Earlier I talked about using Org Mode to produce lesson worksheets for my students. This year I am thinking about using powerpoint-style presentation slides instead of worksheets to encourage students to write more in their books. This naturally led me to look into how to do this with Org Mode.

A Simple Lesson

Making presentations in \(\LaTeX\) is normally done using the beamer package. It turns out that Org Mode has good support for beamer. An example of a simple lesson presentation org-mode file might look like this:

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump and Musk with Hannity, Hamas open to stepping down in Gaza, Jewish man shoots Israeli tourists he thought were Palestinian, Bannon calls Musk 'parasitic", Trump border czar demands AOC prosecution, Trump FTC sides with Lina Khan, Chappelle says SNL censured Gaza monologue.

James Billot: https://x.com/james_billot/highlights

Doha Mekki: https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/staff-profile/doha-mekki-acting-assistant-attorney-general 

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Following the Gaza ceasefire, Israel is already preparing for its next round of ethnic cleansing with full Western backing. Pro-Palestine activists are facing escalating repression, Trump is pushing a new ethnic cleansing plan, and Israel’s increasing resemblance to fascist regimes is impossible to ignore.

Rania Khalek speaks with Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist, Marxist, and anti-fascist activist, about the historical roots of Zionism, the weaponization of the Holocaust, and the imperialist crackdown on Palestine solidarity.

🚨 The full interview is available exclusively to Breakthrough News members. Support our work and access the full episode by becoming a member at Patreon.com/BreakthroughNews.

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Following a successful negotiation by President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump walked back his executive order imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico. Co-hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth tell the story of this week’s rollercoaster of events in the Mexico-US bilateral relationship, looking at Trump’s executive order, Sheinbaum’s response, and the deal that was ultimately struck. 

Jake and Thomas return to look at the latest news of Elon’s bizarrely begotten offspring. Plus the jewish guy who shot two Israeli guys because he thought they were Palestinians, Millei’s rug pull, and Bari Weiss’ Free Press asks what exactly makes an American hero (and why does it take place in dive bar bathrooms).

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Just a quick post about a short note from Marcin Borkowski (mbork) concerning searching for the thing at point. Despite using Emacs for over 18 years I didn’t know about isearch-forward-thing-at-point.

As mbork says, it does just what it says. You invoke it with Meta+s Meta+. and it searches forward for whatever the point is on. This is something I want to do all the time and I was vaguely aware that it was possible but didn’t know exactly how to do it, so I’m really glad to see mbork’s post.

Finding out about this now serves to emphasize that learning Emacs really is a lifelong journey.

Trump's Economic Recovery a Dead End? - Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Get up close with four presidents of the United States discussing some of their most personal causes.

Former President Jimmy Carter sits down with Jon Stewart to explain his efforts to eradicate the harmful Guinea Worm. Former President Bill Clinton talks about his foundation's campaign to combat ebola. President Barack Obama joins Trevor Noah to unpack how to be authentic amidst the demands of the presidency. Then Senator Joe Biden talks to Jon about how he would approach the presidency, and what it means to him. 

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Krystal, Ryan and Emily discuss Trump blackmailing Eric Adams, DOGE targets the IRS, Trump admin floats Ukraine boots on the ground.

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Take a romantic stroll down memory lane with The Daily Show's Valentine's Day coverage. 

Nate Cordry tackles the War on St. Valentine's Day. Resident Expert John Hodgman educates us on romance. Lewis Black rails against the technology of the holiday. Jon Stewart checks in on a synagogue with a surprisingly saucy new teacher. Trevor Noah weighs in on the risks of modern romance. Ronny Chieng challenges people on the street to prove him wrong about love. Sarah Silverman and Michael Kosta investigate the world of romance scams. 

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Continuing with our “Emacs for all things” theme of the last couple of days, here’s another post that speaks to how Emacs can be used for many things and how seemingly difficult or even impossible tasks can be done by using the right packages.

The topic of the post is using Emacs for taking research notes. S4h4rJ says that he loves Emacs but that he finds it hard to use for taking research notes because it’s so hard to deal with figures (jpegs, etc.). They are, he says, hard to size and hard to place within the file.

That didn’t seem right to me and other researchers chimed in explaining how they handled the problems that S4h4rJ was complaining about. It’s surprising how often the answer is simply installing and using an existing Emacs package.

The TL;DR is that there are many researchers who use Emacs to take and organize their notes. They use things like org-download and org-roam to deal with problems specific to their workflows. Take a look at the comments to S4h4rJ’s post for the details.

The takeaway is lots of serious researchers are using Emacs everyday for taking and organizing their research notes. If you’re a researcher and want to use Emacs, there’s no reason you can’t. You just need to be aware of a few packages and techniques that ease the process. Read the comments to S4h4rJ’s post to get an idea of what’s available. Even if you’re not a researcher, you may find those packages useful for your own workflow.

