sxan

sxan, 5 months ago

✋😐

I grew up with incandescent bulbs, and it was hell. The waste, in both trash and energy consumption, was horrendous.

The (thankfully) short age of flourescent reduced energy use, but the trash was worse, and the light categorically regressive.

LEDs are, in all ways, superior. You buy cheap-ass crap LEDs, you’re going to get a worse experience, obviously. Despite some negatives, LEDs are still the best lighting technology available. Feel free to complain, but there’s no better option right now. Wanting to go back to incandescents is vinyl-turntable-level, selective memory, retro hipsterism. And also super shitty for the environment.

sxan, 5 months ago

But did her black friends have Nikki Haley for a friend?

sxan, 16 days ago

The thing I think is the most irreconcilable, incompromisable, consistently demonstrated behavior of The Right in America is the blatant hypocrisy about nearly all of their planks. It’s the thing that, when the next civil war comes, will allow me to pull the trigger on anyone wearing a red baseball cap with little remorse.

• Everyone needs guns to defend themselves from The State, because 2A! (Except for black people defending themselves from no-knock entry cops who got the address wrong)
• The government shouldn’t be allowed to tell us how to live! (Except for LGBTQ* people, women’s choices about their own bodies, or homeless people)
• The Constitution is sacrosanct! (Except for the part about separation of church and state, we just ignore that part)

It’s the same for their every. Single. Position. It makes me weary, and furious, depressed and pessimistic.

sxan, 19 days ago

This cannot be emphasized or repeated enough. Before the acquisition, Boeing was led and run by engineers. After the acquisition, MBAs and Finance people were put in charge.

This happens at all large companies, eventually, and it’s why they all inevitably shit the bed. It’s just in this case, it’s killing a lot of people in the process.

sxan, 1 month ago

Like, she doesn’t have a office with a door?

One year, we got a tank of compressed air and a bunch of balloons and stayed after work and literally filled his office with balloons. Floor to almost ceiling. Not only was it hilarious, but popping the balloons the next day was a lot of fun, and clean-up wasn’t too hard. You absolutely need compressed air for this, and even then it took an hour or so to do.

These days, I guess it’d be seen as environmentally wasteful; balloons aren’t recyclable, I think. Plus, it only works if she has dedicated office with a door. If it’s still an “office” but shared with another person, you could still get their permission; maybe they’d agree to hotel in a conference room until the balloons are popped.

sxan, 27 days ago

Alligators, not crocodiles. Crocodiles would be stupendously to do this with; alligators are much less aggressive.

This thing operated for nearly 50 years, from 1907 to 1953. I couldn’t find a single report of any incidents of people being hurt by the alligators; it only shut down because attendance had dropped to fewer than 50,000 annually.

I an frankly a little surprised; I thought for sure it got shut down because it alligators ate one to many kids… or pets. People brought their dogs. But, apparently, well-fed alligators are pretty docile unless you make them feel threatened, and the domestic bred ones were used to people handling them from babies.

They’re still reptiles, and crocodilians to boot; this whole endeavor sounds batshit to me. But 50 years with a yearly attendance of more than 50,000 people is a lot of evidence.

sxan, 4 months ago

They were written by someone who’s exposure to anything martial - and probably anything more strenuous than making a trip to mom’s cupboard for more Cheetos - has been through film.

sxan, 1 month ago

Minnesota’s.

Minnesota’s group is approaching this a smart way, from the local up. They’re not spending much time in the high-profile positions; they’re tackling local elections. Gets people used to the idea, and they stack higher and higher positions as they’re going. It’ll take time, but starting at the top and working down is a lot harder.

Is this how CA is approaching it?

sxan, 27 days ago

UK server, OK. Fine. But OP has never been to Pennsylvania in the US. Most houses over a hundred years old look like this: you can see the generations that have lived in it. First it’s stone and mortar; then there’s a wood addition ca. the early 1900s; then there’s a more modern addition ca. the 50’s or later. There’s one property that was briefly famous as it came up in Zillow that had 5 clearly distinctive styles and technologies worth of additions on it; it’s like every generation added another room with whatever was in style at the time. I can’t find a picture, but it was hideous.

