Tom Roche

In previous years, organizers streamed the video feeds for EmacsConf from their own computers to the Icecast server, which was a little challenging because of CPU load. A server shared by a volunteer had a 6-core Intel Xeon E5-2420 with 48 GB of RAM, which turned out to be enough horsepower to run OBS for both the general and development track for EmacsConf 2022. One of the advantages of this setup was that I could write some Emacs Lisp to automatically play recorded intros and talk videos at scheduled times, right from the large Org file that had all the conference details. I used SCHEDULED: properties to indicate when talks should play, and that was picked up by another function that took the Org entry properties and put them into a plist.

This function scheduled the timers:

(defun emacsconf-stream-schedule-timers (&optional info)
  "Schedule PLAYING for the rest of talks and CLOSED_Q for recorded talks."
  (interactive)
  (emacsconf-stream-cancel-all-timers)
  (setq info (emacsconf-prepare-for-display (emacsconf-filter-talks (or info (emacsconf-get-talk-info)))))
  (let ((now (current-time)))
    (mapc (lambda (talk)
            (when (and (time-less-p now (plist-get talk :start-time)))
              (emacsconf-stream-schedule-talk-status-change talk (plist-get talk :start-time) "PLAYING"
                                                            `(:title (concat "Starting " (plist-get talk :slug)))))
            (when (and
                   (plist-get talk :video-file)
                   (plist-get talk :qa-time)
                   (not (string-match "none" (or (plist-get talk :q-and-a) "none")))
                   (null (plist-get talk :stream-files)) ;; can't tell when this is
                   (time-less-p now (plist-get talk :qa-time)))
              (emacsconf-stream-schedule-talk-status-change talk (plist-get talk :qa-time) "CLOSED_Q"
                                                            `(:title (concat "Q&A for " (plist-get talk :slug) " (" (plist-get talk :q-and-a) ")"))))
            )
          info)))

It turns out that TRAMP doesn't like being called from timers if there's a chance that two TRAMP processes might run at the same time. I got "Forbidden reentrant call of Tramp" errors when that happened. There was an easy fix, though. I adjusted the schedules of the talks so that they started at least a minute apart.

Sometimes I wanted to cancel just one timer:

(defun emacsconf-stream-cancel-timer (id)
  "Cancel a timer by ID."
  (interactive (list
                (completing-read
                 "ID: "
                 (lambda (string pred action)
                    (if (eq action 'metadata)
                        `(metadata (display-sort-function . ,#'identity))
                      (complete-with-action action
                                            (sort
                                             (seq-filter (lambda (o)
                                                           (and (timerp (cdr o))
                                                                (not (timer--triggered (cdr o)))))
                                                         emacsconf-stream-timers)
                                             (lambda (a b) (string< (car a) (car b))))
                                            string pred))))))
  (when (timerp (assoc-default id emacsconf-stream-timers))
    (cancel-timer (assoc-default id emacsconf-stream-timers))
    (setq emacsconf-stream-timers
          (delq (assoc id emacsconf-stream-timers)
                (seq-filter (lambda (o)
                              (and (timerp (cdr o))
                                   (not (timer--triggered (cdr o)))))
                            emacsconf-stream-timers)))))

and schedule just one timer manually:

(defun emacsconf-stream-schedule-talk-status-change (talk time new-status &optional notification)
  "Schedule a one-off timer for TALK at TIME to set it to NEW-STATUS."
  (interactive (list (emacsconf-complete-talk-info)
                     (read-string "Time: ")
                     (completing-read "Status: " (mapcar 'car emacsconf-status-types))))
  (require 'diary-lib)
  (setq talk (emacsconf-resolve-talk talk))
  (let* ((converted
          (cond
           ((listp time) time)
           ((timer-duration time) (timer-relative-time nil (timer-duration time)))
           (t                           ; HH:MM
            (date-to-time (concat (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d" nil emacsconf-timezone)
                                  "T"
                                  (string-pad time 5 ?0 t) 
                                  emacsconf-timezone-offset)))))
         (timer-id (concat (format-time-string "%m-%dT%H:%M" converted)
                           "-"
                           (plist-get talk :slug)
                           "-"
                           new-status)))
    (emacsconf-stream-cancel-timer timer-id) 
    (add-to-list 'emacsconf-stream-timers
                  (cons
                   timer-id
                   (run-at-time time converted #'emacsconf-stream-update-talk-status-from-timer
                                talk new-status
                                notification)))))

The actual playing of talks happened using functions that were called from org-after-todo-state-change-hook. I wrote a function that extracted the talk information and then called my own list of functions.

