@0.
This is the public portion of *Random Thoughts*, a giant text file of quotations, stories, mini-essays, and anything else that was on my mind that I didn't have a good place to put. It's similar to the old idea of a commonplace book. You can read more about Random Thoughts in my Zettelkasten: https://zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com/#RandomThoughts.
I'm Soren Bjornstad, a software developer, tech thinker, writer, and information systems designer. For more about me, see https://sorenbjornstad.com.
I've been writing in Random Thoughts since October 2009, when I was a freshman in high school. You may wish to read this page from bottom to top -- that way, you'll start with the items that are most relevant in today's context.
If you found a reference to an individual entry in here somewhere else, which in my writings typically looks something like "RT 5995", you can type '#5995' as an anchor at the end of the URL to jump there. If you don't jump there, sorry, that entry isn't public (see below). For the same reason, some internal links to other numbered entries won't do anything.
You may notice that the numbers are not in neat sequence -- that's because those missing entries are not for public consumption. I try to be conservative about what I make public, particularly when it involves quoting people who aren't public figures, so as not to risk landing unflattering information on anybody's Google search results, but in a 500,000-word document I'd be surprised if I haven't misclassified an entry or two. If I've published something you don't think should be public, please email 'zettelkasten@sorenbjornstad.com' and I'll look at taking it out.
I don't save only things that I agree with. If you encounter an idea in here, you can safely assume that I find it interesting (or did at the time I originally recorded it), but not that it perfectly aligns with my opinions.
This page is formatted in your browser using vim's ':TOhtml' command and a little bit of Python magic. It's not incredibly pretty, but I've been reading it more or less this way for 14 years and it's quite functional!
October 9, 2009
@1. This is the random thoughts document. It contains random thoughts. I have random thoughts I want to save.
@4. "In this auditorium, the acoustics are really bad, so that little 'p' means 'project.'" --Mr. Kopf, commenting on a school auditorium just before a concert
{BL #4338}
@6. I was going to go to bed early, but now I'm busy starting the random thoughts document.
@7. I just lost the game. (haha take that when you read this a year from now)! [insert evil laugh here]
@12. I wonder if I'll actually keep doing the random thoughts document.
@55. I should do my homework.
@57. "But wait! There's more fail!" --end of each page on FailBlog.org
@59. "All right, everybody. Apparently there was something that I neglected to go over with you all in the past when I was training you, and that is Purple Money. What is purple money, you may ask? Well, simply put, it's money that is purple. And just so there's no confusion, No, we do not accept purple money. Why? Because it's purple, that's why. Money is not supposed to be purple. You know how I know? Because I've seen money before. And it wasn't purple. So, from now on if anyone tries to pay with purple money (or blue, or red, or any other color that clearly does not look like normal money), apologize to the customer and tell them we simply cannot accept that money. If anyone has any questions about our purple money policies, please let me know." --Emailsfromcrazypeople.com
@71. "Server failures can happen to anyone. But backups can only happen to the competent." --User on ZDNet Talkback
@82. I got a Google Voice Account! Yay! Still available on an invite-only basis.
October 15, 2009
@102. "It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end."
@105. Got Windows 7. Don't know if my processor is 64-bit or not (and Google couldn't supply the answer for some stupid reason), so I'm not sure whether to install the 64-bit or 32-bit version. I'm also considering upgrading motherboard and processor (and maybe RAM) at the same time because product activation can get screwed up when you do that and I know I'm going to want to some time. I have enough money too, just debating when to do it. And of course, there's that nasty chance that something much better will come out right after you buy.
@131. Got back from the confirmation retreat. Kinda fun. The ping-pong table that was expected mysteriously vanished, but the pool table was still there and we had fun there. I kept all my stuff in the ceiling until Seth told me to take it down because "that rarely ends well" (but it was about time to get packed anyway!). It took me almost a day to really realize how absurd it was that all my stuff was in the ceiling, since I was on the top bunk and it seemed the most natural to get my stuff by pushing up a ceiling tile, after all.
@137. It's Friday the 13th today.
November 14, 2009
@145. I just went to Wikipedia, and I was meaning to type ".com" but I found my fingers were automatically typing ".org". For a second, I thought I had screwed up, but then realized I had corrected myself without conscious thought because I go there so much.
@146. "They say that if you play an AOL CD backwards, you hear Satanic messages. But that's nothing. If you play it forwards, it installs AOL!" --Anonymous
November 22, 2009
@149.
If you have broken
Your computer yet again
Fix it by yourself
--me
@152. I'm sitting in study hall the day before Thanksgiving with homework still to do, but I can't do it. Which brings me to...
@153. My study hall supervisor wouldn't let me go to my locker because I forgot my math book. That normally wouldn't make me mad--maybe a bit frustrated because I couldn't do my homework, but that's it, since it was, after all, my fault--except that he let someone else go earlier who had done the exact same thing. I'm pretty sure he was just frustrated that several people did it, especially since he's always let people go before.
@160. Three Microsoft engineers and three Apple engineers are taking a train to a conference together. When they go to the ticket window, the Microsoft engineers buy a ticket each, and the Apple engineers buy only one ticket among the three of them. "How are three people going to travel on one ticket?" the Microsoft engineers ask. "Watch and you'll see," say the Apple engineers. So they get on the train, and the Apple engineers squeeze into a bathroom. The train starts moving, and the conductor comes down the train, bangs on the door of the bathroom where the Apple engineers are hiding, and says, "Ticket, please!" One of the Apple engineers opens the door a crack and hands the conductor the ticket.
The Microsoft engineers are watching this and think it's a pretty good idea, so, as usual, they decide to copy it on the way back. However, this time, the Apple engineers skip buying tickets entirely. "How are three people going to travel without a ticket?" ask the Microsoft engineers. "Watch and you'll see," say the Apple engineers. So they get on the train, the Microsoft engineers go into a bathroom, and the Apple engineers go into another bathroom further down the train. Shortly after the train starts moving, one of the Apple engineers comes out of the bathroom, walks down the train, knocks on the door of the bathroom where the Microsoft engineers are hiding, and says, "Ticket, please!"
@179. "Stock up and save! Limit: one."
@180. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell." --Rinkworks.com Things People Said
@183. "Sorry, we don't sell tickets outside of the U.S....I don't care how new Mexico is, we don't sell tickets outside the U.S." --A ticket salesperson for the 1996 Olympics, on the phone with someone from New Mexico
@206. "Warning: Use this door for entering and exiting only."
@216. Speaking of words, someone made fun of me for using the word "condensation" today. But really, it is kind of scientific and sophisticated, but what else am I supposed to say?
@222. "What do you want to eat? [tNT or *?]"
February 10, 2010
@225. The conversation after I played my solo at ISSMA last year:
"Have you grown a lot lately?"
Huh?
"...I...guess so."
"Well, that's not a full-size violin, is it?"
"Umm, I'm...pretty sure it is."
"Well, I guess it must be a slightly smaller full-size violin than normal."
And before I played:
(Soren tunes his violin)
"Make that E a little higher."
(Although it's in tune, I do so.)
"Let me see that."
(I hand her my violin. She tunes it nearly a half-step sharp.)
"There."
(I glance at my orchestra director, who is accompanying me, and he shrugs.)
"Whenever you're ready."
My comments sheet includes the remark on Intonation: "Always make sure your E-string is in tune before playing" and a half point off.
What's worse is that this lady somehow got back judging ensembles the next year.
@227. "Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes."
@230.
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
@249. "No shirt / No shoes / No pets / No service" --A very bad attempt at modifying a traditional statement.
{BL #5890}
@253. "The door opens! It summons insects!"
April 11, 2010
@260. Downloaded an archive of mrivan's NetHack ttyrecs. He is quite well-known for running a streak of 23 consecutive ascensions. As far as I know, he's been beaten only by Adeon with 28? ascensions in a row. I don't like his playstyle that much, but it's cool to watch.
@263. The internet is messed up. I wonder if there's something wrong with our DNS server, because it always freezes on the "looking up" stage. The strangest thing is that the internet light on the router is on.
@273. I know I'm kinda out of the groove, but I honestly don't know whether iPads are actually available for purchase yet. Some people have said they are, but I'd think I'd have heard a bit more about it if they were.
@294. Suggested Google April Fools joke: Google is going out of business.
Similar idea: Scheduled maintenance on Google tomorrow. Do all your searches today.
@297. We were taking a test on Edline (our online grading system) in the computer lab the other day. There was a sub supervising the test. I started up the computer, opened Edline, took the test, scrolled back up to the top and double-checked my answers, then hit submit. I went back to the home page of Edline, and, having nothing more to do, pulled out a book and started reading. After I had read about a page, the sub came up behind me (so I could barely even see him) and said loudly, in an I-can't-believe-you-would-try-to-pull-that-one tone, "I'm going to have to ask you to put that away." I was surprised because I hadn't seen him coming and rather confused. (As if I would be cheating by reading answers out of a novel!) I said, "Well, I'm done with the test." He walked away and said "Oh, are you?" I was actually quite annoyed that he didn't apologize.
@310. The word "writing" is on this SAT vocabulary list. That's sad.
@314. One time my mom submitted an ad to the paper and told them they could reduce it if they needed to. Instead, they cropped off the time, date, and location.
@316. "The teacher is prejudice." --a college student
@319. "Well, I know the secretary, so I'm listed as having been at every meeting this year, even though I've only been to two." --Nichi
@323. Conversations #overheard on the bus from two people who sit near me:
* "Obama has nothing to show for his presidency. All he did was pass a healthcare bill, which Bush would have done anyway."
* "There's basically no difference between Obama and McCain."
* "You know, that triangle with the square in the corner. The a squared plus b squared equals c squared thingy."
@330. Two adjacent signs on a door: "Please keep this door closed and locked at all times" and "Fire Extinguisher Inside."
@338. "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive \Device\Harddisk4." --Windows
@339. "Error: No error." --Freeciv
{BL #5005}
@340. "The device #UNKNOWN# is missing a driver. Please download the correct driver from the manufacturer's website." --Windows
@344. "What you need to do is go to Wal-Mart and buy a sheet, and put it over your tent to keep the water off it." --woman at a campground, as if she knows it all
We found out later that she ended up staying at a hotel that night.
@345. "I wonder where they put the pump." --me, at three years old, looking at a waterfall
@346. "All the healthcare bill is going to do is make healthcare more expensive and fine you if you don't have any. It's stupid because they took out all the socialist parts and now there are only stupid parts left." --#overheard in the Media Center
Update: At the time I thought this was funny because it sounded like total nonsense. Nearly ten years later, it's funny for a different reason: it's proven to be remarkably accurate. Go figure.
@348. "Oh look! A mommy butterfly and her babies!" --#overheard at a trailhead in the Great Smoky Mountains
@349. "WIPE HANDS ON PANTS" --posted on an out-of-order hand dryer
@350. "Do we put these in radons?" --a student asking if he should enter radian mode on his calculator
@351. "Will you stop going to sharpen your mechanical pencil?" --my study hall supervisor, very correct about one student's #excuse for going to the other side of the room to talk to his friend
@353.
"When is this class over?"
"At the 6."
(Laughter.)
"What?! That's when it's over!"
@354.
"Oops, I just erased your assignment."
"Yay!"
@355. "I hate these Microsoft guys! What a rotten compiler! It only accepts 16384 local variables in a function!"
{BL #9730}
@358. "My plate was sitting on it." --my uncle, after determining the cause of his malfunctioning computer was a plate depressing his Alt key
@361. "I think God gave me more paper." --Daniel, after noticing there was more paper in his notebook than he thought he had
@362.
@@@
if (x == 0)
return x
else
return 0
endif
@@@
@363. "A man is rowing upstream from point A. At point B, he loses his hat. Ten minutes later, he notices the loss of his hat and immediately turns around and rows back. Exactly at point A, he overtakes his hat. What is the speed of the current?" --Yeah, and I'll keep this problem in mind if I ever need to measure the speed of a current with a hat.
@364.
"Can you think of any animals that start with 'q'?"
"Quillfish."
"What's that?"
"You don't know what a quillfish is?"
(Pause.)
"Wait, I think that might be a Pokemon."
(For the record, quillfish do exist.)
@368. "There are 30 students in a class. Two move. How many are there now?" --quite possibly the most ambiguous math contest problem ever
@369. We were on a family trip, and we got a flat tire. It being Sunday, and there being no shops open to fix it, we elected to drive the remaining hundred miles or so on the spare at reduced speed. The day after we arrived, my dad took the car in to see about getting a new tire.
"And can I have your last name, please?"
"Bjornstad. B-J-O-R-N-S-T-ay-dee."
"You have a number at the end of your name?"
"???"
He had entered "bjornst80" as the name.
{BL CB35.18}
July 12, 2010
@381. Honk if you love Jesus; text while driving if you want to meet Him.
--bumper sticker
@386. "I fell at the university!" --a child
July 19, 2010
@388. I was copying some files with my flash drive. I moved it to the other computer, opened up a file listing, and the files weren't there. I went "Whaaaaa....?" for a moment, and tried to think of what could possibly have happened. Then I noticed that there was a scrollbar, and I needed to scroll down to see the files.
@394. "NameError: name 'DEFINE' is not defined"
--Python
@398. "Huh, I forgot what I'm doing. Guess I'll just type 'ls' five times and maybe that'll help." --me
@399. "Using Linux is like driving a tank. Not everyone knows how to drive a tank, but once you learn how, holy shit, you're driving a tank! Why would you want anything else?" --commenter on Lifehacker
July 29, 2010
@400. I had a dream last night that when I noticed my birth date was a year off in Gmail and I tried to change it, it popped up a notice that said something like "Aha! You finally admit you lied!" and gave a poll about why you decided to tell them your real birth date.
@403. "My idea is full of heads." --me
@409. "How much or if you charge for the software does not matter. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a million dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a million dollars." --Richard Stallman
August 17, 2010
@411.
s/<kerio>*.//
casmith789: your regex is broken
so...
it matches <kerio followed by any number of > signs, then one character
<kerio>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>A
you probably meant .* not *.
ais523: sssssh, don't tell him
er, right
here on #nethack we debug your insults for free
August 23, 2010
@412. School is almost upon us. Been a pretty good summer, and I'm interested to see how Anki works for me this year.
@413. Since Facebook moved the number of notifications to the title bar, it's become even easier to get distracted while you aren't on Facebook. Although it also minimizes useless tabbing to the page when there's nothing new.
@416. I was at a friend's house one day when his mom came in and told us about a scam where you are social engineered into dialing a number beginning with 809, and you're then charged an absurd amount of money. I had never heard of this before, and wanted to find out if it was really true (later on I found out that it is), so I headed to Google and started typing in "809". His mom yelled "Oh no you don't!" at me and started backspacing my search. Uhuh--because you can dial a number and get charged by searching the web.
August 30, 2010
@433. From our precalculus book: "Suppose that postage is 8 cents for the first ounce and 8 cents for each additional ounce."
I guess someone missed the memo about that being called "eight cents per ounce."
September 1, 2010
@436. Our precalculus book, like most math books, has the answers to the odd problems in the back. In one case, an odd problem gave a very similar answer to an even one, and the book fixed this problem by writing on the answer to number 29, "See number 28." (I guess they think everyone has tele-and-X-ray-vision to see the full answer key on the teacher's desk.)
@441. "Please note: Battery acid is listed below only for purposes of comparison, and should never be confused for any reason as a beverage."
@442. "I made this letter very long, because I did not have time to make it shorter." --Blaise Pascal
@445. In most classes, the usual order of work is, more or less:
1. Notes.
2. Workbook/other assignments.
3. Chapter Review pages.
4. Test.
In my health class this year:
1. Chapter Review.
2. Workbook pages.
3. Notes.
4. Test.
I'm not sure exactly what the point of the notes is by that point.
@446. Epic Laziness: In health class, I can sharpen pencils sitting down at my desk.
@450. In Soviet Russia, the game loses you.
September 4, 2010
@461. "My favorite language is called STAR. It's extremely concise. It has exactly one verb '*', which does exactly what I want at the moment." --Larry Wall
@463. "Caution: Do not install telephone wiring during a lightning storm."
September 8, 2010
@466. SOCCER NOT ALLOWED / Soccer May Only Be Played in Archery Range
@467. In English today, a repair guy was lying on the floor in the corner fixing the radiator, quietly, so nobody noticed him. Until his cell phone rang and he started talking at an absurd volume during the lesson.
@469. "While great for weekends and family reunions, Twister is not to be played in the hallways or commons area." --Mr. Doane
You know you did something awesome when a new rule is created ten minutes later.
@475. circa July 2010: Currently _Free Software Free Society_ is out of print. We are working on the second edition of the book. The new edition should be available by mid-August. Please visit our website for the new edition later. Thank you!
August 2010: The new edition should be available by mid-September.
September 2010: The new edition should be available by late November.
@480. "Your search, #, did not match any documents." --Google
@486. "Well you shouldn't build it until you're open! Idiot!" --customer, screaming
@490. "Don't try to trick me! I'm a scientist, and I know that heaters make things warm!"
@500. "Alas, with Sholes's machine and most other typewriters until the early part of the century, the type bars struck the invisible rear side of the paper, and you didn't know the bars had jammed until you pulled out the page and saw that you had typed 26 lines of uninterrupted E's instead of the Gettysburg Address."
@501. I was looking through a guide trying to fix my sound that wasn't working that told me to run a command, without explaining what it did: "cat /dev/urandom >> /dev/dsp". I figured that this would give me a nice display of the applications currently using the sound. No, instead it blasted me out of my seat with absurdly loud static from the speakers.
@503. Coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Random Thoughts document.
@504. "1 ream of elephants = 500 elephants" --an example in my chemistry notes
@506. "When in doubt, umlaut!" --a German I student's brilliant idea.
(UPDATE: Katharina argued that this was actually pretty accurate when I shared it with her!)
@507. "Theft of this container is a crime."
@508. "Stay inside if there is a threat of tornadoes or flash floods." --more brilliant advice from our health book
@509.
(during a quiz, discussing her directions) "Well, if I had said, say, 'underline the titles', that would have given it away."
"You just did."
@510. "If it's in stock, we have it!"
@511. "I know it's an old cliche, but you can cut the atmosphere with a cricket stump." --Murray Walker
@512. "A nickel isn't worth a dime today." --Yogi Berra
@513. "Our offense is like the pythagorean theorem: There is no answer!" --Shaquille O'Neal
@514. "Several passengers reported the event." --the close to a news story in which an airplane made a rough emergency landing, producing a shower of sparks
@519. Want a good oxymoron? Microsoft Works.
@533. "I can't belive that last message went out to all of you. Sorry, I still have the problem with the eudora email client. It sometimes addresses my personal mail to the altkeyboards group. I thought I would catch them all! It will be a couple of weeks before I can crack that problem. Looks like you may be able to read up much more on me than I want you to."
October 9, 2010
@534. Well, today's the one-year anniversary of the random thoughts document.
@535. Pong is probably the best designed shooter game in the world. It's the only one that is made so that if you camp, you die.
@538.
IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
@544. "...If someone claims to have the perfect language he is either a fool or a salesman or both." --Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++
@555. "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." --Robert Firth
@562. "There are two types of people in the world: 1) those that can extrapolate from incomplete data."
@563. "The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot."
@569. "A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform."
@572. "It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics." --Fletcher Knebel
@573. "WARNING: Do not look into laser with remaining eye!" --sign at MIT's Junior Lab
@581. "Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives." --bumper sticker
@582. "The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket." --Albert Einstein
{BL #8364, #11569}
@583. "I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost..."
{BL #10284}
October 28, 2010
@587. "When the grammar checker identifies an error, it suggests a correction and can even makes some changes for you." --Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 User's Guide
@590. "The steering wheel controls the direction of the front wheels. Turn right to go right; turn left to go left." --Drive Right
@591. "Before driving...look inside the vehicle to make sure you do not have unwanted passengers." --Drive Right
@596. "If your vehicle is disabled...do not stand in the expressway to direct traffic." --Drive Right
@598. "Rabbit feet are clearly not lucky--they sure didn't work for the rabbit!"
November 2, 2010
@599. "[The 64-bit Unix time date format will cease to work] approximately 292 billion years from now, on Sunday, 4 December 292,277,026,596 CE. However, this problem is not widely regarded as a pressing issue." --Wikipedia
November 16, 2010
@602. What do you want to wield? [cAT or *?]
November 20, 2010
@603. Uncyclopedia -- the content-free encyclopedia.
@605. We were watching _The Crucible_ in English class. The substitute teacher was browsing the Web on the teacher's computer. In the middle of the movie, we are suddenly interrupted by an ear-splittingly loud siren sound, caused by an ad on the computer.
@607. "I had five people in this class who decided that the Law of Cosines had sines in it." --Mrs. Brady
@609. Someone in our school's communications class decided that jumping on top of a water bottle in the middle of the computer lab would be a good idea. Water flew all over the room, and the bottle jumped out from under his feet and hit some kid in the face.
@610.
"In C, to start the day..."
(noises that show we are clearly not playing the right thing)
"Oh, a scale?"
Stand Partner and Other Students: "Oh, the piece?"
@612. "It's amazingly arbitrary alliteration."
@614. "We expect that the bus will return sometime between 12 and midnight." --Mr. Doane
@617.
"Mrs. Arthur in the Media Center wasn't very happy about it, because I had to snatch laptops out of the hands of students, but here they are."
"Wait, so we're using stolen netbooks?"
"Isn't that a felony?"
"Carpe diem, man."
@635. "You tried and failed. The lesson here is never to try." --Homer Simpson
November 29, 2010
@645. "So, if you have a car copier, I think you should be free to copy any car. But there are no car copiers, so that really is a meaningless question." --Richard Stallman
@647. I once actually had an experience where I was working away on my computer, and it started playing a fanfare sound out of nowhere. Before I started isolating the problem, it went away. A couple of minutes later it happened again, played all the way through the 20 second file, and then disappeared inexplicably and never came back. (I recognized the sound; it was from the play I was doing sound for.)
Computers can be *weird* sometimes.
@648. We were trying to eat at the VU cafeteria during the summer, but it turned out to be only open for people in the summer camp that was currently going on. So we went to the cafe on the other side and asked "Can we eat here instead?" The lady at the counter responded, "Yes, but...you have to pay."
@650. Had to abandon a blog post I was trying to continue to write because I no longer agree with the opinion I expressed in it.
@652. A website I went to had such an annoying color scheme (blood red background, yellow text) that at first when I tabbed to it I thought it was highlighted.
@666. "The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin." --Jay Leno
@670. "Artifact lances will never break (they also don't exist)." --NetHack wiki
December 14, 2010
@675. "Could you stand up and 'is' for us?" --English teacher, after a student said "is" was an action verb
@677. "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." --Douglas Adams
@680. "The banana is a great place to start. After all, 66% of banana is Na...So if you want to go about reducing the Na in banana, the best way to do it and keep everyone happy is to gradually rename it, first to the bana, and then the ba." --Part of an Internet Oracle discussion about salt (Na).
@682.
"If you were smart, you'd study for your final. You can get a lot done in 30 minutes."
"If I were smart, I wouldn't have to study!"
@684. "The notes are right, but if I listened they would be wrong." --Eugene Ormandy
@685. "Lazy Japanese Men Blamed for Falling Birth Rate" --Reuters headline
@690. A student attached a $100 bill to his exam with a note that said "A dollar per point." The next day the student received his failing exam and fifty-three dollars change.
@691. "This is a two-handed piece." --someone in church choir, on a piece with an absurd number of page turns
@695. <studdud> what the fuck is wtf
@698. Being the only one in the computer lab is just weird.
@700. "It's like the same size, except bigger."
@702. "Get one of the big small bags." --someone in my German class
@707.
"These are new scales, so do not break them."
"But if we have old scales, we can break those?"
@708. "It would be higher than it should be because it should be higher." --me writing absent-mindedly
@711.
"What now?"
"Pray."
"In the game or in real life?"
"Both."
@714. Silliest argument ever for why emacs is better than vi: Richard Stallman prefers it. Yeah, you'd kind of expect that the person who was responsible for originally writing the program would like it.
@723. "I hate how people keep texting me "k". I am very rarely in the mood to talk about potassium."
@725. "The processor is a 166-GHz, single-core Intel Atom N455." --a news report, discussing a new smartphone
@749. I found this cool search engine, http://www.google.com/.
--Adeon, #nethack, in response to somebody telling us about the cool website they found that was listed in the channel topic
December 26, 2010
@757. I had a dream that I got a report card with a bunch of C's and D's on it. After being puzzled for a while, I noticed that the school had printed the line "Grades on this report card may be lower than expected due to a printing error."
@758. "I know Mouse!" --an oft-quoted (and extremely obnoxious) person who used to work with my dad
@763. Banjoewangi says "You be careful with my corpse!"
January 1, 2011
@780.
the "bishop" came to our church today
he was a fucken impostor
never once moved diagonally
January 12, 2011
@783. "Location: Unknown Location (Approximate)"
January 14, 2011
@784. "Moses was the most sinful person in the Bible because he broke all ten commandments at once."
@787. "Oops, now I have staples in my nose." --me
@792. Obey gravity. It's the law!
@793. "For your convenience an elevator is located in CHINA" --A department store sign
January 19, 2010
@795. "That's not what I clicked. And I'm color-blind and I can tell that's not the color I picked..." --me
@796. It's 18 degrees and snowy and there's a guy across the street outside cutting wood planks with a circular saw.
@802. Sent to me on IRC: "Really, you should get an IRC client, like mIRC."
@803. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
@804. A man walks into a bar, and he says "Ouch!"
@813.
]-[pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp743\
heh, cat on the keyboard, sorry
@826. So earlier I wrote that it was cool to be able to be lazy and sharpen pencils right from my seat in health. This has the one disadvantage of it being possible to sit down and smash your ear on the pencil sharpener, not only causing significant pain but also making a fool out of yourself. (It was pretty funny though, to be honest.)
@832.
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of Congress?
What is the opposite of the Constitution?
@834. "If you had a million years, you couldn't wipe out half the *fuck you*s in the world." --Holden Caulfield
@843. "More than the entire class was tardy today. Wait..." --Mr. Kopf
@844. Ever noticed that MACS backwards is SCAM?
@848. "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." --Joseph Stalin
@853.
called me an old cunt, in fact.
I must admit that I *have* the body part in question and I'm no longer exactly young, but still.
@866. "You can't make a race horse out of a pig." / "No, but you can make a very fast pig." --_East of Eden_
{BL #10797}
@874. Around 2001, our family got a new desktop computer from a popular computer company. We also got an inkjet printer in a sort of bundle deal. After a few weeks of flawless operation, the printer ceased working and made an odd clicking sound whenever a document was sent to it. We called customer support for help.
The customer support associate went through an idiotic troubleshooting checklist ("Is the printer plugged into the wall?" and so forth) and then had us check the device manager and reinstall the printer drivers. I told him it did not appear to be a software problem, because the printer was making odd noises, which indicated a mechanical failure of some kind. After an hour long session of troubleshooting, we were advised to box up the computer and printer and send it to their repair center. Yes, not just the printer but the computer as well.
They asked if we had any files on the hard drive that we'd like to save. We told them which files and folders to save for us. Finally we got the computer back and a new printer. The computer had been wiped and the operating system reinstalled, and we got our data files on a CD.
The problem? A cheeto had fallen into the printer and jammed it. They sent the cheeto back in a small plastic bag. The printer was covered by the warranty, but the CD backup was not, so they charged us $100 for it.
--Computer Stupidities
@877.
@@@
public int convertItoi(Integer v)
{
if (v.intValue()==1) return 1;
if (v.intValue()==2) return 2;
if (v.intValue()==3) return 3;
if (v.intValue()==4) return 4;
if (v.intValue()==5) return 5;
if (v.intValue()==6) return 6;
if (v.intValue()==7) return 7;
return 0;
}
@@@
@878. "The instrument for the current weather is called a window." --a weather forecasting guide
@880. "SPLS LASER BUS CAR" --my Staples receipt
This sounds a lot cooler than it actually was--it was just a pack of business cards.
{BL #8034}
@881. "Any time that the EPIRB is not on the vessel, it should be switched off. This avoids the embarrassing experience of having SAR forces converge on the trunk of your car." --NOAA Emergency Beacon Guide
March 10, 2011
@891. A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question. "Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked. The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes before replying, "I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
@899. "Eat Fat Markers And Fried comforters Bad Monster!" --Soren Composition.doc
@902. "The page you were looking for is not here. Clearly, this is because you have damaged the inter-net. At great expense, we have placed the broken pieces in an archive so that you can mend the damage you caused." --The Onion's 404 page
@903. "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some email."
@906.
"How much worse can this president [Obama] get? :-("
"He could order illegal warrantless wiretaps, illegal torture of prisoners of war, pointless invasions of foreign nations and involving the US in unwinnable wars..."
@907. < ais523> well, I suspect we'll have to drop the xorn corpse
{BL #6067}
@908.
!genocide stupidity
A thunderous voice booms through the caverns: "No, mortal, that shall not be done!"
aww
@910.
Pepe: g+direction
more conservative than ctrl
What the heck is a g
it's a letter
lol
XD
comes after f
@917. "STOP TAKING POP-TARTS! WER'E [sic] WATCHING YOU!" --sign in the VHS cafeteria
@925. As you kick the door, it shatters to pieces! You feel that monsters are aware of your presence.
@930.
Shall I pull this patch? (1/9) [ynWsfvplxdaqjk]
...that enough options for you?
@935. "'Considered Harmful' Essays Considered Harmful" --essay title
@936. "There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses."
@946. "What is the best thing to do when you become a victim of road rage? D. Pull in front of them and then drive very slowly."
--online driving course
@948. #ironyoftheday: Found a piece of homework from the beginning of last year that includes the line "I will avoid tossing stuff all over the place" behind the shelf in my room.
@949.
You hear a horn being played. The bolt of fire hits you! You start playing your fire horn. In what direction? You kill it!
FIRE HORN BATTLE!
@954. "Do not use near fire or flame." --warning label on a lighter
@955. "I guess we should have asked the Americans what they wanted for our grammar!" --Frau Houldieson
@956. "Go to page 507 and read that page, because I didn't want to take notes on it." --part of a student-produced lesson I did in my World History class
@957. "I forgot to buy you a flower. Here, have a dollar!" --a friend
@958. So I was thinking about this brand of violin case, 'Bam', and joking that the name comes from the sound it makes when you get mad at it and smack it against the wall.
@962. "Why is 4chan blocked?" --student at VHS; when I asked him why he was surprised, he said "How would the school know about 4chan?"
@963. "A correct answer with no indication of the method used will normally receive no marks. You are therefore advised to show your working." --IB Math Test
@969. "A right turn at a red light is permitted unless: C. There is a sign saying TURN ON RED ARROW ONLY." --online driving course
@972. "The MythBusters agreed that putting a grenade in the refrigerator was not a good idea." --Wikipedia article, #unusualsentences
@988. "If you spoke your mind, you'd be speechless." --T-shirt
@989. "Es ist pretty good." --John
@990. "...convicted of having provided the defenders of the country with sour wine, condemned and executed the same day." --a log of executions during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror
@993. "We can get by with less light. Save a tree." (pause) "What's light got to do with trees? Well, nothing. Save a polar bear, that's it." --Doc Boyle (who I have for study hall) on the occasion of being requested to turn off unnecessary lights for Earth Day
@994. "Would you please initial that right there indicating you appreciate the severity of your offense and you sincerely promise never to let this happen again?" --Doc Boyle, anytime someone comes in tardy, repeated verbatim every time
@996. "Does anyone have a bologna sandwich?" --Doc Boyle, frequently before asking for people with hall passes for the hour of the study hall to present them
@1004. So one of the things we're supposed to say in our conclusion is whether we think about the topic of our paper differently now. However, we're not allowed to use "I".
April 26, 2011
@1015. "The metronome is rushing!" --me
{BL #6640}
@1021. "But seriously, show me a significant Word macro virus later than 2003 and I'll print it out and eat the paper." --Ed Bott
@1034. "Counting" --the title of a section in my pre-cal book
@1036. "For the second one, pick an activity that you like (and it does have to be school appropriate)" --Mrs. Nagel
@1038. "These packages do not exist..." --Aptitude's description of what a "virtual package" is
@1051. Latest insane driving: We were down at WiseWay on Highway 30. We were backing out of a parking spot. As I'm looking behind me to make sure it's safe to back out, I see a guy come down the road on the edge of the parking lot and hit one of the big stop signs on those little yellow islands in the middle of the road head-on, moving it about six feet forward but not damaging his car visibly. He didn't stop. He didn't go tell someone he hit the stop sign. He didn't get out and move the sign back to where it was supposed to go. He just backed up, drove around it, and parked.
May 8, 2011
@1056. Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and data loss.
@1057. "I apologize for any typo's in the article."
@1059. "...But Mattel went further, including a cleverly placed Reset key that users could accidentally strike while programming, wiping out hours of work."
@1061. Man, I hate the new Uni-Ball Vision (still the most awesome pens in the world) green color. It's not terrible (though it's not my favorite in the new set), but the old color was totally awesome and the new one just sucks by comparison. Makes me want to travel back in time and buy a big stash of the old ones.
@1071. In 6th grade, we got a new grading system. This caused a number of problems. First, in some classes where we didn't actually have a grade assigned to us yet, a grade got printed out on the midterm anyway. The computer just picked a random one--so some people got an F in Home Ec, for instance, when we were two days into the class. Then, when teacher comments first appeared, a bug caused the comment "Excellent Student" to appear on the report card as "Excessive Talking."
May 16, 2011
@1075. You pull the pit viper out of the pit. The pit viper falls into a pit! How pitiful. Isn't that the pits?
@1079. Three days ago I ordered a cool barometer. Today I received a box filled with broken glass, needles, and bits of wood.
@1080. "kohlrabi wheels" gives no results on Google.
@1081. "Well, whenever I use Windows I am convinced of the absence of a just and loving God." --Slashdot commenter
@1085. "A regular 2147483648-gon is constructible with straightedge and compass." --Wolfram|Alpha
@1086. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is definitely not for you.
@1087. "Trump Unable to Produce Certificate Proving He's Not a Festering Pile of Shit" --Onion headline
@1091. Really freaky: Go to a random Wikipedia page, and repeatedly click on the first link on each page that is not in parentheses, italics, or in a box. You will eventually reach "Philosophy" in all but a few cases where you land in an infinite loop.
May 28, 2011
@1098.
what happens when you guys press F4 while holding ALT?
Drjebus: my cat just blew up
@1099.
the wakasashi is a special sword carried by real samurai in their off hand. they used it for forcing chests in between battles.
@1101. "My mom misspoke while serving green beans and we thought she was talking about 9/11." --an excerpt from my dream journal
@1102. You kick the Wizard of Yendor. You kill the poor Wizard of Yendor! Welcome to experience level 2. You hear the rumble of distant thunder...
@1106.
i think laptop is a better os than pc!!
@1115. I've determined there are three types of classes as finals approach:
1. "We have time to review now!"
2. "Let's waste time and watch a pointless movie or something!"
3. "OH CRAP WE DIDN'T GET THROUGH EVERYTHING, LET'S CONDENSE HALF A SEMESTER INTO A WEEK!"
@1120. "Security Service Accidentally Makes Websites 60% Faster" --Slashdot headline
@1121. "Man Invents Open-Source Flashlight" --another Slashdot headline
@1161. "New Study Shows People With Panic Disorders Respond Poorly To Being Locked In Underwater Elevators" --Onion headline
@1169. "Alert: This piece has B flats *and* E naturals." --_Essential Elements Book 2_
@1172. There is a pair of combat boots here; eat it? [ynq] (n)
@1174. Congress Continues Debate Over Whether Or Not Nation Should Be Economically Ruined
July 21, 2011
@1196.
"Please activate your card *immediately* by calling: [number]. To activate your card, you will need your PIN."
On the next sheet of paper:
"Your PIN should arrive in the mail separately within 5 to 7 days."
@1198. "And guns and swords and unicorns were scattered on the ground." --#mondegreen in Paul Simon's 'Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream'; of course it's 'uniforms'.
@1199. So I was premiering Dennis Friesen-Carper's _The Innocents_ in 6th grade. I was sitting up in the front of the Chapel of the Resurrection with five other soloists, with about 3,000 people ready. The performance was going to start in five minutes. He leans over to us and says, "Oh no! Where's my score?"
@1206. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
@1260. "Streets flooded. Please advise." --Robert Benchley, reporter, in a telegram to his editor, upon arriving in Venice
@1278. "WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD: Small parts. Not for children under 3 years." --On an Amazon page for a Linksys wireless router.
@1279.
!grepsrc *would_you_mind_lighting_me_a_cigarette*
Sorry, no matches.
@1291. Two guys walk into a bar. The first guy, thinking himself clever, asks for some "H2O." The second guy, trying to imitate his clever friend, says, "I'll have some H2O, too." The second guy died.
@1293. "The capital of England is Britain." --me #ankiblunders
@1294. "I can't break this pencil in annoyance, it's the only one I have." --me
@1297.
are geckos shock resistant?
@1298. "Okay, _you_ write this without repeating the code."
--NetHack 3.4.3, read.c, line 1237
@1305. "At one time I'm walking at 10 meters/second that way..." --Mr. Hefner
@1313. "When I say 1, 2, 3, you clap three times. So if I were to say 'uno, dos, tres,' you would clap three times...in Spanish." --Mr. Hefner
@1319. "Two significant fidgets." --Mr. Hefner
@1320. "Physics is complicated enough without you screwing it up." --Mr. Hefner
@1325. "Dort are many objects here." --an incomplete German translation of a game
@1326. Dein Excalibur glow blaues for a while.
@1327. SATZBEGINN MODIFIER_KONJUNKTIV_II VERB_MOEGEN SUBJECT_IM_SATZ PRONOMEN_PERSONAL OBJECT PRONOMEN_POSSESSIV NOUN_HABE identifiziert haben? [jnq] (n)
@1333. "Yesterday we were dropping the masses. And the masses fell." --Mr. Hefner
@1338. "Math or APUSH? Math is more important. If I don't get my APUSH done, it isn't the end of the world. If I don't get my math done, it is the end of the world. Well, at least the end of the world as we know it." --me
@1344. "That damned physics, it makes no sense." --Mr. Hefner
@1349. "Tell her thank you from the bottom of my...deepest shoes." --Mr. Hefner, to a student aide bringing him a note from another teacher
@1353. "You will need your student idea to purchase tickets." --Mr. Doane
{BL PC Doane, #1353}
@1354. "The first concern is the people, because if something happens to you I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and that's a pain." --Mrs. Bailey
@1355. "What period is this?" --a student, 5 weeks after the beginning of school
@1359.
!genocide paxed
Sent in some paxed.
-!- paxed [~paxed@pdpc/supporter/active/paxed] has joined #nethack
@1360. "I forgot to wear purple yesterday to raise awareness for Alzheimer's." --Mr. Kopf
@1370. This quote perfectly sums up my bus: "I'm losing my innocence on this fucking bus!"
@1375. "Is 'uh, no' going to be on your test on Monday? Uh, no." --Mr. Hefner
@1384. "Surely your business and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."
@1389. We're having brunch at Pikk's downtown. My dad tries to order a drink.
"I'm sorry, we don't have the ingredients for that right now."
"Okay, I'll have a ginger beer then."
"I'm sorry, we're out of ginger beer."
"Okay, I'll have a root beer then."
She takes that and heads out. She has to come back to confirm his order. Five minutes later, she's back again.
"I'm sorry, we're all out of root beer."
"Okay, how about the limeade then?"
"Sorry, we're out of limeade too."
"How about a lemonade?"
"All right, we have that!"
@1391. FUNNY EXCERPTS FROM THE VALPARAISO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT HANDBOOK:
While rather boring, the rules in the front of the student handbook have a few gems. I've included page numbers if you have yours and want to see for yourself.
#10: Bus Transportation Regulations (p. 8): "Pupils should not throw rocks, snowballs, or any other material at the school buses before entering or after alighting from buses."
(Really guys?)
#9: Sales (p. 18): "Students who accept items to sell for the purpose of gaining revenue for a school organization are responsible for returning the items or the monetary value of them."
(Why should I have to give the school the money I got from selling school property?)
#8: Skateboards: (p. 18): "Therefore, skateboards and roller blades should not be brought to school without the prior consent of the principal..."
(I wonder what kind of excuse you need to give Mr. Doane to bring a skateboard in.)
#7: Work Permits And Attendance (p. 20): "A work permit will not be issued to a student who, in the opinion of the administration, is excessively absent from school..."
(Because that's such a subjective thing.)
#6: Electronic Devices (p. 11): "If these [electronic] devices are used or visible during class time or disrupt the educational process, the student may face disciplinary consequences. Violation of this policy can result in discipline up to an [sic] including suspension or expulsion and notification of law enforcement authorities."
(I wish I could arrest people whose phone rang while I was presenting.)
#5: Bus Transportation Regulations (p. 8): "Pupils shall not enter or leave the bus until it has come to a full stop and the driver has opened the door."
(What!? No climbing out the window of a moving school bus?)
#4: School Related Events (p. 37): "There shall be no peculiar or unusual conduct permitted during the event."
#3: Driving And Parking (p. 10): "Once students enter the parking lot, the car is to be parked."
(There are many other things I like to do in parking lots, like driving around aimlessly in circles and going back out in order to come in again.)
#2: School Closings (p. 18): "School is seldom closed for inclement weather."
(In your dreams, Dr. Melin.)
#1: Student Discipline Infractions (p. 46): "[Student discipline infractions include] throwing or propelling any object. Permitted athletic activities shall not constitute a violation of this provision."
@1393. GOLDEN RULES FOR ENSEMBLE PLAYING (by J.W. Swing)
1. Everyone should play the same piece.
2. Stop at every repeat sign and discuss in detail whether to take the repeat or not. The audience will love this a lot!
3. If you play a wrong note, give a nasty look to one of your partners.
4. Keep your fingering chart handy. You can always catch up with the others.
5. Carefully tune your instrument before playing. That way you can play out of tune all night with a clear conscience.
6. Take your time turning pages.
7. The right note at the wrong time is a wrong note (and vice versa).
8. If everyone gets lost except you, follow those who get lost.
9. Strive to get the maximum NPS (note per second). That way you gain the admiration of the incompetent.
10. Markings for slurs, dynamics and ornaments should not be observed. They are only there to embellish the score.
11. If a passage is difficult, slow down. If it's easy, speed it up. Everything will work itself out in the end.
12. If you are completely lost, stop everyone and say, "I think we should tune."
13. Happy are those who have not perfect pitch, for the kingdom of music is theirs.
14. If the ensemble has to stop because of you, explain in detail why you got lost. Everyone will be very interested.
15. A true interpretation is realized when there remains not one note of the original.
16. When everyone else has finished playing, you should not play any notes you have left.
17. A wrong note played timidly is a wrong note. A wrong note played with authority is an interpretation.
@1396. "You can fix the problem by changing your template to double quotes, but please don't do that, as I will hopefully fix this in the next beta and testing would be helpful." --Damien
@1397.
"What are you doing with your calculator?"
"I dunno...turning it on."
@1399. "What's better for you than cheese? Fried cheese!" --Mr. Hefner
@1404. "If you build something to be idiot-proof, someone will make a better idiot."
{BL #10740}
@1410. "There is a God, and he uses units." --Mr. Hefner
October 25, 2011
@1412.
"What are you drinking?"
(looking guilty) "Hot water."
"Hot water?"
"...With tea in it."
@1427. "Obama Now Attempting To Get Each Word Of Jobs Bill Passed Individually" --Onion headline
@1429. "You're a terrible musician...magician." --student
@1436. "I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone." --Charles Darwin, _The Origin Of Species_, 1869
@1439. Today is 11/11/11. I caught 11:11:11 too. Yay. First and last time in the century, and almost certainly in my life too.
@1441. "Over and done for. As I say. I can't say 'they say,' because nobody does." --me
{BL CB23.32, CB49.64}
@1451. "Can this get you out of a Saturday class?" --student asking about volunteering at the speech and debate tournament
@1461. "It was a pillable fee-dee-eff." --me
@1462. "Yeah, it says 'Bring Coat.' So bring a coat." --Mr. Hefner
@1463. "I like complaining about stuff I can control but don't." --Mr. Hefner
@1474. "This salt is too salty!"
@1475. "You set that deck's new cards per day to 20000000000000000, which is too big for AnkiMobile to handle." --Damien Elmes, on someone's malfunctioning Anki deck #ankiforums
@1476. "You know what sucks? I can't email things to myself, because Macs can't intercept it." --a 6th grader in my Compute This event
@1478. "The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance." --Robert R. Coveyou
@1479. "Vi is a good example of software deliberately created for a user who already knows how it works: It's not unheard of for new users to reboot their computers because they couldn't figure out how else to get out of vi."
@1482. <+ais523> there are so many bugs, at least one's bound to be a security bug
@1483. <+ais523> presumably, the reason the issues link isn't working is that the issues link isn't working so nobody could report that the issues link wasn't working
@1484. < ishanyx> bleh. i'm tired and my eyes hurt (since even before i spent five hours playing nethack on a too-small terminal)
@1492. "In a fight between you and the world, bet on the world." --Kafka
@1495. "Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees." --Boris Marshalov, Russian visitor to DC
@1497. Instructions for opening an early tin can: "Cut round the top with a chisel and hammer."
@1498. "Help! We had an image come in that needs to be published, but it's upside down! Can we still use it?"
@1504. "Please make the video between 60 seconds and 1 minute."
@1518. "hey got you're message, try using spelcheck next time and check you're grammer okay bud?"
@1545. "How do you spell HTML?"
@1573. "Can you please rotate the logo 360 degrees?"
@1574. "Can you green it down 10%?"
January 13, 2012
@1575.
(The school district has recently made news for having some accounting mistakes that have caused a large amount of money to disappear without a trace.)
"Will the student with the Viking Nation receipt box please come to the office as soon as possible?"
"So *that's* where our 3 million dollars went!"
@1576. "There will be no talking during the quiz. Any talking during the quiz will be considered cheating, take your paper away and give you a zero, no looking off anyone else's paper, chances are the person next to you's no brighter than you are anyway." --Mr. Hefner's shot at Doc Boyle's verbatim mantra, every time we have a quiz, and spoken really, really fast
@1580. "It wouldn't matter if I launched that quarter at a *billion* meters per second...well, it would, it would leave the gravitational pull of the earth." --Mr. Hefner
@1581.
"If you have ICF on your paper, then that means--"
"--Incompetent Fool."
@1582. "I know, 'facial tissue.' As opposed to 'ass tissue' or something." --Mr. Hefner
@1584. "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." --Bill Clinton
@1594. "Fraudenscheude." --Mr. Kopf
@1602. "Do the means justify the ends?" --Mrs. Stoltzfus
{BL CB48.29 n.1}
@1603. "Can you name a country that starts with the letter 'u'?" / "Europe?"
{BL #4324}
@1610. We had a sub in APUSH recently. First she didn't believe that the word bank was simply missing from the quiz (this was our eighteenth vocab quiz of the exact same format, and we've always had a word bank) and didn't let us put it up, thus wasting massive amounts of time. After the vocab quiz, which should have taken about ten minutes but instead took forty, we started trying to watch a video about Pearl Harbor, it being December 7th. Instead the VCR came on to a video of cat birthing. (It must have been at the end of the tape before whatever else was on it started being taped. Mr. G said he got it from a student, so who knows where that tape has been.) We watched this twice after she rewound and started playing it AGAIN. (She complained and was saying "this is weird" the whole time but never actually stopped it.) When we finally managed to get the video going (it was in fact a DVD, not a VHS tape), it came on to a sex scene instead of actual footage of the attack, and she once again complained and was like "this is awkward" but didn't change it, nor did she fast forward to the appropriate scene.
Basically, we had to redo the entire class period the next day.
@1628.
... 10+3 != 13...
bcode: um, yes it is
{BL #2724}
@1642. "The light that comes off a smooth surface is called a sensual reflection." --answer on a physics vocab quiz
@1647.
(after we take a large and completely unnecessary detour) "Why did you go this way?"
"I dunno, I was just following you."
"Oh, I was just following you."
@1651. "...because you thought you knew what you knew. But you didn't know what you didn't know....Brilliant! That's why they call me the teacher." --Mr. Hefner
@1653. "...that feels more like WYSIWYGPALOES (what you see is what you get, plus a lot of extra shit)." --Lifehacker commenter, on Dreamweaver
@1655. Dream quote of the month: "Why is my sandwich a shoe?"
@1656.
"Hey, I wore that shirt yesterday!"
"Thank you! ... That wasn't the right response, was it?"
@1657. "Salutations, scorchgeek50! Welcome again to Akureyri's general store! Will you please leave your soul outside?"
@1661. One of the bathrooms at the high school is blocked off with a large panel with a sign reading "Out of Order" on it. Underneath a second sheet of paper is attached with the hand-written clarification "Keep Out."
@1662. A sign on the timpani case that was in orchestra yesterday: "No Books on Timpani"
@1664. "See you tomorrow! Hang onto your receipt!" --as a customer leaves with an item the salesperson knows will not work
March 13, 2012
@1666. "If someone's face is compromised from a database, they cannot cancel or reissue it." --thanks Wikipedia
@1667. lp0 on fire
@1672. "Do you think I could add a MIDI file to fix that?"
@1680. "I'll *become* a Muslim for three extra credit points!" --APUSH student, on learning we would get extra credit for attending the Muslim Student Association's question-and-answer session
@1681. "Because it's not done by chapters, and I got it...illegally..." --Mr. G, trying to explain why he was having to rewind a DVD
@1683. "Do Drugs" --message on an anti-drug pencil after sharpening it
@1688. "...but we have no musical instrument, and anyway no usable hands to play it with (musical instruments are typically not designed to be played by bees)." --ais523, TAS explanation
@1690. "What do you think you purchase from the *power* company?" / "...Power?" / "And you'd be wrong." --Mr. Hefner
@1691. "You're the secretary. I need minutes from yesterday." / "What are minutes?"
@1692. In the Media Center in the morning, we enjoy changing the names on the bookmarks bar on a regular basis. Which brought someone to have to ask one morning, "Which one is Google again? 'Crash Mainframe'?"
@1697. "Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit that Doesn't Fucking Work"
@1699. "You can't even put one and one together the way you're going." --me
April 18, 2012
@1701. Prank idea: Make a train so long that you can drive it around a loop and then couple the engine to the last car and make a never-ending train.
People drive up to the crossing, go "this is a long train," then "why the heck is there an engine in the middle of the train?" I wonder how long it would take them to figure it out.
@1702. I'm pretty sure that fighting saurians in Battle for Wesnoth is my number-one cause of swearing while using the computer. (See also http://xkcd.com/290/.)
@1704. On a tape from when I was about six:
"So...you knew them [your otters] even before you were born?"
"Yes."
"What place was that?"
(very matter-of-factly) "In Washington."
@1705. Started out the day by pouring orange juice on my cereal. Not a very good omen.
@1706. A timer went off in the kitchen, and my dad went in to turn it off. He picked up the timer and started punching the start button angrily--no matter how many times he hit it, it would not switch off. I got up from the table to help him figure it out and maybe take it away and remove the battery (it was getting quite annoying). Then he realized that there were two of the same timer on the counter and he was pressing the stop button on the wrong one.
@1707. s/keyboard/leopard/:
* "Interpreter Leopard Toolbar"
* "Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Leopard"
* "Then type a simple passage for several minutes to determine if you can outpace the leopard when typing familiar words and letter combinations."
@1708. "Do not drop, disassemble, microwave, burn, or paint iPod Touch."
@1717.
why do you think I play un rather than vanilla or acehack
Adeon: because you suck
@1721. "Believe you can, believe you can't; either way, you're right." --Henry Ford
@1724. "Do you know what's worse than the mysterious force? The Holocaust."
@1725. "Did you see your elbow in the paper?" --Mr. Kopf
June 3, 2012
@1726. "Justin called me 'Darnit.'" --first-grader at Montessori school, to a teacher
@1742. I just thought of an asshole idea: set $EDITOR to rm.
@1744. Searched for "dvorak keyboard" on the VU Galileo library catalog.
-> "Did you mean 'dork keyboard?'"
August 5, 2012
@1747. "Aim for heaven and you will get the earth thrown in." --C.S. Lewis
@1752. "'Ice is food.' No it's not." --my dad, reading from a package of ice
{BL #9667, #10537}
@1753. "A music stand in a practice room? What an idea!" --me (first days of LSM)
@1754. "I hope we don't have to sing when we cant."
@1756. I saw an eighth-grader at a student union computer toggling the capslock on and off every time he wanted a capital letter.
@1762. "God bless Bach. He wrote a lot of these." --Dr. Aspaas, after the cantata orchestra asked about some odd notes
@1765. "Sometimes, we take our dishes with us when we go out of the cafeteria." --me #sometimeswe
@1766. "I'm going to change 'usual' to 'official.' Because it's not usual, but it is official." --me
@1767. "Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed." --Warren G. Harding
@1770. This is brilliant (MIT ITS system):
"To deal with a rash of incidents where users sought out flaws in the system in order to crash it, a novel approach was taken. A command was implemented which anyone could run which caused the system to crash, which took away all the fun and challenge of doing so. It did, however, broadcast a message to say who was doing it."
@1771. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_stuff_beans_up_your_nose
@1772. "So... does this mean that deleting data from Amazon Simple Storage is called an ASS-wipe?" --slashdot comment
@1775. "I don't wash clothes." --#overheard in the hallway
@1779. Our new physics book has a chart of metric prefixes and their pronunciations. Here's one:
kilo (as in kilowatt)
@1781.
Eli told me a story about a student who'd thrown a paper airplane labeled "Stealth Bomber" in class.
"Who threw that airplane?!"
"What airplane?"
@1785. "I don't have time to play you all the music in the world." --Mr. Kopf, beginning of music theory
@1786. "In case you're wondering why we've been circling for 30 minutes, our landing gear won't go down. We're not 100% sure of this, however, so we're gonna fly over the airport and have someone with binoculars check." --The Oatmeal, "The Scariest Thing I've Ever Heard on an Airplane" (true story, supposedly)
@1788. "Sorry. That was *totally* your fault, though." --me, to someone I ran into in the hall
@1789. "We will be interrogating in the parking lot." --#mishearing of "tailgating"
@1793. "Piss-keys." --John's pronunciation of "Pisces"
@1794. "We are going to be using the cars of others." --Mr. Hefner
@1798. There's a floppy disk on the floor!
@1802. "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."
@1804. "We have to do all the parts of speech, like personification and irony." --#overheard in the hallway
@1805. For many years the UNIX mail program 'sendmail' contained this bug: when mail was delivered from another system, the mail program was (of course) being run non-interactively. If the destination address was local, but referred to a user name not found in the local password file, the message sent back to the originator of the email was the announcement that the person they were attempting to communicate with was not a typewriter.
@1806. "Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow." --student teacher
@1811. "No need to look for a three-legged cat here." --Treviranus, _Labyrinths_ (77)
{BL _Don Quixote_ I.XXII, p.170}
@1813. "Studied 377 cards in -25 days today." --Anki (reported on the forum) #ankiforums
@1817. In Apex's settings panel, you have to get your teacher's permission/assistance to change your name, but you can change your own gender.
@1819. "Viewing the laser output with certain optical instruments (for example...microscopes) within a distance of 100mm may pose an eye hazard." --Logitech Marble Mouse "Important Information" booklet
@1820. "Enjoy basic trackball functions, such as left- and right-button click." --same device's "Quick Start" booklet
@1821. "Never be a slave to the rules in real life. For training purposes you need to follow these rules to make your mind strong, but in real life sometimes these rules are just stupid. If you think a rule is stupid, try not using it." --Learn Python the Hard Way
@1823. Sign on the VHS bookstore window: "Out of Compasses"
This confused the heck out of me, at first because I had expected it to say something mundane like "out of order" or "out of the office," then because my first thought was of magnetic compasses and I wondered why the bookstore had them.
@1827. The door handle on the orchestra room was fixed (it's been broken for years). As a result, you now have to actually turn the handle before pulling on it, so Mr. Kopf made a sign that said "turn door handle to open." That got laughs (duh, you turn the door handle to open the door) and people didn't turn it far enough, so he replaced it with "turn door handle 90° to open." But that wasn't strictly accurate (it was only about 60° by eye), and people started complaining about that. I actually did get confused and tried to turn it further than it went, so it wasn't entirely silly. So he got out a *protractor* and measured it. The resultant sign? "Turn door handle 51° to open."
@1833. "It wasn't premeditated, so he didn't even do it--I mean, plan to do it." --#overheard in the hallway
@1836. "Not to say your idea is a bad one, but it is." --me
@1837. "A time capsule allowed Frank to travel anywhere in the cosmos." --on the side of a milk carton
@1838. "Press [2nd] [Enter] again and the LinReg(a+bx) L1, L2, Y1 magically reappears." --Apex study guide, on using the completely-ordinary last-entry function on a TI-84 calculator
@1839. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." --Yogi Berra
@1843. "Thanks, and here's a screencast." --#ankiforums post subject
@1844. Wrote something about what Random Thoughts is at the top of the document. I think I'm going to try to publish it somewhere or somehow. Not sure if anyone will want to read it, but maybe they will, who knows.
@1845. Mulla Nasrudin used to stand in the street on market-days, to be pointed out as an idiot. No matter how often people offered him a large and a small coin, he always chose the smaller piece.
One day a kindly man said to him: "Mulla, you should take the bigger coin. Then you will have more money and people will no longer be able to make a laughing-stock of you."
"That might be true," said Nasrudin, "but if I always take the larger, people will stop offering me money to prove that I am more idiotic than they are. Then I would have no money at all."
@1846. "This app has the most complicated user interface you wil ever find. You were warned!" --Singularity Experience
September 30, 2012
@1847. "Pssh, that's all right. I wash my face in Tennessee." --me, in a dream
@1852. "How to Forge a University Degree"
October 1, 2012
@1853. We were passing out poetry books in English today and reading the numbers off to the teacher. Two people said "51." No, it wasn't a mistake--there were *two* book 51's. (We changed one of them to "51b".)
@1857. "Every paycheck I'm gonna save 50% and keep 50%." --#overheard outside the school
@1858. "Never answer an anonymous letter." --Yogi Berra
@1860. "I should print out some addendas." --me
October 2, 2012
@1861. So I had an idea in #hypnagogia that actually remains funny the morning after: If you have a really bad sitcom, it's a "shitcom."
@1862. "Please inform or shut off if you are administering the net?" --#ankiforums support email sent to Damien
@1863. "Grant me encryption." --#mondegreen that I still haven't worked out
October 3, 2012
@1864. "A. All of the above" --choice on an Apex test
@1867. "Cutting PBS support to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500 GB hard drive." --Neil deGrasse Tyson, Twitter
@1868. "The thing is, women don't have a need to make sex." --#overheard on the bus
@1872. Sometime I want to try to get a really low score on a practice SAT (on purpose).
UPDATE: Done. Got my 600.
@1876. "All I know is that force equals mass times acceleration." --Gabe, before a physics test on a confusing unit
@1877. This is the worst #excuse for not being prepared for class that I've heard in quite a long time:
"[I don't have my book because] I went to the wrong locker."
@1878. We are *they*, the sayers of things.
http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/they/
{BL #6762}
@1879. "Do you know where I can get some paperclips?" --a senior in college
@1880. Romney Frantically Figuring Out How Tax Plan Could Actually Work After Realizing He Might Win Election
October 13, 2012
@1882. "female wife" --#ankiblunders
{BL #10079}
@1883. We were making rules for the pumpkin drop lab in physics. Mr. Hefner mentioned that one year they had made a rule that everything had to be recyclable, so somebody suggested that everything should have to be *not* recyclable. This quickly led to the rule (written on the board like the rest of the serious ones): "heavy metals only."
@1884. After I use the cafeteria restroom, I notice that there's no trash can. Holding some wet paper towel in my hand, I check by the paper towel dispenser, around corners, and under the sinks. No trash can. So I figure it must have migrated into the entryway or even the hallway. Nope, no trash can. (There are paper towels all over the floor as a result, of course.)
I throw the paper away in the cafeteria trash can, then approach the two janitors, who are swapping trash bags.
"There's no trash can in the bathroom."
"The boys'?"
(Yeah, because I would've been in the girls' and come out to report that there was no trash can. No duh. Strangely, this is something that people often do in this situation--it's like they somehow need the clarification for something.)
"Yeah."
They then proceed to tell me that it *is* there--even after I go back to double-check. Finally the lady grudgingly goes over to check--I apologized but didn't really have anything to apologize for, as I was just trying to limit the mess on the floor.
{BL #2030}
@1886. "You are free not to buy the app if you don't see the value in it." --Damien, after someone complained about the price of the Anki iPhone app #ankiforums
(Cf. #2289.)
October 14, 2012
@1887. "If I do ac come complish it I'll definitely report back thanks" --guy on the #ankiforums
@1888. "It's been rough trying to learn 20 new words all starting with 'a' every day, hah." --#ankiforums
@1889. New 'NFL Long Snap' Channel Promises To Air Every Single Long Snap On Sundays
@1890.
"They have two different girls."
"No, they have two of the same."
@1892. According to Mr. Hefner, cruise ships get about 9 inches to the gallon.
@1895. Apparently people in my German class have never heard the phrase "on the whole."
@1896. "The choice [of case for the preposition], however, is not free." --German grammar book
@1898. "Non-standard: Sorry, I lay about our appointment yesterday. (Should be lied)" --Wikipedia
@1899. "Actually, MPAA gets their data exclusively from their ass." --comment on TorrentFreak
@1905. "While you can do conditional probability by a formula, it's really easier to do it in a way that makes good intuitive sense." --Apex
October 30, 2012
@1906. "Who will marinating the technical part of the Anki?" --#ankiforums
@1907. "84% less packaging than glass container by weight" --on a plastic peanut container
@1915.
scorchgeek said (558d 14h 37m ago): If you get this message (which you will if you rejoin this channel) I have not yet, but I will sometime soon. Ask again in a couple days
I guess that's a bit more than "a couple days"
lol :)
@1921. "Do not use outdoors--world hazard." --#misread warning on the back of an acoustic shell (actually 'wind')
@1922. "Why wasn't a more significant investigation undertaken?" / "Because then we find the culprits." --documentary about the 2008 economic collapse
@1924. "The Lambs of God are just before 200." --me
@1926. "It says I've been procured." --Apex student, upon being told she needed to contact the proctor to unlock more material
@1933. "Option: Ctrl-X to enter Ctrl-X mode"
November 08, 2012
@1936. "Rachmaninoff Solo Piano Sonata for Four Hands"
@1940. Keyboards generally work better when they are plugged in.
@1941. Widening Petraeus Scandal Reveals Human Race Has Been Having Sex For 200,000 Years
@1942.
(We are having a political event at our school, and many politicians are attending, including the governor of the state. There is a free lunch, but we get less than half the people we expect, so we start giving lunch to random people who happen to be walking by.)
(cuts in line)
"Excuse me, you cut the line."
"Do you know who I am?"
(I don't know who the student is, but I do know who the man behind him is, so I'm concealing my laughter.)
"No, but I'm not allowed to cut the line either and I doubt you're allowed to."
"Excuse me? Who do you think you are?"
"The Governor. And you are?"
November 18, 2012
@1943. "Physical damage to any product voids that product's return policy." --Newegg
@1944. "Usually denoted by a capital letter zero." --Mr. Hefner
@1945. The University of Arizona offered me a scholarship for $30,000/year...and a free Apple iPad. Because that's a significant cost compared to the scholarship.
@1947. I got a z-score of 198 in a stats problem.
@1949. "Do you know about MIDI? I was *there.*"
@1953. "Soren you bloody legend..." --#ankiforums user
@1954. "How can a democracy make good decisions? Half the voters are more stupid than the average."
@1955. "They were formerly carried by the aether, which was decommissioned in 1897 due to budget cuts." --xkcd on electromagnetic waves
@1956. "Could you please revise the alphabet?" --me, #misread ing "revise abstract"
@1958. < blackcustard> heh. UPS switches to battery momentarily and power flickers. "wtf? it's not storming" *sound of transformer exploding in distance*
@1959. "Keys. Keys are definitely going to allow me to cross an item off my to-do list." --me
@1960.
waldo is a higher concept
by joining arms with the beasts of the dungeon, you find your own waldo
waldo symbolizes the unity that can only be reached by searching deeply within yourself
or you could also say the challenge is fucking buggy
@1963. Area Stoner Has Mind-Blowing Out-Of-Cheetos Experience
{BL #5037}
@1964. "See, if I run like that, I like...I fall." --#overheard in the hallway
December 06, 2012
@1965.
(We are having a discussion about a YouTube video.)
"Why?"
"That applies to most videos on YouTube."
@1967. "Sorry, I'm mentally handicapped." --#overheard in the hall
@1968. "Did you get my meeting about the email?" --me
@1970. "We'll take a posterior picture for posterity." --Mr. Kopf
{BL #4145}
@1976. "Do alligators alligate?"
@1977. Apple Promises To Fix Glitches In Map Software By Rearranging Earth's Geography
{BL #11829}
@1980. "How long have you been married?" --asked of my mother and me
{BL #4447}
@1981. "Last Sunday, this paper ran a story about dream kitchens. It should have been about the cyclical nature of the homelessness problem in America. _The Onion_ regrets the error."
@1982. "It breaks save compatibility, bones compatibility, possibly tiles compatibility (I don't know how they work) and maybe several other compatibilities I didn't even think of."
@1983. "Those that don't remember history are doomed to press Up repeatedly."
@1984. If you're reading this, it's likely your first and only experience with ed went something like this:
@@@
$ ed
help
?
h
Invalid command suffix
?
?
^C
?
exit
?
quit
?
^Z
$ killall ed
$ vi
@@@
--Arabesque article on ed
@1985. An engineer is someone who will spend three hours figuring out how to do a two-hour job in one hour.
@1986. "I do apologize, sir, but the accidental damage plan does not cover accidental damage."
December 25, 2012
@1989. "If you write a poem, I'll burn it and give you a zero." --Mrs. Pagel, after a student asked if his response to the question of what he learned from the poetry unit could be a poem
@1995. "Obliterate the following items from the beginning of time:" --Chrome's 'clear private data' option
@1996. "I dunno, I think I have schizophrenia." --#overheard in the hall
@2000. Searched for "nuke." There were 0 results. Did you mean "hanukkah"?
--VHS library catalog
@2001. "Sometimes we flush the toilet when we're done using it." --me #sometimeswe
@2002. I should start a series called "Sometimes we" :-)
@2003. Maybe I can hashtag random thoughts. That's a good idea, actually. To track stuff like that. I'll start.
@2006. "In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage." --TSA
December 28, 2012
@2008. "Water does this cool thing called 'evaporation.'" --Lifehacker comment
{BL #2702}
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--spam comment
@2011. "That's like asking, 'What's the difference between the Red Cross and the mafia?'" --Slashdot comment
@2012.
Six Stages of Debugging
1. That can't happen.
2. That doesn't happen on my machine.
3. That shouldn't happen.
4. Why does that happen?
5. Oh, I see.
6. How did that ever work?
7. svn blame
8. one day we will write tests
@2014. Apparently Audacity feels the need to tell me that I can record for 266 *hours* more.
@2015. I had a funny thought that it's kind of odd that the human voice is the only instrument that can include words. That seems really stupid, but when you think about it you realize that there are all these different possibilities for most kinds of sounds, but if you want words in your music you have no choice -- you *must* use voice. (Well, you could put in a recording of a speech synth, I suppose, but that doesn't count.)
@2019. "Also, Christmas is cancelled next year and you're adopted." --Lifehacker commenter after hearing that Adam Pash was leaving as editor-in-chief
@2021. In 9th grade my Easy button was sort of stolen, in a sense. I accidentally left it in Mrs. Fiegle-Hicks' class--I forget when or why. When I went back (not very long afterwards), it wasn't there, and she knew she'd seen it just a little while ago. After a day, she had the button for me, and explained that a student had "found" the button lying on the ground. He claimed to assume that it was just there and hadn't belonged to anybody.
@2023. "I'm not doing the Cold War because the Cold War was last year." --Frau Houldieson, luckily meaning that we'd *studied* it last year
@2024. "I am a slow walker, but I never walk back." --Abraham Lincoln
{BL Descartes, Discourse on Method, p.2, §WalkBackwards}
@2025. "Stephen is married to his wife." --English presentation
@2026. "It wouldn't be wrong, but it wouldn't be right." --Mr. Kopf
@2028. Trying to use a mouse or keyboard upside down makes you feel really dumb, really fast.
January 09, 2013
@2030. Whenever I tell a janitor, clerk, or other employee that there's a problem with a facility's bathroom, I always purposefully leave out the "it's the men's" part, because people always seem to feel the need to confirm that, which I find hilarious.
(Cf. #1884.)
@2033. The format of this sheet music is described as "paperback." I guess it's sort of true...
@2034. "Sell us your item for a $0.54 gift card!"
@2035. "Improved performance and stability." --changelog for the "Flashlight" app
@2037. "I'm an additive Anki user." --#ankiforums
@2038. "You have successfully submitted the Common App Online."
Woot woot!
@2044. "Where's that one page where I wrote about..." (flip to index, flip back) "...oh, on the facing page." --me
@2047. "How can you be an Apple fan? That's like being a communist." --written in the margin of some old physics notes
{BL #3777}
@2048. Ready, fire, aim!
@2049. Report: Most Small Businesses Fail In First 6 Hours Of Being On Fire
@2050. Got my wisdom teeth pulled this morning. My mouth hurts from holding it open with gauze in it, my chin is twice its normal size from getting 12 lidocaine shots, and I'm slightly high on painkiller. But actually I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. :D
@2051.
Sconi (Val Hum Fem Neu) wished for "Elbereth", on turn 51702
Sconi (Val Hum Fem Neu), 1574390 points, T:51730, petrified by a chickatrice
...
crap
@2052. One phone to rule them all, One phone to find them / One phone to bring them all and in the darkness bind them / In the Land of Google where the Shadows lie.
@2053. < bcode> Hydroxide: do you know about the move-diagonally-to-get-out-of-any-bear-trap-in-5-turns trick? in case you don't, move diagonally to get out of any bear trap in 5 turns
@2054. "Having met quite a lot of sheep I have been left with the lasting impression that brick walls are probably smarter."
@2055. I Don't Pee Like My Aunt Leona
@2056. It's 8:30. I have a paper due tomorrow. I have not yet written any of it. (I am looking for quotes and important parts of the book.)
@2057. lol adblock for piratebay, firstworldproblems
@2058. "He expressed disappointment and subtly suggested he had been looking forward to sleeping with me by saying, 'But I want to sleep with you.'" --Jezebel
@2059. "He works at the loser college." --Google Voice voicemail #transcription of "Luther College"
{BL §LutherCollege}
@2061. "The software is quite improved by my hacking session this morning." --me
@2063. "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do." --William, _The Name of the Rose_
@2064. pissing up a flagpole
January 27, 2013
@2067. "I don't know how hangers work." --a first-grader
@2068.
Jesus and the devil get in an argument about who has the better computer skills. To settle the argument, they get an arbiter to arrange an hour-long contest during which they have to complete a number of tasks. Five minutes before the end of the allotted time, the power goes out and the computers die. The devil immediately jumps up from his seat and starts swearing, but Jesus is unperturbed. The devil looks at Jesus and asks angrily, "Why is he so calm?"
"Well," the arbiter replies, "Jesus saves."
@2069. "Sometimes I like to steer while I'm turning." --me
@2070. "It's downpouring snow." --#overheard on the bus
@2071. "'Downpour' is totally not transitive. Well, it's not a verb at all." --me, on #2070
@2073.
#overheard in the hall:
"Where's your homeroom?"
"Downstairs."
"No waaay! Where?"
@2075. "There's a hole in my ass. It looks pretty bad. I don't care." --#overheard in the bathroom: a person who walked in, engaged in contortions in front of the mirror to see if something was wrong with his pants, then left again
@2076. "An idealist is a pragmatist with an eye on the future." --Slashdot commenter on RMS
@2079. Lifehacker exchange:
"What helpful items do you store in your car?"
"An engine. I find it useful when wanting to move the car from one location to another."
"I keep my smart ass in my car so I don't use it when I get home. Looks like I forgot to take it off this time."
@2081. "It's like an eyrie today." --#mishearing of Ella Simon's "an earring or something"
February 07, 2013
@2082. I literally found a computer I'd forgotten I had (that Windows XP one I keep under the desk in the back).
@2083. I'm seeing all clean floor space as wasted space now after picking everything up... (That was my weekend during the internet break this week.)
@2084. If you ever want to be a hero on a group trip, throw a power strip in your backpack. (One time I had someone complain when I took it away on the last night because I wanted to pack up early! I can understand, but it's still pretty hilarious.)
@2085. I found a 3-ft USB extension cable. That's almost an oxymoron, isn't it? Then again, I have actually used said cable, so maybe it's not quite that silly.
February 08, 2013
@2086. I finished my AP Stats course yesterday. I only got a 73% on the final, but I passed. :-) I think I could have done better on the final if getting a higher grade had been life or death (or if I couldn't retake it if I didn't make the threshold). Matter of fact, that holds for the course in general--the way it was set up served to really decrease motivation. All in all I think the course certainly taught me some good introductory statistics, but I would have learned more in a real class. Maybe if I was better at required independent study (independent study on my own on things I'm just sort of interested in has historically gone fairly well, like *ahem* computers), I could have gotten more out of it.
Anyway, I think I'll kind of miss the course, actually: Mr. Leahy was pretty cool, and the classroom was actually a fairly nice place to spend an afternoon. It's sort of too bad there's nothing else I can take there. I'm trying to decide how I should use that extra time. I'd like to make sure it doesn't blend into other time and get wasted. I might try to practice when I get home or near it.
@2088. "It's just that I see not getting sued as a feature."
February 13, 2013
@2089. "A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking email a lot." --xkcd title text
@2090. "What's the difference between hardware and software? If you use hardware long enough, it breaks. If you use software long enough, it works."
@2091. There's a guy at school at the intersection of the downstairs red and orange hallways who plays guitar in the hall before school on a lot of days. It's really awesome--you just walk by and he's with some friends playing away.
@2092. "I don't like sitting on this side [of the table]. I don't know how you do it." --#overheard in the cafeteria
@2093. "Time is all we have." --Elliott, in an (incorrect) attempt to translate a German saying about time
@2094. "Die Zeit ist eine Uhr ohne Ziffern." --Ernst Bloch's son
@2095. "...when it presents ominent danger." --Danny
@2096. "...but for me its just worser in all possible points." --#ankiforums
@2098. You can be dead right and still be dead.
@2106. American Airlines, US Airways Merge To Form World's Largest Inconvenience
@2107. "If you don't eat for 25 hours, you'll be hungry." --someone at the 30-Hour Famine
@2108. Over the Famine, I learned that not having mealtimes really messes with your perception of time. You don't realize how much you normally mark the time by "now it's midday and I'm going to eat lunch" until you don't eat lunch.
@2109. Software Rage
@2110. "In case you Can't tell I'm trying to Not Capitalize every word." --after being told title case was inappropriate for a wiki article
@2111. I saw this sign at RadioShack today: "Fix Cracked Screens Within 72 Hours." For quite some time I interpreted this as meaning that you had to get the phone in to them within 72 hours or they wouldn't be able to repair it, and was extremely puzzled by why this would be.
@2112. I'd forgotten how immature middle-schoolers are....
@2114. Mr. Hefner told us he has 4 Laserdiscs: two physics ones, one chemistry one, and _Rain Man_. Apparently a student found the Rain Man one at a thrift shop or something and thought he should buy it since he knew Mr. Hefner had a Laserdisc player in the classroom.
@2115. Problems cannot be created or destroyed; they can only change form.
(See §ConservationOfProblems.)
@2116. Betteridge's Law of Headlines: Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word *no*.
February 19, 2013
@2117. "I have a clarificational question." --Emma
@2118. "Keine leeway." --Marco
@2120. Spam email.
Hello.
It's My Pleasure
Am miss Stella, interested in you, & wish to have you as my friend, for friend is all about Respect, Admiration and love passion, and sharing of ideas, i intend to send my picture for you, if you reply me. thanks from Stella.
@2121. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
(Cf. §HanlonsRazor, §HanlonsTanto.)
@2122. "I don't knock stuff over. I build it up!" --#overheard, person helping someone who spilled his stuff all over the floor in study hall pick up
@2123. "Please make a special note of placing the iron on its lowest setting to avoid igniting the page." --notebook repair guide
February 22, 2013
@2124. #overheard on the bus:
"I can't pee my pants because I'm wearing a dress."
