Danny and Derek welcome back AP mega-guest Spencer Ackerman, author of the Forever Wars newsletter and soon-to-be-published issues of Marvel Comics’ Iron Man. The group explores Spencer’s inspiration to pursue more work in the world of comic books, writing for a character who is a defense contractor, bringing left-wing messaging into the medium, the sand box of Marvel Comics vs. the behemoth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, plus Spencer’s impressions on some major current events.

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NOTE: This interview was recorded on 8/30/24, prior to reports that the Israeli military had recovered the bodies of six hostages inside Gaza.

Click hear to learn how to pre-order Iron Man & get free merch!

More of Spencer’s work:

• The graphic novel Waller vs. Wildstorm

• Forever Wars newsletter 

• His book Reign of Terror 

Further Reading:

• Annie Nocenti, journalist, writer, editor and filmmaker

• Six Stops on the National Security Tour by Miriam Pemberton

We are joined once again by Olly and Marlon of FLAP24 to talk about everything that's happened in France since the election.

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Radio 4 brings you the spirit of the Edinburgh Fringe this August. Host Mark Watson takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the city, capturing the buzz of the festival, taking us with him to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards and showcasing some of the most exciting comedy talent from this year. Acts this week include Hannah Platt, Marjolein Robertson, Ania Magliano and Huge Davies.

Additional Material: Christina Riggs

Production Coordinator: Katie Baum

Sound Recordist: Sean Kerwin

Sound Editor: Charlie Brandon-King

Executive Producer: Pete Strauss

Assistant Producer: Becky Carewe-Jeffries

Produced in Edinburgh by Gwyn Rhys Davies

It was a BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

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Journalist, Bernie 2020 speechwriter, and founder of The Lever David Sirota joins Bad Faith to talk his new podcast series Master Plan, which tracks the roots of American corruption from the infamous 70s era Powell memo to our present day. We discuss the DNC, Chris Cuomo's newfound interest in the corrupting power of money in politics, & Kamala's price capping plan along with the bipartisan backlash to it. We also debate the limits of working from within the Democratic Party and whether or not the Bernie campaign -- where Brie and David were colleagues -- proves it cannot be done.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Ever wonder how America became so corrupt? It didn’t have to be this way. Our series begins in 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like… milk. 

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There’s a lost tale behind Watergate: corporate bagmen, suitcases of illegal cash, and Nixon circumventing the very campaign finance rules he’d just signed into law. Amid the blowback, Nixon leaves a ticking time bomb in the heart of Washington.

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Danny and Derek welcome to the podcast television writer and producer Justin Boyd to talk about Oliver Stone’s 1991 epic JFK. They explore Justin’s own origins as a Dallasite, the place the film occupies within the film & television canon, whether a 3 1/2 hour, paranoid epic fueled by rage could be made today, its modernist features, claims of homophobi…

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I’ve written about Peter Prevos and his Emacs Writing Studio several times [1, 2, 3, 4 ]. It’s a series of articles on using Emacs for long form writing. Now, happily, Prevos has announced that the project—or at least the first version of it—is finished and available as a book from several e-bookstores. The source files are also available from his GitHub respository.

This is, as I’ve written, a great resource with lots of useful information. But don’t take my word for it. Protesilaos Stavrou also has a few words to say about it. He has, in fact, contributed those words as a forward to the book.

Those of you who have been around for a while know that I’m very interested in stories about people who use Emacs for non-technical purposes such as prose writing. Those who share that interest will find Prevos’ book a handy resource for using Emacs in their own projects.

I’ve read a lot of Prevos’ articles but never read them through as a book. I’m looking forward to reading the complete work.

At work I use org-mode to keep notes about useful ways to query our systems, mostly that involves using the built-in SQL support to access DBs and ob-http to send HTTP requests. In both cases I often need to provide credentials for the systems. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but for a long time I've taken the easy path and kept all credentials in clear text. Every time I've used one of those code blocks I've thought I really ought to find a better way of handling these secrets one of these days. Yesterday was that day.

I ended up with two functions that uses auth-source and its ~/.authinfo.gpg file.

(defun mes/auth-get-pwd (host)
  "Get the password for a host (authinfo.gpg)"
  (-> (auth-source-search :host host)
      car
      (plist-get :secret)
      funcall))

(defun mes/auth-get-key (host key)
  "Get a key's value for a host (authinfo.gpg)

Not usable for getting the password (:secret), use 'mes/auth-get-pwd'
for that."
  (-> (auth-source-search :host host)
      car
      (plist-get key)))

It turns out that the library can handle more keys than the documentation suggests so for DB entries I'm using a machine (:host) that's a bit shorter and easier to remember than the full AWS hostname. Then I keep the DB host and name in dbhost (:dbhost) and dbname (:dbname) respectively. That makes an entry look like this:

machine db.svc login user port port password pwd dbname dbname dbhost dbhost

If I use it in a property drawer it looks like this

:PROPERTIES:
:header-args:sql: :engine postgresql
:header-args:sql+: :dbhost (mes/auth-get-key "db.svc" :dbhost)
:header-args:sql+: :dbport (string-to-number (mes/auth-get-key "db.svc" :port))
:header-args:sql+: :dbuser (mes/auth-get-key "db.svc" :user)
:header-args:sql+: :dbpassword (mes/auth-get-pwd "db.svc")
:header-args:sql+: :database (mes/auth-get-key "db.svc" :dbname)
:END:

Ryan and Emily are joined by journalist Michael Tracey and RFK Field Director Jeff Hutt to debate RFK Jr endorsing Trump.