(defun emacsconf-org-after-todo-state-change ()
  "Run all the hooks in `emacsconf-todo-hooks'.
If an `emacsconf-todo-hooks' entry is a list, run it only for the
tracks with the ID in the cdr of that list."
  (let* ((talk (emacsconf-get-talk-info-for-subtree))
         (track (emacsconf-get-track (plist-get talk :track))))
    (mapc
     (lambda (hook-entry)
       (cond
        ((symbolp hook-entry) (funcall hook-entry talk))
        ((member (plist-get track :id) (cdr hook-entry))
         (funcall (car hook-entry) talk))))
     emacsconf-todo-hooks)))

For example, this function played the recorded intro and the talk:

(defun emacsconf-stream-play-talk-on-change (talk)
  "Play the talk."
  (interactive (list (emacsconf-complete-talk-info)))
  (setq talk (emacsconf-resolve-talk talk))
  (when (or (not (boundp 'org-state)) (string= org-state "PLAYING"))
    (if (plist-get talk :stream-files)
        (progn
          (emacsconf-stream-track-ssh
           talk
           "overlay"
           (plist-get talk :slug))
          (emacsconf-stream-track-ssh
           talk
           (append
            (list
             "nohup"
             "mpv")
            (split-string-and-unquote (plist-get talk :stream-files))
            (list "&"))))
      (emacsconf-stream-track-ssh
       talk
       (cons
        "nohup"
        (cond
         ((and
           (plist-get talk :recorded-intro)
           (plist-get talk :video-file)) ;; recorded intro and recorded talk
          (message "should automatically play intro and recording")
          (list "play-with-intro" (plist-get talk :slug))) ;; todo deal with stream files
         ((and
           (plist-get talk :recorded-intro)
           (null (plist-get talk :video-file))) ;; recorded intro and live talk; play the intro and join BBB
          (message "should automatically play intro; join %s" (plist-get talk :bbb-backstage))
          (list "intro" (plist-get talk :slug)))
         ((and
           (null (plist-get talk :recorded-intro))
           (plist-get talk :video-file)) ;; live intro and recorded talk, show slide and use Mumble; manually play talk
          (message "should show intro slide; play %s afterwards" (plist-get talk :slug))
          (list "intro" (plist-get talk :slug)))
         ((and
           (null (plist-get talk :recorded-intro))
           (null (plist-get talk :video-file))) ;; live intro and live talk, join the BBB
          (message "join %s for live intro and talk" (plist-get talk :bbb-backstage))
          (list "bbb" (plist-get talk :slug)))))))))

and this function handled IRC announcements when the talk state changed:

(defun emacsconf-erc-announce-on-change (talk)
  "Announce talk."
  (let ((func
         (pcase org-state
           ("PLAYING" #'erc-cmd-NOWPLAYING)
           ("CLOSED_Q" #'erc-cmd-NOWCLOSEDQ)
           ("OPEN_Q" #'erc-cmd-NOWOPENQ)
           ("UNSTREAMED_Q" #'erc-cmd-NOWUNSTREAMEDQ)
           ("TO_ARCHIVE" #'erc-cmd-NOWDONE))))
    (when func
      (funcall func talk))))

The actual announcements were handled by something like this:

(defun erc-cmd-NOWCLOSEDQ (talk)
  "Announce TALK has started Q&A, but the host has not yet opened it up."
  (interactive (list (emacsconf-complete-talk-info)))
  (when (stringp talk) (setq talk (or (emacsconf-find-talk-info talk) (error "Could not find talk %s" talk))))
  (if (emacsconf-erc-recently-announced (format "-- Q&A beginning for \"%s\"" (plist-get talk :slug)))
      (message "Recently announced, skipping")
    (emacsconf-erc-with-channels (list (concat "#" (plist-get talk :channel)))
      (erc-send-message (format "-- Q&A beginning for \"%s\" (%s) Watch: %s Add notes/questions: %s"
                                (plist-get talk :title)
                                (plist-get talk :qa-info)
                                (plist-get talk :watch-url)
                                (plist-get talk :pad-url))))  
    (emacsconf-erc-with-channels (list emacsconf-erc-hallway emacsconf-erc-org)
      (erc-send-message (format "-- Q&A beginning for \"%s\" in the %s track (%s) Watch: %s Add notes/questions: %s . Chat: #%s"
                                (plist-get talk :title)
                                (plist-get talk :track)
                                (plist-get talk :qa-info)
                                (plist-get talk :watch-url)
                                (plist-get talk :pad-url)
                                (plist-get talk :channel))))))

All that code meant that during the actual conference, my role was mostly just worrying, and occasionally starting up the Q&A (if I wasn't sure if the code would do it right). The shell scripts I wrote made it easy for the other organizers to take over the second part as they saw how it worked.

