Old Man Shouts At Phone

So I was complaining about how stupid the Calendar app on Android is, and somebody (reasonably enough) asked me “but are you using Google Calendar or Samsung Calendar”?

I have no idea. I’ve got a Samsung phone, and I’ve done my best to get rid of all the Samsung apps that are installed instead of the Google apps, but it’s just difficult to say sometimes.

I long-pressed on the icon, and chose “Information”, and I got the above. As we can see, the app is called “Calendar”, and… er… that’s it. Nothing about who made it.

Scrolling down, I get a version number, and “App details in store”, which is a button I can’t press.

Isn’t that… insane? You can’t see anything about who made the app, or what the app’s “actual” name is (i.e., the Java classpath)? (The latter is allegedly possible if you install third party software.)

So I went to the Play app and typed in “google calendar”, and I saw “Google Calendar”… and pressed the first “Install” button there, because I’m a moron.

(Ignore that it says “Installed” on “Google Calendar” — I took this screenshot afterwards.)

Eeek! I didn’t mean to install that “sponsored” Calendar app! How do I get rid of it! There’s no “I didn’t mean to do that” button (that I could see, at least). So I though “hm, perhaps if I long-press that ‘open’ button, it’ll change to ‘remove’ or something”… Yes, you guessed right — that started the app.

EEEEEEEK

Presumably my entire calendar has now been uploaded to nefarious hackers in Minnesota. Hope you find it illuminating!

Anyway, I have to go to the “app search” thing by swiping upwards from not-the-bottom of the screen, and choose one of the three apps named “Calendar”, long-tap it, and remove it.

If you wanted to create a more user-hostile environment for these things, I don’t think you could have? I mean, I understand why they’re hiding the real identity of the apps — it’s so that Samsung can gaslight you on what apps you have installed, right? But man…

The whole thing is just disgusting, isn’t it?

Book Club 2025: The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

I bought this slender book at a sale in 2019, apparently. I’m pretty sure I got Larkin confused with somebody else, or that I just liked the name — I certainly didn’t know anything about him. But the reason I’m finally reading the book is because I read an interview with Larkin in an old issue of The Paris Review, and he came off as a bit of an asshole.

So naturally I wanted to see what his poetry was like.

Well… OK, I can see why they wanted him to become the poet laureate after the previous one died. (He refused, I think?) These poems seem very… er… I mean, they’re good, but they’re probably also awesome to teach in school? They’re straightforward and leave a lot to be interpreted at the same time.

This one about reading habits as we age is probably an excellent teaching tool, for instance — it’s witty and acerbic… and doesn’t scare any horses.

What I’m saying is that these poems aren’t surprising coming from that slightly assholish guy in that interview.

But I mean, they’re pretty good? They’re fine. I’m a poetry expert.

The Whitsun Weddings (1964) by Philip Larkin (buy used, 3.9 on Goodreads)

Book Club 2025: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

I’ve read all of Pynchon’s books before, and this one was the first I read. I think I was around 16, and I remember feeling really smug and a-cultured while I was reading it. So not much has changed!

I read it in translation, and I only remember one single thing about it: The protagonist’s name is Oedipa Maas, which must be the best name in literature.

This book here, though, is a disappointment — physically. It’s a print-on-demand book! But why! Surely Pynchon still sells sufficiently to print it properly every few years? I mean, they wouldn’t do it if that were the case, so, er, not? I’m just surprised.

About half of the “new” books I’ve bought in this buying spurt have been print-on-demand books, which is way, way more than it used to be even just a few years ago, so I guess we’ve reached some kind of tipping point where there’s no point in trying to buy an older book in a newish edition any more? If I’d known that this was a print-on-demand book, I would just have bought a copy from a used book store instead.

So from now on I’m going to head to Biblio.com instead of Bookshop.org whenever I’m looking for a book that’s older than a couple years.

But I mean, this isn’t a horrible print-on-demand edition — but it’s got that slightly icky phthalate treatment of the cover, and the pages aren’t quite flat. It’s just doesn’t feel like completely like a proper book, so I’d rather just have a used edition instead.

Oh, how’s the novel? It’s terrific! All that paranoia and excitement… and so funny and well-written. It’s a delight.

It makes me want to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow… Hm.

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon (buy new, buy used, 3.69 on Goodreads)

An Updated Spamassassin Is Nice

Lately, a lot more spam/scam emails seem to be getting through the Spamassassin installation on my mail server. Which finally made me go “eurhm… how long has it been since I upgraded that thing?” And, d’oh! It’s been a few years.