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Let Danny and Derek’s labor guide you into the holiday weekend newly informed. This week: Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire (0:29), an IDF operation in the West Bank (8:31), in Gaza, the IDF attacks Deir al-Balah and shrinks more protected zones (11:06) while Palestinians in Gaza also struggle to obtain a polio vaccine amid an outbreak (14:07); Yemen’s Houthi/Ansar Allah forces allow the recovery of a damaged oil tanker (17:15); Jake Sullivan is in Beijing and meets with Xi (19:14); Sudan ceasefire talks end without an agreement (21:23); Libya’s Government of National Unity (or “Eastern Government”) shuts down oil facilities (23:41); in Russia-Ukraine, concerns over the Kursk nuclear plant while Russia bombards Ukraine again (26:11); in France, Emmanuel Macron blocks the leftist prime minister from taking power (30:12); in Mexico, President AMLO “freezes” contact with the American and Canadian embassies (33:30); Honduras pulls out of its extradition treaty with the US (35:50); and the police intervention in Haiti is off to a shaky start (37:32).

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Danny and Derek speak with Séamus Malekafzali, a Beirut-based journalist focusing on the Middle East, about his recent piece for The Nation, “The Rotten Partnership Between the US Media and the Israeli Military.” They check in about the current atmosphere in Beirut amid exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden administration and US media’s current narrative around Hamas and Iran, the violence Israel has inflicted on Palestinian journalists, the double standards of their portrayal in the US media, and whether there might be any meaningful difference in a Trump or Harris presidency with regards to America’s support for Israel.

Recorded Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Further reading:

• Séamus Malafzali on Substack

• Séamus’s piece "Do You Want Total War?"

• Follow Séamus on Twitter/X @Seamus_Malek

Danny will be talking on a panel at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft at 10am PST/1pm EST on ‘Trump vs. Harris: Whose Foreign Policy Will Win the 2024 Election?’. Here’s the link if you’re interested.

No time to read the news? Catherine Bohart does it for you in TL;DR.

Scott was disappointed there was nobody waiting for him when he died. In this episode he ponders whether someone was in fact watching over him and tells the most unbelievable funeral story of all time. With an unexpected apology from his mum, a trip to get measured for a suit and rolling down a hill chased by a bunch of OAPs - this is an episode packed with anecdotes and revelations.

The final episode in a trilogy of tales that gets into the gritty and grim goings on that nearly saw Scott pushing up the daisies. Each episode is far from a forlorn fable, but rather is bursting with colourful, lively stories of the people who have shaped Scott's life and helped him along the way. This is more than just a life story, this is Scott's death story.

A stand up series, written and performed by Scott Agnew Produced by Lauren Mackay Audio recorded by Chris Currie and Niall Young

Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, is now radically changing his international strategy and foreign policy by applying to join the BRICS group of non-aligned nations.

While the opposition has been trying to keep the focus on Gaza the government has pushed a number of key bills through the Senate -  on aged care, changes to the NDIS and putting the CFMEU into administration.  

Guest: Laura Tingle, Chief Political Correspondent, 7.30

Ryan and Emily discuss Tulsi joining Trump's campaign, swing states keep RFK on ballots, Israel launches massive West Bank attack, Zuckerberg admits Biden Facebook censorship, France erupts over Macron election result refusal, and Dan Osborn joins to discuss his independent run in Nebraska. 

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Headlines for August 27, 2024; Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused: New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons; What Is RealPage? DOJ Sues Software Firm Using Algorithm Enabling Landlords to Fix High Rents

A celebrated feature of Emacs is its rich ecosystem of packages to extend its behavior. A curated versioned set of these packages are included in the distribution of each Emacs release. These packages are referred to as “built-in” and significant consideration is made by the core Emacs development team to ensure their stability and interoperability for that release. But that consideration does not stop there. Although a built-in package can have updates after an Emacs release, the default policy of the Emacs package manager (package.el) is to avoid upgrading built-in packages. However, this policy can be overridden as of Emacs 29.1 with the customizable variable package-install-upgrade-built-in. If this variable is set to t, then built-in packages can be updated. As this change is relatively recent in the overall history of Emacs, this might be news to a number of readers. For such readers, consider yourselves informed. That said, I was definitely surprised by this policy. The rest of this post is a reflection on why I thought that way.

One more bit before reflection: Users who are uncomfortable with allowing the package manager to aggressively upgrade built-in packages can avoid configuration of package-install-upgrade-built-in and instead use the prefix C-u before invoking package-install. The prefix will “special case” behavior as if package-install-upgrade-built-in was set to t for a specific package update.