"Thanks for sharing."
{BL #3240}
@2125. "We're going to have refried beans for dessert." --Mama
@2127. "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing." --Swedish saying
{BL #6360, #11696}
@2129. Lifehacker comment: "Coffee May Decrease Your Risk of Dying"
I don't care how much coffee you drink, your risk of dying is still 100%.
@2130. Seen in an advertisement: "TurboTax is up-to-date with all the latest tax laws!"
Well it had f-ing better be...
@2132. What do you want to eat? [emU or ?*]
@2133. So I got a letter from some university offering me a full ride scholarship. Among the terms was a per-semester cash stipend of "$44,000." Someone's gonna get chewed out over that typo!
@2135.
Mr. Kopf made a good point right before Solo & Ensemble, declaring there are three different states of mind you need to have when playing:
* Live in the PAST: while practicing
* in the PRESENT: while performing
* in the FUTURE: while improvising
@2136. Mr. Kopf told us about the time he was playing Beethoven's 3rd symphony (Eroica). The first movement is crazy long and somewhat exhausting, and when they'd finished the conductor just sort of leaned over his stand and stayed there like he was having a heart attack or something. They started playing the next movement anyway (a funeral march!), because that seemed like kind of what you have to do. They were horribly scared that he was going to die during the funeral march.
@2138. "It's the same note as the clap." --Chuck, in a discussion about how the basses should get their note
@2139. "Started 0 discussions and made -1 replies." --TenderApp
@2141. "On a more encouraging note, 'password1' cracked the top 25 this year, so perhaps people are learning that a combination of letters and numbers makes for a stronger password. (Now they just need to work on not picking the most obvious of each.)" --PC World
{BL #6026}
March 01, 2013
@2148. "...students who receive either free or reduced lunch...qualify for an exception of fees on all non-math and non-science AP exams."
@2151. "Please add a note function to this forum." --#ankiforums
@2152. < Wooble> calling things gay is lesbian.
@2153. #overheard on the bus:
"There's not going to be a _snow day_ tomorrow."
(angrily) "Shut up, be optimistic!"
(In the end we did have a snow day.)
@2154. "Don't forget we have a fire tonight." --#mishearing of "choir"
@2155. "Error message: server is loaded" --#ankiforums title
March 09, 2013
@2156. "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."
@2157. I noticed there's a specific way that people hold trash--kind of sideways, and they swing it more than usual. It's also kind of light and careless.
@2159. "Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead."
@2160. "Bach died from 1750 to the present."
@2162. "Cannot schedule a drive test. Scheduling a test date in the past is not permitted." --Indiana BMV website
March 14, 2013
@2163. "Do not sit on the counter! It will break!" --sign in the VHS Attendance Office
@2166. "Thou liest, thou shag-eared villain!" --Macduff's son, _Macbeth_
@2168. Every year the psychology class does something with traffic in the hallways. This year they created a roundabout at the intersection of the red and purple hallways (a big mess). They've done various things, including standing in the middle and standing at the edges, putting arrows on it and not putting arrows, and so on.
@2170. "O...Q. The alphabet definitely goes O-Q." --me
@2171.
Q: What does a dyslexic agnostic insomniac do?
A: He stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.
{BL #7605}
@2172. A lot of times the complaining can be worse than the circumstance.
{BL CB7.06}
@2173. "OK, I've said this two bajillion times. No one ever does it, though."
@2176. "Is there anyone still monitoring this post?" --#ankiforums user after a record 1 hour, 18 minutes lag time between posts
@2177. St. Olaf tuition comes out to nearly $4K less than Luther...wut? (This does include rejecting loans, though even without, that doesn't account for the difference.)
@2179. "In most cases, lead poisoning is preventable by avoiding exposure to lead." --Wikipedia
@2183. In my chrono book, I wrote these three dates in a row for consecutive days: the 13th, the 13th again, and the 23rd.
@2185. While searching for the xkcd "fucking jacket" comic (used as an annoyedness adjectival modifier):
"The word 'fucking' has been filtered from the search because Google SafeSearch is active."
(It still found it just fine!)
@2187. "Do not pass under the forgetting tree."
@2188. In study hall the other day, the bell rang. The guy in front of me woke up and was horribly confused (I suspect it was dream-related, as similar things have happened to me before). He asked, "What was that?" I wasn't sure how to respond, but said, "The final bell?" He asked, "For the end of the day?" I said, "No, 9th hour." And he said, "I don't know what just happened." Not sure what to do, I left the room.
@2190. We were listening to the Drake University Trombone Choir in orchestra, and during the last piece the end-of-day announcements started. Then there was a grand pause, and precisely in the pause the announcements said, "Have a good day!" The whole auditorium laughed (though it was still in the middle of the piece).
@2191. "You weren't here because you were gone." --me
@2192. "Headless whole notes are hard to see." --Sibelius Student help
March 31, 2013
@2195.
"Have a safe trip!"
"You too!"
@2198. Wikipedia surfing: "Saint Elmo's Fire" to "Bid Euchre"
@2202.
Procrastination is a crime
It only leads to sorrow
I can stop any time
I think I will tomorrow
@2203. Best Lifehacker tag I've seen so far: "DEATH"
@2204. "Some people I know use a small fanny pack for their EDC. It means they can carry a lot, and that's awesome. It also means they have to wear a fanny pack."
@2205. When you wash the shirt, hang it on the hanger with the top button buttoned. Each time you wear the shirt hang it back up with the next lower button buttoned. It's an easy way for me to look at my shirts and know which ones are fresh out of the laundry or which have been worn a couple times.
@2206. I'm writing a collaborative essay in English 12 IB. This sentence was in it: "Traitors being served justice is a foreshadow for the entirety of the play, replacing the old Thane with Macbeth to be finally served justice in the end."
It also contained the adjective "Banquo-centric."
Unsurprisingly, we got a C- on the paper.
{BL #2245}
@2211. (To be read in idiot-voice on April 1) "Did you hear that they canceled April Fools' this year?" / "April Fools'!"
@2213. "In today's society, college is ambiguous. We need it to live, but we also need it to love. Moreover, without college most of the world's learning would be egregious." --an essay designed to get high marks from a computerized grading system
@2214. "Was that file in File Manager?" --me
@2215.
"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything." --(attrib. to) Confucius
@2216. "In the center column, we have short snippets of text written by ten individuals or groups, though of course, Google reports that it has 32 million more snippets to survey if we want to keep clicking. "
@2219.
"Mobile client took a dump" --#ankiforums subject
(Follow-up thread: "Anki took a dump again")
@2220. Shibboleth
@2221. "Aesthetical issue"
@2222. "Water bath canning is okay, but it's slow and nothing worse than a kitchen with boiling pots on an August afternoon." --Lifehacker comment
@2226. "In responding to the question, you are free to refer to any literary works except the books in the Harry Potter series. (They are so well known that it is difficult to find anything new to say about them.)" --St. Olaf Great Con application essay guidelines
(/r/fuckyouinparticular?)
@2232. "More people have probably died from ingrown toenails [than meteorites]." --Slashdot comment
@2236. "Are you kidding me? I'd just rather *not* die." --#overheard on the bus
{BL CB50.28}
@2241. "Mr. Wilson recalled that when he was on the California Energy Commission, he asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer: 'Nobody asked us to use less.'"
@2242. "No psalm today, because we're sort of winning time because I had a very short first reading." --the taped me
@2243. "Wanted: Cement cat statue" --Freecycle
@2252. "Do you want to buy one Advertisement Off for $0.99?" --Timer app
@2253. "Thanks for saving me Chris, only I could misspell a word I made up."
@2261. "Any fool can use a computer. Many do."
@2269. "Sixes aren't that bad of numbers." --me
@2271. "You know, twenty five years ago, everyone was convinced it would be computers built by the military-industrial complex that would become self-aware and take out the human race. Now I'm beginning to wonder if HFT algorithms will be the ones that do it."
@2275. "I lost my job. I've never saved so much on my commute." --Lifehacker comment
@2278. "Writing fiction doesn't mean you're writing perfection." --Mrs. Pagel
@2284. "Reduced fares are offered only to those customers who are eligible." --CTA website
@2285. "A jar full of fennel will never save your life, whereas this bike light might."
@2286. "The helmet is helpful against hitting your head on the ground." --Wikipedia on unicycle safety gear
@2287. From CS random paper generator:
"AugustanQuice is composed of a collection of shell scripts, a homegrown database, and a homegrown database."
"We now consider prior work. Further, instead of emulating the development of SCSI disks [10,31,32], we fulfill this intent simply by visualizing the investigation of sensor networks."
@2288. "EBay suspended the auction, which was contrary to their policy against the sale of human remains."
@2289.
"Umm...if you think the price isn't good, then...don't buy it." --me, after the latest #ankiforums complainer about Anki's price
{BL #1886}
@2290. "Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book." --on a Moleskine blank journal
@2291. "Theme" --the entirety of an #ankiforums post
April 30, 2013
@2298. After Checking Your Bank Account, Remember To Log Out, Close The Web Browser, And Throw Your Computer Into The Ocean
@2299. "Oh, her singing voice? I thought you meant her *actual* voice." --#overheard in AP Government class
@2300. Overexcited, High-Pitched Girl: "I never wear real pants. Pants are too much work!" --#overheard in the hallway
@2303. The Laws of Bureaucratic Procedure (from my AP Gov book).
* Acheson's Rule: A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
* Boren's Laws: When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate. When in charge, ponder.
* Chapman's Rules of Committees: Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner. Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this stamps you as being wise. Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating others. When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
* Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right but always time to do it over.
* Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
* O'Toole's Corollary to Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
* Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
* Parkinson's Second Law: Expenditure rises to meet income.
* Peter Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; thus, every post tends to be filled by an incompetent employee.
* Robertson's Rule: The more directives you issue to solve a problem, the worse it gets.
* Smith's Principle: Never do anything for the first time.
@2305. I saw the strangest vehicle I've seen in quite some time while waiting for the bus. It was a little four-wheeler painted in camouflage with a big fake machine gun on the top. It said "Military Police" on the front. The guy hand-signaled a right turn and went around the corner in front of us. I wondered if I was dreaming for a moment, it was so weird.
@2306. "If a student refuses to use a calculator on the exam, they will have to sign a release form." --AP Stats preparation checklist
To be fair, it *would* be a really nasty test to try to take without a calculator.
{BL CB26.67}
@2312. In English today, we were doing a sort of partner essay (it wasn't really an essay so much as a response) and were typing it up on netbooks. In the middle of this, at full volume, another group's netbook blasted something like "Welcome to UK Essays!" He swore up and down he hadn't been looking up essays but that he'd been Googling a part of the question for historical background information and it had come up in a pop-up. I can almost believe him.
@2315. The packaging for this product boasts that it "contributes to the environment." Doesn't everything?
@2321. "If I don't, my day is off on a very bad foot." --me
(I think it's a mix of "wrong foot" and "bad start.")
@2324. "tl;dw: use a table instead of this bullshit" --in my AP Stats notes
@2325. IF DOOR DOES NOT OPEN DO NOT ENTER
@2326.
"Please enter your phone number, one digit at a time."
Nah, I'll just press them all at once.
@2328. "But i cannot find a fitting addon in the internet." --#ankiforums
@2336. When I tried to empty the trash on my scanner's memory, I got an error saying I couldn't do that because the trash was full and I needed to empty the trash first. >__<
(There was something funny going on with it being "read-only" despite the fact that the RO switch was not flipped. Who knows.)
@2341. "Too bad the scientific method is no match for the stick-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-yell-la-la-la-la-la method." --Slashdot comment
{BL #4638}
@2342. I just looked at the lyrics for "Love is Stronger than Justice" because I couldn't understand a line---whoa, I had no idea that was what it was about! Proves how little we listen to lyrics (especially when they're hard to hear).
@2344. "I will give you the Nobel Prize if you just shut the fuck up!" --#overheard in the hallway
@2345. "Whoooah!" --after I told someone in my German class how to make an umlaut in Word
@2346.
"Someone give me a country. Any country."
"Africa."
--an unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate my knowledge of the capitals of many countries during a presentation
@2347. "...we all live in a freaking submarine..." --me
@2348. "What's the plural of analysis? Analysises?" --asked in English class
@2350. "...nice headphones. The only problem is that you can't hear when people talk about stealing them from you." --#overheard in the hall
@2351. "Yeahh! I got a sandwich!" --#overheard in the hall
@2353. "It's very easy; to get to the colour blind test, just go outside and follow the green signs until you see a red building. Go through the purple doors, just past the blue ones."
@2354. ...These lyrics say "wool" for "woe."
@2357. "Missing the point! Ha, ha, ha, ha." --me, late at night after noticing the rollerball tip had broken off my pen
@2358. "If you don't care about opening it up once you close it, this is the safe for you." --Amazon review
@2359. "I tried using a real PDA for a while but I found it to be kind of like a really expensive notebook that took ages to write in."
@2360. Said comment about a PDA was written only 4 years ago. It was literally that short a time ago when smartphones were still just starting to be topics of conversation. It's amazing how fast these things can change.
@2371. "If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes..." / "True. I for one would be worried about getting hit by one of those flying pigs." --Slashdot comment
@2372. "Anyway as of the last time I was in my auto I was getting 532,224 rods per hogshead which is low compared to 544320. Of course I've been driving where the speed limit ranges from 27,200 furlongs per fortnight to 107,520 furlongs per fortnight. However when the school zone lights are flashing it is a piddly ass 40320 furlongs per fortnight even in a 107,520 furlongs per fortnight zone." --another Slashdot comment
@2373. "Sir, I really have no idea what people's political leanings are based on their bread preferences."
@2375. The average smartphone user checks his or her device about every 6 minutes.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/05/25/1333246/how-the-smartphone-killed-the-three-day-weekend
@2376. "You don't have to tell me the rules! I'm not stupid. I've been at this high school for five years!"
@2377. "I also searched for the 'reverse' button so a card could be readen in both senses, but I didn't find it." --#ankiforums
@2378. "Presumably you will be creating a document that contains at least some text." --Memoir documentation
@2379. "The last nail in the coffin to this potentially kickass auction is the fact that the secret can be 'digitally delivered' to you. Fuck that, if the secret of invisibility is 'digital' we're getting it off fucking BitTorrent." --Cracked
@2380. #ankiblunders:
"louse"
"a single lice"
(In my defense, I wasn't wrong.)
@2383. Right when I was leaving for school today, I got a push notification informing me that there *had been* a severe thunderstorm watch the night before, expiring 5 hours prior to the notification. Very useful there.
@2384. "Do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back."
@2385. "You would think that this [club] would fall faster than this [feather] -- [drop] -- and you'd be absolutely right." --_Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_
@2388. When I was in fifth grade or so (maybe middle school, actually), I was walking past the Banta Center and met a girl in third grade or so. She had this chant on "Say No to Drugs" and was going around reciting it to people (or, at least, to me). She never stopped and started a conversation or anything, she just spoke from memory. I don't even remember how I reacted, although I'm sure I assured her I didn't intend to do drugs in one way or another.
@2389. "YODO: You Only Die Once, don't make it happen" --one of the locker signs about health and safety that the elementary schoolers put up on high school lockers at prom
@2394. "offer: huge bag of teen girls" --#whoopstypo seen on Freecycle
Even worse than "binders full of women"!
@2396. "Hi,expert," --salutation to an #ankiforums support question
June 02, 2013
@2402. In church yesterday, I said, "It is right to give us thanks and praise."
@2404. "It all comes down to Nevada." --election in _The West Wing_
@2405. "She'll never set the fires on river." --(unintentional) blunder in English parody presentation
@2406. "Okay, well it's pendleing." --apparently my new word for 'pending'
@2412. "Hi, welcome to [store]. How can I lie to you today?"
June 05, 2013
@2413. I coined a term for when you're having a difficult computer problem and then you reboot and it effortlessly goes away: "reboot salvation."
(Cf. §RebootSalvation.)
@2414. "But lie and lay seem to give people more difficulty than do all the other irregular verbs combined."
@2421. "Now the author of this paper might argue that this 'disproportionately favors the guilty', but that makes the naïve assumption that all crimes are equal and that all crimes should be prosecuted. It is arguably not in the public's best interest to prosecute every possible crime, because under such circumstances, our current body of law leads to a world in which everyone is in prison. Therefore, there is no legitimate public need for you to be required to confess to a crime that the government does not know about. As a general rule, if no one has reported the crime, chances are good that no one was actually harmed by it, which means that prosecuting the offending person would be a waste of taxpayer resources that would detract from the ability to prosecute serious crime."
June 08, 2013
@2428. "Service Inturruption" --Apex email subject line
@2430. I just cut into my driver's license with an X-Acto knife. Smooth. (I was using it as a rule.)
@2431. Shipping: Standard (18-32 business days)
--for an item coming from Japan
@2432. Or you can pay $40 to expedite the $16 item to 1-3 days.
@2436. "This is an optional fee."
@2437. "No! I don't back up [my car]. You do it. I don't know how."
@2438. "This BIOS is exclusively for Acer only." --on the POST screen of Emily
@2439. "I know that my mail sends, but I have no clue how..." --me
June 27, 2013
@2440. "It's eating your computer, sir, day by day." --"technician" cold-calling from "Windows"
@2442. So I got a call from "Windows." Apparently my system was "filled with nasty viruses" that were "eating [my] computer, sir, day by day." I kept the guy (or, the four people I was transferred to throughout the course of the call) on the phone for 32 minutes.
The only mistake I made was at the end, when I decided they would soon give up because we were on the third piece of remote control software that didn't work (I didn't even have to do anything to make the first two not work, they just didn't) so, upon downloading the third, I decided to say my computer "rebooted by itself." For some reason, instead of faking my system rebooting, I decided to cut the power switch and then turn it back on, which had the effect of corrupting the hard disk and legitimately making the system unbootable. Oops. Needless to say the call wasn't so funny after that.
Fortunately fsck recovered the disk, so all is well and hopefully one less person got scammed during the time we wasted.
@2444. "If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way." --Mark Twain
@2445. "Every man...should periodically be compelled to listen to opinions which are infuriating to him. To hear nothing but what is pleasing to one is to make a pillow of the mind." --St. John Ervine
@2446. I've noticed I spend considerably more time reading the comments section of articles that I disagree with, as if to find validation for my own opinion. It's really kind of stupid--the whole point of reading articles I disagree with is to see what other people think and add it to my database of opinions, not to read something and let other people refute it for me.
@2447. Here's something to think about as we have fewer jobs:
"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life."
@2448. "I've seen how you can't learn anything when you're trying to look like the smartest person in the room." --Barbara Kingsolver
@2449. "One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure." --John W. Gardner
@2450. "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot a wrong question." --Anthony Jay
@2451. "The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil." --Thomas Edison
@2454. "Keep out of the reach or use by children." --on the side of a kerosene can
@2455. Signage that tells you to do things that are the law always amuse me. Like "Obey Speed Limit." Right, because on all the other stretches of road I don't have to do that.
@2457. "You'll be as healthy as a horse." --#overheard at the campground, spoken to a child
@2459. At a number of buildings at UW Madison, they now post the hours they are *closed* on the door. Apparently the idea of posting the hours you're open is too ordinary, so they decided they had to flip it around. It's considerably harder to figure out, since you're not used to it.
@2460. "Uh-huh. National urinal week." --#overheard phone conversation of a janitor at the campground bathrooms
@2461. "Log me in to LogMeIn..." --me
@2462. "These multimedia and internet settings use international USB standard codes, which work with all recent Windows operating systems without requiring a special driver. Please contact Apple to ask why Apple operating systems do not support these codes." --Kinesis manual
@2463. A recent rocket crash was caused by somebody installing velocity sensors upside down.
@2465. "The stats indicate the card was created in 2000, which was before Anki existed." --Damien, #ankiforums
@2469. My new external HD was echoing noise into the desk, so I put two pairs of underwear under it. Yay for hacks -- it works well.
@2471. "Wow, I downloaded a lot of shit back in the day, didn't I?" --me
@2477. At several gas stations on the Ohio Turnpike, they have signs up at the filling stations that say "No Parking Except to Fuel." I'm glad they specify that you can fuel there, because otherwise I would have thought because they told you not to park there and use up the filling bay, you had to fuel while your vehicle was in motion.
@2478. "We're infernal twins." --two people we met at the church on the way to Manassas
@2479. "The wasterpaper basket." --me
@2481. Whenever I use those automatic paper towel dispensers I feel like I'm trying to do some kind of magical incantation or curse. I'm just waving my arms around at different speeds in different places trying to get the damn thing to notice I'm there and want some paper towel.
@2484. Say what? If someone is going to find out what my password is, there are many problems beyond the password being "offensive":
"When you purchase your Card online or activate it, you will be asked to create a password to view your account. You may not select a password that violates anyone's rights or one that, in SA's sole discretion, SA considers offensive, improper or inappropriate. If you do so, SA may modify or delete it."
@2486. "I didn't bring my son up to be killed by a falling cow," his mother Maria de Souza told Brazil's Super Canal TV channel.
@2487. "The paper quoted someone as saying this. The Times doesn't have a policy of only quoting people who say true things. If it did, all coverage of politics would come to a screeching halt." --The Straight Dope
@2489. Compared to a typical car carrying 2,000 pounds per axle, a fully loaded truck stresses the road surface 6,561 times as much.
@2490. One researcher estimated in 1986 that as much as half the populace subscribes to what he called "valve theory," namely the belief that the thermostat functions like a gas pedal: the higher you set it, the hotter your furnace runs.
@2492. Taser is an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle."
@2493. One study calculated for each person actually saved by CPR, 12,306 people have to have received CPR training.
@2494. Selections from Wikipedia's "List of Unusual Deaths":
* 1567: Hans Steininger, the burgomaster of Brunau, Austria, died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard. The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch.
* 1794: John Kendrick, an American sea captain and explorer, was killed in the Hawaiian Islands when a British ship mistakenly used a loaded cannon to fire a salute to Kendrick's vessel.
* 1871: Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician, was demonstrating how a victim may possibly have shot himself while drawing a weapon from a kneeling position when he shot himself in the process. Though the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was ultimately cleared, Vallandigham died from his wound.
* 1920: Ray "Chappie" Chapman, shortstop for the Cleveland Indians baseball team, was killed when a submarine ball thrown by Carl Mays hit him in the temple. Chapman collapsed at the plate, and died about 12 hours later. He remains the only major league baseball player killed by a pitched ball.
* 1993: Garry Hoy, a 38-year-old lawyer in Toronto, fell to his death on July 9, 1993, after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visitors that the glass was "unbreakable," a demonstration he had done many times before. The glass did not break, but popped out of the window frame.
* 2007: Humberto Hernandez, a 24-year-old Oakland, California resident, was killed after being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant and the water pressure shot the hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.
* 2010: Jimi Heselden, British owner of the Segway motorized scooter company, was killed when he accidentally drove off a cliff on a Segway at his estate at Thorp Arch near Boston Spa.
* 2010: 20 crew and passengers died in a plane crash near Bandundu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when a crocodile, being smuggled by one of the passengers in a sports bag, freed itself and panicked the passengers who all ran towards the flightdeck. The tiny Filair L-410 Turbolet became unbalanced and crashed, despite the lack of any technical failure. One passenger and the crocodile survived.
@2495. "My guess would be that fish electrocution by lightning is a pretty underreported phenomenon."
@2496. In 2012, 2.3 million toilets in the United States, and about 9,400 in Canada, were recalled due to faulty pressure-assist flush mechanisms which put users at risk of the fixture exploding.
@2502. Emacs is a good OS. The only thing it lacks is a good text editor.
{BL #5323}
@2515. "Hi. The hotkey for deleting a card (cmd+shit+del)..." --#ankiforums #whoopstypo
I could use a *shit* key sometimes.
@2516. "Obviously. But where is click?" --clientsfromhell.com
@2517. "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." --Peter F. Drucker
{BL #8368}
@2518. /usr/bin/updatedb: line 221: /usr/bin/sort: No such file or directory
Ok, using an iPod Touch isn't quite like a normal Unix system.
@2519. "Phone sold separately." --on a $15 package of screen protectors, under a picture of the product in use
@2521. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Clarke's Third Law
@2523. "Buy soren at Amazon." --ad in footer of Google search
@2524. Best Boggle word in a while: "jeepers".
@2526.
Change "McGonigle" to: 1) "Mogo niggle"
--Aspell spelling suggestion
@2529. "Yes, huge news alert, a $1000+ device smokes a $500 device in head to head competition." --ZDNet comments
@2531. "Hey administratorWhy is there a lot of comments that look a lot like spam?" --spam comment
@2532. "I would prefer not to lose my passport." --me
@2533. "You may electronically post up to thirty (20) of my graphics." --copyright permissions notice on lifeprint.com
@2534. Interesting choice of name for an SSID: "Screaming Toilet."
@2535. "These matches are for outdoor use only."
Well, I guess they won't blow out for a reason...
@2539. "This is a deadbolt, so you can't pick it." --a "locksmith"
@2541. "This is bad, really, really bad done." --#ankiforums post
@2543. "SimCity 4: where you can instantly bulldoze an entire airport by building a connection to the next city." --me
@2548. "Catch them as they throw by. Kinda like Mardi Gras." --me, on home video, regarding some "scissor art" I had made
@2549. "Why, oh why, does the Common App essay accept .xls files?" --me (but seriously!)
@2552. "It is getting very bothering." --#ankiforums
@2554. LaTeXWiki -- the free latex fetish encyclopedia
I swear I'm not making this up. There are a...variety of sites on the Internet. (And you know how I found that now, right? Based on my capitalization? Right?)
@2556. "Total: 0 sheet of paper" --Google Chrome
@2557. Here's a book I could safely have predicted would wind up on the clearance rack at Barnes & Noble: "The Biscuiteer's Guide to Iced Cookies."
@2559.
"An effortless online shopping experience" (MoleskineUS)
Because online shopping is normally very difficult and strenuous.
@2561. I love how Wikipedia can sometimes be ridiculously neutral: "[The 27th Amendment] is the most recent amendment to the United States Constitution. It was submitted to the states for ratification in 1789 and was adopted in 1992." As if that's perfectly normal!
@2563. 25% of people on food stamps report that they have never used a government social program. Wut?
http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2013/08/24/citizens-using-state-programs-unaware-that-they-use-state-programs/
@2564.
"The idea that a grown man didn't know it is fantastically absurd." / "The idea that the Australian Emu is the worlds greatest underwater killing machine between the deepths of 100-5000m is fantastically absurd. That somone was ignorant of the law is staggeringly less so. You need to improve your fantasies, I imagine you missing out on quite a lot of fun."
--Ars Technica thread
@2565. Goes along with something I've been thinking about lately:
"How can we say that someone 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes old is too young, but one minute later and ... TADA! ... now you've crossed through the magic threshold of all knowledge, wisdom and forethought! Now you can go ahead and do all the gangbang videos and whatever weird shit you want because of some arbitrarily definition created by some old farts in stuffy suits who think they know better? Oh, right, but you can't drink for another three years. In what universe is such arbitrium anything but asinine?"
@2567. On this St. Olaf course about relationships and substance abuse, there was an animated section where it advised you to offer to accompany a friend who is a victim of sexual assault anywhere they need to go. The picture showed the car traveling at 110mph. As serious as the topic was, I laughed for the next five slides.
@2568. "It's about time! I pushed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!"
@2569. "OK, here I see some F-ing keys."
August 31, 2013
@2572. From "The Nodder," _The Best of Wodehouse_ 504:
"Quiet...Respectful...What's that word that begins with a 'd'?"
"Damn?"
"Deferential. And what's the word beginning with an 'o'?"
"Oyster?"
"Obsequious. That's what he is."
@2573. "I thought they used to be thrown out of nightclubs together." --Uncle Fred in the Springtime, _The Best of Wodehouse_, p. 532
@2574. "The firing of guns in bedrooms is always a thing that tends to excite the interest of the owner of a country house." --Uncle Fred in the Springtime, _The Best of Wodehouse_, p. 703
@2575. "Do These 7 Things and You'll Never Get Alzheimer's" --one very optimistic news headline
September 6, 2013
@2579. "So I'm not going to teach you the harmony, you make it up....Here's how it works: if you sing a note and it doesn't sound good, change it." --Dr. Aspaas
@2581. "You need to be the person who answers the CPU's "What next?" question. But it would be very uncomfortable to shrink you down to 5mm tall and insert you into the computer just so you could issue a command three billion times per second." --_Python for Informatics: Exploring Information_
@2588. "Wherever you are, if you hear or see a tornado coming, take cover right away." --St. Olaf safety webpage
@2591. According to a new survey, 53% of Protestants could not correctly identify Martin Luther as the person who started the Protestant Reformation. Seriously?
{BL #4531}
September 16, 2013
@2593. There's a book on display in Rolvaag somewhere titled "The Magnificent Wilf." Every time I walk by, I read it as "The Magnificent Wifi" and do a double-take.
@2596. In 1976, Chris Nicholl scored all four goals in a 2–2 draw between Aston Villa and Leicester City on 20 March 1976.
@2597. On October 25, 1964, in a game against the San Francisco 49ers, Minnesota Viking Jim Marshall recovered a fumble and ran 66 yards with it the wrong way into his own end zone. Thinking that he had scored a touchdown for the Vikings, Marshall then threw the ball away in celebration. The ball landed out of bounds, resulting in a safety for the 49ers. Despite this gaffe, the Vikings won the game, 27–22.
@2600. In college football, a conversion safety could also be scored by the defense. To accomplish this, the kicking team would have to retreat all the way back to their own end zone and then fumble the ball out of it or be tackled in it. While such a conversion safety has never been scored by the defense, it is the only possible way in which a team could finish with a single point in an American football game.
@2604.
"Permitted Uses: You may use your Account for Purchases, Balance Transfers and Cash Advances. You may not use it for illegal transactions...You will not earn cashback bonus on illegal transactions."
--Discover cardholder agreement
@2605. I accidentally called the Sexual Assault Resource Network instead of my voicemail. Fortunately they weren't open and I thought it was rather odd that dialing voicemail caused my call to be forwarded to an automated voice messaging system, so I noticed my error.
@2610. "Authentification error" --error message written on a whiteboard by IT
@2612. So this morning in the caf when it was time to clean up, I was asked to take care of the food waste and dirty dishes from our station. I had not done this before, so I was not quite sure what to do. However, I worked out I needed to go toward the kitchen, which I did. I then pushed the cart straight past the compost bin without seeing it and had to go back. Then I tried to take the cart into the kitchen again to drop off the dishes, and upon going in I knocked some seven steel trays to the ground, making a ridiculously loud noise. After I apologized for that, someone told me the dishes were supposed to go to the other dish room. Thinking this would finally be the end, I went over there, only to be told by those people that they actually did go in the kitchen! The guy back in the kitchen then got upset that I'd brought them back over to him, of course.
@2616. "The list of books on the secondary shelf has changed somewhat since the work began. At the start, I made use of a couple of books which seemed authoritative but eventually revealed themselves to be whimsical or worse. One was so deadly it became the only book I've ever destroyed as a menace to society." --Online Etymology Dictionary
@2617. "Calypso then attempts suicide, but, being immortal, is unable to end her life." --Wikipedia
@2618. "Alarm clocks are bound to gradually fall out of favor. Unlike hot dogs, they are already universally hated by their users." --SuperMemo sleep article
@2621. Today I finally got a good shave with my new safety razor. I'm starting to figure it out, I think -- didn't do anything else different. It was also the first day that I cut myself, so I'm hoping there's not a correlation there... :-)
@2623. "It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern..."
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/nook-version-of-war-and-peace-turns-the-word-kindled-into-nookd/
@2624. "After papers have been accepted for publication, revisions should be submitted on one hard copy and on a 3.5-inch disk formatted in WordPerfect or Microsoft Word." --journal submission guidelines, 2013
@2625. "If a login doesn't work, try again up to 5 times." --instructions on whiteboard for malfunctioning Regents 203 computers
@2644. "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." --Groucho Marx
October 3, 2013
@2650. Took a random typing test on my laptop keyboard with it on my lap: 117 WPM adjusted over a minute. Not too bad.
@2651. Random Thoughts has just hit line 10,000. (RT will also celebrate 4 years of existence in 4 days, on the 9th. And it's approaching 125,000 words.)
@2654. The Latin word for "manliness" is feminine. Love gendered languages...
@2655. "Hi I do not understand these things" --#ankiforums subject
@2656. "Error: cannot allocate vector of size 74.5 GB" --R
@2662. "Oh, look at that, there's those italic letters! What does *mmmp* mean?" --Dr. Aspaas
@2673. "Up at the crack of 1:30!" --someone in the dorm lounge making fun of a late riser
@2674. "To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, pour the water out, and put the cork in really fast before the air can get back in."
@2677. "Make the commas more commary."
@2684. On the way to the barbershop today I ran across a light to cross Highway 3. After you push the button, it says "Wait." And it continues to say "Wait" every five seconds. I get the idea...
@2685. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
@2691. Psychiatrists Deeply Concerned for 5% of Americans Who Approve of Congress
@2692. "The train is not allowed to stop whilst on fire in the tunnel." --Wikipedia on the Channel Tunnel
October 17, 2013
@2694. "In a brief closed session with his Republican rank and file, Mr. Boehner told members to hold their heads high, go home, get some rest and think about how they could work better as a team." --New York Times article on the end of the government shutdown
I mean, that sounds like an Onion article.
@2695. This makes me laugh because it's such B.S.:
"One figure often repeated by industry mouthpieces like the MPAA is that $250 billion has been lost since torrents became a viable source for content acquisition, around 2003. The problem, as journalist Julian Sanchez discovered, was that the number was based on a 1993 Forbes article citing the overall economic damage from worldwide distribution of all counterfeit goods, from bootleg copies of Disney movies to badly stitched Levi's."
@2697. Sudden Language Revelations: I noticed that the German word for "discovery" is *Entdeckung*, and was trying to answer 'covering', for *Deckung*. And then I was like "but that's a stupid prefix, because it completely changes the word and it's not related to the root". But then I noticed we have the same thing in English, and that in fact it does make sense: to "discover" something is to literally remove the cover from it, so it's now understood and noticeable.
@2704. I'm trying to create a "mini" table of contents at the beginning of sections in my Maudiverse encyclopedia. The package is called "minitoc." After a dinner break, when I came back and looked at the command to activate it, "dominitoc," I read it as "Domini TOC" and was like, "Lord Table of Contents?"
(Hmm, I suppose it would really be "\the Table of Contents of the Lord".)
@2708. "It is risk free and legal." --end of a spam message
@2713. New, Improved Obamacare Program Released On 35 Floppy Disks
@2714. "R is not the tool you would choose for running an ATM." --The Art of R Programming
@2724. "N comes before M." --me, late at night
(See also #1628.)
@2725. "For external use only." --on a styptic pencil
@2728. "Meanwhile, Narcissus saw his own image in the poop." --#whoopstypo
@2737. Yesterday they had "biriyani" in the caf. To be fair, I was sick, but even so: that was the mildest Indian food I have tasted in my entire life. I had to *try* to taste the ginger, and I didn't notice any other spice at all (and if the food is good, you should be able to tell because your mouth feels different afterwards: nope, not at all). There was also cumin squash, which was marginally better, but even with it I don't think they popped the cumin right, and the squash itself was terrible and not as well-done as I would have liked. (It is really too late in the year for good summer squash.)
So, guess who will not be trying that dish again...
@2740. NRA Calls For Teachers To Keep Loaded Gun Pointed At Class For Entire School Day
@2741. "This isn't a 'buying things' store!" --employee
@2743. So I'm sitting at the IT section of the circulation desk in the library and some guy comes by and asks for a paperclip. I go over and get them from another part of the desk, hold it out, let him take one, then take it back. When I come back, he says, "Nice pencil, by the way," holding up a Rotring 600 drafting pencil, and starts walking away. Now, this happened to be the pencil I was using at the time, so what my mind jumped to was that he had picked it up and borrowed it to write his name on the printout or something. So when I noticed he was walking away with it, I paused for a moment, then said, "Umm, may I have it back?" Then I looked down at the desk. My pencil was still there. He just happened to have been carrying the exact same pencil.
@2745. "I like talking to myself, have you noticed?" --me, to myself
@2747. Download Rate: 4543 B/s
Yay library St. Olaf wifi...
@2751.
Here's a problem with the "not ending a sentence with a preposition" thing:
"Identify the type of literary expression (genre) of the passage, or the larger unit *of which it is part* if it is not complete in itself."
I stumbled over this sentence when I reached 'if it', because I *expected* an 'of' there and instead there was what looked to be a typo, 'if.' It legitimately made the sentence more difficult to read.
@2754. "I should read instructions before complaining." --#ankiforums
@2758. I just had a great idea (or so I fancy): when you get a call on your cell phone, one of the options should be to play a message saying you can't answer instantly but if the person holds on, you'll pick up in just a moment. Like I was just in the library and got a call, and it finished ringing through before I could get out the door to a neutral place, so Papa spent two minutes recording a message only to get a call back right away.
@2761. I'm booking a Greyhound ticket from Minneapolis to Willmar for Thanksgiving. For the return trip, there's a choice of a three-hour trip during the afternoon or a fourteen-hour trip with two transfers in the middle of the night, for the same price. Hmm...
Update: I posted this on Facebook and about 5 people took the opportunity to come up with a silly reason for why I should take the long one, like "it's forced study time" or "the unit price is better."
@2762. Dr. Aspaas likes to call sightreading "fright-screaming."
@2766. Murphy's Law of Copiers: Whenever you are in a hurry, the copier will jam or process your job really slowly.
@2767. "It's like slices of meat. It needs to be like rockets in the sky." --Dr. Aspaas
@2769. I'm very amused by the Latin for "long": longus, -a, -um. Because it totally sounds like Dog Latin.
@2771. The Stock-Sanford Corollary to Parkinson's Law: If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.
@2772. Someone in my dorm has decided the stairwell right outside my room is a great place to have a loud and very emotional argument on his cell phone.
@2773. "You have submitted your assignment submission." --email notification from Moodle
{BL #7645}
@2774. Random Fact of the Day. Since I was about four, I've noticed that cursors always go completely off two of the edges of monitors so that you can no longer see them, but stubbornly stay on two others. (They go off the right and bottom but stick on the left and top--try it.) I finally realized why: Since the point is at the upper-left-hand corner of the cursor, for the left and top sides, when that tip of the cursor touches the edge, you've reached the edge of the clickable region, so there's no reason to make the cursor go further. But on the other sides, if the system didn't let the cursor go off the screen, there would be stuff on the edges you couldn't click. (If you move the cursor all the way into the lower-right-hand corner of the screen and look very carefully, you should *just* be able to see the point there.)
@2781. Today I was standing in line to take a cookie and the person in front of me dropped the tongs on the floor. He paused for a moment, then carefully picked them up and, not knowing what to do with them, put them back on the plate for use. I couldn't help laughing even in front of him--it was something about the way he did it. He kind of gave me a look...
@2791. Back on Choral Day, we were singing "E'en so, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come." There's this beautiful pianissimo suspension into a dominant seventh in the tenor part at the end. The guy next to me, though, kept dropping with the other parts and singing the lower note, which sounded utterly terrible and dissonant, but apparently he didn't notice this. I pointed his mistake out at least once, maybe even twice. Finally, after hearing it about five times, I leaned and directed my voice in his direction as non-rudely but obviously as possible and sang it forte (no doubt some other people wondered what that moron was doing singing this line forte).
He figured it out, though. A couple of seconds after the piece finished, he said, quote, "Ohh."
@2792. "I'm the one that spills the tea in this relationship." --#overheard in the lobby of the library, one woman to another
@2793. "It's like you make eye contact with someone you really like to make eye contact with." --Dr. Aspaas
@2795. I saw a flyer on a kiosk yesterday. The heading said "Free Baked Goods" and the sub-heading said "Earn Up to $15." I puzzled for a few minutes how these were related, so much that I had to go out of my way on my way back just to go past the kiosk again and satisfy my curiosity. I had gotten the right hypothesis in the end: they were two different parts of a reward for the same thing, participation in some sort of study. But what throws you off is the juxtaposition of the "free" and the "$15." You think it's offering you $15 for making "free" baked goods or something.
@2798. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
@2799. Hmm...is it "troubleshooted" or "troubleshot"? Both sound weird.
@2801. "Firefox Made Me Happy" / "Firefox Made Me Sad" --buttons on the page you get when you choose "feedback" from the help menu
@2806. (in a calm and friendly tone) "I hope to never see you again."
--#overheard in the hall between Buntrock and Rolvaag
@2813. In Great Con on Friday, Prof. Kuxhausen brought in some European wafers and cookies and stuff. One of them was shrink-wrapped, so she asked if anyone had a pocketknife, and I grabbed mine and opened the package. Someone then asked, "Why do you carry a pocketknife?" This was rather puzzling to me: in any other situation it might have been a reasonable question, but I would have thought that a situation in which you just needed a pocketknife would have been Exhibit A for why one would carry a pocketknife.
@2815. So I'm sitting in the library this morning with a few other people, and every so often there's this really annoying notification sound. (Also, at one point, there was a "You've got mail!", but I'm not sure if that was actually related or not.) After it repeats a few times, I'm giving dirty looks to the people sitting at the table across from me, and they're giving dirty looks to me, so I figure it's not their fault (and I'm certain it's not my fault since my computer is off, my phone is on silent, and I've never heard the sound before in my life).
Shortly I do what any good IT person would do and use my stopwatch to see if it is going off consistently. It turns out it is -- just about every two minutes. It was pretty easy, then, to locate the one backpack sitting between our two tables and put my ear up to it right before the timer sounded, and sure enough, it was coming from there. Although I'm not a huge fan of going through other people's stuff, I opened up the backpack and found a phone that had a new message and felt it had to make a loud noise informing everyone on the fourth floor of the library of this fact thirty times an hour. There was an "ignore" button, which I pressed, and...silence. (I'd gone to lunch when the person came back; I hope she didn't think someone had stolen stuff from or searched her backpack. And I say 'she' because I had seen her come in earlier.)
@2818. "It's always good knowing the truth." --after I replied with (and apologized for) a long page of text fully explaining the issue on #ankiforums
@2824. There's a particularly amusing/egregious typo on the Christmas Fest hymn sheet for this year: "Behold, the dessert blossoms, the dry land becomes like spring."
{BL #6043, #8834}
@2837. "Oh my God, the president's been shot by me." --Onion article about the JFK assassination
@2838. "WonderShare MobileGo for iOS" --software recommended by a how-to site
@2842. "mutually explosive"
@2851. Dear RStudio: Resizing the plot window really shouldn't cause a fatal error the next time I try to graph something. Kindly stop it.
@2854. One of the funnier business names I've seen in a while: "Transfer Everything to DVD." It's descriptive...
@2855. Also, "Pindrop Hearing."
@2857. "Did a bear bite you?" --Chapel speaker's son to speaker, upon hearing he'd had a bad day
@2858. "Fractuating knowledge is good." --#ankiforums attempt to explain the minimum information principle
(There are about 397 hits on Google for "fractuating" -- most of them appear to be typos of "fluctuating.")
@2862. "This new industry standards-based thin connector delivering data, power, and video is the only connector one will need across all devices."
Gee, where I have I heard that one before? I dunno, USB standards 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0...and like every other connector ever created?
@2864. "Does anyone have one or two light sabers I could borrow at 9am on Friday?" --stolaf-extra post
@2865. "There's two types of people in the world. Those that pee in the shower, and liars." --Lifehacker commenter
December 6, 2013
@2868. (to general laughter) "I think I agree with what Colin says more than what Aristotle says."
@2869. I bet: "The NSA said it does not intentionally target Americans' whereabouts but gets such data 'incidentally.'"
@2870. "It's been 10 hours and she hasn't fucking responded." --a student at 10:00 PM, referring to an email he sent to his Spanish professor
{BL CB54.43}
@2877. "We are in a PDF attachment." --Google Voice #transcription of a voicemail from Grandpa, saying he'd emailed a PDF of tickets to me
@2878. "Thanks man , now I can type more word !" --#ankiforums user after I told them that the 'tab' key moves between text boxes
@2880. Dr. Aspaas wore a different vest for each night of the Christmas Festival. Then today he emailed us a poll to ask which one he should wear for the last performance. It was a three-way tie, so twice during the concert he ducked out and changed his vest.
@2885. "If I can't get health advice from the comments section of a tech blog then what's the point of the internet?"
@2886. "Error: unexpected } in }"
{BL #5086}
December 11, 2013
@2889. "What Groupon is about is great deals, great service, and medieval catapults." --another parody of Amazon's drone delivery program
@2898. A guy across the room from my fourth-floor table just flung his chair to the ground and said, "Fuck finals."
@2911. "Assuming "winter solstice" is winter solstice." --Wolfram|Alpha
I'd say that's a fair assumption.
@2913. "Tell him: One who puts on armor should not brag like one who takes it off." --1 Kings 20:11
@2914. So back at Christmas Fest (wow, that feels like ages ago now -- it's not even a week!), Ole Choir sang "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella." There's one line that goes, "It is Jesus, good folk of the village." Something about their enunciation made me catch it on the dress rehearsal night, loud and clear, as "It is Jesus, who'll fuck up the village." I continued to hear this on Thursday and also on Sunday (Saturday it was much clearer, Friday it was in the middle). On Wednesday it was so bad that I literally had to take out my program to figure out what they'd *actually* said.
@2935. "If allusions to racism, especially for the purpose of satirizing racism and its cousins, are confused with racism itself, then I think it is time to stop writing." --Douglas Hofstadter
@2971. SSID: "FBI Suveillance Van" (too bad they spelled it wrong)
December 26, 2013
@2977. "I'd rather have a baby than get my teeth cleaned." --#overheard in the waiting room at the dentist
{BL #7686}
@2989. I just shivered and knocked the headphones off my head.
@2993. "Some people say they turned straight? So what? Some people tell me I can enlarge my penis by 50% in two weeks or less."
@2997. "Toenails are stupid." --me
@3005. "Do not discharge at people's faces." --on a kitchen fire extinguisher
@3010. "You do it on purpose," she says, "to make more look stupid. I am not stupid. I have read several books." --Naseem, _Midnight's Children_
@3012. "Selfish? Narrow-minded? Well, perhaps; but excusably so, in my opinion. After all, one is not born every day." --_Midnight's Children_
@3013. "You complete fools! Brothers of cockroaches! Sons of transvestites!" --Doctor Schaapsteker, _Midnight's Children_
@3014. "That was the day on which taxes were raised and tax thresholds simultaneously lowered; my father flung down the /Times of India/ with a violent gesture and glared around him...'It's like going to the bathroom!' he exploded, cryptically... 'You raise your shirt and lower your trousers!'" --Saleem's father, _Midnight's Children_
@3016. He issued a proclamation explaining that the car represented the future, and must be allowed to pass; the people ignored the notice, although it was pasted to shop-fronts and walls and even, it is said, to the sides of cows....The third notice, which was adorned with a gory drawing, said that the car would henceforth run down anybody who failed to obey its horn...."No trouble; the car is respected now. Progress has occurred." --_Midnight's Children_
@3017. "In a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case." --_Midnight's Children_
@3018. "But what I learned from the Widow's Hand is that those who would be gods fear no one so much as other potential deities; and that, that and that only, is why we, the magical children of midnight, were hated feared destroyed by the Widow, who was not only Prime Minister of India but also aspired to be Devi, the Mother-goddess in her most terrible aspect." --_Midnight's Children_
@3019. "Parvati-the-witch, by marrying me, fell victim to the curse of violent death that hangs over all my people...I do not know...whether [Shiva] left her to the bulldozers...because now the machines of destruction were in their element, and the little hovels of the shanty-town were slipping sliding crazily beneath the force of the irresistible creatures, huts snapping like twigs, the little paper parcels of the puppeteers and the magic baskets of the illusionists were being crushed into a pulp; the city was being beautified, and if there were a few deaths, if a girl with eyes like saucers and a pout of grief upon her lips fell beneath the advancing juggernauts, well, what of it." --_Midnight's Children_
@3020. "A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
@3022. "With a good book, all delays are short." --me
@3028. "What's more, researchers found those who reported sexting in the past six months were four to seven times more likely to also engage in other sexual behaviors."
Oh really?
@3032. "According to the science of numerology..."
Some science.
@3036. "I don't know about you folks, but if I had 48 bombs in my car, I would be sure to drive as carefully as possible and not speed."
@3037. "Relying on a dizzying array of symbols ('sigils') for even basic stuff, Perl code is utterly opaque. We already have a set of symbols we use to communicate meaning - they're called 'words.'"
@3047. "Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat." --(attrib. to) Albert Einstein
@3055. I know. The *American* way to fix this is just to spend more than I have. It's easy.
@3056. "You're a sophomore, don't think about your future." --#overheard in the library
@3059. "I don't *wanna* go to the library." --#overheard in the hall during finals
@3067. "For Paperwork Reduction Act Notice, see the separate instructions."
@3070. "All [of Julius'] schemes were cancelled by his assassination." --Suetonius, _The Twelve Caesars_
@3086. "Faculty/Staff/Copier Room"
The place where the copiers relax and eat lunch?
@3088. There's going to be a presentation on campus about the experiences of survivors from modern wars. Rather unfortunately, it's being held in the room called "Valhalla"...
@3089.
At lunch, someone looking at a sign on the table:
"Reserved for Spanish Interim Lunches."
(flipping sign) "Or Pasta Salad with Basil Vinaigrette. Take your pick."
@3090. "Paper syncs with everything." --_Mindhacker_
@3092.
"Like earlier horse-phones..."
(http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/25/252.html)
@3099. "The solution came when she asked me to check that the 30 amp twist and lock plug was securely seated in the wall outlet. Turns out, since there was no 30 amp outlet in the room, they had cut the plug off and put a 15 amp plug in its place."
@3100. "It just hasn't worked the same since I dropped it in that cup of coffee."
@3104. Apparent Roman superstition: when your ears are ringing, a conversation about you is taking place (at which you are not present).
I like this quite a bit, actually.
@3105. Waltz, dumb nymph, for quick jigs vex.
@3107. "You know what would be really awesome? Two monocles." --#overheard on campus
@3115. "STOIC NERO (a fictional construct)" --column on the whiteboard in Great Con
@3122. "In truth, though, we already know what we need to do, and we have for a long time. We just don't like the answers." --_The Conundrum_
@3123. "Forget all that. Just tell me what to buy." --_The Conundrum_
January 20, 2014
@3125. "Discontinue Starvation and Put Away Your Dumbbells" --spam email headline
@3126. "'Automating comes from the roots 'auto-', meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing.'" --xkcd 1319 alt text
@3133. "Where are my glasses? ...Oh, they're on my face." --me, too many times
@3135. "Requiring a judge's order for searches, however, would appeal to many privacy advocates, but intelligence leaders say such a change is needless, cumbersome, and will slow investigations."
It would also, you know, follow the law.
@3136. "Either you know what you're doing or you broke GTK theming and don't know how to fix it." --IT staff member looking at my laptop screen (CB9.39)
@3137. Soren uses ANKI! It's super effective! (CB9.59)
@3138. "Call me naïve, but I was expecting there to be at least some *music* in the *music* folder we checked out from the *music* library." --CB9.59-60
@3143. "What's wrong with me going out of state? Come on, Mom, you went to *Greece*." --#overheard in the vestibule of the library (phone conversation)
January 21, 2014
@3146. "A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that announces that the country is in a state of emergency." --Wikipedia
@3148. "If you can comment out code and your program still works, then yes, that code was optional." --StackOverflow user
@3149. I find it rather amusing that Simple has a big "+" button at the top of the app (for depositing checks or transferring money). It makes good intuitive sense, but it's still pretty funny to have a button that you push to get more money.
@3150. "[Perl] combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript."
January 22, 2014
@3157. "But a lot of people were divine, weren't they, back in the day?" --Maria
@3159. "First-Class Mail prices are the same regardless of how far the mail travels. That's a great deal!" --USPS
Uh, no, that depends entirely on where you're sending it. Basic mathematics?
@3160. "The simplest [logic gate] is the NOT gate, which takes a single input and gives a single output. It's like a bratty child. When the input is true, it produces an output of false. When the input is false, it produces true."
@3164. "It's about giving freedom to the code." / "I dunno about you, but I've never had any code I've written pass a Turing test then demand emancipation." --exchange on Slashdot
@3165. "RMS has a distressing habit of being proven right."
@3166. "I know, I'll print my reference sheet in Webdings." --me
@3171. "If I wanted an app to nag me about being happy, I'd use the phone app and call my mom." --Lifehacker comment
@3175. My in-tray is now empty. Although that's because I dumped it into a box.
@3177. "The TSA claims that theft [of travelers' electronic devices] isn't widespread, since *only* 1 in 200 officers have been terminated for stealing."
@3180. "Normally, at the point of the discussion where someone states that he or she is 'out of here,' I would go on discussing the topic instead of commenting on this person's contributions to it. But, apparently, you are *not* out of here, and so I try to understand what your problem with a forum is where everybody tries to help you, even after you insulted them. That one of us gave an insult back...should not really make you wonder." --forum response of the month
(Update 2021-02-05: I thought about this randomly today and think it may in fact be my favorite forum post ever. It's snarky, epitomizes the nastiness internet discussions can end up mired in, and is highly memorable.)
@3181. "I don't care about backups, I only care about restores."
@3191. Tried to download a zip of music (Philharmonia concert recordings). Firefox identified the file as 17 EB and said it would be 657936775 days to completion (at one point; it varied by several thousands of years as the instantaneous download speed changed).
@3202. "What is ephemera?" --advertisement on St. Olaf TV
@3206. There's something in Lost Scriptures titled "The Epistle of the Apostles." I'm sorry, that just sounds hilarious. (It sounds like a goofy Dr. Seuss book.)
@3209. I've noticed that when I get up early, I'm invariably quiet and careful to respect people who are still sleeping, but when I stay up late, I'm often loud and obnoxious (unintentionally). It's like in the evening, you naturally assuming everyone else is still awake. This kind of does explain why people are so rude late at night sometimes (besides the times when they're drunk, but I'm not just talking about those times). I'm not sure if it's something about having just gotten up versus being tired and soon to go to bed, or something intrinsic about the evening versus the morning, or what.
{BL #2918}
@3214. This sounds like an aphorism (said by Eric at the library desk):
"You can't put pancakes in a panini maker."
@3215. Research shows that people tend to cheat only as much as they can without realizing they're cheating.
@3219. "I stomp in puddles, I roll my windows down in the rain, and I print my name. God, it's good being an adult." --Lifehacker commenter
January 29, 2014
@3226. "I shouldn't sing in the library." --me
@3229. "There. Timothy gives us offensive texts when we need them for speeches." --me
@3230. "Oh. Revelation isn't a gospel." --me
@3231. My magstripe had stopped working, so I called and asked for a new one and said if there was a small fee that was no problem. The response: "You can request as many cards as you'd like free of charge with Discover."
I wonder what they'd do if I called every day for the next month and asked for a new card.
@3235. "It's unfortunately not very difficult to have a child." --CB6.12
@3237. "According to a news release from the American Cancer Society (ACS), the diagnosis of cancer in children and adolescents is 'a life-altering event' for them 'as well as their families.'"
No shit.
@3238. "However I'm not a programmist." --#ankiforums
{BL #8408}
@3245.
any comments on good beginning strategy
don't die
s-vektori: don't die;
s-vektori: don't die
@3246.
the EXORCIST, man
fucking*
that's the most confusing use of this* notation i've ever seen
@3254. "Media collection fractured" --#ankiforums subject
@3255. "I literally have not left this room all day. Oh, I went to the microwave to make tea this morning." --me
@3256. "What kind of college doesn't give out complimentary annual planners?" --ridiculous trolling post about STO on some forum
@3257. "Please remember to leave the vehicle ready for the next member. Clean up any trash or spills, return seats to upright position, remove keys from ignition, and ___turn off the lights and engine.___" --Enterprise Car Share terms of use
@3258. I have four videos in my YouTube "watch later" list. They're completely random, and I'm pretty sure they're all things I've put there by clicking that little button by mistake.
@3263. "You're probably not supposed to sit on top of the washing machine, but who cares? There's not a sign saying 'don't sit on the washing machine.'" --me
@3264. Changelog for a Morse code app: "Resolved an issue where z is sometimes displayed as q."
@3265. "In addition, you can expect to find 0.000729 wands of wishing on average in the Minetown quality apparel and accessories shop." --NetHackWiki
@3268. I think this wins the contest for most clearly fake etymology: "quisquis" and "couscous" are related.
@3272. "I'm a leárned person."
February 10, 2014
@3273. "All we would like is just the code and information of the Anki Web build, and we will take it and make it our own." --#ankiforums
That's all. Nothing much.
@3274. "We do not know what to do. We would like to petition God, but we have not got his address. He is the only person we have not petitioned yet."
@3277. "The invitation has a type-o."
@3278. "I wrote a picture on that in high school." --#overheard on campus
@3282. There is a proposed method of creating a pseudorandom character sequence by having a user unfamiliar with vi seated in front of an open editor and asking him to exit the program.
@3283. My section leaders scheduled our sectional during Sunday morning chapel. Seriously? I mean, I understand if you don't go to church, but it's kind of common knowledge that a sizable portion of the population does this on Sunday mornings. You just don't schedule things on Sundays before noon, I thought that was common sense...
@3288. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bVAoVlFYf0
"Discrimination law is probably the queen."
"Give up on the rise for radiation."
"Tune in and slam the door."
"Give up / You cannot do it back in."
"Let us very angry."
@3289. Inspired by that, I attempted a few corruptions of my own here, which follow. Mostly from my Maudiverse letters of late, which are hilarious because they use unusual wording and a sort of lyric style that does even more to throw off the translator than usual.
@3290. "If you kiss your child, or your wife, says he is kissing a man, then [] when she dies, she will not be broken" --Google Translate corruption of Epictetus
@3293.
English -> Spanish -> French -> German -> Latin -> English translation of "The Springs beckon. All is ready; come and be cleansed and refreshed.":
"In your six aircraft. Everything is ready for cleaning and at my coming they are refreshed."
@3305. "Finally, the great customer service of Comcast combines with the competitive pricing of Time Warner to create a single convenient entity to steer public policy with targeted campaign funding." --Slashdot comment, on the merger of aforementioned companies
@3306. "On a scale of one to ten, I would give Comcast a one. I would give TWC a zero. So a Comcast takeover could be a win for consumers."
@3308. "You know something? That virus is illegal in all 50 states except one. Michigan. And you know who wrote it? I did."
@3313. "What kind of cameras do you have?" / "Umm...ones that work." --STO library desk worker
@3314. Lewis' Law: "Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism."
@3336. "Well, as long as you kill me out of love, I think we're good." --Great Con discussion
February 18, 2014
@3342. "The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." --Adam Savage
@3351. Was doing the sociology reading by Wright C. Mills and caught myself considering how well I liked the "translation" in the middle. I've been reading so much translated stuff in the past semester that I've practically forgotten the possibility that the words on the page might actually be the ones the author selected...
@3356. "Uh...bears can't read."
{BL #9997}
@3357. "You can't print double-sided transparencies?"
@3358. "Hey, I love Microsoft Word! By which I mean Word 5.1 for Macintosh, which next month will be old enough to vote."
@3359. "So no, LibreOffice is not a solution; it's a crappier version of a terrible program."
@3366. "I expect a water bottle to be able to survive contact with water. This one didn't." --Amazon review
@3367. The Helpdesk has a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 and a 16MB Sony MemoryStick, among other things, but it does not have any paperclips.
@3368. "Pictures courtesy of GOOGLE" --credits in a music video
@3375. "The NSA is the only branch of government that actually listens to people."
@3380. American Airlines To Phase Out Complimentary Cabin Pressurization
@3383.
Additionally, the medieval concept of time was that of a spiral continuously growing upwards, the assumption being that history repeats itself, albeit never in precisely the same manner. Within the spiralling form it is possible to look both forwards or backwards along a curve and view the course of events almost horizontally (or as a continuous ring), or follow certain points from one curve to another, vertically. This results in the past being remarkably close to the present.
February 27, 2014
@3385. "I had to tell the manager that I burnt up something in the microwave. I didn't tell him that it was socks. I didn't want him to think I was stupid."
@3387. On this subjunctive forms Latin reference sheet, it's evident that whoever made it applied all the macrons using little lines from the drawing tools in Microsoft Word -- they're not quite on-center, and there are still tittles on the i's, with the macrons overlapping. It kind of makes me laugh realizing that someone must have spent the time to drag all those lines into place instead of learning how to input diacritics pröpērlý...
@3388. "Larger fonts, smaller Americans" --headline about a change in "nutrition facts" panels
@3389. Prof. Reece told us a story about Dr. Felland, the university's first classics professor, known as the "absentminded professor." One day he showed up to speak in Chapel with his suit but no tie. (At the time, of course, this was a big deal -- and would be a little bit silly even today.) People must have been looking at him funny or something, because he noticed, and without missing a beat, he announced, "The opening hymn for today will be 'Blest Be the Tie that Binds.'" Then he ran back to his office and got a tie.
@3396. "You can't sell movies you haven't seen, without knowing if they're any good. It's the law!"
@3397. "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." --Churchill
@3403.
It's funny, I feel like there'd be a U-shaped graph if you were to plot "amount of knowledge someone has" against "acceptability of saying 'I don't know.'"
People with very little knowledge are usually okay saying they don't know. People with a lot amount of knowledge are typically more secure with what they know, and are willing to admit when they don't. The dangerous ones are the ones in the middle. My experience is that the people who are willing to overcome that insecurity and keep asking questions will push through to become experts, and those that are too scared to admit their ignorance will put up a bigger and bigger front, never growing in their abilities.
A lot of that last group become the infamously inept middle managers that people joke about.
--Lifehacker comment
@3411. Speaking of which, I was walking across campus behind two people the other day, and one of them said that Latin was like "math for words." I kind of like that.
@3433. "Somebody made a mistake, and that somebody was me." --me
@3434. "This is a three-handed procedure." --me
@3435. "Is homework more important than God? Huh? Huh?" --#overheard on campus on the way to Chapel, when someone said he wasn't going
@3437. Also, they put up little signs that say "tree work ahead" about ten feet before where they're working, which are kind of superfluous when there's a thirty-foot-tall cherry-picker there.
March 9, 2014
@3438. "Deck progress leads a double life" --#ankiforums subject
@3439. "The least wrong thing we can say about God is that God is love." --someone at St. John's monastery; see also #2919
{BL §SingingLessWrong}
@3441. Bullshit of the Day: "I don't think there's a company on Earth that cares more deeply about human rights than Apple does." --Tim Cook (CEO)
@3442. Dr. Aspaas told us when we were at the choir event last weekend that we should follow the "bathroom rule," which says that you should not criticize anyone else at an event until you've left. The name comes from the idea of going into the bathroom with someone you know and complaining about someone who then turns out to be in a stall listening to you.
(Cf. §BathroomRule.)
@3460. "One more time, officer, I am NOT calling or texting! I am uploading a picture of my citation to Pinterest!"
@3461. "It's hard to hear music from that distance, particularly when your ears were just hit by (a) a sonic boom, and (b) pieces of a rapidly disintegrating stereo." --What If
March 13, 2014
@3462. I merged the two pronunciations of Dvorak today: /D'vórahk/.
@3467. I was relieved earlier this year when we were reading the _Confessions_ (which I really liked, BTW) to find that Augustine mentions lying in bed in the morning and not wanting to get up. If it was a problem for Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, I think we can safely bet it's a universal human problem.
@3470. Someone on #nethack said the phrase "Astral Antshield" to describe the phenomenon where summon insects actually helps you because it blocks more powerful monsters from getting to you. I think that has to be a #bandname or something of the sort.
@3472. I went to make a copy of a document that was on really crunched paper this evening and remarked on how really amazing photocopiers are when you stop to think about it. You shove some paper in the slot at the top, push a few buttons, and in a few moments an exact duplicate of what you put in shows up in the bottom tray. Would probably have seemed like the coolest thing ever to someone from a century ago.
@3473. "I love you, man, you saved me a lot. god bless you. happy new year. happy birthday.....happy for your life" --#ankiforums
@3476. "I think you own this one." --to someone returning books at the library desk
@3490. "I'm just pulling code out of my ass here and hoping it works." --me (CB15.47)
@3494. "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do." --Mac Andreesen, 2012 (creator of Netscape)
@3495. "Well, if there's so much rubbish [on the Web], if it's rubbish, don't read it. Go read something else." --Tim Berners-Lee
@3496. "'Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash,' television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly current affairs show....Kiselyov was named by President Vladimir Putin in December as the head of a new state news agency whose task will be to portray Russia in the best possible light."
Doing a great job at that, ain't he?
@3500. "Conservatives who actually conserve are about as rare these days as liberals who actually liberate." --JMG
@3501. Having recursive deja vu: thinking I remember a previous time that seems oddly similar when I was having deja vu. (This happens to me with some regularity...)
@3503. Extreme Multitasking: Saw a guy in the Rolvaag bathroom texting/phone-using at the urinal. I mean seriously, how long does it take to pee? Like 25 seconds? Is that really time you can't spare?
{BL #7649}
@3506. "The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about computers, or that computers are somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else."
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
@3511. "If someone wants to sell wine and to sell the use of wine, he sells the same thing twice or sells what does not exist---a clear sin against justice." --Aquinas, (on Politics and Ethics), p.74
The RIAA should take a look at this.
@3514. "Rocks do calculus when they roll down hills, since they always make sure to only move a distance which exactly matches the integral over time of their velocity. Circles do calculus too, since they always choose their area such that it corresponds to the integral over their radius of a circumference." --Slashdot comment
@3520. "These are automatic cookies." --me
(i.e. processed)
@3521. "Rather than have one person mocked for asking a serious question and another person flattered for answering with a smart lie, I would, if I did not know the true answer, simply say I do not know." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (265)
@3522. "People want a transgressive knowledge of others' lives, but are blissfully ignorant of what might change their own." --Augustine, /Confessions/
@3523. "The memory must, instead, be a kind of mental belly." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (224)
@3524. "All desire to take joy in the truth. I have met many who enjoy lying to others, but none who enjoy being lied to themselves." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (232)
@3525. "Who will help me to rejoin you [God]? Should I employ angelic agencies? If so, by what approach? What forms should I submit?" --Augustine, /Confessions/ (252)
@3526. "...yet all we aspired to was some carefree worldly joy--the very thing this beggar had already gained and we might never gain at all." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (117)
@3527. "A man honest in small things is honest in large ones." --quot. in Augustine, /Confessions/ (124)
@3528. "There is not a way to predict the future, though human hunches often have the luck of the draw. If men say enough, some of what they say will happen, not because they foreknew it--they just chanced on it by not keeping silent." --Augustine, /Confessions/, on astrology (142)
@3529. "There is not only no evil in you, there is no evil in anything you made....Some things, because they do not fit with others, are thought to be evil, though they are good where they do fit, and good in themselves." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (151)
@3530. "Till now you used to claim that you could not escape encumbrance with hollow things because you were not sure of the right course; but now you are sure, and yet are still encumbered--while wings have long since lifted free men's shoulders, who did not spend ten years and more considering if they should fly." --Augustine, /Confessions/ (174)
@3531. "For monks who in a week's time say less than the full psalter with the customary canticles betray extreme indolence and lack of devotion in their service." --Rule of St. Benedict chptr. 18
@3537. "You may have noticed we are running *a little bit late*. We are running about five hours late." --Amtrak conductor's actual words
@3539. "No! Don't thank me, fix the problem!"
{BL #6009}
@3545. Output volume at 100%, still couldn't hear anything...turns out I put my headphones on my head but didn't plug them in.
@3552. "What makes a frog romantic?" --me, reading a description in a catalog
@3553. "Having dismissed the captain's wife, Stepan Arkadyich picked up his hat and paused, wondering whether he had forgotten anything. It turned out that he had forgotten nothing, except what he had wanted to forget -- his wife." --_Anna Karenina_, p.9
{BL CB36.12}
@3554. "'To the Anglia, then,' said Stepan Arkadyich, choosing the Anglia because he owed more in the Anglia than in the Hermitage. He therefore considered it not nice to avoid that hotel."
@3556. "'When I was young, I was in love with a beadle,' said Princess Miagky. 'I don't know whether that helped me or not.'" (138)
@3557. "In fact, Kitty kept her new views and feelings hidden from her mother. She kept them hidden, not because she did not respect or love her mother, but because she was her mother. She would sooner have revealed them to anyone than to her mother." (225)
@3558. "Sergei Ivanovich...liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation." (240)
@3559. "Do you think they'll ask us what's *in* the books?" --on a student's note found inside a used book, regarding an upcoming exam
@3560. "Student loans haven't made education "affordable," they've made education accessible. That's a huge difference. Once you access your education, you still have to pay for it. And if you've happened to access more education than you can afford, well, you're going to have a hell of a time "accessing" other life goals: like a house, a car, or a modicum of financial security. "
@3562. #overheard someone on the South Shore train asking the person next to em if it wouldn't be nice to live right next to the train station because "you wouldn't have to worry about parking." The other person replied no, because of the noise and because "hooligans" from the station would always be around. Have these people ever heard of living within walking distance of but not right next to a place?
@3564. "We do not foresee any emergencies today." --conductor on the Empire Builder
@3565. An actual Metra station name seen from the train: "The Glen of North Glenview Station"
@3566. For some reason one of the coach cars has a sign on the door that says "Please wait to be seated." I wondered if I'd somehow gone the wrong way to the lounge car when I ran into it...
@3567. According to the Amtrak tracker, the 7/27 train will be arriving on time, but the 807 (you know, the one attached to the back of this train) will be arriving 32 minutes early.
(Over the course of the day, the earliness margin for 807 has been gradually diminishing, but the 7/27 remains on time.)
@3569. "2. It is not okay to threaten to rape people in this group."
You know you have a great group on the internet when this is one of the rules (number two, moreover).
@3570. "If two people make the same mistake and one of them is a bank, the person who is not a bank is wrong. It's the american way."
@3572. Read about a guy on the news today who was accepted to all eight Ivy League schools. I couldn't help but note that I did better than him on the SAT. :-)
@3576. Benefits of Latin for lazy people: If you forget to write a word, you can just drop it somewhere else in the sentence and it will still be right.
@3581. Reading an otherwise very boring book on Chartres Cathedral (it just goes on and on and basically just describes every single window in prose, with tiny reproductions and a very few actually interesting blown up ones) for Great Con. There's a window that has all the months and signs of the zodiac, and three of them have the wrong month inscribed. How do you do that?
@3587. Thought that there are two kinds of abbreviation, syntactic and semantic. Syntactic abbreviation is writing the same word or morpheme in a shorter way, like "p." instead of "page", or like Speedwords taken in an English shorthand style. (The words known in the latter have a tendency to creep into and change one's way of writing if writing from one's head, at least for me, but let's assume transcribing already-written text.) Semantic abbreviation is writing things in a different way and leaving out words. So a semantic abbreviation of the previous sentence could be "Semantic -- _differently_ (fewer/different words)." Of course in all likelihood you'd combine them ("Semantic -- _diff._ (</diff. words)")
I'm not sure exactly why this theory is important except that maybe there's a difference in the intelligibility of the two types either to others vs. oneself or over time. Or something of the kind. Thought I should explain it while I was thinking about it though.
@3588.
Running total of voicemail messages on my room phone:
- 5 blank
- 0 with content
@3591. "The part that the 'in'-group sings is very simple. The reason for this is that the 'in'-group, itself, is very simple." --Peter, Paul & Mary live
@3592. So apparently when you share your own item on Facebook, you get messages like "Soren Bjornstad shared Soren Bjornstad's album" and (even worse) "Soren Bjornstad shared your album."
@3594. Chen just had his bike stolen...a couple of days after winning a competition for designing a bike lock.
@3595. "Don't forget to pay your seller." --eBay "tip"
@3596. In a recent test, 84% of Americans couldn't correctly locate Ukraine on a map, despite all the recent coverage. Sigh. (See also #2591 -- even worse!)
@3599. "The only real solid advice I've heard [on staying hydrated] is that if you're thirsty, you should drink some water." --What If
@3602. Had a thought that (in my opinion) there's hardly anything that's more fun to sing than a really good bass line. (But it's also pretty easy to make a horrifically boring one.)
@3603. My STO username rendering of "bjornsta" has now caused me to write my last name as "Bjornsta" on more than one occasion...
@3604. Apparently hippopotamuses injure more people worldwide than any other animal.
@3607. "The Attorney General will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!" --Louie Gohmert
(See also https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4632. He doesn't appear to be the first and it might have been intentional.)
@3610. "Green tea is the healthiest beverage on the planet."
What about water? All being necessary for life and all.
@3611. "Green tea may reduce your risk of dying"
Yeah, I bet. (#3373, #2129)
@3612. "If I based every software purchasing decision on whether or not the company CEO was a prick, I wouldn't have many products left to choose from." --Slashdot comment
@3616. "As a general rule, I refrain from writing about my blog on my blog because regular readers of my blog come to my blog to read my blog, not to read about it." --Benjamin Studebaker
@3618. "Sir, I have a doubt, please help me out" --#ankiforums
@3619. I just tried to turn up the volume on my music because I wanted more light...
@3620. "If we want to hear you sing, we'll come to a concert!" --Ellingson 2nd floor resident, yelling at the Limestones, who were performing in our stairwell during quiet hours
@3622. Also, there's this metaphor earlier in the chapter (not invented by the authors of the book) likening the process of a country growing economically to "the journey of an airplane." In it, however, the airplane never lands. Note to him: there's that whole nasty thing where "what goes up must come down."
April 17, 2014
@3623. "What is it, dayswithoutrage.com?" --#overheard from the back of the IT Helpdesk
@3624. "Sometimes I forget I'm the mayor." --Mayor Costas of Valparaiso
{BL CB30.52}
@3625. "They could also write in that if I click 'like' on a cereal facebook page I would have to kill myself, but that doesn't make it legally binding." --Slashdot comment
@3628. I have a note that mentioned an anecdote to tell in CB or somewhere else, when I had my shirt on backwards in church. It's kind of sloppily written, and I keep reading "shit backwards" whenever I look at it. What would that even be?
@3629. "The other [student] played a Mozart violin concerto and sounded like he could have been really good if he had actually practiced." --CB1.22
@3638. Just had the thought that tabbing up to the top of my document to revise my thesis statement is sort of like coding in some ways. You make a change one place, and then (sometimes) you go back to the initial foundations to make it cover the changes you've made and all work together. There's actually quite a lot of logic in literary research, come to think of it.
@3639. Using LaTeX, I'm not really sure about page requirements anymore, because I have this line spacing parameter I can just tweak for a good half-page in a 7-page essay for a 0.1 change in the spacing parameter. And it's not like I'm exactly cheating, as the default is actually significantly smaller than the Word defaults, and presumably every program has a slightly different default.
@3646. "Safety, as you know, is paramount..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircHCzcg3WY
(New link as the old one is broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkkPiilF_mI)
The most awesome part about this is that it's literally the exact second when he says the word "safety" that the train appears in the distance. The most perfect ironic (or heck, comedic) timing you could possibly have.
@3648. "Wednesday. I think you're you....Unsealing kale!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23H8IdaS3tk
@3651. "TEST Tornado Warning expired"
I'm glad the test tornado is gone. Those can be nasty.
@3658. "I'm having a problem with my computer." --caller to the IT Helpdesk, explaining her call
@3665. I got called over to the admissions office to fix a paper jam on a huge Laserjet. They call the printer "Sassy" (it even has a sticky note on it saying that that's what this printer is named, along with its network name).
@3666. I had a dream in which I was sitting at the IT Helpdesk and a lady of about fifty (not faculty/staff/student, it seemed) came up to the window with tons of plates from the caf, probably four or five separate ones, containing partly eaten food, and started ranting about the things that were wrong with each one. I think she was allergic to the contents of some of them and hadn't been properly warned, others were no good, and so on and so on. I told her she could perhaps file a complaint with the caf. She was infuriated by this: wasn't this what she was already doing, and I can't accept her complaint? This is unacceptable! To which I said, "This is actually the IT Helpdesk." (Shouldn't that have been obvious?) At this she was somewhat embarrassed and asked me where she could go to file the complaint, and I directed her to the manager's office immediately to the right of the entrance when you face it, and if nobody's there maybe she could fill out a comment card and stick it up on the board. After she left, I turned to the other person on shift with me and said, "Just when I thought I'd seen it all...."