I mean, it’s automatically upgraded with security fixes, but it was on Debian oldoldstable, so that’s pretty old. Last week I got my act together and upgraded it to the current Debian stable, and after poking at it for a few days, I got the other stuff that was running on it working.

But back to spam: I was shocked to find that I’m getting almost no spam now, so I started worrying that it was rejecting legitimate mail… but looking at the logs, I don’t see anything suspicious, and I’m getting everything I’m usually getting. But virtually no spam.

Previously, about ten spam/scam messages per day were getting through, and in the week since I updated, it’s about one. That’s, like, fantastic. So I wondered whether there was anything interesting to see statistically in the logs, and I got the chart above. Which looks dramatic — it’s like they’ve almost stopped spamming me!

I have my MTA reject spam on delivery, so that could theoretically be an effect: Addresses that reject spam could theoretically lead to spammers removing those addresses from their lists, but I’ve always thought that sounded unlikely. Sending spam costs nothing, so why bother to keep lists updated? And besides, while I’ve seen a 90% reduction of spam that gets through, that’s just 9 messages extra, so it’s insignificant.

And the period is really too short to draw any conclusions. I mean, I’m no scientist.

So I remembered that I have a backup server that keeps all old versions of old files, even mainlog.gz, so looking back two years:

There’s basically no major change, and the data is really noisy on a day-to-day basis. (Well, there’s a development in the amount of ham I’m getting, but that’s because I withdrew from Emacs co-maintainership late 2022.)

If you squint, you can kinda make the argument that spams are declining a bit, I guess.

So I guess… I didn’t find out anything of interest here other than that an updated Spamassassin is nice? It works?

Sorry for making you read this!

But while I’m typing away, I might as well bitch a bit about something!

I noticed that there’s a number of RBL tests based on the Validity provider, and they all “pass”. So there’s this in the logs:

 -2.5 RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_CERTIFIED RBL: Sender in Validity Certification -
                             Contact certification@validity.com
 [Excessive Number of Queries | ]

These RBLs commonly have rate limiting, and that rate limiting is based on the IP address of the DNS resolver. The usual solution to this is to run a resolving name server locally — but I already do that, and still it’s rate limited:

host 242.101.89.167.bl.score.senderscore.com 127.0.0.1
Using domain server:
Name: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53
Aliases: 

242.101.89.167.bl.score.senderscore.com has address 127.255.255.255

And that means “pass, but because of rate limiting”. And:

For other DNSBLs, SpamAssassin does have rules in place to ignore such checks when this happens, but since this is likely new, it’s not accounted for yet.

I even created an account on Validity and whitelisted my IP address, and it still fails, so eh, I just disabled the tests.

The exiting world of running your own MTA…

Comics Daze

Rubbish weather today. Yay! That means that I have to read comics.

Stereolab: Instant Holograms On Metal Film

12:25: The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud (Scholastic)

I’m trying something revolutionary today (photography wise) — I’ve changed my reading light bulb from the normal 2700K (“warm white”) to a 6000K (“daylight”) one so that it’s basically the same as the rest of the room. And look! I’m no longer sitting in a sea of blue! The system works! Magic! (Well, except for the other lamps, which now look like they’re totally yellow in the snaps, but they aren’t really. Perhaps I should have gone with a 4K bulb to even things out a bit… Hm…) Anyway, here’s a snap from last week, with the 2700K bulb:

SUCH BLUE ROOM

Oh, anyway, comics reading.

This book is very pedagogical — it’s about making comics. I mean, there’s a story, too, but it’s mostly about making comics.

It’s a very “up” book. Everybody’s smiling all the time.

But I wonder who this is for. Is this meant to be used in a school setting, to teach kids to create comics?

I mean, I’m not the target audience here, but I found this book to be kinda dull.

Too many pages like this. Spending more pages on the plot would have been nice.

But I mean, perhaps kids will find this inspiring? I don’t know.

13:00: Š! #54 (Kuš)

Well, I can just turn the other lamps off… now everything has the correct white balance.

I got this from here.

The theme this issue is happiness.

It’s a fun and funny issue, with superstar artists like Caroline Cash and Heather Loase.

Some people interpret “happiness” kinda widely.

It’s a great issue.

Orbital: Radiccio (2025)

13:25: Summer Shadows by Dunning/Cabral/Simpson/Campbell (Dark Horse)

Well, the artwork is quite attractive…

But the story is like… not there. And the characters have no character.

And it’s about gay vampires, and they all have to die! Die!

It’s not a good comic book, but the artwork’s kinda nice.