Yay timers, Emacs, and TRAMP!

You can find the latest versions of these functions in the emacsconf-el repository.

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Briahna speaks to Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler, about his thorough and viral analysis of the 2023 Omnibus bill. No. one is breaking down military spending like Stephen. We discuss how the bill undermines Biden's climate "victories," increased spending on the Ukraine/Russia conflict, the complacency of elected progressives, and whether the American dream exists outside of the military.

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).

This mini-episode is part of our Inside The Story series, where we highlight some of The Lever’s original reporting and speak with the journalists who wrote the story. Frank Cappello speaks with Rebecca Burns who details their new story published by The Lever:

Amid a financial crime spree and spate of corporate convictions, federal regulators recently floated a proposed fix: strengthening an existing rule designed to bar criminal banks from managing — and profiting off — trillions of dollars of retirement funds.

To read the full story, click here.

If you enjoyed this story and want to support independent journalism, you can go to LeverNews.com to subscribe to our free newsletter or become a paid supporter. 

This mini-episode is part of our Inside The Story series, where we highlight some of The Lever’s original reporting and speak with the journalists who wrote the story. Frank Cappello speaks with Rebecca Burns who details her new story published by The Lever:

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company, has become a top target of the right’s crusade against so-called “woke capitalism” because of its rhetoric around climate change and sustainable investing. But when it comes to climate action, the giant asset manager isn’t presently all that far apart from its GOP detractors. Both BlackRock and congressional Republicans are fighting — albeit through different strategies — to defang a forthcoming regulation that would force companies to disclose their carbon emissions and the risks that climate change pose to their business models.

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This post first talks about the PARA method and then my Org-mode implementation for organizing tasks and notes.

The PARA Method

The PARA Method is a modern system for organizing digital information. It stands for Projects-Areas-Resources-Archives, the four categories of all digital information.

• Project: a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline.
• Area: a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.
• Resource: a topic or theme of ongoing interest.
• Archive: inactive items from the other 3 categories.

Project vs Area vs Resource

“Projects” and “Areas” are inherited from GTD. “Distinguish Project and Area” is a common challenge for GTD and PARA adopters, including me. I once had many unimportant projects without deadlines that cluttered my agenda. There are many discussions and articles on it¹ and the model answer is to check (1) the nature of the task and (2) if there is a deadline.

• A project has (1) a specific outcome/goal and (2) a deadline.
• An area has (1) a standard to be maintained that (2) is continuous over time.

In addition to the model answer, I have my interpretation,

• Projects contain the tasks I should focus on (because of the importance, urgency and desirability). They have higher priority over the other categories. I work on them first, especially when there is a chunk of uninterrupted time or my energy level is high. If a “project” does not come with a deadline, I set one for it.
• Areas contain the tasks I have to do. I reserve some time for these tasks every day to keep areas maintained. I can also skip them for a while when the current projects are too demanding.
• Resources contain the tasks I am interested to do. When there is no pressure from projects or areas, I can choose to work on these tasks or simply take a rest.

These three questions help decide which PARA categories a task should go to:

1. Does it require my focus within a timeframe? If yes, make it a project.
2. Is it something I have to do? If yes, move it to an area
3. Is it something I want to do? If yes, move it to a resource.

PARA is Pragmatic

On one hand, I organize my tasks. On the other hand, I know it is not necessary to get it perfect.

Firstly, it takes a lot of effort. I move forward and do the actual work when the tasks are by-and-large in the right places that help to prioritize. The end goal should be the actual outcomes instead of organizing.

Secondly, it is impossible. PARA is a system of single classification. Everything is either a project, an area, or a resource. In practice, a task or note can fall into multiple projects, areas, or interests. For example, “planning a trip for the 10-th anniversary” could arguably belong to either area “spouse” or area “travel”.

Organizing should be forgiving. It is okay to organize wrongly as long as it works. PARA is not a system for perfectionism but for pragmatism.