@3667. I discovered that all the letters in "UM YA YA" are perfectly symmetrical: when I wear my UM YA YA T-shirt and look at myself in the mirror, it clearly reads "AY AY MU."
{BL #5315}
@3668. "Saying things in capslock doesn't make it more true, it just makes you look stupid."
@3675. Teen Boys Losing Virginity Earlier and Earlier, Report Teen Boys
@3676. Getting a blazing download speed of 16.6KB/sec on the download of an email attachment...
@3677. "That'd be a great emergency room report. Broken sternum, because I tossed a multitool in the air for no reason and it landed there." --me
@3680. "[Smart guns] should just do something analogous to what smoke detectors do. Like every few minutes when the battery gets low, automatically fire off a round." --Slashdot comment
@3681. After reading my translation of the Canterbury Tales for about an hour, I'm walking around feeling like I should be thinking in iambic pentameter...
https://xkcd.com/79/
May 2, 2014
@3684. "Whoever decides what to put in the headers at the top of pages -- the chapter number would be really helpful. And if there's not enough space, you can remove the title of the book from one of the spots. I know what book I'm reading, thank you very much." --me
{BL #7213}
@3686. "Diesel is an expensive non-renewable fuel source whereas electricity is a cheaper and infinite source of energy."
Clearly this guy knows better than everyone else: electricity is infinite! What are all these stupid people doing talking about energy problems?
@3687. In 2004, there were nearly 2 million knives taken from passengers by airport security.
@3690. "I've seen greater than or equal to ten penises today." --#overheard from outside the door of my dorm room (a man)
{BL #6695}
@3696. "The problem is, you're being ostentatious by using the word 'ostentatious.'" --me
Matter of fact, it fits into that category of words that are themselves what they describe, like 'blend' or 'pentasyllabic.' (There's apparently a name for this: "autological.")
{BL #4662}
@3697. More of them: http://www.segerman.org/autological.html
@3698. Also, "word."
This is a special one: a sort of "identity autology."
@3704. No matter how many times I walk over the section of uneven carpet on the second floor of the library, I *still* forget it's there and trip over it.
@3706. "I've never heard anyone say 'Fiddlesticks! Sorry guys, but I need to go because my phone just reached 42% charge and I really need to keep it between 40% and 80% to maximize battery life.' Perhaps my friends and I just hate batteries." --Lifehacker comment
@3709. Wasting time while I should be writing sociology response papers playing with 'tdfsb', a 3d filesystem browser.
@3712. I'm really amazed by how many different comment characters different markup and programming languages use. Could it have really been that hard to have standardized them at least roughly at the beginning?
May 8, 2014
@3713. "Vimscript isn't going to help you much if you wind up fiddling with your editor all day instead of working, so it's important to strike a balance."
{BL MW "Writing an MLA-format paper in LaTeX"}
@3714. "Terminating NOW (this may take a few seconds)." --offlineimap
@3717. "That was the dumbest late-night idea in the history of the world." --me
@3718. I just discovered "vimgrep" today--super-awesome! Very handy for projects with many similar source files like coding or maybe writing projects. (Okay, it's not quite accurate to say that I "discovered it today"--I'd heard of it before, but I'd never actually tried it until today, when I discovered that it was really awesome and started using it constantly.)
@3720. I notice I tend to write shorter paragraphs (in terms of word count) when the width of the input box for the text is narrower. I guess it makes sense, since the easiest way to judge the length is by its height on the screen, but that makes it a bit hard to figure out what the appropriate length is.
@3724. "I predict that within fifty years, not only will every electrical appliance have a clock in it, but they will also have so many flashing LEDs that we will no longer need lamps." --article on electrical outlets
@3725. "Then your house will burn down and houses are very expensive and sometimes have family members inside them." --same article
@3728. "The souls in heaven will be punished forever." --found while proofing my paper on purgatory
May 12, 2014
@3729. Our library doesn't have a copy of the /MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing./ That is *ridiculous.* We have the puny little "MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers," all the content of which is freely available online, and which never contains answers to the tough questions. But not one copy of the actual style manual?
They say the puny book is for undergraduate students, but it in no way is sufficient.
@3730. Cullom fried our microwave by trying something from the internet and microwaving a potato for 20 minutes. (Add that to the mental 'things never to do' list...) That was a $200 microwave, and nobody in the dorm can heat anything up now.
This is also the second ruined microwave this semester. Although the first one was a crappy little thing and it broke when someone cracked the carousel into two pieces and we decided it wasn't worth repairing, so this time was definitely worse.
I'm not sure whether to be more annoyed at the fact that somebody stupidly put a potato in the microwave for 20 minutes unattended or the fact that a $200 piece of equipment can be ruined by cooking a potato for too long.
@3732. "I feel kind of bad about cutting the part about how Kjartan would have been the best, but I needed some space and it was kind of an aside to the thesis. But it was a much more interesting part than some of this shit. Yes, I called my paper shit." --revision message for an old paper
@3736. "If you want interviews that tell the truth about what really happened, you should just give up now." --Chuck Huff, psychology professor at STO
@3741. Budget Woes Force Heaven To Reduce Eternal Life to 500 Billion Years
@3743. "Ahah its always funny to see that people have their own problems in life, and how it can be so much different. Some fight for peace and others are worried about the missing title of an album." --YouTube comment
@3744. TA: "The first line begins, 'When George Washington wrote the Gettysburg Address, he discussed women's rights.'"
May 15, 2014
@3745. Ran into a news article about a study finding that people who drink lots of energy drinks also often smoke, use screens extensively, and drink lots of sugary drinks. Not rocket science, but still worth reporting. The ridiculous thing was the title under which it was reported: "Stop Consuming Energy and Sports Drinks." Because apparently, drinking energy drinks and smoking is a causal relationship, and you wouldn't want to end up starting to smoke, would you?
@3747. When Cantorei was singing on Sunday, Dr. Bobb conducted them from the organ, while playing it, with his left hand. So he played most of the accompaniment with just one hand and his feet. He did drop his left hand and hit a few keys in places where he needed a couple more fingers, then he went right back to conducting.
@3749. In RMS, there are the dumbest bathrooms I've seen in quite some time. First off, they're single-person bathrooms, but they're men's and women's on alternating floors. You'd think it would be more efficient just to make them all unisex. Then, inside each one, there is a single stall and a sink (no urinals in the men's). The (accessible) stall takes up more than half of the bathroom space, with the remainder being just barely enough to access the sink and still swing the door open. As a matter of fact, though it's an "accessible"-sized stall, I have quite some doubt that a person in a wheelchair would actually fit in the part of the bathroom that's not the stall in order to get *into* it. I cannot fathom why they have the stall there in the first place; the only thing I could think of would be that it could slightly increase efficiency by letting one person wash his or her hands while someone else started using the toilet, but there isn't enough space in the rest of the bathroom for anyone to wait, so you wouldn't actually know when the first person was done.
@3752. I noticed (and realized I'd noticed before but long since forgotten) that our milk machines in the caf say that the milk comes from a "farmers' coopertive." I think they need a partnership with the spelling cooperative.
@3754. We also had the idea that we should make a CS opera. Someone said that there would have to be a part about segfaults, and I said that what you should really do is just stop the music at random points and have someone say through a bullhorn "SEGMENTATION FAULT, CORE DUMPED."
@3768.
En Olavi proles!
Non credere noles;
Nobiscum cor priscum victuraque vis.
Quis nostrum non acer?
Quis vestrum non lacer?
Mox Equites istos accipiet Dis!
@3769. It's a very good thing Amazon lets you edit payment and shipping information after you clumsily hit the place order button...
@3770. "In fact, computers can't 'win' at anything, not until they can experience real joy in victory and sadness in defeat, a programming challenge that makes Go look like tic-tac-toe."
--http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/
@3771. "Is my ID just collateral?" --#overheard at the library circulation desk
@3772. "I'm a free woman. I just finished college." --#overheard at the library circulation desk
@3773. https://isitchristmas.com/
@3774. "...which would create a beam of photons a billion times more energetic than the speed of light."
That's like, "taller than a kilogram."
--CNET comment
@3777. "I am definitely not a woman." --marginalia (only a couple of weeks later!)
(Cf. #2047.)
@3780. I have an unusual distinction this year: I have not missed a single regularly scheduled class period, for any reason.
@3781. "I once heard an account from someone who worked on the Cassini-Huygens mission, where one of the designers pointed out that their spacecraft traveled to a target a billion kilometers away, and arrived within something like a second and a half of the scheduled time."
I think Amtrak needs to take a leaf out of their book...
@3782. I had a thought at lunch today that hand-writing an essay in a green book under time pressure has almost more in common with responding in conversation than with writing a formal essay. You basically only get one shot to say what you are going to say, with maybe a bit of pre-preparation.
@3787.
A co-worker (not an intern) was editing a perl script in production (at the time, we didn't have any other way to work on the system we'd inherited) and he removed a line in some perl code that said to print "PIG7" to the console. All that does is print the string PIG7 to the console on the machine it was running on, which should not matter to any code. Lines like that are usually used for debugging.
When he saved the file 15 minutes later, after making a few other modifications, the whole system came to a crashing halt. We're talking thousands of porn sites that were no longer making money.
It took us about an hour and a half, as we reverted change after change, [to figure out] that the PIG7 line was the key. It turns out that at some point in its history, somebody had use the output to the console as a trigger for another essential piece of code that had to run in order for everything to work. The entire operation hinged on that one little PIG7 string on the console.
Since that day, I refer to any narrow point of failure in a system, as a PIG7.
(Can anyone think of a dumber architecture than passing data between two web-server processes by printing it on the console?)
{BL CB61.44}
@3790. Injury codes: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2011/09/further-reactions-to-the-turtle-code.html
"Bitten by duck" "Primary blast injury of rectum" "Fall from non-moving motorized scooter" "Spacecraft explosion injuring occupant, initial encounter"
@3791. Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine
@3801. "Oh gosh, I have to read that movie." --me
@3803.
"Set an alarm for 7:15."
"Sorry, Soren, I can't do that. You're not listening to the Music app."
@3804. So the vacuum cleaner story (#3751) gets even better: I went down and asked Sofia if someone was using it. It's now broken, and they're providing Ellingson residents with a broom and dustpan to clean their carpets.
@3805. The broom evidently hasn't come back, and there's no other vacuum. I'm kind of stumped on how I'm supposed to clean my floor. Shane says to wait and hope that it comes back at some point. I'm not sure if I can be blamed for not being able to clean my floor when nothing is provided to me to clean it with.
@3809. "...saying the letters and numbers one at a time." --instructions for reading my reservation number to the Amtrak system over the phone
@3810. Somewhere in Minneapolis, at the top of a post was a sign that said "No Parking, Bus Stop" and some further information about the bus stop. Then, lower on the same post, was the clarification "Buses Stop Here."
@3813. Bus driver, trying to get us all back to the bus on time: "My mother always used to say, 'The difference between a traveler and a hitchhiker is five minutes.'"
@3814. Grandmother to five-year-old girl behind me on the bus (#overheard), trying to make out the text in a blurry picture: "Can you read that? Oh, you don't know how to read."
@3815. "Think carefully before you have children." --guy sitting next to me on the bus
@3816. I'm waiting for the South Shore at Van Buren station. The PA says, "All trains are on track 1." As if on cue, a Metra train pulls up on track 2.
@3821. "Friends don't let friends clap on one and three."
@3822. Trying to log into Simple and got this message: "Whoops! Sorry, we're having trouble right now." I don't mind occasional downtime, but I would wish it would at least give me a little more information, like "please try again in 10 minutes" or something. I have no idea what that really means except "can't do it"--do I just need to try again? down for 10 minutes? down for a week?
@3831. Remembering a news article I ran into a while back in which a university decided to do an audit of all their servers and network equipment, having not done so for a few years. When the network had been scanned and mapped, they realized there was one server that wasn't in any of their server rooms and they couldn't physically locate at all. After an extended investigation, they resorted to physically following the ethernet cable back from the switch, to discover that, during a renovation of the building it was located in, the construction guys had drywalled it in--still plugged in and connected to network and running normally. It had been in that state for several years already when they found it.
@3832. So I think I forgot to tell this story anywhere. I was out walking in the Natural Lands during finals. At about the turnoff onto the STOGROW trail, I noticed a plastic St. Olaf Bookstore bag lying on the ground. When I went to pick it up, I found it was extremely heavy and contained a second Target bag. Inside were *hundreds* of metal spoons. I just replaced the plastic where it had been before and went on my merry way, but that was a rather strange thing to find out there. (Everyone I've told this story to has now asked if they were caf spoons; I must confess that I didn't look closely enough to know, nor do I really have a good working model of what the caf spoons look like--I just pick them up and eat with them without really looking at them.)
@3834. I think I forgot to tell this story: Phin and Perrin both bought "new Core i7" processors on eBay for $100, from a seller in China who had zero ratings. They knew it was probably a scam, but figured since there was buyer protection they might as well try, since it'd be an unbelievably good deal if it turned out to be true. So one morning I walked into the Helpdesk. He had a bubble mailer of about the right size for a processor, which he'd gotten a tracking number for. Instead of the processor, though, there was a small wooden horse on a string. He said it was almost better than the real thing!
@3836. "Very few typographic arguments can match the intensity of that over whether there should be one space or two spaces after periods that end sentences. This practice is left over from typographers from the Victorian era, which was an unenlightened period in more ways than just typography. Corsets and mutilating anti-masturbatory devices were eventually phased out, but corn flakes and this poor habit have lived on." --_Design for Hackers_ appendix
@3838. "We trained two starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to fly in a wind tunnel whilst wearing respirometry masks."
@3839. "Note that you can't be convicted under this law unless you *knowingly* cause a nuclear explosion. But all I can say is I hope you have plenty of insurance, because that is some serious negligence, my friend." --_The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance_
@3842. Somewhere by the side of the road on the trip I saw a tow truck with a notation on the side: "23-Hour Towing." So which hour are they not available, and why?
@3843. "Oh, that means 'assignment.' I thought it was 'assassination.'" --me, reading some old notes
@3844. I saw a massive trailer in the campground with the name on the side "Ultra Lite Grand Touring." They just can't make up their mind whether they're going for light and small or great.
@3845. "They [the raccoons] will never get into *this.*" --#overheard in the campground (famous last words!)
@3846. "Daddy, you made a fire! Yaay!" --#overheard in the campground
@3847. On my hoodie, the tag advertises that the company has been around and making hoodies "since 2012." I'm sorry, you can't put a "since such-and-such a date" unless you're at least ten years old.
@3850. "Like, most of my toe got scraped off." --#overheard in the campground (one of several girls on bikes)
@3851. Great sign seen in a parking lot in Janesville: "Do Not Push Snow Here"
@3852. Hmm, I managed to typo and mount an external disk on /. I wonder what will happen...
@3853. Turns out nothing, in this situation at least. Except that it's not possible to unmount it (though its files aren't actually accessible anywhere while "mounted," so that's not too much of an issue).
@3857. "Use social media wisely -- only post information about your finances that you feel comfortable making public." --Discover website
No durrr.
@3858. Was noting the other day that typing is one of the few things I'm really basically an expert at. (Although proviso that this is typing on a computer--having just got my typewriter, I'm quite aware that by the standards of years ago, I'm quite a poor typist who is even continually making line spacing errors, even if I'm pretty fast.)
@3865. I saw a diagram on a tent of the way that you were supposed to fit the 6 people who supposedly could sleep in it. It said "sleeps 6" and had five people one way and one person perpendicular at their feet in the tiny amount of space that was left. It looked exactly like those diagrams you see of how they used to pack people into slave ships.
@3866. On another tent, it said in two different places, "fits 2 queen mattresses" and "sleeps 6". Since when do you put three people per queen mattress? That's like a perfect admission of how ridiculous those numbers are.
@3870. "This has other severe problems though, like totally broken keyboard focus and very strange effects on desktop changes or when the user raises other windows." --Qt docs
@3873. My Cygwin installer progress indicator just went *backwards* by about 20%. I'm not sure how that makes sense.
@3874. Your dark potion boils and explodes! It suddenly gets dark.
@3875. The library Anki uses to detect delimiters in CSV files uses the name "sniffer.sniff()".
@3878. Along with 'sixths' for ridiculously-difficult-to-say words: "regexps."
@3882. "The defendant owed the plaintiff...a duty of care not to drink under age or to fire bottle rockets out of his anus." --Lowering the Bar
@3883. "Citing new regulations that forbid banks from employing anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime involving dishonesty, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has fired an employee [in 2012] who was convicted of putting a fake dime in a washing machine in 1963."
@3884. "We strongly discourage anyone from choosing crime as a career. Nevertheless, as with any pursuit in life, one should be prepared. For instance, if you are planning to carjack someone, you should make sure you can drive a stick shift."
@3887. "Never say, 'I will be brief' either. First off, being brief is unusual. If you are, people will notice without you calling attention to it. Second, if you intend to be brief, you can save an additional two or three seconds by leaving that out." --Lifehacker comment
@3889. http://abstrusegoose.com/164
This comic has some level of strange loop-ness/at least infinite recursion embedded in it. I was thinking about how if you want to share it with anybody, you ought to mention the fact that it contains a spoiler and you shouldn't read it if you haven't read _Anna Karenina_ yet. But then you're *giving* a spoiler by trying to prevent a spoiler... (Time for a spoiler alert on that?)
One way to look at it, perhaps: making sure you can prevent the spoiling of one results in the potential spoiling of the other. (If you make sure that it's safe to show someone the comic, you spoil the comic. If you don't, you spoil _Anna Karenina_.) So maybe it's almost some sort of quantum state, although in this case there is the out made possible by human memory and relationships of finding out if someone has read it by other means, or asking them and then waiting a couple of days.
Come to think of it, regardless of the fact that it's funny and clever, I don't think I would have created a comic like that, because of how many innocent people you're likely going to spoil. At least for a book that I care about as much as that one.
@3891. "The pen is easy to use." --Amazon review of a gel pen
@3899.
Stop forwarding that crap to me
Like glittery hearts and unicorns and pictures of somebody's cat
Now tell me, in what alternate reality would I care about something like that?
--Weird Al
@3903. "Second, the crime, such as it is, has been classified as a *felony egging*." --Lowering the Bar, on Justin Bieber being arrested for egging a house
@3906. "AssertionError: False is not true" --unittest
@3907. "When you are given an FBI BlackBerry, it's for official use. It's not to ... send a picture of yourself in a state of undress. That is not why we provide you an FBI BlackBerry."
In another related story, it apparently has not dawned on hundreds of FBI employees that the FBI might be able to eavesdrop on the messages they send on their FBI BlackBerries.
@3908. In other animal news, the Bristol Post reported last week that the owner of a dog in North Somerset, England, was fined £1,000 for allowing it to bark excessively. "Excessive" in this case was 863 barks in 23 minutes, which is 37.5 barks per minute or one bark every 1.6 seconds for 23 minutes. The barks were counted by an officer who visited the property to gather evidence, and presumably made 863 little marks on a piece of paper while developing a splitting headache.
--Lowering the Bar
@3909. "As I have also mentioned before, you should do everything you can to ensure that your picture never appears above the words, 'ran from reporters.'" --Lowering the Bar
@3910.
There once was a fellow named Hall
Who fell in the spring in the fall;
'Twould have been a sad thing
Had he died in the spring,
But he didn't, he died in the fall.
@3913. Akron City Hall Evacuated After Man Named 'Kaboom' Leaves Walking Stick
https://web.archive.org/web/20130216043311/http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/10/03/akron-city-hall-evacuated-after-man-named-kaboom-leaves-walking-stick/
July 01, 2014
@3914.
An Alsatian dog went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote, "Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof."
The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: "There are only nine words here. You could send another 'Woof' for the same price."
"But," the dog replied, "that would make no sense at all."
@3917. "Not explained in the reports:
- Why a car wash had a 27-inch TV in its restroom;
- Why nobody noticed someone leaving with a 27-inch flat-screen TV under his sweatshirt; or
- Why the suspect stole from a place where he had just used his credit card, thus providing his name." --Lowering the Bar
@3925. "I'm tired of reading about misogyny." --me
@3926. "These demands are contradictory and impossible to realize (massless arms and zero-friction bearings do not exist in the real world)." --Wikipedia
July 07, 2014
@3929. "Why should it be so controversial to challenge statements that are factually incorrect?" --Jezebel comment
@3931. This isn't the answer to the question. This is an answer to a different question, that happens to work for this particular situation. It's as if someone asked "how do I make a left turn" and the top-voted answer was "take the next three right turns." It works for certain intersections, but it doesn't give the needed answer.
--StackOverflow comment
@3932. Variable name: FOFF
(The 'F' stands for 'format.')
@3934. "Because fish live underwater they are more difficult to study than terrestrial animals and plants." --Wikipedia
@3936. The new PCPLS catalog is great at giving you completely random and worthless suggestions when they don't have the book you're looking for (#1744, #2000). Today:
"debugging by thinking" -- Did you mean: debunking 9 11 debunking?
"the elements of typographic style" -- Did you mean: the elements of e mail style?
"bringhurst" -- Did you mean: longhurst?
@3937. Wikipedia surfing: started looking up whether "reread" needed a hyphen and ended up reading about simultaneous interpreting.
@3938. "If you're determined to run the latest version of offlineimap, you can install it with pip or something. If you just want to download your fucking email and get on with your life, you can follow the instructions I've laid out for you here." --https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/
@3939. "Yes, this program that syncs your email has multiple user interfaces." --https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/
@3940. "First, Mutt's SMTP support was considered "experimental" the last time I checked. Sending email is kind of important, so we'll stick with something tried and true." --https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/
@3941. "So if you have any questions about what you read on the Internet contact my sister-in-law rather than Snopes. She is a more reliable source of information."
--http://thenaturaladvocate.blogspot.com/2011/04/another-reason-not-to-trust-snopes.htm
@3942. Yo!-Oh?-So?-No.
@3943. "That research paper is awesome! Never before have I seen the use of partial differential equations to justify unequivocal bullshit." --Slashdot comment
@3945. "Start beforty-two." --Eugene Ormandy
@3946. "Ears pierced while you wait"
@3947. "It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose." --posted in the Black Forest
@3949. I'm listening to and occasionally glancing over at the video feed of the Seekers' "Forever Isn't Long Enough For Me." I've watched this probably ten times at least now, and I just now noticed that they cut between multiple videos in which Judith is wearing completely different clothes. Umm...sorry, that's not a permissible cut when it's supposed to show her singing a song continuously.
July 19, 2014
@3950. Reasons Not to Marry Your Parent, #1,000,005: Really screwed-up relationships with other members of your family.
This assumes that -- hypothetically, hopefully -- you are a man and have married your mother; every gendered term except the stepfather one (which has to be the opposite of the parent you married) can go either way. Effects:
- Your entire family becomes your in-laws.
- If you have a child, you are also stepsiblings with your child.
- You become your own stepfather (and your own stepson).
- Every other relationship changes too: niece->granddaughter-in-law, father->brother-in-law, aunt->sister-in-law, cousin->nephew-in-law, grandmother->mother-in-law.
- None of this changes the relationships you already have, so you end up being related to everyone in your family in two different ways.
I haven't worked it out, but I suspect you could similarly become your own grandfather if you married your grandmother.
People still interested in incestuous relationships will be happy to know that #1,000,005 isn't a concern if you marry your sibling, since your sibling is related to everyone in the same way as you and all the new relationships will overlap perfectly (theoretically shadowed by another set suffixed with "-in-law").
@3951. "I know multiple choice questions are a bad format for learning, so let's skip that part." --#ankiforums
@3952. Second result for the search "nosetests confirm that something causes an error": "How to Tell if You Have a Cold or Allergies"
@3953. *Another* piece of mail addressed to "Ms. Bjornstad". This one was from a 10th-grader thanking me for donating to LSM, so it's a little bit more understandable than Greyhound.
@3954. "Call me weird, but I think saving is an important feature of an application." --me
@3955. The word 'croup' has two completely different meanings. *Both* of them come up in _Anna Karenina._
@3957. Just thinking about hearing cuts and was remembering the spot in the original version of "Hey Jude" where someone says clearly but quietly in the background, "Fucking hell!" It's great because you would never notice it if you didn't know it was there, but if you remember it's there and are paying attention, it's completely distinct.
@3963. On a related note, I ran into a place in the ELW the other day where the simplified accompaniment edition reads 'thee' and the normal accompaniment edition says 'you.' I think I've worked out that they were intending to change them over where possible, spotted that one at the last minute, and took it out, and the one in the other edition was missed.
@3964. People seem to think that by writing "NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED" in the descriptions of their YouTube videos, they are somehow less responsible if they're found to be infringing.
{BL #6876}
@3966. "Organization of language through the hearing of shoes" --#transcription from my voice recorder, as best I can make it out
@3967. The men's shelter (New Creation) in Valpo prices used books by the copyright date. I know this because I wanted to buy a book that didn't have a price on it, and when I went up to the front, the woman at the check-out counter looked at the copyright page and said out loud, "Hmm, nineteen-twenty-(whatever it was)...that'll be five dollars." This could certainly be exploited, although it would depend on someone giving away the right valuable, relatively new (or old?) book.
@3968. In a recent dream, I called 911 and got a dispatcher who walked me through ways to improve the voice quality of my cell phone conversations instead of helping me with the problem.
@3969. Written on Ben Studebaker's blog: "Weakening of 'asshole dampening systems' like the family, religion, the law, the regulatory state, etc."
"Asshole dampening systems" is the best phrase I've heard all week.
@3970. "You know it's tomorrow, right?" --parent to her child, after midnight
@3971. When we were pulling out of the parking lot at the Kane County Cougars game some couple of weeks ago, Daniel described the spot where the parts came together as a "libertarian intersection." It was really quite accurate--there were people coming from about 7 different directions and there was nobody directing in any way.
@3974. Everyone In Middle East Given Own Country In 317,000,000-State Solution
@3976. Just remembering the guy who smashed into our rental car's mirror on the freeway with his trailer. When we finally managed to get him to realize he'd hit our mirror and stop to talk about it, which was no small feat, he told us, "What I *usually* do is pay cash."
{BL MB2.46}
@3979. "When you just got a new hammer, everything looks like a nail." --me
@3980. Never really thought about this before, but "sleeping bag" is a really funny term.
@3981. How to learn shortcuts: Stop and experiment and research when you find you're doing something inefficiently. If you do that enough, you'll get better eventually.
@3983. Read an interesting article on Lifehacker about college not being the best time of your life. The comments were much more interesting than the actual article; eventually many people's argument contrary to what the article said was that it has the perfect balance between freedom and responsibilities, which I thought was a very good assessment.
@3984. "Your response was: 'yes'. If this is correct, say 'yes.'" --Verizon Wireless survey
@3985. Addition to the list of difficult phrases to pronounce: "Draw drawing"
@3986. A tree planted in Los Angeles to honor former Beatle George Harrison has been killed -- by beetles.
@3987. Facebook post on my fan and light:
Just finished balancing the fan and repairing the light socket in my room, a project which involved several hours on a stepladder looking up at the ceiling, breaking the light socket while just about to be done with the fan, a trip to Ace where they only had one light socket that was sort of the right thing, having to wire a light socket with stranded aluminum wire, trying approximately four different screws to find one that was almost right, and last but not least, filing down the top of the light socket and bending the bracket to make it stay in.
If you're ever in the market for a ceiling fan and light, I highly recommend buying a higher-quality one.
@3988. "Oops, I've sent money to your donation thread." --#ankiforums
@3991. "In my experience, an Anki deck is a highly personal experience. Cards have to be adjusted by the individual in order to fit ones taste, so that it fits the person's limbic system, which opens or closes the way into joy and remembering." --#ankiforums
@3992. "Battle for Sexy Angels - Play Free" --ad in µTorrent
@3993. "Error while copying error.txt"
@3995. "Share a link to this question via email, , , or ." --at the bottom of a StackOverflow page
@3997. "Not legal for trade." --on a bathroom scale
@3998. "I tried to instal the last versions of ANKI (V 2.0.27 and V 2.0.28) on my computer (Windows 7 familial premium)." --#ankiforums
@4002. "It s becoming an announce !" --#ankiforums
@4005. It turns out that if you only plug one end of the speaker cable in, you won't get any sound.
@4006. "One client took the vehicle he had bought just a month earlier for its first oil change. After my client paid for the oil change, the car made it one (1) block before the dash lit up like a slot machine on crack and the engine seized. Suspecting a causal relationship between the purported oil change ten minutes earlier and the engine failure, the client walked back to the shop to see what insight they could provide. 'I forgot to put oil back in!' an employee blurted out, as if he had just solved a hilarious murder mystery."
@4007. "Not suitable for navigation." --on a 6-inch globe
July 29, 2014
@4012. "I hope I didn't put you off of insert mode too much. After all, as someone once said: 'it is the only mode in which you can insert'." --blog post about vi
@4013. "I like your Ad Homein attack though, learn how to properly debate."
@4014. New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By Shouting Title Of Book Loudly And Repeatedly
--http://www.theonion.com/video/new-kindle-helps-readers-show-off-by-shouting-titl,36568
@4015. "And, Amazon's competition has also stepped up their game, as Apple released a new iPad that whispers, 'I have an iPad' over and over again." --http://www.theonion.com/video/new-kindle-helps-readers-show-off-by-shouting-titl,36568
July 31, 2014
@4016. "Searches without a cigar." --#ankiforums user saying that he had failed to find anything about his problem by searching
{BL CB21.80}
@4019. "This draws the texture upside down, so make sure the texture is upside down on disk." --comment in our Software Design final project
@4022. "Location not found. (error: ERROR)" --Weather Underground
@4025. "God and I both knew what it meant once. Now God alone knows."
@4027. "The person most widely acknowledged as having coined the term [lucid dreaming] is Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860–1932).[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]" --Wikipedia
Looks like someone had a bit of an argument about the truth of that statement...
August 06, 2014
@4028. "Regardless of all the back and forth. I hope that Wiki[media] gets its butt handed to them. They are simply trying to protect their thievery business model."
Yeah, as a non-profit providing free information to the entire world, they're real thieves and have a "business model" based on making no money from it.
@4029. "I have found that if you need to do anything important at a stop light, you will never get a stoplight. So, always have something that needs to be done at that next stoplight when you're driving." --comment on a Lifehacker post on how to spend less time waiting at red lights
@4032. Watching a segment of a recent Seekers concert. Between sets, Judith is telling a story about a time someone came up to her with an album cover they wanted her to sign--but it was a Peter, Paul & Mary album.
I'm amused by thinking of the possibilities for how this could have happened. So far, I've come up with:
- The person was purposefully messing around wanting to see what Judith would do. This isn't out of the question and does explain it well, but seems like an odd thing to do unless it's become some sort of meme.
- The person was at the concert, thought they wanted to get an autograph, just happened to have this album with them, and got it signed, knowing it wasn't actually the right one. This seems rather unlikely, as most people would have given her a scrap of paper rather than gotten the *wrong* thing autographed.
- The person had been running late for the concert and thought as they were leaving, "Hmm, I should try to get someone to sign my album cover" and accidentally grabbed the wrong one off the shelf. In this scenario, the person never even realized that it wasn't a Seekers album. This is probably the most likely and would probably make for the best story for that person in the end, even if it's not the funniest for us. (Actually, regardless of the story, it would be way cooler to have something that Judith signed "Mary" than anything she signed with her own name!)
- The person somehow actually mistook Judith for Mary Travers, perhaps having been somewhat flustered and excited by actually meeting her. (Both 60's folk singers with great voices, but beyond that...really nothing at all in common.)
- The person somehow came to an entire Seekers concert thinking it was Peter, Paul and Mary. This is probably not the case, but I rather like to think it is.
Whatever the case, not to be thrown off, she took it, signed it "Mary," and gave it back.
@4035. "Your doing great work helping others with their tech dilemmas - may god bless you and all who sale in the good ship 'AnKi'" --#ankiforums
@4036. Customer: "What's a cow?"
@4039. "I have 'Mistakenly' deleted all my decks on ankiweb." --#ankiforums
(/r/suspiciousquotes?)
@4041. "A reading from...Nothing." --the younger me
@4042. "Steeping good tea does not take a PhD, but it is also not as simple as chucking it into boiling water and letting it stew."
@4043. Which reminds me... (Lifehacker comment)
"I was in America once. I asked for English Breakfast Tea. They half filled a mug with cream, topped it up with cold water, put a tea bag on top and then zapped it in the microwave. They probably don't drink much tea in Iowa."
Yeah. Even in Iowa, that's pretty bad.
@4044. "Why does Windows think that my wireless keyboard is a toaster?" --SuperUser question
@4045. "Confusingly, gnome-terminal works for me [to load vim]. Caveat editor."
@4046. "This year, Valpo Athletics is embarking on a challenge unlike any other in Valparaiso University history."
That is, they're going to enter students who attend games into a drawing to win free tuition. Like, to discourage them from studying instead of going to ridiculous numbers of games or something.
@4050. Apparently we're not allowed to splice electrical wires in our dorm rooms.
@4051. An interesting mix: "Items that may not be placed in storage rooms include bricks, furniture, paper bags, shelving, unsecured boxes, boxes less than half-full, aerosol cans or other combustible materials and other bulky items."
I especially like the one about bricks.
@4052. "Volume 0.5" --describing the capacity of an electric kettle
August 14, 2014
@4053. "I just punched the iPhone app of Anki also." --#ankiforums
@4056. "thank you. works." --#ankiforums
@4057. When you are in a hole, first, stop digging.
--comment on the Archdruid Report
@4060. Ran across an old forum thread in which someone asked for the words and melody to a song they were remembering but didn't have a copy of. Someone posted the tune as the text of a MIDI file (within the post). This was the response:
"""
Jeezz
How's anyone supposed to understand all that sh.....
The tunes easy
It goes..........
DAH DAH DAHHHH DAH DAH DAHHH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAA DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH, DAH DAH DAH DA DA DAHHHHHHHHHH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
i'VE HAD A COUPLE OF BEERS GUYS AND I CAN'T REMEMBER THE CHORUS BUT MY MATE DOES BUT HE'S PIS.... AND'S NOT MUCH HELP RIGHT NOW.
ps SING IT IN C FLATS.......
lOVES
bILL S
"""
@4062. "Haiti, Tahiti...minor difference." --#ankiblunders
@4063. "Showing one result, starting with #1. " --MediaWiki
@4064. I'm fairly sure that I just remembered an Anki card solely because I accidentally held down a key and caused a fluttering glitch at the time when I previously saw it as well as this recall.
@4068. Have you ever realized how ridiculous package/mail insurance is? "Here, pay us extra so that we'll guarantee that we can do our job properly!"
@4069. So Grandpa Bjornstad was in Norway for a month this summer. One of the things he did was go on an extended hike. One of the relatives he'd been staying with for a while, however, was quite worried about him and made him take a blood-pressure test before going and promise to call them every day. The blood-pressure test was fine, of course, and apparently cell service is generally very good in Norway, and he has a dumb phone with great battery life, so no problem.
The first night everything is fine. The second night he can connect to a tower but can't seem to get a call through; he tries a couple of times, but no dice. Oh well, he'll just call the next night. The next night there's no service at all. The next night there's *also* no service.
The following day he comes into a shelter for the night. While they're eating, a huge dual-rotor rescue helicopter lands next to the shelter and a guy comes in with a picture of Grandpa and asks if anyone's seen him.
Yes, they've had not only the police with dogs but also the navy, the air force, and the Red Cross out looking for him for the last couple of days, because his cell phone wasn't working. One issue was apparently that he neglected to sign the logbooks along the way, because in America those are just for fun and aren't really used for anything except for ending up in some archive somewhere, but apparently in Norway they expect people to sign them, and when the first responders walked up the trail checking the logbooks and didn't find him they got worried.
Still, it's rather worrying that all those rescue people searching for two days didn't see a guy who was hiking normally on the freaking trail the entire time. It's a good thing that they didn't charge him the bill for his "rescue," though, which apparently some eastern U.S. states have now started doing (although in those cases it did involve people who legitimately needed rescuing).
It's also a very good story.
{BL #5922}
August 19, 2014
@4070. "how to get it to work" --#ankiforums subject
@4073. "Hi, I may feel that I am abusing of your support" --#ankiforums
@4074. "I do prefer reviewers, hostile or otherwise, to take the time to read a book of mine before they review it... Still, a review of a book the reviewer hasn't read is one thing, and a review of a book the author hasn't written and the publisher hasn't published is something else again." --JMG
@4075. Never go to sea with two watches -- always take one or three.
@4078. It's better to under promise and over deliver, than to over promise and under deliver.
@4079. TurningPoint is the worst piece of software I have ever tried to use in my entire life.
@4089. "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." --Leonardo da Vinci (B135:8)
@4091. "Right. They don't hold up to as much tension as violin strings, rubber bands." --me, playing with string pitch physics with a rubber band and snapping it and hurting my fingers
@4092. Nation Debates Extremely Complex Issue of Children Firing Military Weapons
"Much like the long-running national debates about jumping off a roof, licking electrical sockets, and gargling with thumbtacks, the vexing question of whether children should fire military weapons does not appear headed for a swift resolution."
--http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/nation-debates-extremely-complex-issue-children-firing-military-weapons
@4093. I don't actually have to fully depress my TypeMatrix F8 key for it to do something: just lightly tapping a finger on the top of the key will trigger it. That's potentially rather dangerous given that F8 is 'delete' in Midnight Commander...
@4094. Having an 'rm -rf *' command take forever is not among the most reassuring things to have happen when you use a computer...
@4096. I was just realizing the other day how silly the idea of package insurance is. It's like, "Pay us extra so that we'll guarantee that we can do our job!"
{BL #8491}
@4097. "...when you're older and wider." --me
@4099. "Do you not want to tell us what [the book you're going to read on the train] is because it's _Lady Chatterlain's Lover_?" --Mama
@4102. In an essay from last year that I'm looking at now, I wrote something about the belief that "men are intrinsically superior to men." The professor did not comment or (apparently) notice.
@4103. "I understand what went awry." --#ankiforums
@4104. bash: cd: sob: No such file or directory
@4105. This one is great because it manages to confuse about five points of grammar in the same line.
"Please help me! How do you conjugate the verb 'house'? Is it 'house,' 'houser,' 'housest'?"
@4106. "The present research suggests that... The more intensely people felt... the urge to urinate, the less they believed in free will....This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation."
@4107. Ski. A large amount of postage was affixed to a card that was attached to the ski. The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workers' attention). Notice of postage due received, 11 days. Upon pickup at the station, the clerk and supervisor consulted a book of postage regulations together for 2 minutes and 40 seconds before deciding on additional postage fee to assess. Clerk asked if mailing specialist knew how this had been mailed; our recipient said she did not know. Clerk also noted that mail must be wrapped.
Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.
--http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html
@4108. Amused by the header of this wiki page: "Creating Anna Karenina". Would be pretty cool...
@4110. "Ugh, people keep coming in all day asking for them and I keep having to explain we don't have any demand for them!"
@4111. Spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out why the heck my MediaWiki template wouldn't print (and wondering why nobody else had ever apparently wanted to print a wiki page that contained a template, as determined by the lack of any information about it). Turns out I'd explicitly specified "class=noprint" in the template. Duhh. (In my defense, I just copied that code from somewhere. But still.)
@4112. "Really? They all went gone?" --me
@4114. "Hardware is just petrified software." --Karen Panetta
@4116. "The authors hereby predict the end of civilization at midnight on Dec. 31, 9999, when 8000 years worth of old COBOL programs crash simultaneously." --_Structured Computer Organization_
September 06, 2014
@4117. "I see you have the original smartwatch." --Michael Dominguez, commenting on my calculator watch
@4118. Apparently 2.5 *billion* cups of coffee are drunk worldwide per day.
@4120. I notice that I yawn a lot in choir, regardless of whether I'm actually tired. It must be something to do with opening my mouth or breathing or something.
@4124. The assisting minister in church this morning said something about "en'lĭvening" in the post-communion prayer. I had a hard time not laughing.
@4125. "i got crazy. i tried everything." --#ankiforums
@4126. "I feel like I'm not a good enough role model to have a favorite role model." --#overheard outside the caf
@4127. "Come to class, do your work, say your prayers. That third one's essential." --Prof. May
@4128. "The Romans, because they knew that you would be studying Latin in 2014, did something to make your lives miserable." --Prof. May
@4129. "Verbs have moods, right? Sometimes they're happy, sometimes they're sad." --Prof. May
@4130. "As we say, logic is the first casualty in Latin class, right?" --Prof. May
@4131. "If you study the first eighteen pages of your packet, and you know it all by heart, you're just smart." --Prof. May
@4132. "Fear clause is introduced by a verb of fearing. Whoa." --Prof. May
@4133. "We've got two Latin words, 'cum' and 'cum.'" --Prof. May
@4134. "Choosing to take Latin was the best choice you made in college, right?... Some of you probably want to shoot yourselves right now." --Prof. May
@4136. Last year someone next to me in church hearing Ole Choir for the first time told me, "I forgot how to sing."
@4141. "Theoretically, we could measure instruction execution rate in BIPS instead of MIPS, but nobody does that, so we will not either." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4142. "You can't add an archive to itself." --error received while trying to save a font collection
@4145. "So I leave this up for posteriority." --#ankiforums
(Cf. #1970.)
@4147. "What if my computer brakes down?" --#ankiforums subject
@4149. "You don't have to sing the high J right now." --Dr. Aspaas
@4153. The EFF now has a feature called "Stupid Patent of the Month."
@4154. "...insisting that the way to solve our problems is to push optimistic notions about the future at people is more than a little like deciding that the best way to deal with flashing red warning lights on the control panel of an airplane is to put little pieces of opaque green tape over them so everything looks fine again." --JMG
{BL #5809}
@4155. I have the option of receiving a $5.00 replacement watch band UPS Next Day Air for only $66.97.
@4158. "Feeding directions: Feed to wild birds." --on a package of birdseed
@4160. "This order was shipped via MAIL."
September 12, 2014
@4161. "That sounded like Webern." --Dr. Hodel, after we sightread part of "Let it Go" from _Frozen_
@4170. "They sent some people to assassinate Cicero, but he knew about it. He didn't let them in." --Prof. May
@4171. "If you understood it all, you'd be teaching the class, right?" --Prof. May
@4172. "You should [say 'O tempora, o mores!']. I do it all the time! People will understand it. If they don't, they're ignoramuses." --Prof. May
September 16, 2014
@4180. "[God] once spake by an ass; therefore no man is to be despised, no matter how humble he be." --Luther
September 19, 2014
@4181. "During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Für Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random."
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/261186
@4189. "It is more devout to adore the unknown than to investigate the unexplorable." --Erasmus
@4190. I love how Mathematica automatically italicizes "Mathematica" whenever you type it in the program.
@4205. Someone came over to me in the library and asked me to type slower because it was too noisy.
Besides being funny, it is kind of a problem, actually: this keyboard is fairly noisy (although I should bring in a Model M and start typing with that--*that* would justify a complaint), and slowing down doesn't really make that much of a difference. But this isn't a super-quiet floor, so I don't think I'm obligated to be quiet anyway.
@4206. Sign posted in the caf: "Presenting a panel of Oles in the field of sex trafficking"
{BL #5835}
@4211. "Most of us probably prefer not to talk to a mattress salesman about the sexual benefits of a particular bed while in the store, so this guide is a handy substitution." --Lifehacker
@4215. I've said this before (CB20.39), but I find that the length of a CD is much too long. We simply don't have the attention span to sit and give 50+ minutes of good music the attention it deserves if it's not live. At least I don't.
@4216. And in support, nobody would ever make a set of 12 or 15 songs, would they? But that's what you're essentially doing with a CD of that length.
@4217. "Most disk and I/O device makers also continued to make controllers for [the ISA bus], so IBM found itself in the peculiar situation of being the only PC maker that was no longer IBM compatible." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4218. I'm sure I don't need to say this, but I'd just like to point out how much I love using the shell (and my tiling window manager &c). I want to do something, and a brief flurry of typing later, it's happening. It feels so awesome to do things efficiently.
@4219. "A prince must punish the wicked in such a way that he does not step on the dish while picking up the spoon." --Luther
@4220. A careful master makes a good horse.
@4221. "God helps those who help themselves."
(WWCM?)
@4222. "Whichever side is defeated...must accept it as a punishment from God; but whichever side wars and wins, in such ignorance, must regard their battle as though one fell from the roof and killed another, and leave the matter to God." --Luther
@4223. Someone asked on stolaf-extra to borrow some sawhorses, which they phrased as "Saw horses to borrow". I read this as indicating that they were giving us an advisory of a place they had seen where one could borrow horses, and finding that odd, selected it...to find what they really meant.
@4224. I love Latin grammatical function names too much: this is the "ablative of attendant circumstances."
@4229. "Please select a password that does not have a suffix commonly used for women's names." --St. Olaf Account Services
@4231. "Rubato, where you steal from one note and give it to the next. It's like Robin Hood, only with rhythm." --Dr. Hodel
@4232. "Latin is the source of everything good in the world." --Prof. May
@4233. What *is* the proper way to write the plural of a choir part name in a sentence? (#4226)
* bass 2s: weird usage of a numeral
* bass 2's: about as weird
* bass IIs: strange use of plural Roman numerals in a sentence
* bass iis: No.
* bass twos: weird application of the plural 's' to the number
* basses two: Fixes the above, but...just no.
I guess you're stuck with "second basses".
{BL #12986}
@4234. "I would like to think that the time I've spent developing tools to make writing more efficient has been repaid by the time I've saved using these tools, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't." --John McFarlane
@4235. "What? It's only a few seconds [to load your email program]? Brothers and sisters, this is a computer. It should open instantaneously. You should be able to flit in and out of it with no delay at all. Boom, it's here. Boom, it's gone. Not, "Switch to the workplace that has the Web browser running, open a new tab, go to gmail, and watch a company with more programming power than any other organization on planet earth give you a...progress bar."
--https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055551/http://stephenramsay.us/2011/04/09/life-on-the-command-line/
{BL #7221}
@4236. TSA: Thousands Standing Around
@4237. "Wow, you guys are smart. You must have gone to college. Or...you're *in* college." --Prof. May
@4238. "You guys, I think you're learning something!" --Prof. May
@4241. "Ooh, nicely done, Dr. May. Sometimes I even surprise myself." --Prof. May
@4242. "Now you're onto something, but you kinda goofed up." --Prof. May
@4243. "When Cicero was writing this, he didn't go, 'Hmm, I think this should be an ablative of means...no, wait...'" --Prof. May
@4244. "[Cicero wrote this] because he said, 'Someday Rachel will be translating this sentence and I *want to kill her*.' Because he's perverse." --Prof. May
@4246. "Latin and Greek, they keep you humble." --Prof. May
@4247.
"You're sitting in the dark. Does that describe your mental state?"
"Yes."
(flipping the light switch) "Fiat lux."
@4248. "If you *don't* put the work in, you're gonna die." --Prof. May
@4253. "My eyes are turned to *this music*, O Lord. / In *this* I put my trust. / Strip me not of *this music*..." --Dr. Aspaas
UPDATE: Even several years down the road, I can no longer sing this portion of the Vespers service without smiling.
@4258. In the project guidelines for a HD project: "If you have a (working) Makefile, submit it with the rest of the files."
And if you wrote a Makefile and it doesn't work, then just don't even bother.
@4266. "Bugzilla Bug Exposes Zero-Day Bugs" --Slashdot headline
@4267. "Booo. Stop taking classes." --#overheard by the POs
@4268. So I've been frustrated with mutt's slow loading of large mailboxes for about the past 6 months, and today I decided to do some research on it. It turns out that, although I had in fact enabled header caching in my muttrc and had oddly not noticed any effect, the folder that I was telling it to store the cache files in didn't exist, and it had been silently failing for the past 6 months because I forgot to run 'mkdir'. Not brilliant UI design there, but it's actually kind of funny too.
@4271. Wikipedia article title: "List of laundry topics"
@4274. "That was some good harp work on the harp." --Dr. Hodel
@4275. "Because these are great parts. From the crack-smoking copyists of Paris." --Dr. Hodel
@4278. "Cannot create directory: no such file or directory"
@4281. "I HUMBLY REQUEST FOR YOUR ASS"
http://www.cracked.com/article_17270_100-unintentionally-hilarious-spam-subject-lines.html
@4283. "See, you're being taught by a very famous person." --Dr. May, after someone mentioned that he'd been named a "Distinguished Professor"
@4284. Dr. May told us that he was on a study abroad trip once, and one of the assignments they did was to keep a journal while they were there. He had one student turn in his copy with about five pages paperclipped together and a sticky note reading, "Dr. May, don't read this part." Of course he did...it was about some romantic encounter he'd had with this Greek girl, but it wasn't anything particularly bad.
Seriously, though, did the guy have no other paper? It wasn't like he didn't know he was going to be asked to turn it in and have his professor read it.
@4285. Tomorrow will be the fifth anniversary of Random Thoughts! I'm considering whether it might be a good idea to break RT into a new file at the five-year mark, simply because a 1MB text file starts to make the text editor run a little bit sluggishly. It's super-nice to have everything together and know a search within the file will find anything, but it is frankly beginning to get annoying. Two files would not be a huge burden, though -- maybe I could keep an "archive" file and a "current" file and, if I needed further splits, just keep appending to the "archive" file.
@4286. It's sure been a journey, hasn't it? 4286 entries later?
@4287. "This is my editor. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My editor is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My editor, without me, is useless. Without my editor, I am useless."
http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com/2011/01/reasons-for-transitioning-to-vim.html
@4288. "After 33 years of [working] with Emacs, anything less powerful (e.g. Eclipse) just makes me want to throw the keyboard in frustration."
@4289. "Do I laugh when I'm grading students' quizzes? More often I cry." --Dr. May
@4290. "People ask me, what's it like to be dean? I tell them, being dean of the college is like being a psychologist or a priest: All these people come in and tell you things you wish you never heard, and then you can't tell anyone about it." --Dr. May
@4291. In Great Con a little while ago, someone said that Bacon died in "1962", rather than 1626.
@4294. It is the spoken-of fifth anniversary of the creation of Random Thoughts.
Other metrics: 183,000 words, recently broke 1,000,000 characters. It's actually pretty cool to have broken a million characters -- millions are something we don't come into contact very often in our everyday lives.
@4295. "The lights go down, and someone goes 'BRAVO!' You're like, 'SHUDDUP!'" --Dr. Aspaas, on people not being quiet at the end of Christmas Festival
@4296. "According to Joyce scholar Jack Dalton, the first edition of _Ulysses_ contained over two thousand errors but was still the most accurate edition published."
@4298. I really want to use the word "half-assed" in my Great Con paper, but I'm not sure that would be appropriate...
@4300. "It is always better to let a knave live than to kill a good man, for the world will still have knaves, and must have them, but of good men there are few." --Martin Luther
@4302. "'I say that your grace is correct in everything,' responded Sancho, 'and that I am an ass.'" --Don Quixote (201)
@4303. "Hi, welcome to [Fast Food]. This is [Coworker] speaking. Would you like to donate a dollar to end the world?"
@4305. "Thanks a lot and I am looking forward to touch you. Will you please drop me a mail?" --spam comment
@4306. So I discovered that Amtrak is so often late that they've added the following *static* message at the top of the tracker:
"Trains often make up time en route. In many cases, recovery time that is built in to the schedule may result in the train arriving at or departing from the following stations on time. Please contact Amtrak at 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245) for full details on arrival status."
Yes, even when the train is listed as on time, as today.
@4307. "After all, we've caught up to ants, and *they* don't seem too concerned. Sure, we seem like we've taken over the planet, but if I had to bet on which one of us would still be around in a million years -- primates, computers, or ants -- I know who I'd pick." --_What If?_
@4308. "The [staircase deviance] experiment was basically a license to be weird and a huge asshole to people in the name of science, which was pretty fun." --CB16.65
@4316.
"Set an alarm for 6:50."
"Send an alarm for 6:50."
"You don't have any alarms for 6:50. But you do have this one: (6:00)."
(All bad voice recognition aside, what would it even mean to "send an alarm"? Clearly it was ready to do something with it.)
@4317. In a conversation with Papa and Grandpa about being made to think something really small was making an environmental difference (see also #4263), I was thinking again about what I thought on the mission trip to Manassas about the dumb placard above the flushless urinal that suggested that you were helping to save the environment by using this urinal (CB 6.69-70). Thus:
"Pee here to save the world!" --me
{BL CB26.34, #8651}
@4321. I saw a pest control van with the vanity plate "EARWIG." Really, I'd rather see one that says "NOEARWIGS" or something -- the state of earwigness doesn't seem like quite the right message to be conveying.
@4324. Lecturer: "Now the test is mostly multiple choice. The questions should be fairly simple; things like 'what is the capital of Europe?'"
(See also #1603.)
@4325. "In theory, after fully understanding this chapter, the reader should be able to go out and buy a large bag full of transistors and build this subset of the JVM machine. Students who successfully accomplish this task will be given extra credit (and a complete psychiatric examination)." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4328. "As academics, we have the enormous luxury of being able to waste 1 bit to give a cleaner and simpler design." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4329. "This process [the fetch-decode-execute cycle] goes on and on until somebody gets bored with it and turns the machine off." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4330. "Activate your hazards (or, as my daughter calls them, the 'park anywhere lights')." --Lifehacker comment
@4331. "If you're eating whole foods, you want to eat what you're eating. You know what I mean?"
@4334. "Latin has different plurals for different parts of speech."
Huh?
@4335. "All right, I have to go and build my resume." --#overheard as the closing of a phone conversation in the dorm room next to mine
October 15, 2014
@4337. "The Toxic Airborne Event. I've heard it's important, but I don't know what it is." --#overheard on campus
@4338. "Can you let 'mp' mean 'more power'?" --Dr. Aspaas
(cf. #4 -- wow, this is definitely the only time I've ever referenced a single-digit RT entry)
@4339. I had the idea that timetables should include a standard deviation, or perhaps 50% and 95% one-sided confidence intervals (since transportation usually cannot be early), along with the actual timetabled time. It would give you a much more realistic picture of the actual on-time performance and how long it would really likely take you.
@4341. My voice is working better than it has been over the past few days, as my cold is starting to get better, but today I also have the very odd property of having no working falsetto -- I try to do it, even quite loudly, and it just doesn't engage at all, there's just weird hissing air. The first time it happened in choir during a warmup I just laughed it off, then when I tried to do a high-pitched cheer later and it still didn't work, I realized what was going on.
{BL CB23.11}
@4343. "The passive active infinitive." --#ankiblunders
@4344. "[The test] won't be impious, but it could be nefarious." --Dr. May
@4345. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." --Linus Torvalds
October 17, 2014
@4346. "The pen is not really leaking in this case, it's just the user's capping technique that leaves something to be desired."
@4347. "Fountain pen ink is basically colored water."
@4349. "It's aesthetically sexistly imperfect. That is totally not a word." --me
(15K hits on Google.)
@4352.
"""
Too Many Decks Create Too Much Confusion
How Do I Reorganize Them In Different Folders ??
""" --#ankiforums
@4354. So the Walgreens in Northfield has about three-quarters of an aisle of household cleaners, but they have neither vinegar nor plain household ammonia. What is this world coming to...
@4356. "It's like when all the immigrants went through Ellis Island." --RAB, on some element of an ALU
@4357. I just #misread "indelible" as "inedible": "When dry, this ink has a permanent black color and is inedible."
@4358. While helping Mama with a technical problem:
"How many things have I done wrong?"
"I don't know. Three, I think."
@4360. In an article in the Mess about a campaign to eliminate teen smoking:
"Periodically updated, this table of numbered facts [no antecedent for 'this'] occupy most of the screen in little tan boxes, offering search functions such as death, race, and women."
@4361. I'm often amazed by how much gets left behind in practice rooms. I can understand some music or rosin or a mouthpiece or whatever, or even the iPhone I found once, but often it's much larger stuff. Like today, someone had left the paper and two large bouquets of flowers on top of the piano.
October 20, 2014
@4362. "[This] raises the curious idea that we buy cars...with an underdeveloped sense of how to use them. This is true for many things, arguably, but not knowing what the F9 key does in Microsoft Word is less life-threatening than not knowing how to properly operate antilock brakes." --_Traffic_
@4364. "Other things being equal, fast and efficient is always better than slow and inefficient."
@4368. This HD problem asks us to create two different assembly language translations of a code fragment. It doesn't give any guidelines as to what needs to be different, so I'm very tempted to make the second one be identical to the first with a single NOP somewhere in it. Actually even more so since Bryan will be grading it and I know he would appreciate that.
@4369. "It's not rocket surgery." --Dr. Aspaas
@4372. Mama sent me an email pointing out that I was learning to read when I was 17 months old.
{BL #4900}
@4373. "You can't see because of the glory of the heavens here." --RAB, when the sun shining on the document camera was making the projection hard to read
@4375. "Even God has not read the terms and conditions."
@4377. "CH/BI: more accurate when reversed" --T-shirt
@4379. "Let me sniff it on the web." --me, about a scented laundry detergent whose picture said to "sniff here"
@4380. I was getting all mad at Discover because I have a payment due in two days and they haven't sent me any reminder or statement email yet. Then I realized the balance due is $0.00.
@4384. "When it breaks, you get to keep both pieces."
@4385. I was just working on my linear homework (doing some research on the Mathematica assignment) and somehow found myself reading the article on _Matilda_ on Wikipedia.
@4386. Just took a step back for some reason as I'm doing my Latin and realized how cool it is that I'm reading poetry by Catullus. This was written more than two thousand years ago, and I can still understand it, and it's still beautiful.
@4387. "In this case, we're trying to get really bad boxes to people who don't want them." --Prof. Diveris on the logistics of flying bombers, after discussing those of UPS
@4388. Dr. May told us a story today: He was teaching an introductory Latin course, and he wrote "Carpe diem" on the board and asked if anyone knew what it meant. Some guy raised his hand and said confidently, "Fish of God."
After class I was walking across campus unable to stop laughing to myself, knowing people must be thinking I was totally weird.
@4389. Sometimes Unix commands and their parameters can turn out unexpectedly humorous. Like the command I just used (which did exactly what I wanted): "locate books".
{BL #12187}
October 23, 2014
@4391. "Please enter 1084227584 floating point values, pressing Enter after each." --my program output
@4393. "As mentioned above, our Latin search algorithm has made you're life that much easier by preparing a list of Latin Words with similar sustenance as While."
October 25, 2014
@4395. Read a news article this morning in which they used the phrase "per say."
@4396. Curious idea: How would traffic and transportation (especially in cities, but also long-distance) have developed if people could fly? Supposing that we could move at a reasonable clip, maybe 30mph. Would we still have developed the same kinds of transportation technology? Obviously some things like the bicycle would be pretty much pointless in terms of their niche, although in high-density areas traffic could still be really bad without something like it, for the same reason that flying cars are an absolutely dreadful idea.
@4397. "The distribution of and copying of copyrighted digital files (music, videos, etc.) is a direct violation of copyright law."
Uh, no, it isn't. That would mean that it was illegal to legally purchase them.
@4398. "Are we crazy? (Hint: No.)" --_Structured Computer Organization
@4399. "Mr. Duncan provided me with an "affidavit of truth", a rather substantial volume that appeared to me to be the result of somebody doing a Google search for terms like "jurisdiction" and the like and then cobbling them together in such a way that it makes James Joyce's _Ulysses_ look like an easy read. This hodgepodge of irrelevancies relied upon by Mr. Duncan was one of the misbegotten fruits of the internet. Finding it was a waste of Mr. Duncan's time; printing it was a waste of trees and my reading it was a waste of my time and public money."
--qtd. in http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/10/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-make-mad.html
@4404. Milton does this cool thing where he picks an unusual sense of a word and uses it, and when you read to it your mind jumps to that sense -- but many of them are footnoted, and I look at the note going "well duh, the stupid editor thinks I don't know this sense?", but then they point out that the more common use(s) are also being punned on.
@4405. "Is there anything I can do to get stepparent working again?" --autocorrect for "stoPrint"
@4406. #overheard on campus:
"...'Well, shit!' and I punched her right in the *face*!"
"Nice!"
{BL #4695}
@4407. "Is it *bad* if I have *two* bananas?" --#overheard in the caf line
@4410. Just want to put in a good word for Dr. Feldt's method of taking a video of our voice lessons and making us watch it. It is wonderful because you both don't have to worry that you're missing something or feel like you should be frantically scribbling down notes during the lesson and then actually do get a chance to pick up on the things that were said. And you get a second chance to hear stuff and let it sink in, regardless of whether you actually take notes on it or when you end up watching it (guilty of waiting until the last minute and until I've already practiced all I'm going to before the next lesson on occasion -- "on occasion" referring to all of last year).
@4416. #ankiforums:
Hi, everyone
Can you help me do this.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/powerzoomer.htm
Thankyou very much
@4417. "Ok I am attaching the pictures of screen." --#ankiforums
Well, to be fair, that is what a screenshot is.
@4418. Apparently Dr. May owns a fire engine. Not a functional one, mind you; the pump is disconnected. But still, he has a freaking fire engine.
He said he used to drive it in the homecoming parade, but now there isn't one, so most of the time it just sits around unless he can find an excuse to use it or just randomly feels like driving a fire truck.
@4424. "Yours Truly -- I don't like this. It makes me feel like I'm ten years old and getting a note from a pen pal in Sweden." --list of email closings
@4429. "Thanks for all people !" --#ankiforums
@4431. "[The second choir], though, had almost no energy and did the most impotent and lethargic rendition of the F. Melius 'Wake, Awake' I had thought possible." --CB11.21
@4433.
"Good morning, ma'am. How can I help you?"
"ALLERGIC REACTION!"
@4434. "I just need to talk to someone who knows a decent amount about things." --caller to the Helpdesk
@4438. "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." --(supposedly) Abraham Lincoln
@4440. "Oh my, Lesbia. [Catullus] likes her." --Dr. May
@4442. "Well, you could do that, but then it wouldn't be quite right, would it?" --Dr. May
@4443. "Any problems? ...Latin problems. I know you have problems." --Dr. May
(Cf. #3944)
@4444. "It's the destruction of that beautiful movement, of the Requiem mass, and they're putting it on a toilet." --Dr. May, about the overuse of this piece in commercials
@4445. "I'm not sure what your computer people were smoking..." --what I kind of want to say to someone on #ankiforums
@4446. Written on a page by itself in an old notebook: "Viking bird orgy"
I'm guessing this was some sort of dream, based on the content near it. But I have no memory of it at all...
@4450. "If you pay more cash to Intel you get more cache in return." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4452. I had a Northfield community member come up to me at the library desk today and ask me, "So you're the it help?" (Pronounced as the pronoun.) I thought this was a joke and laughed, but then she asked me anyway if I could help her get a library card, and after some thought I realized she probably actually didn't know the acronym "IT".
{BL CB23.65}
@4453. "If I ever had a walrus, I would name it Wallus." --#overheard in the choir room in the Basilica of St. Mary with Chapel Choir
@4454. "50 Shades of Grey! Yeah!" --#overheard on the bus (exclaimed loudly)
@4459. "Ever since I got my third concussion, my math skills are depleted very severely." --#overheard on campus
@4460. So the other day I came out of my room and was walking along the hall and all of a sudden my head smashed into something. I looked up to see that I'd crashed into an exit sign -- but I swear I'd never noticed it there before now, and I certainly hadn't bumped my head into it. (I'm good at bumping my head into things -- usually I would have hit my head on everything I'm going to this year by now!) I really doubt that someone just put it up, though...
@4464. """
while doing this suddenly anky stops and something tells me that there is a mistake and I should send a mail to describe the mistake.
what can I do in order to solve the problem?
""" --#ankiforums
Personally I'd suggest "sending a mail to describe the mistake," but maybe that's just me.
@4467. "Thus, for example, a 20x20 matrix will require about 20! = 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 multiplications [to compute the determinant], far more than is remotely practical." --linear algebra textbook
@4469. I can't quite bring myself to address this #ankiforums response to "Slightly Furious," so I'm just going to start it with a blank "Hello"...
@4470. "National Fuck with the Clocks Day" --Slashdot comment
{BL #9186}
@4473. "That said, it's not all roses and affordable health care." --JMG
@4474. "The 112th Annual St. Olaf Choral Festival and Manitou" --someone at the end of the concert, complaining about how long Manitou had sung
{BL #4488}
@4475. I heard someone sing "exselsis" at the concert as well. That made me cringe.
@4476. "Now if only that blond kid was in [our] choir, my life would be complete." --#overheard at Choral Day (high school girl)
@4478. Also, I saw someone in the first row of CC reading with his book hidden behind his choral score. I *completely* understand and don't judge him at all for it during Choral Day, but it's still pretty funny to see someone in a college choir using the junior-high slacking-off tactic.
@4479. Dr. Armstrong told us today that there are three kinds of "ugly":
+ Normal ugly - we're all human, and we can't help this. Just keep it to a minimum.
+ Mugly - "mucho ugly." We don't want this.
+ Bugly - "butt ugly." We *really* don't want this.
He called a few passages "mugly" later, but I don't think we ever got to "bugly."
{BL PC Armstrong, §DegreesOfUgliness}
November 03, 2014
@4482. "But I thought that was kind of beyond what I could ask you to do, and sure enough, it was." --RAB
@4483. I feel like this RAB quote is my life in tech support:
"Can you verbalize a question about it?"
@4484. "I have always been trying to reform Choral Day. But it's a bit like trying to steer an aircraft carrier with a tongue depressor." --Dr. Aspaas
@4486. One more thing from Choral Day: the conductor of the community choir (Beau Chant) had some of the most beautiful conducting technique I've ever seen. He was so elegant and could flick his fingers and everything around with almost infinite dexterity and flexibility and made it look so easy and natural. He didn't use a baton, of course; it would have just prevented him from conducting.
@4487. When I talked to my parents over the weekend, Papa told a story from the Blackbird. A young woman and her boyfriend in their early twenties came in and sat down and were talking for a while, and when there was a bit of a lull, the guy idly picked up a book from one of the shelves that run around the room. The girl goes, "What are you *doing*!?"
Papa said that this was a sign that he should dump her and walk out on the spot before he got any further into this relationship.
@4489. So I went and scanned CB23. All went without a hitch. When I got back to my computer and plugged the flash drive in, I discovered that the copier had decided that I would prefer a drawing of a tree in all of my images along with the notebook itself in the corner of the image. (There were also colored blocks on a couple of them, but those I could understand as glitches. The tree...I can only suppose that someone scanned the drawing of a tree earlier and it somehow got stuck in memory.)
{BL CB24.07, CB35.20}
Definitely going to call this in to EO Johnson myself tomorrow morning. And show it to Phin, because I know he'll get a kick out of this -- definitely his kind of humor (or...technical problem?).
@4490. It took me about 30 minutes to vote rather than the 5 or so I expected. First I waited in the line to sign off and get a ballot only to find that although I had preregistered, said registration hadn't actually gone through, so I then had to go wait in the registration line and reregister (an irritating process). Then I filled out the ballot carefully. While on the last three offices, in which I was specifying that I wanted the one person listed rather than a write-in, I accidentally filled in both "write-in" and the candidate. Naturally, this made the entire ballot invalid, so I had to fill out the whole stupid thing again (repeatedly filling in little ovals is not too much fun anyway, and doing it *twice* is definitely not fun). I also had to balance rushing (because I had a meeting with Dr. May right afterwards) with not rushing so I wouldn't spoil the whole thing again.
@4492.
In manner free
From blasphemy
Or bigotry or bribery
Permit me to
Explain to you
The art of unsubscribery.
For though the note
You lately wrote
Was kind and intellectual,
Such emailed pleas
To lists like these
Are wholly ineffectual.
The proper plan
For such a ban
(I pray you, don't get nervous) is
To find the site
To set things right.
Its name is "Account Services."
And there, I think,
You'll find a link
Which, thank the heavens gaily, is
Designed to free
You from the sea
Of emails to this alias.
And if you find
You change your mind
About this list extraneous,
You always can
Rescind the ban
On emails miscellaneous.
Therefore be free
From agony,
And do not stoop to jibery,
But live in love,
A model of
St. Olaf unsubscribery.
http://www.stolaf.edu/personal/aliases.html
--Alex Kirstukas '14
@4494. Pax Intrantibus
@4495. When I talked to Grandpa for a few minutes after the Basilica concert last Thursday, he was talking about how not many people around him seemed to really be singing, and he got from there onto the idea that singing -- in groups, for the everyday person -- really isn't a thing anymore, or isn't encouraged. The barbershop thing has disappeared (not recently, of course, but it was the mentality), weekly church-going isn't so much of a thing, and recently we don't even sing the national anthem together, so much that I wouldn't be surprised if some of today's children are growing up not even knowing the words. That is actually a recent change, at least its complete proliferation -- I can remember still when I was a child being asked to sing it at numerous events, but now I couldn't tell you when the last time was.
@4496. "The issue seemed to have resolved after I sunce my iPhone then ipad." --#ankiforums
(See #3098 -- only a little bit off!)
@4498. These "public minutes" from hall council are the most useless thing ever, containing such lines as "Sex in the Lounge" which either have no meaning or sound really bad to anyone who wasn't there.
@4499. "It's probably necessary at this point to note that yes, I'm quite aware that European feudalism had its downsides--that it was rigidly caste-bound, brutally violent, and generally unjust. So is the system under which you live, dear reader, and it's worth noting that the average medieval peasant worked fewer hours and had more days off than you do." --JMG
@4500.
"What's the name of the program you're using?"
"I don't know. I just click on it."
@4502. Exactly matches what I think about mice:
I actually don't have a problem with programs that *do* make use of the pointer. Sometimes the mouse works well, in fact. The problem IMO is over-reliance, which I was almost completely oblivious to until I switched to a tiling window manager myself. This is made worse by programs that do not have good keybindings and, in other words, actually *require* the use of the mouse just to function properly. IMO a well-designed GUI application should be mouse-aware, but also be comfortably and completely controlled by the keyboard if needed. This, I think, is where so many GUI applications fail miserably. Well, other than often being bloated, but that's beside the point.
@4503. "I love tmux apart from its C-b prefix key, which has to be one of the worst default keybindings of all time."
@4505. "Actually, division doesn't exist." --Prof. Diveris
@4506. "Everyone has bar lines in their part?" --Dr. Hodel
(meaning bar *numbers*)
@4507. "Musicians have to count." --Dr. Hodel
@4509. At the Classics Festival on Wednesday where we wound up spending most of our time chatting with our friends because there was nothing to do, I had a brief talk with Emily and Ben and someone else about online Latin dictionaries/grammar resources and whatnot. I was interested to find that all of them also knew about some online ways to look up what some strange particle was, as I often do with Wiktionary. But they also understood that doing so too often was a bad idea just for learning's sake, and were quite aware of the potential for abuse, something that seems to be lost on myriad language students who don't get why typing things into Google Translate constantly is cheating, much less bad for their understanding.
{BL CB24.9}
@4511. "thank's)" --#ankiforums
November 07, 2014
@4513. "What happened on February 7, 2013, was a technicality: the Mississippi Secretary of State officially informed the National Archives that his state had indeed ratified the 13th Amendment. For a reason that is still unclear, this notice wasn't given immediately after the state took that action, but everyone who is making fun of Mississippi for not 'ratifying' the 13th Amendment until 2013 is being unfair. It did *that* way back in 1995." --Lowering the Bar
@4514. Voltaire, on his deathbed, asked to renounce the devil: "Now is not the time for making new enemies."
@4517. "He [my dad] is really good at running a company, but when it comes to life, he kind of sucks." --#overheard outside Boe
@4519. "This update has Greek to me!" --#ankiforums (from the Anki 2 upgrade days)
@4520. "Quin (after negative verbs of doubting)"
@4521. I just typoed and pressed '.' on a word I was intending to change in vim...and it just so happened that the last (unrelated) edit I made was exactly what was needed to change it to the word I wanted. That was really kind of freaky.
@4522. "Sold: Free - Fluorescent Light Fixtures"
Doing a good job at selling free items, eh?
@4523. "The benefit of keeping a diary is that it helps me figure out what the hell I'm doing with my time on earth." --John Sundman
{BL several Year in Review entries}
@4524. Listening to my voice reflection. I really think my speaking voice has gotten better (more likable to me) since taking voice lessons, despite not thinking about it at all. In the past I've liked my recorded singing voice better than through myself but really disliked my speaking voice comparatively, but I think it's gotten better. It still sounds lower than it does to me, though.
@4525. This is the article about abstraction, computer science, commodification, advocacy for the old type of software and against cloud / Facebook / advertising. Great article. {BL CB24.10} {BL CB27.16}
http://contraposition.org/blog/2014/10/29/the-societal-cost-of-computer-science/
@4526. I just noticed I wrote the phrase "while turning down their noses" in this blog entry. (cf. #798)
@4527. "It's like reinventing the wheel, based on you only ever seeing a bike travel down stairs. Then wondering why people complain about the fact that you decided a square wheel would be better. A square wheel may very well provide better traction on the stairs, but you've missed the bigger picture." --Slashdot comment about systemd
@4528. "What we have above what we can use is not properly *ours*, though we possess it." --Benjamin Franklin
@4529. "For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome [my pride], I would probably be proud of my humility." --Benjamin Franklin
@4530. "LaFlower said the calls are a scam, and that police do not call people before they serve legitimate arrest warrants."
In case you were wondering.
@4531. In one poll, 10% of Germans stated they did not know whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx
(see #2591)
@4532. Oldest Girl: "Was the cat in the oven again?"
@4539. "What she did was dismiss his case, but still not until after another exchange in which N'Ge-Sala managed to become totally incomprehensible, such as promising the judge that 'as long as God will be alive, you be picked up like a wet rubbish bag by the Interpol police.' It's interesting how something can clearly be insulting though it has no actual meaning whatsoever." --Lowering the Bar
{BL #11930}
@4542. I totally walked right in on someone in a practice room today. He was playing cello facing the window and hadn't turned the light on in the room, despite the fact that it was about dusk, so seeing there was no light in the window, I opened the door.
@4544. "So if you're not doing anything, why don't you come over after work yesterday for dinner?"
@4545. So the internet connection on campus just went out. I walked down to the Helpdesk to see if it was just me, and I stood there for a second waiting for someone else to stop talking, and before I'd even said a word, someone at the desk told me, "Yep, it's down, campus-wide, until further notice." Telepathy!
@4549. I literally had to cut a page in my HD textbook -- like, with a pair of scissors. The page had been partly folded into the book when they cut and trimmed it, so there was this weird part sticking out.
@4552. #ankiforums:
I was looking for the Tag to select ( from the list of Tags ),
did not see the tag I was looking for;
clicked CANCEL intending to verify the Tag name in the Browser.
Alas ! The Deck was created -- converting 43 Review cards to NEW type !!!
(See also #3854 for more alasness)
@4555. "Don't be a balloon. Eeeeeeeeee!" --Dr. Aspaas
@4556. Almost typed 'rm *' instead of 'rm !$'. (Fortunately, the directory was under git control, so it wouldn't be a huge deal even if I had hit Enter.)
@4557. "We're not in Britain, spell-checker." --me, after it complained about the word "practicing"
@4558. One of my biggest typographical pet peeves is hyphenation in ragged-right texts. I get that it's supposed to make the edges more consistent, but hyphenation makes the text considerably harder to read, and it's jarring to run into it without the benefit of identical-length lines.
It's annoying, then, that my blog does this and I don't know how to fix it!
@4560. Astronomers Discover Planet Identical To Earth With Orbital Space Mirror
@4561. "If you're complaining about government spying on the Internet, or in a gathering of programmers, and you won't take basic steps to do anything about it, then you're a hypocrite, full-stop. I will personally come to your terminal and demand the return of your complain license."
@4564. "This mode [register indirect addressing for branches] gives the most flexibility since the target address is computed at run time. It also presents the greatest opportunity for creating bugs that are nearly impossible to find." --_Structured Computer Organization_
@4565. My coat has been misappropriated from outside the caf, along with the Locke book that I had in it and needed to read for tomorrow (which is going to be a great #excuse for why I didn't do the GC reading). Due to the book in the pocket, I'm kind of suspicious that somebody could have taken it accidentally, but I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt since we're at St. Olaf. But I'm really pretty pissed, especially if it was actually stolen -- taking somebody's coat in winter is just an asshole thing to do. It's fucking 13 degrees outside and I don't have a coat. Also, I *really* need to go to Northfield, but seeing as I might freeze to death if I do that without a coat, that's not happening. If I don't get it back, I'm not sure what I'll do, either. (Buy a new one this Thanksgiving break? Hehe.)
