Blackcap Blog

Published at 01:27 on 14 April 2018

Groff is an old-school text formatter that’s shipped with every Mac. Why? Because Macs are Unix systems under the hood, and the documentation for all the command-line tools is in Groff, because the Unix manuals have always been in Groff (or some very similar predecessor).

Being sort of a diehard, until fairly recently I’ve used Groff for typing letters, a résumé, and such. Why not? I know it, and it still works fine. Why spend time learning something else?

Well, it worked fine until a year or so ago, then I noticed (after upgrading MacOS) that most of the fonts seemed to have vanished. If you’d use a font other than Times Roman, it would tend to just use Times Roman anyhow, but with the spacing of the other font. Total ugly mess.

After ages of wondering what’s up (and doing web search after web search to research the issue), I finally found what Apple broke. Not Groff; it still works fine. It’s the Mac’s built-in PostScript tools that are broken.

Historically, PostScript devices have all supported a set of basic core fonts. Groff as shipped just uses those fonts. It knows their metrics but it has no other data about them. It assumes the device will know how to render them. For some reason, Apple’s pstopdf tool has ceased to support most of those fonts.

The fix is to use install and use Ghostscript, which still knows about the core PostScript fonts. Or, in my case, simply to use Ghostcript, which I had installed some time ago, having used it before I became aware of Apple’s pstopdf tool.

That said, it’s a fairly limited suite of fonts that Groff knows about by default, and it’s a pain to install other ones. Groff doesn’t understand normal TTF or OTF files (in the normal system locations for such installed files) like most other programs do. The tools to generate the files that Groff can understand are both (a) poorly documented, and (b) prone to getting tripped up by anything a font does that’s the least bit unusual (albeit legal and allowed).

Add that to Groff’s extremely limited support for mixing text and illustrations and lack of Unicode support, and it’s time to use something more modern for most purposes. Still, it’s nice to know the trick for getting the system documentation (and my old documents) printing normally again.

Published at 20:20 on 13 April 2018

1. Who knows if it’s all a deliberate attempt at diversion? It would certainly be in character for any leader of an authority hierarchy to divert like this. It would particularly be in character for a sociopathic narcissist like Trump to do so. On the other hand, it does really seem likely that Assad did use chemical weapons again, and the UK and France (neither of whose leaders have much love for Trump) did cooperate with Trump in the attacks.
2. It’s mostly for show. It’s almost impossible to achieve anything by air strikes alone. I seriously doubt there’s any will to go in on the ground in a serious way. Even if there was, there would be huge ethical concerns about doing so, and huge lack-of-trust concerns about just who is doing the intervening.
3. Trump said some tough things about Russia tonight. That doesn’t matter so much as many might think it does. Talk, as they say, is cheap. If it’s limited to talk, and there is continued appeasement of Putin behind the scenes, it’s obvious that the talk was meaningless. Remember, the last time that Trump bombed Syria, he called Putin first so that Russia could get their men and materiel out of harm’s way before the bombs fell. Also, the expulsion of Russian diplomats after the chemical attack in the UK is less meaningful than it appears, because Russia is free to simply replace them.
4. Any rhetoric about “brutal tyrants and murderous dictators” is basically meaningless coming from a guy that pals around with the likes of Putin and Duterte.

Published at 10:38 on 13 April 2018

Nine years ago, the “Tarnac Nine” were a subject of frequent right-wing hyperventilation, as if society was on the verge of being plunged into chaos by a violent left-anarchist insurrection. Now, they’ve been mostly exonerated; only a few minor charges have survived judicial scrutiny. Of the charges that survived scutiny, only two offenses, committed by only one of the Nine, were judged serious enough to merit any punishment.

Contrary to the right-wing fear-mongerers, there simply was no terrorist plot. And by this time nearly everyone has forgotten about the (mostly forgettable) work the Nine were associated with.

But it took nine years to fully deal with the charges. Nine years of having lives seriously disrupted, motivated by nothing more than the Establishment fearing those who are fearless to question authority and hierarchy.

