Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

@gdeihl @winjay @ricardoharvin @mekkaokereke Same here. The hard part is getting people to actually read it. And I understand, I get it. It's hard. It's really hard to face the fact that you've essentially been lied to your whole life.

@winjay @ricardoharvin @mekkaokereke It's a huge and maybe unsolvable problem. The truth is so horrific that those who have lived their lives in "The Perfect American Dream" are absolutely unable to take any of it in. They immediately go unconscious, eyes glaze over, they start yawning, because it contradicts everything they've been told and believe. The truth contradicts who they are. They'll never let it into their brains unless something happens to them / harms them personally that causes them to stop and think.

@Ateriath I enjoy languages and the different ways of expressing things. It's interesting how modern English has forgotten how to say certain things. We replace them with long clumsy substitutes. Overmorrow is an example: "the day after tomorrow". Sure, let's use seven syllables instead of four.

In grade school back in the middle of the last century, I remember "next to the last" and "next to the next to the last". What??? There's a word for that: penultimate. Nobody uses it. We even have a word for the latter: antepenultimate. Nobody's even heard of that one.

Years later I became fluent in Spanish and happily discovered that in Spanish, those words are used: penultimo and antepenultimo. Whoo hoo.

@HopelessDemigod If this solar cycle stays on this mad curve it's on, this is going to be fun. We can always hope for another Cycle 19. Whoo hoo! It would be freakin' awesome.

@opsnlops Yes, I like it. It took me a while to get my head around the mindset behind the language. It looks like C, but it's really different.

Now I have the right attitude about anything new. "What weird way does golang do this?" That's not a criticism because there are good reasons for why. You just have to learn what they are.

I'm still nervous about the lack of pointers, though. There are so many cool tricks I know that use pointers, I'll have to learn new tricks. Sigh.

@westly I hear you. You make a good point. But they are not the same. Having lived through all that, I'll say that it was possible to push smoking to the curb by shunning it and those who practiced it. Shunning works for many things.

It won't work with guns. As soon you get out of the big cities, you'll find that millions of people in this country feed their families by hunting. Food for your family's survival is not the same as an optional addiction to a drug.

I'm all in favor of banning guns but it's not possible here. What's more, growing your own tobacco is difficult. Manufacturing guns is not. Live in Montana or Idaho for a while. Gunsmiths are as common as gas stations and gun manufacturers are everywhere. It's easy for any skilled machinist to make guns and they will. Making it illegal will simply drive it underground but won't change anything.

@opsnlops Hah. Yes. I first had to learn to use pointers when programming in PL/I in 1973. Looking back on it, I'm surprised it took me so long to "get it", given that I was already an inveterate machine language programmer.

Despite programming for five years, what I lacked was a good understanding of how useful they are and the fast-executing structures you can make using them. A bit more learning and I became a huge fan, which then influenced my machine language programming.

These days I'm learning golang and am feeling a bit hemmed in by the lack of pointers. On the other hand, I understand the need for safe programming languages, which will surely become mandated as time goes on. Pointers are powerful and fast, but dangerous unless you know what you're doing.

@HopelessDemigod Yes, this solar cycle is running a bit ahead of schedule. Perhaps we'll get a nice aurora. :-)

@benda @brianonbarrington@mastodon.world @joseph Exactly. Debate will get you nowhere. By definition, the only thing Nazis understand is force because it's the only thing they choose to respect.

The way I see it, Nazis choose to set themselves apart and outside of civilized society. They have renounced civilized behavior, therefore no civilized behavior is due them.

@benda @brianonbarrington@mastodon.world @joseph Yes, weak, fearful, broken people, only comfortable when in a pack of like-minded people -- the opposite of what they pretend to be.

@lolennui Hmm, yes. That's just how my brain is when I first get up in the morning, before my first coffee. For this reason, conversation is prohibited until after my first coffee. I am not responsible for anything I might say during the first 30 minutes of each day.

@mastodonmigration Of course he did.

@sshann Hah. Yes, Vitorino has been had.

Interestingly, I'm not aware of a direct translation for Macarena. In English we have words for male womanizers like Lothario, Romeo, skirt-chaser, Casanova, etc. I'm not aware of a name for unfaithful females who behave like this.

@morgfair Yes, thermobaric weapons are horrible when used against people. Back in the Vietnam War days we called them fuel-air bombs. Honeywell was the primary maker of them, if I remember correctly. Large ones are sometimes called the poor man's nuke.

As far as I know, they are not banned by international law. The U.S. used them in the Afghanistan war.

The main use for large ones is to flatten buildings over a wide area. In Vietnam they were used to flatten large areas of jungle.

The ones the Russians are using are small versions of these weapons apparently intended to be used against human targets.

They probably should be banned, at least for use against personnel. On the other hand, large ones used for bunker busting, rooting out terrorists hiding in caves, disabling North Korea's nuclear stockpile, they might prevent escalation to nuclear weapons.

Well, they have the right to do that. And you have the right to pick up your marbles and play somewhere else. Fortunately, today there is a somewhere else.

@mapache_tico True, and it looks nice, too.