@4566. Hmm, another post to stolaf-extra about a missing green jacket. Is there a Coat Stealer going around?
@4567. "When I program in JavaScript, I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of midgets."
@4568. "Editor: A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed." --Elbert Hubbard
@4569. When I first started using advanced Python, I thought nested functions were the weirdest thing ever. Now I love them.
@4570. An #ankiforums post without a question in it...just one declarative sentence containing "I assume."
@4571. In the Mess, about the Classics Festival recently held (CB...?):
"'We're just glad nobody died,' Groton said. 'We didn't lose any students, and we may have gained 588.'"
@4576. I'm doing some work on the Anki manual and came across an option that's supposedly on the More menu in the review screen: "Card Options." It doesn't exist, and to my memory never has. (There's just a plain "Options," which edits the deck's options; I'm not sure how that turned into "Card Options.")
@4579. Listening to recordings of a song I'm working on for voice lessons, and one of them has this bizarre stereophonic effect where the soloist's voice sounds like it's going around you in circles repeatedly, like one of the goofy experimental things the Beatles did. But it's a Bach oratorio. Not sure what the recording engineers were smoking at the time.
@4580. I'm so glad that my metronome app has gained 64-bit support.
@4582. "Oh, that's right, Soren will have nothing at all to add to the discussion." --Prof. Willcoxon, being flippantly mean to me after I explained I hadn't read because the book in my coat was stolen
@4583. "That's kinda a Velveeta slice, and I want Gouda." --Dr. Aspaas
@4584. "It's like walking across the Grand Canyon on dental floss." --Dr. Aspaas
@4585. Believe it or not, my VCS E-locker is still accessible from the online NetStorage system. Apparently they never bother to delete old accounts...
@4586. In other news, the VCS is still using Novell NetWare in 2014. I hear they're planning to switch to Google Apps at some point; this might be the last year of Novell?
@4587. "We have other reasonable sets,and please try to directly request your hopes." --Amazon product description
@4588. I totally want to share the fact that I just bought a package of Band-Aids with all my friends on Facebook, Amazon.
@4589. Wow, this is the easiest Latin assignment we've had all year, I think. There were good notes, and they were relatively simple sentences, and I got it done in around 35 minutes. Which is a really good thing since I started it at 12:40AM after spending a really, really long time trying to figure out why the hell my linear algebra homework wasn't turning out. It turned out that I'd flipped some signs early in the problem... on BOTH problems I couldn't get. Someone needs to go back to fourth grade and practice working with negative numbers a bit more!
{BL CB24.34}
@4592. "You have to do the backwards Aflac." --Dr. Aspaas
@4594. I continue to be rather curious about why every practice room (or most of them, anyway) has its own trash can and recycling bin. I mean, yeah it's occasionally useful, but it seems like an awful lot of work to have to come around and empty them when you could just put a single can in the hall. It's not like anyone would go to Tim Wells' office and be like, "C'mon man, give us each our own recycling bin in the practice rooms! It's so much work to go out in the hall!"
@4599. The Onion's guide to whether you should do your Black Friday shopping online, in the pros of online shopping:
"Ability to read 1,634 reviews of $12 iPhone case before committing to purchase"
So true!
@4600. "Give me Error sharing!!!" --#ankiforums subject (complaining about an error received while sharing a deck)
@4601. So I went to Northfield this afternoon to pick up some food at the coop and get my hair cut, as I often do. When I got downtown after about 15 minutes (I had to work on moving quickly because I left a little bit late and I had orchestra rehearsal to get back to), I came up to one of the bridges across the river and found the road was blocked off. Was the sidewalk? The left side had a big "Sidewalk Closed" sign, but the right didn't, and the walk was clear all the way across. I went over there and saw that the plastic orange fencing stuff was on the ground, but it definitely looked intentional. Seeing no impediments (literally), I walked over to it and was about to step on when I heard in a monotone, "Hey bud." Knowing I was in a construction zone, I figured it might be about me, so I looked around for the source, which was not easy because it had been relatively quiet. Eventually I spotted a guy leaning on the open doorway of his red SUV. When he caught my eye, he said -- I kid you not -- "No." It took him another couple of seconds to add something like, "You can't go through there." There were probably about 500 politer ways to get that message across.
It's really sad that I was alone at the time, because "Hey bud, no!" would be a great inside joke.
{BL CB24.38, CB27.46}
@4604. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_llama_syndrome
That has to be one of the best names ever. Sounds a bit like a #bandname too.
@4606. "It sounds a bit like stepping on a cat's tail." --JBobb
@4608. "Dante's /Divina Commedia/, to cite the obvious example, is neither a scientific paper nor a technological invention; does that mean that it belongs in the same category as the noise made by hogs grunting in the mud?" --JMG
@4610. A tech note on WebHelpDesk:
"Wants to turn on duplex printing, will likely need remote session. Told her to go to system preferences->printers and scanners->options and supplies->options->duplexing. Would not listen to me, didn't go to system prefs, kept trying to change the options through the print dialogue even though I explicitly told her how to get to system preferences, blamed me for running out of paper and being late for her meeting."
@4619. "I sorry by my English" --#ankiforums
@4622. I'm trying to write a document in Markdown, which uses backticks (`) to represent code sections that should be in monospaced font. Thing is, the code I needed to quote was... two backticks. It turns out the correct way to escape this is:
``` `` ```
@4623. "Hit me with all your guns!" --Dr. May, frequently when he gets several questions
I thought this had to be a quote from something, but I googled it in quotation marks and there were *zero* results.
@4624. "But 'utinam' could be like 'would to the cat' or something." --Rachel, defending her use of 'utinam Deo' rather than just 'utinam'
{BL #4763}
@4625. "Zach, you've finally chosen the right word!" --Dr. May
@4627. "Can you believe that there are 900 students in Minnesota studying Latin? You're not alone!" --Dr. May
@4628. "Back in those days, when everyone was a hippie except me..." --Dr. May
@4629. The 4 Stages of Drunkenness:
- jocose
- bellicose
- lachrymose
- comatose
@4633. "If mathematics is magic, statistics is stage magic." --someone at Great Con lunch
{BL #5709}
@4636. I lost my coat AGAIN. This time I'm suspecting I just misplaced it, because I'm not nearly as certain about where I left it, I just kind of tossed it. Although I'm a bit suspicious because I seemed to remember it in about the same spot that my other one was taken. Update later... (Update: I found it where I left it. It was just hidden.)
@4640. GNU EMACS has been expanded to "Generally Not Used, Except by Middle-Aged Computer Scientists"
This is so (at least stereotypically) true, though...look at RAB, for instance.
@4643. Found buried in the computer usage policy from 'legaluse' on CS lab computers:
Game playing, irc, and similar uses of computers are not permitted
via modem, over the campus network or the Internet, or in public
or department labs.
You can tell nobody has looked at these for a while...
@4646. "Oh, I guess there was a tiny fracture of tuning." --me
Sounds cooler than "fragment," I guess.
@4648.
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
- This article needs additional citations for verification. (September 2012)
- Some or all of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. (September 2012)
- This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: original research essay that is mostly false; mixing mosh pit issues with crowd surfing; irrelevant example. (June 2011)
- This article possibly contains original research. (May 2014)
- This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states the Wikipedia editor's particular feelings about a topic, rather than the opinions of experts. (May 2014)
- This article's factual accuracy is disputed. (May 2014)
- This article may primarily relate to a different subject, or to only one aspect rather than the subject as a whole. (May 2014)
(Are there any quality templates it *doesn't* have?)
@4649. Speaking of weird concert behavior, at the EMS & Collegium concert I went to last night, multiple people walked in, wandered around the chapel looking for a seat or someone they were with, and eventually sat down --- in the middle of a piece.
@4651. I'm sitting and doing my linear algebra homework. When I come to one of the problems, I realize I don't know exactly what a "vector space" is, so I go, "What is a vector space?", and I flip to the back of the book hoping to find it in the index or glossary or something. Handily, right where I'm looking, written in the back cover, is the definition of a vector space.
@4652. iab recieve YOU DUMMY YOU SPELLED IT WRONG
@4653. So Simple has had a thing for the past couple of months where they've had to delay their statements because of some issue getting them to work the way they wanted (I never bother looking at statements when I just look at the real-time feed, and I didn't need one for any reason, so I didn't pay attention to the exact situation). After they finally sent them, though, I thought they probably should have said something apologizing for the issue and assuring people that something like that won't happen again, because it's kind of unprofessional and not really confidence-inspiring. Then I realized that that would mean that they should issue a statement about statements, or perhaps a "statements statement."
(see also #4938)
@4654.
"But if you change the order of the arguments, the value gets stored in the wrong place!"
"Yeah, and it works!"
Love assembly.
@4655. #ankiforums (fifya):
"Be Happy; Please." (Don't you like it as a motto?)
https://anki.tenderapp.com/discussions/ankidesktop/10519
@4656. "I think that kind of heads into the fruit incident." --Matt, describing the Fall
@4657. I forgot to mention that the other day we had an extended discussion in Latin about my coat having been stolen, and Dr. May said (among other threats) that if he saw someone wearing my coat he would break their knees and take it from them.
@4659. "Yeah, if you shoot all the birds on campus, we won't have a quiz." --Dr. May, after telling us that he was going to take the auspices to determine when our next quiz should be
@4661. For some reason the due time for our Great Con essay on Moodle is set at 11:55 PM. Screw the last four minutes of the day.
@4664. A noon cannon, sometimes called a 'meridian cannon', is a specialized sundial that is designed to create an 'audible noonmark', by automatically igniting a quantity of gunpowder at noon.
@4665. Just a sudden thought: I'm pretty sure my Kinesis is the only keyboard I've ever used where the spacebar is labeled. It just wouldn't quite be entirely obvious otherwise, would it?
@4666. Typing in the proof modifications of my paper. I circled a "them" and wrote "hanging", indicating that it didn't have a clear antecedent. But I just replaced it verbatim, leaving the sentence "God is everywhere and will always be with hanging."
("Message: I care"? #125)
@4667. Why you proofread: I almost turned in my paper with the title "Something about hope."
November 29, 2014
@4669. Lute and viol players spend 3/4 of their time tuning and the other 1/4 playing out of tune.
{BL #10896}
@4670. I had the thought that there should be some kind of media player specifically designed for practicing with recordings. It would have the ability to set semantic checkpoints based on the form of the music, and then you could select a specific range between them to play on repeat, easily jump back to other sections, and so on. Maybe there is -- I haven't done my research, so I'm not going to be complaining about the state of the world in the fact that it doesn't exist yet.
@4671. Street name: "Purgatory Creek Park"
@4675. "'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the machoest of them all?' And the mirror says, 'It ain't you, bro.'" --Grandpa BJ
@4676. "The French class was so easy, it wasn't even a French class." --Hannah
{BL CB24.68}
@4678. I couldn't think of the name "Wordsworth" when I was talking with Hannah the other night, and I called him "Woolsworth."
@4682. Just listened to "Alice's Restaurant" for the first time. I love it, but it did take up 18 minutes of my time that I didn't intend to give because I was expecting it to be something I could listen to in the background!
(cf. CB24.72)
November 30, 2014
@4689. At Christmas Festival choir/orchestra rehearsal:
"Start at F."
(He conducts a couple of bars, then stops, frowns, and looks at his score again.)
"No, sorry, P. I need new glasses."
{BL CB24.75, #6688}
@4690. "Why didn't you tell us that? I've been molto-con-blasting all this time!" --someone next to me, after Aspaas told us we should worry more about diction than volume
@4692. Also, my fourth verse of the processional hymn (to the tune of "All Glory, Laud and Honor"):
I do not know the wooords at alll to this verse.
I guess I'll have to learn them before we perform this!
Oh does it even matter what I am singgging:
Is anyone even listening to the words I am singing?
@4693. In high school there was this International Soccer Fest every year, which I never managed to get a chance to go to. But one time apparently the German students were singing during the game, and they ran out of good German songs that were appropriate for a soccer game and everyone knew, so they started singing the accusative prepositions song ("Durch für gegen ohne um [3x] Sie sind Akkusativ"). Evidently it was a hit, because nobody had any idea what they were singing, and it's quite catchy.
@4694. Also, we were supposed to wear ugly Christmas sweaters if we had them, and Jesse came with a shirt which had a bunch of battery-powered Christmas lights built into it (she'd just cut holes in it and glued them on, it appeared). She had to turn them off for most of the rehearsal because they were giving her a headache, but they were great.
@4695. While walking to dinner after mass choir, I #overheard the following between two Chapelites, sung to "Love Has Come":
"Help! Help! I am such a weirdo."
"Help! Help! I'll punch you in the face!"
They did some other things before that too, but that was by far the funniest, and was funny enough in the moment that I had to bury my face in my coat neck so they wouldn't see me laughing.
See also #4406.
@4697. "I don't think it's the fleece." --Dr. Feldt, trying to figure out why I seemed more relaxed than usual today
{BL #13027}
@4699. Was reading from CB3 at dinner tonight and ran across the incorrect phrase "I & Mama." Being the grammarian that I am, my immediate reaction (after concluding that the I couldn't be a Speedwords 'in' or anything an abbreviation) was to try to figure out why this was wrong, since it sounded so odd. And my first theory was, "Oh, 'Mama' is in the objective case, but 'I' is in the nominative." English doesn't work like that, Soren...not to mention that that has nothing to do with the reason it's wrong.
@4702. "Category A consists of things that are both affordable and useful, such as indoor plumbing. Category B consists of things that are affordable but useless, such as electrically heated underwear for chickens. Category C consists of things that are useful but unaffordable, such as worldwide 30-minute pizza delivery from low earth orbit." --JMG
@4703. During the Christmas Festival dress rehearsal today, I decided there is a class of chords which are determined not by their theoretical function but by their effect on the audience in the position they're in. I term them "eyebrow chords" -- they're the ones that make me raise my eyebrows when I hear them for the first time.
@4708. "But if someone use Anki and Ubuntu and is witty about it, please, help me !" --#ankiforums
@4709. "ACT ONE" --libretto translation of "ATTO SECONDO"
@4712. "plants solemnly battling" --spam subject
@4714. I'm so glad that my English -> Latin dictionary has the word "forsooth" in it. I need to look that one up all the time.
@4717. And the harpsichord sounds like (according to Sir Thomas Beecham):
"Two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm."
(Kate, later: "I'm never going to think of the harpsichord the same...")
{BL #5482}
@4721. This is definitely the quote of the week, and probably the #overheard of the semester. I had to stop to tie my shoe in the vestibule of Skog on my way out of Christmas Festival tonight, and there were two girls from Manitou standing there. The one girl says to the other:
"I'm so emotional tonight. I don't know why."
I've been thinking for a while about what commentary I could add to this, but there's really nothing that would make it a) more amusing to people who have been in Christmas Festival or b) funny at all to people who haven't. I can add, though, that I can say with confidence that she will understand by Sunday. And I can't say exactly what she'll understand, but she'll understand.
Update: this has become something I think about fairly regularly, as an instance of disconnection from emotion. The list of backlinks will probably continue to grow.
{BL #4739, CB31.32, CB35.43}
@4728. "I am not a native english speaker and a woman, too...." --#ankiforums
@4729. "All of these fonts and keyboards are in the public domain, and can not be sold or redistributed for commercial purposes."
Nice try there.
@4730. I think I have worked out the cause of the unpleasant "warmth" of some choirs that I've discussed previously (CB23.61): there isn't enough of the tenor part. This is of course a common choir problem, which is unfortunate because it really detracts from the sound. The warmth, then, is the more prominent bass and the relative lack of mid-frequencies between there and the alto. And it sounds kind of gritty because it's not filled in. I heard it some more in Cantorei this year, but it was much worse last year.
@4740. I had this wonderful moment on Wednesday that I'm not sure I talked about, right when we jumped down for Sleigh Ride. It was after all these rehearsals, all these hours of work and memorizing and stuff, and the guy who wondered if I wouldn't be happy not to be in Christmas Festival (CB25.7). And I had started to lose sight of the meaning of all of it, or I simply hadn't had it at the beginning. And then just suddenly it all made sense. There was the idea that we were going to do this, and that everything was absolutely, unequivocally worth it for what we could do to other people and to ourselves. Of course, it's like that now too. And I'm also sad because it's over, but at least I have another two years.
@4741. Actually, I'm really pretty sad, and I don't really want to do more homework right now (much less listen to _The Marriage of Figaro_ right now, which is what I'm supposed to do for Great Con -- NOT the right music for my mood). I'm not upset about it or anything, but in the words of Penny in _Myles to Go_, I just want to be sad right now.
I should probably also stop listening to last year's Beautiful Savior on repeat. That might help a bit.
@4742. Someone (I think it was Kristina and someone else) was telling me as we were walking in today that they'd decided that the theme for next year's Christmas Festival should be "Oh My Fucking Lord." She pointed to the panels reading "The World Renewed with Love Divine" and explained how awesome it would be if you walked into the hall and saw "Oh my fucking Lord" written up there.
@4743. I'm also being reminded what an incredible privilege it is to be part of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival. I knew that of course, but not on the same level that I'm realizing now.
@4745. "I beg your pardon, but I would like to contradict." --#ankiforums
@4746. "So yes, in some ways I still browse the web like it's 1995. On the other hand, back in 1995 most of the web was text, and much of that text was actual useful content, and what few graphics there were contributed to the text as relevant content. Now most of what's retrieved is crap, so I'm happy to ignore the crap to get at the actual content again." --Slashdot comment
@4749. Listening to last year's Christmas Fest and last year's Chapel Choir Requiem, which I didn't even have anything to do with, although I went. Recordings are such an amazing gift to the world, one of the best things of modern technology in my opinion. Seriously, maybe like just about *the* best.
@4751. "Return on suspicious stack pointer prdepth 1"
@4753. There are forty-nine characters in this sentence.
(An autological sentence.)
{BL #5157, #5328}
@4754. "I should exaggerate on that." --me
(i.e., elaborate)
@4757. In IT today, a AAA called and said someone was planning a lecture on Thursday and needed a "croakee machine" for it. I listened to the rest of her request, then asked her to repeat the item she needed, thinking I'd misheard.
-- "A croakee machine."
I suppose this must be some sort of brand name or combination tool that I'm not familiar with.
-- "I'm sorry, I don't know what that is. Can you explain what it's for?"
-- "It like, has a microphone..."
-- "Do you mean, like, a collar mic, for while you're lecturing?"
-- "No....it like, plays music."
At this point I put her on hold and give her name and description to the other three people in the Helpdesk at the moment. None of them have any idea what she's talking about either.
-- "So, who would normally handle this?"
-- "I don't know."
-- "Okay, well I can put in a ticket for you and we'll take a look and get back to you."
-- "Okay, should I spell it for you?"
-- "Yeah, that would be good."
-- "K-A-R-A-O-K-E."
Aha!
We had a good laugh about the "croakee machine" after I hung up. (I mean, it does have a microphone, and it plays music, you can't argue that. So does just about every other piece of complex multimedia equipment in the world, though.) The other remaining question is what in the world she needs a karaoke machine for in a biology lecture.
@4758. Also in IT today: A guy came in asking if we had soldering tools and electrical tape. I told him we had electrical tape but I didn't know where it was and we had soldering tools but I didn't know if we were allowed to let him use them. He then proceeded to show us what he needed them for. He pulled out a laptop power adapter that looked like it had been through some sort of torture camp: the brick was wrapped in two straps of duct tape and had hideously twisted and yucky cords coming out of both sides, one of which was frayed at the connection to the brick. He proceeded to remove the duct tape and open the brick, telling us that he'd opened it previously to repair a short (by prying it apart), then was too lazy to glue it back together, so he just duct-taped it. The problem he now wanted to fix was that the external cord had frayed and was no longer properly connected to the brick. This was the 120-volt power line, and he wanted to repair the broken and frayed connection with *solder and electrical tape*. I mean, I've done that with a pair of headphones (though I used permanent heat-shrink tubing, not electrical tape), but a *power line*?
I was polite about saying I didn't think we would be able to help him, and fortunately, by some ridiculous stroke of luck, someone at the desk (don't remember who anymore) had several spare adapters that he'd gotten for free with him in his computer bag, that happened to be the right kind, and so he just gave the guy one. Afterwards I made him give me the old one to discard it and took it and showed it to Phin and we both laughed at the idea. I thought afterwards that this would probably have been a good time to just respond to his initial request, "No."
@4761. "We go over and conquer Carleton, they all become our slaves. We should try that." --Dr. May
@4762. "Note that Cicero used the present in his indirect discourse. Which is okay. Of course it's okay, he did it." --Dr. May
@4764. "I'm a sadist on this stuff, huh?" --Dr. May, on his quiz policy
@4765. Just finished reading Book 5 of /Emile/, on the education and jobs of women. I had a pretty hard time not throwing it across the room.
@4766. "Sinking error" --#ankiforums
{BL #5482}
@4767. "Typically, things with properties we like are vector spaces." --Prof. Diveris
@4773. According to the project description, our assembly project for HD was due last year tomorrow at 11:59pm.
@4775. I was writing an email and went, "Hmm, I should check my email!"
(See also #1382.)
@4777. "Jesus is a lie" --#mondegreen of "alive"
@4778. "Since human beings depend for their survival and prosperity on the products of natural ecosystems, avoiding unnecessary disruption to those systems is arguably a good idea." --JMG
@4783. #ironyoftheday: my command "set nospell" didn't work because I spelled it "nospeel."
@4785. "Ooh, I work better with a black cursor." --someone trying to use one of the Helpdesk's computers
@4786. "...she never would have tarted stalking." --me
@4787. Looking at a comparison of MS PowerPoint 2013 and LibreOffice 4.3 (put out by the LO folks, so perhaps not quite neutral). One of the comparison points is "number of slide layouts," which can't but help remind me of the car salesman my grandpa and I dealt with one time who made sure to compare the number of cupholders that each minivan we looked at had (one of them had seventeen, but the other had twenty-one, if I remember right).
(Cf. CB48.36.)
@4790. "This is not HYPE! This is factual information." --spam email
December 13, 2014
@4791. "Have an oddly exciting day and may you live another day." --#ankiforums (fifya)
@4792. "On my birthday, that was written. 51 B.C." --Dr. May
@4793. "It's my favorite construction. It's the *double dative*! I have to announce this to the masses." (opens door, pokes head out) "IT'S THE DOUBLE DATIVE!" (slams door)
--Dr. May
@4794. I forgot to say that I helped a guy in IT on Thursday who came down to the Helpdesk because he kept getting a horizontal scroll bar and was really annoyed by it. The problem? The window wasn't wide enough to display all of the content.
@4796. "All ants measure their angles in radians." --Prof. Diveris
{BL #7278}
@4797. "It is more important to be realistic than perfect." --CB3.73
@4798. Had the thought the other day, thinking about my quote/commonplace book experiment again, that Random Thoughts really *is* a commonplace book, in almost every sense of the idea. A really good one, too. I think I might have vaguely considered this once upon a time, but not really in the way I have now.
@4804. "You sir, are a freaking legend. Fixed it." --#ankiforums
@4806. I love when, in order to procrastinate on writing a paper, I write something else.
@4811. So every time I mistype 'the' 'teh' in a LaTeX document, instead of autocorrecting or even just leaving 'teh' there, vim pastes in a couple of lines from some abbreviations file. It only happens in the LaTeX file type, and those entries aren't next to each other in my current abbreviations file. I'm not really sure where it's coming from, but it's quite annoying.
@4813. Time to proof the essay...I haven't gone back over it at all yet, but I don't think this is the kind of paper that tends to need that much revision. Which is good because I've only given myself an hour.
@4815. "FINO [First In, Never Out] works by withholding all scheduled tasks permanently. No matter how many tasks are scheduled at any time, no task ever actually takes place. This makes FINO extremely simple to implement, but useless in practice." --Wikipedia
@4816. "Hah! I win, terminal." --Phin
@4818. Just noticed that I'm storing my private key -- labeled as such -- on the same drive as my backups encrypted with said key. It is protected by a strong passphrase, but still.
@4819. Just meant to type 'canto' and typed another word beginning with 'c' and ending with 't' instead...
(history -d!)
@4820. "Invalid error message." --error message I almost coded instead of 'invalid input'
@4821. I'm having that thing where you're unable to tell how loud your chewing is because I'm trying to eat potato chips in the library without being a nuisance.
@4823. "You are comparing apples and oranges. Back then, the world is a much safer place. Now, not much anymore." / "Sure it was a much safer place except for the WORLD WAR!" --CNet comments thread
A minor problem, really.
@4827. I'm getting tired earlier and earlier lately, and it doesn't seem to be that related to when I got up. I wonder if it's partly the light outside -- when it gets dark at like 4:00, it's hard to stay awake longer?
@4828. So I forgot to bring my HD book to the exam this afternoon, and I came running back to Mellby (literally) to grab it -- but I couldn't find it anywhere, so I grabbed Bryan and borrowed his copy. When I got back this evening, I found that it was on my keyboard tray in plain sight, being used to raise the keypad to a higher level.
@4833. Since classes ended, I'm barely getting any email -- it feels super-weird.
@4834. In case you were wondering, lighter fluid is flammable.
@4835. "This is what I do on my vacations. Write completely useless code." --me, after writing a C version of our assembly project just to see how it would work in C
December 20, 2014
@4836. "Your bagel is ready in the dining car." --misheard announcement on the Empire Builder
@4838. Idea: Select some 200 (perhaps) important dates in history and memorize them, a sort of basic framework.
@4839. I just ran "sudo umount something /". I immediately pressed ^C and nothing untoward happened...I'm curious what would have happened if I unmounted / as well.
December 23, 2014
@4843. "May you win an unpurchased (Hmm. Do you have this world in english?) lottery, man." --#ankiforums (fifya)
@4844. "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
@4847. IMPORTANT: Before replacing the bag, make sure the vacuum cleaner is turned OFF and unplugged.
--on a package of vacuum cleaner bags
{BL dr #931}
@4850. As I get older, I'm finding myself reminded more and more often of something Mr. Kopf told us in the summer orchestra introduction where I first touched a violin. He said that he's found there are four stages that most orchies go through. The stages consist of the thing that is keeping them in orchestra, the thing that succeeds in fighting the effort and busyness and everything that wants them out. Not everyone proceeds through them at the same rate, and maybe there are some exceptions, but all in all they are remarkably accurate. As follows (I elaborate a little bit and so may be more like 95% true to his original):
1. It's fun -- for a couple of weeks, playing an instrument is kind of cool.
2. Your parents keep you there -- you get some pressure to keep trying it until you've at least had a good shot at it and have tried it long enough to be decent.
3. Your friends keep you there -- there is some social opportunity in music, and it becomes part of your identity.
4. You love it.
He was not able to explain exactly what number four was, and now fully understanding what he means, it is I guess something that really defies explanation in ordinary terms, if you aren't yourself there. He just said that we were not there yet, and he *asserted* that, saying that students somewhere around our age often claimed to him that they were at stage four, but that they were just outright wrong. I felt I was there after a couple of years, and I was in the sense that 2 and 3 were not really major influences on me anymore, although they were there; but it was almost more of a thing that I did because I'd always done it. Not that I didn't like playing music, quite the contrary, but there wasn't a need from within me that kept me going.
I almost feel like I've reached stage four and a half now, or at certain points of my musical life now at least, when I experience a sort of overwhelming sense of divinity and beauty that contains so much of the meaning in the world. And I completely understand how offensive it would feel to have a fifth-grader come up to you and claim that his soul had been a part of that.
@4851. "Parsing error: True"
December 28, 2014
@4852. "It's *smart*! HTML is *smart*!" --me
@4854. After giving my mom the Random Thoughts book for Christmas, I'm having the odd experience of having quotes and anecdotes that I never actually shared quoted back at me. She really liked it and everything, and I'm glad I did it, but it's very disconcerting.
@4855. I get paid 23 cents a minute for Anki work. (I was calculating it because I grabbed a new invoice template that measures in hours, and I was wondering if I could easily change it to minutes and what would be the easiest way to do that.)
@4856. "This is kind of a place where accuracy is important." --me, debugging a LaTeX invoice template that was rounding incorrectly
@4857. "This is pooping music. Seriously, I always have to poop while I'm listening to this record." --me
@4858. I was looking at a screenshot on my iPhone, and I almost took a screenshot of it in order to save it.
@4859. "It's freezing!" --Mama, standing in front of the open freezer door
@4860. "How about I sketch it in a sketch book? That'll be an original idea." --me
@4862. Why the hell does sc not have an undo function? There's an undo in the line edit part, but not the actual spreadsheet part. Having a modern application without an undo function is just ridiculous.
@4864. "All right, well this is a MIDI file, this isn't going to be a great audio test..." --me
@4868. "As for the idea of using only one deck, it is a bit rectilinear understanding." --#ankiforums, itraveller (I think this is autocorrect, but I have no clue what it was supposed to say)
@4869. One day around Christmas Festival time this year, I ate breakfast next to two guys. I was supposedly reading the news on my phone, but I was really eating my biscuits and gravy and listening to the one guy tell a story about how he had escaped trouble when he was smoking weed in his room and Public Safety came to the door. It was told well and really pretty funny, much more worthy of attention than the news. It involved him throwing his device (it was some sort of electric thing) out the window a really long way so that he was able to claim that it was his neighbor's, say he took so long to answer the door because he was pissed at them bothering him (he missed, as he noted in the story, the opportunity to claim that he had been having sex, because he had a friend in the room who was a girl), hide the rest of the drugs effectively, and then just give all sorts of stupid #excuses that could not possibly have been convincing but were apparently enough that they couldn't officially prove he had done anything wrong well enough to write him up or charge him for it.
@4870. I'm sure enjoying my new headphones with their long "action radius."
It *is* really nice, but I can't help but make fun of that "features" section of the manual describing the phones in really technical terms, this being by far the best.
{BL CB26.22}
@4872. "Hi, I am having an issue with Anki." --opening to an #ankiforums post
@4873. "No. Not that there's any problem with it, but...No." --me
@4874. I find it amusing that my headphones come with a manual titled "Operating Instructions." I offer these operating instructions:
To use your new Sony headphones:
1. Connect the plug to an audio jack.
2. Put the headphones on your head.
3. Listen.
@4875. On a side topic, the niece who hosted us (she's early 40s) works for the CDC. After commiserating about mass-media inspired Ebola hysteria in the U.S., she asked us if we had heard the latest Ebola joke that was going around the CDC offices.
"No," we replied,"what is it?"
"You won't get it."
@4877. On the Empire Builder on the way home, I heard a woman talking to her son of maybe 9 or 10 years. She was saying she didn't envy the job of a train conductor or similar staff member, and talked about how you ride some distance, stay over there, then you're up and back on the train again...and so on. The son said something about how it wasn't that bad, and the mother said, "But you're always working."
"So?" he says. "It's just like your office."
Not another word from her.
@4878. #overheard on the Empire Builder, from someone playing a city simulation game on his iPad: "Mass transit? What's that?"
Especially ironic while you're currently *using* mass transit.
@4880.
"No clearance for man at side of car"
"But there is for a woman?"
Not actually that far-fetched, at least for average values... :-)
@4883. I am going to add a "scratch area" here for todo lists and such so that I don't clutter up the document. Changing macros...
@4884. "Your search 'crest toothpaste cavity protection' did not match any products in: Musical Instruments"
@4885. If you thought spaces in filenames were annoying in a shell -- never, EVER, put backslashes in filenames.
@4886. (For whatever reason, beyond being confusing, they completely block tab-completion, even when you correctly escape them.)
@4887. For some reason today, I've decided that when I want to use the 'ls' command, I should type 'less' instead.
@4888. So I was remembering that I learned today that dwm is configured by changing options in the source code and recompiling, and among other virtues of this approach, the authors said, is that it is more secure because it doesn't have to read any input files. Which led me to thinking that you could create a security flaw by overwriting the binary, but then of course if you can do that you don't need a security hole in the first place. Which led me to this joke: Bash is all one huge security hole -- it allows execution of arbitrary code under the user's privileges!
@4889. "Note that the calculator cannot *exactly* represent pi."
@4890. I think I've fallen in love with RPN... I just bought an HP 35s calculator that I totally would not need just to get my dc-like input.
@4891. There is a Windows emulator for said calculator that I've been playing around with. When you download it from the webpage, it's packaged as an msi installer inside a self-extracting exe (which displays an install wizard) inside a zip file.
@4892. So apparently I've been exaggerating the story where Nichi answered a completely wrong interval for ear training in music theory, saying it was like an octave and a second or something. It was *actually* a major second and a perfect fourth.
Actually, I'm not entirely sure that's better.
@4893. "That's actually a fairly respectivable percentage." --me
@4895. Some cursive words have a beautiful flow to them. Like "community" or "Immanuel."
@4896. There's about a paragraph in the appendix of my acoustics textbook on "solving equations." Because if you've never solved an equation before, that's all you really need to have it down.
@4898. "I don't think we have unlimited resources in the world." --Prof. Anquandah
@4902. My new favorite on the Christmas Festival recording, stuck in my head since I listened to it:
Cold December flies away
At the rose-red splendor.
April's crowning glory breaks
While the whole world wonders
At the holy unseen pow'r
Of the tree which bears the flow'r.
On the blessed tree
Blooms the reddest flow'r
On the tree blooms the rose,
Here in love's own garden,
Full and strong in glory.
Love the bud has come to bloom,
And the world awakens.
In the lily's purest flower
Dwells a wondrous fragrance.
And it spreads to all the earth
From the moment of its birth;
And its beauty lives,
In the flow'r it lives
In the flow'r
And it spreads in its heavenly brightness
Sweet perfume delightful.
In the hopeless time of sin
Shadows deep had fallen.
All the world lay under death,
Eyes were closed in sleeping.
But when all seemed lost in night,
Came the sun whose golden light
Gives unending joy,
O the endless joy
Of our hope, highest hope
On this Christmas morning.
Heavenly love -- Christmas love is dawning!
@4903. Trying to learn the above well enough to sing along with Ole Choir on the recording. I am struck by how the music can actually move so fast that you can't think ahead to know what's coming next -- even in a song when you most need to. And this is a *lot* of text for the speed.
@4904. Actually, I ought to stop struggling and sleep and continue tomorrow morning -- my experience with this project so far shows that it's just about impossible without that, and I should probably have stopped just after my six repetitions or so, or maybe after an attempted run beyond that. I've found it to really be amazing what a difference it can make: it's like you just wake up and suddenly you know it when you couldn't get it before. Maybe not completely and perfectly, but much better than when you went to sleep.
@4905. I just tried to scroll to the top of the deck list in Anki by pressing 'gg'...vim mappings across all these programs are getting to me.
@4906. Just remembering that when we were playing Trivial Pursuit a little while ago, I read a German name wrong with 'ie' and 'ei' and Mama corrected me, so I was wondering how I'd screwed up the rule...but then when I went back and looked at it, I had read it correctly -- it was written wrong on the card.
@4908.
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:29:08 -0500
From: Soren Bjornstad <soren.bjornstad@gmail.com>
To: Chen Ye <yechen_xixi@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: OMG! SCS not going to be a citybuilding game!!!!!!
WAIT-WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On 6/13/07, Chen Ye <yechen_xixi@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can you believe it!!!
> NO pipes to lay, NO powerlines, NO ZZOONNEESS!!!!!!!!!
>
>
--
Sincerely,
The Technical Geekery/Soren Bjornstad
@4909. Me, describing a key change: "Here's the frequency change."
Too much physics!
@4910. Remember these wise words from Mitch Hedberg:
I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.
http://www.sparringmind.com/benefits-of-writing/
@4912. "It doesn't require any particular genius or prescience to grasp this, merely the willingness to recognize that if something is unsustainable, sooner or later it won't be sustained." --JMG
@4913. I forgot to mention anywhere what happened when I arrived back at St. Olaf with EcoTrans after Christmas break. We turned into the road that comes up from the highway next to Norway Valley, and it hadn't been plowed or anything and we're driving this huge van. On the turn we lose traction completely and slide into the curb, hitting fairly hard. We then go up the hill, sliding and skidding out the whole way. The guy knew how to drive a van in January in Minnesota, and we properly corrected for everything, but it was still a bit crazy.
@4914. I had an interesting thought that I bet the average person loses more time of their life by going through ridiculously strict airport security instead of a simple, obvious check than they have the chance to lose in a terrorist attack at average rates.
@4915. App changelog: "Fixed an erroneous SIS bug with professor listings."
So there was supposed to be a bug, but it was wrong?
@4916. "I did manage to find out that the worldbuilding ban only applied to 'imagining a different world with the intention to deceive' but it wasn't clear whether fiction and roleplaying counted as deception, so I kept the existence of Valdyas to myself." --Found Objects
@4917. #ankiforums:
"Hello- is there any way to set my Anki flashcards as the lock screen on my iphone, so it cycles through them and in order to unlock my phone I have to get the answer correct on the card? thanks!!"
That's probably the most specific -- and bizarre -- feature request I've ever seen...
@4918. I just spent a minute trying to work out why my script wasn't working...I was interpreting a Bash script with Python.
@4919. You bought a dog corpse for 7 gold pieces.
It's a good buy, I swear.
@4920. "Publisher: Public Domain Books. This book is locked by DRM."
@4921. We're Here Because We're Here
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DngSe0HwstM)
@4922. Memorizing this goofy poem from _Alice in Wonderland_. It gets funnier the longer I spend with it.
@4923. It is, however, really hard to memorize, because the lines are mostly pronouns and filler words and there's barely anything to hook onto.
@4924. """When two or more sentences follow a colon, capitalize the first word following the colon.
He made three points: First, the company was losing over a million dollars each month. Second, the stock price was lower than it had ever been. Third, no banks were willing to loan the company any more money."""
Personally, I consider this usage kind of awkward, but the capitalization rule is good to know.
@4925. Note: The AlphaSmart 3000 factory master password is 'think'.
@4927. I've now forgotten about four things that I was supposed to or wanted to do in the last two days. I guess it's because I have so little to do during interim, I'm not used to thinking about the things that I *do* have to do.
@4928. "Although hi-fi speakers can be turned up to ear-damaging levels, they have the advantage of not being strapped directly to your ear canal."
@4930. "Response to Request No. 9: Plaintiff objects to producing the requested documents, because doing so is annoying." --Lowering the Bar, https://loweringthebar.net/2015/01/objection-annoying.html
@4931. Turns out that you won't be able to find a line in the "first lines" index of the ELW if the line you're looking up isn't the first line.
@4932. Dear Google Spreadsheets: If I select a cell formatted as a DATE and drag it down, do you really think that I want to *duplicate* that date over 31 cells?
@4936. "'Keep Your Eyes On Your Hands.' Also known as 'This Land is Your Land.'" --me, making fun of VLC getting the identity of this CD (and its tracks) completely wrong
@4937.
"That's in addition to the cost of the potion, of course."
You light Adjama's potion. It gives off a dim light. "That will cost you 33 zorkmids (Yendorian Fuel Tax)."
Scammer. :P
@4938. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists
{BL #4653}
@4939. "It is interesting to speculate what type of protective mechanism, analogous to eyelids, might have developed in the auditory system had the loud sounds of the modern world existed for millions of years (earlids, perhaps?)."
@4940. I made a pun involving "sign" and "sine" in acoustics lab today (someone said that some thing that happened was a "sign of ____"), and people somehow actually thought it was funny. It was so totally obvious to me that it would have been a complete groaner, but apparently not. And it was also the type where you just basically point out that there's a pun, rather than actually having a way to work it in naturally, which doesn't help.
@4942. Finally, back from the days of Ferg..."Drink. Drink WATER. Sleep. Sleep ALONE." Take care of yourselves and your voices!
{BL CB31.6, #5881}
@4943. "Nothing happens. KABOOM!! You see a door explode."
Sounds like something happened to me.
@4944. "I've never gotten a tray before. Ever. In my entire life." --#overheard in the caf
@4945. "Omniscient Katie says: No fire tonight!" --Katie, after Elizabeth woke up during a fire alarm, saw her still asleep, and somehow concluded from this that it was a false alarm
{BL CB27.48}
@4946. #overheard in the caf:
"Do you want to face the sun? Because I don't want to face the sun."
"Oh, I *always* face the sun."
@4947. On the arrangement of "In Thee is Gladness" we did for choir, they spelled the hymn tune "IN DIR IST FRUEDE."
@4948. Clayton, about a place we were supposed to cut off whenever it happened: "Copy and paste this into your brain."
I really like this idea.
@4949. You see here a gravestone. You read: "Obesa cantavit"
That took me a moment, but it's great!
@4950.
flik_: no
actually yes
@4951. "...'cuz the letter Q sucks!" --me
@4952. Total Mr. Kopf cliche (from TB2.57c): "Did we tune?" He could never remember if we had and asked this probably every other day.
@4953. The Borg bites the bluebird of happiness.
@4954.
Turns out, ascending is a nullpointer.
You ascend beyond the boundaries of the array...
A dereferencing choir sings, and you are bathed in segfaults...
@4955.
he summoned tons of dragons, foolords etc
The fool ord hits!
THOU THOUGHT THOU COULDST ORD ME, FOOL?
@4956. TenderApp fairly frequently returns invalid data through the API, enough to make my scripts crash. It's quite annoying. Most of the time it's immediately resolved by just running it again, which is very strange.
@4957. "I had a consultant that would frequently forget his password. I finally set it to 'I forgot' and gave it to him. Three weeks later, sure enough, he drops by because he can't get in. I ask him 'What's your password?' and he says 'I forgot'. So I just looked at him. Finally he got it. No issues since then." --Slashdot comment
@4958. "The term 'sustainable' is code for 'have your cake and eat it, too.'" --blog comment
It was a very pessimistic comment, so we shouldn't perhaps put too much stock in it, but as a dictionary of usage rather than an absolute statement of truth, there's quite a lot of truth to that.
January 22, 2015
@4960. Very interesting and thought-provoking: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html
@4961. I've clearly been working too much on my stack-based calculator app: I just tried to use the "clear stack" keystroke in Google Chrome.
@4962. "The construction of a single C++ binary at Google can open and read hundreds of individual header files tens of thousands of times. In 2007, build engineers at Google instrumented the compilation of a major Google binary. The file contained about two thousand files that, if simply concatenated together, totaled 4.2 megabytes. By the time the #includes had been expanded, over 8 gigabytes were being delivered to the input of the compiler, a blow-up of 2000 bytes for every C++ source byte."
@4964. An index entry for CB27.22 just gave me a great phrase: the Minotaur of Reality. I'm going to have to start using that.
@4965. An interesting thought from my walk tonight: History is the story of people ignoring history.
@4967. We did two IT-related things at our 2.5-hour shift at IT this evening: we helped a young woman figure out why she couldn't like things on YouTube (it was a multiple sign-in problem because her St. Olaf account was signed in first, and our domain setup had it off), and I took three hang-up calls from the Ellingson front desk.
It was an eventful shift.
@4968. Student: "So they had a mean gender of 1.6 and a mean ethnicity of 1.3."
January 27, 2015
@4969. I somehow managed to type "afbf .." instead of "cd..". I have no idea how that got changed.
@4970. "The driver has been charged with two counts each of kidnapping and criminal restraint, as well as driving with a suspended license, and is being held in New Jersey on $1 million bail. So far as I can tell, though, he did not get a ticket for improper use of the HOV lane. Still, not a strategy I would recommend, given the other potential issues." --Lowering the Bar
@4971. "Good, now you don't *fail* anymore after you were charged!" --in a directory of voice-recorded notes from middle school
@4972. Another document from the HFS (Hurricane File System):
"""
How to allow SimCity Scenario Creator to open
1. Temporarily uninstall Access 2000 by going to Add/Remove Programs, clicking Change on its icon, and choosing Add/Remove Components.
2. Click on the button next to Access and choose Do Not Allow Component.
3. Choose Next.
4. Go to Folder Options and associate .mde with Microsoft Access database.
5. Open Scenario Creator.
6. When you are done, reinstall Access.
"""
Hey, I guess if it works...
@4973. "If the keyboard works, try pressing Alt-Shift-S to activate the Soren soft shutdown shortcut on the desktop."
That alliteration is pretty hard to beat...
@4974. "You Currently Have a Pig License.doc"
@4975. And one of my other favorite folder names: "AAA Do not open-delete today"
It's been around for so long that I've never really thought of deleting it. Plus it's such a cool name.
@4976. Young Soren's Cookbook.
Transcribed from a Microsoft Works Database (I had to manually pick the text out of the file using a hex editor as I didn't have the appropriate program).
From the Kitchen Of: soren
Name: gty
Category: desert
Ingredients:
* 1/8 pepper
* 5 bananas
* 1 cup water
* 2 teaspoons
* etc.
Instructions:
1. boil pepper
-----
From the Kitchen Of: soren
Name: jtwoptrseaqpljo
Category: side dish
Ingredients:
* 99 apples
* 4 tablespoons cinnamon
* 21 bananaleds [these are composed of a banana with a pencil lead sticking out of it]
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 21 coins
* 10 cups blueberries
* 21 yams
* 3 cups oats
* 70 tipewriters
* 2,000 drops of water
* 21 queens
* 21 princes
Instructions:
1. boilbananaleds
2. soak coins in cinnamon and vanilla extract for 5 days.
3. micorwavequeens for 1year. Cook and mush up blueberries and yams, separately.
4. boiltipewritetrs
5. Mix all of the above; salt and pepper to taste.
6. Add remaining ingredients and cook in an oven at 550 degrees for 2 minutes.
[Fun fact: given the volume of an average woman (59.42 L, according to W|A) and the power output and size of an average microwave (1000W, 1.6 cubic feet), it would consume over 240,000 kWh of power and, at 8 cents per kWh, cost $19,300 just to microwave the queens, if we're assuming all of the parts go in, which I am because the recipe doesn't say otherwise. Also, that's assuming that we can completely fill the microwave with the queen parts. Of course, all this pales in comparison to the difficulty and expense of finding and killing 21 queens to use.]
-----
From the Kitchen Of: soren
Name: ROPSDF
Category: SIDE DISH
Ingredients:
* 40 BANANA LEDS
* 50 PAPAS
* 50 MAMAS
* 20 COMPUTERS
* 8 KINGS
* 10 OTTERS
* 8 GOPS [whatever those are]
Instructions:
1. BOIL BANANALEDS
2. MICROWAVE OPAPAS AND MAMAS
3. PUT REMAIN ING ITEMS IN OVEN
4. MIX 20 MINUTES.
-----
From the Kitchen Of: SOREN
Name: matedfar
Category: main dish
Ingredients:
* 40 empty tin cans
* 90 cups baking powder
* 50 cupcakes
* 4 cups salt and pepper
* 1 papa
* 1 queen
* 2 ovens
* 1 house
* 2 bananaleds
* 1-9 eggs (optional)
Instructions:
1. Put 40 tin cans in large bowl. Add salt and pepper and cupcakes.
2. Put baking powder in large bowl. Put the papa, queen, and ovens on cookie sheet.
3. Put house and bananaleds in microwave for 1 year.
4. Mix together. Add 1-9 eggs if desired.
5. Boil on car motor for 50 minutes. Cook at 600 for 2 days. Eat warmed or cold.
@4977. This has to be one of my all-time favorite lines: "Add salt and pepper and cupcakes." I haven't laughed so hard in months as I did on reading these recipes...
@4978. "However, when I look at my Anki deck in the lessons I am on the cards that were not showing up were said to be due the next day but were not showing up." --#ankiforums (Reminds me of #1768!)
@4979. "the poisoned fireproof Unholy Magic Markers of Pestilence"
@4980. A funny idea I had once was that after the revolution, the new government gets a 100 page blank notebook to write the laws in. Once they fill up the last page, all of them are executed.
--Slashdot comment
I actually think this is a *really* good idea. At least a certain limit on the number of laws that you can have.
@4981.
It's like this in any engineering discipline:
* The apprentice doesn't do things by the book, for he thinks himself clever
* The journeyman does everything by the book, for he has learned the world of pain the book prevents
* The master goes beyond the book, for he understand why every rule is there and no longer needs the rules
Or put another way - the apprentice thinks he knows everything, the journeyman known how little he knows, the master knows everything in the field, and still knows how little he knows.
--Yet another Slashdot comment
@4982. You have to love when your laptop is so weird that someone thinks that your system clock is causing a technical problem.
@4985. "A lot of people thought we recorded that song...and we did. And a lot of people thought we recorded this next song...and we didn't." --The Seekers, /Night of Nights/
@4986.
Can you check your pet's hp or status ?
with a esthetesocope
@4988. "You cannot put on gold." --NetHack
@4989. "I recognize that there is an algorithm going on." --#ankiforums
@4990. 4:45 PM. I think maybe it's time to get dressed.
@4993. "That's a really terrible picture of the kitchen." --me, after drawing a single square in my sketchbook
February 04, 2015
@4994. "This article about an Italian physicist is a stub." --Wikipedia
@4995. "Brian is now listening to: C sharp" --http://xkcd.com/1482/
@4996. "You see, when people say, 'I forgot,' they didn't, usually -- what really happened was that they didn't remember in the first place." --The Memory Book
@4997. "Embarrassing: The US Is Ranked 182nd In The World Alphabetically" --Clickhole
@4999. "As with most things in tech, you can get pretty silly with your tmux config."
@5000. Have had "I Am Australian" stuck in my head for about the last day and it's starting to get infuriating.
@5002. "...reply to my tweeting this article via Twitter."
As opposed to tweeting it via carrier pigeon?
@5003. Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back
@5004. Good memory palace article: https://web.archive.org/web/20120917154554/http://theworldofjoeriggs.com:80/blog/?p=809
@5005. This is probably the worst error message I've gotten in a long time, from Google Voice's web interface: "We had an error." (cf. #339)
@5006. I swear I wrote about it somewhere, but I cannot find it anywhere: I was just remembering a time when I wrote as an answer on a physics quiz, "angle of something rude." It got a nice red question mark. The correct answer was "critical angle," and I got there because I had crammed the list of vocab words into a journey (we didn't get a word bank, which I thought kind of a stupid way to do it, so I always memorized the list beforehand) and could remember that the angle was saying something unpleasant, but didn't make the leap from there to its being "critical" of the object (whatever it was).
@5007. "Please dont respond trying to judge the comments I have made because those comments will be deemed 100% insignificant." --some idiot on Facebook responding to something I said
@5010. "Two-part group project. The assignment consists of five parts." --syllabus
@5011. "None of them are so fucking badass, and they're all way more practical." --#overheard on campus
@5013. In Chapel Choir today, we were listening to parts of the Mozart Requiem and then fright-screaming them. But the recording was using classical tuning -- okay, fine, but then of course we were singing with our A=440 equal-temperament piano, and it was quite jarring. It would take me about 30 seconds to get used to the change, then we would listen or sing for somewhere between 2-7 minutes, and then it would happen again. Arrgh.
@5014.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
--Schiller, alt. Beethoven
@5015. Prof. Whitlatch said she had a friend in college who used the Vergil-divination method to determine that she should break up with her boyfriend. Evidently it worked, Whitlatch argued, because if you have to look at the Aeneid to figure out that you should break up with someone, you probably should.
@5016. "That would make much sense." --me
@5017. "If I was intelligent enough to read the commentary while I was translating it, I might have figured that out." --me
@5018. I have 27 new emails this afternoon...and I last checked my email this morning.
@5019. Then again, only 10 of them were actually useful.
@5021. I like how I just landed in third place on TypeRacer by typing 131 wpm.
@5023. "OK, thanks Soren. I will feverishly rename it with 'Title' field in Share option next week, hoping that anything will bug." --#ankiforums
@5024. "...but for old cards it would make the font too slow." --#ankiforums
@5025. "help me. i do not import." --#ankiforums subject
@5026. "We don't need for people to learn to 'code.' We also don't need for people to learn how to use particular proprietary products. We need for people to learn things like basic math, basic logic, and understand how they can use computers, with a teensy bit of effort and understanding, to accomplish their unique and specific tasks. We also need to teach people that they should not feel helpless when confronted with a computer program that doesn't do precisely what they want." --Slashdot comment
@5027. Error messages should state *whether* the operation was performed, *why* something went wrong, and *what* to do instead.
@5028. The last 7 people alphabetically had no feedback for the assignment I'm grading, completely randomly. It totally looks like I started slacking off and just gave them all 5/5 at that point!
@5029. Ugh, I didn't get any Anki OR homework done today. I did practice though. And I did some useful things.
@5030. This has to be one of my favorite Computer Stupidities stories:
I was taking a COBOL course at my undergraduate institution. One day I was working in the lab and needed to look up something in the manual. The students had access to one in the student support room, usually staffed by students just off the lab. The procedure was just to go in and ask for the manual.
"Can I have the COBOL manual, please?"
"There is no COBOL manual."
I turned, and I saw what looked to be the correct binder there on the shelf.
"It's not here, or I can't have it?"
"There is no COBOL manual."
I grabbed the binder with "COBOL" and "manual" on it.
"This looks like the COBOL manual to me."
"It is not a COBOL manual. There are no manuals in this room. You do not want this."
I opened the book and looked inside.
"Looks like a manual to me. Yes, this is the information I want."
"THERE IS NO COBOL MANUAL OR ANY OTHER MANUAL IN THIS ROOM."
"Look. You're new here, you have had lousy training, and you likely don't know much about computers. See these things on the wall? They are *all* manuals of various sorts."
"No, they are not."
"Can I take this book for a moment, please?"
"Get out of my office, and stop bothering me."
I later commented to someone that they were hiring incompetent student help. The response I got indicated that the person I had spoken to wasn't actually a student but a university staff member in charge of various computing services and student help desk staffing, and he even taught a course. Needless to say, I never took the course.
@5031. My AA book has an answer in the back for question 4e...but there *is* no part e on question 4.
@5032. I'm remembering a time when we at Sunnyside had bought a new bike (either for me or Mama, I can't remember which) and we had an old one to get rid of somehow. We weren't sure exactly what we were going to do with it. While we were deciding, someone came and stole it from outside the garage. Well, that solved it!
February 16, 2015
@5033. "Quiet hours are still a thing." --our AC
@5034. "'If there's no sperm, the egg's not going to get fertilized,' says Joseph Tash, a reproductive biologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center."
Sure glad we're paying him to tell us that.
@5037. On a comment card outside the caf: "The iced tea maker shocked me and I had an outer body experience."
(Cf. #1963.)
{BL #11809}
@5039. "I had a question about chrome plating." --#overheard on campus
@5040.
"This is a dative of the compound verb."
(stage whisper) "Making up grammar!"
@5043. Words: The most important part of a web design. (Maybe this is an argument for the Terminal-Based Way of Life, too.)
http://justinjackson.ca/words.html
@5044. Error 000: You are not awake.
@5045. 10:00 at night having not done any of your homework for the following day yet: the best time to realize that you don't even have the book that you're supposed to read for Great Con.
To be fair, I suppose it means you don't have to do that part right now...or really at all, probably, because the rest of my time is going to be spent on Latin I know.
Update: I skimmed it in 15 minutes and actually did totally fine in the discussion! There was a lot of verbosity evidently...
February 18, 2015
@5046. "There is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and Vergil has here decidedly taken it." --qtd. in my commentary on Eclogue 4
@5047. So I was playing with escape sequences in tmux while working on my Latin homework, and I accidentally detached from the session and then started a new one with 'tmux' rather than 'tmux attach', and the fortune that came up in the new session was "You die...Do you want your possessions identified?" For a fleeting moment I legitimately had that sinking feeling you get when you die in NetHack or something similar...like my Latin translation would be lost in that way or something!
@5048. "Wait, you're reading the epilogue first?" --Mama, mishearing "Eclogues"
@5049. "This corner's memorization is like walking on eggshells, where I'm the eggshells and some people insist on wearing cleats." --me, during Christmas Festival
@5050. "Oh, that changes things." --me, noticing that there were two more stanzas of a poem on the next page, when I thought it was done
@5051. I think I need to write my own very simple bookmarks application. Or maybe it could even just be a flat text file. I want something browser-independent that just works.
@5054. intexo, intexere: to run through TeX
@5055. "That makes actually sense." --me
@5056.
"Please come to RML525"
(15 minutes later) "Please do not go to RML525"
@5058. The Argument Clinic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc
@5059. I'm legitimately curious: will I get fined for turning in a marked-on score with the "clean copy policy" if I corrected an error in the score?
@5060. The other day during Great Con, Anna-Christina put an open book on her head, and I got this great image of it as the little "hat" that's in the mathematical e.g. "p-hat."
@5062. "Don't worry if you sound pretty or not. You actually do." --Dr. Feldt
February 22, 2015
@5063. [Author: forgot my name, should put it in anki <email@domain.com>]
@5064. "See, this is why I don't do things." --#overheard in the caf
@5065. "What the hell, why are there so many people here‽ ...Oh, *Chapel*." --#overheard on the stairs to the caf after Sunday worship
@5066. So AOK told us that she had a friend in college who gave her roommate a Glenn Gould CD. Shortly afterwards, her roommate was alone in their apartment at 10:00 at night and decided to listen to the CD. She put it on and was listening for a while and then heard his characteristic vocalization...but she didn't know it was something he did, so she thought there was a stranger in the apartment. She went and got a baseball bat and was looking all around the house!
@5067. "Let's copy all my money to that account." --me
@5068. #ironyoftheday: This morning I forgot that I was supposed to do a prospective memory exercise.
@5070. I'm trying an experiment with print-on-demand with my Speedwords dictionary. I almost submitted a version with 'showtrim' on...I can imagine that would have been great if I got a printed book in the mail and found it had trim markings on it.
@5071. Modern life...
"Oh geez, what's her last name?"
(Mod-Tab to workspace 9, where Facebook is open in the browser already. Click in search box. Type six letters.)
"Oh, Scott."
(Mod-Tab back. Time elapsed: 2 seconds.)
@5072. "In a way I'd rather be killed by a cow." --#overheard across the classroom
@5073. All of today's Latin reading (beginning of the Georgics) is one sentence, except for the first 5 lines.
February 25, 2015
@5074. "It's not like in the old days, where students got killed if they were late to class." --me, thinking randomly
@5077. "Every time someone tries to explain or point out teal to me, I put their name on my list of people who make shit up."
@5078. I had the thought that perhaps part of the reason we use so many more words in writing than we do in speaking is because we don't have inflection in writing. If we *needed* more words to express our ideas as effectively in speech, I figure, then people would tend to have larger active and fluent vocabularies, it would just happen. See also #4849 about italics in writing and inflection.
@5079. "I will eat my shorts if I don't release Stenosaurus in 2015." --Josh
(Update: He didn't do either, as far as I'm aware!)
@5080. if(h>40) {p<-400+(h-40)*15} else{p<-h*10}
Well, it *works*...I must admit I'm not quite sure how, though, and I do not intend to try to figure it out.
@5082. "I don't have magical computer parser eyes." --me, annoyed at people submitting code interleaved with output for grading
@5083. "And, with the exception of nethack, there aren't many ways to waste a lot of time at the console."
@5085. "This would make sense, except it doesn't." --explanation in a homework submission
@5086. "Error: unexpected '>' in '>'" --R
{BL #2886}
@5087. So I just got an email that I suspected was phishing, from "Carlson Hotels." And I went, "It's not Carlson, it's Carl*ton*...right?" And I went and googled it, and of course it was actually Carlson. Only at that point did I realize I thought it sounded wrong because of that college that's rather close to here...
March 01, 2015
@5089. In Phil last Thursday, Marty called the feeling he got "chillbumps," a conflation of "goosebumps" and "chills." I started laughing in Chapel then this morning when I got chills myself for the first time since then, and at lunch I had to tell Kari the story because she wanted to know why I'd been laughing during Manitou's very serious and beautiful Kyrie.
{BL CB29.40}
UPDATE: I just realized that this is a definite malamanteau (https://xkcd.com/739/).
@5091. "Abstruse Algebra"
@5095. On the way back from Chapel Choir today, I found myself wondering if part of the reason I'm a good writer is because I can type well. It came to mind because I was remembering how irritating it was when I was trying to write in steno the other day, because I'd have my writing flow of thought interrupted by the fact that I couldn't figure out how to key it. Now of course steno is way more demanding of brainpower than typing is, even if you're a poor typist, so I doubt it would be a huge influence, but it could certainly be there. When you look at the people who toggle capslock to get a capital letter (and yes, I see college students at the IT Helpdesk doing this and am usually caught between having a tough time not laughing and feeling really sorry for them because their typing skills are clearly so bad), you wonder how they manage to input thoughts without getting sidetracked by trying to press the stupid letters.
@5096. And about UIs: A tool should be complex in proportion to the complexity of the task.
@5097. "It makes no sense. Well, it makes perfect sense. But let's start with /fero/." --Prof. Whitlatch
@5101. "Then I did the next part, which I no longer remember what it was, but I said it already." --me, dream recording
@5104. Today I #overheard someone in the caf use the phrase "six in the afternoon." Only in college...
March 05, 2015
@5105. Yesterday at the Helpdesk:
"Thank you for calling the IT Helpdesk, this is Soren. How can I help you?"
"Well, Mr. Helpdesk..."
(Now I'm not just sitting and being help*ful* (#3151), I'm sitting and being Help*desk*.)
@5106. For Casino Night in Tomson, they had decorated the place (I went over on Friday night to get the CS125 homework from the Link). One part of this involved decorating the banisters: they wrapped silver cord with fake leaves on it around them. In other words, they made it impossible to run your hand down the banister while going down the stairs. Those are there for a reason, you know...
@5107. "So this is an ablative of liquid in which." --Ben
@5108. Because a number of us missed the fact that there was supposed to be an implied 'est' in the last line of Georgics 2, we wound up with the phrase "already smoking necks have unbound the time horse." We liked the idea of a "time horse," though.
@5109. Extra can be totally insane sometimes: posted that I had free ink cartridges of a type I couldn't use, and within 3 minutes I had a response.
@5111. "You can always just be a leprechaun." --#overheard in the lobby of Mellby
@5112. A good thing not to keep on your desktop, besides "so many files you can't see yourself think": porn. The offender was the person who sits next to me in theology. It wasn't graphic or anything, but among the two rows of folders and shortcuts he had on his desktop were several video files with...let's call them less-than-polite names.
I don't have a problem with people having porn on their computers, and I'm not saying that everyone needs to completely lock down everything they don't want others to see with 64-character passwords and private keys. But there are many ways to go about making things at least marginally difficult to find that require almost zero imagination or technical knowledge, and one of those is *not putting them on your desktop*. And if you put something on your desktop, it's bound to be publicly visible at exactly the wrong time, and I did not need to know that about you.
@5113. "One good typeface is better and more useful than fifty thousand poor ones." --Bringhurst, /The Elements of Typographic Style/
@5114. Somehow I'm a little bit suspicious that an organ recital is taking place in Urness.
@5116. "Consider the "clipboard" on the Mac, PC or XWindows. It's just like a regular clipboard, except (a) you can't see it, (b) it holds only one object, (c) whatever you put there destroys the previous contents. Aside from that, IT'S JUST LIKE A REGULAR CLIPBOARD IN EVERY OTHER RESPECT-- EXCEPT THERE AREN'T ANY OTHER RESPECTS!" --Ted Nelson
@5120. I've decided that if you take a long way around instead of a shortcut, it's a "longpaste."
(Cf. §Longpaste.)
@5121. So I don't think I've ever written this story anywhere: once upon a time we were sightreading some random piece of music in VHS orchestra, as we often did. When I looked at my part, I saw that a lot of things had been written in. When I looked again (I think I was sitting with Marissa, who had a similar reaction to me), I realized that somebody had gone through the entire part -- not just the first couple of lines or pages, but the entire part -- and written in every sharp in the key signature as an accidental.
It was extraordinarily disconcerting -- I kept playing double-sharps because the music was indicating a sharp on top of the position that the note would normally be in.
@5123. "A pod of sex. What would that look like?" --#overheard outside Buntrock
@5124. "I hate chasing notes on Wednesdays." --Dr. Aspaas
@5126. "I think we have to read your handwriting a little better." --Prof. Whitlatch, commenting on the lines someone had just translated for us
@5131. "No, I am a load and am going to make the greatest mistake of my life by not joining St. Olaf's premier honor society." --checkbox on Eta Sigma Phi's invitation form
@5132. I just want to note that this semester it feels like everything I'm studying either in class or personally is fitting together absolutely perfectly (well, except maybe Abstract Algebra -- although I'm seeing that through CS and getting quite a bit out of that comparison). I've no sooner gotten thinking about something when it comes up in Great Con or theology; we study the story of Abraham and Isaac in Great Con and then it shows up in my reading for theology; and on and on and on. It's really nice!
@5133. A new thought about our Georgics/Eclogues commentary citing Milton excessively. Prof. Whitlatch is not a fan of this, thinking it off-topic. I find it kind of thought-provoking myself, sometimes; other times it really is off topic, though. But in any case, the fact that the author was able to think of that line suggests a wonderful familiarity with that work, doesn't it? It reminds me of Joseph's story (CB25.37) of the professor who had memorized the whole Aeneid and quoted a couple of pages when something reminded him of it. That's something the world absolutely needs more of.
I thought of this because, while doing the theology reading, I ran into a marginal note from last time I read Romans 5 (in GC interim) saying "Hmm, I didn't understand that before," to a phrase about sin bringing death, and I suddenly was reminded of something, and thought this was actually fairly obvious, and then recalled the line from the invocation of Paradise Lost, "brought Death into the world, and all our Woe", which was really cool -- undoubtedly we've discussed the Fall more since then, but I'd certainly like to think having internalized that line is a big part of it, and it certainly can't have hurt.
@5135. RAS Syndrome
@5137. "I don't want to get tea bits into my tea." --me
@5142. "but it made the people who'd gone in for the book deal lisp." --typo for "rich" in steno practice
@5143. A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a free drink. The bartender says "I'll give you a free drink if you can tell me a multi-level meta joke." So the guy says "A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a free drink. The bartender says 'I'll give you a free drink if you can tell me a meta joke.' So the guy says 'A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a free drink. The bartender says "I'll give you a free drink if you can tell me a good joke." So the guy says "What do you do when you see a spaceman? You park, man." So the bartender gives him a free beer.' So the bartender gives him a free beer." So the bartender gives him a free beer.
@5144. "I can't type."
--Says me, who yesterday scored over 130WPM on a 5-minute typing test.
@5147. I just tried to push the "off" button on my alarm clock after a song ended and I wanted to pause playback on my computer.
March 18, 2015
@5150. LaTeX Showcase:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends?rq=1
@5151. "Since when has Qt allowed you to set the contents of a text box by setting the *widget* equal to that text? Since, uh...never." --commit message on CQM
@5152. I really can't read Latin while I'm listening to German. It's hard enough while I'm listening to English...
@5153. "an obliviist"
@5154. Sometimes I like to think about how goofy the idea of tea is, from an objective perspective: "Let's put some leaves in water and then dump the leaves out and drink it!" I was especially thinking about this when I got some tea in the mail today: I paid $50.00 for some people to send me bags of leaves of various sorts.
March 21, 2015
@5156. Clerk: "Ma'am, are you sure you didn't have a baby in the last year?"
(See #517.)
@5157. Another semi-autological sentence (#4753): "This sentence contains a typeo."
"Sentence this, is grammatically incorrect."
@5158. Every time I remember that paper airplanes exist, I have an almost irresistible urge to make one.
@5160. So apparently this year is the 2500th anniversary of the first comedy performed in Athens. When was the last time you got to say "the 2500th anniversary"?
@5161. "poetic dative of place to which"
@5162. "When you're running late, it takes less time to get somewhere, of course." --me
@5163. I somehow ended up reading the Emacs FAQ. I don't have any memory of how I got there.
Aha, I remember now: there was a link to the Emacs homepage on the Conkeror start page...still, that was freaky.
@5168. "Are you losing your mind today?" --#overheard, in a level voice, from across the Cage
@5169. "I am grateful" --#ankiforums subject
@5170. Improbable phrase (#unusualsentences) of the week that I had a reason to say: "Uh-oh, that might have gotten my Kindle case in pie."
(I had a plate on which I'd been eating pie but hadn't washed yet sitting on the floor, and I put the case right next to it in the dark, then realized what I'd done.)
@5172. Apparently after the premiere of Brahms' First Symphony, someone reviewing it said of the theme of the fourth movement, "Hmm, sounds a bit like the Ode to Joy." Brahms replied, "Yeah, any ass can see that."
@5173. Mama always talks about "taking the hypotenuse" when you cut across something diagonally to save yourself some walking. I coined a verb for this today: to "hypotenify" (accent on the antepenult).
@5174.
"This is the greatest day of my life."
"This is the worst day of mine."
--#overheard in the library
@5175. There was a French fry sitting on a table next to the railing upstairs in the caf when I sat down the other day, and I absently brushed it off...over the edge. A French fry thus fell down all the way to the floor -- fortunately not on anybody's head or into their food. It was actually pretty funny.
@5176. There's a sign on a juice machine in the caf right now that says "Temporarily out of order." Can something be permanently out of order? I mean, it can be permanently broken, but would you really put up a sign that said "permanently out of order"?
{BL #6525}
@5177. During the Rite of Spring concert in Skoglund on Sunday, between movements, someone wearing gym shorts quickly went across the Christmas Festival stage.
@5178. I got the funny idea that, in the style of all the xkcd jokes like "reverse euphemisms" or "blag", you could replace "todo list" with "bucket list" when you're telling people about really mundane things that you want to do.
@5179. "[Start at] 36. 37. Or 93. You know what I mean." --Dr. Hodel
@5182. Dear Conkeror browser: I love you, but the page should never, *ever*, be able to override the browser's keyboard bindings so that, for instance, it becomes impossible to close or toggle away from a page without restarting the entire browser.
@5183. "In it Sisi tells Rizq that he frequently sees dreams which then come true but that he stopped talking about such dreams in 2006. Nevertheless, he then shares four of his dreams."
@5184. "If you cannot fix this, I would like to purchase a refund." --#ankiforums
@5185. A really extensive set of coding and Unix reference sheets:
http://hyperpolyglot.org/
@5186. "Okay, it's time to learn some of these vocabs." --me
@5187. Unusual Word of the Day: "imbrication."
@5189. "It was a memorable mnemonic. As opposed to a mnemonic that's not memorable. Which is a pretty shitty mnemonic." --me
@5190. "They're smarter than me, because science, goddammit! Science runs the world!" --#overheard between CHM and Mellby
@5191. "I loaded down a new version of Anki." --#ankiforums
@5193. I just finished listening to an LP, and I *almost* ejected the CD drive of my computer to retrieve it.
April 05, 2015
@5197. There are some people behind me on the train looking at houses on some sort of electronic device. Realty is a really funny thing because most people, at some point or points during their life, really get into it for a little while. And then once you find and purchase a house, after a little while when you find yourself looking at houses even though you now don't need to be looking at them, it becomes entirely uninteresting again.
UPDATE: That was written at 2:30. Now at 6:00 it's starting to be mildly annoying.
@5198. "We can see for the most part the light pollution from the population centers has been blacked out, which is good since that was the goal of this project." --CS125 project writeup
@5199. I'm sitting in the observation car, and I hear a child from behind me: "I haven't been here before, I'm just following you!" He repeats this as they walk down the car, about six times. The guy next to me says, "Definitely not deja vu."
@5202. "It's not real internet, it's like slowish." --#overheard in the observation car
@5203. At the Red Wing Amtrak station, the legitimate correct way to get to the second track is to walk directly across the tracks on the ground level. There's not even a special crossing that you're supposed to use.
@5205. Someone called in to the Helpdesk asking for help with a "microphone reader." We were not able to figure out what this was.
Update: I think he actually said "microfilm" reader, but the other person at the helpdesk had never heard of microfilm (which is totally fair -- the only reason I have is because I'm interested in information technology). It also didn't help to not know that the library had a microfilm reader that could scan to a computer.
@5207. "The library dynamic is pp." --on a sign at the entrance to the music library
@5208. "Since there aren't that many nouns that can be typed with two letters...the sentences talk a lot about accounts, handguns, confidence, and companies." --notes on a new Plover learning site
@5209. Man Prone To Lying Beds Woman Prone To Lying Prone
@5210. The page that lists Speedwords contractions:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120316001747/http://www.reocities.com:80/Athens/Delphi/2464/page11.html
@5211. "Incidentally, I'd like to suggest that anyone blindly typing "and-pussy-and" into Google do so in the privacy of their own home, and shouldn't expect too much in the way of typographic content as a result!" --comment on an article about the ampersand and the origins of its name
April 08, 2015
@5212. "You should shout more across campus!" --#overheard, shouted across campus
@5214. "I don't think I have ever had to reboot one of my dogs." --rancher, commenting on the introduction of sheep-herding drones
@5215. It was highly evident that someone different than usual had typed up the menu pages in the caf today. Everything was written in title case, for one, whereas normally it's all in lowercase. And then there was this wonderful typo on the composed salads list: "Mediterranean barely salad."
@5216. You are a total asshole if you put a multimedia ad that plays loud music on a page that also has a *video* on it. (Actually, you shouldn't use those ads anywhere, but especially here...)
@5217. "Soren, have you considered graduate school?" --at the end of my 20/20 theology paper
@5218. I think that my typing has moved from working in the realm of spellings to words and their sounds. Essentially, I guess, I can think of the sound of a word in my head and type the correct letters. Of course, it's long past the *letter* level: for years I've been able to think of a word and type the word, rather than thinking that "word" requires me to press the 'w' key, then the 'o' key...I don't think it would be possible to type at 130WPM that way.
What makes me think that I've started typing on the sound level is the greatly increased prevalence of a certain type of error over about the past year. I know that typing errors are a very complicated topic, and nobody is fully aware of what exactly goes on in the typist's mind, at least not in the admittedly relatively limited literature I've read. But, in my judgment, I think there are a couple of categories of errors I make:
* There's the simple finger flub, where I aim for the right keys but press the wrong ones: I don't quite move my finger far enough to depress the key to the trigger point, so the letter is dropped; or I press a key on the other side of the keyboard slightly too early, causing a transposition; or I touch a key that I didn't intend to touch at all. While I don't think I make these errors much less than I ever have (though since I've become an expert typist, I don't make them often), the number of times the error causes a problem has been decreasing steadily as I add more and more of the common errors to my vim abbreviation dictionary. I can also typically detect by feel that the touch differed from what it was supposed to be and backspace the appropriate amount to correct the error without having to look up at the screen, if I have my eyes on copy.
* There's the kind where I type the wrong letter entirely, but I was on some level thinking about touching that letter. I think nowadays this happens mostly because I haven't fully collected my thoughts and know what I wanted to type. Or, similarly, I start typing a word that is supposed to come later in the sentence I'm thinking of. (I don't think that happens much if at all when I type from copy; it's a thinking-typing process error.)
* There's the kind where I start typing a word or common sequence of letters and then my fingers finish the word differently. For instance, at the beginning of the previous sentence, I accidentally typed "king" instead of "kind." This happens, I think, because that word is in my muscle memory and my typing is a separate "thread" from the words I'm deciding to type, so I've already dumped responsibility for typing that word into my finger-movement thread and am (perhaps undeservedly) trusting that it will end up typed out okay.
The error that I almost never made before recently, but that I now make relatively frequently, is a complete spelling error. (By frequently I don't mean anything like the scale of the other errors; perhaps a couple times a day, maybe even less. But the occurrence was essentially zero before, so it's noticeable.) It's not that I spelled the word wrong because I pressed the wrong buttons, or because I don't know how to spell the word. It's that I type something that phonetically makes sense but semantically or linguistically is completely wrong. Sometimes this takes the form of typing the wrong homophone: "their" for "there," or something stranger like "lye" for "lie". Sometimes it ends up being something that is absolutely nothing like the actual spelling of the word, and that I would never possibly say was the spelling of the word if you asked me to spell it for you even if I was tired and drunk, something like "konfidens" for "confidence."
And so that's why I conclude that I'm starting to type phonetically. I don't make a lot of these errors, and the increased fluency is almost certainly worth it, but those kind of errors don't happen if you're working from the spelling. I'm a very good speller, and I know perfectly well how the words are supposed to be spelled; it's that I'm not passing through the spelling information properly on the way to the keyboard.
I do wonder if studying computer stenography, which is a phonetic system of input, has something to do with it (I've been studying for about a year, although the seriousness of that has gone on and off and disappeared entirely for considerable periods at times). I've also noticed that I make these errors much more frequently when I'm working on Latin assignments, which definitely supports the hypothesis since Latin has a very phonetic orthography and also uses letters in somewhat different ways than English does.