I don’t know if it’s common all along the mid-Atlantic, but it is super common in Pennsylvania.

sxan, 6 months ago

Master and Commander. It’s atmospheric and fun, and I’m sad they didn’t make more with that cast.

sxan, 9 days ago

So you cook the potatoes in a garden variety pressure cooker; but the difference is you then rapidly chill them before preparing to eat. Right?

sxan, 9 days ago

Software is a necessary component, just like screws are a necessary component in an engine. Screws don’t exist only in engines, have existed since long before engines, and can be used in other ways. Just like software.

sxan, 9 days ago

Software is algorithmic instructions. We wrote and executed algorithms by hand long before we had calculating machines; and when we did get computers that could run more complex algorithms, they didn’t have CPUs. They had vacuum tubes (there were even simpler programmable purely mechanical computers before even vacuum tubes). CPUs didn’t come along until much later; we’d been writing software and programming computers for decades before the first CPU.

And even if you try to argue that vacuum tubes computers had some collection of tubes that you could call a “CPU” - which would be a stretch - then it still wouldn’t have been made from silicon (rocks) as in the OP post.

But before the first calculating mashing, people are writing algorithms - what software literally is - and executing them by hand long before we had calculating machines to do it for us. Look up how we calculated the ranging tables for artillery in WWII. Algorithms. Computed by hand.

The word “computer” literally comes from the word for the people (often women) who would execute algorithms using their brains to compute results.

sxan, 9 days ago

Say I agree with your distinction - or restriction. There was still software written for, and programmed into, general-purpose, Turing-complete calculating machines long before there are CPUs.

So let’s look at the technical details of the word. The term “Software” was coined in 1958 by John Tukey. The computers in use at that time were machines like the IBM 704, the PDP-1, and the UNIVAC 1107; these are all vacuum tube computers that contained no silicon microchips and no CPUs. Even technically, the term “software” predates silicon and CPUs.

Non-technically, I disagree with your premise on the basis that it’s often been argued - and I agree with the argument - that humans are just computers with software personalities programmed by social conditioning, running on wetware and a fair bit of firmware. And there’s increasing evidence that there’s no real CPU, just a bunch of cooperating microorganisms and an id that retroactively convinces itself that it’s making the decisions. Even if the term “software” wasn’t coined until 1958, software has been a thing since complex organisms capable of learning from experience arose.

Unless we’re all living in a simulation, in which case, who knows if software or hardware really exist up there, or whether there’s even a distinction.

sxan, 5 months ago

Humans. Where is my snow?

sxan, 6 days ago

That’s kind of a straw man, though, isn’t it? Governments of capitalist countries have worked hard to suppress non-capitalist movements within and without their country, but that’s just what governments do. The Soviet Union was communist (as pure communist as the US is pure capitalist, which is to say, not very), and that also suppressed any alternatives. It’s not a function of the economic system; it’s a characteristic governments repeatedly demonstrate, regardless of their economic ideology.

I agree with the grandparent argument: capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we have so far. Personally, I don’t believe communism can work, mainly because I think it goes against human nature. Except for clan behavior - altruism to your family, friends, neighbors - people are generally selfish, and communism requires us to be altruistic at our own expense to people who we not only don’t know, but who may talk differently from us, look different from us, have different culture from us. And even at the clan level, communism struggles. There were hundreds of attempts at building communes in the US in the 60’s, and I honestly believe most died out not because they were subverted by the government, but because people are selfish and they collapsed under their own internal conflicts. Very few of those remain, and when you look at them, they have fairly rigid internal structures that re-enforce the commune.

Maybe if we can make it to post-scarcity, we’ll be able to afford to be communist, because then it won’t depend on altruism. But right now, when times are hard and food is scarce, most humans will look to feeding their own children first, and the priorities of the commune tear like tissue. Capitalism endures because it’s built upon greed and selfishness, and those come easy to humans. When times are hard, we tend to fall back on barter, which is capitalism.

Anyway, saying that the US suppression of communism in Latin American countries says less about capitalism than it says about the US government, and their perceived interests. The proof is in the parallels in Soviet and communist (Mao era) China regional actions.

sxan, 7 days ago

I am a firm believer of playing by the same rules the opposition has set, when playing against them.