What led to surprise

My recent work on a Casual feature required a more recent version of Transient ( > 0.6.0) than what was built-in (0.4.3). I had coded the package dependency specification correctly, but there was confusion when a different user tried to actually install and run it, as package.el avoided updating the user’s local install of Transient by design.

Reflecting on User Expectations

Reflecting on the above, I’ve come to some observations about why I felt such surprise on package.el’s default behavior. It comes down to different expectations of trust:

• Lay users (such as yours truly) in 2024 have been conditioned to extend a lot of trust to software updates.
  • Presumption is that diligent software providers use practices to uphold that trust.
• The Emacs core team in designing package.el does not trust the third party package ecosystem.
  • Presumption is that software providers are not diligent in using best practices.

The divide in the expectations of trust by the provider (in this case the Emacs core team) and the consumers (Emacs users) only gets exacerbated as more built-in packages such as Org and Transient have a higher frequency update schedule than that of Emacs releases. Developers such as myself building packages that require updated versions of built-in packages will only become more pronounced over time.

I claim no monopoly on having an answer to resolving these different expectations. But I do think the Emacs community as a whole needs to advance their conversation on what its package ecosystem should look like in the 21st century. Should it evolve to be more like OS and programming language library package managers? Or should it stay ad-hoc and adversarial in trust? (Are those even the right questions?)

Closing Thoughts

Meditating on software ecosystems, the one that I’m most familiar with is developing for mobile app distribution, particularly Apple’s flavor of it. If we think of Emacs core as an OS and the built-in packages as pre-installed software (apps), we see a striking similarity to the update schedule as illustrated in the table below.

All the concerns Apple has faced in building its ecosystem I see are the same ones facing Emacs with its package ecosystem. This is not to say Emacs must mimic Apple here, but rather the questions of trust are the same. It will be interesting to see how the Emacs community answers them.

We have on Séamus on to talk about the reaction to Germany's repression of pro-Palestinian voices and undying support of Israel in the region as well as the idea of regional war, Israel Katz's videos and Eurovision. Also you can hear the exact moment Ciarán dies of embarrassment.

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Danny and Derek welcome John Washington, staff writer at Arizona Luminaria, to catch us up to date on the state of play in the United States’ policies toward the southern border and asylum. They explore the extremism in the Biden administration’s recent decisions, how the current policies continue a thread going back to the 90s’ “Prevention Through Dete…

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The Prestigehead Convention at the Ho-Ho-Kus Inn has drawn a record crowd, but Danny and Derek still find time for your news roundup. This week: in Russia-Ukraine, an update on Ukraine’s Kursk invasion (0:29), reports of cancelled peace talks (3:57), and a continued Russian advance in Donbas (6:32); in Palestine-Israel, an update on Gaza ceasefire talks (9:34), the IDF is moving into the last Gaza “safe zones” (15:14), an Israeli strike kills a Fatah commander in Lebanon (17:04), and the status of the long-anticipated Iranian retaliation (18:52); Afghanistan sends its ambassador the to United Arab Emirates (20:43); a new Philippine-Chinese confrontation in the South China Sea (22:29); failed ceasefire talks in Sudan plus a cholera outbreak (24:39); troubles for the Central Bank of Libya suggest a further deteriorating political situation (26:56); and the Biden administration prepares new sanctions for Venezuela (29:58).

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AP champion Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, returns for a discussion of his recent piece for Carnegie, “Strategic Change in U.S. Foreign Policy.” The group muses on the difficulty of altering established foreign policy paradigms before delving into several case studies such as NSC-68, Nixon's Vietnam Withdrawal, Carter's Failed Korea Withdrawal, NATO Enlargement, and the Global War on Terror, emphasizing the need for foresight, strategic planning, and a willingness to incur political costs to make such change possible.

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Check out the companion piece to this episode, Rethinking U.S. World Power w/ Michael Brenes and Stephen Wertheim.

The Chapo Trap House x TrueAnon live show from Aug 21 with special guest Hasan Piker. Musical intro from Yung Chomsky. Reviews of nights one and two of the DNC, TrueAnon shoe leather reporting from around the convention, oppo dump on Kamala Harris, and a reading series from Chicago legend John Kass. We also nominate the President of Podcasts.

Special thanks to all our Podcast Delegates!

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Is the United States backing the Mexican opposition via the NED and the US Embassy’s funding of the NGO “Mexicanos Contra la Corruption y la Impunidad”? A new report from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggests the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy says Mexico is “major target country for infiltration” and US funding bothered President Andres Manuel López Obrador so much that he sent a diplomatic letter to Joe Biden. Soberanía co-hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth breakdown how the US uses NGOs to promote regime change against leftist governments. Plus an update on constitutional reforms that will see fracking and open-pit mining banned in Mexico and of course news on the hotly debated judicial reform. Kurt and also José Luis also have a discussion on the attempted illegal detention of former Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral. Finally, in our Losers and Haters section, we look at Andrés Oppenheimer’s rehashed column on Claudia Sheinbaum’s upcoming inauguration.