@5220. I just did a characterwise search for the letter 'e' at the beginning of a 406-column line hoping to navigate to something at the end...
@5221. "The ability to learn from a mistake may just be the most important of all human skills." --JMG
@5222. "Monotheism's boast is that ultimate reality lives in its house and nowhere else. Monotheism's sorrow is that everything must be accommodated in that one house." --Miles, _God_
@5223. Marty's measure numbers are wrong in one movement of the Mendelssohn. As a result, today he told us at one point, "Start 44 before F."
@5224. Also today, we played the cadenza on the Weber concerto for the first time. There are two measures that have little brackets on them and aren't supposed to be played if you do the listed cadenza, and people weren't sure about this and were trying to figure it out. I pointed out that it was explained in the music at the bottom of the page -- I had read it before when we started playing it -- then looked down there and said, "Oh, but it's in German." And it wasn't particularly easy German either.
@5226. "At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial -- and any question about sex is that -- one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold." --Virginia Woolf, _A Room of One's Own_
@5227. "All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality, all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot." --Virginia Woolf, _A Room of One's Own_
{BL CB29.70}
@5228. Gay Conversion Therapists Claim Most Patients Fully Straight By The Time They Commit Suicide
@5229. "If a permutation has two factorizations...(_m, _n), then m and n have the same parity. The proof of this astonishing fact is given at the end of this section."
--AA textbook
@5232. Wow, I haven't had to wait this long for a compile in a long time...I'm not used to compiling on a Raspberry Pi.
@5233. Hillary Clinton Quietly Asks Bill If He Still Finds Her Electable
@5234. I can't say I've ever heard of the concept of an endangered fungus before. Live and learn...
Though I would argue that I'm not sure there's such a thing as a "fungus of special concern," that being the lowest endangerment status.
@5235. There's a BeautifulSoup file named 'dammit.py'.
@5237. Val-pa-sarias-o-so-so
@5240. "The result is the modern perception that the 'not proven' verdict is an acquittal used when the judge or jury does not have enough evidence to convict but is not sufficiently convinced of the accused person's innocence to bring in a 'not guilty' verdict. Essentially, the judge or jury is unconvinced that the suspect is innocent, but has insufficient evidence to the contrary. In popular parlance, this verdict is sometimes jokingly referred to as 'not guilty and don't do it again.'"
@5241. "Wait, please don't tell me I'm dating a toddler." --#overheard in Buntrock
April 13, 2015
@5244. "The ethics of subduction." --me, mispronouncing "seduction"
(That's the geological process by which plates sink beneath others and melt.)
{BL #7959}
@5245. Over the last year or two, I've just fallen into the habit of using YYYY-MM-DD dates everywhere. I put it MM-DD-YY on the tax form because it explicitly said that, but anything that doesn't explicitly have a date now gets the Proper Way of Writing a Date. Typography, records, homework, pink cards...I figure everybody should be able to figure it out.
@5247. "Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word." --John 8:43
@5248. "URLs are often typeset in a monospaced font. Probably anything is better than Courier." --StackOverflow post
@5249. "I don't agree what that sees with." --me, doing my Latin reading
@5250. "So will you make all the music go to 'heaven'?" --Rene Clausen
{BL #7655}
@5251. "92. That will be one before 93." --Rene Clausen
@5252.
"""
Here is the list of things that went wrong with the 3D-bar diagram:
* The whole graphic is dominated by irritating background lines.
* It is not clear what the numbers at the left mean; presumably percentages, but it might also be the absolute number of participants.
* The labels at the bottom are rotated, making them hard to read. (In the real presentation that I saw, the text was rendered at a very low resolution with about 10 by 6 pixels per letter with wrong kerning, making the rotated text almost impossible to read.)
* The third dimension adds complexity to the graphic without adding information.
* The three dimensional setup makes it much harder to gauge the height of the bars correctly. Consider the "bad" bar. It the number this bar stands for more than 20 or less? While the front of the bar is below the 20 line, the back of the bar (which counts) is above.
* It is impossible to tell which numbers are represented by the bars. Thus, the bars needlessly hide the information these bars are all about.
* What do the bar heights add up to? Is it 100% or 60%?
* Does the bar for "very bad" represent 0 or 1?
* Why are the bars blue?
"""
--https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/tex-contrib/beamer/pgf-1.01/doc/generic/pgf/version-for-tex4ht/en/pgfmanualse4.html
@5254. There are two birds doing a call and response outside my window. A moment ago both of them screwed up and did it at once (clashing because they were on slightly different pitches) and both stopped for a moment in confusion.
@5256. "Unirregardless"
@5257. "It sounds bitchier, but I'm bitchy, so..." --#overheard in the lobby of CHM
@5258. "To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not enough time." --Leonard Bernstein
@5260. #overheard in the locker room for the Friday Phil concert:
"Hopefully my pants won't fall off this time...they fell off on the bus."
"Accidentally or on purpose?"
"What?...No, my pants on my *tux*."
@5262. I was helping Tim check off the folders after the concert, and Egeman and Levi (the person who hosted us there) came up and were talking to Tim about his piece "Journey" that we did and his composition endeavors. There was some composition contest that Egeman was talking about and suggesting. Last year, he said, the theme had been that your piece should include a leitmotif.
At the next pause, Levi clarified, "Sorry, the theme was you have to use llama teeth?"
April 19, 2015
@5263. In the wake of a bunch of people giving fake reviews to their decks, I ran into one today where someone put HTML bold tags around their title, so that it appears in bold in the list of decks. Now that's cheap...
@5264. Note: the color of pocket notebooks I buy is called "Oxide Green."
@5265. "Good job! You were like the best one in your row, I could hear you." --someone after the concert on Saturday
@5266. Someone was asking around if anybody had an extra bowtie last night. Then he realized that the reason he was missing his was that he'd already put it on.
@5267. Saw a construction traffic sign today that said "TRUCKS HAULING." Two problems with this:
- It makes you pause and consider how strangely worded the sign is, which is not usually what you're going for when you're putting up a hazard sign.
- If you need to be told to watch out for trucks (hauling or otherwise) in a construction zone, you really shouldn't be driving in one.
@5268. During this single weekend, I somehow managed to lose two combs -- both of the ones I brought with me on Saturday.
@5270. "Why is E there? That's a stupid place for E." --Marty
@5271. "This was damn near crap last night." --Marty
@5273. "I applauded in seven." --#overheard audience member, after playing Mandra
April 20, 2015
@5274. "I'm not saying that I'm voting for him, but can you see my arm at this angle?" --someone in Chapel Choir, during a blind vote
@5275. "Sure, what the hell?" --someone accepting a nomination
@5276. "Pass." --someone declining a nomination
{BL #8156}
@5277. In their speech, someone said that he'd heard that being secretary was "a lot like herding cats and dogs." Multiple people heard this as "hurting cats and dogs."
@5278. One of the worst line breaks I've seen in a while:
Davidic-
heir
@5280. Oddly, another one very soon after, on a blog (this one due to a crappy hyphenation algorithm, I think):
read-
just
That one had me scratching my head for about fifteen seconds.
@5281. "They've having, like, 13-year-olds in charge of commanding the Trojan War? No wonder they're losing!" --Ben
@5282. "But this [reading] is ingenious rather than convincing." --in our Aeneid commentary
@5283. My calendar looks all sad in the afternoons without ensemble rehearsals... :(
@5284. I opened a terminal intending to start Whitaker's Words, and instead of the relevant 'ww', my fingers typed 'mocp'. Which is a program, but...it's a media player, that I haven't used for some time.
@5285. "Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void."
http://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman.html
{BL #6101}
@5286. "If using this medicine for an extended period of time, obtain refills before your supply runs out."
--under "Additional Information" on the facts sheet for my potassium supplement
@5288. I am of the apparently strange opinion that running a verify on a backup should not push the system load average to 9.
@5290. Apparently they move elephants in "crates." Those must be some fucking huge crates. (Unless it's like that joke about how you get a giraffe into a refrigerator: open the door, put the giraffe in, and close the door.)
April 25, 2015
@5291. "The awesomeness of a programmable backpack." --me, referring to my hiking backpack
@5294. I'm highly amused by the fact that in this medical deck, out of over 16,000 notes, the single one that happens to be randomly selected to show on the top of the previews on AnkiWeb contains a picture of a penis.
@5295. "Download adds-on from codes" --#ankiforums
@5296. "Did you lose a diabetes testing kit?" --subject of a stolaf-extra post
@5297. "Cash payments. Caassh paaayments. Like money." --me, voice memo
@5300. "I have to get off the phone, because I'm going to write a poem." --Judyth Hill, introducing her song at the Manitou-Viking concert
@5301. There was this guy on the 9/11 documentary we watched in theology a little while back who said that he believed that the Second Coming would not come until we were ready for it. I really liked that idea.
{BL #6038}
April 26, 2015
@5302. "In reality, cats possess the ability to turn themselves right side up in mid-air if they should fall upside-down, known as the cat righting reflex. This enables them to land on their feet if dropped from sufficient height, about 30 cm (12 in). Toast, being an inanimate object, obviously lacks both the ability and the desire to right itself." --Wikipedia
@5303. "I just want to make sure she's not dead!" --#overheard in the quad
@5305. "I think a handout would make us stand-out." --#overheard in the Cage
@5306. "No, Mom! I was running to room draw, it was clearly the most [reckless?] hour of my life!" --#overheard in the quad
@5308. "It is not currently shit. It is getting there. But it is not very nice." --#overheard in the Cage
@5310. This is the weirdest way someone (AOK, that is) has ever phrased my grade to me: "Your grade for the discussion is A."
@5311. I had an idea while I was out walking tonight (novel). It's a corollary to JMG's famous post entitled "One Story," and I title it "One Theory." In turn it was based off something I read on Studebaker's blog recently, in which he stated in passing that most people who are not moral theorists are surprisingly inconsistent in their beliefs, and it seemed to me to imply that we all ought to be consistent. And for whatever reason I decided to question that assumption (cf. CB30.39). *Is* it important to be consistent in one's moral beliefs, to have a single unifying theory? And I thought that perhaps really, it wasn't; what matters is that you always do what you feel ethically comfortable with (to the extent that you are sane and capable of making good decisions in that respect).
But I think in a lot of things, we have this desire to make everything fit one theory, and this leads to a dangerous and ugly and maybe even boring reductionism. It's natural to want this, I think: wouldn't it be cool, for instance, if there were a single theory that somehow explained everything in the universe? (Is this the Question to the Life, the Universe, & Everything?) But combined with confirmation bias, we start twisting things around to fit a theory that really isn't cut out to explain something else. For instance, what happens when we start trying to explain objective facts with religion? We wind up insisting that the earth is flat in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary, and then we get ourselves in a real fix because we're trying to deny reality. Better to leave the religious aspects in the realm of things that are not objective fact, which is what religion is good at in the first place. Conversely, what if we like the way science helps us explain the world and we want to apply it to everything? Well, now if it can't be measured objectively, it doesn't exist.
This doesn't happen everywhere. Nobody says that Newtonian mechanics is bullshit because the theory of relativity exists and is a useful way to describe everything. Sure, Newtonian mechanics relies on certain simplifications. But it still objectively *works*, and it's a very clean and beautiful approximation to (the best approximation we have of) what's actually going on that is far more accurate than available measuring precision in all but the most unusual circumstances. If I want to know how long it's going to take me to drive 400 miles on the interstate and I have to take the time dilation caused by my travel into account, I'm probably not going to bother to figure it out. (And is it how long it takes *me* to travel, or how long the people at my destination think I took to travel it? For that matter, are our clocks the same to begin with?) If I want to write an email client, I don't try to plan everything out using the theory of circuitry. There is no "theory of computing" that will appropriately encompass everything that's going on and be a useful tool at all levels.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that a useful theory has a single purpose and it sticks to it, and intelligent people shouldn't try to apply it to places beyond where it belongs. (It might be a nice and useful exercise to play with it sometimes, but if you find yourself stretching things and making ugly concessions to get it to work, you're probably pounding in a nail with a spoon.) Good theories are like Unix utilities: do one thing and do it well, and then we use our natural creativity and associative memory to pipe them together.
@5312. TeX geekery moment -- and I seriously almost did this, I am not making this up or exaggerating how close I was to doing it -- I came to the end of a line in my paper journal after the word "Mellby" and knew that the room number "310" needed to come next, and I knew that "310" wasn't going to fit on the line but this was a crappy place for a line break. So I was on the verge of putting my pen to the paper after "Mellby" to draw a tilde to indicate a non-breaking space.
@5314. "I hope everyone gets to go to heaven except Hegel." --Sebastian
(/r/fuckyouinparticular?)
@5316. I was noticing again that I have a recording in my voice memos app titled "Ornament onion." I have this because autocorrect suggested it for "ornamentation" and I found it so hilarious I couldn't help accepting the correction.
@5317. "It [the software] ought to be smart enough to do that. But I can't really complain, because I wrote it." --me
@5318. Programmers making typos (in constant strings) always makes me a little bit nervous...
April 28, 2015
@5319. "Document cannot be saved as text." --Conkeror, displaying a text file
@5321. "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." --Camus, 'An Absurd Reasoning'
@5322. I just starred an idea I liked so hard that I cut through the paper with HB lead.
@5323. "Emacs was nice, but I now prefer systemd instead." --Slashdot comment
{BL #2502}
@5325. Sisyphus the Piano-Tuner
@5326. "You're so bad at putting your dishes away! You're just terrible at it." --#overheard by the tray return in the caf
@5327. "A...what do you call it. Music major." --#overheard in the quad
@5328. I decided today that I found an (arguably) autological line in Vergil, Aen 9.447:
nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo
Not only is it talking about Nisus and Euryalus not being forgotten, it itself is not forgotten! Of course, it's a special kind of autology, because Vergil could not have written it thusly on purpose.
I got to thinking about this because this line is written on the 9/11 memorial (in English translation, but with "Vergil" tagged in the corner). And it's rather out of context since it's...well, glorifying Nisus and Euryalus. Which isn't quite what they're going for, is it? At least that's not what *I* would be going for on a 9/11 memorial. Though I'll admit the line itself is very nice. But as I said during class, anytime you quote somebody or merely refer to their work, you necessarily must deal with the connotations associated with their work and with the context, because you can't expect people to set that aside. Making those connections is how we develop our thought and how we learn.
(Cf. #4753 on autological sentences.)
@5330. So I thought there was an odd dark spot in my peripheral vision...but there was actually a piece of black fuzz sitting on the carpet over there.
April 30, 2015
@5331. "Thanks! It worked smoothly, like the remote moon, like imaginary breezes." --#ankiforums, fifya
@5332. "Flying today is worse than riding a Greyhound bus in the 1950s."
@5333. "Promise I won't do it again?" --#ankiforums: someone banned from AnkiWeb for stacking reviews
@5334. "Empty nose syndrome"
@5335. "Is that ears or air or gold?" --Alison, translating "aures"
@5336. "House style is that vectors are purple with yellow dots." --answer on TeX Stack Exchange explaining why contextual commands are useful
@5338. Yes, hibernating your computer will cause data to "burst into the RAM" when it is restored, thereby "creating black spots" which will decrease its efficiency.
http://superuser.com/questions/907474/can-hibernating-the-computer-damage-the-ram
May 01, 2015
@5339. Helpdesk: "I have the connector from there to a UPC connector." (meaning USB)
@5340. "Hi I got into a problem" --#ankiforums
@5341. "So what browser are you using?" / "I used to have Mozzarella, but now I'm using Wirevox."
@5342. "I'm kind of a font connoisseur. What about Times New Roman?"
@5343. I find this phrasing extremely amusing: "14-year perpetual calendar"
@5344. "Note: the following table is mostly wrong." --seen on the LaTeX Wikibook
@5347. Just read _Waiting for Godot_...very interesting.
"Because we're waiting for Godot!"
@5348. Also, it sounds so much like it fits into the Coope, Boyes and Simpson song "Waiting by the Road" that I can't help swapping the words.
@5349. Man, I cannot spell 'diphthongs' correctly on the first try for the life of me.
@5350. I've decided if you try to clarify something but really just make it worse, it's a "muddification."
@5352. "Do you want to know where this post became useless to Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and big thinkers? Right where I said, 'Computers are not a natural working medium for mathematics.' They understand computers and they understand how to turn computers into money so they are understandably interested in problems whose solutions require computers. Sometimes a problem comes along that doesn't naturally require computers. Like mathematics. They may then define, change, and distort the definition of the problem until it does require computers."
@5353. "I like thunderstorms. Until they get really bad. Then things get beat up and people die and stuff. That's never good." --me
(cf. #1830)
@5354. I saw a dog using the drinking fountain in the quad (with a person to help it, of course). It was tall enough to put its forepaws up on the crossbar, and then the person turned on the water and the dog drank. It was really pretty funny.
@5355. "I love this skirt because I can pull it over my head and still be comfortable." --#overheard outside the caf
@5356. "As my roommate, you're responsible for my life and my death. More so my life." --#overheard in the quad
@5357. "Where's concept 23? Oh, I didn't do it." --me
@5358. "The Frobenius Endomorphism"
@5359. Learned, for about the twentieth time in my life, that weighted averages are really confusing: if you get a higher grade than your current average in one part of a weighted average grade, but a lower grade than your current class average, you can still gain overall percentage.
@5362. (In a discussion about meaningless phrases.)
"You could just mix the word order up completely."
"So basically Vergil."
@5364. I just mistyped "linguistic" as "linguishit." It has *almost* the same set of letters...
@5366. "Extra Circular Activities" --on an Honor Council application
Do I trust someone to be my Honor Council representative if they can't proofread their application (or, worse, they actually think that they're called "extra-circular activities")?
@5367. Talk about a loaded question: "Do you think there should be more discussion about diversity on campus?" (yes/no)
@5368. "...but you only paste once (YOPO)." --in the docs for a vim plugin
@5371. Well... I'm now a member of Ole Choir. I'm not exactly sure what to think about that.
@5375. "Do you currently have an iPhone? / 'I'm not sure.'" --offered answer to a survey question on the NWI Times website (of course, I selected this option to be a smart-ass, because their system of making you answer a poll to view the page is really annoying and dumb)
@5376. "There were also notions that spitting into a frog's mouth three times after intercourse would prevent pregnancy."
Okay, the Romans didn't have everything figured out...I particularly like that it has to be *three* times, precisely.
{BL #12487}
@5377. "...because $mn$ is the product of two finite integers."
This got the smart-ass but very accurate comment: "...all integers are finite!"
@5378. "We [the Ole Thrift Shop] do *NOT* accept: socks, underwear, food, trash, or items with holes or tears."
@5383. "Hi everybody. For those of you who have young kids I have a couple days this month that I can babysit, May 23 and 39." --seen on Facebook
@5384. "Often those who bearest not; break forth into singing" --Google Translate corruption of part of above email
@5385. Another great phrase: "the worship of Aspaas"
I don't think that was supposed to be an objective genitive (though actually there's no genitive at all as far as I can see), but it's still pretty funny.
@5386.
I thought this was quite a brilliant use of the "good enough" estimate, which I just happened to think of. I'm typically not very good at doing estimates of this sort, and I'd like to get better.
I wanted to see if I'd remembered to update my work log program to the new rate of $16/hour. But the output only displayed "hours" and "balance due." I could round the hours to 7, but 14*7 or 16*7 is mildly annoying to do in your head. So instead I just did 15*7, found that value was lower than the displayed due value, and knew it was 16*7 and not the other way around.
@5387. "The concept of proving an assumption to be wrong is a strange idea."
@5389. "I'm melting! Moral relativism!" --Joseph at lunch, in a witch voice
@5390. "Do boys have sex drives over there?" --#overheard in the Cage
@5391.
And who takes care of the details? When I worked at Inside Asia magazine and galleys came back for proofreading, they were read and corrected by three people: the two editors, who concentrated on making sure that the spellings and punctuation had been entered correctly, and myself. My role as designer was to check that markup had been correctly applied, and I also focused on the quality of line breaks, hyphenation and justification.
Who checks these details in today's typesetting environment? Judging by the low quality of a lot of typesetting, from the most prestigious magazines to the documents prepared in corporate offices, the answer appears to be -- nobody.
--http://xml.coverpages.org/taylorWYSIWYG.html
@5392. "This is psychedelic!" / "Or psychotic!" --#overheard on the quad from inside Mellby
@5393. "print a[0][1:len(a[0])-1],a[1],float(a[3])/100"
What in the...
@5395. A funny typing error: "lasty ear"
@5396. "Avoid intending after list" --typo of "indenting"
(The opposite of #2255.)
@5397. "to moo in reply" --WW definition of 'remugio'
I mean, it's accurate, but it's still a pretty goofy definition.
Also, it's an awesome word to begin with.
@5398. I told someone before Ole Choir auditions who had not done them before (I can't, oddly, remember who it was) to "breathe." He laughed and said something to the effect of, "Yeah, that's a good thing. Necessary for life and all."
@5400. I'm afraid Sophia's second email to me the other day (in =Beauty, rereading) has an Intelligence Coefficient of Exclamation Marks (#1859) of .67 ("Extremely overexcited or extremely stupid"). But it was sincerely meant...
@5401. I think the two Random Thoughts files might still just *barely* fit on a single 3.5-inch floppy disk -- if not, it's a close call. That just goes to show you how awesome ASCII (well, UTF-8) text is as a format.
{BL #12239}
@5402. There's a thread on StackOverflow asking how to exit vim. It has 432 up-votes.
Really it's not *all* that strange, because it's totally non-intuitive and there are plenty of people who will be trying to use it for the first time and google it to find out. But still, in the words of a commenter, "This is a legendary question."
Update: There's a post on the SO blog now about this thread. I quote: "In the last year, 'How to Exit the Vim Editor' has made up...one out of every 20,000 visits to SO questions. That means during peak traffic hours on weekdays, there are about 80 people per hour that need help getting out of Vim."
@5406. I love interpreting Vergil...I can basically make up whatever the hell I want as long as it matches the language and call it an argument.
May 11, 2015
@5408. I hate the word "reenter": all three plausible ways to spell it seem weird.
reenter (I have rEEn-tered!)
re-enter (ugly)
reënter (archaic)
I would avoid it, but it's impossible to do so in this dream without resorting to ugly circumlocutions.
@5410. "Common English usage misconceptions. The neutrality of this article is disputed. It has been suggested that this article be merged into 'Disputes in English grammar.'"
@5411. One of the funniest uses of the literary double negative is Douglas Adams' description of a machine dispensing "a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
May 13, 2015
@5413. "What was that short piece they played before the conductor came out? It was awful!"
@5414. I graded people on CS125 homework for about 10 minutes on whether they'd completed exercises with certain numbers -- on the WRONG homework. I was wondering why literally *nobody* had done D2 and D3...
@5417. "13 suggestions or improvements" --#ankiforums
Sounds a little like 95 Theses!
@5424. Man, is it a gloomy and depressing Reading Day. It's been pouring and gray all day, and it feels like evening even though it's 4:30 because it's so dark outside. If it were just ordinary studying, it'd be a great time for it to be raining, but with all the stress here I think it really would help if it were at least decently nice outside.
@5425.
"A ring is an abelian group under multiplication."
"Is not."
--#ankiblunders
@5426. The Great Con paper assignment says that your paper must be in "a 12-point font." While I applaud them for not prescribing a specific font, I do wonder how crazy you could get before they would complain, and if so what they would say. (Could I design my own font in which each letter was stretched and kerned so that only a word fit per line, but was labeled "12-point"? Could I use Wingdings in 12-point? Could I bold, italicise, and underline everything and print it in yellow text on a white page? It doesn't say a "readable" or "text" font.)
Actually, you could go a long way with a "joke paper," so to speak, that followed the letter of the rules but was completely wacko. For instance, how many sets of your average paper guidelines specifically indicate what language the paper should be in? Or what size paper you need to print it on? It would be awesome to turn in a paper printed in seven columns on a poster.
@5428. "In answer to the Moodle question [is /I think, therefore I am/ defensible]: It probably depends on what the meaning of 'is' is (with apologies to Bill Clinton)"
--written in the margin of my Descartes
@5429. "Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral." --Frank Lloyd Wright
This reminds me of Bringhurst's admonition to pay attention even to the insignificant typographic details.
@5430. Prof. Kaden told us a joke a while back. The question is, "Who is the shortest person in the Bible?" Some people say it's Zacchaeus; others say it's "Knee-high-a-miah." But actually it's Job's friend, Bildad the Shoe-Height. [sp. recte "Shuhite"]
@5431. "I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room." --Blaise Pascal
May 15, 2015
@5435. "But, as all of us who will soon make way for robot masters and robot directors know, the march of supposed progress cannot be halted, especially not by a cultural predilection." --CNet, apparently utterly seriously
Uh-huh...
@5436. According to the assignment guidelines, my Great Con paper needs to have a thesis. Uh-oh... :P
@5439. "The first and only 2-in-1 joint and sleep supplement!"
And...what is the purpose of combining those?
@5440. "Are you a virgin?" / "Pardon?" / "Yeah, if it's not a personal question." / "How much more personal can you get!?"
--Life of Bryan
@5441. "Windy with a few clouds." --weather forecast
May 18, 2015
@5442. "Contents of the statue of Death:"
@5444. You force your crude dagger into a crack and pry. Maud suddenly disappears!
@5445. The other night we were discussing whether it would be worthwhile to audit a philosophy class, and Annika told us that in college her mother audited typing. (Apparently this was only one of a very large number of eccentric things that she did in college.)
@5447. So when Bryan and I set up Mathematica for linear algebra at the beginning of this year on our Linux machines, we had a lot of trouble getting the activation keys to work, and as part of that I ended up re-requesting a license key several times. Today I got no fewer than four emails telling me my site license has been extended.
@5452. "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." --Hemingway
{BL #8364}
@5453. "I used to manage a motorcycle shop and people would come in all the time looking for the cheapest helmet we had. I always asked them what their head was worth and left the decision up to them." --Lifehacker comment
@5454. Having a lot of trouble typing after moving all my boxes into storage. Your muscles get used to making a really big effort, and then you want to overdo it on the small things.
@5458. Stored the trash can I forgot to put in storage. They had a sign on the door saying 'Mellby storage is FULL', but they were clearly still accepting items.
May 25, 2015
@5459. Went looking for something to tell me where the proper place to hyphenate 'Beethoven' is. This one website tells me that it's monosyllabic. I guess I've been pronouncing it wrong...
@5460. "I recently started using your application both for my mac and iphone. It's super effective, but design of the app is worst." --#ankiforums
@5461. So Grandpa and I were working on a little bit of video editing and ran into one that had been taken on a phone in portrait mode, but the phone had detected the orientation of the phone wrong or something, because it was sideways. Grandpa asked if we could fix it in the Adobe software he had bought for it, and I said I was sure we could. "But of course," I said, "the audio will be rotated too."
He said I had him going for about a second.
@5462. "Press the button that is in the middle of nowhere and often marked with a symbol." --part of my "computer treatise" that I wrote for homeschool, explaining how to turn the computer on
@5463. "It's barely worth my time to post this in the trash can instead of throwing it to Extra." --me, misquoting myself
@5464. "Closed captions cards" --#ankiforums for cloze cards
May 29, 2015
@5465. "Ach, cantankerous offal!" --Judith, to her horse, "Judith"
@5466. "I did a not insubstantial amount of swearing at it." --CB31.63
@5467. Just remembering that someone on the Empire Builder asked me if I was working on homework when I was catching up on CB. No, I'm done with that for now, thank God...
@5468. "Pending read you receive my greetings and thanks" --#ankiforums (machine translation)
@5469. "Or, to increase your [mobile data] plan by 1GB for $0 more per month, reply YES."
Somehow I doubt this is what they meant.
UPDATE: Believe it or not, it is; they decreased the price of all plans by $10 but didn't charge people less unless they explicitly switched plans.
@5470. "If I get up to go to the bathroom without looking, I'm going to die." --me, after leaving a lot of stuff on the floor
{BL CB33.9}
@5471. So I told this one to my parents yesterday. I can't remember where I learned it.
A guy walks into a bar, orders a pint of beer, and goes and sits down at a table. As he's about to start drinking his beer, a monkey swings over the table and pees in it. Annoyed, he gets up and goes and asks the bartender, "Whose monkey is that?" "It's the pianist's," says the bartender. So the guy goes over to the pianist and asks him, "Do you know your monkey pissed in my beer?" "No," says the pianist, "but if you hum it I'll play it."
May 31, 2015
(Cleaning up PB.)
@5475. "How in the world am I supposed to draw a pilcrow on the train?" --me
@5476. "I tried to install it on my mobile phone." --#overheard on the South Shore, 2015
@5478. "Any volunteers to get off at Tomah?"
@5479. #overheard in the lounge car:
"I need a hot tea."
"I would like to have a hot tea..."
(accepts correction)
(Cf. #805)
{BL CB35.51}
{BL #8713}
@5482. While waiting for all the Anki I did while camping to finish syncing, I found myself starting to sing "...when I was sinking down..."
UPDATE: Now every time I hear this song I think of this... cf. #4717.
Also cf. #4766.
@5483. And now for a bunch of stuff written in PB while camping.
@5485. In the used bookstore in Mineral Point, I found a cookbook published in 1989 by the American Heart Association on low-fat cooking. What caught my eye was the fact that it was a cookbook written by an M.D. The whole thing was really pretty hilarious (and stomach-churning, in some ways, although it wasn't all *that* bad for the most part), but these two quotes stood out:
"The recipes in this book have been analyzed by computer."
And in the ingredients list for a number of recipes: "1 Tbsp acceptable vegetable oil."
@5488. While browsing our wildflowers field guide, I ran across a plant called "bastard toadflax." We decided that could be a term of endearment of some sort, so we've started using it jokingly.
@5491. "Your safety and security are of the upmost concern to those of us who welcome you as our guest." --seen on the brochure at the Best Western in Dodgeville
@5492. "Please dispose of corndog sticks in proper receptacle." --sign in the caf line
@5494. #overheard in the campground by the water fountain between 270 and the pit toilets: "This is where the raccoon peed on yours, isn't it?"
@5496. "WHOEVER IS PRAYING FOR RAIN / PLEASE STOP" --seen on a church sign in (very low-lying) Momence during a period of rain
@5497. "Dear anki authorities" --#ankiforums salutation
@5498. I just spent over five minutes looking for what I thought was a missing Records Project book, only to close the book that was lying open on the table and discover it was the one I thought was missing.
June 16, 2015
@5500. "The only bad thing about this song is that you don't want it to end." --Papa, about "Precious Lord"
(cf. #5304)
@5501. So I got a B+ in Abstract Algebra. I'm *really* happy about that. In a very illogical but quite understandable development, I now feel a lot better about how the class went now that I know that my grade was not a disaster (indeed, quite a bit better than I had expected). I still didn't fully understand everything in the course, but you know, maybe that doesn't have to be the point. It taught me something about doing proofs in preparation for algorithms. It gave me a very difficult class to try to wrap my head around. It taught me that there *are* such crazy and abstract and difficult things out there to struggle with if you want to. And it was something different. Maybe most of all, I think it taught me that that kind of math is not for me, but I can try to force my way through it and have some success if I try hard enough. And all that is worth something even if I can't honestly say in objective terms that I "liked" the class given how difficult it was. Although, actually, I still have to admit that (especially before we got into the more complex stuff near the end), there really were parts that I enjoyed, or at the very least found intellectually and mathematically stimulating. So all in all, I think it was a good thing for me to take. I still don't think I'll recommend taking it to people who aren't math majors; I can think it was a good thing for myself to take, but I certainly won't put any shine on the amount of difficult work and hand-wringing involved.
@5505. "Surely the famous Soren Bjornstad, whose technical abilities are superlative, will have a great solution!" --#ankiforums
@5507. "...to my Christmas Festival colleagues, led by Anton Armstrong, who lets all of us speak our piece and then says, 'No, of course not.'" --Sigrid, on her Manitou reunion concert
{BL CB32.79}
@5508. "...and I know that my next Manitou reunion will be in heaven." --Sigrid, on her Manitou reunion concert
@5510. "Music is not the end in itself; it is but a means of grace." --Dr. Armstrong, at Sigrid's Manitou reunion concert
@5511. "She didn't quite tell you the truth, okay?.....in the end, yes, I do get the last word, and it's usually this: 'Yes, dear.'" --Dr. Armstrong, in response to #5507
@5512.
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and [the] rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
--Irish Blessing
@5514. As the 1897 Sears, Roebuck, and Company Consumer's Guide pointed out: "If you don't find what you are looking for in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue."
http://www.backwordsindexing.com/Intro.html
@5515. "Why do people always read these posts and assume, 'OH, you don't own a BUNDT PAN? I bet you don't have PANTS or FORKS either.'" --Lifehacker comment
@5516. "As luck would have it, there are no true collisions between notes and rests in this example, but that has more to do with the positions of the notes than the rest. In other words, Bach deserves more credit for avoiding a complete collision than Finale does." --LilyPond documentation
@5518. Odd situation caused somehow by the 'verse' LaTeX environment: using \noindent caused a line to be indented, whereas it was not indented without the command.
June 21, 2015
@5519. "No tradition that has to put up with the inconveniences of actually existing is or can be identical to the ageless wisdom that stands eternal in the heavens." --JMG
@5521. I love doing debugging tests. You get to do things like this:
@@@
def moo(self):
print "MOOOOOO!"
self.form.questionList.model().layoutChanged.connect(self.moo)
Emily 567 [~/current/clicker-quiz-manager](!)$ ./runcqm
MOOOOOO!
MOOOOOO!
@@@
@5522. "Sorry for interrupting. I'd just waited long enough." --me
June 23, 2015
@5523. "South Carolina Refuses To Remove Confederate Flag From Capitol Trailer"
@5524. "...the item is also be selected." --Qt documentation
@5526. "Nearly everyone can feel good about themselves by opposing the confederate flag, but only because this requires no sacrifice on their part and consequently cannot solve anything." --Ben Studebaker
June 26, 2015
@5527. y - an uncursed stone called flint named luckstone
Hmm.
@5528. "A determination of "Water is wet" would be an 8-1 decision by the court with Scalia writing a scathing dissent that forcing the ruling on Americans destroys democracy." --Slashdot comment
@5529. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." --Arthur C. Clarke's First Law
@5531. So you might have gathered this from #5528, but the Supreme Court decided that preventing gay couples from getting married is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It's about time, folks. All the same, it's nice to know that there are at least a couple of things our government can actually get done, even when it has to go through the courts.
@5532. "Is there anything I can do, other the backup, to be safe of a crash down?" --#ankiforums
@5533. "The lameness of going to the trouble to do OCR to cheat on a typing game is mind-boggling."
July 01, 2015
@5534. I #overheard the following while waiting in line at Walgreens, spoken super-loud by one of the pharmacy attendants into the drive-thru headset:
"As a precaution, ma'am, to put in our system...you're not trying to get pregnant, are you?"
@5535. So apparently somewhere in Canada there were a couple of guys in a helicopter chatting about their sex lives...with the megaphone on.
@5536. typeupsidedown.com
@5538. "Despite Governor Asa Hutchinson's refusal to sign a controversial religious freedom bill that seemed to permit businesses to discriminate against homosexuals, officials from Arkansas-based retailer Walmart announced Wednesday that they would nevertheless continue defending whichever gays buy their cheap shit."
@5539. "Why did I write 'page'? Oh, I'm looking at the wrong part of the code." --me
@5541. "I do see the reasoning behind the status quo as well." --#ankiforums
@5543. "After This"
July 05, 2015
@5547. Slashdot comment on user interfaces:
"""
I believe they call it UX now.
It used to be called UI, but after a while people became familiar with the term UI and knew how to use it.
So, they had to change it.
"""
@5548. I had some kind of dream last night or the night before about a kind of poetry that used some sort of concordance different than but similar to rhyme. It seemed to be related to the sort of alliteration that early English poetry used, but it involved words in specific places within the lines that matched each other in some way. It was very beautiful; it's too bad I can't remember more.
@5550. On this Cara Dillon video on YouTube, the description text begins with "Massan and Ellie Forever." Curious what this meant, I googled it in quotation marks; there were 96 results, and when I clicked on *any* of them and did a find, nothing came up. None of them explained it or were that sort of site, either...so I guess it's just a huge mystery. It sounds cool. Nice and mysterious for something you can't figure out, I suppose.
@5551. I've looked at this other one probably three times, and it's titled "Never in a Million Years After the Morning," which I thought was a really neat title, but wasn't sure exactly what it meant. It turns out that the song is "Never in a Million Years," and it's from the album "After the Morning," which isn't nearly as cool but makes a hell of a lot more sense.
@5552. Reminds me of a #mondegreen which I don't have in here: when I got the 24/7 album by CB&S, I listened to it a couple of times before I looked at the lyrics, and I thought during that time that the title and refrain of the song "Privatize" was "private eyes," which made a little bit of sense and is a lot more fun.
In my defense, it's very difficult to tell the difference in a properly sung text, because the 't' has to attach to the 'ize' syllable regardless of which it is. Plus the accent fell largely on the third syllable (in accordance with my interpretation of the first two as an adjective) because of the line of the music.
@5553. In the same way, when the media spouts some absurd bit of manipulative hogwash, if you take the time to think about it, you can watch your own representation shift from "that guy's having an orgasm from slurping that fizzy brown sugar water" to "that guy's being paid to pretend to have an orgasm, so somebody can try to convince me to buy that fizzy brown sugar water." If you really pay attention, it may shift again to "why am I wasting my time watching this guy pretend to get an orgasm from fizzy brown sugar water?" and may even lead you to chuck your television out a second story window into an open dumpster, as I did to the last one I ever owned. (The flash and bang when the picture tube imploded, by the way, was far more entertaining than anything that had ever appeared on the screen.)
--JMG
@5555. So I found a can of sardines in the basement and thought they had been there for a long time, so I checked the expiration date: Best by October 28, 2019. Holy crap, those things last...
@5557. Apparently there are twenty different commands that can be used to quit vim (:help write-quit).
@5558. "Ever need to open just one more application, but find you're 100K short of RAM?"
--/How Macs Work/, 1993
@5560. "Please *do not* enter any links that begin with 'http' in the field below." --St. Olaf health insurance waiver
Sounds like somebody needs to fix their form...
@5561. And here's the confirmation email I got:
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 11:29:21 -0500
From: noreply@american-mgmt.com
To: bjornsta@stolaf.edu
Subject: St Olaf 2015-2016 - Waiver
X-Mailer: PHP/5.3.3-7.6+hw2
Thank you for completing your Waiver for St Olafs health insurance plan.
We have recieved your waiver form and it will be processed shortly.
If you have any questions, please contact your schools office.
Besides misspelling 'receive', I'm suspicious that the apostrophes are missing because they screwed up the quoting in their PHP code, given the above entry. I'm not quite sure we should be doing business with these folks...
@5564. "Information Sent Here Advises Actions I Cannot Take and Refers to Findable Places When I Only Run into Blank Walls" --#ankiforums subject
@5565. "There is [an] ancient writing in a cave somewhere, that says there [are] 3 things that make life worth living, sex, faith, and Kate Rusby." --YouTube comment
@5566. Sod's Law: If something can go wrong, it will, and it will happen at the worst possible time.
July 16, 2015
@5567. Why Are Salted Hashes More Secure?
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/51959/why-are-salted-hashes-more-secure
@5568. "The hashing process is like a meat grinder: there is no key, everybody can operate it, but there is no way to get your cow back in full moo-ing state."
--http://security.blogoverflow.com/2011/11/why-passwords-should-be-hashed/
@5570. "importing runs amok" --#ankiforums subject
@5571. "Desktop Stationary" --sign at Staples
@5572. Today at 4PM on Wunderground:
Active Advisory: Tornado Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Flood Warning, Flash Flood Watch, Heat Advisory, Special Statement
Active Notes: Local Storm Report, Public Information Statement
When I posted a screenshot of this on Facebook, Nichi said, "OUTSIDE IS CLOSED."
July 19, 2015
@5575. I always remember this quote from Things People Said: "A supersaturated solution is one which holds more than it can hold."
The best part is that it's really not that far off!
@5576. "To produce about 500 g of honey, foraging honey bees have to travel the equivalent of three times around the world."
(Wikipedia)
@5578. "The drawers are made to fit 3" by 5" cards and all slide in and out easily....Great for photos, essential oils, thread, herbs, any collection."
Might it also be great for 3x5 cards?
@5580. "When traveling on the Auto Train, motorcycles, vehicles with trailers and Priority Vehicle Offloading must check in by 2:30 pm. All other vehicles must check in by 2:30 pm as well."
So...all vehicles must check in by 2:30pm. That was too hard.
@5584. "What the hell is Cue?!" --me, finding it in my password manager accounts list
@5585. "I should migrate away from Comcast ASAP, they're causing eye-dee-ten-tee errors." --in the notes section of my password manager for my Comcast account
@5586. Username: 'user error'
@5588. "I currently cannot log in because of an asinine system where you can sign up with a 25-character password but only log in with a 20-character one. I have contacted them about this." --also in password manager
July 23, 2015
@5589. FastMail's IMAP access is SOOO much faster than Gmail's...
@5590. "Does the retail kit come with mitigation [migration] software?" --Amazon product question
@5591. Along with 'downforeveryoneorjustme.com', I think one of my favorite website names has to be 'replacementkeyboardkeys.com'.
@5595. "Dorm sweeps are rather like Choral Day, I decided: absolutely nobody actually wants to do it, but it's nevertheless an important community ministry. But damn, am I tired of running the stoPrint installer. [...] I stayed with one girl for about 25 minutes because her computer was so slow. I couldn't get her into a conversation, so we sat in silence staring at a blinking cursor for that time. It was really boring."
--CB22.57-8
@5600. Mama and I decided that all possible permutations of this saying are reasonable:
- Cash for trash: you bring in (what you consider) trash and get money for it.
- Trash for cash: you go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of junk.
- Trash for trash: some sort of swap event.
- Cash for cash: a currency exchange?
@5606. "I keep on trying to dot my x's today. I think it's time for bed!" --CB22.65
@5608. "This" --the entire text of a Scheme compilation error (CB21.76)
@5609. One of the signs of a chimney fire, according to a wood stove manual (CB20.40): "Sparks and flames are flying out of the chimney."
@5610. LISP: Lost In Stupid Parentheses
{BL #9299}
@5611. "The usability of Firefox's UI is like shit in a urinal today." --Slashdot comment
@5612. "nosetestes" --#whoopstypo on the command line
@5613. "Naive objects are easy to understand and to work with, at the cost of ignoring some aspects of reality." --datetime documentation
August 07, 2015
@5614. "It was riveting. It was admirable. It compels me to write a cluster of words I never imagined writing: hooray for Fox News." --NYT editorial on last night's debate
@5615. Reasons to use constants instead of raw numbers, #500: I just spent at least 5 minutes debugging why an if-statement wasn't working properly. Turns out I wrote '16834' instead of '16384'.
@5616. "Trains are big." --#overheard child on the South Shore
@5617. Another child, repeating a parent's words in a sing-song voice: "People are coming [through the aisle], so sit down...People are coming, so sit down..."
@5619. "To hear a duck quack, press seven."
@5620. "In 2008, more than...106% of automobiles were recycled."
@5621. Why passwords should be able to be displayed in cleartext:
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/stop-password-masking/
It's worth noting that this is a website that talks a lot about your business, so it is not exactly a security-oriented company, but they certainly consider security, and they make a very good argument.
@5622. Here's a fun SQLite error: "Use of recursive cursors is not allowed."
@5623. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_toad
August 14, 2015
@5624. Shipping options:
Standard: 5-10 business days
Priority: 5-10 business days
At least they also have the same price.
@5625. "We really care to make our customer happy. Buy with confidence as we will accept any returns within 30 days. All your queries will be answered within 24 hours & we promise to resolve any issues you might have." --"Terms of sale" for a bookstore
@5626. "According to the reports, the plaintiff claims she 'sustained a lacerated cornea with a vitreous detachment and all head, neck, eyes and vision were severely damaged' by the roll. Seems very unlikely that 'all head [and] neck' were severely damaged by a dinner roll, unless they throw them at something close to escape velocity, but let's assume the other injuries are at least possible." --Lowering the Bar
@5628. "As for Bodoni, its high-contrast design is flashy and attractive, but annoying to read after three words."
--http://practicaltypography.com/bad-fonts.html
@5629. https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck
@5630. "coding: utf-42"
--Python documentation's example of an invalid encoding
@5631. Oh no: the Chicken Scheme compiler has a guaranteed maximum of 120 arguments per procedure.
@5634. "Wow, my code worked the first time." --me
@5635. "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov
@5636. "For reasons that probably reach far into our evolutionary past, a call to shared sacrifice usually gets a rousing response, so long as the people who are being asked to sacrifice have reason to believe something worthwhile will come of it." --JMG
@5637. "I know. It's wrong because of the one-upmanship." --me, describing why the tooltips in Anki were not displaying the buttons I pressed because of an add-on that shifts the values by one
@5638. When calling Frontier about an internet connection problem: "We are experiencing technical difficulty with our music on hold."
They went on to tell me that when there was silence, I should stay on the line, and I would still be connected. And then the hold music played normally.
@5640. I think I just made up a term: instead of "human-readable" for stuff that's technical error output, "user-readable."
@5641. I just tried to set up CQM so that it loaded the path to the database from a table in the database.
@5642. "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." --Brian Kernighan
{BL #12228}
@5643. "So what's the best material for nibs, and why? Assuming that the materials in question can be adjusted (tempered, shaped, finished, etc.) to produce the same feel in the user's hand, then the ideal material would be one that costs nothing and lasts forever. Obviously, there is no such material."
--http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/ttp/materials.htm
@5644. I just got a mail notification from mailer-daemon@messagingengine.com telling me that the attempt to send email to <myass@example.com> timed out, but it will keep trying until mid-afternoon on Sunday. I expected emailing example.com would just black-hole emails...
@5645. Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on "blaming the victim," it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone's emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one's group identity. The thin argument "I'm offended" becomes an unbeatable trump card.
--http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
@5646. "Some studies advise against taking ginger during pregnancy, suggesting that ginger is mutagenic, though some other studies have reported antimutagenic effects."
Oh, science...we don't really know anything, do we?
@5648. "...however, this should not apply to ordinary oral consumption of Earl Grey tea."
@5649. "List of lemonade topics"
@5650. High Altitude Flatus Expulsion
August 26, 2015
@5652. http://tonedear.com/
While it's a great site, I keep parsing that URL as "tone dear" and #misread ing it as "tone deaf", which is kind of the opposite of what the site wants, isn't it?
@5654. The other day I was parking my bike at church and was remembering a time when I was parking at VBS and there was a session in progress in the room with the windows below my parking spot. (It was the year I edited the newsletter, so I got there when stuff was already going on.) The adult who was in there later told me that one of the kids interrupted the session to ask her, "Why is he parking his bike on the roof?" I mean, it does rather look like it when you're in the basement...
@5655. When Mama and I were shopping at Ace for some paint the other day, I noticed a warning on the side of the paint-mixing machine, which casually stated, "This machine is not explosion-proof."
@5657. "No, planes are pretty much set up for not-smoking. Heck, there's even a 'No Smoking' sign on the ashtray in the bathroom."
@5658. "A 2013 study published in the journal BMC Medicine found that one-third of herbal supplements sampled contained no trace of the herb listed on the label."
Nice.
@5659. "Warning: Do not use this pen other than for writing." --on a Platinum Preppy fountain pen
{BL #9767}
@5660. "...as an additional quiver in their bow." --Slashdot post
@5661. "In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." --Theodore Roosevelt
@5662. "...I think the four-in-hand takes up the least material, followed by the Pratt, the half-Windsor and last of all, of course, the silk-extravagant full Windsor, which looks magnificent with the right jacket and collar but gives you a knot of about the bulk and weight of a small cat."
@5663. "The superheterodyne receiver in radar detectors has a local oscillator that radiates slightly, so it is possible to build a radar-detector detector...since detector-detectors use a similar superheterodyne receiver, many early "stealth" radar detectors were equipped with a radar-detector-detector-detector circuit." --Wikipedia
September 01, 2015
@5664. "Oh no I'm so clumsy I blew up the sun!" --http://www.jspowerhour.com/comics/93
@5665. "Had to throw it away--smelled like smoked tea, awful." --review for Lapsang Souchong
@5666. "Fuck, for whose benefit am I carrying this burden?"
An odd mix of registers...
@5667. Once I helped a user whose folders were all named "New Folder." There was a "New Folder" and a "New Folder (2)" and so on up to "New Folder (35)." He opened up one of them, and there were more "New Folders." And inside those were more. He had a series of handwritten sheets that indexed each of his files for him. He'd look up a file he wanted to find, and it would say, for example, "New Folder (22) - New Folder (5) - New Folder (8)."
I mentioned that he could rename the folders to reflect what data they contained. The user thanked me but assured me that the system he was currently using worked quite well.
--Computer Stupidities
@5668. #ankiforums:
Subject: English for communications
Body: Work, adventuress
@5670. "See, there's this thing called the internet, where Reddit gets all of its material. That's the thing I like to read." --Alan Henry of Lifehacker, responding to someone accusing him of posting something with incorrect attribution
@5671. People become too reliant on "black box" functions and libraries where you simply pass in values and the output magically appears.
I loaned a student my HP calculator to take a quiz one time. I asked him if he knew how to use it and he said "of course". (Enter>=!). The question dealt with the concentration of hydrogen ions in a nearly-neutral solution of something. His answer was "1". "something enter something enter divide" where the second "enter" wasn't supposed to be was his mistake.
I gave him zero points for that answer, and deducted an additional point for not even thinking about whether the answer made sense.
--Slashdot comment
@5672. So I was pretty sure I'd bought Dove soap from Amazon before, so I tried searching my orders for it, but nothing came up. So after paging through some search results, I found an item, and lo and behold, "You purchased this item on January 11, 2014." Turns out that the title doesn't contain the word "soap" anywhere: it's called a "Dove Beauty Bar."
@5673. So apparently now the average American consumes 270 bottles of bottled water every year. What the hell, people.
@5674. I like the Anki,so I'll remember some code use Anki,but about the picture phenomenon,who can help me?
so I discover the Anki cannot display the double curly bracket.It take me a hug trouble.Help me please.
--#ankiforums
@5675. "Can you shot a screen to teach me?" --#ankiforums
@5676. "Largely we predicted flying cars and robots clipping our toenails and completely missed the cat videos and Wikipedia." --CB34.72
September 06, 2015
@5677. "Disambiguation (disambiguation)" --Wikipedia article title
@5679. "Fun fact: saying you have a soul does not automatically make you sound 'like a girl'." --reply to a YouTube comment
{BL #6114}
@5680. "After try make the synchronism my anki doesn't work more." --#ankiforums
September 07, 2015
@5681. They've repainted one of the bridges right before Hegewisch on the South Shore line. It's now about the brightest blue I've ever seen in my life.
@5682. So VU decided this year to change from using perfectly good parking stickers to using hang tags; the reason is not clear to anyone. It's gradually becoming clear that they really didn't think this out very well. For instance, a few days after issuing the new ones, they sent out an email reminding people that it's dangerous to drive with the hang tag on the mirror, so everyone should be careful to remember to take it off before moving. Furthermore, they said, they're going to send everyone a sticker to put on the back of the hang tag that reminds you that it's dangerous to drive with the hang tag on the mirror. .........
@5683. Someone else on the South Shore pointed out a train wash. It was very much like a car wash, only it went over the tracks and was much longer of course. While of course it's a necessary thing, it's still very funny to see.
@5684. In the department of very odd and specific industrial business names: "Chicago Mailing Tube Co."
@5685. Also, "Reynold's Urethane Recycling, Inc."
@5686. I've noticed that while trains can be rather bumpy at times, it's almost never annoying or disruptive (unless there's some particularly bad track out there). I think it may have something to do with the fact that the train is so *long* -- the bumps get spread out over the length of the train, so you get some gently undulating waves rather than huge, jarring bumps when you go over a change.
@5688. "The door said COACH/BAGGAGE. For a minute I thought it said HIGH VOLTAGE." --#overheard on the Empire Builder, a man to his wife as they came back into the car and sat down
@5689. Apparently someone didn't come down who was supposed to disembark at LaCrosse -- there were some four calls for people to come down, including one that ran, "This is the absolute *LAST* call for LaCrosse, Wisconsin!"
@5691. "William Henry Ford" --#ankiblunders
@5692. Jackson apparently was once accused of owning "gambling furniture" (a billiards table). I think that's about the funniest phrase ever.
September 08, 2015
@5693. "Avoid dangerous and distractive behavior." --seen on the side of a bus, advocating being careful as a pedestrian
@5694. "Careful Painting" --business name
@5695. On the way back to STO from Northfield today, I came across a young woman and a dog at the park that's on Ole Avenue. The woman took a big handle and threw a tennis ball for the dog. The dog then went and picked it up from the ground. Then it just lay down in the grass and sat there wagging its tail instead of bringing it back to her, and she couldn't get it to come back in the minute or so I could see what was going on.
@5696. "The Stamp Removal Act." --#ankiblunders
@5697. "Oh, you really can't do that with Katerina. It's only a technique for chicken liver." --#overheard (incorrectly!) on the way out of the caf
@5699. It drives me nuts when a program that says it uses "vi-compatible keybinds" only implements a few of the movement commands. Like this note app that implements ^D and ^U but not ^F and ^B. What the heck?
@5700. Anki forums:
Something is definitely wrong. I had 65 cards to review. I did around 20 and left the room. I came back a few minutes later and now it says I only need to review 1 card !
I'm *really* tempted to reply, "Do you have a cat?"
@5701. "I find it quite urgent as I already suffer from carpool tunnel." --#ankiforums
September 11, 2015
@5702. "Normally copyeditors and proofreaders don't get acknowledgements, but Bob Lentz (copyeditor) and Joe Ruddick (proofreader) did exceptionally thorough jobs. Joe in particular, can spot the difference between a roman period and an italics period from 20 meters." --_Modern Operating Systems_ preface
@5703. So after that I've caught several stray characters in just the first three pages. Including this gem of bad delimiters:
In particular, those instructions that affect control of the machine or do I/O )Input/Output" are forbidden to user-mode programs.
I mean, what?
@5704. "What we learn from this is that the computer industry has a habit of continuously enhancing existing acronyms with new prefixes and suffixes. We also learned that an adjective like "advanced" should be used with great care, or you will look silly thirty years down the line."
@5705. "One last note about Win32 is perhaps worth making. Win32 is not a terribly uniform or consistent interface."
@5708. "All models are wrong. Some models are useful." --George Box
@5709. Had the thought (_Statistical Modeling: A Fresh Approach_, p.21c) that statistics is really an applied discipline of math, sort of like physics. Because it doesn't give you proofs or answers or anything like that. It's about doing the best you can with what you've got, and working in probabilities instead of certainties. (As the book says: the world is complex, and "it is better to be useful than to be provably certain."
See also the idea that "done is better than perfect", which I think I've seen on Lifehacker and often refer to personally but don't have in RT.
See also #4633 about stats vs. mathematics.
@5710. In 2012, [Tim] Storms reclaimed the record for the Lowest Note Produced by a Human. The new record is G(-7), or 0.189 Hz, eight octaves below the lowest G on the piano, or just over seven octaves below the piano.[5]
@5711. "It [cloud computing] allows people to read and modify word-processor files, spreadsheets, and presentations using a smartphone on the toilet. This is generally regarded as #progress." --_Modern Operating Systems_
@5713. "If you are not used to strong typing you may find it excessively pedantic and annoying."
September 14, 2015
@5714. Somehow I don't think "git ln -s" is a thing.
@5719. "Looking up www.localhost.com" --Firefox
@5720. Have you not kuh-nown?
@5722. "Copyright (c) 1901 by Public Domain." --at the end of a quoted ASV text
@5724. "the agony" --spell-check suggestion for "theogony"
@5725.
Q: How do you keep a programmer in the shower all day?
A: Give them a bottle of shampoo that instructs the user: "Lather. Rinse. Repeat."
September 17, 2015
@5726. "If you have time, you can listen to the Coldplay song 'Atlas', which is in my opinion one of the worst songs ever written. So we won't listen to it." --Prof. Whitlatch
@5727. "Hesiod doesn't seem to like *anything*." --Prof. Whitlatch
@5728. "Sometimes your git gets in kind of a tizzy or something." --RAB
{BL #5861}
@5729. "You have a last word that you get to say to your parent. 'Three!'" --RAB, on child processes exiting
@5730. "This was the fun Sunday. Where I was the only tenor. And I'm not a tenor." --me, listening to last year's Interim choir
@5733. "Some sheriffs, though seemingly legally required to approve such requests, question the wisdom of allowing blind people to own and carry firearms."
@5734. "Venezuela" --autocorrect for "Vanessa"
@5736. "This is, by far, the most destructive What-If scenario to date." --http://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
You know it's going to be *baaad* when that's the first sentence.
@5737. "(These photos taken by me today. I got lots of very odd looks taking photos of empty first class seats over a few hour period on different trains, I hope they help!)" --Travel Stack Exchange
September 19, 2015
@5738. "Free peppers outside Print Center window" --stolaf-extra subject line, #unusualsentences
@5740. Two successive voice memos:
"Think very seriously about decreasing my frequency check for canto and mutt."
"And by 'frequency check,' I mean 'check frequency.'"
(Cf. #8603.)
@5741. Another gem: "So it smells very strongly of egg rolls at 4:05 AM. I don't know what they're doing."
@5742. "The difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less."
@5744. Last year immediately before one of the breaks, I arrived near the end of the dinner time and they were getting rid of whatever they had left in the freezers. I took essentially the food that they had, and this was the resulting meal:
- tortilla with black beans, cheese, and cilantro
- a salad composed of lettuce with blue cheese and thousand island dressing
- carrot curry soup
- lemon cranberry bundt cake
@5745. I was thinking recently that one of the cooler things about RP abbreviations for names (besides taking less time to write) is that they give you some different forms of the name to use stylistically. Sometimes I might want to write out a name specifically, or specifically use the abbreviation. That's a register that you don't have if you leave things unabbreviated (sadly, in English there are not many forms of names). It's a sort of personal language of added expressiveness.
@5747. They clearly have upgraded the St. Olaf data pipeline over the summer like they said they were going to: I'm just downloading a large video file from Google Drive, wired into the Ethernet, and am getting over 4MB/s transfer rates. The whole thing took less than a minute.
@5749. "regarding the collection of cyclic garbage" --Python docs, talking about problems with garbage collection of objects containing circular references
@5750. Book title: "C++ in 8 hours"
Yes, you're going to learn a powerful but horrifically messy and complex language built on a language from 1970 whose primary goal is to allow users to shoot themselves in the foot. In 8 hours. After which time you'll be able to program whatever you want.
@5751. Armstrong told us today a metaphor that KJ used for being ready to start singing your line: it's like you're next to the railroad tracks waiting for a train you're planning to jump. You don't just stand there and try to hop, you start running beside it as it approaches.
@5752. Wrote a wonderful scathing review for this terrible Ada "book" (I'm not even going to give it the honor of being called a book without scare quotes).
There are several major problems with this book:
1) The usage and style is dreadful. Here's a short passage from Chapter 3:
"After the starting letter, identifiers can contain as much numbers, underlines, and letters. Just make sure that underlines only occur once in the identifier. Also, underlines must ever be the last character in the identifier....Letter cases are not very important....However, it is imperative for an identifier to fill one text line."
There are a few places where I can't even tell what the author means, and besides, I find it very difficult to trust a book that is written so poorly and unprofessionally.
2) Though this is supposed to be a "beginner's guide," in several places technical jargon and Ada terminology is used without introduction. While I understand that this is probably not intended to be a book for learning your first programming language, I am a computer science student and have fairly extensive background in programming, and I have trouble understanding some of these paragraphs (not helped by point 1).
Things such as imports or the function Put_Line() (for displaying output on the terminal) are used in code examples without explanation. The text surrounding the code examples tells me less than the code itself, even without much familiarity with Ada's syntax.
In other places, pages are taken up on boilerplate: an entire chapter is devoted to explaining the use of the boolean comparison operators (equal to, not equal to, less than, greater than, less than or equal to, greater than or equal to).
3) The book fails to explain the motivation behind many things; for instance, underscores can be written in numbers and will be ignored by the compiler. The purpose of this is to allow you to write thousands separators in the source code, but it doesn't explain this and leaves you to wonder why you might want to put extra characters in your code without any reason, and why the compiler would specifically be written to allow it.
4) There are no exercises whatsoever, nor does it even explain how one compiles an Ada program, which might be fine for a reference work but hardly for a book that is supposed to introduce you to the language.
This book cannot possibly have earned 4.8 stars on its own merit; while the reviews did look a little bit like empty praise, I wasn't expecting the book to be this bad. Don't waste your money, or your time.
@5753. "In HiPerCiC we like to pretend that we practice test-driven development." --Rodney
@5755. "These are the famous tippy-tables." --RAB
September 25, 2015
@5756. This OS assignment is really dumb. It requires you to "properly handle" null bytes in user input, meaning that you should continue copying them after you reach the null. How the hell are you supposed to find the end with C code that's written to handle null-terminated strings? Also, there is literally no way to get printf to display that text, so it's pointless to have it there in the first place.
@5757. "Because Delos gets to speak. Which is cool. Why not have a talking island?" --Prof. Whitlatch
@5761. "And I'm a constipated baritone." --Dr. Armstrong, telling the tenors they should clearly be able to sing the line he just demonstrated
@5763.
does anyone know what excalibur is supposed to look like?
)
@5765. Ask the Duck: http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html
@5766. "I know there are a number of parents of students here." --Marty, at the Family Weekend concert
@5767. Working on setting up rsync to pull backups to Lillian. (In fact...writing this entry is part of a test of rsync!)
@5768. "Update:I Zapped Myself With the Wand of Poly-morph But than The Jaguar Ripped Thogh Both Sets of HP and i Died" --on a talk page on NetHackWiki
September 28, 2015
@5769. "No. I'm typing a CAPITAL P. A capital P inserts the letter P into the document!" --me, pissed off at Google Docs/Firefox not working properly
@5770. "Did someone snort at 'twenty dollars'?" --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@5771. "You are a good choir." --Dr. Armstrong, to Ole Choir
@5772. "Then you sit on your toes. For a really long time." --#overheard in the quad
@5773. "Take a breath, or at least a breath." --typo in my voice reflection
September 29, 2015
@5774. "Umm. Does anyone know why I have a monkey image in my homework 2 folder? That I didn't put there?" --Hawken
{BL #9092}
@5776. We had some recruiter/outreach people from Google come to OS today. I asked Papa's pet question about how possible available disk space can cope with increasing data storage volumes, and the answer I got was that disk space is still growing at a healthy exponential clip and so it simply hasn't been a problem for them yet (looking at the growth rate of big data, I still imagine it will be eventually if present trends continue -- but then those last four words are some of the most naïve and dangerous in all of statistics and economics).
Among the other questions people asked was one about whether Google uses any particular software development methodology, and the answer was no, not really, it depends on each individual project. One of the guys worked on the GUI toolkit for Android, and he said when they were first developing Android, they essentially used the "HSP -> WTC -> S" development methodology, which means:
1. Hire Smart People.
2. Write the Code.
3. Ship it.
{BL CB36.67}
@5777. If I forget, I went to a very interesting sort-of-lecture at the Classics Conversation Table last night by Prof. Ripley in religion, where he talked about how studies of the ancient world can help inform his study of the gospel of John. One of the most interesting things he talked about was how there's often a reductionist approach to Judaism and Christianity in that time period and this notion that Christianity was emerging out of "Judaism," and these were two clearly defined forces (or even, as I might have thought previously, that Judaism was one solid thing and then some amorphous blob of Christianity started taking vague shape and was rather plural over the next while until it finally coalesced into the Catholic Church). He says no, there were actually a number of different kinds of Jewish perspectives at the time, and it's not clear who exactly John was. But this he said might help explain some of the anti-Semitism that's often read into it; I know we talked in The Biblical God last semester about how from Mark -> Luke/Matthew -> John things start to progressively more "blame the Jews"; Ripley suggested that rather John is probably blaming the particular brand of Judaism that insisted that people thinking a bit more freely and going a bit outside of tradition was very harmful. (And as he pointed out, there is some value in community cohesion that can come from insisting that everyone follow a certain path, and there was also history to make them want to think that. But of course it also has its downsides, like resulting in killing the Messiah. You know, pretty minor.)
@5778. I realized tonight that from feeling a wool sweater, sheep must really be pretty scratchy, not nearly as warm and fuzzy as they look. I also decided that "Scratchy Sheep" needs to be part or all of a title for something.
@5779. "A schedule plan for producing the prototype by the prototype demo target date (Wed Dec 31, 1969)." --listed in the HiPerCiC planning information as something you should include in your project plan
@5780. Debugging a linked list implementation while drinking some really good Earl Grey tea here. It's quite funny because I'm sitting with my tea in my hand gazing at the screen pondering the code. So I decided we could call it "C and tea." It could even become a thing.
@5781. "...but process B will never receive any output. User B will hang around the printer for years, wistfully hoping for output that never comes." --_Modern Operating Systems_
@5782. "Somebody zigged when they should have zagged on this." --RAB, referring to a broken curtain
@5784. "Never pursue efficiency at the expense of clarity. An efficient program is better than an inefficient one, of course, but it is also true that a slow, correct program is better than a fast, buggy one."
--http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~mccann/style_c.html
@5786. "Remember: sin boldly, grace abounds." --Dr. Armstrong
October 02, 2015
@5787. I was walking down the stairs in Buntrock yesterday and someone ahead of me was carrying a toner cartridge box, and I read from the side of it, "stoPrint 135 Series Toner." I did a double-take and looked closer, and it actually said "varioPrint." Close enough...
@5789. "I was just talking to one of my friends who has a girlfriend, and he says..." --#overheard in the caf
@5790. "In general, having data on a disk should be considered as safe as written notes on a wet paper napkin." --ArchWiki
@5791. "I really should be using my own erotic hand implement by now." --#overheard in the caf, hopefully incorrectly
@5793. "Pointers and arrays are different things in C, until you sneeze near an array, and then it turns into a pointer." --StackOverflow comment
@5794. The other day in IT I had to teach someone how to use the photocopier. Not the payment system -- like, he actually didn't know how to lift the top, put the page on the glass, and press the start button.
@5795. "I know they knocked a few down. As in more than one. As in multiple." --#overheard in the quad
@5796. "That's not a reason to slur the articulation down." --me
@5797. The Wimpiest Spin Cycle Known to Man
@5798. "That sounded so under pitch it hurt my heart." --#overheard in CHM
@5799. "Mellby" is misspelled in our floor's email alias...really?
Then again, I also participated in a Facebook group called "Mr. Hefner's 10th hour Phsyics" for two years, and it was about one year before I mentioned that the name of the group was misspelled. (Nobody ever changed it.) But then even worse is #2308, about the book with a misspelled title.
@5802. "I feel like whenever I talk to Heather, I get really nervous and I start doing dumb things." --Virginia
@5803. "...as you're parsing along." --RAB
@5804. "note: expected 'struct path_directory *' but argument is of type 'struct path_directory *'" --gcc
@5805. The Exposure Tricycle
@5806. "Let your fingers do the walking on the yulkjhnb keys." --NetHack rumor
@5807. "Python and vim. Easily confused, you know." --me
October 12, 2015
@5808. "Happy genocide of Native Americans day!" --on Columbus Day
@5809. "...But a properly written program should never get in a situation of dividing by zero, and this is one of the dumbest "Ask Slashdot" questions in a while. Masking the interrupt makes about as much sense as driving blindfolded so you don't see the people you are running over."
(Cf. #4154.)
@5812. Sing Legato: The Musical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ6E-GVc3S8
@5813. So I remembered that the weight of the paper in my new Leuchtturm Master notebook was described as "100g", and I was trying to figure out what that might mean. (For the record, a little bit of googling seems to suggest that it's the weight of one square meter, which seems at least plausible.) My initial thought, however, was that it was simply the weight of one sheet of paper. Not only does this not make sense because the rating of the paper would then depend on how large the sheets were, it would also mean that that Master notebook, not counting the cover, would weigh over 12 kilos!
October 14, 2015
@5814. "Or maybe you think I'm wrong too. Could be. It's statistics." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@5815. "I will not explain unalikeability, I do not know what unalikeability is, and you do *not* need to know this." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@5816. "What do I think is the best solution, or what have we done in the past?" --Rodney
("What we have done in the past" was apparently 'chmod 777 /var/www'!)
@5817. I'm apparently really, really distracted right now -- I wanted to make some tea, so I took the kettle and infuser and went out. I then went into the bathroom instead of the U-room, but figured I might as well use the bathroom, so I did. Then I went to the U-room, filled the kettle, and left without the infuser. Then I came back, set the kettle on the shelf, rinsed out the infuser and threw the tea leaves away, and went back to my room without the kettle.
Maybe next I'm going to forget to put the tea in, or put the water in the cup instead of the infuser... (I've done both before!)
@5818. "I got two tenors forte. The rest of you were mezzo-wussy." --Dr. Armstrong
@5819. "We'll do 'Glorification' next week. I have a plane to catch, and I don't want to get a ticket." --Dr. Armstrong
{BL #7276}
@5820. Two people #overheard inspecting the motivational sidewalk chalk in front of Buntrock: "Gender is a social construct!"
@5823. "A diary should find its sufficient justification in the writing of it. If the act of writing is not its own reward, then let the diary remain for ever unwritten."
--http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/09/13/the-diary-habit/
October 16, 2015
@5824. "Watch my gesture to know what beat I'm on!" --Dr. Armstrong
@5825. An Old Hosanna
@5827. "Chorale is my favorite part of the day. I don't know why, because it consists of an hour and a half of getting yelled at to sing better." --one of Mama's students
@5828. "The Halle-Keyser system has been criticized because it can identify passages of prose as iambic pentameter." --Wikipedia
@5829. I'm quite impressed at my prospective memory this evening. At lunch it failed terribly: I picked up a package from the post office right before lunch and then afterwards got all the way back to Mellby and took my sweater and socks off before I remembered. So I figured I'd just get it later, and wrote a note to do so. I subsequently forgot about it entirely -- until I was walking out of the cafeteria at dinner and actually managed to remember, "Oh, I have a package here!", and I hadn't even passed it yet, I was able to just reach over and grab it off the shelf a moment later.
@5830. PayPal is working on making it harder and harder to find what the fee was for a payment you sent someone...on the new website you now literally can't see what the actual amount you billed someone for is, you can only see the amount you received, which is really dumb and terrible accounting.
@5832. "So yeah, that was a little obnoxious." --Dr. Feldt, after I sang "vowels obnoxiously far forward" at her suggestion
October 19, 2015
@5833. "We reseeded the RAM." --report in a Helpdesk ticket of what had been done to fix a computer that wouldn't boot
@5835. There are a bunch of advertisements saying that student orgs should come to the "training session on hazing," which I have to say sounds a bit unfortunate.
(Cf. #4206.)
@5836. "This is a counting piece." --Dr. Armstrong, of "All You Works of the Lord, Praise the Lord"
@5840. Just finished the OS quiz. It included a section where you had to mark which of the goals for IPC were met by some provided example code. I was really tempted to mark all of them as "not met" and make a snarky comment because there was a typo that meant that the code wouldn't compile at all: there was an accidentally unclosed and thus nested block comment that commented out an important global variable declaration.
@5841. "...I told him, 'Unless you commit murder, you have a stunning recommendation for the rest of your life.'" --Dr. Armstrong, of a student who had jumped in to play organ at a concert when Ferg couldn't be there
{BL CB49.64}
@5843. "There's a deer up there. Hi deer! Bye deer!" --me, walking at night
@5845. "I always offered extra credit for people who could graph in six dimensions, and one time someone tried to take me up on it, so I stopped doing that." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@5846. "Oh yes, it's some sort of cheetah having a monocle." --Prof. Whitlatch, answering a question about some piece of art
@5847. "So if someone's your guest, you can't kill him." --Prof. Whitlatch
@5848. Apparently every Green Bay Packers game since 1960 has been sold out. That's truly impressive...
@5849. For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, if T includes a statement of its own consistency then T is inconsistent.
--Gödel's 2nd Incompleteness Theorem
@5850. "If you'd rather not hear something, planting a listening device near it is not the most obvious strategy." --Lowering the Bar
@5852.
But I like this [ordinance] a lot better:
> 10.36.050 Failure to disburse
>
> A person is guilty of failure to disburse when such person remains at the
> scene of a riot, disorderly conduct or an unlawful assembly after having
> been ordered to disburse by a law enforcement officer.... Any person who
> fails to disburse shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
[...]
Did they obviously mean to criminalize a failure to *disperse*? Sure. Am I going to ignore it for that reason? Nope.
--Lowering the Bar
October 24, 2015
@5854. "Language is so unprecise!" --Mama
@5855. "Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration." --Stan Kelly-Bootle
{BL #10773}
@5857. "Problem with the police font" --#ankiforums post about a problem with the subscript button making text smaller after backspacing the subscript
@5858. "The main problem with NFU is that it is like an elephant: it never forgets anything." --_Modern Operating Systems_
@5859. "The difference between Christmas Festival recorded and Christmas Festival live is the difference between looking at a picture of a beautiful woman and marrying her and making love to her." --me
{BL #6257}
@5861. "Wait. You fixed git and it only took you two hours? You guys are good!" --RAB, after John and I spent basically the entire HiPerCiC class and lab getting his git repository to sync with stogit
(Cf. #5728.)
{BL CB38.13}
@5862. "Don't even think about the 's'. If a couple people forget, it'll be perfect." --Dr. Hibbard
@5863. "SXSW Cancels Panels On Harassment Due To Harassment" --Slashdot headline
@5865. "And of course, I didn't respond. Why? Because I have no fucking clue. If you don't have any idea what to do with yourself, what makes you think some jackass with a website would? I'm a writer, not a fortune teller." --http://markmanson.net/passion
October 28, 2015
@5866. "Filter anything that's from Hawken, and archive it and then delete it, because screw him!" --Virginia
@5869. "That's a beautiful mezzo-soprano." --Dr. Hibbard, trying to describe a dynamic level
@5872. "Never trust a conductor. Count." --Dr. Hibbard
@5877. Here's a good trivia question, from #2600: Is it possible to finish an American football game with a single point?
Answer: Yes, although only in college football: while going for an extra point or two-point conversion, if the offense were to retreat more than 97 yards into their own end zone and then fumble the ball out or be tackled in it, the defense would score a one-point safety.
@5878. "The mass choir caf-pocalypse is upon us. If you don't want to eat dinner with half the school, avoid 6:30 dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays from now until forever." --student happenings newsletter
@5879. "And there the mester ratted." --me, for "matter rested"
@5880. Right now in the passage between Rolvaag and Buntrock, there's a display by the College Republicans, and for a brief time there were a number of signs that read, "Please don't vandalize our display -- we hate Donald Trump too!" But after a day they were gone; I don't know if they got removed by vandals or if the signs were themselves vandalism or what.
@5881. "I may take a nap today, by myself." --Siri, after being told by Andrew that today (her birthday) was National Hermit Day and that one of the suggested activities was to take a nap
(cf. #4942)
@5882. "...as though you're wrapping that most beautiful child. He hasn't pooped yet, he hasn't screamed yet." --Dr. Armstrong
@5883. "Sorry it's a non-tech description but that's me." --#ankiforums
{BL #6114}
@5885. "One of the best things about being an autonomous adult is buying only the Halloween candy you like." --Annika
@5886. "[Unix is] not aimed at making things easy; it's aimed at making things possible."
--http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/winstupid/2
{BL #6176}
@5887. "When we type a few characters in the Notepad text editor, saving this to a file will trigger 26 system calls, including 3 failed open attempts, 1 file overwrite and 4 additional open and close sequences." --qtd. in _Modern Operating Systems_ (302)
@5888. "While a user may be unhappy if one of his files is ruined in a crash, he is likely to be far more unhappy if the whole file system is lost." --_Modern Operating Systems_
@5889. "On what street did you lose your childlike sense of wonder?" --"Nihilistic Security Questions", https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nihilistic-password-security-questions
@5890.
CANINE REGULATIONS
* Must be on leashes
* Must be licensed
* Must pick up defecation by owners
(Cf. #249.)
{BL #11471}
@5892.
Reminds me of a friend of mine who used to check if a pointer was NULL, then if it was not and finally for other cases:
@@@
if (!p) {
...
