fatsam

fatsam, 6 days ago to random

After 2000, lots of people sneered that the Y2K bug had been a big nothing, massively overhyped.

They were idiots. If the vast amount of Y2K remediation that took place hadn't, planes might well have fallen from the sky, nuclear power plants might well have melted down. I worked on two projects myself to fix bad 2 digit dates.

We get to the other side of the current Nazi infestation, the same idiots are going to say, "See, you were just hysterical."

fatsam, 8 days ago to random

"Israeli Jews and Arabs differ widely in their views of the U.S. president: 66% of Jews have confidence in Biden, but only 21% of Arabs agree. Among both groups, overall confidence in Biden has decreased by 10 points since last year."

It took real genius to engineer a war that only benefits fascists. To this day, no explanation of Hamas's attack has made sense to me, unless it works out that Putin and Netenyahu engineered it together.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/30/how-americans-and-israelis-view-one-another-and-the-us-role-in-the-israel-hamas-war/

fatsam, 11 days ago to random

The Right hates blacks.

And Latinos, Asians, Muslims. Thugs (black men.) Indigenous peoples. LGBTQ. Young people with blue hair. The poor. Educated people. Women who aren't doormats -- or are but won't be raped or beaten. Jews, at least those who don't hate Arabs. Feminists. Liberal men. Atheists. Women who've had an abortion. Witches. Goths.

Liberals just hate conservatives (and that's fairly recent.) It's much more efficient. You don't have to memorize the various lists of people to hate.

fatsam, 16 days ago to random

A comment about global warming.

fatsam, 17 days ago to random

The "railway gauges are based on Roman chariots" passed through my feed twice recently. It's untrue.

https://garethdennis.medium.com/the-not-so-glamourous-origins-of-standard-track-gauge-2b5f1ae7e3bc

fatsam, 20 days ago to random

"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." —Zora Neale Hurston

fatsam, 22 days ago to random

What's the earliest case in SF, that any of you can recall, where books and movies and physical media are explicitly obsolete?

fatsam, 23 days ago to random

I don't know who's reachable at this point. Not many, I suspect. Trump will tell Israel to go ahead and nuke Gaza.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/aid-starts-flowing-gaza-us-pier-israel-rafah-rcna152714

fatsam, 23 days ago to random

An expert is someone who has made most of the mistakes you can make, on someone else's dime.

fatsam, 23 days ago to random

fatsam, 24 days ago to random

This is lovely.

fatsam, 24 days ago to random

On the subject of ecosystem and civilization's collapse:

fatsam, 26 days ago to random

Neil Gaiman wrote: "Everything good that happened in my writing career happened because someone, normally another writer, helped me. Suggested me for something, put in a good word, and so on. The idea was always that you help others and they help others in their turn. It's not a win or lose game."

I'm not Gaiman, and probably neither are you (unless you are, in which case hi, Neil.)

But this is true for me and true for most of us.

fatsam, 26 days ago to random

Nice compliment over on FB.

fatsam, 28 days ago to random

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who did the work, of whatever gender.

This was my mother's last painting, in progress when she passed.

fatsam, 30 days ago to random

Reading "How the Irish Saved Civilization."

I read a lot of history as a young man. One of the problems I have at this age is that, having lived through "history," now, I'm aware how much written history is just a good storyteller at work, interpretation, explanations of times and places the author understood only from the outside in.

It's made it harder to read history. I'm too aware of the strings behind pulled, of conscious and unconscious agenda.

fatsam, 1 month ago to random

Shock and awe plan for fixing the U.S. ...

2024 - 2036: Only black women get to vote.

2036 - 2052: Black men and all women get the vote.

2052 - 2068: All men except white men get the vote.

2068: white men permitted to vote again.

Just a proposal. Would fix most of what's wrong with the U.S., in less than three generations.

atomicpoet, 1 month ago to random

When I was a kid, I thought, “I wish I was alive when Elvis and the Beatles were around.”

Now I hear kids say, “I wish I was alive when arcades were around, and there were real Outrun cabinets.”

Time is a funny thing because kids imagine these arcades were neon-drenched in pink and purple, with people casually wearing powergloves and leather jackets.

So it makes me wonder if my entire idea of the 50s and 60s is a caricature.

fatsam, 1 month ago to random

I moved to New York in 1994. One day I was walking to the subway on my way to work ... There'd been a chemical spill on the street. Crusty white stuff, just laying there in the road. I kicked at it a bit, wondering why I was the only person who was concerned with it. Salt? It wasn't salt. Maybe I shouldn't be kicking it? Maybe everyone knew it was solid white arsenic and that's why I was the only one near it?

fatsam, 1 month ago to random

This is Buddha babble:

"You can deal with your problems now, or later. Why not now?"

Because, in a long life, I have frequently found that some classes of problem go away if you out wait them.

Because, even if a problem does need to be dealt with, and soon, it's usually better to do it after a good night's sleep, than when you're tired and distracted.