Trump To Force Ukraine Peace on Europe - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

On The News Quiz this week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Ayesha Hazarika, Susie McCabe, Geoff Norcott and Pierre Novellie to discuss Britain's attempts to court the US and the EU, Trump's tariff turmoil, new report cards from Ofsted, and Starmer's uncovered voice coaching.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Jade Gebbie, Alex Kealy, Christina Riggs and Stuart McPherson. Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4 An Eco-Audio certified Production.

Danny and Derek reveal their true faces. This week: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agree to start bilateral peace talks for the war in Ukraine (1:05), with anticipated fallout for the latter nation (6:17); Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth makes some frank comments on Europe, Ukraine, and NATO (8:06); an update on the situation in Israel-Palestine, including Hamas threatening to delay the next hostage release over Israeli transgressions (12:06) and Trump continuing to push a US takeover of Gaza (16:53); in Lebanon, a new government is formed (21:22) and the IDF seeks to extend its occupation there (23:28); a Washington Post report suggests Israel might be planning to strike Iran (25:33); in China news, Trump reinstates a de minimis tariff exemption, but there is still no sign of a meeting with Xi Jinping (28:46); the Sudanese military is close to driving the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) out of the Khartoum region (31:20); the so-called Islamic State group appears to be on the rise in Somalia (33:36); a regional summit demands a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo as M23 continues its advance (35:38); and back in the United States, Trump announces new steel and aluminum tariffs (39:03) in addition to presenting exciting new opportunities for corruption (40:57).

News updates will also be on our YouTube channel going forward. Check out this week’s!

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Jordan Klepper tackles Trump getting "hot" and heavy with the Kennedy Center, the government confirming RFK Jr. as health secretary, and the president fumbling peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine before they even start.

Josh Johnson asks New Yorkers how they're dealing with eggflation and tries to get in on the egg grift.

Brady Corbet, writer and director of “The Brutalist,” joins to discuss his ten-time Oscar-nominated film. He explains how Trump’s first-term push to “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” inspired the story, the connection between Brutalist architecture and the immigrant experience, and how he pulled it all off using VistaVision and a meager $10 million budget.

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Jon Stewart tackles Trump's attempt to be the Super Bowl MVP and examines the president's rejection of federal agencies, birthright citizenship, and basic constitutional checks and balances. Plus, John Oliver welcomes America to its monarchy era.

New Yorker editor David Remnick sits down to discuss the magazine’s 100th Anniversary Issue and journey since its inception in 1925. They also talk about the importance of long-form journalism, especially under the overwhelming second Trump administration, as well as how the President is overstepping executive power, the danger of the tech oligarchy, and the need for Democratic politicians and citizens alike to finish licking their wounds and take action.

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Jordan Klepper on Trump's boredom over his own tariffs, Pete Hegseth's half-woke Fort Bragg rebrand, and Eric Adams's "get out of jail" card. Plus, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, Michael Kosta, and Troy Iwata take a lesson from Mayor Adams on how to multi-task at the salon.

Sports War: Klepper & Ronny spar over Super Bowl LIX and Kendrick's halftime show.

Academy Award-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg sits down to discuss writing, directing, and starring in his Oscar-nominated film, "A Real Pain." They talk about carrying generational grief and grappling with his own life’s meaning as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, how his relationship with Kieran Culkin mirrors their characters, and how that influenced his role as director.

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Democracy Now! 2025-02-12 Wednesday

• Headlines for February 12, 2025
• Elon Musk Will Personally Profit from Dismantling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Ex-CFPB Official
• "Are We Sleepwalking into Autocracy?" Trump Embraces Authoritarian Playbook of Hungary's Orbán
• Tariq Ali on Trump's Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & Global Rise of the Far Right

Download this show

Peter Beinart speaks with Danny and Derek about his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, American Jews’ conception of and relationship with Israel, and how things have changed since the start of the genocide in Gaza. They explore why Peter centers being Jewish at this moment, what he’s seen happen in the Jewish community since October 7, Palestinian dehumanization among American Jews, liberal Zionism and the two-state solution, the loss of agency for Palestinians, American Jewish institutions, and more. 

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Kath joins us for our annual review of the Big Game spectacle. We give our appraisal of what this year’s ad slate says about the state of American culture, plus reactions to Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, and how conservatives continue to be oppressed by the TV. Then the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein joins us to discuss his reporting on what exactly Elon Musk & the DOGE team are trying to do to the federal government.

Jeff’s piece on Elon & DOGE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/08/doge-musk-goals/

If you’re in LA, check out Jacques & Grace’s Game Show Pig variety show at the Loge Room this Wednesday, 2/12: https://www.lodgeroomhlp.com/shows/game-show-pig/

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Based on my experience of building and maintaining professional and personal/hobby projects, I've come to realize that I often tend to prefer well documented checklists over automated scripts for recurring workflows.