} else if (p) {
...
} else {
...
}
@@@
His reasoning: the compiler could have a bug and this way you would catch that bug.
--Slashdot comment
@5893.
BEARS DON'T USE CURRENCY!
@5894. "I'll be giving you messages with my conducting, like 'don't breathe there.'" --JBobb
@5895. "Altos, put on your bossy matriarch. But loving." --JBobb
@5896. "I think it's the moon reflecting off a thumbtack." --me, trying to figure out what the bright light reflected in my eyes was
@5897. "That's one of the erotic -- errata." --Dr. Armstrong
November 04, 2015
@5898. "The IG's office itself last appeared here in June when it released a report entitled 'TSA Can Improve Aviation Worker Vetting,' which I thought was something of an understatement given the finding that TSA had in fact cleared 73 people who were on the terrorist watchlist at the time." --Lowering the Bar
@5899. "You remove the bear trap from the hunter."
@5900. There was a study in the news recently that stated that perhaps cats are really lions at heart and secretly want to kill us. I had the random thought some time after reading that this seems an awful lot like Freud's theories...but for cats.
@5901. Armstrong was talking during rehearsal the other day about how he hates conducting in two. Which seems a bit odd, but then I was idly half-conducting in front of the mirror in the practice room last night and I realized that it really is quite awkward in many ways, comparatively. Not that I really know anything significant about conducting besides a basic awareness of beats and patterns and the kinds of things that you're supposed to do, but I can see where he's coming from.
@5902. Today was supposed to be 71 degrees and sunny, but it turned out to be a high of about 65 and dreadfully gray, and more like 59 most of the day. I was going to my voice lesson at 11 and met Armstrong coming down the steps of HOM as I was about to go up to them, and as I approach wearing a light short-sleeved shirt, he proclaims, "So you believed the lie!"
@5903. "This isn't your grandmother's St. Olaf Choir." --Dr. Armstrong, about our singing of "Ride On, King Jesus"
@5904. "It's our dear friend the tritone." --Dr. Armstrong
(See 2014 tour book...)
@5906. "Came in to post the same thing. Beyond asking 'What color is this,' the most annoying thing is when people ask you something obvious like 'SO WHAT COLOR IS GRASS THEN!?' like they are going to trip you up. It's green, you fucking moron. Even if I could only see black and white I'd have heard what color it is." --comment on Gizmodo
@5907. "Oh that's it. I'm supposed to know the literary source that I want to write about. And I don't." --me, finally remembering the thing I woke up knowing I had to remember (but not actually *remembering* it)
@5908. "Nowadays, women can kill using anything they want [not just poison]. #progress!" --Prof. Whitlatch
@5910. "Yes. She's suffering from penis envy, so she killed all these people." --Prof. Whitlatch, of Medea
@5911. "So, when we talk about randomness in statistics, and when I talk about randomness in general, because I'm annoying..." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@5914. "+1 for you, -100 for the guy that decided to use a capital P and not put some sort of warning in there if you specify a port after lower case p..."
--StackOverflow comment on the answer that explained why ssh was working but scp wasn't (ssh uses -p to specify port, scp uses -P)
@5915. Just managed to completely lock myself out of the shell on Karina by placing `exec bin/karimenu` at the end of my bashrc (because I wanted to show the menu instead of the shell when I logged in...but this meant choosing the "shell" option from the menu also triggered the menu). Even better, I couldn't log in as root to fix it because I'd symlinked root's bashrc to my own. I ended up having to boot from the rescue disk to comment that line out.
@5916. "linux run code in bashrc only after i[ntercourse]" --Google autocomplete suggestion
@5917. Just installed a font by extracting a tarball into the root directory. I feel like that's not what I was supposed to do, but then...it did *work*.
@5918. A Mr. Kopf rule I don't think I've mentioned: the 24-Hour Rule, which states that for 24 hours after a performance you believe and act as if your performance was the best thing anyone has ever done. After that you can get realistic again and start thinking about how you can improve in the future.
@5920. "If anyone does not wish to have people view his Web pages through links from other pages, he has a simple remedy: DON'T PUT UP A WEB SITE. If you do choose to gain the benefits of putting up a Web site, then DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE WAY IT WORKS." --Slashdot comment on an EU proposal to make links eligible for copyright protection
@5921. Mama was telling me about a story Tim told her, or maybe this last part was a made-up example, in which he couldn't seem to get his students to understand the difference between symbolism and the literal events of the story not being true. One student begins an "interpretation": "Maybe he didn't *really* go through the door...".
@5922. Apparently someone from the Department of Homeland Security came to Trinity and told us that we needed to take the stage curtains down because they were a fire hazard. A reasonable compromise was eventually reached. But why the hell is the Department of Homeland Security inspecting churches for fire hazards? Do they seriously not have better things to do? (Cf. #4069.)
@5924. Chamomile Contamination
@5926. DUMB: Disasters Usually Motivate Backups
@5927. Choral Day. I'm tired now, but it was pretty good. Also, first OC concert. That was cool. Yes, these kinds of sentences are about how I feel right now.
@5928. "Lernen" --both the subject and body of an #ankiforums post
@5929. "Sent from Paper Party Cup attached to Long String" --email signature
@5930. Prof. Whitlatch had an idea for our short paper that I want to think about some more; she said:
Is there something mythy about *any* creative work?
@5932. "It's not initiation, it's a welcoming, because you can't haze, you know? And we might get our season canceled." --#overheard in the quad (phone conversation)
@5933. "Gender up."
@5934. "You don't sound like elephants in the room. You sound like little...dancing reindeer." --Dr. Armstrong
@5935. "Rich and full, not butt-ugly angry." --Dr. Armstrong
@5936. "Can you not sound like ninja turtles in heat now?" --Dr. Armstrong
@5937. Period Ensemble to Perform "Clapping Music" Using Steve Reich's Original Hands
@5938. Someone left himself logged in on a CS lab computer, so I edited his .cshrc to display the message "You've been hacked! Might want to make sure you log out next time..." on shell startup. ("Because I'm classy," as I told Jon, I also printed a second line explaining how to make the message go away!)
I told Hawken about it, and he told me that last time he was in a similar situation, he went in and aliased at least a dozen commands -- cd, emacs, vi, nano, cp, etc. -- to 'ls'. Oddly, he never heard anything further about it!
Ah yes, messing with people who forget to log out is a time-honored tradition.
@5939. "Recalibrating a disk makes a funny noise but otherwise normally is not disturbing." --_Modern Operating Systems_
@5942. "When I'm reading poetry, I use fancy words, like 'recalcitrant.'" --me
@5943. "I have a hole in my wall too, and I need to fix it." --#overheard in the vestibule of the library
@5944.
I took your advice and started working from home with Google, but now I have a problem: I'm making so much money that my house is overflowing with gold coins. I've been trapped in this room for days as the coins have been piling up outside the door. Yesterday the muffled screams of my family finally stopped. While I am crushed by the loss, I am relieved that their suffering is at long last over.
I understand if rescue is impossible, but please try to warn others about working from home with Google.
Oh, god, the coins are coming through the keyhole! They've found a way inside! This is it. At least I'll get to see my family again soon.
--Lifehacker comment, responding to a spam post
@5947. From my Facebook page a while back:
Transcribing notes about a dream that I recorded in the middle of the night. This is probably the biggest non sequitur I've ever typed:
"She had a feeling we would find dead bodies or skeletons or something up there, and we really didn't want to discover them there. So they didn't bring a recording home for us, but of course we could still form playlists."
November 15, 2015
@5948. "I'll see if I can find a recording of a non-fishy choir singing it." --me, looking for a recording on YouTube
@5949. R is known for providing helpful errors.......not. Today I tried to merge two datasets, but provided the names of columns that did not exist to tell it how to merge. The resulting error? "'by' must specify a uniquely valid column." I spent at least twenty minutes trying to figure out why the hell I was getting this despite the fact that the columns *were* uniquely valid...they didn't *exist* because I named them wrong. Tell me that for heaven's sake R.
@5950. "Ideally, women should not smoke before, during, or after pregnancy." --Wikipedia
@5951. "So yes, keeping a dream journal is important, so ignore my example and keep up the recording!" --after a paragraph on how he doesn't
@5952. "Sorry...whenever I'm coding, my language goes to hell." --Emma
@5953. Heroic Tmux
@5958. "Their major conclusion was that one should not use duct tape to seal ducts." --Wikipedia report on research
@5963. Note: palette entry 7 in Solarized is the string constant color.
@5964. -bash: /usr/bin/tmux: cannot execute binary file
That's not a great sign...
@5965. /sbin/reboot: 1: /sbin/reboot: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")
@5966. Today Donald Trump suggested that Muslims in America should have to register in a national database, and we should consider shutting down mosques.
How can we forget so fast?
{BL CB41.67}
@5967. "5 observations deleted due to missingness" --R
@5969. "You'd get *shot* if you did this in the St. Olaf Choir today." --me, listening to a 1941 recording of them
(That said, it's not *bad*, I rather like it actually. It's just a completely different style, with swooping and stuff.)
@5970. "Despite repeated pleading, begging, and distributed copies of Edward Tufte tracts, they refused to listen to reason." --Lifehacker comment
@5974. 'Cause you start out stealing songs / Then you're robbing liquor stores / And sellin' crack and running over schoolkids with your car...
--"Don't Download This Song", Weird Al Yankovic
I *love* this song, it's so wonderfully and ridiculously sarcastic, and it manages to not be bad music either.
@5975.
Being half-British myself, I think if pushed I could probably be equally annoying about tea if presented with a bag of Lipton's and lukewarm water in a styrofoam cup during a tea emergency.* Fortunately, I know that US tea is not up to my expectations, so I try not to put myself in a situation where I will go on a tea rant to someone just trying to get through their shift.
* Tea emergencies can include but are not limited to: something bad happened; something good happened; something might happen soon but I'm waiting to see; it is the afternoon; it is the morning; something reminded me of tea; there is a social gathering that requires tea.
November 27, 2015
@5977. "The results also reinforce something that Nielsen wrote in 1997 after his first study of online reading. 'How do users read on the web?' he asked then. His succinct answer: 'They don't.'" --_The Shallows_
@5978. "But there's a problem with our new, post-Internet conception of human memory. It's wrong." --_The Shallows_
I love me a direct accusation of bullshit now and then...
@5979. "Last edited... Reason: Spelled 'that' and 'in' wrong!"
@5980. Another useful thing to remember from _The Shallows_, as a programmer/designer: the more helpful the software is, the less good people get at doing tasks.
@5981. "My biggest gripe about systemd, though, is its counterpart in crime: journald. Binary log files are the work of the devil and journald needs to die in a fire."
Agreed...I don't care much about systemd versus init as a desktop Linux user, but not being able to look at files in /var/log is just stupid. And I don't give a damn whether I can "easily reformat" my log files unless I'm running a pretty complicated sysadmin job. I just want to look at the damn log file without wasting my time when something goes wrong.
@5982. "It's pretty funny that making a backup caused me to lose data..." --me
@5986. "if someone's answer to 'do you admit to bashing your husband's head in with a hammer?' is 'no, it was a pair of combination pliers actually' you can be reasonably sure that she's guilty." --Found Objects, from Irina's snippets file
@5987. "Don't fill the space with sound. Fill the space with space. Or with grace." --Dr. Hibbard
{BL #6190}
@5988. "Equal opportunity consonants!" --Dr. Hibbard
@5992. "Be a lean clean singing machine." --Dr. Hibbard (regularly)
@5993. "There are a couple of you who think sliding portamento is artistic. It sucks. Don't do it." --Dr. Armstrong
November 29, 2015
@5994. "U is seldom useful in practice, but is often accidentally pressed instead of u, so it is good to know about." --Vim wiki
@5995. "If F. Melius drank during Prohibition, I can text during rehearsal." --#overheard behind me in Ole Choir during mass choir/orchestra rehearsal
{BL #8199}
@5998. "I like your sweater." / "I like you." --#overheard between two young women during a rehearsal break
@6000. It's number 6000! Another RT milestone of sorts.
@6002. Frustrated Gunman Can't Believe How Far He Has To Drive To Find Nearest Planned Parenthood Clinic
@6004. "Because he [Odysseus] is clever, and she [Athena] finds that attractive. I swear, if she weren't a virgin goddess...that would have happened." --Prof. Whitlatch
@6005. "That's what I do, I listen to NPR, because I'm a middle-aged woman." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham
@6006. "In Jung's view, his results fortuitously imitate astrological expectation and therefore constitute a synchronistic phenomenon. The archetypal background to this synchronicity he finds indicated by the lively interest taken in the experiment by himself and his co-worker. Rejecting as primitive and regressive the hypothesis of magical causality, he concludes that if the connecting principle between astrological expectation and the results obtained is not causal, it must consist in meaning."
Very interesting: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_synchronicity05.htm
@6007. "Vladimir Poutine" --spotted typo on a forum
@6008. "This is a very personal activity that one does not do while eating a piece of pizza and checking Facebook." --on finding a personal liminal symbol
December 02, 2015
@6015. "You sounded more like kick-ass shepherds." --Dr. Armstrong
(This begins some backlog from PB, not in any particular order.)
@6016. "Most of you, hopefully, will be going into something useful rather than academia." --Prof. Whitlatch
@6017. "Are you trying to waterboard him?" --#overheard in the caf
@6018. "It feels a little bit like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness." --JBobb
@6019. "Seizures are more common than commuting by public transportation." --an ad on the side of a bus
The ad was advocating for seizure treatment, but I think you could also make it advocate for public transportation...
@6020. I'm remembering a Mr. Kopf story which he used to tell us that we should always listen to a piece that we were supposed to play for an audition at some point in the practice process. He arrived at an audition and started playing the first excerpt, and at the first note the person listening cried out loudly. He jumped, of course. He had started playing the excerpt as if it were in major, but it was actually in minor. He had never noticed the mistake in practice.
If I remember right, the audition still went fairly well. But man.
@6024. While rehearsing the beginning of "Rise Up, Shepherds, and Follow", somebody somehow dropped an 's' in by mistake, resulting in a very clear statement of "leave your sheeps and leave your lambs." Everyone laughed.
@6026. "We used to quip that 'password' is the most common password. Now it's 'password1.' Who said users haven't learned anything about security?" --Bruce Schneier
(Cf. #2141.)
December 04, 2015
@6027. "I'm sorry, did you say you're trying to send an email through *Microsoft Word*?" --#overheard at the Helpdesk
@6030. For the first time ever, I had the idea that I should take some ibuprofen *before* I went to the performance and sat on the bleachers and made my back ache. And it worked miracles -- it wasn't like feather-bed comfy, but it was only very mild discomfort.
Cf. #4734 for other brilliant Christmas Festival things discovered only late in one's career.
@6033. "How many birds are there?" --article title, quoted by Randall as his favorite journal article of all time
December 05, 2015
@6034. "Now only 50% off!" --advertisement
@6036. "extra-cirricular writings"
@6037. (42) Jesus said, "Become passers-by."
--The Gospel of Thomas
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but it's very interesting. Perhaps it suggests paying attention to the potential wisdom of others?
@6038. (113) His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
Cf. in particular #5301, #6723.
@6040. I've always said I didn't really like the F. Melius Beautiful Savior that much. I think I'm starting to come around.
@6041. "It was a lot of singing, yes." --#overheard in the Mellby lounge, about Christmas Festival
@6043. "Look to the east where golden dawn / Its smoothing presence brings" --2015 Christmas Festival program
Cf. #2824.
{BL #8834}
@6046. Study Finds Majority Of Accidental Heroin Overdoses Could Be Prevented With Less Heroin
@6048. Instead of "by the end of the day today": "by the end of the today."
I actually rather like this!
@6049. "EEG of a mouse"
This caption is somehow funny in itself.
@6050. "Someone broke into our home and stole our toaster."
--http://adequateman.deadspin.com/hot-wiring-a-car-and-other-tales-of-the-worst-trouble-1746639845
@6051. "the deadliest balloon accident in history"
@6052. "It's always good to know what you're writing before you write it." --RAB
@6053. "That was a little sexual." --#overheard in the basement of Skoglund
@6054. "Booker is the first Newark mayor in 50 years not to be indicted." --news article
@6055. "This is one of those meaningless ones...Why the fuck did you use statistics for that?" --me, about my own analysis
@6057. "I've gotten emails, sent emails, where the period was just left off in places, usually by accident. And it meant nothing, except, that we forgot the period."
--Lifehacker comment on an article about how periods in text messages can make you seem insincere or abrupt
@6058.
"How does copyright law apply to a photo of a chair?"
"I mean you can't even take a picture of a fucking chair? That's seriously impressive. That's really an American level of stupid. Congrats!"
--Ars Technica comments, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/you-may-soon-need-a-licence-to-take-photos-of-that-classic-designer-chair-you-bought/
@6059. "Taking off is optional; landing is mandatory."
@6060. "Dreams seem to be too difficult to analyze, and we are afraid that we will miss the point of a dream or misinterpret. But can you imagine being afraid to go to a movie because of a fear that you couldn't figure it out? I cannot imagine someone saying, "Well, I don't want to see Ghostbusters because I might not understand all the symbols." We're not afraid - we just go and enjoy the movie. If we can analyze the symbols, that's fine, and it will add to our appreciation of the movie. But it would be sad to avoid the experience of the movie for fear of not being able to analyze the symbols. Don't let a feeling of a need for sophistication make you miss out on your dreams."
--http://www.creativespirit.net/henryreed/seminars/dreamtext2.htm
@6061. "In 2013, a woman named Sharai Mawera was mauled and killed by a lion in Zimbabwe during intercourse; (she was having sex with a human, not the lion)."
--Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_during_consensual_sex
That's the most I've laughed in quite a while. Yay parenthetical-loving editors!
Update: Sadly, that parenthetical has been removed. Not like it was necessary, but it was certainly *funny*.
{BL #9257}
@6063.
The 'dead' intrinsic still seems fairly easy to come by.
In fact, if anything easier than before.
@6065. "Later, Schneier would carry two bottles labeled saline solution -- 24 ounces in total -- through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. 'Two eyes,' he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles."
@6067.
'An uncursed scroll called sack'
Hmmm
I'd say it's a safe bet that that's mis-IDed
(Cf. #907.)
@6068.
sometimes I read /usr/share/doc/*/copyright for fun
December 14, 2015
@6070. "You sound like Viking thugs right now." --Dr. Armstrong
@6071. "Don't smack the baby!" --Dr. Armstrong
@6072. "I'm really interested in a foreign language, but I *literally* suck." --#overheard in Boe
@6073. "Guns are loud." --#overheard outside the caf
@6075. "Whereas philosophers have been primarily concerned with the goals and intentions of the bullshitter, we are interested in the factors that predispose one to become or to resist becoming a *bullshittee*."
--http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html
@6076. Went for a 40-minute walk and came back, my kernel is still recompiling.
@6077. "'In' is the first word [of the _Metamorphoses_]. Which means 'in.'" --Prof. Whitlatch
December 15, 2015
@6079.
It is my opinion that a function called zap_wand should probably not contain a variable called zap_wand.
@6080.
oh, wait, I just remembered something, please let me have been awake at the time
yay, I was
...wat
I was stuck in a bunch of recursive dreams last night
one of them was particularly funny, so after I woke up I wrote down what I remembered
on my laptop
and it seems I was genuinely awake and writing it, rather than dreaming I wrote it, because the file was still there
you were in it
and you asked me in the dream to look at some fanfiction you wrote
...WAT
it was pretty hilariously bad, like fanfiction normally is; the strange thing is, it wasn't fanfiction /of/ anything in particular, so just fiction I guess?
the plot was about an evil empire who were forcing people to eat babies (can't get more evil than that!), and how they had some sort of mostly indestructible machine, which people were trying to hit with hammers, and eventually destroyed by dousing it in petrol
but it had the following awesome line in (which was a total nonsequitur): "the yellowshift reached banana-custard proportions"
how many times do i have to say "wat"?
I don't know
I mean, I was pretty surprised too
@6081.
"Let us be the light in your darkness!" It explodes! You are caught in a blast of kaleidoscopic light!
@6082. Waiting for YAKC... (Yet Another Kernel Recompile)
I actually managed to implement both of the other system calls with only one recompile, everything worked the first time (except for compiler errors the second time). Not even a compiler error this time, so we'll see, *maybe* I produced working code for a more complex syscall the first time.
@6083. Load average is currently 5.17. That's what I get for recompiling a kernel, running a backup, and playing a movie at the same time. But hey, the computer's still responsive at least.
@6084. "Mein Bildnis wunderselig / Hab ich im Herzensgrund" --my memory blunder in a voice lesson
@6085. "That's a lot of money." --me, looking at a tuition bill of $9,161
@6086. "You don't want somebody sitting in the [Oval Office] chair, spinning around going, 'Gee, whiz, isn't it great to be president?' You want somebody who's going to...understand from the first minute he sits in that chair that this is serious business." --Chris Christie, on Donald Trump
@6087. Terrified Jeb Bush Beginning To Fade From Visual Spectrum
@6088. 67 tabs open right now. I've done worse.
Also though, when Mozilla takes tab groups out of Firefox I have no idea what I'm going to do, this would be utter chaos without tab groups.
@6089. So I was very puzzled because I started randomly getting an error "redeclaration with no linkage" for a whole ton of variables in code that was working before making entirely unrelated changes. Turns out I accidentally copied and pasted a section of code several times.
@6090. "I am getting good at using C. That's an oxymoron." --me
@6091.
In the last decade, terrorists killed 17,981 people per year on average worldwide. Dogs kill an average of 25,000 people per year worldwide. We know the enemy, but our president refuses to speak its name: radical canine terrorism. We cannot continue to allow these dogs to come pouring into our country. We cannot have a country without borders, and rabid baby killing dogs are infiltrating our country disguised as friendly refugee dogs. We need to keep the bad ones out, and that means we need to stop allowing any dogs in until our stupid leaders figures out what's going on. Can you be sure that the dog in your home hasn't been corrupted by the rabid baby-killing ideology of radical canine terrorism? You can't. You need to build a cage, and it needs to be built quickly, and you need to make your dog pay for the cage. It's the only responsible way to keep your family safe.
--Benjamin Studebaker
@6092. Just tried to use 'while(t_ptr)' but the array pointed by t_ptr was not null-terminated. I then got really confused about why it was locking up on the call to pthread_join (it was trying to join to a thread with an ID of uninitialized memory).
@6093. "Segmentation fault disappears when debugging with GDB" --StackOverflow post
@6094.
Dimensions: 1.5 IN
2.48 x 2.05 x 0.55 inches
...Tell me again what exactly is one and a half inches about that?
@6095.
He thought he saw an Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
"A fact so dread," he faintly said,
"Extinguishes all hope!"
--_Sylvie and Bruno_, qtd. in intro to _The Annotated Alice_
@6098. This has got to be one of my favorite _Alice_ sentences: "The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo."
@6099. I just noticed that my terminal cursor will blink ten times and then go solid until it moves again. It's pretty funny that I've been using these settings for years and never noticed it; but then again the cursor is quite difficult to see anyway unless you know where it is and are looking at it, and I generally like it that way.
@6100. "I literally don't understand that sentence, and I wrote it yesterday." --me
@6102. Just discovered that if you pull Scotch tape straight apart hard enough, you can break it with your fingers, fairly cleanly. Never knew this before. (The practical drawback here is that you probably have to get your fingers in the sticky stuff, which would make it less useful to apply afterwards.)
@6103. "The dream occurred sometime in the middle of the night." --me
@6104. Nuts and No Christmas
{BL #12425}
@6105. "Please confirm that you want to add the items below to your cart: There are no items to add to your cart." --Amazon, after logging in right after adding an item to my cart
December 29, 2015
@6106. "Take care of your arms. They're useful." --Dr. Peters, on prescribing treatment for my tendonitis
@6108. "Hm, this audio file seems like it contains a jpg image of a kitten, said no human ever."
--Slashdot comment on finding information in noise, humans vs. computers
January 1, 2016
@6109. I'm annoyed because since 2012 I've typed the year number using the same hand pattern: 2 on the left, 0 on the right, and then two fingers from left to right on the left. But now I can't really reach the 6 on the left -- I went "Whoa!" the first time I tried to type the number.
@6110. (Beginning writing about a collection of things in PB that I've been avoiding dealing with.)
"I'm not sure I actually argued anything at all, but I finished, so that's all that matters." --#overheard in the caf
@6111. I was listening to some prayer in Chapel the other day, and the phrase "reached out" was in it. For some reason I felt like this was wrong and it should be "roach out," and about one second after I thought that I had a very hard time not laughing out loud at myself.
@6115. After most of a day of working on my paper on myth in _Alice in Wonderland_, I went to dinner and was reading the news on my phone, and I spotted a headline that said something like "FDA wants to ban minors from tanning beds." With my _Alice_ hat on, I read it as "FDA wants to ban mirrors from tanning beds," and I even clicked through and read the first paragraph, puzzled by what kind of tanning beds used mirrors and why this would be particularly problematic, before I saw my mistake.
@6117. Papa read us an article about a woman who just got out of a DWI charge because she has "autobrewery syndrome," which is a condition in which your gut biome is off and a certain kind of yeast is in high concentration and creates alcohol in your stomach even though you haven't drunk anything. She had an absurdly high BAC, like .3 or something, despite having had only a couple of drinks, and those a few hours ago.
The article also called irritable bowel syndrome "irresistible bowel syndrome."
@6118. "A better network is better." --Tautology Cell Networks (aka Verizon)
@6119. "My water isn't usually white." --#overheard on the train
@6120. "Turmeric Indian Restaurant" --seen in Glenview
@6121. Over break I spotted a misuse of "effect" for "affect" in Mama's serger manual, and I noted that at least in that case, interpreted literally, it actually caused a reversal of the direction of causation implied. We got to thinking about it and realized that this is usually the case in this particular exchange. Thus the following which came up over lunch and which I think could be a title for something: "How Children Are Effected." (Mama commented that there are not many ways, and we know them quite well!)
{BL CB39.63, CB39.74, #8584, #10983}
@6123. I tried to plug my headphones in on the right of Karina, about where they are on Emily, and ended up trying to put them into the USB port. This managed to short something in the computer so that the screen went gray and all the lights turned out. It appears fine after a reboot, but wow, I don't feel like it should be that easy to screw something up.
@6125. "...the story of...how the seemingly simple task ended up in a cull the sac."
@6126. "The woman just in front of us, long brown hair and black jacket and trousers, was asked for the names of the Muses and could only come up with four[1], so they beat her until she knew the other five (which she didn't)." --Found Objects
@6127. "[T]he purpose of luggage is to hold your belongings, and -- perhaps surprisingly -- not that many bags do a particularly good job of this."
--http://www.onebag.com/bags.html
@6129. Nasreddin and his son were traveling towards a market town, with an ass which they had to sell. The road was bad, and the old man therefore rode, but the son went afoot. The first passenger they met asked Nasreddin if he was not ashamed to ride by himself and suffer the poor lad to wade along through the mire; this induced him to take up his son behind him. He had not traveled far when he met others, who said they were two unmerciful lubbers to get both on the back of that poor ass, in such a deep road. Upon this the old man gets off and let his son ride alone. The next they met called the lad a graceless, rascally young jackanaphs to ride in that manner through the dirt while his aged father trudged along on foot. And they said, the old man was a fool for suffering it. He then bid his son come down and walk with him, and they traveled on leading the ass by the halter; till they met another company, who called them a couple of senseless blockheads for going both on foot in such a dirty way when they had an empty ass with them, which they might ride upon. The old man could bear no longer. "My son, it grieves me such that we cannot please all these people. Let us throw the ass over the next bridge, and be no further troubled with him."
--adapted by Benjamin Franklin
@6130.
While on a trip to another village, Nasrudin lost his favorite copy of the mystical book. Several weeks later, a goat walked up to Nasrudin, carrying the book in its mouth. Nasrudin couldn't believe his eyes. He took the precious book out of the goat's mouth, raised his eyes heavenward and exclaimed, "It's a miracle!"
"Not really," said the goat. "Your name is written inside the cover."
@6131. After working with Karina for a couple of weeks, Emily's 17" screen seems luxuriously huge. (Look Ma, I can put *two windows* on the screen side by side!)
@6132. "Command too recursive" --vim
@6133. God's Thematic Javascript
--#hypnagogia
@6134. Just learned from Gibbon (if I'm parsing/understanding correctly) that Mauritania is so called because it's the country of the Moors.
@6135. "...and has multiple series of unpooing, deconvolution, and rectification layers." --#whoopstypo in a research paper, overseen in the CS lab
@6137. Unusual materials have been used to construct pinhole cameras, e.g., a Chinese roast duck.
--Wikipedia
@6139. "Yeah yeah yeah! I'm a happy camper!" --Dr. Armstrong
@6140. "Crazy black man takes over the St. Olaf Choir!" --Dr. Armstrong, on the repertoire he did his first year
@6142. "I'm not a nerd, I'm a vegetarian!" --#overheard in the caf
@6143. The Immortal Soul Clause
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/17/gamestation-grabs-souls-o_n_541549.html
@6144. "Imagine that. Someone making fun of someone being a nerd in a CS classroom." --#overheard in the lab
@6145. "I've written one sentence so far. Well, it's really a rewording of the first sentence on stereoscopy on Wikipedia." --#overheard in the lab
@6151.
While browsing my user profile on Wikipedia, I noticed that this rather strange phrase was entered in the middle of it:
I much prefer a cuckolding to a cod-stepper was vandalously edited into one of my webpages.
Even though I couldn't entirely understand it, I took this as an insult. Unfamiliar with the phrase "cod-stepper"--and still in the dream--I attempted to look it up in the dictionary. There was a result, and it was something like this:
cod-stepper - noun - an unwise or unsound business proposition (Ex: "I invested $20,000 in electronic bagels. What a cod-stepper that was!")
--http://realityhandbook.org/lucid-dream/cuckolding-and-cod-steppers/
{BL #13120}
@6152. "Science isn't the problem, of course--on the contrary, it is the process that has emerged for building consensus that should be the cornerstone of respect. The problem is treating people who have experiences different than you like crap...assuming a priori that they are idiots if they can't (or don't) translate their experiences into your model."
--http://realityhandbook.org/essay/the-church-of-james-randi-scientist/
@6153. Instructor: "More properly, it is the *Chlorine-Free* United States of America."
--http://realityhandbook.org/lucid-dream/chlorine-free-united-states/
@6154. Just added an optional argument to a function to have it do only part of a transformation, then wrote the calling code and was really upset that it didn't work...to realize that I never actually changed the *function* to use said optional argument.
@6155. "Okay. Zero times anything is zero." --me
@6157. "...otherwise you may comprise the quality of your sleep."
January 14, 2016
@6158. "I don't want to put my name on any code that people would want to kill me for." --Elijah
@6159. "Heyyy! Some documentation!" --#overheard in the CS lab
@6160. "Because 'deep fish' is also a kind of pizza." --Rodney
(And he actually thought it was called that.)
@6161. Error: 'SOMETHING' was not declared in this scope
@6163. The former presiding bishop of the ELCA preached in Boe last Sunday. He told us that he's become a "Distinguished Fellow" at Augustana, and says that he's decided this means you "have some wisdom left in you before you become an *ex*tinguished Fellow."
@6164. "And on the third day God said, 'Nice try!'" --former presiding bishop of the ELCA, as above
@6165. "You have to be beautiful, sopranos. Not like you're kicking the crap out of somebody." --Dr. Armstrong
@6168. "This isn't going to be a slow Missouri Synod chorale." --Dr. Armstrong
@6169. "You can't be Presbyterian on me when you sing." --Dr. Armstrong
@6171. "Can you get me a fork and an execve?" --Jack, to someone going back to the caf line
@6172. "You know what's classic? I'm going down to the Cage to get ketchup." --#overheard on the third floor of Buntrock near the stairs
@6173. Amazon just suggested that I share with my friends that I just bought deodorant.
January 17, 2016
@6174. Watched _Inception_ again last night. While I didn't have a ton of trouble following it the first time a few years back, I definitely followed it better this time, which was nice -- only at the beginning was I confused about what was a dream. Rather, only at the beginning was I confused about what the *characters* thought was a dream; I have a new possible theory that to a certain extent Mal was right and the entire movie was a dream (or at least to the extent that the RL world is itself a dream), and there are many other confusing places. And I'm still bothered by the final scene. I read a review that suggested that Cobb stopped caring about whether it was a dream -- he leaves the totem still spinning on the table while he goes to hug his children and never comes back to it before the final cut -- and so it didn't matter so much. But I think it's crucial, maybe not to him at that moment, but in general, because if he is still dreaming, he will be doing exactly what Mal fell victim to, purposefully forgetting that things are not real, and that just feels wrong. That was why he ended up responsible for Mal's death: because he couldn't stand to live in the dream forever. And at the end of his time in obvious limbo, he dismissed Mal's spectre saying her dream identity simply wasn't real and complete enough for him; his children will necessarily be no different.
I keep going back and forth on whether the top was meant to fall. It starts wobbling harder, especially in the soundtrack, right before the final cut -- and this was presumably why my mind revised it to have fallen entirely the first time I saw it. It also wobbled while it was still starting, though. I guess the combination is why I like my theory about everything being a dream: it lets me believe that yes, he is back in his reality, but then throws in a little bit of doubt about whether *that* reality is any good.
My other big insight is that the main thriller plot is really secondary; at least for me, it's the Cobb & Mal line that really makes the story. The goal of inception is only a means to an end, and were it not for his mistake with Mal he would never have needed to do the whole thing in the first place, he would still be at home and could have given up on the extraction peacefully.
Also, I give artistic license to all the completely ridiculous constraints that have to be put on their dream machine. IMO they become believable enough because the machine can instantaneously put you under and wake you up, so it stands to reason that the dreams produced could be somewhat different than normal ones, but it still requires a substantial amount of conscious suspension of disbelief. Come to think of it, I think that many of the people who don't like the movie just aren't able to get over that (Mama was this way, I think; IIRC she got all hung up on the fact that the dream machine "couldn't exist"). Anyway, I have a big and rather obvious suggestion for improvement of the safety of the machine, should it somehow ever actually exist: put a damn eye movement sensor on it, so if one of the dreamers signals an emergency, say eight consecutive eye movements, it triggers the timer and wakes them up. (If necessary, said person could presumably disconnect the others at that point, say Cobb for Mal. Or the timer could even wake everyone.)
Oh, and in the LD-experience category I absolutely loved the moment where the boss goes lucid because the carpet is made of the wrong fiber -- not the slightest bit unbelievable as a cause, but yet really funny as well. And of course Ariadne's first moment of awakening. I'm not sure I had exactly that experience of wonder myself, but something like it.
Update: 2 days later, as silly as it is, I kind of want to see it again again now...Christopher Nolan for you.
@6176. I had a bunch of directories that had setgid but group execute missing in our ATP directory. I could not for the life of me get `find` to find directories with the setgid bit but no execute bit set, so I wound up resorting to the following:
$ for i in $(find -type d -name "*"); do ls -al $i | head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | grep '^d...rwS' > /dev/null; if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo $i; fi; done > rwsdirs.txt
$ chmod g+x $(cat rwsdirs.txt)
It *worked*, but man. It ain't supposed to be that hard. On the plus side it's Unix, so I was at least able to do it. (Cf. #5886.)
@6177. In keeping with Uber's business model, the pilots won't be licensed, of course. And the helicopters won't be inspected or insured. That's ok because you're not really buying a helicopter ride, you're just asking to ride along with somebody that happens to have a helicopter they found somewhere and a smartphone.
--Slashdot comment
@6178. "Overfishing Responsible for Declining Fish Population"
(No, this is not in the Onion -- Slashdot summary.)
@6179. "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and the oceans will eventually be depleted." --comment on same article
@6180.
I have a symlink to an important directory. I want to get rid of that symlink, while keeping the directory behind it.
I tried rm and get back rm: cannot remove 'foo'.
I tried rmdir and got back rmdir: failed to remove 'foo': Directory not empty
I then progressed through rm -f, rm -rf and sudo rm -rf.
Then I went to find my back-ups.
--start of a StackOverflow post
@6182. Average [Reprojection] Error: 3.02x10^9 pixels
January 25, 2016
@6184. "The good thing is, he wasn't handsome to begin with, so..." --#overheard on tour, bus driver talking to another bus driver
@6186. "There's a weight and balance issue: the plane is tipping forward." --flight attendant on our flight to Denver
@6187. "It's like watching Dr. A drive a Ferrari, and I have a Honda Accord." --visiting choir director at the end of OC rehearsal
@6188. I've noticed that my green backpack has a very unusual and very desirable property: it is *unoverloadable*. That is, it is not possible to fit more stuff in the bag than you can comfortably carry in it. (I suppose you could probably get there by filling it with bars of lead or something. But normal circumstances here.)
@6189. "Em Assy Suites" --hotel sign, partially burned out
@6191. Near our hotel in Denver, there were a ton of churches. There were also a ton of mattress stores. Like, I don't think I'm exaggerating to say there were at least four on the 10-minute bus ride from the Saturday church to our hotel.
@6192. I noted wryly to my roommates that we can afford to stay in four-star hotels but apparently can't afford to buy choir folders that don't suck and aren't falling apart.
@6194. "My seatbelt is *securely* fastened." --#overheard behind me on the plane, someone in OC
@6196. "You're supposed to believe in the placebo!" --#overheard in the caf
@6197. "If I was the love-child of a nutcracker and a Pokemon, and then had an acid trip, this would be the soundtrack for that." --#overheard in the hall between Buntrock and Boe
@6198. Dream notes quote of the month: "Myrtle's owl cannot read in the dark a receipt (but it actually can)." (dr #1071)
@6202. The caf posted a list showing how many dishes they've lost and how much the total replacement bill comes to on the comments board...it's like $10,000 over just December and January. Come on people. Some stuff gets lost, but 1,000 forks in two months? I don't think people are intentionally stealing forks (at least, not that many of them), but the damn forks need to get back to the caf. Bring them back.
(And no. I've never taken a set of dishes from the caf and not brought them back. Ever. A handful of times I've taken dishes from the Cage and forgotten about them for some time, but even then I've always found and brought them back eventually. And I certainly haven't stolen any.)
@6203. I currently have 94 tabs open in Firefox...maybe 10-15 per group.
@6204. "Let's make this one legal." --#overheard in the quad
@6206. "Obviously these can't be absolute statements of zero risk. For example, if you take your water from a puddle with a big heap of mule poop in it, you're taking a risk." --on the need for filtering water
@6208. #hypnagogia: "a good X[org] screen waiver"
@6209. "The word 'serendipity' suddenly entered the English language at the exact moment it was needed on this day in 1754." --Wikipedia post to Facebook
@6211. I currently have an invisible cursor in my vim windows on Karina console. It's surprisingly still largely usable, but it's quite weird and rather annoying.
@6213. "Nachos! Fuck my life!" --Jack, upon seeing them on someone else's plate and finding he'd missed them
@6214. Hosanna In Excel Sheets
@6217. "Actually, I had two, but they're both broken and in New Jersey." --#overheard on the bus
@6219. No Trespassing / Except Persons with Motor Vehicles in Garage
--sign in a Lincoln, Nebraska parking garage
@6220. "We can't change the world, but we can make the part of the world we live in more beautiful." --Dr. Armstrong
@6221. "The salmon was, like, really awesome." --Dr. Armstrong, to our hosts
@6222. "We -- the royal we -- want you to get a good night's sleep." --Jean
@6224. While dropping off our stuff in the dressing room before rehearsal:
"Are we robing?"
"No, we're just throwing crap."
Someone then attempted to write "Throwing Crap" on the board, and we told everyone else who poked their head in that we were "just throwing crap."
@6235. Today Dr. A was getting frustrated because it sounded like the sopranos singing the descant on "It is Well With My Soul" were coming in a beat early, and we redid it several times with them swearing they were coming in on time. Eventually it turned out that we were just singing so perfectly in tune and the space was so right that the octave overtone sounded so loud we thought they were singing it.
{BL CB40.75}
@6237. I am currently attempting to use a CS lab computer from Nebraska. To do this I am accessing the Internet over a 3G data connection, then bouncing through Lillian (in Indiana), Emily (in my dorm room), and only then the actual CS lab computer. It took about 15 seconds to get a prompt, and there's about a half-second lag. But it works.
February 01, 2016
@6238. "He's in the bathroom tying his bus." --me, of Charlie tying his tie in the bus bathroom
@6239. "And I know to love my vulva!" --in a discussion about the "Biology of Women" class
@6243. "Title Loans Up to $10,000 / No Title Needed" --seen in the window of a payday loan shop
(No, I don't know what that means.)
@6247. "Unlawful to Back Into Parking Spaces" --posted in a parking lot in Topeka
I'm puzzled by this, as according to AAA it's actually safer to back into a space. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense that it'd be illegal.
@6249. Also saw a school bus where someone had removed some of the letters so that it read "COOL BUS."
@6250. "No Public Restrooms" --sign at a toll booth in Kansas
@6254. "I hated when you did that to me in Norway. Don't do it now!" --Laina
@6255. This is exactly what the sign I saw in Oklahoma City said. I was certain there had to be letters missing, but I checked carefully and there were not:
aloft / a vision of w hotels
@6257. Tanner told me that last night an older couple came to the concert at Baylor, but balked when they found out the ticket price. "THIRTY DOLLARS!?" they yelled across the room. They then decided to buy a CD instead of going to the concert, because that would cost only twenty dollars and they could play it many times. "For that," the man says, "we can go out to dinner and listen to the CD, and still listen to the CD over and over afterwards!"
(Cf. #5859. Also stands for Ole Choir.)
I can't entirely decide if this is hilarious or sad.
@6258. "I just wanted to have a conversation about your eyebrows, that's all." --#overheard on the bus
@6260. Just passed a large trailer that contained probably 20 bags of something labeled "Antlers Plus Deer Nutrition."
@6266. "Were you hit by an 18-wheeler? Call [us] today!" --Super Bowl commercial
@6267. "...And the ball squirts all the way down inside the five." --announcer
@6268.
"Plus please put one second on the game clock."
This is one of the weirdest football games I've ever watched, but still enjoyable. Among other bizarre things, Denver went 1 for 13 on third down conversions, but still managed to win by 14 points.
@6271. "I don't know, shoulders are pretty promiscuous." --Sebastian
@6272. "I bet God wears a pencil skirt." --Sebastian
@6274. Gas was $1.30 in one place we went through. This is getting *crazy*.
@6275. Slaughter Lane
@6278. I currently have no cell service. I'm not sure I've actually seen that message in all the time I've had this iPhone -- Verizon is pretty good!
February 11, 2016
@6281. "I like it when there's cream cheese on my face." --#overheard at breakfast (another choir member)
@6282. "And she caressed the printer." --#overheard in a hallway
@6283. "I stole this hanger from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra." --someone in the dressing room, the day after his had broken and he had indeed taken one from the concert hall
{BL CB47.48 n.1}
@6285. Someone on the bus yesterday started receiving his brother's texts, including several of a romantic (if PG) nature!
February 13, 2016
@6287. In the Kaufmann Center there was a printout that someone had made from a Craigslist post they found. It was for a bassist in the area, with "some restrictions." These included that he can only play G, C, and D ("If your songs are in other keys, please transpose them to G." -- "no funny chords like Am and Em" -- "or you can pay me $30 per note to learn other notes"), he needs someone to come pick him up for the gig unless it is directly along a public bus route, and he can't have any gigs that go past 11:00 at night or within 500 yards of a church, playground, or school.
@6288. At a Wendy's we stopped at the other day, they had an electronic fountain drink dispenser. Like, there was a touch screen that you used to choose what drink you wanted it to dispense. You could filter the drinks by things like whether there was caffeine in it and how much sugar it had by pressing buttons. No, I am not kidding; apparently having spouts for all the drinks and pressing your cup against the one you want has become too difficult and requires a computer to improve.
@6291. "So I just want to take a few moments before we get changed to go over the...tornado plan." --OC member in the men's dressing room, brandishing the emergency plans for the room
@6294. On the way into St. Louis I saw a sign on the highway with the rather ominous message "LAST REST AREA IN MISSOURI."
@6295. "Ballasted Flocculation System" --seen on the back of a semi truck
@6296. Echo got confused and told everyone on bus 1 (I was on 2) that Peebles, a store near where we stopped for lunch today, was a grocery store and had a deli and would be a good place to grab something for lunch. I then followed some people who were walking in that direction and asked them where they were going, and they said, "Peebles." I assumed they were joking or something, being able to see from where I was, looking at the window, that it was *not* a grocery store or restaurant. Then someone at the head of the group stopped and turned around, shaking their head.
"It's closed?"
"It's a clothing store."
I still can't stop laughing about this.
@6300. I listened to the Simon & Garfunkel "Homeward Bound" today. I really should have done it a couple of days ago when we all wanted to go home and weren't doing it yet, and I had even thought about it, but I never really got around to it. It's cool because I liked the song before, but now I can really identify with it so much more. You have to have been on tour yourself to really get it I think.
@6301. First, was the alligator "likely [to] cause death or great bodily harm when used in the ordinary and usual manner contemplated by its design"? That question seems to have religious overtones. Cf. William Blake, The Tyger, in Songs of Experience (1794) ("Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?") Assuming the courts mean a human designer, then we may conclude that this prong of the definition is simply inapplicable to alligators.
--Lowering the Bar
February 16, 2016
@6302. I realized at some point on tour that I may well have performed for longer on tour than I have in the rest of my life up to this point -- I mean, ~2 hours a night 18 times makes 36 hours of performance. Performance time is just really scarce for everyone but professional musicians.
@6304. I'm remembering a story from a past year that someone retold during a devo this tour, quite similar to #4723 but more powerful owing to circumstance. Someone came up to Armstrong after a concert. He was terminally ill and probably only had a few weeks. And he said something like this: "I don't know what heaven is like. But if it's anything like this, I'm ready to go."
@6305.
> It amazes me that most American still believe their government's official story of 9/11. Elsewhere in the world, people generally accepted the US government blew up their own buildings.
Yeah, it's not like we saw terrorists fly planes into buildings on almost-live TV or anything. And it's not like we saw the government drop a collective load when it happened, generally looking like idiots for not being able to sniff out the plot or stop them despite plenty of warning signs. It's not like we heard first-hand from very brave eyewitnesses that tried to commandeer a fourth plane that was likely destined to hit the white house or capitol building. And it's not like any terrorists organizations claimed credit for the attack.
I think the most damning bit of counter-evidence is the fact that it would require some crazy level of competence and cunning to successfully pull off the most audacious false flag operation in the history of humankind. That doesn't remotely begin to describe the federal government I know.
I mean, hell, they can't even hack into a locked iPhone.
--Slashdot comment
@6306.
If you are using a Mac, the command you use to back up is this:
$ sudo rsync -vax --delete --ignore-errors / /Volumes/Backup/
If you're using Linux, it's something a lot like that. If you're using Windows, go fuck yourself.
--https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html
{BL #9034}
@6307. Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
--https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
@6308. "Wow, that's impressive." --me, of my own software, doing something I'd forgotten it did
{BL #7267}
@6309. I was just watching a stream from the St. Olaf website and accidentally closed Firefox. Unlike YouTube, the player that it uses doesn't save your place when this happens. So I opened it back up and jabbed a random spot on the time bar which I thought would be roughly in the right place -- and it was literally *exactly* the right place, like, the soloist was still on THE SAME NOTE as before.
Sort of like the book angel phenomenon, I suppose, and all in all not *that* improbable, but still pretty amazing.
@6311. Found the entry "Small Cave" under the "People" category in RPPAS...
@6314. "Hi Dear" --#ankiforums salutation
@6315. Super Bowl Halftime Show Marred By Functioning Sound System
@6319. "It is overwhelmingly more common to book tickets with airlines that exist, rather than airlines that have ceased to exist." --Stack Exchange comment
@6321. Quora question: "Is Finland a real country?"
Many answers are priceless, but this is my favorite:
> I am from Finland. But on the other hand, I am a solipsist.
> Thus, Finland exists when I am there or when I can actually see Finland.
> However, I currently reside in Brooklyn. Therefore, Finland does not exist at the moment.
> That's OK, though, as you do not exist, either.
@6322. "So loudly that we can complete in a single language editor to have Enki" --#ankiforums
(I don't have a clue what this machine-translated question is asking.)
@6325. "The Parking Office has moved to the Business Office." --posted in front of the door of the old Parking Office
@6326. "I have 'people' turned off [in Tabularium]. That would tend to make it hard to find people." --me
February 22, 2016
@6327. Just realized, amusingly, that the majority of the composers who did *not* come hear us perform their piece on choir tour are dead! (Even stranger, all of the ones who are alive and didn't come were in the fifth set.)
@6330. "We're so sorry. How about we show you one of our dogs? [dog picture]" --bottom of a 404 error page
@6332. "'Glory and praise' trash." --YouTube comment on the OC version of "It Is I, Lord"
@6333. "Someone I know is here someplace too." --at the end of dream notes on a dream in which I was with the St. Olaf Choir
@6334. "Due to the inclimate weather conditions..." --email from church
@6340. "Somethin' about glass." --me, after skimming a difficult Latin paragraph
@6342. "As you young people go out into the world, there are two things I want to warn you against--Methodism and Socialism." --pastor of F. Melius
@6343. "It would be weird to talk about God getting converted." --Prof. Brunelle
@6344. "I like to keep my money. I like to keep my freedom. Two very basic things in America." --Prof. Lane-Getaz
February 29, 2016
@6348. Did you hear the Russians launched a bunch of cows into low earth orbit? It was the herd shot around the world.
@6349. "Oh God, that was emotional!" --#overheard in the quad
@6350. "There are approximate[ly] 27 rear-end accidents per 100 miles traveled in Maryland." --https://www.millerandzois.com/presumption-negligence-rear-end-accident.html
Somehow I don't think that's quite right. Or else Maryland drivers should all have their licenses revoked.
@6351. "What slept with on" --the actual title of a data table for presentation
This reminds me of the anecdote in Cross's _Indexing Books_ (p. 63), about an index entry that read "diet, anus, artificial, patients with, for."
@6353. I very nearly tripped over a "Caution: Wet Floor" sign (some idiot put it right in the middle of the floor about a foot behind a closed door, so I didn't see it until I was on top of it). That wouldn't have been ironic at all...
@6354. "a short between the earphones" --the radio equivalent of PEBKAC
@6355. "Women using oral contraceptives blink 32% more often than other women on average for unknown reasons." --Wikipedia
@6356. "There's no grammatical hanky-panky going on here." --Prof. Brunelle
@6357. "There's a sort of a...'C' change..." --Prof. Brunelle, on Medieval Latin
@6359. Ran into a good post showing how quickly it's become impossible to pay your way through college by working. In 1965, with no other expenses, working minimum wage for the summer along with 24 hours a week during the year would let you graduate from an average public university with money to spare; in 2013, working the same amount you graduate with over $60,000 in debt. In the comments section someone asked that someone "with a background in economics" check this work. It's not economics, it's arithmetic...
@6360. There are no stupid computers, only stupid programmers.
(Cf. #2127.)
@6362. "However from my experience classes I got a C in are the classes I have learned the most in, the ones I got [an] A in was because it covered topics I already knew a lot about." --Slashdot comment
@6363. "Client lost about $2 printing several PDFs about Judaism today." --entire content of a Helpdesk ticket
@6365. In Wednesday's reading we had the following lines:
Et postquam Ursula
sic dixerat,
rumor iste
per omnes populos exiit.
Et dixerunt:
Innocentia puellaris ignorantie
nescit quid dicit.
The penultimate line is grammatically such that you can take it in at least three distinct ways which all make some sense, and we discussed this for some time. Of the last line Brunelle said: "It's a response to the grammar of the previous line."
@6367. "Dirty bombs are the strategic equivalent of poking a polar bear with a small twig." --Slashdot comment
@6368. "Tracking down intermittent problems is hard. When those problems result in the destruction of hardware, finding them is even harder."
--https://lwn.net/Articles/304105/
"Developers working on tracing generally put a lot of effort into minimizing the impact of their code on system performance. Every last bit of runtime overhead is scrutinized and eliminated if at all possible. As a general rule, bricking the hardware is a level of overhead which goes well beyond the acceptable parameters."
@6371. This Cantus recording has some recurring note in it that sounds so much like my phone vibrating that I keep looking over expecting a notification. It's really distracting.
@6372. "I could get a degree in blanket theory." --me, making fun of my need to have my stacks of blankets aligned exactly right
{BL #8712}
@6373. "It's important for it to be audible." --me
@6374. "I feel less stupid sitting and thinking while I'm moving." --me, of my enjoyment of brainstorming with a voice recorder walking in the Natural Lands
@6376. "Shit, I'm singing Chapel with *Ole Choir* today!" --me, realizing I very nearly forgot to go to pre-service rehearsal
The best part is that the reason I remembered is that I absentmindedly, from nowhere, started singing part of the Sanctus we're using this Lent, and remembered that we'd been practicing it in rehearsal recently.
@6377. ibis redibis nunquam per bella peribis: The ancient "eats shoots and leaves," in the form of an oracle. (There's a similar Greek saying. But I won't bother writing that one because I can't read Greek.)
@6379. "Keyboards are people. Just like corporations." --someone at the IT Helpdesk, offering a possible interpretation of the very confusing equality depicted in a small, low-resolution icon on the boot menu of a Linux installation disc
@6380. "You are no longer a German. We are Italian." --Dr. Feldt
@6381. "Okay, now we should get a segmentation fault." --me
Always a good way to test a program.
@6382. "[Mr. Fletcher] testified that setting off explosions close to employees could be a fireable offense, but that it depended on the 'severity of the explosions.'"
--"Has Your Boss Ever Pooped In Your Lunchbox?": one of the most bizarre stories I've ever read on LtB, and that's saying something. (http://loweringthebar.net/2016/03/has-your-boss-ever.html)
Also, "Nothing livens up the company picnic like a few IEDs."
March 08, 2016
@6386.
"Literally talking to yourself."
"I'm so okay with that."
--#overheard in the caf line
@6387. While rehearsing for Chapel Sunday morning:
"What [piece] are we doing?"
"'Nobody knows'."
@6389. "I remembered my name!" --Naomi, filling out a pink card
@6392. Dr. Armstrong read a section of text from a Wilfred Owen poem in _Pieta_ to us during rehearsal, which contains the line, "But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael." He then clarified, "The archangel Michael." Next to me, Michael goes "Not me, dang it!" and snaps.
{BL CB41.66}
@6393. "Can you guys yawn silently, please?" --Dr. Armstrong
@6396. "I put three more waffles in there. So I'm up to *five* waffles. Because I like waffles." --#overheard in the caf line (presumably regarding the panini maker)
@6399. A rather unfortunate St. Olaf username: "dickme2"
(You'd think someone might notice this when assigning them... I'm also amused that this suggests there was previously a "dickme1.")
@6400. "At least there isn't going to be a tornado...that we know of." --#overheard in the Mellby parking lot
@6401. "My supper plan is nothing." --#overheard in the hall
@6402. "the histograph" --typo on a stats assignment
@6403. "Hi, are you going to stay up all night too?" --a totally random person I don't know, poking his head into the Mellby lower lounge from the computer lab
@6406. "Subjunctive, subject, same difference." --me, misreading my abbreviated gloss
March 11, 2016
@6409.
> Oh come on, who here hasn't had to reboot during air to air combat?
... a problem that is aggravated by system's insisting on the installation of innumerable update packages on every reboot.
MISSILE LAUNCH DETECTED!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE APPROACH WARNING!!!
Installing radar software update 3 of 68....
MISSILE IMPACT IMMINENT, EJECT! EJECT!
Installing radar software update 4 of 68....
For this update you need Microsoft Silverlight, install Silverlight [Y/N]:
--Slashdot comment
@6410.
> The software version "3i" is affected.
As a general rule, when your version numbering system needs to use complex numbers, something's going wrong with your project.
--Slashdot comment
@6412. #overheard in the caf line:
"Cottage cheese? That's even weirder."
(evil laugh)
@6413. "I'll hit up the stoPrint trail and then come back..." --me
@6414. "The problem is almost entirely in the paper; considering that PAPER is the entire point of a notebook, this is a big problem."
@6417. "The World's Above" --written on the back of the Concordia Choir 2016 tour program, writing in text the name of an album that was displayed correctly in the picture
I have since been trying to think of situations in which this would be correct. Like, "the world's above hell"?
@6422. "The few. The proud. The here." --Prof. Brunelle, when nearly half the class was not on time to Latin
@6424. And, tomorrow is National Fuck with the Clocks Day (#4470), time to reset them...
March 13, 2016
@6425. "Wow, no segfaults?! I implemented it correctly the first time." --me
@6426. It did, however, have a bug wherein it was returning the keys instead of the values when a value was requested from a key, and I didn't notice! (The bug was just me writing the wrong variable name.)
@6428. "Whee!" --Prof. Olaf, running an infinitely recursive program
@6429. Really good explanation of why handling exceptions in threads is difficult:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/2830277/1938956
@6430. "Perl goes in the blue bin, C++ in the green (please remove and discard all templates first)..." --Slashdot comment
@6432. "I had a subatomic clock, but I kept losing it." --Slashdot comment
@6433. Smooth. I wrote an exception handler that would print the traceback but then continue if it hit an error. I then thought for several minutes that it wasn't catching the exception and couldn't figure out why the heck it wasn't, because the output looked exactly the same.
@6434. Ummm...my R^2 value is decreasing -- considerably -- when adding terms to a model. This isn't supposed to happen...
@6435. Hehe...there was an old model stuck in my uncleared environment that was making the R^2 look like it was 50% for the first model, but actually it was less than 4%. I knew *something* was wrong.
@6436. A nice way to print only part of summary/model output in R Markdown in the future:
t <- capture.output(summary(mod9))
cat(t[11:13], sep='\n')
March 17, 2016
@6437. "Relax, you'll think better (p < .05)." --on the board during our stats midterm
@6440. "Never approach God with a runny nose." --me
@6441. "It just arrowed out." --me
@6443. New Report Reveals Kentucky Seniors Forced To Endure Brutal Hazing From Freshman Players
@6444. "Yes, Republicans are responsible for the state [of] every bus system across the entire country and probably the entire planet."
@6445. "And it's asymptotically optical." --me
@6446. "Croop!" --me
(Halfway between "crap" and "shoot.")
@6447. "Right words, tenors." --Dr. Armstrong
@6448. "Anna, I thought you went to the Cage to study, and you grew like three inches!" --#overheard in the quad
@6449. "How would you feel if someone turned you on and left?" --posted above a light switch in a Kildahl computer lab
@6450. "Always check your PO, Mr. Morales!" --#overheard by the PO boxes
@6451. "50 miles per second." --student in stats, describing the speed of a race horse
@6452. "No, I don't do John Doe because I'm a psychopath." --#overheard in the hall
@6453. We ran into the partial tempo marking "con esperanza" in sectionals the other day, and we hashed out eventually that it meant "with hope." I commented that, as a random fact, this is where the name "Esperanto" comes from. Everyone looked at me blankly and I went..."you know, the constructed language...", but evidently nobody did.
March 23, 2016
@6455. The So of Excuse
@6456. "It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them." --Agatha Christie
@6457. "That's a good way to become early for tomorrow's train." --conductor of the Empire Builder, on wandering away from the train during a stop
{BL #7916}
@6458. "Mama, I'm gonna be fat regardless." --#overheard on the train (cell phone conversation)
@6460.
"Are there any restaurants here?"
(pointing to the restrooms) "There's one right there."
"...Oh, *restaurants*."
--#overheard couple in Van Buren Station
@6463. Speaking of the South Shore, yesterday I completely forgot to purchase a ticket before I got on the train. I was sitting in the station for a good forty minutes and never thought about it.
@6464. Also, the one odd mishap on the Empire Builder was that the power to a switch was out...so we had to stop for about ten minutes while we figured out what was going on and a conductor got out and went and threw it manually.
@6467. semper ubi sub ubi
@6469. Fall Creek Falls State Park
@6471. The lady at the Menards counter spelled our name BJORNSTAB the other day; I think that's a new one.
March 29, 2016
@6472. I literally just cackled upon composing a correct :global command. I love vim way too much.
@6473. Vim just threw SIGFPE and crashed...that has literally never happened to me before.
@6474. Almost declared some class members as "pubic"...
@6475. I wrote a class that stored *A SINGLE* distance value for an entire graph. And it somehow WORKED for the first application.
@6476. Sometime on this trip I finally figured out what the Coope, Boyes and Simpson song "Falling Slowly" song is about. I always liked it musically, but I like it much better now.
(This begins a bunch of items from the train ride yesterday.)
@6477. "You have to remember that Evan's 64 and Soren's 75. He barely has time for breakfast. And then...wisdom teeth before and after?" --#hypnagogia
@6478. Dining car attendant taking reservations, asked if credit cards were accepted: "Yes, card, cash. Gold coin is preferred."
@6479. "Rohbin, party of four. Rohbin, party of four....I'm sorry, Robin, party of four, Robin."
@6481. This begins a long string of quotes from the boy sitting in front of me on the train, maybe six or so. He reminds me quite a bit of myself at that age.
@6482. "Well I guess I have time to take a nap." --upon learning there were 20 minutes until departure
@6483. "Mom, do you want to go have wine or something?" [in the observation car]
@6484. "I'm just gonna stare out the window."
@6485. On whether a train could fit next to us on the tracks, which looked quite narrow: "Well if it's a really skinny train, like a sheet of paper." (This one sounded so much like me it was great.)
@6486. "I like Trump!" (As his parents were chatting with someone wearing a Bernie T-shirt.)
@6487.
"There's no way I'm going to the hotel."
"Oh yeah? Where you going instead?"
"Back home."
(They're traveling from Columbus, Ohio, to St. Paul.)
@6488. "Well, you promised you were going to sleep."
@6489.
"I thought you said 'teacher.'"
"No, I said 'T-shirt.'"
@6491. "The grammar is wretched." --Prof. Brunelle's notes on a reading
@6492. I just figured out why the algorithms homework (and reimplementing stuff I could have reused if I had done it better at first) took me all day yesterday: I wrote 650 lines of C++ code.
@6493. I was observing the other day that stereo recordings used to truly be stereo and be mixed with good effects, sometimes nearly all of one particular track in only one channel. Most of today's are so subtle that you can barely even tell the difference, and I miss the old ones.
@6494. An interesting thought on how much independence children can be given due to safety concerns: Are most adults really all that much more capable of defending themselves, either from cons or from physical assault? And what's the ratio of crimes committed against them?
@6495. A couple more from the boy on the train.
"And the Pacific Ocean!"
"That's a lake."
(It's the Mississippi River.)
@6496.
"Don't you want to sit up and look outside?"
"I don't waaant to!"
@6499. Sometimes "gch" (precompiled header) files end up in my source directories by mistake (if you accidentally compile a header file) and result in old code getting used instead of new code. I am thus terming them "Growl, Compilation Halted" files.
@6502. "My heart attack was only five hours." --#overheard in the quad
@6503. Got a B+ on the algorithms exam, which I'm pretty happy with...but the raw score was a D. That's some curve. To my credit, though, the exam was an insane number of problems for the time we had to take it (14 problems, many with multiple parts and several very long, for a 55-minute exam). I made such mistakes as writing "O(n^2)" in my analysis and then copying out "O(n)" in my final answer, and indicating that the limit of 3n^2/n^2 as n approaches positive infinity is infinity.
Update: After doing the corrections, my score was just slightly over 100%!
@6506. "If you write with *pen* in a library book, you're just a bad person." --me
@6507. "Share a Coke with the KKK" --a meme about people trying to get Coca-Cola not to support Donald Trump, referencing Trump's initial refusal to disavow an endorsement from the KKK
@6511. "Gets wrong answers." --comment found at the source of a subtle bug
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-comment-in-source-code-that-you-have-ever-encountered
@6512. Also the Safety Pig:
_
_._ _..._ .-', _.._(`))
'-. ` ' /-._.-' ',/
) \ '.
/ _ _ | \
| a a / |
\ .-. ;
'-('' ).-' ,' ;
'-; | .'
\ \ /
| 7 .__ _.-\ \
| | | ``/ /` /
/,_| | /,_/ /
/,_/ '`-'
@6513. Just turned in my stats homework 3 minutes before it was due.
@6516. Apparently GCC can't detect a type error that arises when you return a templated type instead of an int and your templated type happens to be an int...that wasted a good half an hour.
April 02, 2016
@6517. "ambiguates" --gcc
@6518. "I used to drive with the most expensive radar detectors out there, now I do something really crazy and simply drive the speed limit using the cruise control."
--http://lifehacker.com/how-radar-detectors-work-and-why-they-wont-always-save-1768593070
@6519. fatal error: can't create precompiled header shortest-pour: Text file busy
What the heck does that mean?
@6521. This was very interesting, about people getting mad at discussion sites for changing rules and stuff:
> If you disagree with one there's no reason not to move on.
I can do that. You can do that. They probably can't (easily) do that. They have a vested, emotional, interest in their "internet home." Me? I've been online, in one form or another, since the mid-1980s. I've seen communities come and go. I've left more sites than I can count. It's reached the point where I don't even bother to voice my displeasure, I just wander off and stop visiting entirely one day.
I, and probably you, grew up when our site, or even the internet, weren't ubiquitous things or even consistent things. How many forums have you seen come and go? How many have you, yourself, owned? Me? Dozens... Hell, if we want to count the BBS' then... Wow... (I was leet, baby - not just one but TWO 40 MB HDDs, backups AND a spare system.)
I've got an address bar and I know how to use it. Them? They've set it as default and have spent eight hours a day there since they were 14. They've been molded by it and molded it in return. They have a sense of ownership. They have a sense of being.
Really, it's a transient thing (this internet) so they're foolish for doing so but it's how it is - I'm pretty sure.
@6522. Really, is it so foolish? You might as well say there's no point in making friends or falling in love, because we're all going to die someday, and we might well drift apart before then. I get the point that the Internet may be even more transient than that (although I think that's debatable), but just because something might not always be around doesn't mean you shouldn't take advantage of it now, does it?
@6523. "I am *not* reading Yahoo Answers to help myself write poetry." --me
@6525. Headline: "Experienced diver accidentally drowns exploring underwater New Mexico cave"
Is there a case in which someone would be reported as having "purposefully drowned"? (Reminds me of "temporarily out of order," #5176.)
@6527. I'm remembering a time at Montessori when we got a photocopied grammar worksheet from a workbook and I noticed that in the running heads they had spelled "grammar" (part of the title of the book) as "grammer." I believe I raised my hand and commented on this, and I think Mrs. L found it pretty funny, but my third-grade classmates didn't have enough of a linguistic sense of humor. (Cf. a typo in the title of a book, #2308.)
{BL #8007}
@6530. "Much like virtually everything else that white people like, these notebooks are considerably more expensive yet provide no additional functionality over regular notebooks that cost a dollar. Thankfully, since white people only keep their most original and creative ideas in the Moleskine, many of them will only be required to purchase one per lifetime."
--http://lifehacker.com/pocket-paper-notebook-showdown-moleskine-vs-field-not-1768558693
@6533. "Put it this way, if there's sight-reading on the exam, that's on you, not me." --Prof. Brunelle
@6535. "I find lifetime warranties rather frightening... what if it's cheaper for the company to have me killed than to fix the product?" --Slashdot comment
@6536. "When I say 'in the beginning,' I'm talking about FORTRAN." --Prof. Allen
@6537. So I somehow never heard about this during ATP. Conrad and Mason installed the FoxReplace extension on Jack's Firefox, which lets you specify strings to search and replace on websites that are loaded. They set it up to replace common pleasantries on forums with insults and profanity (e.g., "Thank you!" -> "So long, fuckheads!"). It took him over a week to figure out what was going on, during which time he was wondering why the hell everyone on these forums he was doing research on was being so rude.
This is such an awesome prank, I have to find a chance to do it myself sometime!
@6541. "It turns out that bringing millions of rows down from the database into a VB application just to look for a single row is a bit slow."
--http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Mystery_of_the_Missing_Screw_
April 06, 2016
@6542. "When user tries to clear the memory, it says that the memory card is empty. When user tries to record, it says that the memory card is full." --Helpdesk ticket
@6543. "Please go to the United States or its territories and try again." --http://www.thedailywtf.com/articles/Pop-up_Potpourri_0x3a__Mayday_Edition
@6544. "At the height of Trumpaign" --#hypnagogia
@6545.
I knew a couple who were moving to a new apartment, so we helped clean up with them. My wife noticed that the vacuum bag was full, and asked where they have new bags.
'Wait. You have to change the bag?'
They never knew that the vacuum cleaner doesn't actually make dirt disappear, and so they had been vacuuming for *years* with the bag completely full. I am surprised the motor didn't burn out.
--Lifehacker comment
@6547. "Based on the help I've received it appears that for some reason the libc startup code is dividing by 0."
--http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12570374/floating-point-exception-sigfpe-on-int-main-return0
@6550. "Adding a hint field has suplicated most of my cards" --#ankiforums typo
@6551. Umm, dpkg?
$ sudo apt-get remove anki
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: The package anki needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it.
@6552. "But Matt still was unsatisfied with Network Operation's response to the power outage: someone should have been paged to fix the problem. After a quick investigation, Matt discovered that the alerts server was in fact hooked up to the UPS and did try to call just about everyone on the I.T. call tree. It's just too bad that the fine folks at Lowest Bidder, Inc. didn't think to plug the PBX system that runs the phones into the UPS."
@6553. I think there may be an information theory idea (for me at least) that I can call the "Rule of Two": Having to look in two different places (two indexes, two files, etc.) to try to find something is totally fine. It's when you have to try more that it starts to get irritating. This means for instance that RT can be in an archive and a normal file, or that I can have the most recent CB unindexed in RPPAS with no difficulties.
@6555. "Yeah, Liechtenstein is inherently funny." --me
@6556. "You can indeed see the citation format of choice changing as you read dissertations 3, 5, 8, 12 and 20 years ago. From what I can tell, they all strictly follow one rule: the default LaTeX output." --Stack Exchange comment
@6557.
Hello,
This is my first time posting on a Internet forum so I am a little scared.
My name is Chris and I love Anki.
[question]
--#ankiforums
@6558.
How change again my language? Because i choosed wrong my language.
thankful since already
--#ankiforums
@6560. "You know, in my next life I'm going to be perfect. I'm planning on it." --Prof. Lane-Getaz
@6561. "Yeah, I knew that wasn't going to work out, but I did it anyway, because I'm *stupid*." --me
April 11, 2016
@6563. "You can ignore all that stuff on the top, it's just to make a point." --Prof. Lane-Getaz
@6564. "So the odds ratio is...it's just the ratio of the odds." --student
@6568. "P is not R." --me, using a dictionary
@6569. "Oh Brother Where Art Though" --seen in the sidebar of YouTube
@6570.
At one point my then employer and I had a great idea, which we never implemented, that we should show pictures with each error message, so the call would go "Hey, I just used your product, and it showed me a picture of a tree and said 'Software Error'", "A tree? Ah, that means you're out of memory. Might mean a memory leak. Can you tell me what you were doing before you saw the tree..."
--Slashdot comment
@6571. Ran into a short #ankiforums post the other day that was entirely in Spanish, but I was able to read it without even using a dictionary, despite not knowing any Spanish!
@6572. I misspoke yesterday and somehow made it sound like I thought I'd edited a file I'd previously emailed to someone else (on their computer). Conrad and I thus came up with the idea of "email by reference."
@6574. There's a bathroom on the right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YlTUDnsWMo
I think I can actually analyze how this one gets misheard at least on this (presumably the primary) recording. The big issue is that there's almost no sibilant on "rise" -- it's almost "rye," sounding just like a shortened "right," also sometimes followed by a literal "all right." The phrase "bad moon" is actually quite clear, but when you're trying to piece together "there's a ba--oo-- on the right," "bathroom" just feels like the answer.
Also, one of the commenters says when they were young their mother once asked them why they were listening to a song about a bathroom.
@6575. Incredibly Random Statistic of the Day: "Particular subpopulations have higher prevalence, with a 6000-subject MBTI-based survey indicating that 60% of attorneys, and 90% of intellectual property attorneys, are introverts."
{BL MB1.120}
@6576. One of the groups presenting in Algorithms today wrote on the board, "MST [minimum spanning tree] is based on the order of costs." Looking over at it for the first time I read "MST is based on the odor of cats."
@6577. So I'm reading this section of the book _Quiet_ about an experiment involving what volume level introverted and extroverted people choose to put headphones playing random noise at, and I caught myself unconsciously turning the volume down.
@6578. Racist Dog Rejects Job Applicant
(from Lowering the Bar)
@6579. "I can add more swap if I start running out of memory." --me
Always a good philosophy...
@6580. "Now, open a secure shell (SSH)."
I have literally never heard someone refer to sshing as "opening a secure shell."
@6581. "As we all know, English kind of sucks." --someone in a PL group that's trying to do natural language processing
@6582. "Do you want to go smell that hat, Soren?" --Conrad #unusualsentences
I told him I doubt that sentence has ever been spoken before.
@6583. "rm -rf --no-preserve-root --write-zeroes --shred-mbr --exec-all-ssh-hosts --douse-hydrofluoric --high-velocity-eject-removable-media --carpet-bomb-offsite-backup --salt-earth" --in a Slashdot comment
@6584. There are no uninteresting numbers.
Proof: Assume N is the smallest uninteresting number. That property in itself makes it interesting. Therefore there can be no smallest uninteresting number, so logically uninteresting numbers cannot exist. QED.
(Note: Not a logically complete proof. But still funny.)
Update: I was thinking the other day, I think we can edit this proof to make it logically complete: all that's needed is to say that the second-smallest uninteresting number can't be uninteresting either because it's the second-smallest "uninteresting" number, and so on up to infinity. The 98,357th otherwise-uninteresting number might not be *very* interesting, but it does have some property we can talk about.
@6585. "I translated the manual in 3 days with the highest effort possible and the least amount of sleep." --#ankiforums
@6586. Just came to "to celebrate" in my German Anki deck. I *still* remember this by the mnemonic I learned in seventh grade, which was not even a mnemonic. The reason it's memorable is because it was me who was made fun of in the mnemonic: I was asked for the translation of "celebrate" (perhaps to the class at large; I don't remember the details), and apparently said "feiern" in a particularly excited, celebratory way.
@6589. "Emacs is a religion that can also edit text." --Slashdot comment
@6590. Also today there was a Slashdot article about what people's take on the idea of speed-reading was. Naturally, some wise-asses purposefully wrote comments that pretended they skimmed the summary very poorly and misunderstood it. By far the best given current events was:
"My view on speed-readers is that they can use any public bathroom with which they identify."
(Cf. #6540, #6001, #5945.)
@6591. "Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it."
--http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html
@6595. "We somehow accidentally called intermittent infinity." --#hypnagogia
@6597. So the British Natural Environmental Research Council ran an open online poll to ask people what they should name their new polar research ship. The top choice -- with over 120,000 votes -- was "Boaty McBoatface." In the press release, they said they probably aren't going to name it that.
@6598. "Advanced Beginning Ballet" --St. Olaf course title
April 18, 2016
@6599. It's 6:00pm and what I really want to do is go to sleep...Mondays on this schedule! Even without also practicing for and presenting at a colloquium and trying to figure out transportation for the 22nd and fill out forms that were due last Friday (neither of which we managed to complete).
@6601. "Computers are pretty fast at computing." --http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2526815/moon-lunar-phase-algorithm
@6604. Keep it Stupid, Simple
@6606. "Actually, recursion is a very bad idea." --_Algorithms_, p.160
@6607. "Oops, there's no bang in the shebang." --me
@6608. Cool Latin word of the day: moechor, -ari, to commit adultery.
April 20, 2016
@6609. "Horizontal slash." --Prof. Allen
@6612. "It's sort of eye-twisting, if you will."
@6615. I was waiting in line at the checkout counter of the Walgreens in Northfield today and #overheard the following in front of me. The customer was a woman probably in her late fifties purchasing an ornamented glass birdbath and some other yard ornament.
"Just a second, Anne, I want to give you some extra points." (she scans a coupon)
(cheerfully, but almost like a commercial) "Well, *thank you*!"
@6616. #overheard between two caf workers as I was in the tortilla line getting dinner:
"What the fuck happened?"
"*Your roommate* happened. I'm going to beat him up!"
@6617. "Great investment for a college student!", 6th year college student
--quoted as a testimonial for an iOS app
@6618. You can now get a discount at the Minnesota Orchestra for being anywhere under 40. This is what's happening to classical music.