Published at 10:59 on 12 April 2018

First, Trump probably will can Mueller. It would be entirely in character for him to do so, after all:

• Trump is a child of privilege, who has never been made to suffer consequences for any misdeed he has done. First his father’s wealth, then his own (mostly inherited from his father) have seen to that.
• He’s a complete authoritarian, who cut his teeth on in the fascist microstate that is the capitalist corporation, and who has little or no appreciation for any more-democratic alternatives to fascism.
• He has all the intellectual sophistication of a petulant preschooler, so is unwilling or unable to consider the consequences of his actions.
• Many of the individuals who surrounded him and helped talk sense into him have now departed.
• Before those individuals departed, it is known Trump tried to fire Mueller. He was persuaded to not do so after it was explained how this would likely be against his best interest in the long run.

So, it’s all but inevitable. Then what? That’s the big question.

First, the Republicans are much more captive to the White House than they were in the Nixon years. Those were a far more bipartisan time than ours, as evidenced by Nixon’s landslide victories; such victories would not have been possible without a lot of Democrats crossing party lines to vote for Nixon. So that makes an impeachment threat much less plausible than it was for Nixon.

But it’s not quite so simple. It’s looking more and more like there’s a so-called “blue wave” coming. Sooner or later, the rats will start deserting the sinking ship of Trumpism, preferring to save their own careers over the now-lost cause of saving their party’s majority. But it may take until they lose badly this November for that to happen.

Moreover, if the Democrats take just the House of Representatives, impeachment still becomes much more likely. The House will be able to launch its own investigation, which will be run entirely by the legislative branch, and thus be entirely outside the control of the executive one. They’ll be able to dig up dirt on Trump then make it public in order to shame the Senate into convicting the president and removing him from office.

Of course, this is still the same Democratic Party that let Bush basically get away with the Iraq War we’re talking about, so it must be kept in mind that there’s no guarantee of anything happening unless the Democrats are forced by pressure from below to make things happen. That makes widespread protest and disruption of business as usual when the inevitable occurs a necessity.

Published at 20:52 on 11 April 2018

I think I may have found it: TeX Gyre Schola, a free Century Schoolbook clone. It’s been around for years, which hopefully has given people plenty of time to work the glitches out of the thing. (Glitches being the bane of open source fonts, and one of the reasons people still pay for commercial fonts.)

Century Schoolbook, like most of the serif fonts in the Century family, is a modern serif font. It’s not exactly the sort of modern serif font I typically really like; glyph sizes tend to be wider and the variation in the font weight less than in typical 19th century typography. Both were of course deliberate design decisions made in the name of creating a font easy for children to read (it’s not called Century Schoolbook for nothing).

However, those minuses tend to become plusses on the Web. Even the best screens pale in comparison to the resolution a low-end laser printer (much less a printing press) can deliver. That makes reproducing the fine details in most modern serif fonts tricky. So the very same features that make larger sizes of this font easy for beginning readers tend to improve on-screen legibility for smaller sizes of it.

Being a TeX font, it has a lot of glyphs, which makes for larger font files and slower web download times. If anything makes me dump the new design, that will probably be it.

Published at 08:00 on 6 April 2018

Actually, there’s a silver lining to this dark cloud. It’s going to hurt the farmers and the capitalists, and both groups tended to lean towards Trump in the election. Thus, it’s going to hurt Trump’s base of support.

But we’re only beginning to enter the woods on this one, and this case the woods is more like a jungle full of vipers ready to strike and jaguars ready to pounce. The worse the economy gets, the more likely the regime is to start a war in order to distract from it, and a war with North Korea in particular could easily escalate into a nuclear conflict with China.

Much of it depends when the Republicans in Congress start deciding they need to pay more attention to the wishes of their Wall Street paymasters than the adult toddler in the Oval Office, and consequently act to seriously rein in or remove Trump.

Published at 08:42 on 5 April 2018

I don’t do this often, but this article raises some points I feel compelled to comment on.