Let me be clear about what I mean by recurring checklists first. I have a side project which is a web application that uses VueJS for the frontend, Rust for backend, and tapestry for generating SQL files from jinja templates. It runs behind nginx and is managed using systemd on a VM. As you can see, there are many steps involved in building and deploying the app and for that I have a checklist in the same repository that comprehensively documents every single step. Even though I have previous experience of automating such workflows, I refrain from doing it here, because every time I have to build and deploy the app, I am happy that it's a checklist and not a script.

As I began writing this article, I thought about the reasons behind such a preference, but that part itself got so big that I felt it deserves to be a separate post. It's sitting in my drafts folder now and I hope to publish it soon. Today, I'll stick to how I manage such recurring checklists in emacs using org mode thanks to a hidden gem from the org-contrib package.

Now org mode supports checklists out of the box. You just have to create a plain list under an outline entry and prefix it with a checkbox i.e. [ ].

A build checklist for the above app would look something like this:

* Build
  - [X] Generate SQL files using tapestry
    #+begin_src bash
        cd <dir>
        tapestry render
        # etc.
    #+end_src
  - [X] Build backend
    #+begin_src bash
        cargo build --release
        # etc.
    #+end_src
  - [ ] Buiild frontend
    #+begin_src bash
        npm run build
        # etc.
    #+end_src
  - [ ] Create a tarball
    #+begin_src bash
        # tar czf ..
    #+end_src
  - [ ] Upload to s3
    #+begin_src bash
        # aws s3 sync ...
    #+end_src

The only problem is that these tasks need to be performed repeatedly i.e. every time I have to build and deploy the code. To address this, the first thing I reached out to was (ya)snippets. In past, I've used snippets quite effectively for recurring activities. For example, I had a snippet that expanded to a template org tree for taking notes during a meeting. There was another similar one for taking interviews.

But in case of build/deploy workflows, the expanded checklist is practically of no use once all the items are checked off. In case of meeting notes or interview notes, the information captured in the expanded org tree during the meeting/interview is usually worth retaining for future reference. Another problem with snippets was that while performing the tasks if the checklist had to be updated due to any deviation, I had to remember to update the snippet as well.

The next thing I tried out was to directly store the expanded checklist in the repo with all items unchecked. Org being just plain text, I can simply use M-x query-replace to uncheck all items again after executing the checklist. When this worked well for me, I thought it might be a good idea to wrap this into an interactive elisp function and bind it to some key.

Now emacs has a funny way of always being one step ahead of you! Whenever you find yourself thinking "wouldn't it be great if emacs could do this?" chances are it already can, or someone in the community has already built a package for exactly that purpose. And sure enough, there's org-checklist.el in org-contrib which does exactly what I want!

First you need to install the org-contrib package and require org-checklist file in your init.el:

(use-package org-contrib
  :ensure t
  :config
  (require 'org-checklist))

Then just set the property RESET_CHECK_BOXES to t in the org tree. You may do this using C-c C-x p which will show a prompt for property names and let you enter the value in the minibuffer. It will also create the property tray if required.

Now my checklist looks something like this (individual tasks collapsed for brevity),

* TODO Build
  SCHEDULED: <2025-01-30 Thu .+1d>
  :PROPERTIES:
  :RESET_CHECK_BOXES: t
  :LAST_REPEAT: [2025-01-29 Wed 11:29]
  :END:
  - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2025-01-29 Wed 11:29]
  - [X] Generate SQL files using tapestry...
  - [X] Build backend...
  - [ ] Buiild frontend...
  - [ ] Create a tarball...
  - [ ] Upload to s3...

The org item is marked as TODO and a recurring schedule is set with the .+1d cookie. When the state is changed to DONE, the following things happen automatically:

1. all checkboxes get unchecked,
2. the time when the state was changed to DONE gets recorded,
3. the org item becomes TODO again and the scheduled date gets shifted to the next day

I may not actually end up running the workflow on the next day, but the .+1d cookie ensures that even if it's repeated next after say 4 days, it won't consider the task as overdue for the previous 3 days ¹.

The changes to the org files are committed in git, but I make it a point do so only after the above side effects have taken place i.e. the org entry is in TODO state and all items are unchecked . This way the diff only contains the time when the checklist was last executed.

With this workflow, there are no additional org entries created with duplicate data that I'd have to archive later. If I have to update the checklist during execution, I can do it there itself and commit the changes in git. But more than anything this workflow feels so much natural and native to org mode.

Footnotes

1. Not sure if I'm making sense here! Repeater cookies are explained with better examples in org mode docs. ↩

Nick and Ciarán talk through the less heavy hitting parties of the German snap federal elections of 2025. Make sure to listen to part 1 beforehand

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Ryan and Emily are joined by Natalie Winters to discuss her roll as a White House correspondent for Steve Bannon's War Room show.

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