@6619. "The drain went down the drain!"
April 23, 2016
@6622. "RENEWALS NOT ALLOWED" --on a score of which the library has at least ten copies, eight currently checked in
@6623. "I'm all for healthy, but I'm all for fudge." --Jack
@6624. "Hey, your brother's really attractive, I'm gonna have to...throw that out there." --#overheard in the Cage, several women looking at someone's desktop background
@6626. "Find Out How Easily Distracted You Are With This One-Minute Test" --Lifehacker
@6627.
"What's the [full-size Apple] keyboard for?"
"To turn it on and off."
--of a robot entered in the MICS competition
@6628. In other news, two papers submitted to MICS had grammatical errors in the title:
* "Using Neural Networks to Detect Examples of Ad Hominim in Politics and Microblogging Platforms"
* "A Hybrid Quantum Encryption Algorithm that Uses Photon Rotation to Insure Secure Transmission of Data"
@6631. "This piece goes from a lot of flats to a lot of sharps. That wasn't just accidental." --John Muehleisen
(He didn't even mean to do it!)
@6637. Whitaker's Words just suggested using "me" as an adverb. I actually rather like that. Like, instead of "like me," you could say "mely."
@6638. Magnum Chorum was in a rush yesterday and warmed up faster than I've ever heard anybody warm up. Like, they did all the normal warmups, but did them twice as fast.
@6639. "It just creeps up like bananas." --tenor singing for _Pieta_, about his pitch in the Civil War song
@6640. "I think the piano's going flat." --tenor singing for _Pieta_, about his pitch in the Civil War song
(Cf. #1015.)
@6641. "Dead people, I can mess with their music." --Dr. Armstrong
@6646. "This is not the Second Coming, you know...people are looking so startled." --Prof. Allen
@6647. "And God has provided a prefix null-question-mark, hasn't he...or she." --Prof. Allen
@6648. http://notaverb.com/login
@6649. "+CommanderX3001 This makes a genre of comments complaining about the comments complaining about comments of being born in the wrong generation which I am commenting about that will eventually become the norm to the point that there will be YET another kind of comment complaining about the comments which complain about the comments complaining about the comments that complain about the comments about being born in the wrong generation. Welcome to the internet." --YouTube comment
(Cf. #5941.)
@6651. "A church or a school without a choir is like a body without a soul." --John Rutter
@6652. "I've been a little worried about the Unicode Consortium ever since 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9) received its own codepoint." --Slashdot comment
April 28, 2016
@6653. "In any case, EARS are analog. There is no plugging that hole." --Slashdot comment
@6654. "The Evil Ists" --JMG
@6655. Got back my corrections on the Algorithms midterm. My raw score on the exam was a D-. With the combination of said corrections and the curve, I now have slightly over 100%.
@6656. "Whoever came in early with shame, don't do that again." --Dr. Armstrong
@6657. Yesterday in rehearsal someone farted at a quiet spot right between two movements, on the beat. We only barely managed to keep from laughing into the start of the chorale.
@6658. Also at said rehearsal, one of the oboists was warming up while we were trying to warm up. I guess if you've never really sung formally, you don't realize how irritating it is to sing when you can't hear your pitch -- I mean, you play over people when you're warming up in orchestra all the time...
Update: The second day of this, Dr. A told them to please stop. They seemed slightly miffed.
@6661. "We've already seen our potential." --a group presenting in PL, of one of their bullet points
@6662. Nathan was trying to present his progress on the project in PL, but the executable wouldn't run on the Windows computer he was trying to use it on, and his laptop wouldn't connect to the projector, so he pointed the document camera at the screen. It was pretty hard to read, but it was also actually pretty clever. A good hack.
@6663. "Unfortunately, as we have continued to sneak Windows 10 onto unsuspecting users systems, we have seen some software designed to disrupt the malware like experience of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to collect all of your information and send it to Microsoft. The result is a compromised user database that is not worth as much as an ad platform as we had hoped. The completeness of our database is crucial to us, and is disrupted if CompTelRunner, Cortana, and other subsystems cannot use the MS backend for data collection. The only way we can plan on how to pillage further and make our database more valuable to other entities (NSA) is through the integration of Cortana, Edge, and Bing. -- All designed to capture more for us." --Slashdot comment
@6664. "Do not set a variable to the contents of a long text file unless you have a very good reason for doing so. Do not set a variable to the contents of a *binary* file, even as a joke." --warning on the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide
@6669. "A transgender cat?" --#overheard on the bus
@6672. So I was cleaning out my black day pack to bring it to the Cities for Pieta, and I found an unopened container of yogurt in it. I think I took it at a hotel one morning on tour and put it in there, then forgot about it. Surprisingly it didn't smell at all and looked totally normal, though I wouldn't have dared to open it.
@6673. The Journal of Universal Rejection: http://universalrejection.org/
@6678. "I'm not going to add a ten-dollar customization fee for them to rearrange the keys on my keyboard..." --me, of Unicomp
@6679. "ex test 24 fails because test is wrong." --comments in the vim help about POSIX compliance
@6680.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
--Sonnet 30, William Shakespeare
@6683. "Patients who were too ill to fill in a questionnaire were excluded from the study."
@6684. "Wait, how come people's age is so high?" --#overheard in stats class
@6685. "MSCS Colliquim" --title of a promotional poster, in at least 36-point font
@6690. "Translating things into ancient Egyptian is not really a common problem." --Stack Exchange
@6691. Had a realization that I may be more susceptible to misspending time than some people because a lot of the stuff I really enjoy doing I can just do whenever I feel like it at my desk.
May 04, 2016
@6693. "But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things." --_Baudolino_'s Otto of Freising
@6697. I was thinking that there's an excellent example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (aka "illusory superiority") in listening to recordings of myself, in both directions. When I listen to myself playing solo violin, for example, it always sounds worse than it does to me (but people still seem to like it, so at least that's good; just like my voice doesn't sound as good as it sounds to me). But then when I listened to, say, _Pieta_, I thought it was relatively poor at the time we sang it, and it's absolutely gorgeous on the recording.
A good part of the bad direction is a phenomenon which I might aptly describe as the, "Dammit, I put an 'S' in the wrong place, the whole piece is ruined!" phenomenon. Of course the piece isn't as good when someone puts an S in the wrong place, and it is actually noticeable in many cases, and maybe it is worth beating yourself up over at least a little bit if it means you'll do it less often in the future. But the thing is it really *does* feel like the entire piece is ruined when you put an S in the wrong place, and of course it really isn't.
@6699. "The question doesn't change, my friend," Niketas said. "Indulgently, I suggested you wanted to be the Prince of Falsehood, and now you make me realize you would like to be God Almighty."
--_Baudolino_
@6700. "Yes, the vision was an illusion, but what I now felt inside was not; it was true desire. When you feel it, it's not an illusion. It's real." --Abdul, _Baudolino_
@6701. "There is nothing better than imagining other worlds to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn't yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one." --Baudolino, _Baudolino_
{BL #10222}
@6702.
"But does a relic, to be true, have to date back to the saint or to the event of which it was part?"
"No, of course not. Many relics that are preserved here in Constantinople are of very suspect origin, but the worshiper who kisses them perceives supernatural aromas wafting from them. It is faith that makes them true, not they who make faith true."
--_Baudolino_
@6704. "If you give me one more topaz I'll swallow it, then shit it out the window." --Baudolino, _Baudolino_
@6705. "...Someone proposed also mentioning an underground stream rich in precious stones, but he refused to pursue the idea, for fear of hearing someone say topaz again." --_Baudolino_
@6707. "The FDA should totally regulate farting." --Slashdot comment
@6709. "Running someone over for a minor traffic offense is illegal in all 50 states." --Jalopnik comment
@6711. "Is that a *mosquito*? If that's a mosquito I'm *suing*." --me, walking in early spring
May 07, 2016
@6712. Apparently I joined Facebook seven years ago today.
@6713. "I'm too lazy to find the right tool on my multitool." --me, using a serrated knife blade to cut a tag off a tie
@6717. Just got back from the Viking/Manitou concert. They blew me away, they were absurdly good. We were *nothing* like that. Last year was nothing like that. There were a few technical slips (hell, we have those in Ole Choir), but they sang with feeling and their tone was absolutely gorgeous. It was nearly an Ole Choir-length concert, though, a few minutes past two hours.
The concert was great, but the audience was horrendous. The average age was probably about 30 higher than usual in Boe Chapel. I think a lot of Oles didn't come because it's just those first-year choirs (bad choice today, guys!). So several cell phones went off during the performance. More than one person was taking pictures with the shutter sound on full volume. A number of people were probably too sick to really be at the concert, and this is something I don't get: if you're really sick but you really want to come to a concert, and said concert is fairly casual, as this one is, then you sit in the back on the aisle. In Boe Chapel, if you sit in the back row and find you need to cough or leave for whatever reason, you can literally be outside the building in silence in under ten seconds. One old lady was sitting on the center aisle in the front row and had a huge coughing fit during a quiet piece, which ended up lasting basically the entire length of the piece as she proceeded down the side aisle, loudly, at about six inches per second, and then, reaching the back, coughed like crazy without actually going outside the narthex or closing the door. And there were others.
@6719. "Your account was logged into by an unrecognized browser." --Facebook
@6720. "Anyway, an addiction of Anki in the whitelist and everything started to work nominally again." --#ankiforums
@6721. "When it comes to doing things, I prefer the people to be alive, and female." --Boiamondo, _Baudolino_
{BL dr #1266}
@6722. "I don't want to sound mean, but if I were to obey the inspiration I receive from Our Lord, I would smash your ass." --Baudolino, _Baudolino_
@6723. "By the devil! Baudolino said to himself. This old man is right. The Grasal should be a cup like this one. Simple, poor as the Lord himself was. And for this reason perhaps it is there, within everyone's grasp, and no one has ever recognized it because they have been searching all their lives for something gleaming." --_Baudolino_, p.274
{BL #6038}
@6724. "foolishly headless of danger" --#ankiblunders, found in the definition of "reckless"
@6726. I'm rather amused that the Indiana BMV is sending me angry emailed reminders saying this is my *FINAL* reminder to renew my driver's license and I will incur late fees if I don't, when I have my renewed license, good until 2022, in my hand.
@6731. "And that's going to solve all our problems, because this is a textbook problem." --Prof. Lane-Getaz
@6733. "Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe." --qtd. in http://loweringthebar.net/2012/07/order-overruling-objection-to-motion-filed-about-four-minutes-late.html
{BL CB46.72}
@6734. What the hell, g++? Apparently initializing an unsigned variable to -1 doesn't merit a warning with -Wall -Wextra.
@6735. "Imagine if you were trying to read a book or look at art in a museum or something, and every 5 minutes some annoying person would come around and shout at you or do something random and stupid to distract you... That would be really ridiculous, but most people accept it when watching TV. Once you live without those distractions for a while though, you realize how weird it is." --Slashdot comment
@6738. "When I try to use the cloze card, I get an error message telling me I need to use the cloze card." --#ankiforums
@6739. "Will Google sue Sue Googe?"
{BL #11595}
@6740.
Emily #11129 @1817 [~]$ MUTT
MUTT: command not found
Emily #11130 @1817 [~]$ mutt
Mailbox is unchanged.
Moral: Never yell at Bash.
(Cf. #5960)
@6742. "Hunger, poverty, disease or even death may not be a problem by 2035, or 25 years from now." --president of Huawei
(Besides the basic absurdity of this statement, I'm pretty sure this year isn't 2010 on any usual calendar.)
@6743. "If I had a nickel for every time I've written 'for (i = 0; i < N; i++)' in C I'd be a millionaire." --Mike Vanier
@6747.
"This book is for Ryan, who is heavily into images, because...he spent this year organizing the college's ancient coin collection."
"I thought it was because he couldn't read."
@6750. "Got some free coffee, free root beer, and told people about my dreams." --#overheard cell phone conversation along Ole Avenue
@6753. "Time is an eternity that stammers." --Hypatia, _Baudolino_ (presumably after Gnosticism)
@6754. "If these fronds didn't exist, we wouldn't sit here and talk about God; if the wood didn't exist, we would never have met, and this perhaps would be the worst of evils." --Hypatia, p. 431
{BL §OnVisitingKateIn2021}
@6755. "I had been warned, after all, Master Niketas, that the Demiurge had done things only halfway." --Baudolino, upon having to leave Hypatia, p. 456
{BL §OnVisitingKateIn2021}
@6756.
Can you imagine if this attitude was taken by any other company?
"Keurig agents have been sneaking into people's houses and replacing their Keurig coffeemakers with the new, fancy Keurig 10.0. However, the Keurig 10.0 is incompatible with all old 3rd party k-cups. To avoid being 'upgraded', you should leave a sign saying 'do not steal and replace' by your coffeemaker, but the Keurig agents will remove the sign sometimes so you need to make sure to keep replacing the sign if it disappears overnight. Reports have also surfaced of the Keurig agents occasionally ignoring the sign altogether, so some people recommend having someone in the house stay awake by the Keurig at all times to decline the upgrade."
"Tesla owners are facing a forced upgrade to the Tesla Model FU, which now runs on diesel. Tesla officials say that, to decline the upgrade, simply park your car facing towards Redmond when the upgrade agents come by to check. The upgrade agents can come by to check at any time, including when you're in the middle of driving."
I could go on, but do you get my point? People should not be required to be actively vigilant about keeping their equipment from suddenly having massive (and potentially ruinous) changes forced on them.
[...]
That's like blaming a guy for receiving a box of poop in the mail because he didn't tell the mailman once a week "Please do not mail poop to me."
--Slashdot comments on Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics
@6757. "It's bad enough having one wife." --Dr. May, of Groton correcting him repeatedly
@6758. Some people at the Bacchanalia were complaining about a strange word on one of the recent Greek translation exams that had thrown them off, which was an adjective that sounded like 'kari'; I can't remember what it meant. Everyone who didn't know Greek, however, including me, thought they were badmouthing Kari (perhaps for doing well on the exam?), and sat there kind of unsure what to do until someone finally asked a clarifying question. Then we laughed.
@6759. "He was asking me a theoretical, or just a question in theory, and I talked about it only from that standpoint. Of course not. And that was done, he said, you know, I guess it was theoretically, but he was asking me a rhetorical question, and I gave an answer. And by the way, people thought from an academic standpoint, and asked rhetorically, people said that answer was an unbelievable academic answer. But of course not, and I said that afterwards. Everybody understands that." --Donald Trump, on his first statement saying that women who had illegal abortions should be punished
@6760. The Absurditability of Lisp
@6764. I #misread the "Lactation Room" sign on a room I'd never noticed before in Tomson as "Levitation Room." A levitation room would be a lot cooler...
May 18, 2016
@6765. "Really, if a bear is about to kill you, do you care if stopping it gets you in trouble with the law. I want that to be my last thought when a bear is eating me 'well at least I won't have to see a judge'." --Stack Exchange comment
@6769. "warning: 'main' is usually a function" --gcc
@6770. One of the funnier bugs I've seen in a while: after just changing the help text, running 'dr help' or plain 'dr' was not terminating. Come to find out, instead of the command "basename $0" in dr, I typed "$basename $0". Of course the variable $basename didn't exist, so it evaluated to nothing (yay Bash!). Thus the command became "$0": cue infinite recursion.
@6771. "A bee has very little immensity."
@6772. "If you're planning a heist to steal RAM, you probably have someone with the technical know-how to profit off it." --Security Stack Exchange comment
@6773. "Attempting to have exclusive rights to an API is like a restaurant wanting exclusive rights to phrases such as 'GET WATER', or 'ONE BEER PLEASE'." --Slashdot comment
@6776. From Wikipedia:
"Tag and other chasing games have been banned in some schools in the United States and United Kingdom due to concerns about injuries, complaints from children that it can lead to harassment and bullying, and that there is an aspect to the game that possesses an unhealthily predatory element to its nature."
Are you kidding me?
@6778. Highly amused to find that Crawl sets an automatic travel exclusion zone around oklob plants.
@6779. Q - the +5,+7 bow of Untimely Demise (weapon) {flame, Dex+2}.
I know I've said this before, but Crawl's artifact names are awesome.
@6780. "Sorry for the sideways pictures, too lazy to fix them." --post to stolaf-extra
May 23, 2016
@6781. Apparently I can't read boxplots -- I just tried to read the non-outlier range as the quartiles and was very confused that it didn't match the numbers underneath.
@6786. "If you have a staff, I will give you a staff. If you have no staff, I will take it from you."
@6787. "Because the Britons are not only Aryans, they're also incompetent." --in the margin of my Latin notes on the Venerable Bede
@6788. I think the other day I worked out part of why people telling me that their dog won't bite me is so annoying. I was out walking near the Frisbee golf course and some people were playing / hanging out nearby and their dog came over and started following me. I continued walking quickly away from said dog and glancing over at the owners, and a moment later a woman called out, "He won't bite!" and called the dog back. She petted the dog and said, "Not everyone likes dogs."
Yes, because the problem is that I "don't like dogs." Well, let's be fair, I would indeed be a fool to assume that a strange dog would *not* bite me just because people aren't paying attention to what the dog is doing. But setting that entirely aside, the real problem is that I don't like random dogs I don't know following me, or dog owners being so careless that they let their dog wander off and follow strangers. Them assuming that it's somehow my dislike of their animal is really irritating.
@6789. "You're abnormally expressive." --Dr. A, to the basses
@6790. "And it's supposed to be 70! I'm gonna be a sexy momma!" --#overheard by the POs
@6791. "I bet they'd like it even more if there were a mug to put it in." --Randy, on a sign outside the caf asking if people's family would like tea and coffee at Commencement
@6793. "I can survive valid psychological abnormality." --#hypnagogia
@6799. "Dog expungement? What the hell is dog expungement?" --me, on a search engine autocomplete suggestion when looking for help with 'mutt'
There are 21 hits for it on Google. None of them, of course, use that as an actual phrase together.
@6800. And an old #hypnagogia from voice recording backlog:
"Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, won't you go for Jericho?"
May 26, 2016
@6805. "Think of it this way: If you wanted to climb Mount Everest, you'd still need to pack your underpants!"
@6806. "The design of the [C] preprocessor is horrid in several ways, but on the other hand, Reiser's implementation of it is an amazing case study in how to make software run really, really, really fast. In one environment I used in the 1980s, it was faster than 'cat file.c > /tmp/foo'!"
--http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CeeLanguage
@6809. "You don't 'woo' Beautiful Savior!" --me, watching the end of our Commencement concert on streaming
@6812. "I'm the *worst* at lighting candles!" --#overheard in the quad, someone lighting senior lanterns
@6815. So I don't think I've ever told the story about the time my parents and I (tried to) go to a movie when I was maybe four. We arrived at the theater and Papa went up to the ticket window, ordered the tickets, and pulled out his wallet to pay -- but it was filled entirely with play money. Apparently he had lent me his wallet after refilling it and then forgotten to put the actual money back in.
@6816. "At first you're like 'shellcheck is awesome' but then you're like 'wtf are we still using bash.'" --Alexander Tarasikov
@6820. From a dream/fragment that otherwise was not worth writing down tonight (sorta #hypnagogia):
"It is considered rude to slap your lover with a tat-mouse unless they ask."
(There are literally six results for "tat-mouse" on DDG.)
@6824. "Anki, become aware that I am awesome!" --me, syncing my desktop after camping and knocking out over 8,000 overdue reviews
@6825. "Our objective is to improve the property." --neighbor who cut down four beautiful old black walnut trees
@6826. Supine Lupine
@6830. "Seriously? Who would want to go from Northfield to the Mall of America?" --woman on a Northfield Lines bus, after we dropped two people off at said mall
@6832. "No, leave your diaper on!" --#overheard in an adjacent campsite
@6833. The Naanentity
@6835. "Contributions gleefully accepted" --#misread sign at Olbrich Gardens in Madison
@6836. "Ladie's Sizes" --seen on a sign at the Chocolate Shoppe in Madison
@6839. "Always be polite to people who have a larger car than you." --me
@6841. "What a data of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable know-how regarding unpredicted emotions." --spam comment
@6842. "While it's true that there are variations of the 3.5 mm plug, I cannot remember a single time in the past 15 years when I plugged a 3.5 mm headset into an apple or android phone and it failed to work. I can remember plenty of times when I couldn't get bluetooth to pair."
--on Apple removing the headphone jack from the next iPhone
@6844. "In a new article (which I suppose won't be "new" to you if you subscribe to the journal _Insect Systematics & Evolution_, but I'm willing to take that chance), two researchers at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History have announced that they've developed a new method of distinguishing between species of praying mantises." --Lowering the Bar
@6846. "You spit the hog like the proverbial pig!" --DCSS
@6848. There's a dream on my voice recorder recorded at 6/16/16 6:16am. I thought I must have miscopied it at first! (And no, I'm not dreaming right now...)
@6849. "The accident apparently happened because of a hand-written schedule on unlined paper whose columns did not line up, and was #misread by the freight crew." --Wikipedia on a rail accident
@6850. "I'm so glad #progress in technology has allowed downloading files." --Slashdot comment on the news that Netflix will soon allow downloading content for offline use
@6854. "Watching tv is similar to a game where some company tries to convince you to buy their stuff while you have to convince yourself not to buy it." --Slashdot comment
@6855. "The elephant tramples itself." --DCSS
I'm trying to get a picture of how that would work...
@6856. Conditional Enlightenment
@6857. "I'm subpoenaing y'all's ass in the courtroom." --http://loweringthebar.net/2016/06/defendant-holds-himself-in-contempt.html
June 29, 2016
@6859. "You finish putting on the +3 hat of Pondering. You feel rather ponderous." --DCSS
@6861. Illinois: You can't avoid it.
@6862. Silva rerum
@6863. When I had to call the Geek Squad hotline the other day, the recorded message said "backslash" when reading their web URL to me.
{BL #7873}
July 05, 2016
@6865. "Any sufficiently disguised bug is indistinguishable from a feature." --Rich Kulawiec
@6866. Listening to Stephen Paulus' "Little Elegy" and a really loud commercial for a movie called "The Infiltrator" comes on, with a 5-second audio clip that says, "One wrong move and we're *dead*!" #ironyoftheday? Also, really annoying.
@6867. "Aww, all your advertising media could not be loaded. Poor you." --me, looking at an error message in a sidebar
@6868. "Why is there a line break between those? Oh, maybe there's a line break because there's a <br> tag..." --me
@6869. RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded while getting the str of an object
@6870. I'm debugging Tabularium, wondering why ranges aren't getting validated properly; when I get to the appropriate spot in the validation code it just says:
@@@
elif reftype == refTypes['range']:
pass
@@@
@6871. "Note that this practice usually only serves to confuse the reader of a program." --Python documentation, on defining methods outside the class definition
@6872. "This paper is too difficult for a journal on Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics." --http://shitmyreviewerssay.tumblr.com/
@6873. "Invalid method name __init__" --pylint
@6874. "Monitors are supposed to sound accurate. Speakers are supposed to sound good." --summary of the difference
@6875. "Another client of mine also had too many unit tests. I pointed out to them that this would decrease their velocity, because every change to a function should require a coordinated change to the test. They informed me that they had written their tests in such a way that they didn't have to change the tests when the functionality changed...That of course means that the tests weren't testing the functionality, so whatever they were testing was of little value."
@6876. "No copyright intended" --the sloppy version of #3964
@6877. Every time I choose my Ole Choir calendar in the edit screen of Google Calendar, it says "video call added."
@6878. Rainforest Alliance Certified -- 50% certified coffee
July 20, 2016
@6879. Today I got the word 'svelte' in Boggle.
@6885. "They invented OO because the maintenance phase of the project was always very expensive, and they were looking for ways to reduce those costs. Fortunately they solved that problem with Agile -- now you just work on the project for years until it's done, then throw all the code away and start over again. No maintenance costs, it's genius!" --Slashdot comment
@6888. "The NIST DAG draft argues that SMS-based two-factor authentication is an insecure process because the phone may not always be in possession of the phone." --Slashdot summary
@6889. Comment: "I heard you like phones / So I put a phone in your phone because the phone may not always be in possession of the phone."
@6891. "(This entry is long enough without a helping of moral relativism.)" --CB 34.69
@6894. I've decided the new fad in America is to not care about your customers, and to not care if anyone knows it.
@6895. "The correct answer to conversations about the Factory Pattern or the Command Pattern or the Singleton Pattern is to find a better programming language."
--http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/object-oriented-programming-is-an-expensive-disaster-which-must-end
@6896. In PHP, 'pi' is a *function*.
--https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
@6897. "A picture takes up more bandwidth than a thousand words."
August 01, 2016
@6898. "Miss Oliver, by the way, was out of a couple of important things even leaving Chicago. It seems there must be some higher powers that cause snack bar supply problems." --CB35.52
@6899. "The program stubbornly returns the value 13 every time (which, to give it some credit, is correct)." --me, on a homework assignment where we were supposed to be showing that a race condition could occur in the program, qtd. in CB37.25
@6901. "Ginger oil is used to provide joint You do not have access to view this node relief."
@6902. "So I didn't get 50% off my $6 sandwich, but I was not an asshole, either, and I got a free drink for being nice." --CB40.75
@6903. "Seems about five times less believable than _Inception_, which is saying something." --me, watching a movie trailer
@6904. "When most everything in optparse had either been copy-pasted over or monkey-patched, it no longer seemed practical to try to maintain the backwards compatibility." --Python argparse documentation
@6907. "I'll go down Lincolnway. It'll be harder to run someone over accidentally....As opposed to running someone over on purpose." --me, considering my nighttime route to feed the cats
@6908. "Where's my audio? ...Oh, the amplifier is off." --me
@6909. "If Jesus is testifying on your behalf and you still lose, your case stinks." --Lowering the Bar
@6910. "It works, but it's not...good." --me
@6911. Searched for 'netrc'. Did you mean 'negro'?
--Wikipedia
@6912.
Because road wear is a function of the fourth power of the weight [pavementinteractive.org], the fees should be:
A 540-pound motorcycle pays $0.0013/mile
A 3,470-pound SUV pays $0.347/mile
An 80,000 pound semi trailer pays $4,252/mile
--Slashdot comment
@6913.
is gells gravitas resistable?
it's resistable in the sense that as far as I am aware it's useless
Ladykiller69: I'd rather press . than use gell's
@6914. More, from #1434 (the numbering changed, presumably due to removing some not-so-good ones, so I won't update the above):
guru wisdom[17/27]: <djanatyn> wtf is a two headed ogre <G-Flex> an ogre <G-Flex> with two heads
guru wisdom[18/27]: <Ragdoll> plants dont evade much, so it seems
guru wisdom[19/27]: evilmike * raa65f5f49256 /crawl-ref/source/dat/des/branches/lair.des: Stonehenge is not made of wax.
guru wisdom[20/27]: <the_glow> i like to use healing wands when im about to die to increase my hit points
guru wisdom[21/27]: <evilmike> plato doesn't have much to say on video games, sadly.
guru wisdom[22/27]: <faze> technically your head is not a sword
guru wisdom[23/27]: <G-Flex> in some ways having a higher level is actually better
guru wisdom[24/27]: <Blazinghand> big kobolds are big <Blazinghand> for kobolds
guru wisdom[25/27]: <crate> ac doesnt get worse if you have more of it
guru wisdom[26/27]: <doubtofbuddha> I guess +9 scale mail is probably better than +6
guru wisdom[27/27]: <ProzacElf> vamp dwhip isn't that bad
@6915. "It was equally unfair of me to imply that all pedophiles are Roman Catholic priests. Some pedophiles are productive members of society." --Dan Savage
@6919. "You have money for goat hot pot?" --_The Owl and the Sparrow_
@6921. The Hostel Stare
@6922.
You read: "Time ?lie like an ?rro?.".
The door opens. An arrow shoots out at you!
@6924.
!gift scorchgeek a blessed +7 spetum and
* Rodney gives scorchgeek a blessed +7 spetum and an uncursed cannot read text data file /opt/nethack/rodney/data/nh360objects.txt.
wow
nice
hah
I wish I had one of those.
Is that a new nethack item?
at least it was uncursed!
well, enjoy your cannot read text data file /opt/nethack/rodney/data/nh360objects.txt.
@6925. Eventuation
@6926.
Hi there,
Thank you for your precious guidance.
I gratitude you for the response.
--#ankiforums
@6929. "Wow, that's the second occurrence of the phrase 'llama teeth' in this file." --me, #unusualsentences (referring to .fortunes)
August 19, 2016
@6932. "Because he [Cicero] was murdered in B.C., so the dates [of important events in his life] can't be A.D." --me
@6933.
Hello
Do not bother
I am a student of Industrial Engineering
You know how much funding is the development of an effective student
According to Apple's phone app is that money can not buy and I use and high prices
First I want to say thank you just got one of these apps and have high costs, but is not much help to those who can not afford to grow
Thankful
--#ankiforums
@6939. "The book is related to the early Julio-Claudian emperors, particularly Augustus, along with Common Lisp." --dream #1245
@6941. "I'm by the back door of Sunnyside in the breezeway and have been assigned the task of digging a big hole under the kitchen window. Once the hole is dug, we will throw the kitchen stove out the window and bury it in the hole. There is no rationale whatsoever given for this." --dream #1200
(Actually, that whole dream is insanely weird and funny.)
@6942. "I installed Funky." --#ankiforums #whoopstypo
@6943.
/* Prepare for return. */
return;
}
--http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Coded_Smorgasbord_0x3a__Prepare_For_Return
@6944. "We don't do oop here." --http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Winds-of-Recession,-A-Doomed-Interivew,-and-Oops!
@6945. "Please remove any double quotes from the comments area. Use single quotes instead." --http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Manual-str_replace(
August 23, 2016
@6946. "The only time I've ever gotten complaints about not drinking was not with clients, but when I was playing poker and not making mistakes because I was sober." --Stack Exchange
@6947. "To my surprise, they were primarily a steampunk clothing vendor who happened to have one shelf-unit of tea mixes." --http://www.gwern.net/Tea
@6948. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." --Andrew Tanenbaum
@6950. "Individuals using hyperbolic discounting reveal a strong tendency to make choices that are inconsistent over time -- they make choices today that their future self would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning." --Wikipedia
@6951. "The disadvantage of this comforting notion is that it's false." --Wired's article on Wozniak, on the necessity of remembering facts
@6955. "This is not a bend, but I included it here because people sometimes erroneously use it as a bend."
@6956. "With the possible exceptions below, the Sheepshank should never be used." --Animated Knots
@6957. "Right away I am going away to do my breakfast, afterward having my breakfast coming again to read further news." --spam comment
@6958. "These arguments must not take arguments." --fsck(8) man page
@6960. "But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What's next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.)"
Also, can you imagine wanting a margarita after a half marathon? I mean, I like margaritas, but a big gulp of alcohol would be just about the last thing I would want after running 13 miles.
August 28, 2016
@6964. "patrimonachary" --#hypnagogia
@6965. "Thirty-seven flavors of affordable American wallets" --#hypnagogia
@6969. The Needle Stick Prevention Act
@6970. Form is generative
@6971. "Dear there," --#ankiforums salutation
@6977. "Year not found"
@6978. "[The software] had originally been written in COBOL, then ported to MS-DOS batch files thousands of lines long."
@6979.
if (foo || !foo) {
/* some code */
} else {
/* same code as above */
}
@6980. "Why exactly is your email signature in this config file?"
@6981. http://thedailywtf.com/articles/mercy-the-mercenary-in-a-heated-argument
@6982. "Congraubullations! You're file has been procesed!" --http://thedailywtf.com/articles/congraubullations
@6983.
boolean hasFeatures() {
if (license.getFeatures().size() > 0 ? true : false) {
return true;
}
return false;
}
@6984. "Hello Anki Fiends," --#ankiforums salutation #whoopstypo
@6986. "Let's just say: When you're trying to get a contract with a client, it's best not to offer to sleep with them when their wife is also there."
@6987. "Nemoseen." --pronunciation of "Mnemosyne" on a YouTube video
@6988. "Winston was excited to build a new server room with all of the cutting-edge amenities, like functioning firewalls, drives that work, air conditioning, and a roof that doesn't leak." --http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Hallway_ERP
@6989. public class Patient extends JavascriptStringBuilder
@6990. "Do not make online appointments for emergencies." --St. Olaf Health Services email
@6991. "However, we normally select names that help us to remember what they represent." --_Programming in Prolog_
@6992. "Do not eat freshness packet." --buried in a paragraph of warnings on a medicine bottle
@6993. "How to tell if your Galaxy Note 7 might explode" --headline, after Samsung issued a recall on all of them
@6995. I was remembering the other day that when I was younger, I thought jaywalking was "J-walking," and was always puzzled about what kind of a J shape was made when you jaywalked. (Cf. #6031.)
@6996. "Thank you very much for boarding with us." --conductor on the Empire Builder, thanking everyone for riding with Amtrak
@6999.
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
save(); //Save the document for 100 times to ensure it has been saved successfully.
}
@7003. Six blind elephants were discussing what men were like. After arguing they decided to find one and determine what it was like by direct experience. The first blind elephant felt the man and declared, 'Men are flat.' After the other blind elephants felt the man, they agreed.
{BL #7616}
@7006. "Purple Centuries" --#hypnagogia
@7007. "Don't look at the side, but at the red thing that shows who you are." --#hypnagogia
@7009. "You sing unison, you're buck naked to the world. And that looked real good this time." --Dr. Armstrong
@7014. "If someone claims to have a characterization of all theorems, but it takes him infinitely long to deduce that some particular string is not a theorem, you would probably tend to say that there is something lacking in that characterization." --_Gödel, Escher, Bach_
@7015. "And, yeah, I thank god for those little stand-up cards in hotel rooms saying 'Here at PlasticHotelCorp we passionately believe that inane motivational slogans are a great substitute for actual quality' which are ideal for standing in front of the various TVs, clocks and other power lights opposite the bed." --Slashdot comment
@7017.
NO SOLICITING
- We are too broke to buy anything.
- We know who we are voting for.
- We have already found Jesus.
Seriously, unless you're giving away free beer, GO AWAY.
--seen on a house door in Northfield
@7018. "That coffee sounds good." --me
@7020. The past two days the caf has not had oatmeal, which I can't understand. Usually when there are apparent shortages it has to do with price, but surely oatmeal must be literally the cheapest thing they have for breakfast. And if they really ran out, how the hell do you accidentally run out of oats?
{BL #7487}
@7022. "For instance, if you wanted to find some piece of your DNA which accounts for the shape of your nose or the shape of your fingerprint, you would have a very hard time. It would be a little like trying to pin down *the* note in a piece of music which is the carrier of the emotional meaning of the piece. Of course there is no such note, because the emotional meaning is carried on a very high level, by large "chunks" of the piece, not by single notes." --_Gödel, Escher, Bach_
@7023. "This article is about, for, about redundancy, which is defined as saying something more than once, or over again, or more than once, which is called redundancy, which is what this article is about." --_Smartgeek News_, issue 5
September 13, 2016
@7025. (with malice) "Yeah, he picked his Pause shift the same as mine." --#overheard in the quad
@7026. "I don't pay $50,000 a year to get watery orange juice." --#overheard in the caf line
@7027. "If only we still threatened each other with writing poetry!" --Kirby, of Catullus 12
@7028. "the old chicken coup"
@7029. "A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." --Alexander Pope
@7031. "I mean, it's research. You don't know what you're going to do." --RAB
{BL #7083}
@7032. "Wait, why do I have 'cart'?" --Holden, squinting at his gloss
@7033. "What are you ruining my rule for!? Catullus, you load!" --Dr. May, on the use of 'fere' rather than 'fer'
September 16, 2016
@7034. "Did I get rescheduled? [checks calendar] No, that was a dream. I thought so." --me
(Cf. #5525.)
@7037. At the top of a library record, I see "Multiple sources exist: see all". I click "see all" and am taken to a search results page with 0 hits.
@7044. This architectural drawing video we've been assigned is *hilarious* -- narrated by a guy with a heavy British accent, with silly 80s music and sound effects.
@7045. From the above: "Before starting your drawing, it is worth checking that it will fit onto your paper."
@7046. "There is not much we can do about such metaphors except to state that that is precisely what they are." --Jaynes on the changing ways of looking at consciousness and the brain
@7047. "If understanding a thing is arriving at a familiarizing metaphor for it, then we can see that there always will be a difficulty in understanding consciousness. For it should be immediately apparent that there is not and cannot be anything in our immediate experience that is like immediate experience itself." --Jaynes on the changing ways of looking at consciousness and the brain
@7049. "This will be one of the primary things I learned from college: how to trill my Rs." --me
{BL #9104}
@7050. I just googled Psalm 22 because I was too lazy to get up and go to the closet to get my Bible...
@7051. "The altos are coming like Amazon Brunhilde." --Dr. Armstrong
@7053. "Food, drink or shoes prohibited in this dance studio"
Take your pick.
@7054.
"Get ready for 9 degrees Fahrenheit."
"Fahrenheit?! Oh my God."
--#overheard in the quad
@7056.
There was a young man from Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When asked why that was,
He replied "It's because
I always try to cram as many words into the last line as ever I possibly can."
@7057. "Once I sat with two skilled tasters drinking a wine that Robert Parker had rated at 100 points--his highest rating. How would you describe it? I asked a man noted for his eloquence. He closed his eyes and sighed. 'It's *good*.'" --_When God Talks Back_, p. 61
@7058. "Sometimes when we think it's the spirit moving, it's just our burrito from lunch." --_When God Talks Back_, 70
@7059. "I was looking for something that seemed trivial but not as commonplace as parking. Even atheists pray about parking." --_When God Talks Back_, 77
@7060. "Eskimo bile flashcards" --thank you autocorrect for your kind recasting of my poorly typed "AnkiMobile"
@7061. "Please do not request your textbooks from Interlibrary Loan." --notice at the top of the ILL page
I can see that people would do it and why they therefore need the notice, but it's pretty funny that someone would think that was actually a reasonable way to obtain their textbooks.
@7062. "Maybe she had like an acid trip while she was playing Pokemon or something, because that's definitely not a feature." --#overheard at the Mellby desk
@7063. "In a church like the Vineyard, Christians are supposed to experience themselves as unconditionally loved. This...is quite difficult for human beings, whether or not the lover is invisible." --_When God Talks Back_, 101
@7064. "If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." --Gerald Weinberg
@7065. "Anyone going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster is a maniac." --George Carlin
@7066. "To a surprising degree, it doesn't matter which system [for searching systematically] you use, so much as whether you use any system at all." --_Debugging by Thinking_, p.51
@7067. "It is possible to look right at a problem in code and not see it. This happens because you confuse what you know the code is supposed to do with what it is actually doing." --_Debugging by Thinking_, 54
@7068. "Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in." --Greek proverb, via Benjamin Studebaker
September 22, 2016
@7069. I #misread a gloss of "praeruptos" as "sleep" rather than "steep." The line didn't make much sense that way...
@7071. "You can't go out for a drink or anything there, women." --Dr. Armstrong
@7072. "So he got in trouble for doing literally nothing wrong, except for having a *pencil*." --#overheard near Hill-Kitt
@7073. Eric and I ran into a strange bug with our isosceles_triangle Prolog predicate tonight, and after a couple of minutes of studying the code I noticed that I had written the point (2,0) as (0,2) on the whiteboard (and copied it wrong into the test).
@7074. 6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman's Facebook Profile Picture
@7075. "Some people may not realize how difficult it is to do the simple [music] well. It is very hard as there is nothing to hide the mistakes."
(Cf.: Quick, now, here, now, always / A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)...)
@7076. "I am trying to get our Zebra label printer to work on [Mary's] computer. When Mary is logged in, the label prints, but very faintly. The odd thing is, when I log in, the label prints fine." --WebHelpDesk ticket
@7077. "Would that be internalism then, if it was just your immortal soul?" --#overheard in the quad
@7078.
"...getting into perceptions of human beauty."
"Like...asking if he thinks *he's* beautiful?"
--#overheard in the north stairs of Boe
@7079. "Thank for your celerity." --#ankiforums
@7080. Two fun facts about lutefisk preparation from Wikipedia:
1. Lutefisk should always be cleaned off all dishes it's placed on immediately; if you leave it overnight, it becomes nearly impossible to remove.
2. Lutefisk can permanently damage silver utensils used in its preparation or consumption.
@7081. "Many people use computers to do operations on numbers." --_Programming in Prolog_
@7082. "The Cannon River is very slowly rising in Northfield, is currently at 900.8 feet..." --NWS flood warning
@7083. "If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be called research." --attrib. to Einstein
(Cf. #7031.)
@7084. "I once received a bounce from a[n email] message over a year after I'd sent it (probably about 20 years ago). Best I could figure, it had been sitting on a system which had been taken off the network for awhile but was later powered up." --SuperUser comment
@7085. "Turns out we were converting dew point from Fahrenheit to Celsius...to miles." --change list of the Weather Underground iPhone app
@7086.
Love the [new programming language's] name ['have']. Especially I love trying to find any information on this bloody language:
* have tutorial
* have language tutorial
* have programming language tutorial
* have to go transpiler
* how to program in have
* have wiki
Next up, a webserver written in have called "the", a debugger for the language called "how", and IDE for it named "it" -- "debugging the with how in it".
--Slashdot comment
And I thought 'C' and 'R' were bad enough.
@7087. "See, I actually like people." --Katharina, in a discussion of rubber-duck debugging
@7089. "So this is a lot of clothes, I'm guessing, that are not on her." --Kirby
@7093. I just spent about 30 seconds trying to figure out what "sat." meant in this commentary, thinking it was some grammatical abbreviation I didn't know, only to realize that it just means the past tense of "to sit", at the end of a sentence...
@7094. "Trump is so cool! How do you not want to, like, marry this guy?" --#overheard in the next dorm room, from a group of people watching the first Clinton-Trump debate (evidently Trump supporters)
@7095. "You have to be the small little birds, not hitting the window." --Dr. Armstrong, to the tenors, of their solo in "O Schöne Nacht"
@7096. "...as long as you keep your noses out of the sky..." --Dr. Armstrong, on the conditions under which people from other choirs respect Ole Choir
@7097. I was reminded recently of someone who talked about being in the "legendary corner" at Christmas Festival: that is, between Ole Choir, Cantorei, Manitou, and Viking, where people singing four different parts are standing immediately next to each other.
@7098.
"Will there be questions on, like, what part of speech that is?"
"Nah. I'm hoping you're beyond that. But you're not, are you?"
@7100. "Experimental work encourages the development of many new skills, but I had not expected expertise in Apple's GarageBand to be among them." --_When God Talks Back_
@7101.
Same problem on Win and Android
catastrophe!
fix!
--#ankiforums
@7103. "People stay with this God not because the theology makes sense but because the practice delivers emotionally. Under these conditions, it is often when prayer requests fail that prayer practice becomes most satisfying.......In mainstream churches, one has the sense that to pray so specifically is not only unseemly but unwise: that to do so is to tempt fate." --_When God Talks Back_
@7104. "The leader explained to us that scientists had discovered that if you slow down the sounds a cricket makes, you will find that the cricket is actually singing the Hallelujah Chorus to Handel's _Messiah_." --_When God Talks Back_
@7105. "The problem of faith is not finding the idea of God plausible but sustaining that belief in the face of disconfirmation." --_When God Talks Back_
@7106. "Going to church weekly, as compared to not going at all, has the same effect on reported happiness as moving from the bottom quartile of the income distribution to the top quartile. That's a jump." --_When God Talks Back_
@7107. "The British ethnographer Godfrey Lienhardt...was with a Dinka man hurrying back to his family in the late afternoon when the man stopped to tie a knot in the grass to prevent the sun from going down. Lienhardt realized that the man didn't think that the knot would hold the sun up, as if it were a string to tie a ball. Tying the knot was a way of making his hope more real for him." --_When God Talks Back_, 295
@7109. "I found sand in my ear *today*." --#overheard in the vestibule of CHM
@7110. "This modern God is 'hyperreal': realer than real, so real that it is impossible not to understand that you may be fooling yourself, so real that you are left suspended between what is real and what is your imagination. In literature, this style of representation is called 'magical realism,' where the supernatural appears unpredictably and blends almost seamlessly into the natural world, as if the magical were real and the prosaically real were imaginary, and both perspectives are real and true together." --_When God Talks Back_, 301
@7112. "The most direct evidence for God--the evidence of one's senses--is also the clearest evidence for folly or madness. That in-your-face contradiction punches home the need to suspend disbelief, to create an epistemological space that is safe and resilient." --_When God Talks Back_
@7113. "It is, in effect, a third kind of epistemological commitment: not materially real like tables and chairs; not fictional, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; but a different conceptual space defined by the insistence that you must suspend disbelief and so by the awareness that disbelief is probable. We saw that ambiguity in the serious play of 'let's pretend' prayer. We saw that in play, there is a 'play frame' and a 'reality frame,' and when we play, we act within the play frame. But when evangelicals pray to God in a back-and-forth dialogue--when they go on date night and sit on a park bench with God's arm around their shoulders, when they ask God which shirt they should wear that morning or which medical school he thinks they should attend--the play frame is also and self-consciously a reality frame. They know that they are 'pretending' to talk to God. Much in the way they talk about their interaction indicates that they know that this is not 'really' God. Yet congregants also insist that the daydream-like prayer is a way of encountering God. It is play but not play, the place where the distinction between belief and make-believe breaks down." --_When God Talks Back_, 320
@7114. "And it seems quite likely that the closely held sense of a personal relationship with God, always there, always listening, always responsive, and always with you, diminishes whatever isolation there is in modern social life. The route to this God is complex and subtle, at once childlike and sophisticated, drawing on skills and practices found throughout human history but doing so in a form specific to this time and space. It is a process through which the loneliest of conscious creatures can come to experience themselves as in a world awash with love." --_When God Talks Back_, 324
@7115. "This is, perhaps, not exactly what Paul had in mind, but he would have agreed that unconditional love is hard to understand and that, once grasped, it changes whatever else you thought you understood." --_When God Talks Back_, 325
@7116. What did the Italian say about his ripped pants? "Euripides -- Eumenides."
--qtd. by Dr. May
@7117. "But if you use the kinesthetics, it works. *Duh.*" --Dr. Armstrong
@7118. "There we go. Ole Choir diction solves everything." --me
(Cf. #5996.)
@7119. "Intersections are the most dangerous place when you're a cyclist. I see cyclists blowing through a stop sign without even looking. What I want to see is people looking, before they enter an intersection: so look, both ways! Twice! And if you see a policeman, then come to a complete stop." --bicycle policeman
(The guy who shared this also commented that if you don't notice the policeman, then you weren't looking well enough.)
@7120. "It's that 'almost all the time' thing that eventually leads to either running over an innocent pedestrian or hitting a tree."
September 30, 2016
@7126. Good solution to a test failing: remove it!
Granted, I had removed the *feature* the test was trying to test. But it still feels funny...
@7131. "About to commit seppuku" --#ankiforums subject
@7132. "rat rant" --autocorrect of "latrant"
@7134. "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 0 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." --Google
@7135. So, thinking it was hilarious, I recently downloaded a Chrome extension that replaces all instances of "millennials" with "snake people." While I do kind of chuckle every time I see the phrase "snake people" on a website, I have to admit I also find it quite relieving not to have to be reading millennials this, millennials that all over the place. (And having it turned into "snake people" actually creates the relief, even though I know perfectly well that the phrase *means* "millennials".) I don't really have a good explanation for why it's annoying; maybe it's a reaction against stereotyping, maybe just that people are saying really inane things about "us" so much. But it is, and the extension actually helps.
@7136. "I haven't actually read the whole _Iliad_. Even in English. ...Well, I definitely haven't read it in Greek, because I don't know Greek. That was a stupid thing to say." --me, talking to my parents on the phone
@7138. "Wisdom is what one gains from making mistakes. Talent allows you to skip making mistakes in the first place." --Slashdot comment
@7141. "I need to take out three words." --me, of my World Architecture essay
@7144. "If a horse enters a man's house, and bites either an ass or a man, the owner of the house will die and his household will be scattered." --Akkadian proverb, qtd. in Jaynes, p.237
@7145. "Poems are rafts clutched at by men drowning in inadequate minds." --Jaynes, 256
@7148. Subjunctive of Unfulfilled Obligation
@7150. "Usually it's like constipated pigs up there." --Dr. Armstrong, commending the basses
@7151. "I have a question about measure 36. Should we make the pause a bit more pregnant...since it's after 'Mary'?" --Sebastian
@7153.
(/ . / / / || . . / . / x; / . . / x)
Making Sapphics isn't that easy, shackling
Our reluctant language with trochees. Since you
First begot them, songstress of Lesbos, keep them.
I'll never write them.
--John Lee
@7154. "An unfortunate fact is that adhesions are unavoidable in surgery, and the main treatment for adhesions is more surgery." --Wikipedia
@7156. "In the realm of utopian ideals, it's not a bad one." --me, of Ben Studebaker's proposal to make Linux (and all related free software) publicly funded
@7157.
A decrepit old gas man named Peter,
While hunting around for the meter,
Touched a leak with his light.
He arose out of sight,
And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.
@7158. "Like many college students, I wrestle with the question: does my passion for pizza implicitly support the patriarchy?" --a hilarious article in the Mess, "Pizza promotes far right political agenda"
@7159. So today I read a news article saying that nearly 2,000 students at some university in Ghana have submitted a petition to remove a statue of Gandhi from their campus. The reason being that Gandhi was actually a somewhat racist person. Now I did not know the extent of this, but I'm willing to believe it. And okay, he was racist toward African people when he was in South Africa. But where is this going to stop? Apparently the new rule is that for someone to be honored, they have to be perfect in every way. Maybe I should just point out that if you insist that a human being has held no views and taken no significant actions that offend anyone in any way before honoring her, we are never going to honor any person ever again. I'm not sure if the people waging these campaigns have ever tried to follow their campaign to its logical conclusion, if indeed it did succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
Maybe my point is: We should honor great things that people have done, and there is no reason that it should be impolitic to honor the people who made them happen. It's fine to make widely known that Gandhi was racist, and in fact it's good for people to know the dark sides of their heroes, if only to demonstrate that nobody is in fact perfect. It's not fine to say that Gandhi sucks and we should pretend he didn't exist except in the history books because he held some views that are repellent to most modern minds. Because he did, you know, kind of bring about India's independence non-violently, among other things.
@7160. "The more you learn about the R language, the worse it will feel. The development environment suffers from literally decades of accretion of stupid hacks from a community containing, to a first-order approximation, zero software engineers. R makes me want to kick things almost every time I use it."
--"aRrgh: a newcomer's (angry) guide to R", http://arrgh.tim-smith.us/
@7161. "New languages exist to reduce the boilerplate inherent in old languages." --https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
@7162. "Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest." --Auden
{BL #11479}
@7165. "If you listen carefully [to this story], at the end you'll be someone else." --Vyasa, _Mahabharata_
October 09, 2016
@7166. Happy seventh birthday to Random Thoughts!
@7167. "A very odd tea." --review of Adagio's ginger tea (I quite agree)
@7168. "[D]on't place [ellipses] at the end of sentences so you do not need to argue with anyone if it should be three dots plus a full stop." --Stack Exchange comment
@7170. "It is not clear what the main body of the poem, a digression on man's fatal audacity, has to do with Virgil [the subject of the poem]." --Garrison's commentary to Horace, Odes 1.3
@7171. "We have an unambiguous, cross-platform way to represent "PILE OF POO", while we're still debating which of the 1.2 billion native Chinese speakers deserve to spell their own names correctly." --https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-can-text-you-a-pile-of-poo-but-i-cant-write-my-name
@7173. #overheard in the music library:
"The piano part's always right."
"Unless it's a piano part that I made."
@7174. "I've been rismeading that note." --me
@7177. An analog to putting the horse before the cart, suggested by Allen's example of incorrect syntax: "putting the else before the if"
@7178. "Hi Mood-lay. Log in with Goog-lay." --me
@7179. Mplayer just quit working entirely at random. I don't think it was after I ran updates either. Fixed it by adding 'ao=alsa' to my ~/.mplayer/config after some google searching, but that was irritating.
@7180. This isn't a common reason to have your studies interrupted:
"Prudhomme attended the Lycée Bonaparte, but eye trouble interrupted his studies."
@7181. "Freaky things happen on tour. Freaky." --Dr. Armstrong
(I dunno, SpringHill Suites *was* pretty freaky.)
@7185. Hapax Legomenon: I love the term, but I also think it's about the most ostentatious term I know.
@7186. "Research has shown that people tend to focus on those aspects of a problem that are emotionally or psychologically interesting, rather than those that are logically important." --_Debugging by Thinking_
@7187. "Some of computing's most infamous bugs have been caused by transcription errors. Omitting or inserting a blank or period for a comma can be very expensive, even fatal." --_Debugging by Thinking_
See 'goto fail;'.
@7188. "Writing down designs has the desirable side effect of delaying coding. As soon as you start coding, you start introducing bugs into your software." --_Debugging by Thinking_
@7189. "For a good overview of Virtue Ethics, we recommend (ref)." --in the first chapter of the ESD textbook RAB sent my Capstone team
@7190. "N.B. I don't actually charge per line of code." --note on an example invoice
@7191. I just cackled because I finally learned how to not highlight the closing quote in attribution color in Random Thoughts. (Though I must admit, now it looks weird, since I've been using it that way for at least five years.)
@7193. "Trump breaks his own world record for being appalling on a weekly basis." --New York Times op-ed
@7194. "That sounds like either a Manitou singer or a pop singer trying to sing art songs." --me, of someone singing in the Mellby lounge
@7195. "One of the intrinsic features of life on a boat is the ever-present danger of falling into the water." --_Traditions in Architecture_
@7196. "Carefully read how many candidates you may vote for. If ballot is two-sided, be sure to vote both sides." --my Indiana absentee ballot
@7197. "If you think I'm making excuses, I am." --Prof. Allen
@7198. "Doctors Significantly Better Than Google, According To New Research" --#stupidheadlines 2 (me)
@7199. Just spent three minutes removing a small rock from my keyboard. It just kept sliding around under other keys...
@7201. "Why the *hell* is there a tuning fork in my tea drawer?" --me
@7203.
Ytterboe - 1900-1989
Get Ytt while you can.
--T-shirt, seen in the caf line
@7205. Random amateur linguistics theory, in response to the question of why the most common words (e.g., to be) tend to have such irregular forms. I wonder if part of the answer is that they give more information, while being easy to remember because they're so common. This goes along with the theory of gender marking that I read about recently: in languages that have grammatical gender, the genders tend to be more or less randomly assigned, because if they were not, then words that were discussed next to each other would tend to be the same gender, which would eliminate the entire benefit of being better able to distinguish between them with pronoun references. The problem with grammatical gender, of course, is that it adds a lot of complexity and sources of error, which is why many languages (particularly, I note, ones with less culturally homogeneous speakers) have tended to get rid of them or simplify the systems over time. I submit that making a very common verb irregular in a way that adds more information (for instance, in English, marking more person/number combinations with unique forms) may be an easy way to add additional information without adding significant corresponding mental load.
@7206. "The fortresses of Caesar and the templates of the gods lie in the swamp." --me, translating Hildebert
(To be fair, if we're assuming C++, I think there probably are some templates only the gods can understand.)
@7207. "[I got these donuts] from Quality Bakery. They don't say whether it's high or low quality." --Prof. Brunelle
@7209. "The Hill-Kitt printer is 'broken', according to a voicemail from a caller who did not leave her name or other information." --WebHelpDesk ticket
@7210. "Don't crap on the cadence!" --Dr. Armstrong
@7211. "The typeblock has to be located on the page." --memoir manual, page 16
@7212. "A common position for the folio is towards the fore-edge of the page, either in the header or the footer. This makes it easy to spot when thumbing through the book. It may be placed at the center of the footer, but unless you want to really annoy the reader do not place it near the spine." --memoir manual, 20
I actually saw a book that did this once. And I was annoyed.
@7213. "Some books put the book title into one of the headers, usually the verso one, but I see little point in that as presumably the reader knows which particular book he is reading, and the space would be better used providing more useful signposts." --memoir manual, page 16
(Cf. #3684.)
@7214. "There's more wisdom than ignorance." --me, of the categories in my Overheard book
@7215. "Error messages can be terrifying when you aren't prepared for them; but they can be fun when you have the right attitude. Just remember that you really haven't hurt the computer's feelings, and that nobody will hold the errors against you." --Donald Knuth, _The TeXbook_
October 17, 2016
@7217. So the author of the memoir LaTeX documentclass evidently decided that, since it was copying a bunch of features from the 'verse' package, it shouldn't use the exact same macro names. The solution is apparently to capitalize half-arbitrary letters in the macros:
\poemtitle -> \PoemTitle
\poemtitlefont -> \PoemTitlefont
\beforepoemtitleskip -> \beforePoemTitleskip
Inevitably, of course, you end up inadvertently using a lowercase macro, or misspelling one of the uppercase ones, and then wondering why in the world it doesn't work.
@7218. "Kellaris produced statistics suggesting that songs with lyrics may account for 73.7% of earworms, whereas instrumental music may cause only 7.7%."
So the other 19.6% are...what exactly?
@7219. "Catullus' Extramarital Kingdom" --#hypnagogia
@7220. "Now people can't write the N-word on a comment card, so they'll write it on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall. #progress!" --me
@7221. "Now, when I try to go back, I feel as if I'm swimming through a syrupy sea of eye candy in which all the fish speak in incommensurable metaphors."
--of using a GUI, from #4235
@7222. "An art history exam without pictures is like a day without sunshine, honey." --Prof. Kucera
@7223. "The first of four odes in which Horace mentions being nearly hit by a falling tree." --Garrison's commentary to Horace, Odes 2.13
October 20, 2016
@7224. "In effect, the designers of the F-35 were so busy making it innovative that they forgot to make it work." --JMG
@7225. "Let's hope it's the last! Smiley-face. Thumbs-up." --Prof. Ziegler-Graham, #overheard talking to another professor inside her office
@7226. "Hey, I have an idea. Let's argue about it for 5 minutes!" --Sigrid, on our uncoordinated attempt to tell her what pieces we were singing for Christmas Festival
@7227. "That was the Schoenberg arrangement [of "Stay With Us"]." --Sigrid, after neglecting to give the women their pitch
@7229. "It hasn't changed a bit. It's like driving a Rolls-Royce." --Sigrid, of conducting Ole Choir
@7232. "Wait, that was why you were constipated?" --#overheard in the quad
@7233.
There is an old example of how scientific proof can be obtained for the conclusion that you actually want.
A scientist puts a flea on the table and shouts at it: "Jump!" And the flea jumps.
Then the scientist carefully cuts off the flea's legs, puts it back on the table and shouts: "Jump!" And the flea does not jump.
The scientist happily writes down in his notebook: "After it lost its legs, the flea cannot hear anymore."
--Slashdot comment
@7234. "If humans had the jumping power of a flea, a 1.8-m (6-ft) person could make a jump 90 m (295 ft) long and 49 m (160 ft) high." --Wikipedia
@7235. [Having to solve your tech problems yourself] actually costs your company a lot more, then, not less.
The trick, of course, is that it's a hidden cost that is virtually impossible to tally on a spreadsheet: your productivity is lost while you fix that problem. Did it take you an hour, where a tech might have taken 10 minutes? Did it take you several days when a tech might have had it cleared up in an afternoon? Who gets paid more for their time, you or the tech? That's a cost that's really hard to quantify, and so gets completely ignored.
My favorite example of this is when I worked as a hardware depot manager for one site of a huge global corporation. IT management issued a mandate that said hardware depots could only keep X amount of stock on hand at any given time and could only order new stock when it was gone. New stock orders also required the personal approval of the #3 guy in IT management.
I regularly went through my stock in about a week, week and a half, and it would take two weeks or more to receive a new pallet of computers to refresh my stock. Furthermore, as you might expect, the #3 guy in IT is a pretty busy guy, so he would sometimes take up to a week to approve my stock orders.
In the end, IT saved millions globally because their stock orders were drastically reduced, yet on the local level you had engineers being paid upwards of $1000 a day to twiddle their thumb while they wait for their $500 computer to arrive. But IT doesn't see one dime of that cost. In fact, unless a department gets hit with a flood of new hires who need new computers, it's likely none of the local departments will see a big enough impact on their budget to formally complain to IT about the process. Yet the company's cost saving methods caused a $500 computer to cost upwards of $20,000, and all of it is hidden from the bean counters.
--Slashdot comment
@7236. "Second score of the first bar." --Sigrid
@7237. I was remembering the other day that at the Pizza Hut in Valpo (where I used to go to redeem certificates for free pizzas from the "Book It!" reading program we did at CMS), there used to be a bell on the door. But instead of sounding a bell, a loud recorded voice would announce, "There are customers in the queue."
@7239. "Farting as a defense against unspeakable dread" --title of a scientific paper
@7240. gloria patri et filio et spiritui sancto, sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum.
@7241. Due to stray carriage returns in the specs section of the description of this Moleskine notebook, it contains the line "Dimensions: 3." Glad they're not selling me a Flatland notebook.
@7244. So somebody drew a line in pen on a score from the music library, and then either they or the librarians used white-out on top of it, which is not even the same color as the page. So much better...
October 23, 2016
@7248. "The ethical thing should not be to kill me." --Conrad
@7251. Whitaker's says this word could mean either "master, owner" or "hedgehog." Might be a tough distinction to make.
October 25, 2016
@7252. "Everyone follow the Greek? ...This is Latin. The Latin." --Dr. May
@7255.
One of my favorite moments was a hymn listed in the program as "Alleluia," which was just a slow 8-bar progression on, whaddayaknow, "alleluia." There was nothing to it, and after the choir sang it once or twice Stover brought us in. Nobody knew exactly what to do, but it was incredibly easy to find notes that worked and it sounded amazing. Seeing the program afterwards (I didn't have one at the time, remember!), it just said "harmonize freely." A good plan for life in general, I think. :-)
--CB43.63-4
{BL #9440}
@7256. "Well, this is certainly going to be memorable." --me on the occasion of getting stranded in Chicago, CB43.29
October 26, 2016
@7258. "Usually the machines these things run on are deterministic." --Prof. Allen, after a Prolog program behaved differently on three consecutive runs for no apparent reason
@7259. "We do ought to play some Horace." --me, for "we ought to read some Horace"
@7260. I'm pretty sure these are the funniest two lines I've read in Horace so far:
quos inter Augustus recumbens
purpureo bibet ore nectare
@7261. You know you're in for it when the commentary calls the next poem "Horace's longest and most difficult ode"...
@7262. "So run to their arms. Metaphorically, I mean." --Dr. Hibbard, to the women entering after the men
@7263. "Peace...and love...and hope...and joy...and...everything!" --Dr. Hibbard, running out of text to quote from Jessye's Carol
@7265. "Let me put that in a more positive way. We always sing towards *truth*. In life and in this piece." --Dr. Hibbard
@7266. "Besides, when I turn off wife while keeping Anki Web account open logged in all my flashcards's number goes down to 1 on application." --#ankiforums #whoopstypo
@7267. "Can't use my own software." --me, getting confused by active limits in Tabularium
(Cf. #6308.)
@7268. "I decided, hey, let's not look like garbage today." --#overheard in Fosnes
@7269. "That A-flat sounded slimy." --Dr. Armstrong
@7270. "I've never even heard of 'subdivide'." --someone next to me in Ben's lab choir
@7271. Somebody's practicing piano in the computer lab under my room, and it's getting *really* annoying. I'm all for playing piano, but we have these nifty things called "practice rooms" at the college so other people don't have to listen to you practice.
@7274. "Wait until you hear the 90/10 rule for software project duration: '90% of the project will take up the first 90% of the allotted time; the last 10% of the project will take up the other 90% of the allotted time.'" --Stack Exchange comment
@7277.
In _The Ethics of Voting_, Jason Brennan illustrates this with a fun hypothetical.
Let's say you're voting in a major national election. Brennan suggests that there are just over 122 million voters, the same number that voted in the presidential election in 2004. Brennan models a very close election -- each citizen has a 50.5% chance of voting for candidate A and a 49.5% chance of voting for candidate B. To add in a sweetener to encourage you to vote, if your candidate wins the election, you will personally receive $33 billion in benefits, far more than any individual citizen receives as a result of any real world election. How much do you think your vote is worth to you given those parameters?
Brennan did the math, and calculated that even given these parameters, your vote is only worth $4.77 X 10^-2650. That's 2,648 orders of magnitude less than the value of a penny. Indeed, even if you were to receive ten thousand million trillion dollars if your candidate won, the expected value of your vote would still be thousands of orders of magnitude below a penny. Bear in mind, this is modelling a very close election in which you are to be awarded a fabulously unrealistic sum in the event your candidate wins. In a normal election, or worse, a normal election that will be decided by more than half a percentage point, the expected value of your vote is thousands of times smaller.
--Ben Studebaker's blog
Another nice comparison I just estimated: If instead of one election we run a trillion elections every day for the next 100 billion years (far longer than we can expect to be here), and your candidate only has to win one, we remove about 25 orders of magnitude from that figure. -2650 is *mind-bogglingly* small; there is no human way to account for all of those orders.
@7279. "Do you know you're associated with the Virgin Mary? I'm sure it does. It's an intellectual ladybug." --me
(You can tell it's 11:30 at night both because I'm saying these things and because I'm writing them down.)
@7283. "Just a little reminder that when we're singing softly we don't slow down." --Dr. Feldt
@7284. The Project Gutenberg edition of _Flame and Shadow_ that I've been reading was edited by "A. Light." When I read this I was giggling for about half a minute.
@7285.
Let this single hour atone
For the theft of all of me.
--Sara Teasdale, "August Moonrise", from _Flame and Shadow_
@7287. "When you look at it architecturally, what do you see?" / "Well, it's very beautiful."
@7289. "The power of pianissimo in a choir of this size is overwhelming." --Mark Stover
@7293. "No distribution of child pornography" --one of the six rules on the Rizon IRC network
November 01, 2016
@7294. "We took away the headphone jack, and then we took away everything else." --press release from the designers of the NoPhone Air
@7295. Well, looks like the Cubs might still pull this off...game 6 of the World Series, trailing 3-2 games after 3-1, and just hit a grand slam in the third inning, up 7-0.
@7296. "It's a great time of the year to get out and play ball." --commercial
Somehow I think the folks who ran this commercial don't live in Minnesota.
@7298. "Fully 55% of traffic on the dark web is legal"
High standard there.
@7306. "Come on. Quit fouling it so I can leave." --me
@7307. What the hell, a foul bunt in a clutch situation...
(I didn't even know there was a rule that that means that's a strikeout...)
@7308. Now overtime, and a 15-minute rain delay between the ninth and the tenth.
@7309. One guy tonight on the Cubs has made two errors, hit a home run, and fouled out on that bunt. Fun night.
@7312. Cubs win!
November 03, 2016
@7315. "You can sing a lot lower than I can." --JW, singing first tenor, to me, singing second bass
@7316. "Fun fact: the Cubs 1907/08 world series wins were closer in time to the death of Alexander Hamilton (1804) than to the latest world series win." --Nathan Bouman
@7318. "I was just getting to the word 'soap' when she showed up." --me, trying to regain my train of thought after pausing to talk to Kate, who I ran into randomly in the Natural Lands
@7319. "The moon's a lesbian!" --#overheard shouted across the quad at night
@7320. Got a soggy tea leaf stuck under my tongue and gagged uncontrollably...that was fun.
@7323. Apparently they're remodeling TJE and are not going to have sinks in the classrooms anymore. According to Uncle Jeff, when someone asked why this was, the answer was, "21st century." That was the entirety of the answer and all that was offered.
Yeah, you know, indoor plumbing is so 20th century.
@7328. "The velocity of a pig is falling fast, similar to TJ." --#hypnagogia
(End transcriptions.)
@7330. "You use your lips in other ways to show love-uh. Use them now." --Dr. Armstrong, Choral Day
@7331. "For my senior seminar we summoned a demon and then tried to exorcise it." --#overheard between CHM and Dittmann (in a sarcastic tone, fortunately)
@7332. Before starting to play "Amazing Grace" today, Ben had to take a 15-second delay to remove his binder from his sleeve and carefully roll up his sleeves and flippers, and then he opened his binder and it was upside down. There was stifled giggling from the audience and us.
@7333. "Where'd they get the relic? Bought it at Target?" --Prof. Kucera
@7334. I found the word "release" very faintly penciled in next to "liberat" in one of the Horace odes, and I'm not sure whether I put it there. I don't recall reading the note on it, when I look back, and there's no logical reason I would have skipped ahead several stanzas to write it just before I took a break there. But it looks pretty close to my handwriting, and the previous owner of the book didn't write in any glosses at all (a few lines have been scanned, but that's it). So I'm really not sure, and it's kind of creeping me out actually.
@7335. "I'm just not gonna do that. It's more important to not go insane." --me
@7336. "The rule of thumb is, love thy dissonance." --JBobb
@7337. "Deflation is the Satan of economics." --Evan, on the phone
@7338. I'm not sure whether to be amused or exasperated by the people berating 538 on Twitter about "being so wrong all week." You know, they did give Trump at least a 20% chance of winning the election most of the week. If someone is expected to win 80% of the time, that does mean that one in five times they will lose...
Not to say that there can't be polling and model factors in place as well, but "wrong" is a thoroughly dumb label to pin on a probabilistic statistical model without actually looking at how it was calculated.
Further, of course, sometimes models do give a generally misleading result because of methodological mistakes or imperfections, and that doesn't mean you get all pissed at the people making them. Everyone acknowledges they're educated guesswork, and you analyze why that happened so you do better in the future.
People also seem to be complaining about how the forecast kept changing over the course of the night. There's some fundamental misunderstanding here when a chance says 50%, then you get some additional information and it goes to 75%, then it goes back to 40% the other way, and you complain that the forecast is all over the place. *All of those can be right*, you're just getting more information about where in the distribution you probably are...and would you prefer that they just give one forecast and then give you no more updates ever?
November 09, 2016
@7342. Spot-on:
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/11/09/how-we-let-the-orange-monster-win/
@7343. "I've read essays by people who know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump personally, and claim that both of them are actually very pleasant people. You know what? I literally couldn't care less. I would be just as likely to vote for a surly misanthrope who loathes children, kicks puppies, and has deviant sexual cravings involving household appliances and mayonnaise, if that person supports the policies I want on the issues that matter to me. It really is that simple." --JMG
@7344. "This is a very famous one....Shut up, Kate! She's laughing at me!" --Dr. May, of Horace 1.22, defending the fact that he'd called almost every Horace poem we'd read so far some version of "famous"
(Transcribing margin notes from Horace.)
@7345. "I always say, 'That's a good one' about every one. Because it is." --Dr. May
@7347. "Buildings often collapsed in antiquity." --Dr. May
@7348. "Hey Dad, this is why you paid [so much money for me to go to college]. Now I know what a fecund glebe is." --Dr. May
{BL CB53.50}
@7351. Why did the scientist replace his doorbell with a knocker? He wanted to be eligible for the no-bell prize.
{BL #8527}
@7352. "How to Take a Non-Crappy Picture of the Moon" --Lifehacker headline
@7354. "If you don't have it [the low F sharp], don't even try it. Just love us by not trying." --Mark Stover
@7355. "Soft doesn't mean late." --Mark Stover
@7356. "There should be a budget item for chocolate." --#overheard outside the IT Helpdesk
@7357. "It was so important to me that I didn't even know it was happening." --Nick Saban, football coach, explaining why he didn't know who won the 2016 presidential election
@7358. "Having stores is a critical component to our success." --spokesperson for Kohl's
November 11, 2016
@7359. So Brianna opened her PDF of her one-slide project proposal this morning in LP to present and found that somehow, instead of placing her proposal in that directory, she had submitted her glasses prescription.
@7362. Happy Veterans Day, if "happy" is the right word for it. Thankful, maybe?
@7363. "On June 15, a court in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don...fined the English band Deep Purple after finding that the band had illegally performed copyrighted songs at a concert there in October 2008. The fact that the copyrighted songs were Deep Purple's own songs, to which Deep Purple holds the copyright, does not seem to have affected the outcome of the case." --Lowering the Bar
@7364. "Non-consensual pieing" --Wikipedia
@7370. I was amused yesterday to receive an email telling me that, as a current student at STO, I'm eligible to get free access to the live stream of the Christmas Festival!
@7371. "Let's look up 'virgin' in the Records Project." --me
November 13, 2016
@7372. "One of the great things about the internet is that it can connect you to all sorts of wonderful resources. Unfortunately it also connects you to every abusive, vile, stupid (etc. etc.) person anywhere on the planet." --Slashdot comment
@7375. (See #7327.)
I was giving instructions to a caller once, but his son was the one physically sitting at the computer, so all my instructions had to be relayed. Here's a snippet of the conversation:
"Click on 'start', then select 'shut down', then select 'restart in MS-DOS mode'."
(to his son) "Ok, press 'start', 'shut up', and 'sit down'!"
The really scary part was what his son said then:
"Ok, I'm at the C: prompt!"
Do we really want to know what goes on at that house?
--Computer Stupidities, "Miscellaneous Dumbness"
@7376. "Leave your cares and worries in your choir slots." --sentiment of Kenneth Jennings, qtd. by Dr. Armstrong
@7377. "Operate full blast, brains going." --Dr. Armstrong
@7378. "Silly conductor." --Dr. Hibbard, slapping her face
@7379. "You have to be like a young colt dying to get out of its starting block." --JBobb
@7380. "Can we get a *fortepiano* in measure three. It means you sing loud, and then you sing soft." --JBobb, after giving us the marking and then having everyone do nothing special there
@7381.
"Wait, can I date him? What does he look like?"
"Yes. Like Mario."
--#overheard outside the caf
@7382. "This poem has often been neglected. It is not hard to understand why. It features a speaker who is represented as either having or being a giant penis and gives advice on how to pick up boys." --Paul Miller, commentary to Tibullus 1.4
November 15, 2016
@7384. "'I, demented, was imagining a happy life.' Heh. Dummy." --Dr. May, reading from Tibullus
@7387. Accidentally Closing Browser Window With 23 Tabs Open Presents Rare Chance At New Life
@7389. "I can't tell the difference between Bach and Beautiful Savior." --Erik, after starting to move at the wrong spot during the flash-mob rehearsal
@7390. Nisi hoc legere scis...you are stupid
--T-shirt
It would be mildly offensive, but it's pretty much okay because if you can read it you'll think it's funny, and if you can't you won't know what it says!
@7395. "...to mitigate its more stellar advance post Election Day." --news article, of Wal-Mart's profit falling somewhat short of expectations
@7397. "First, he put the singles *on top of* the twenty!" --#overheard by the POs
@7399. The new James Webb space telescope (to launch next year) is so powerful it would be able to see a bumblebee on the moon.
@7400. "Our lessons learned from the Hubble were, if you really care about something, you've got to measure it at least twice," Mather added. "And if you don't get the same answer, you'd better figure out why."
--from the same article
@7402. From CB36.7, a coinage of mine: "buzzshit." It's a portmanteau of "buzzword" and "bullshit," meaning a bunch of marketing crap that sounds important but will probably come to nothing or is meaningless.
@7403. A fine example of buzzshit, and what made me think of it: a Slashdot article saying that "in 5 years, games will move from discrete to indiscrete," meaning that things you do in CPR will affect your gaming experience. (Why anyone except marketers would want this is unexplained.)
@7406. "Remember that thing where Trump started out as a random joke, and then the media covered him way more than any other candidate because he was so outrageous, and gave him what was essentially free advertising, and then he became President-elect of the United States? Is the lesson you learned from this experience that you need 24-7 coverage of the Ku Klux Klan?"
--http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
@7407. "Also, I hear that accusing people of racism constantly for no reason is the best way to get them to vote for your candidate next time around. Assuming there is a next time." --http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
@7408. "Hello bjornstad,I'm an honest user of anki." --#ankiforums (actually a personal email sent to me)
@7409. "The problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle." --Joe Armstrong
@7410. "I'm torn apart between worlds. Basically, using vim in a highly visual environment with a lot of mouse features feels like soldering a loose wire to a motherboard with a Zippo and a needle, while working with ANY TEXT AT ALL with a 'modern GUI' text editor feels like joining the London Philharmonic Orchestra with a Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn Magical Musical Mirror." --Awebb, Arch Linux forum signature
@7412. What is the weirdest subreddit you've accidentally stumbled across?:
/r/asscredit -- A friend asked me what subreddits I browse and AskReddit was one of them. He said "What the fuck is AssCredit?". After we cleared up the misunderstanding and stopped laughing we checked if that actually exists and it does.