The Democrats’ Rightward Tilt on the Economy Hurt Them

After for decades supporting trade policies that gave the middle finger to the working class, increasing numbers of the working class decided to give a middle finger to the Democrats:

Union leaders in Ohio and elsewhere watched in frustration during the 2016 election as significant portions of their workforce ignored union endorsements of Democrat Hillary Clinton and voted for Trump instead. Jack Hefner, president of United Steelworkers Local 2 in Akron, estimated around a third of his membership voted for Trump despite the leadership’s support for Clinton.

“Labor’s been beating the drum that these trade deals are bad, so here comes Trump saying the same thing, which made it really hard for us,” Hefner said. “He stole our playbook.”

Given how close the election was, the conclusion is therefore even more damning: The Democrats’ rightward tilt probably cost them the election.

Trump’s Tariffs are a Disaster

That’s because Trump overall is a disaster. He has no real concept of empathy, no ability to put himself in another’s shoes. It’s all about his ego, all the time.

That makes him highly likely to do things, particularly delicate ones, in ways that merely serve to needlessly provoke and inflame others. Things like rapid changes in trade policies that will serve to provoke harmful trade wars.

Prior Administrations’ Free Trade Policies Are Not Much Better

None of the above is to say that Free Trade has been good for society overall. It clearly has not. The rich have gotten richer, while those on the bottom have seen their incomes stagnate or backslide. This has been the case during administrations run by both parties.

The Takeaway

A retreat from free trade was needed, but not the one that Trump is giving us. The most likely outcome of what we’re getting is a trade war that will do far more harm than good.

Trade wars are a bad thing and very easy to lose. In fact, the most common outcome of a trade war is for all sides to end up worse off than if there had been no trade war at all.

Published at 08:07 on 5 April 2018

It’s become increasingly obvious that he did willingly choose to collaborate with the Trump campaign, despite Trump’s well-known fascistic, authoritarian tendencies (which even other Republicans were commenting on during the campaign).

Doubtless, this decision was part of a way to retaliate against Hillary Clinton for her role in an administration that persecuted him, but that’s just a juvenile temper tantrum. I don’t like Hillary much either, but Trump was clearly the worse of the two choices.

After all, what did Assange’s efforts get him? A superpower led by its most corrupt, least transparent regime ever, one threatening to start wars in various spots worldwide, one of which could easily escalate into a nuclear conflict between China and the USA. That’s in addition to a tremendous impediment to progress on global warming.

Assange has shown he was willing to gamble the world’s future for the sake of his petty personal feud with Hillary Clinton. Fuck you very much, Julian.

Published at 13:23 on 3 April 2018

Exhibit A is Honduras, where then Secretary of State Killary Clinton endorsed a coup that installed an regime with a horrible human rights record, and Donald Adolph Bone Spurs Trump now stigmitizes the inevitable refugees from.

Published at 11:58 on 1 April 2018

In war, it tends to be best to worry more about defeating the enemy more than it is to worry about being nice to the enemy in order to make him like you.

In politics, therefore, “If they go low, we go high” is not always the best policy. What is the best policy depends on the particulars of the situation. What exactly do “going low” and “going high” mean? What are the chances of victory with each strategy? Are there any principles which must be compromised to follow either? If so, how important are those principles? And so on.

What made me think of this is the case against gerrymandering that is currently in the Supreme Court. The chance of an anti-gerrymandering verdict has been increased because it’s not just Republicans doing dirt to Democrats; in Maryland, the Democrats are quite reasonably being accused of doing the converse.

Nobody much likes to admit it, but the show that Supreme Court justices put on about adhering to higher principles rather than just going for what their gut wants is quite often just a show. Witness how often conservative justices forget about states’ rights the minute they are asked to rule against a state doing something they consider unacceptably too far to the left.

If it were just red states doing gerrymandering to the disadvantage of Democrats, it would be much more likely that the conservative justices would find some pretext for ruling in favor of a state’s right to gerrymander. Instead, Maryland has helped to give them motive to find some pretext for ruling the opposite way.