Let’s talk about my implementation!

Org-mode Implementation

I organize my tasks with PARA using a single todo.org file.

Tags and Categories

I use tags for the actual areas and resources. I assign each of them a specific tag to the corresponding subheadings. This gives me a set of controlled vocabularies for tagging projects and notes. For example, I know I should use writing instead of write or blogging for area “writing”. I don’t create tags for projects (which are short-term and grow over time) to keep my tag set small and useful².

I use categories for the PARA top categories, Project-Area-Resource. When looking at my org agenda view, I immediately know which tasks are my top focuses (Project), which are things I need to do (Area) or interested to do (Resource). I also know which exact area or resource they belong to with the tags on the right.

Tip: I can filter tasks by category and tag by pressing / (M-x org-agenda-filter) and clear filters with | (M-x org-agenda-filter-remove-all).

Organizing my Notes

For project notes, I add or link them directly under the corresponding org subtree in todo.org as I avoid adding project tags. When a project is completed or canceled, I convert the reusable part into the area or resource notes, and archive the project subtree to todo.org_archive.

I place the areas and resources notes under ~/note. I tag them with the tags defined in todo.org and reserve the directory hierarchy³ for the note types. This gives me the flexibility to have multiple tags for a note.

Here is a simplified version of my org directory:

org
├─ todo.org
└─ note
 ├─ 20221125T211904--org-attach__emacs.org
 ├─ ...
 ├─ meta
 │ ├─ ...
 │ └─ 20200202T222222--using-org-mode__emacs.org
 └─ reference
 ├─ article
 │ ├─ ...
 │ └─ 20221226T150449--creating-family-rules__parenting.org
 └─ book
 ├─ ...
 └─ 20220907T134123--building-a-second-brain-tiago-forte__pkm.org

• note/20221125T211904--org-attach__emacs.org is a regular note.
• note/meta/20200202T222222--using-org-mode__emacs.org is a meta note that connects other notes, like the org-attach__eamcs.org above.
• note/reference/article/20221226T150449--creating-family-rules__parenting.org is a reference note for the article “Creating Family Rules”, tagged with my resource “parenting”.
• note/reference/book/20220907T134123--building-a-second-brain-tiago-forte__pkm.org is a new book note for the book “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte.

So far, I don’t archive notes under ~/note. If I need to, I might use the tag ARCHIVED and write some elisp to filter them.

Conclusion

Defining how I am going to organize my digital information reduces the cognitive load when working with tasks and notes. I can add or retrieve the information without thinking too much.

I love to learn how other people works and I hope this post could be interesting and helpful to you, too. If you like it, you probably also check out these:

• Tassin’s implementation which combines Org-mode and Evernote for tasks and notes respectively.
• Emacs CODE implementation which focuses on its note taking workflow with lots of details.

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches. They're joined by Jamie MacDonald, Lucy Porter and Ed MacArthur.

Jamie MacDonald shares his experience of Disability History Month, Lucy Porter examines our increasingly secular population and Ed MacArthur is a PR consultant, rebranding famous faces.

The show was written by the cast with additional material from Aidan Fitzmaurice, Zoe Tomalin, Rachel E. Thorn and Cameron Loxdale.

Voice actors: George Fouracres and Lola-Rose Maxwell

Sound: David Thomas Sound assistant: Guy Marley Executive Producer: Richard Morris Producer: Sasha Bobak Production Coordinator: Sarah Nicholls

A BBC Studios Production

It’s a Best of the Fall Tour compilation! Yes, in a compromise sure to please few and enrage many, we’ve put together a compilation of the best bits from each of our four shows on this year’s fall tour. So in a way we’re keeping our promise to not release these, since the full shows will remain locked away in the Chapo Vault, but those who couldn’t attend will get a little taste of the magic captured on those stages. FEATURING: Barack Obama teaches his speechwriters the power of jazz; Hot goss from the Haberman Trump book with Tim Heidecker; Prudies & Rod with Stavvy; and, Will finally relays the entirety of his Jason Miller lawsuit saga.

Special thanks again to Stavvy and all of our opening bands, especially 95 Bulls and Donzii who performed the two tracks featured in this ep.

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Torstein Johansen has an interesting post on his new Emacs configuration. He’s a long time Emacs user and his old configuration was 20 years old and 1617 lines long. After he refactored his configuration it was down to 368 lines. A lot of the refactoring was simply a matter of removing packages whose functionality had been superseded by core Emacs.

