Month: February 2016

“Don’t read the comments” is a pretty good warning. You can waste a lot of time shouting at strangers in comment threads or fighting with friends-of-friends on Facebook. But if you feel like you do have to engage I really like these rules from Anatol Rapoport by way of Daniel Dennett to give you a fighting chance of changing a mind rather than just blowing hot air.

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

I’ve used various Remember the Milk plugins for Alfred but none of them cope with any input and reproduce it faithfully in the resulting task. Here’s a plugin that does. You need Alfred’s Power Pack to use this.

$ sudo gem install rumember
$ ru # Agree to authenticate rumember, then press Enter in the terminal when authenticated

Now install this plugin. It’ll use “todo” as the keyword by default but that’s easily changed under ‘Workflows’ in Alfred’s settings should you wish.