Biggles @Biggles@social.cleverlibre.org
- python
- science
- games
Father of 4, Lasers and Computers and Physics, Oh My! Soon to be a major motion picture. My Pokemons, let me show them to you.
Joined Apr 2022
Biggles
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Wow: Ophthalmologists giving eye exams can often tell if people are intravenous drug users because the filling in crushed-up pills accumulate in their retinal blood vessels
Biggles
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Memo to self: remember, you don't HAVE TO argue with every rando who is Wrong On The Internet and tags you.
The specific use is "fun, and helping ensure I don't develop a very much more expensive hobby or habit". If other people can smoke or drink or enjoy $8 lattes daily, I figure I'm allowed to play with new hardware.
Actually, $100 for a pi with trimmings is easy. The apple vision is going to be a much bigger thing to justify...
Biggles
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I had promised some photos of our recent trip to the redwoods outside Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Aquarium; here are a few of my faves (pictured: 100-meter tall redwood trees in dappled sunlight and mist, and the 10-meter glass walls of the underwater kelp forest exhibit at the aquarium, with green and yellow kelp towering from the sea floor and scores of fish from garibaldi to sharks)
Sometimes it's just fun to call you Francis. Big Pee-Wee Herman movie vibes. 😈
Heh - I once fixed an emergency work outage on my cellphone at Disneyland with my family, via a remote desktop app and some *serious* squinting and zoom/pan around.
Story time:
So - I have two college degrees, both A.S. because I'm flighty. One is in laser/electro-optic technology, which is a heady mix of high voltage electronics, optics, and plumbing - and the other is Computer Science. I understand on a reasonable level the theory of operations of electronics and computer hardware, from the physics of how transistors work to logic gates to CPU architecture, to machine language and drivers and operating systems and so on. And I can tell you right now - it's witchcraft. Nothing with this many moving (or at least active) parts and this level of complexity should function for more than a moment or two without failing horribly. You may say that's a testament to decades of research - and it is - but it's also bloody witchcraft. We force rocks to think using lightning, and we pretend that's not magic. And they do it *reliably*. I have servers that run for years at a time, 24x7. Literally they run until they're obsolete. That's NOT NORMAL.
just sayin.
Spot on on the bullying. And the fascists.
I'm 6'6", built like a truck. My mother admonished me *never* to use my strength to get my way. End result being I was a soft target and got bullied until midway through high school, when I realized defending myself wasn't abusing my strength. I got into two fights - one with a lower-rank punk, another with someone slightly higher ranking - and the abuse vanished. The bullies all slunk off looking for a target that doesn't hit back.
To this day, I won't start things. But the moment things leave civil discourse, I'll end it. Never yet with fists - a certain bluntness about what is about to happen has always been sufficient.
So - this is for the fascists: we see you. We see you for what you are. You have two choices - slink off, or fight. You won't like the results of the fight - we'll vote you out of office, strip you of power, money, freedom. We'll treat you just as you've treated others. I'd recommend the slinking, honestly.
Biggles
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The people who persuaded me that Republicans are fascist are Republicans.
The people who persuaded me that the dominant spirit of my country is both conservative and supremacist are conservatives.
They persuade me every day.
I just watch what they do every day, as much as they can, everywhere they can, wherever they can stretch the margins of permission enough to persuade themselves they can.
Full essay:
https://armoxon.substack.com/p/youve-persuaded-us-already
Biggles
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Streaming platform executives:
“I don’t think enough people are pirating. Let’s see what we can do about that.”
Most of the creators I watch on youtube mark the sponsor ad on the timebar, making it trivial to skip, or add it to the end; i find either acceptable, if annoying.
Heh. Yeah that's what they told me too. For weeks it was "should be there in the next 48 hours". Apple said FedEx had it, FedEx said Apple still did. And it ended up *in the middle of my driveway*. Where the cars drive. Not the mailbox, not the porch. Supposed to be signed for. Something went drastically wrong.
For my last two major Apple purchases - did pickup at the store. That's been flawless.
You're still too young to have had the optimism crushed out of you. Must be nice.
Sure. Point is - pick it up from the store. Home delivery adds what turns out to be a very random, unreliable third party to the equation. My home delivery was weeks late. How late will yours be?
Remember my 4se? Weeks late, claimed delivered - and ended up *in the middle of my driveway*? I vowed never to have a phone delivered to my home again. I find that "I'll come pick it up from my local apple store when it is ready" is most reliable and least frustrating.
Biggles
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Listening to @neilhimself on No Such Thing as a Fish about why bagels originated from anti-Semitism in Poland. Also learnt that the word "lox", as in smoked salmon, is about 8,000 years old.
I am. We're seeing it happen right now. The first step is legal accountability. The second is voter emancipation. Then it's just some hard work. Will we get to prefection? No. But can we get *significantly better*? Yes.
I keep thinking about consumer safety laws. They get made because the system breaks, somehow, and people do dumb or shitty or unsafe things - and it gets better. We never thought behavioral norms would get this bad - the voters would reject liars and scam artists and crooks. Whoops. Ok - time to get decent folks back in power and fix things. Laws ensuring your right to vote. Laws ensuring equal protection under the law. And some significant reform in government, fixing the recent exploits.
That or get rid of the bad actors. Maybe both. It would be nice to see some of the traditional behavioral norms institutionalized, but money and power get in the way.
Biggles
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@Biggles @samlitzinger there are a disturbing number of things in our democracy that have in recent years been revealed to *assume good actors* and boy howdy, do we need to stop assuming good intent (or even rationality).
The senate has a few *really stupid* rules meant to streamline things that allow one man to fuck up the process. This one is unanimous consent - one guy objecting means they gotta go thru the full process. The other one that happens often is the "no-talk" filibuster, where someone can say they're doing a filibuster without actually doing it, and they all pretend it's happening. No really. It means everyone doesn't have to waste their day while one guy talks nonstop - but it makes it really easy to throw a wrench in the works.
- python
- science
- games
Father of 4, Lasers and Computers and Physics, Oh My! Soon to be a major motion picture. My Pokemons, let me show them to you.
Joined Apr 2022