One thing he does in the video is to number each section of the configuration and then add (occur "^;; [0-9]+") at the top. Executing that expression generates a table of contents for the file. That seems like a nice feature but it’s not in his final configuration, which may mean that there’s a problem when Emacs starts.

My own configuration is currently 2461 lines long so I’m sure it could also do with some refactoring. It’s a bit over 15 years old now so there’s bound to be some cruft in there. One comfort that I took away from Johansen’s video is that he keeps almost everything in a single file.

The current conventional practice is to separate discrete functionality into separate files. Johansen finds this hard to navigate and I agree. I get a lot of pushback whenever I say that but it’s still true. It’s nice to know that at least one other person agrees with me.

If you like seeing what other people are doing with their configuration, Johansen’s video is worth watching. The video is 27 minutes, 50 seconds long so you’ll need to schedule some time for it.

This mini-episode is part of our Inside The Story series, where we highlight some of The Lever’s original reporting and speak with the journalists who wrote the story. Frank Cappello speaks with Matthew Cunningham-Cook who details their new story published by The Lever:

For years, the retirement savings of teachers, firefighters, and other government workers have been funneled by public officials to secretive Wall Street firms that charge high fees in exchange for the false promise of outsized returns. But as the stock market plummets and asset values drop, there are new fears that pensioners will be unable to access their cash, while insiders will be allowed to pull their money out before things get worse.

Now, Wall Street firms and their political allies — including a U.S. Senator with substantial private equity holdings — are trying to stop federal regulators from intervening to protect retirees by banning firms from giving some investors preferential treatment. And there are no rules requiring lawmakers with investments in private equity to disclose whether they are being given special investment preferences while they lobby to protect those asset managers.

To read the full story, click here.

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Rasmus and Freja, two members of the Wolt Workers Group in Copenhagen, join us to talk about organizing as couriers, Danish labor law, and the union-busting practices of companies like Wolt. Sorry about my bad audio, I forgot how to podcast.

Our joint article: https://politiken.dk/debat/debatindlaeg/art9105126/Hj%C3%A6lp.-Vi-bliver-trynet-af-Wolt-og-Flink
Rasmus's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/fodsl3

And some of Rasmus's writing for the Gig Economy Project:
His current case: https://braveneweurope.com/wolt-trade-union-activist-has-account-terminated-for-taking-every-opportunity-to-criticise
Report from this past summer's elections at Lieferando in Berlin: https://braveneweurope.com/gig-economy-project-rasmus-hjorth-berlin-lieferando-couriers-works-council-election-notes-from-a-danish-courier

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In this special holiday round up we discuss House Dems attempting to BLOCK a Trump 2024 run, Pete Buttigieg's rampant use of tax payed funded Private Jets, James Li covering United Airlines massive order of BOEING planes, and Marhsall Kosloff hosts interviews on Tik Tok's Risk of Being Banned in America.

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October 27, 2022 Jamieson Webster, author of this article, examines what severe psychological distress among adolescents is telling us about American society • Raina Lipsitz, author of The Rise of a New Left, looks at the history, personnel, and status of today’s radicalism

The US-dominated unipolar world has rapidly eroded, and the recent victory of Lula in Brazil provided a new lift for those struggling against imperialism in the Global South. 

Are imperialist powers less able to impose themselves on the Global South with past tools of invasion, coups, assassinations? 

To discuss the past and present tools used by the United States against popular movements and revolutionary struggles seeking self determination, Rania Khalek was joined by Vincent Bevins, author of the Jakarta Method and a journalist who has worked in Asia and Latin America.

Listen to every episode of Rania Khalek Dispatches anywhere you get podcasts.

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It’s springtime for fascists in Israel as the secular war criminals are being replaced by an alliance of the far-right, with religious extremists and organizers of racist mob violence. The head of America’s Union for Reform Judaism called the appointment of Itamar Ben Gvir as public security minister akin to “appointing David Duke, one of the heads of the KKK, as attorney general.” To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada and author of “The Battle for Justice In Palestine.”

Follow Ali on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah?s=20&t=ioocS-46SPCvVtScMCkY1Q 

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The Jokyu Rebellion is one of the more minor conflicts in Japanese history; yet it also represents a tipping of the political balance of Japan that, eventually, will profoundly reshape the country. This week, we explore one of the chronicles of that conflict to see what we can learn about it, and about medieval Japan more broadly.

Show notes here.