Xiu Xiu: Orgasm Addict

13:48: Urban Tails by Ilana Zeffren (Soaring Penguin Press)

These pages look really attractive — the airiness is appealing. But I wonder how it was made? It looks like pencil drawings that have been scanned on a low resolution, and then blown up and smoothed, so everything is slightly blurry? (And then the (translated) lettering is super sharp.)

Such a melting pot!

I quite like this book? It’s all one page strips, and that gets wearying when collected like this. So I bailed after 75 pages, but I’m going to read the rest later.

Charli XCX: Number 1 Angel

14:43: Previous Rubbish by Kayla E (Fantagraphics)

This is a book about childhood neglect, abuse and religious damage.

It’s a collection of pieces (many of which I’ve read before in various anthologies), and it’s unfortunate how repetetive it gets collected like this: We go over many of the same events again and again, and often is a sort of oblique way. This works extremely well as a shocking piece in an anthology, but after reading the fifth allusion to the same even, I’m sitting here going “can’t you just write plainly what happened?” Which is not the desired effect.

It’s an understandably angry book, but I feel that she takes the anger out on the reader a lot — the book is very sarcastic, and it feels like she’s venting at us, and we’re not doing anything but sitting here and reading the book!

Various: The Residents Present: Buy or Die! (1)

It’s a quite inventive book… I mean, not the artwork, which is extremely tablety (that’s a word), but using all these games and stuff to tell us about the horrors of her childhood. But does it work? I’m not sure. But what do I know:

Graphic Novel Review: Kayla E.’s PRECIOUS RUBBISH is an early book of the year contender

See?

It’s truly one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, an astonishing and painful artistic accomplishment.

Richard Dawson: End of the Middle

15:39: Tedward by Josh Pettinger (Fantagraphics)

This is also a collection of stuff that’s been published before (I think), but it makes excellent sense in context — these are short stories that build to something bigger.

And it’s funny.

16:18: Eremitt by Martin Erntsen (Jippi forlag)

This is one of those wistful childhood autobio things.

It’s just kinda perfect? It’s funny and it’s touching.

Led Zeppelin: In Through The Out Door

16:25: Season of the Roses by Chloé Wary (Fantagraphics)

Lots of Fantagraphics stuff today…

This looks pretty good…

It’s the story of a feisty football team that has to defeat prejudices and obstacles and etc etc etc (you know), and that’s the problem: If you’ve seen any movie from the last five decades that deal with this, you totally know all the story beats, the three act structure, and how it’s going to end. The only reason this hasn’t been made into a movie (if it hasn’t; I haven’t checked) is that there’s nothing here to make into a movie: It’s all cliché. So of course it won prizes:

Au festival d’Angoulême 2020, l’album remporte le prix du public.

Except the artwork and the scenes from the football field — that’s actually pretty good.

Miki Berenyi Trio: Tripla

16:50: Denniveniquity by D. Boyd (Conundrum Press)

Huh… that’s some art style. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it reminds me of something, especially the staring eyes. The line is kinda adjacent to Rick Geary (but it’s on a tablet here, I think), and… Do I see some Don Martin here? It’s just odd.

I like the way she’s running in the last panel on the left-hand side there.

The way this is drawn, it’s just hard to tell the characters apart. The protagonist (the one that’s smoking and drinking Galliano) is supposed to be a 12/13 year old girl, but it’s hard to tell who’s supposed to be boys or girls, or adults or children, so I spent 37% of the time reading this going “is that one of her 12-year-old friends or is that her mother?”

What’s a wax cigar? I tried googling and I could only find an electric vape thing, and that’s not what that was in 1979.

Anyway, the storytelling here is extremely choppy, and there’s so many oh-now-they-broke-up, oh-now-they-didn’t, oh-now-they-did that it was just hard to care after a while.

Max Richter: Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

17:39: Low Orbit by Kazimir Lee (Top Shelf)

Again, the character design just doesn’t differentiate much between the kids and the adults.

But… it’s fine? It’s (once again) about growing up and stuff, and it’s pretty original is some ways. It’s not gripping, though.

18:43: Pharaon 1: Philtre pour l’enfer by Duchâteau & Hulet (E-Voke)

Well, the artist here is obviously inspired by William Vance…

… and the entire thing seems like a blatant rip-off of Bruno Brazil, but without the charm, the characters or the interesting plots.

This is just incredibly bad. Duchâteau has written hundreds of albums, and I’m not a fan, but even his stuff is usually better than this. It’s so choppy — it’s just hard to tell what’s supposed to be going on.

My Brightest Diamond: This Is My Hand

19:01: The End

And with that I think I’m going to call it a day. Man, I was really unlucky with a handful of these comics today…