If The Hill is censoring and silencing dissent, maybe it’d be good to disallow posts linking to articles in The Hill. Deny them clicks and views.

sxan, 6 days ago

Fewer units, but more home ownership.

We don’t want to be a nation of renters. It’s not good for society; it’s only good for a minority of individuals.

And fewer new units? Where are you pulling that from? It just means developers will be building for home owners, not renters. Like they did back in the Good Old Days, when young people could actually realistically consider buying a home someday. You know, re-creating the conditions that the younger generations are always bitching about that boomers had which aren’t available anymore. Back when not all the land was owned by a few giant corporations.

Fuck renters. Fuck them right in the ear. They can all go eat a dick.

Disclaimer: I’ve owned every house I’ve lived in since 1998, and even with that collateral, every purchase has gotten harder to find and more expensive. So much of America is owned by property developers, it’s disgusting.

Fuck. Renters.

sxan, 6 days ago

Noun: renter |ren-tur|

1. Someone who pays rent to use land or a building or a car that is owned by someone else • the landlord can evict a renter who doesn’t pay the rent = tenant
2. An owner of property who receives payment for its use by another person

It’s not my fault the stupid word means both people renting, and the owners who rent the place out. I’d hoped the context would have made it clear to which I was referring, in each use.

sxan, 6 days ago

In British English, “renter” - means both (in the OED). So, you mean “in American.”

But, yes; I concede landlord may have been a better term, although not all renters who lease properties to others are also landlords; for one example, subletters are renters (in both meanings of the word) but not landlords.

Renters (landlords) are necessary; the real problem I’m railing against is property developers turning single family homes (or apartments[^1]) and farmland into rental properties.

[^1] in 'Murican, the word “apartment” has rental connotations. I’m using it here in the “a unit in a larger building of units, either owned or rented out.”

sxan, 6 days ago

I hate that “renters” mean both people who rent, and rent out. It’s a stupid word.

There is a place for rentals, but it’s gone far beyond reasonable. Property developers are responsible for the housing crisis and the inability for younger generations to even contemplate owning a home.

sxan, 6 days ago

In British English, “renter” - means both (in the OED). So, you mean “in American.”

But, yes; I concede landlord may have been a better term, although not all renters who lease properties to others are also landlords; for one example, subletters are renters (in both meanings of the word) but not landlords.

Renters (landlords) are necessary; the real problem I’m railing against is property developers turning single family homes (or apartments[^1]) and farmland into rental properties.

[^1] in 'Murican, the word “apartment” has rental connotations. I’m using it here in the “a unit in a larger building of units, either owned or rented out.”

sxan, 6 days ago

Duh.

I lived in Germany for two years, and when I returned I visited the mother of one of my high-school girlfriends who’d been living in the States since she’d moved there from Germany when she was 20. So, she was around 40 at the time. Anyway, me, fresh from DE and pretty fluent in German tried to have a conversation with her in German and, after a couple of minutes she switched to English and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve just forgotten too much German to have a conversation in it.” She seemed sad about that.

But oddly, the reverse had been happening to me off and on since I’d gotten back. I’d been living with a German girl over there who didn’t know much English, and I hadn’t spoken English much in the past 18 months. For about a year after I returned I’d occasionally be unable to remember the English word for common things, like “trash can,” and have to ask whoever I was talking to to remind me what it was.

Doesn’t take much, honestly.

sxan, 1 month ago

OK, it’s not yet possible anyway.

BTW, a speeding ticket was mailed to your house because you were tracked exceeding the limit for the road you were on. You were also tracked as passing through an area known for frequent drug crimes, so now you’re on a watch-list as a high-probability illegal drug exchange suspect. Your insurance has been notified that you’ve been tracked engaging in risky activities, so your insurance premiums have increased. Based on your extrapolated sexual activity from collated data of yours and other’s data, that’s also increased your premiums; and since that’s flagged as “risky behavior,” the police database has been updated to increase your “potential suspect” rating, which will be used if you’re ever in the vicinity of a crime when it was committed.

As icing on the cake, all of your location tracking data is being sold to data brokers, for commercial interests to use in whatever way they see fit. It’s how the government funds all of these extra benefits you’re being provided!