@7413. https://www.reddit.com/r/ggggg/
@7414. "Almost 40 percent of Americans would give up sex for a year to never have to worry about being hacked, according to one new study."
@7415. "Some people report to have succeeded in bargaining with their subconscious, but in my experience that's like wrestling an eel. An eel that can read your mind, but doesn't understand what you are saying to it." --comment on /r/LD
@7418. "rainbow theory"
@7419. "Sexually induced sneezing" --Wikipedia article title
@7420. "When you're eating a piece of turkey, think of me. I don't know why you'd think of me." --Dr. May, before Thanksgiving Break
@7422. "Ellipses are extremely important and notoriously annoying to draw."
@7423. "Also, they did a ballistics report on a toilet shooting."
--http://loweringthebar.net/2014/11/teacher-pleads.html
November 26, 2016
@7424. "Imagine Christmas without Amazon!" --judge ordering striking shipping workers to return to work
As I posted underneath the link: "I seem to remember a guy by the name of Theodore Geisel doing something similar once...and guess what? It turned out all right."
@7426. I have accidentally sung at least twice now in "Ring Out, Ye Crystal Spheres," instead of "on hinges hung," "on hunges hing." I'm sure I will not be able to stop thinking of that now.
@7427. "The feature [of a bidet] is 'designed to introduce you to a level of unprecedented comfort,' but, it appears, may also occasionally introduce your ass to an unprecedented level of fire." --http://loweringthebar.net/2007/04/japanese_compan.html
@7429. "big_values too big" --mplayer error
November 28, 2016
@7430. "It seems a bug" --#ankiforums subject
@7431. "When I was a very little boy I was advised to always murmur 'White rabbits' on the first of every month if I wanted to be lucky. From sheer force of unreasoning habit I do it still--when I think of it. I know it to be preposterously ludicrous, but that does not deter me." --Sir Herbert Russell, 1925
@7432. "Spit on the women!" --Dr. Armstrong, trying to get us to use more diction
@7433. "If I had to tell you to back off on the shaping, it would be a victory for all humankind." --JBobb
@7434. "Shall we do it again? Do you mind? I know you mind, but we'll do it." --Dr. Hibbard, during the very long Sunday rehearsal for Christmas Festival
@7437. "He [Frank Lloyd Wright] has a huge ego, he's an architect." --Prof. Kucera
@7438.
% Smashing uppercase letters with diacritics
% ------------------ THIS IS EVIL AND SHOULD NEVER BE DONE -------------------
% Don't smash anything if we are on the first run to produce the index
\IfFileExists{figures.idx}{
% Czech uppercase letters with diacritics:
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{00C1}{\strut\smash{\' A}} % Á
[...]
}{}
% ------------------ THAT WAS EVIL AND SHOULD NEVER BE DONE ------------------
--found in LaTeX source
@7439. "It diminuendoed too early. Yes, that's a word." --me
(There's a pun on "innuendo" here somewhere. Which would be, by definition, a sort of meta-pun...)
@7440. Today I nearly put my butt right into a toilet -- I was in a big rush and didn't notice the seat was up until I tried to sit down.
I believe there's a whole Wikipedia page on "toilet-related injury."
@7441. "Christmas Chutzpah" --#hypnagogia, seen written on a decorative sign in a frilly cursive font
@7442. "This root, this stem, this flowering shrub" --me, sung to myself instead of "flowering Love" on "His Light in Us"
@7445. Somebody had the brilliant idea two mass choir rehearsals ago to write the list of pieces we were going to rehearse into Word in 100-point font, print out two copies, and paste them up on the walls of Urness. Don't know how nobody has ever thought of that before -- it's regularly almost impossible to tell what piece we're going to do next, and the rehearsals are always planned out ahead of time.
@7449. I just mixed up the Latin words for "stepmother" and "young bull," somehow. That was confusing.
@7450. "So, Energy Transfer Partners has avoided completing an environmental impact study on the pipeline by claiming it is simply a series of 1,536,000 half-acre segments that each qualify under the Nationwide Permit 12 exemption." --article in the Mess
December 02, 2016
@7452. I was just remembering last night that when I was very young, I had a vague notion that the line "far as the curse is found" in "Joy to the World" had something to do with a computer cursor.
@7453. msmtp: cannot set X509 trust file /home/soren/.mutt/DigiCertSHA2HighAssuranceServerCA.crt for TLS session: Success.
What the hell does that mean msmtp. Also, this means none of the emails I've sent in the last couple of days have gone out -- how am I ever going to figure out what they were?
As I just wrote to Nichi: "War is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength...success is failure."
@7454. "The first man who compared woman to a rose was a poet, the second, an imbecile." --Gerard de Nerval
@7457. Just had an ad pop-up over my YouTube video...advertising an ad-blocker. #ironyoftheday?
December 04, 2016
@7461. I #misread a label on the side of a large food bin on a cart in the caf yesterday as "BULLSHIT." I'm not sure what it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't BULLSHIT. That's quite a picture, though!
@7465. "In 2009, Danish football goalkeeper Kim Christensen was caught on camera literally moving the goalposts in order to gain advantage over the opposing team." --Wikipedia
@7466.
It shows I had't do the the anki for this few days, but I do it this few days
It would be a data to count my course score, please help me to solve it.
--#ankiforums
@7467. "No my computer got crashed and I replaced the window" --#ankiforums
@7470. "So put on your best-dressed holiday dress..." --invitation to a holiday dance
@7471. "Let's have the orchestra at the bottom." --me, pasting pictures of concert halls onto a piece of paper and noticing one was upside down
@7472. "But odd as it is it is one of those economic things which is true." --Forbes article
I wrote sentences like this when I was in about sixth grade, guys.
@7473. "But then again, I don't have an issue with it because I'm Asian, so..." --#overheard outside the caf
@7474. "I mean, both the parties, whenever they make an economic argument, it's complete bullshit." --Evan, on the phone
@7475. "Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a *sandwich*?"
--http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/
{BL #10674}
@7476. "But then I draw stuff by writing postscript from the terminal all the time so maybe I am just weird." --Stack Exchange comment
@7477. "The relevance of the document is that it's not Finnair's fault that Airbus sold them a broken plane. But I don't know if that gets them off the hook, since it's also not your fault that you booked a ticket on an airline that bought a broken plane. Good luck with your compensation claim!" --Stack Exchange comment
December 11, 2016
@7478. "Ole Orchoirestra" --typo made by me
@7479. "qualitative easing"
@7480. On a notebook cover on Amazon:
Question: Does this work with Midori A5
Answer (by seller): There is no green
I *think* this is a legit notebook cover, and it is from Japan, but still makes me a tad suspicious...
@7484. I've started occasionally getting Spanish advertisements on YouTube, which is bizarre seeing as I don't speak Spanish.
@7486. "The first thing a programmer notes while using EFL is that almost nothing works. Upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that things can be forced to somewhat work with a bunch of hacks." --https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened
December 13, 2016
@7487. Notice in the caf this morning: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are currently out of eggs."
(Better than #7020 though.)
@7488. "I mean, in Great Con we said it like eight hundred times in three days." --#overheard between CHM and Mellby
@7489. "Don't rush it any more than that." --Dr. Armstrong
@7491. "I don't think I used to be an optimist. I think I used to be a narcissist. I figured that when I was a teacher, everything would work out, my kids would be kind and attentive, my lessons would stick, and there would be no behavioral problems or if there are they would quiet down after I give them a friendly talk about why attention is important."
--http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/11/19/genetic-russian-roulette/
(A great article about getting stuck with your kids, however they turn out.)
@7492. I just tried to add an event to Google Calendar while I wasn't connected to the Internet, and the error message I got was, "One or more guests or rooms could not be loaded. Try again in a moment."
@7493. "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." --Greenspun's Tenth Rule
@7494. Just mixed up Augustus and Ovid, what the hell.
@7495. "We're taking TOC [i.e., Theory of Computing], because we're mental masturbators." --Phil
December 16, 2016
@7496. "Remember that the Lord is merciful, and so am I." --Dr. May, on his allowing me to take the final exam a day late
@7497. "I think you've learned something, in spite of yourselves." --Dr. May, at the end of Latin Lyric
@7499. "If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked." --Richard Clarke
@7500. "Students may not...audit an IS/IR or internship." --St. Olaf College Academic Catalog
@7507. "Do not use as earplugs." --on a container of silly putty
@7508.
A man practicing Zen went to his teacher and said, "My meditation is awful. Every time I try to sit, my body aches, or I begin to sleep, or I just can't concentrate."
"It will pass," the teacher replied.
The next week, the man went back to his teacher and said, "My meditation is so much better. When I sit, I feel so calm, relaxed, and focused."
"It will pass," the teacher replied.
@7509. "Oh, it might be nice to bring something to write with, to an exam." --me
@7510. "The donkeys of Alta Fe" --#hypnagogia
@7512. "In the golden president, *somebody's* up there." --#hypnagogia
@7513. "Is it possible to pick a point on each of the four walls on a room such that when they're connected you obtain a perfect square? Does this work in any room? Does it work in my room in Sunnyside? Nobel Prize material, according to my brain." --#latenightvoicememo
Now I do have to say, I'm legitimately curious about this problem.
@7514. "--consult-file options are handled before --consult-file options." --gprolog manual
@7515. "Soren, it looks like someone recently liked your post." --Facebook giving a privacy reminder
December 20, 2016
@7516. "One genuine relationship is worth a fistful of business cards." --The Quiet Revolution Manifesto
@7518. "Where did that go!? I wrote a whole thing about salads!" --me
@7519. "Which of these letters comes first in the alphabet?" / "The symbol on the left is not a letter, sir." / "Damn, you're good!" --_Being John Malkovich_
@7520. "No, [the reason I'm attracted to you] it's your energy, your attitude, the way you carry yourself." / "You're not a fag, are you?" --_Being John Malkovich_
@7521. "That's even better! Hot lesbian witches, man, that's fucking genius!" --_Being John Malkovich_
@7522. "It's a *bus*...it's pretty nice." --phone conversation, #overheard on the bus substituting for the late Empire Builder
@7524. "Wives of gunmen who were charged in the last election" --#hypnagogia
@7526. "We're gonna cut off Nimrod in the middle, because we need to go to bed." --me
December 25, 2016
@7527. "If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company." --Slashdot comment
@7528. "You do your best to turn into a countertop, you know." --#hypnagogia
@7529. Mama and I were looking at the art at the top of the page of "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine" and noticing that there was Mary and two men. One must be a shepherd or something, we figured.
(pointing) "That one's Joseph dearest, and that one's Joseph mine."
@7531. "I don't think I had [i.e., recorded] this one yet. If I did, please just ignore it." --me, at the beginning of a dream voice recording
@7532. "I borrowed your Sherlock Holmes book and I forgot to put the lid back on it." --Mama, handing me the dust jacket
@7533. "Then it [a spam email] starts giving a bunch of suggestions for 'improvements' to Christmas Festival, including complaining about how it's not making enough money and trying to convince me that it should not make me feel vulnerable (that's the best part, idiots!)." --report for dream #973
December 29, 2016
@7534. I've noticed recently that I pretty much write topic sentences automatically in most kinds of writing. I rarely go, "Okay, now I need a topic sentence," but if I go back and read what I've written, the first sentences of each paragraph are usually effective that way.
@7535. This is like the man who, when he heard that most people die within five miles of home, said: "I'm moving."
@7537. "historical architecture" --Uncle Jeff, for "archaeology"
(Cf. /r/wildbeef.)
@7539. "I'm not afraid to die, Mr. Donovan. Though, it wouldn't be my first choice." --Russian spy in _Bridge of Spies_
@7541. "It's, like, where we prep ourselves for Jesus' birth." --explanation of Advent, #overheard on the bus
@7542. "Thank you for riding Amtrak!" --driver on the bus substituting for the Empire Builder, upon arriving at Union Station
@7543. "Welcome to Millennium Station" --marquee at the entrance to Van Buren station, right underneath the huge sign identifying it as Van Buren
@7544. "These things are illegal: ...no electronics without headphones" --sign on Metro Transit in St. Paul
@7545. No Dogs Allowed In City Parks
--an odd sign, seen in a small town from the bus
@7546. "sorry you asked not to talk here about anki but I need just to contact you about some features that we may add to anki." --#ankiforums, entirety of the message
@7548. "Let's get a few mundane things out of the side first." --translation of CB45.8, presumably supposed to be "out of the way"
January 01, 2017
@7549. "Please do not carry packages onto the train that were given to you by someone you do not know." --periodic announcement at Union Station, with the woman's phrasing on "do not know" being particularly hilarious
@7550. \thecopyrightbag
--LaTeX macro typoed because I was listening to Union Station's baggage announcement at the time
@7551. Apparently for about a year, for unexplained reasons, Northfield changed its motto from the typical "Cows, Colleges and Contentment" to (I kid you not) "A special place." I don't think we need to explain the reasons why they changed it back.
{BL #10289}
@7552. I was quite amused to note on the back of the bus transfer I got today that it says "non-transferable." Obviously that's both true and necessary to put on the ticket, but the idea of a "non-transferable transfer" is still pretty funny.
@7553. In the transit center at the airport, the clock was an hour and five minutes fast. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
@7555. "Don't tune me out like you tune your parents out." --Dr. Armstrong
@7556. "It was a less-than-perfect fourth from a few of you." --Dr. Armstrong
@7557. "Brahms didn't think people had to turn the pages." --Dr. Armstrong
@7562. "The viola makes a viable contribution to this work and should not be omitted." --notes to "For the Sake of Our Children"
@7563. "I don't know if you feel the same way about Moodle as I do, which is that it's a kludgy piece of crap." --Prof. Cunningham
(I do!)
@7567. I read a news article about an incident in which a cargo handler had mistakenly been left in the hold of an airplane while it flew a couple hundred miles. Asked for comment, the baggage handling company said sagely, according to the article, that "their employee traveled in the cargo hold 'on accident'".
@7572. "Because grammar has a reputation for being dull and discussion of sexual issues for being unseemly, I may appear to be conferring a questionable honor by dedicating this monograph to Janet Martin and D.W. Robertson, Jr." --preface to _Alan of Lille's Grammar of Sex_, a book I spotted randomly in the library
@7573. "You know, time is entirely unlike linoleum." --Prof. Cunningham
{BL #7651}
@7578. "DATABASE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING: CONNECTION_ERROR"
--http://thedailywtf.com/articles/errors-for-everyone
@7579. "Well, unfortunately, unlike Aristotle's cosmos, this podcast is finite, with a beginning and end, and we've reached the end." --History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast
@7580. "What's 'this'? I don't even know what 'this' is in my own article, and I wrote this about two hours ago." --me
@7581. "Then I went to Montana to walk around a battlefield, something I enjoy doing as long as the battle has been over for a significant period of time." --Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar
@7582. "I just thought that something like this would be provided in the box since most people use toilet seats on top of their toilets." --Amazon review
@7583. "It says our health insurance is being replaced by a series of tweets calling us losers." --political cartoon
@7584. Thinking about #7578, I think there's a class of humor that we might call "personification humor," and it is a prime example.
@7585. "Unfortunately I do not speak English." --written in English on #ankiforums
@7586. "I'm looking forward to the enhancement unhurriedly, not necessarily optimistically." --#ankiforums
@7587. "For as what is conceived, is conceived by conception, and what is conceived by conception, as it is conceived, so is in conception; so what is understood, is understood by understanding, and what is understood by understanding, as it is understood, so is in the understanding. What can be more clear than this?" --St. Anselm, via Nichi
@7588. Starting to memorize the Scholz arrangement of "What Wondrous Love is This" with the recording Myrtle gave, which I'm pretty sure is OC. I missed noticing where the basses came in and I was supposed to start singing, they slipped in so delicately!
@7590. "'Etc.' is a sign used to make believe that you know more than you do."
@7591. "There never has been, nor will there ever be, any language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code." --Donald Knuth
@7593. "I just want to find someone who looks at me the way you look at a martini." --comment on Kjersti's Facebook profile picture
@7594. "A craftsman can write good code in any language. Everyone else writes crap in every language." --Slashdot comment
@7595. Had a very strange moment this morning where I somehow got a fairly strong static shock near my left temple while only the right side of my face was touching anything! I'm pretty sure I worked out that my glasses touched a bare wire coat hanger, and somehow the resistance must have been lower on the seemingly longer path to the left side of my face. It felt really strange.
@7597. "It's just the note values I've got wrong." --me
Yeah, other than that, real solidly memorized.
@7598. "It is just as hard to draw a very small square circle as it is to draw an enormous one: we might say both tasks are infinitely hard." --Max Black, "Achilles and the Tortoise"
@7599. "If somebody commands me to obey a certain 'instruction,' and is then obliging enough to add that nothing that I can do will count as compliance with that instruction, only confusion could lead me to suppose that any task had been set." --Max Black, "Achilles and the Tortoise"
@7600. "I have been talking of time for a long time, and this long time would not be a long time unless time had passed." --Augustine, _Confessions_, XI/25
@7601. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, one blog was created every second.
@7605. "I was on a 6-hour car ride with a racist, xenophobic creationist. It was *terrible*!" --#overheard in the caf
It sounds like a joke, sort of like that one about the insomniac (#2171). Or the other thing it reminds me of is that thesaurus joke, which I can't now remember...
"I bought the world's worst thesaurus yesterday. Not only is it terrible, it's terrible."
@7606. Not new, but worth including in RT:
"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." --C.S. Lewis
January 10, 2017
@7607. "This is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left." --Ken Luther
@7609. One of the few incredibly stupid things about my Neverlate alarm clock: the default alarm duration is *1 hour*. That is, if you don't turn off the alarm, it will ring for one hour and only then shut itself off. Fortunately, you can decrease it to one minute or a couple of minutes, but you have to notice it's a problem and remember to do it. And what exactly would the *point* of ringing for an hour be?
{BL #8950}
@7610. Had a random theory the other day while singing in OC, perhaps related to my moment of enlightenment after home concert last year where I realized I'd been looking at the question the wrong way for most of the tour. I have sometimes wanted to get the technical aspects down so that I don't have to be focusing too hard on them all the time. That seems to be largely elusive and maybe impossible; even though getting things more down means I don't have to worry about them, it doesn't mean I stop thinking about them. But maybe actually there's nothing wrong with being focused on those aspects, being focused on them is actually part of being in an ultimate state of flow and connected consciousness.
@7612. "Also, it probably says something that the one difficult passage I found was about Hegel." --http://existentialcomics.com/comic/167
@7617. "No, all the people who are a certain age were born in the same year. That's how it works." --me, momentarily confused about what makes someone the age they are
@7619. In a dream that I remember nothing else of, from someone who was watching a movie with Hannah and me at her grandmother's house, somehow with the intention of explaining why he had been playing violin recently: "Oh, I have to give a presentation on ginger."
@7623. Someone from Facilities called the Helpdesk yesterday to say his password had expired and he needed to change it, but he couldn't because he didn't know his employee ID. The unique part was that the reason he didn't know the ID number was that he had spilled hydrochloric acid on it.
@7624. Today Prof. Cunningham tried to take a drink, but his cup was empty. He made a face and then said:
"I'm gonna go get a drink, okay? ...Oh, we have a sink right here."
He reaches for the tap.
(dramatically) "Ope, non-potable water!"
He then goes out to the drinking fountain to fill his cup, and comes back wondering:
"Where do we get non-potable water from anyway?"
"It's from Carleton."
@7625. "Dear Ones," --#ankiforums salutation
@7626. "Every programming language embodies in it a philosophy about how problems should be solved. C reduces all problems to manipulations of memory addresses. Java turns every problem into a set of interacting objects. JavaScript summons Shub-Niggurath, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young, to eat the eyes of developers." --The Daily WTF
@7628. "You know, the one who stole the pillows? But people redeem themselves. He's in the National Lutheran Choir." --Dr. Armstrong
@7629. "It is 5 o'clock for God."
--"God's Time", William Hasker
@7631. "It's kind of hard to have tea without water." --me
@7632. "I need a different color to represent time travel here." --Prof. Cunningham
@7633. "My earned income does not include 'other income' which I earned." --me
(It's true, according to the IRS.)
@7634. "No checks of $100 million or more accepted." --spotted in the directions for form 1040
@7637. "Dayooth? What's dayooth?" --Mama, reading "Deauth" in Anki's syncing settings
(Papa suggested first "It means you're God," then "It's a priest with a lisp.")
January 15, 2017
@7638. "I need to shoe my polish." --me
@7639. "The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything." --Aldous Huxley
@7640. "Which is kind of funny, right? Why would they call Jesus a sheep?" --Pastor Fickensher, children's sermon
@7642. Second service, balcony of St. John's:
"...Septuple peace! Octuple peace!"
"Shut up, Carl!!"
@7643. I noticed a Student Government poster today that discussed the "Subcommittee of the Week."
@7644. Also in government: the UK now has a department called the "Department for Exiting the European Union."
@7645. I can hardly believe that Moodle still notifies you that you've submitted an assignment by sending you an email with the subject, "You have submitted your assignment submission." This was true back in 2013 (see #2773), so apparently nobody who works on Moodle cares about style enough to fix the message, or they're all totally oblivious.
@7646. "It says very clearly, the macarena and the disco are prohibited." --#overheard outside the caf
@7647. "Don't ask me, I'm a philosopher." --Prof. Cunningham
@7648. "I am going completely off the cuff here. I have no license to talk about Kant." --Prof. Cunningham
@7649. Texting and peeing seems to be reaching epidemic proportions at St. Olaf. Like lately, I'm seeing people doing it at least once a week.
(See #3503 for original.)
@7650. I was thinking today more about what qualifies as "user-friendly" interfaces. Specifically, I was remarking on the fact that, as I read someone say recently, it's really kind of a poor testament to human ingenuity that for over 50 years, we have not managed to find any more effective way of interacting with a computer than the Unix shell. But I think one of the primary things that distinguishes the supposedly user-unfriendly CLI from the GUI is discoverability: the (perfectly correct) idea is that it's easier to figure out how to do things you don't know how to do in a GUI, at least if it's designed well.
But then take a step back and question the assumption that this is something we should actually be able to do. Essentially, it amounts to expecting that we can use the computer without being taught how to use it, which seems kind of silly. I wouldn't expect someone to be able to work out how to ride a motorcycle without being taught how or at least without reading the manual and experimenting for quite some time. Does that mean it has a bad interface? But somehow if someone can't use my software without taking a while to learn how, people say my software is bad. Sure, discoverability is great, but when it makes the interface worse for people who know how to use the software, that's not a good tradeoff.
@7651. "On the other hand, absolute space is infinite and unbounded, quite unlike a cereal box." --Huggett, _Space from Zeno to Einstein_, p.128
(Cf. #7573.)
@7652. "I love that feeling when I get tendinitis." --#overheard in the caf line
@7653. "I don't like interrupting people who don't have shirts on." --me
@7655. "Okay, there is no 'God'. ...It's always 'Lord.'" --me, memorizing
(Cf. #5250.)
@7656. "Screensaver's off right now." --Dr. Armstrong, attempting to explain why he had used the word 'damn' in choir (the reason being that he'd been in the airsheep process from 4:30am until an hour before rehearsal)
@7657. "I am an avid enthusiast of the sweet ANKI." --#ankiforums
@7658. "Or can you, magnanimously, modify this section of the software...?" --same message on #ankiforums
@7659. "We have not introduced, and happily we are not *going to* introduce, Leibniz's conception of true motion." --Prof. Cunningham
@7661. "This is a beautifully restored auditorium with woeful backstage amenities." --Jean, of Baldwin Auditorium at Duke
@7662. "bed, the roommate, greater than 4 shirts" --in my notes for tour packing last year, apparently having had some meaning at the time
(Cf. #2426.)
@7663. "Please note: When you save, you will receive an error message. Do not be alarmed, please continue to the next tab."
@7664. "We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating...second, that however bizarre and arcane our world might be, nature remains comprehensible to the human mind." --Stephen Jay Gould, qtd. in _Relativity for the Questioning Mind_
@7665. "Mathematics is a tool of extraordinary power, yet this very power can be used as a curtain to avoid any sort of understanding while simply solving problems." --_Relativity for the Questioning Mind_
@7666. "This resolution of the paradox is complete, satisfying, and wonderfully in accord with our common sense. In addition, it is completely wrong." --_Relativity for the Questioning Mind_
(Cf. #1465.)
January 21, 2017
@7667. "This bridge has been peed off of by a thousand passing schoolboys." --example sentence on ELU Stack Exchange
@7668. "Yeah, 2+2=5 is...wrong." --Prof. Cunningham
@7670. "State changed from crashed to starting" --Heroku
@7671. "I've got a big head, it's creating a shadow." --Dr. Armstrong, requesting that Erik give him a stand light
@7672. "Because we tend to see the -isms as evidence of personal moral failure rather than as social problems, our approach to them is quite reactionary. This is what causes so many of us on the left to get so mad at racists. What we need to remember is that when we tell racists to "educate themselves" we're no different from the conservatives who tell the homeless guy they see on the corner to "get a job". We're denying a collective social problem by pretending it's a matter of personal moral failure." --Benjamin Studebaker, https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2017/01/23/how-to-reframe-anti-discrimination-politics-to-overcome-division/
January 24, 2017
@7673. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." --Albert Einstein
@7676. "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." --Jules de Gaultier
(For some inexplicable reason, sometimes the Cheshire Cat is incorrectly quoted as the source.)
@7677.
"Imagine trying to do science if you just doubted everything."
"You'd be a philosopher!"
@7678. "Okay, I'm not going to use this marker [because it's almost dead]. I'll just leave it here to annoy the next teacher." --Prof. Cunningham
@7679. "You have landed into wrong page." --(entirety of a) custom error message when I tried removing the query string from a PHP URL
@7681. "Let's see, I will wear matching socks when I'm going to be a soloist." --me, getting dressed before Vespers
@7682. "I would appreciate it if you could prevaricate my question." --#ankiforums
Not sure what that was supposed to be...
@7683. "This certainly seems *wrong*; it seems that a cause should have to precede its effect in all reference frames. On the other hand, this book has introduced you to all sorts of things that seem wrong." --_Relativity for the Questioning Mind_
@7684. "Though I am moved by this objection, I have often thought I should not be. It is really just a restatement of the view as an objection. It is like objecting to solipsism by saying the problem with solipsism is that there are no other people." --Mark Hinchliff, "A Defense of Presentism in a Relativistic Setting"
@7685. The ASC has a new poster out for an event with the tagline, "Is time starting to go at the speed of light?" I was amused when I paused for a moment to completely seriously consider what exactly it would mean for time to go at the speed of light.
@7687. "Import meme" --my #misread ing of the "Import theme" button in Google Slides
@7688. "These are beautiful phones." --Trump's assessment of the White House
@7689. "If you have any questions, please our office at tuition@stolaf.edu." --email about board plans
@7690. "The problem with measuring time by the sun is that you have to look at the sun, which causes 'blindness'." --a really bad YouTube video about measuring time
@7693. "At some point I should buy a new umbrella. But I've been using a broken umbrella for the four years I've been in college, so it'll be fine." --me
@7697. "I like that you have the cost in Minnesota memorized." --Miles to Josiah, on Josiah's noticing that his order at Chipotle had cost less than usual
@7703. An old woman told Dr. A that she might not be around to hear us next time we came through, but if we're anything like what angels in heaven sound like, she can't wait.
@7704. Someone called the digital clock mounted on the center of the balcony at St. Luke's last night a "classic Methodist clock." That's hilarious, but from the Methodist churches I've been to, it's actually pretty accurate.
@7711. "My opinion of you was so high until that sole moment: 'I like _Jersey Shore_.'" --#overheard on the bus
@7712. "Danger Do Not Enter" --posted on the door to the trash compactor at the Clay Center
February 01, 2017
@7713. Went through "Bland County" in Virginia today, which contains the town Bland.
@7714. "Speed Limit: 7 mph" --sign in a parking garage in Charlotte
@7718. "Yes, check the glasses at halftime....Not halftime. Intermission." --Dr. Armstrong
{BL CB47.24}
February 03, 2017
@7719. In Richmond between the church and our hotel there was a building called the "Center for Kidney Excellence."
@7720. "They don't have wine at Waffle House." --#overheard in the dressing room
@7721. "Extroverted olive oil" --#mishearing of "extra virgin olive oil" in a commercial
@7723. So some of us noticed in a hotel elevator in Charlotte that the elevator inspection certificate was signed by "Sherri Berry" in a large, flourishy signature. Some of the North Carolina folks in the choir then told us she's signed basically every elevator inspection certificate in the state.
So with this backdrop, I was in the hotel laundry room watching MSNBC (or rather, mostly trying -- and failing -- to ignore MSNBC while playing solitaire) and a commercial for a company named "Sheri's Berries" came on. I was rather amused.
@7728. "I know oysters don't go in margaritas, traditionally." --guest on _Worst Cooks in America_
{BL #9349}
February 07, 2017
@7730. "This is very white church, high Jesus." --#overheard before rehearsal in St. Joseph's Cathedral
@7731. I was walking down the street in DC and someone probably about five feet from my ear yelled, "I GOT YOUR CATFISH!" At first I thought he was yelling at me and jumped, especially as I'd just been jaywalking, but it turned out there was someone across the street.
@7735. "Failure to do these instructions..." --on a washer warning label
@7736. "a fire of explosion" --same label
@7737. "I thought, as nice as y'all sing, you don't need to use the restroom." --audience member during intermission
@7741. "The consequence of this [ending conscription] is that the people who join the military are the people who like the idea of being in the military." --Ben Studebaker
February 10, 2017
@7742. "Lincoln Highway / Historic Byway" --sign seen along the highway in Indiana
@7745. Also at Fourth Presbyterian, there's a room called the "Steve Bumpus Activity Room," and it has padded walls. I find this way too amusing.
@7749. I nearly missed going out for the fourth set tonight because we got distracted by finding a sign that said to please not touch or move the piano -- written entirely in German, for no apparent reason.
@7752. Some months ago I'd lost both of my violin mutes. I have since found both of them in the pockets of different suit jackets.
@7754. "For example, it's a common assumption that introverts hate people and that makes it okay. That isn't introversion, it's just being an asshole." --Lifehacker article
This is the best thing I've heard all week.
@7757. Murphy's Law: the camera was zoomed in on me during my literally one substantial memory slip during home concert.
@7758. I just noticed that, with the exception of pretour, our tour schedule this year perfectly alternated between churches and concert halls, one church and then one concert hall (if we count DeKalb High School's auditorium as a concert hall; it's certainly closer to that than to a church). That is really weird.
@7761. "It's a literature review about literature reviews!" --me
(And it is.)
@7762. "Based on this review of the literature we can conclude that...locating and interpreting literature is an important aspect of the literature review process that is currently insufficiently addressed in the literature."
@7763. "We've gotten so used to being the victim of data loss that we often don't even notice it. So consider if what happens routinely on the web happened in real life: You go into Harrod's Department Store in London. After making your selections, you are asked to fill out a four-page form. A gentleman looks the form over, then points to the bottom of Page 3 at your phone number. 'Excuse me,' he says, 'Look there. See how you used spaces in your phone number?' When you nod, he continues, 'We weren't expecting you to do that,' at which point, he picks up the four-page form and rips it to shreds before handing you a new, blank form."
@7765. "...Woodman is reading a definition where none was intended -- while failing to find an included concept that only an unnaturally beady-eyed reader would ever imagine needed to be specified. 'Jim got in his car, turned the headlights on, and drove away.' Woodman: 'The author's failure to specify that Jim turned on his engine shows us that the twentieth-century concept of the automobile included only headlights, and not the engine.'" --J.E. Lendon, "Against Roman historiography"
@7766. I just bought the OC "Great Hymns of Faith" album and am remembering an anecdote Dr. A passed on to us last year about a woman who told him every time she has to drive through Chicago, she puts the CD in and puts "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" on repeat until she's through.
February 14, 2017
@7769. "A giraffe, a sticker book, and Kermit the Frog walk into a bar." --opening line to an otherwise not very funny joke someone told me in a dream
@7782. "ablatives absolute" --in Tatum's commentary on _Bellum Gallicum_
So I thought this was ridiculously pretentious, but then I went to look it up on Google Ngrams and actually it's kind of fascinating: that *used* to be the predominant form, indeed the only form, and then somewhere around 1900 "ablative absolutes" started catching on (because it doesn't sound incredibly pretentious, presumably) and has since become the main form.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ablative+absolutes%2Cablatives+absolute&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=
@7785. "GE curriculum increased my ability to cultivate a wholistic perspective" --Likert-scale prompt on a survey about St. Olaf's GE system
@7786. "I've not seen the eye; shame on me!" --#ankiforums, a user who missed the preview ("eye") icon
@7788. "Collect ALL waste you produce (except food and bodily fluids) in your bag." --email information on a "no waste challenge" one of the environmental groups at STO is doing
Glad they're not going to make me shit in the bag and carry it around with me (though strictly speaking I suppose poop isn't a fluid, generally). I don't think I can do a whole lot to reduce that waste.
@7789. "Today, we present our second installment of Software on the Rocks, complete with new features, like an actually readable transcript done by a professional transcriber. Isn't that amazing?" --The Daily WTF
@7790. "Let's have a 'From:' header on our email." --me
@7791. "I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at the legal system." --Prof. Huff, laughing and then responding to a student's question about digital law
@7792. "WordPress makes me look like I know what I'm doing." --Prof. Huff
@7793. "My bank switched banks!" --me
The reason this is funny is because it's true -- Simple (which is technically not a bank but rather a tech company which is closely linked to a bank, but it basically *looks* like a bank) is moving from keeping our accounts at one bank to another, which means we all have to transfer them with a mildly annoying procedure.
@7794. "I urge the British people to rise up and turn off the TV next time Blair comes on with his condescending campaign." --Boris Johnson, of Blair's attempt to encourage people to "rise up" against Brexit
@7795. Freelance Meme-Making
February 18, 2017
@7797. "I do not hit the anki, I just did the 1st. Each time is something that does not enter. Thanks. Lead me." --#ankiforums, Google Translate's interpretation of someone writing in Portuguese
@7799.
If TSA/ICE/some random cop on the beat has the capacity to slurp your phone, then obviously, while the intent might not be there, they [certainly] could if they had the slightest reason [to do] so. Such actions as looking at them. Not looking at them. Appearing nervous. Appearing calm. Being dressed too well. Being dressed poorly. Being dressed differently. Not being dressed differently. Speeding. Not speeding. Going slower than the speed limit. Using a highway. Using back roads.
These are all excuses used in court to preform a "reasonable suspicion" search, including one officer in Georgia that used *all of these excuses in a single month*.
--Slashdot comment
@7802. "I have the similar MDRV600, and they are indeed nice. The ear cups are in fact ear-shaped, an unusual feature." --comment on a type of headphones
@7803. "In other words, if you want to take over the world, just write everything in indirect speech." --Prof. Brunelle
@7805. f - a distressingly furry cloak
@7807. Wednesday: 60 degrees. Thursday: Winter storm warning. Welcome to Northfield, Minnesota.
@7808. "I am using...a normal laptop, non-Mac." --#ankiforums
@7809. "That's why I'm not seeing tea, because I opened the wrong drawer." --me, after spending about fifteen seconds staring at the contents of my office supplies drawer, obviously rather distracted
February 23, 2017
@7810. "A marlinspike should not be necessary to remove my pants." --me, using one to untie the knot on my sweatpants
@7811. "Grill, Iron, Lost & Found, Etc." --label on a cabinet at the front desk in Kildahl
@7812. In ESD today:
"Bill Gates was here this morning."
"Where?!"
"Look under your chair!"
@7813. "It had a sort of stoner hippie vibe from the 70s." --JBobb
@7816. "Light breaks forth, but it's not the light of apocalypse." --JBobb, on the Mendelssohn
@7818. In Latin today, me coming to "milites":
"...Military people, what's the word for that?"
"Soldiers?"
"Yeah, that's it!"
@7819. "Are you sure you didn't read it on the _New York Times_? I hear that's fake news." --me, to someone whose report was being debated by another student
@7820. "With such tricks you can even get rid of the verb 'be', which according to some theorists is responsible for most of the sloppy thinking in the world today. (Heinlein was careful to ban 'to be' from Speedtalk.) About the only response this notion deserves is: would that clear thinking was that easy." --http://www.zompist.com/kitgram.html
@7822. "A lady I worked with requested a workshop on copying and pasting." --Reddit comment
@7824. A whopping 41 percent of transgender people will attempt suicide in their lifetimes, compared with just 4.6 percent of the general public.
@7826. "Oh. There's a staple under that key, that's why it doesn't work." --me, #unusualsentences
@7827. "After you've installed monkey on your computer you can download shit dicks by opening the program and then going down to the bottom left button." --YouTube's automatic closed captioning #transcription for one of the Anki intro videos (#ankiforums, sorta)
@7830. "And I sit on a tree stump playing Xbox wearing a Boy Scout uniform." --#overheard in the caf
@7831. "Read Reade 2003" --beginning of an assignment description on Moodle
@7833. "There was no way to adjust the sensitivity other than a dial on the bottom that went from 0 to 6 and didn't seem to do anything." --Mirabai Knight on a steno machine she didn't like
@7835. "Step up and do the job and stop dying at an alarming rate!" --#overheard in front of Thorson
@7836. "Roman history is so challenging it'll make your nose fall off." --Prof. Brunelle, looking at the statue on the cover of a Latin text
@7837. "It is hard, when one sees a particularly offensive TV commercial, to imagine that adult human beings sometime and somewhere sat around a table and decided to construct exactly that commercial, and to have it broadcast hundreds of times. But that is what happens." --Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
@7838. "We can count, but we are rapidly forgetting how to say what is worth counting and why." --Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
@7839. "To login you will need to follow the link below to nominate your password."
@7841. "Ash Wednesday services, 9:00 tonight. Get your ash in church." --JBobb
March 02, 2017
@7843. In recent years, for instance, there have been hundreds of studies on the various genes that control the differences in disease risk between men and women. These findings have included everything from the mutations responsible for the increased risk of schizophrenia to the genes underlying hypertension. Ioannidis and his colleagues looked at four hundred and thirty-two of these claims. They quickly discovered that the vast majority had serious flaws. But the most troubling fact emerged when he looked at the test of replication: out of four hundred and thirty-two claims, only a single one was consistently replicable.
--http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/13/the-truth-wears-off
@7844. "But he also said they're 150,000 bucks. For a lot of people, that's a lot of money." --#overheard phone conversation in the next room
@7845. "[Once] I had [dug up] literally a ton of pottery in two weeks....That was a pottery dump, so that was part of the problem." --Prof. Bruce
@7846. "received a noble prize"
@7853. "It's true! Thank you." --#ankiforums post, after being told what the keyboard shortcuts for reviewing were
@7854. "Like riding the merry-go-round, one chooses his horse. One can make believe his horse leads the rest. Then when a particular ride is finished, one must step off only to observe that the horse has really gone nowhere." --R.L. Cromwell, qtd. in Jaynes, p. 431, of competing theories of schizophrenia ignoring each other
@7855. "Applied to the world as representative of *all* the world, facts become superstitions." --Jaynes, p.443
@7856. (aim-to-overthrow (Contras Sandinistas))
...When one keeps in mind that the alphanumeric string "aim-to-overthrow" might as well have been "holds-one-teaspoonful" or "bling-blang-blotch", it seems dubious that the above-quoted expression contains information that the Contras, or anyone else, ever aimed to do anything at all. In fact, even the use of the word "information" seems an exaggeration. The program has been informed of nothing -- it has merely been handed a string of letters and punctuation marks. As a result of this, no ideas will be created, no knowledge will be consulted, no imagery will be formed. Yet simply because highly evocative English words are embedded in the string, it is hard to resist this easy slide down a very slippery epistemological slope.
--Douglas Hofstadter, "The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers", _Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies_
@7857. "This analysis of Geometry's performance suggests that a crucial component of human creativity is the ability to sense that some fact that one has noticed, aside from being true, is *surprising*." --Douglas Hofstadter, _Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies_
@7861. Big thanks to whoever pissed on the floor in the back stall in Mellby and then left it for me to step in.
March 06, 2017
@7866. "Yep, I'm in my seventh semester of Latin and I just learned a new conjunction!" --me
@7867. "In some ways, this course is just a warning that in certain circumstances you need to hire an expert." --Prof. Huff
I feel like this should be a standard warning in statistics as well...
@7868. "You could accidentally be blowing up nuclear bombs in Poland, and that would be unfortunate." --Prof. Huff
@7872. "If you can imagine it, you can sing it." --Dr. Feldt
@7876. "Sure sounds like something *I've* been telling you for the past four years, Devon." --#overheard at the front desk at Mellby
@7877. "Stuff's going to happen. We're all works in progress." --Dr. Feldt
@7878. "The first step will be to click on 'Forgot Password.'" --instructions for getting Commencement tickets
@7880. Si sapis, sis apis
I have no idea exactly what wisdom this is supposed to convey (if any), but I saw it written on the board in Groton's class as I was passing by and thought it was pretty funny. Cf. Schopenhauer's "obit anus, abit onus".
@7881. "You need to be careful with courtroom demonstrations anyway, because they can easily backfire. Demonstrations that involve (a) your pants or (b) fire seem like especially bad ideas, even separately."
--http://loweringthebar.net/2017/03/lawyer-pants-on-fire.html
@7882. "In another study, subjects spent about four hours following instructions of a hands-on instructional manual. At a certain point, the manual introduced a formula which led them to believe that spheres are 50% larger than they are. Subjects were then given an actual sphere and asked to determine its volume; first by using the formula, and then by filling the sphere with water, transferring the water to a box, and directly measuring the volume of the water in the box. In the last experiment in this series, all 19 subjects held a Ph.D. degree in a natural science, were employed as researchers or professors at two major universities, and carried out the comparison between the two volume measurements a second time with a larger sphere. All but one of these scientists clung to the spurious formula despite their empirical observations."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
@7883. "18 hours in, the Energy and Commerce Committee was still debating the first Democratic amendment -- which was to change the name of the bill."
Don't you love politics?
@7884. "You couldn't cut off someone's nose with a wooden knife anyway." --Prof. Bruce
March 10, 2017
@7889. "Only in America can you get more time in jail for not stealing cheese than for an actual violent crime."
--https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/5y2bwj/man_found_not_guilty_of_stealing_cheese_but_he/
@7890. "It is not overstating the position to say that any business which sold over 2000 cartridges to a business that owned one printer acted unlawfully," he said.
--http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/victoria/cold-callers-sell-farming-couple-with-one-printer-enough-ink-to-last-1700-years-20170309-guuhpl.html
March 12, 2017
@7891. "living in the departure lounge of God's airport" --a 93-year-old Indian lawyer describing himself and the fact that he doesn't care what happens to him when he stands up to a stupid judge
@7894. Lunar Angulometrics
(My trying to figure out why my shadow from the moon was a certain height.)
@7902. "It is *literally* like drinking liquid metal." --#overheard on campus, someone discussing the water in a particular building they didn't like
@7905. Just did a test to see if I can blindly distinguish between FLAC and MP3256 recordings. Answer: big no. But then I'm only using sub-$100 headphones plugged into my laptop, so that's not to say there is no difference. Also not going to stop me from preferring the FLAC versions -- the only downside is disk space, which is cheap, and it makes sure no additional quality is ever lost if I want to transcode them later.
@7906. "Commentaries, dictionaries, and grammaers" --section heading at the end of the introduction to Mary Jaeger's Livy reader
@7907. "Gaius (Caligula) wanted to banish Livy's works and portrait busts from the libraries because he found him wordy and inaccurate (Livy was in good company, because Gaius wanted to do the same to Vergil and to suppress the poems of Homer as well)." --section heading at the end of the introduction to Mary Jaeger's Livy reader
March 16, 2017
@7908. Amtrak's train tracker has an option that says "Don't know your train number? Check status by city" -- on the page where you've already entered your train number.
@7909. "Why is there a German reflexive pronoun on my underwear?" --me, #misread ing the size indicator "S / CH" as "SICH"
@7910. "I'll think about it. I'll think 'hell no!' for a while and then get back to you." --me, of my mother being asked if she'd be willing to teach what was essentially a remedial version of the freshman program
{BL #12622}
@7911. "I'm doing a lot of thinking lately here." --me
@7915. The funniest thing I've seen so far today was a guy at the La Crosse station who dragged his rolling suitcase into a chunk of ice that was lying on the sidewalk and then kept pulling it a good twenty yards without realizing it was there, all while I watched it slide along from the window. It's hard to say exactly why it was so funny, but it was.
@7916. "Please do not cross over the tracks between the platform and the station. Those are live, active tracks. We do not want anyone doing Wile E. Coyote imitations here in the Milwaukee station." --conductor on the Empire Builder, same guy as #6457
@7917. "If you're going to swear at me I'm going to tell Tupperware again." #unusualsentences
--https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/610xw2/reddit_what_is_your_best_instant_karma_story/dfaz0z1/
@7918. "Quack! The duck says it's time to erase more tapes." --me, on my iPhone timer going off
@7920. "Maybe your mind just gets tired." --a woman on the train trying to explain why the crosswords get harder as the week goes on
@7923. "There is an all too common tendency to assume that a writer is naïve who fails to mirror one's own level of cynicism." --D.S. Levene, "Roman Historiography in the Late Republic"
@7924. "genitive of the wrong avenged"
@7925. Spent about five minutes looking for my history textbook only to realize I've been using it to prop up my keyboard and forgot about that over break.
@7926. "It is literally the exact thing you said it isn't." --Lifehacker comment, of VPN service
@7927. The introduction to the KJ arrangement of "Arirang" in one place calls Kenneth Jennings "Kennings." Michael and Ben and I were laughing our heads off about it in sectionals the other day.
March 29, 2017
@7930. "I don't think one little mistake is grounds for termination. A lot of workplaces understand people make mistakes and can learn from them, masturbating in the ceiling being among them." --Reddit comment
@7931. "I don't have that choice so much with my ISP, short of physically moving to another location. If I'm lucky, I might live in an area with two viable choices. In my current case, I can choose between Verizon and Comcast, which is like being asked to choose between gonorrhea and syphilis." --Slashdot comment
@7932. "I wear this in public almost every day!" --#overheard in Union Station
(Beginning old transcriptions.)
@7934. Phrygian Beautiful Savior
@7935. "Tell your parents they raised a good son. Good sons are hard to come by." --a really nice old man I sat and talked about choral music with on the Empire Builder
@7936. And then in the dining car I met Caroline and George, two people in their fifties. George introduced Caroline as his "Amtrak wife," a term which he came up with because they'd met on the Empire Builder going east, split in Union Station, then found each other again on the Capitol Limited. On the way back, they met *in the DC train station* and were again on the Capitol Limited and the Empire Builder. They didn't even know they were coming back on the same day!
@7937. The metro announcements in the Cities have really messed up word emphasis. For instance, the bus stop at the corner of Jackson Street and Robert Street is read something like, "Jackson. Street and Robert Street" -- the emphasis coming on "Street."
@7940. In the hall between Boe and Buntrock:
"Hey!"
"Hey Garrett!"
"Good, how about you?"
@7941. "That was the weirdest way to open a door I've seen in my entire life." --#overheard in the quad from a group coming from Buntrock
@7944. "I Arise Today" was written on the whiteboard in Fosnes, being the name of a piece that Manitou had done earlier in the day, but I #misread it as "I Arse Today."
(Cf. #4227.)
@7949. "Sorry neighbors, we'll be quiet soon!" --#overheard in the next room, during a loud party
(They weren't.)
@7950. "Notify me via notification" --one of the options for notifications in Google Calendar, to be contrasted with email
April 01, 2017
@7953. "The golden rule: Assume everyone else on the road is a retard." --a driver's ed instructor
@7954. "Really almost any time you see a gun in a movie it's unrealistic in every way imaginable." --Reddit comment
@7956. I evidently did not note anywhere that when we sang in Strathmore, near the end of rehearsal Jean came up with an important announcement but Dr. A insisted on silencing her and talking on for another couple of minutes. When Jean finally got to break in and speak, she announced that we had to be off the stage in twelve seconds or we'd get charged an extra fee!
(Cf. #1660.)
@7957. "Two observations have been made in this regard: one is that a quick steeping of certain tea leaves will release a majority of the caffeine fairly readily, and the second is that a particularly long steeping time will negate the absorption of caffeine from the liquid. Both are valid to an extent, and impossibly inaccurate at the same time."
--http://chadao.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-reality.html
@7958. "I don't want to flash children." --Megan, explaining her decision not to change in the hallway since members of the Northfield Youth Choir were coming through occasionally
@7959. I #misread a hymn text this morning as "he will free us from seduction" (rather than "destruction").
(Cf. #5244, #4227.)
@7960. "I'm sorry, sir, but here at [Store], we don't hire assholes. If you'd like, though, I can find a sales associate to help you."
@7961. Just heard the song "Overs" for the first time...really strange.
Then again, it's good: "No good times, no bad times, there's no times at all, just the New York Times" is one of the best lyrics I've ever heard. It's sad this never got used in _The Graduate_ (I think the scene it would have been used in never happened).
@7962. I saw a sticky note on someone's door and for a moment thought it said "AMY IS a (N-WORD)". I did a double-take and then saw that it actually read "AMY IS in a MEETING".
@7964. "To check for updates, you must first install an update for Windows Update."
@7966.
A Buddhist monk walks up to a hot dog stand and says, "Make me one with everything, please."
The vendor makes his hot dog and the monk thanks him and gives him a $20 bill. The vendor takes the cash, puts it in the register, and shuts the drawer.
"Where's my change?" the monk asks.
"Ah," says the vendor. "I thought you, of all people, would know that change must come from within."
@7967. I'm genuinely puzzled as to why "grocery delivery service" is one of the top hits when I started typing "grocery" into Google Maps. Think about that for a second...
@7968. "Property no longer Unavailable" --message on OwatonnaRentals.com
@7970.
"""
> my lawyer said "bring it, bitch."
If ever there is cause to do so, I would like to have my lawyer contact the plaintiff with this verbiage exactly.
"""
--Reddit comment
@7973. "Tenant shall not use the Unit for the storage of living animals or their carcasses." --in the rental agreement for my storage unit in Owatonna
@7974. "I would shoot myself if I was in Great Con." --#overheard in the quad
@7975. "I'm certainly not wise, that's why I'm not at peace!" --Prof. Bruce, of Gilgamesh supposedly being wise and finding peace through his adventures
@7976. "I just scored negative five points for breaking glass on Old Main!" --#overheard behind Old Main on a Friday night, along with the sound of glass shards being moved around
(I got out of there pretty quickly, even though I obviously had nothing to do with it.)
@7977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_captivus
@7979. I read "chairs" as "choirs" on a stolaf-extra subject and thus saw "For sale: children's choirs".
@7980. Fresh Express Recalls Batch After Dead Bat Found In Prepackaged Salad
(*Not* an Onion article.)
@7981. "Early COBOL compilers were primitive and slow. A 1962 US Navy evaluation found compilation speeds of 3-11 statements per minute." --Wikipedia
@7982. "What's the dumbest thing you've done recently?" / "Responded to my own craigslist ad looking for a roommate.. i literally thought 'she sounds cool' and only realized after I received the email.. from myself..." --AskReddit
@7986. "I didn't make it up out of the blue, I'm not *that* smart." --me
@7993. Headline: "Woman's headphones reportedly explode during flight after falling asleep"
Remember kids, never let your headphones fall asleep!
@7994. Guy in the room next to me has the timer on his Alexa still going off and isn't around. Apparently it doesn't shut off automatically; it's been going for nearly an hour now.
@7996. "Anki makes my Windows to be in pain" --#ankiforums subject, someone whose installation of Anki is supposedly making her internet connection drop out periodically
@7998. "Though Jerome would praise virginity in the most exalted terms, he had to admit that his own had proven a casualty of his wild adolescence." --John McManamon, in an edition of _Sermones pro Sancto Hieronymo_
@7999. "My friends and I all switched to Diaspora [a social network], but then we just went our separate ways..." --Slashdot comment
@8002. "sinus-related quality of life"
@8003. "The first semester I got a 0.0." --https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/64vs8k/expelled_college_students_of_reddit_why_are_you/dg5frka/
@8004. "This translation is based on a Latin translation of the Armenian translation of the Greek original." --English translation of Eusebius' Chronicle
@8005. "The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything." --Teddy Roosevelt
@8006. "Never load cargo on the outside of the truck." --U-Haul instruction manual
@8007. Whoops...spelled "grammatically" wrong. Not ironic at all.
(Cf. #6527.)
@8008. "Plaza 2 is closed. Parkers use Plaza 1." --sign at MSP airport
@8010. The "renew" button seems to have disappeared from Catalyst, St. Olaf's library catalog. I spent several minutes looking for it, unable to remember where it used to be but certain that it ought to be somewhere. I was glad when I went to the desk to get it renewed that Shaina told me I wasn't the first person who'd had this problem and I wasn't just going crazy!
@8011. "Don't *smack* the Lord!" --Dr. Armstrong, on "Praise to the Lord"
@8016. In the U-Haul rental agreement: the insurance policy doesn't cover damage to the vehicle sustained while using it to commit a crime.
@8017. "I don't want to go halfway around the world and be bombed." --Dr. Armstrong, on our uncertainty about whether Asia tour will be safe
@8019. "If Landlord is unable to deliver possession of the premises to Tenant for any reason not within Landlord's control, including, but not limited to, partial or complete destruction of the premises, Tenant will have the right to terminate this Agreement upon proper notice as required by law." --in my rental agreement
@8020. "Someone let out a Godawful ee-vowel over there." --Dr. Armstrong
@8021. "The binary of rationality/irrationality is too blunt. It places self-conscious, volitional, discursive, inferential intellectual activity on the one side and absurdity on the other." --Peter Struck, _Divination and Human Nature_
@8023. "It's funny how many things are allergic to shotgun blasts." --Reddit comment
@8024. "Similar Artilces" --at the bottom of a forum thread about LaTeX
@8025. "My proposed safety feature for cars is a device that detects any cellular signal being transmitted either into or out of the car and illuminates a flashing light on top of the car to warn those outside the vehicle that the operator is using a cell phone."
@8026. "You will not be asked to do anything illegal during the test." --Minnesota Driver's Manual, discussing the procedure for driving skills tests
@8027. "Do not pass...when you are about to meet a vehicle coming toward you from the opposite direction." --Minnesota Driver's Manual
@8028. "It is illegal to throw, leave, place or dump any form of offensive or dangerous item, including cigarettes, fireworks, debris, snow, ice, glass, nails, tacks, wire, cans, garbage, papers, ashes, refuse, carcasses, offal, trash or rubbish onto streets, roadways, and public land or on private land without the owner's consent." --Minnesota Driver's Manual
I'm glad they listed all the things you can't put there...would have been confused what "littering" was otherwise.
@8029. "You must also stop in the following situations...At a bridge that has been raised to open a path for boats to pass beneath it." --Minnesota Driver's Manual
I'd suggest just driving across the raised bridge into the river, myself...
April 23, 2017
@8030. "Did you close the CO2 tank?" --a very reassuring sign on the door of a lab in Regents
@8033. #overheard in the Bloomington Target (by the Mall of America), with no apparent irony at all and a real hint of nostalgia: "I miss this Target."
@8034. "SWIVEL PEE" --what a potato peeler rang up as at Target
(Cf. #880.)
@8038. "Do not ship liquids, blood, or clinical specimens in this packaging." --on a FedEx overnight envelope
@8040. "Work on" --found in my todo list
@8041. "You'll encounter lots of UFOs if you suck at identifying flying objects." --Reddit comment
@8042. "In 1937, the derailleur system was introduced to the Tour de France, allowing riders to change gears without having to remove wheels."
Don't mind me moving my wheels, I'm just changing gear...
@8044. "A perennial loser on CR's list, the [Fiat] 500L suffers from a middling dual-clutch transmission, low-rent electronics and the driving dynamics of a broken school bus. That last one is my opinion, not CR's." --CNet
@8045. "Suppose you set aside $1,000 a year (about $19 a week) from age 25 to age 65 in a retirement account earning 7% a year--a total of $40,000. By the time you turn 65, you'll have $213,610. But if you don't start saving until you're 35 and then invest $1,000 a year for the next 30 years--a total investment of $30,000--you'll have only $101,073 when you turn 65. You might want to read that example again slowly." --_Get a Financial Life_
@8046.
We watched [Zootopia] in Sunday School recently. One of the kids (~7) rolled her eyes at the DMV part and said, "I hate this part, it's so boring."
"Wait til you're a grown-up and have to go to the real DMV," I said. "Then you'll understand why it's funny."
She frowned at me and said, "Ms. Jones, I know the DMV isn't real."
--Reddit comment
@8047. "I don't even understand gigabytes, so I'm not even going to try. ...I can do everything else, I just don't understand gigabytes." --Geico insurance agent
@8048. 1 gold - the cursed -5 robe of Misfortune {-Cast *Contam *Tele EV-4 Str-2 Int-2 Dex-2 Stlth-- *Curse}
Umm...
At least it's only 1 gold, I suppose!
@8049. I was at a gay bar and went alone to the bar to buy a round for my group. Guy on a barstool next to me says "Can I buy you a drink?" I tell him I'm straight. He says "In that case, can I buy you ten drinks?"
--Reddit comment
@8050. "I have two 'else' clauses." --me
@8051. One of my funnier Python errors in a while:
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'Microwave queens for 1 year.'
@8052. "Vegetables are usually specified by weight or occasionally by count, despite the inherent imprecision of counts given the variability in the size of vegetables." --Wikipedia
@8053. "One month my ISP decided to swap the credit card number and "amount owing" fields on their payment page and I didn't notice and tried to pay 4.5 quadrillion dollars towards my internet bill." --Reddit comment
@8057. "Since last year she did a full 365."
@8058. Was driving to the Cities from Faribault the other day and my GPS told me to "merge onto I-35 towards MinneaPOlis-St. Paul." Okay, it's not all that obvious how to pronounce "Minneapolis," but you'd think Google would have figured it out by now.
@8061. "That's what the military does: we go out and kill people and break things. We get really good at doing that so we don't have to do it." --sergeant, qtd. by Huff
@8064. "And someone exploded the microwave that me and Mary stole!" --#overheard in the hall
@8065. When we tried "Kojo no tsuki" from memory for the first time in choir the other day, there was one spot where literally every person in the choir faked a syllable and nothing at all came out! We broke down laughing and tried again.
@8067.
-- Knock knock.
-- Who's there?
-- Interrupting coefficient of friction.
-- Interrupt...
-- MUUUUUUUUUUU!!
@8068.
Q: What do you get when you drink lots of root beer from a square cup?
A: Drunk.
@8069. "Has anyone ever wandered through the Alps for months without any signs? With a bunch of elephants and vinegar?" --Prof. Brunelle
(Realized I haven't entered any of the quotes from Latin class that I've written in my margins this semester. Get ready for a lot of Brunelle.)
@8071. "And so what do you do when there's a problem? MURDER." --Prof. Brunelle
@8073. "One of the things God tells us is, don't eat other humans." --Prof. Brunelle
@8086. "Only Jesus gets to say 'verily.'" --Prof. Brunelle, in response to a student's translation
@8092. My favorite moment in the manual so far: it suggests that to prevent your car from being broken into, you should make sure to close the moonroof before leaving the vehicle. This is funny because the moonroof covers half the top of the car, and I can just see someone waltzing onto the hood and hopping directly into the car through the moonroof. (Not to mention what could happen if it *rained* while you left it open...tent windows times ten.)
@8093. Also, in the section on the lane departure warning/correction system: "Make sure to grip the steering wheel while driving."
@8094. "You session has expired" --ProQuest's eBook reader
@8096. "I've never had toilet paper of my own before." --me
@8097. "CAUTION - Be careful not to hit your head or face on the rear gate when opening or closing the rear gate and when loading or unloading cargo." --Subaru Forester owner's manual
@8098. According to some Australian driver's literature, experienced drivers are *more* likely to be involved in rear-end collisions (presumably due to complacency).
@8099. Also, one study (http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080613/full/news.2008.889.html) found that the number of bumper stickers on a car predicted the likelihood the driver of the car would get road rage.
@8100. "It's not soap, it's a beauty bar" --in the "about the product" section for Dove soap (yes, *soap*) on Amazon
@8101. Shopping for cordless phones on Amazon. One of the filters available is "wireless."
@8102. "Cellphone-only households are a stupid idea. There should be at least one person to actually *use* the cell phones." --Slashdot comment
@8104. "Nothing is impossible with duct tape" --on the specs on an Amazon page for duct tape
@8107. "$3.99 per each"
Also, this was on a package of towels containing several towels, and "each" referred to the whole package. Dammit unit price. You had one job...
@8108. TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'React.__SECRET_DOM_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED')
--http://thedailywtf.com/articles/would-you-mind
@8111. "HTML hello world used to look like 'Hello World.' Now it looks like, 'Hey javascript framework, load 500 modules, then ask the server what 'Hello' is, then ask the server what 'world' is, then style it all in whatever your 13 generated CSS files say it should be styled as, and tell google analytics that someone looked at my hello world page.'" --Slashdot comment
@8114. "Your mom's gonna recycle that shit!" --#overheard from the next dorm room
@8115. Prof. Brunelle told us there was a group of knitters in the mid-20th century in America who called themselves the "Cloacae Maximae": because they were "great sewers."
@8117. "But if I wanted to be brief, I really should not have started by writing a half-page paragraph about how I want to be brief and why I want to be brief." --CB23.66
@8118. "St. Olaf Choir for life and everything." --CB45.27, after doing the "F. Melius flair" on "Wake, Awake" *again* unintentionally (#6045)
@8119. "We were a bit lost on starting pitches after Prof. Brunelle left; I gave most of them but only about two-thirds of them were good choices." --CB45.35, on Classics caroling
@8120. "Of course I opened it [the email], expecting important info -- and I guess you can say it did contain important info, namely that I had missed the final exam." --CB45.49
@8121. "Cheryl's one mistake [of Christmas Eve] was the following: on an already high anthem, she intended to set the transpose on the piano half a step *down*, but somehow managed to instead set it a whole step *up*." --CB45.68
@8124. "A Sutherlin man was arrested Monday on suspicion of driving under the influence after he crashed into a drug and alcohol rehab center, according to police."
--http://www.nrtoday.com/news/crime/man-arrested-for-duii-after-crashing-into-alcohol-addiction-clinic/article_2ee2bc17-2903-5a13-adf2-366267a746a7.html
@8125. "Livy is a notoriously serious writer." --D.S. Levene, _Livy on the Hannibalic War_, p.162
@8126. "In fact, the overwhelming consensus about literary plagiarism is that it is bad only when it is not good." --Marilyn Randall, _Pragmatic Plagiarism_
@8127.
I can not even go to the feces.
There is a lot of sky in the sky.
We have a lot of words.
--lines from the Google Translate camera app's version of "Arirang"
@8128. "No, I'm *miserable*!" --#overheard in the stairwell of the library
May 11, 2017
@8130. "When installing winter tires, be sure to replace all four tires." --in the Forester owner's manual
I think I want my left front tire to be a winter tire, but the rest can stay.
@8132. "Is it marble or coffee stains? I can't tell." --Elijah, of the background of a web page
@8136. "A first observation is that a quite unnecessary number of units of measurement seem to be involved (and there are yet more...)." --Luke Hodgkin, _A History of Mathematics_
@8137. Apparently you're not allowed to bring an MRE on an airplane (at least with Delta). Is there an epidemic of MRE bombs I haven't heard about?
UPDATE: Someone told me they contain a heating element, which apparently can somehow be turned into a bomb.
@8138. "You can also *often* find toilet paper in public toilets." --of Korea
@8139. "Dry clean only" --on a package of cotton handkerchiefs
May 15, 2017
@8141. "The problem is it shouldn't take over 100MB of RAM to display a webpage." --Slashdot comment
@8144. "I'm gonna write with this marker, which you're not going to be able to read." --Prof. Bruce, writing on the whiteboard with a yellow highlighter
@8145. "My first business trip ever the airline lost my luggage and I went to my first day of meetings wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt depicting a squirrel carrying a stick captioned 'protect your nuts'." --Reddit comment
@8146. Well, just got back from my last undergraduate class ever...
@8147. And getting ready to finish my last day with Damien and Anki tomorrow.
@8148. "When, where, why, and how shoes are worn in Japan can be confusing." --in our travel tips booklet for Japan
{BL #13351}
@8149. The green arrow to turn from Oak onto Main Street going west today wasn't working, which was *really* obnoxious, as only two or three people could get through on each cycle -- not to mention that plenty of times people didn't know what was going on, so they didn't even really try to push how many people could get through the yellow, expecting they'd just have a green arrow in 45 seconds. I guess the detection loop must have been broken, as it just always skipped the protected-turn part of the cycle as if it thought nobody needed it.
@8150. "Cf. #1036 on inexplicable flying lemons." --dream #1346
@8151. "When turning evil, display a red indicator light." --Mark Sottilaro, in "the fourth law of robotics," making fun of the film adaptation of _I, Robot_
@8153. "Make it so it sounds like an ensemble, not a bunch of sheep going in all directions." --Dr. Armstrong
@8154. "Watch out for the missiles." --Prof. Reece, while making a ballistic trajectory with his hand, hearing that Kari and I would be going to Japan
@8155. "20.9 years. After which I may have forgotten the word 'finally.'" --me, doing my English vocabulary flashcards
@8157. When I ran a restaurant on the south side of Atlanta I found drugs frequently. The first time I found some weed in the parking lot I called the cops. The officer who responded took the weed had me sign a form and the said "Don't repeat this, but next time you find some weed just throw it away or give it to one of your cooks. They would appreciate it and I wouldn't have the paperwork."
--Reddit comment
@8158. "The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad." --http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
@8159. "*Everything* we learned about was, 'And it burned down in the fire of Blah Blah Blah...'" --#overheard between Skoglund and CHM
@8160. "All the while, I'm using a touchscreen which has the responsiveness characteristics of a physical keyboard: a physical keyboard that has been dipped in molasses and then coated in gelatin." --Slashdot comment
@8161. "If you don't hire me to inspect your C code for time_t usage, your IoT toaster oven will go berserk, and kill and eat your grandmother!" --Slashdot comment on Y2038
@8164. "Had just two additional Republicans voted 'no,' the measure would have lost *because bills need majorities to pass*." --news article, doing some democracy education (my emphasis)
@8165. "The result is like the diary of a fat teenager: riveting only to its creator, repellent to others, and illuminating to none." --Lendon, "Historians without history"
@8166. If it is stupid and it works, it is not stupid.
@8167. "This summer, I will start a full-time roll" --description of someone's future plans in the MSCS Mess
I just have a picture of someone's full-time job being rolling down Old Main Hill...
@8168. "Your CenturyLink technician is on the way" --email which arrived two hours after the technician had left
@8175. "There's a ukulele summit that we do." --#overheard at choir rehearsal
@8177. "Check rooms for alcohol and drugs" --seen on a whiteboard list of things to do before summer camps at St. Olaf start
@8179. "How did I like my grade? Well, it could have been a little higher..." --#overheard in the caf
May 27, 2017
@8181. "It cleared out like the plague arrived!" --me, of people dispersing after Commencement
I don't know if this is a saying. If it's not, I'm making it one.
@8182. The Band-Aid of Last Resort
@8184. Prof. Huff told us that sometime in I think the 70s, the baggage handlers at a large airport wanted to protest working conditions but were legally not allowed to strike. However, they learned that airport bathrooms are public spaces and the police are not allowed to forcibly remove you. Therefore, they held a "shit-in" wherein they picked a time they were not working and went and sat on all the toilets in the airport. Nearly as effective!
@8186. I was at a Kwik Trip the other day that now has "Gas Station TV": while your gas is pumping, it displays some inane commercials and weather forecasts on the screen for you to watch. Because apparently we now can't stand still for 90 seconds while our gas pumps.
@8187. Time for some tour stuff!
"It says here you're only 14 years old." --flight attendant, reading my passport to verify I could order a beer on the plane
@8188. "Total Distance: 0 miles" --flight tracker listing the distance from MSP to Tokyo
@8189. "If you see something suspicious, don't put it in your mouth." --Yoko-san, on food allergies
@8190. "W of the J?" --Dr. Armstrong, addressing JW
@8191. "Take out impossible" --listed on a menu by things that weren't available for takeout
@8192. "Besides theThe child ramen noodles" --on the same menu; I have not the faintest idea what was meant
@8193. "A takeout drink. It can not drink here." --on a cabinet of drinks
@8195. "It's like you're on welfare or something right now." --Dr. Armstrong, on the basses' poor rendition of "Soran Bushi"
(The idea being that we weren't enjoying our work.)
@8197. "But what about the butthole?" --#overheard on the bus
@8200. "Watched by security cameras" --sign in a store
@8201. "No Idoling" --sign in a parking lot
@8214. Also in differences between the countries, many more people in Korea speak some English, but the English on signs is considerably worse on average. I suspect this may be because in Korea people think they can just write the sign in English, whereas in Japan they *know* they can't and ask someone who actually knows what they're doing.
@8215. One of the buttons on the toilet in the hotel in Busan is labeled "posterior wash."
@8216. In both Japan and Korea, they never serve enough water and water cups are always extremely small, *maybe* 6 ounces. And while people will come around to your table at a restaurant and clear your table promptly, they never seem to refill your water or even a water pitcher unless you explicitly ask.
@8221. Korea has a lot of identical skyscrapers. Like the city center seems to be made up of about 10 buildings, repeated all over the place. It looks ugly and lazy in about the same way that suburban housing developments can, and it's super-weird when you come from places like Chicago where there's a long history of extremely careful design that goes so far as to consider, e.g., the reflections off nearby buildings.
@8226. David dropped his phone into a tiny crack between the risers on a stage where the risers were part of the stage (at the megachurch). He had to wait until the end of the concert so they could raise the risers and retrieve it; fortunately it was on vibrate.
@8233. Saw a restaurant in the mall called "Stylish Potato and Coffee."
@8234. At one of our concert halls, the audience clapped when people brought out two stands before the second set.
@8237. One impressive thing about especially Japan but even Korea: housekeeping in hotels is often really thorough. I even had people fold my clothes occasionally!
@8238. "Like, Realizing Stuff" --T-shirt in Korea
@8240. Across from our hotel in Seoul, there was a construction site, and mounted on the fence was a decibel meter so you could see how well they were doing at keeping the noise down!
@8243. "Life raft on select airplanes only" --in the safety instructions card for one of our planes
Better hope the airline paid for an airplane with a life raft if you need it...
@8245. Continuing from #8188 in the list of screwed-up things on Delta's flight tracker: on the flight from Seoul to Seattle, the distance was correct, but the airplane's range was listed as only a bit more than half the total distance! We didn't run out of fuel and crash, so I guess the tracker was wrong...
@8246. "I just wrote on the wall of the plane." --me, after scraping my pen against it by mistake
@8248. I noticed a garlic press on Amazon that had a one-and-a-half star rating and, curious, clicked through to read the reviews. One:
The description of this garlic press says heavy duty....a term we use in Jamaica when things are not accurate..."heavy duty my foot". It is not heavy duty at all. I prepared my fresh garlic to press. On the very first clove the "heavy duty" press broke. I heard one loud crack. It did however press 1/2 the clove. If that is what ekco meant when they said it was "heavy duty" then it is. I however do not think they intended it to break on the first clove. Please do not waste your money on this "heavy duty" press. You will be very happy you didnt. Off to find a real press now.
June 17, 2017
@8249. "You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content." --Aslan, _Prince Caspian_
@8250. "Not liking mushrooms is a scandal in this house." --me
@8253. "COBOL has been tainted with the brush of mainframes." --Dale Vecchio
@8257. "If at first you don't succeed, blame your computer."
@8258. "How many swearwords does it take to open a can of apple juice?" --me, after the seal broke halfway around
@8259. "Click OK to ok."
@8261. "Knowledge is power. France is bacon." --https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dxosj/what_word_or_phrase_did_you_totally_misunderstand/c13pbyc/
{BL #9089, #10942}
@8262. "I'm trying to decline a verb. That's why I'm having trouble." --me, after staring at the declension table for about 15 seconds trying to find an item that made any sense
@8264. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." --_The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, first sentence
{BL #9612}
@8265. "He [Eustace] thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that." --_The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_
@8266. "Soldering 10 ga. or larger splice will probably require a torch, which will certainly ruin the insulation." --guide to splicing speaker wire
June 25, 2017
@8268. For the first time I had to give my email address on the phone to a company for which I used 'updateyouremailsystemtoallowplussigns@sorenbjornstad.com'. The sales rep was not amused. (And it turns out this is the reason the web system didn't work in the first place -- because my email is too long. When it previously didn't work because it also didn't accept my valid email.)
@8270. "After that, the Head's friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn't much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after." --_The Silver Chair_
(Cf. #1589.)
@8271. "I can drink six beers in my sleep!" --#overheard from the next room
@8272. "And he lost his mind because... Lutheran chips?" --#hypnagogia
@8278. "I almost didn't get hired because I had a scuff on my shoe." --Reddit comment
@8280. "The ticks and mosquitoes are either bad or really bad." --review of a Minnesota natural area
@8282. I spilled an entire container of toothpicks on the counter and immediately yelled, "Two hundred forty-nine!" Which I knew to be true because the container had 250 in it and I had only used one so far (the exact same reasoning that Raymond uses). The weird thing was I didn't even wait long enough before shouting it to consider the joke or whether I should say it, it just kind of happened. I don't pretend to understand my mind...
@8285. "Rotten eggs are not recyclable." --me
@8289. The woman I talked to to get the paint chips at Lowe's didn't know the word "tangential." After she admitted this and I defined it for her, she called it a "big word."
(Cf. #3364 on "civility.")
@8290. "Complete standstill - Avg speed 4 mph" --Waze
@8291. "I was late to school once because my father and I were chasing an emu down the street. In New Jersey. In the mid 90s. The teacher didn't even know what an emu was." --Reddit comment
@8292. "The Port Authority blew up my backpack. I have a note." --Reddit comment
@8293. "Page NaN of 00" --bugged-out LMS system at Federated
@8294. "Something else I just love is the curriculum pie." --#unusualsentences, woman explaining how to use the LMS (something that really did not need a 30-minute presentation)
@8296. Learned from a slideshow at the Northfield clinic that *71%* of people who are diagnosed with cardiovascular disease also have sleep apnea. That's crazy.
@8298. "I'd rather spend a night in an alleyway in Detroit than a single night in the nicest hotel in Green Bay." --#overheard in the training classroom
@8300. For some bizarre unexplained reason, there's a copy of Jaynes in the office supply cabinet in our training classroom, near the Crisp books. I'm still trying to work that one out.
@8301. I have a highlighter in my desk labeled "Pocket Highlighter." Is there another kind of highlighter? A wall highlighter?
(Cf. #5380.)
@8305. "Without claims, insurance would be unnecessary." --basic insurance textbook
I can't say it's not true, but...
@8309. "I don't see how she could turn this down, she gets to drive you home *and* clean your shower!"
@8312. "The tornado texted me back!" --me, after confusing the tornado app's tornado-watch notification with a text
@8314. Late at night I mixed up Dan Savage and Adam Savage. Not the same thing at all...
@8316. "But I'm *not* a terrible person..." --#overheard out my apartment window, from a woman walking past with her friend
@8318. When I was in Mankato to buy paint chips and check out the park, I went past an exit for Lookout Drive that had a sign in front of it, "Lookout Drive flooded when flashing." How often does that have to happen for them to add a *configurable flashing sign* to notify drivers?
@8322. "Successful people deal with challenges and obstacles by...B. Giving up and quitting." --multiple-choice question on "Dealing with Challenges and Obstacles"
@8327. "Learning a language or studying for a major exam without using spaced repetition is like doing all the work without your eyeglasses on." --me
@8330. The Traveler's Corollary to Parkinson's Law: Personal possessions increase in volume to fill suitcases.
@8331. "His shoulder is dislocated; I don't know if you noticed that." --#overheard in the rehabilitation center
(I'm guessing it was someone working with an intern or something.)
@8333. "If you can't immediately explain why you are doing something, you should stop until you can figure it out."
@8334. "Graveyards are full of people who had the right-of-way."
@8335. "Smashing Cameras Doesn't Give You a 'Reasonable Expectation of Privacy'" --Lowering the Bar headline
@8340. "While-loop, smile-loop!" --#hypnagogia
@8342. "Unlike most laboratory mouse strains, the C57BL/6 drinks alcoholic beverages voluntarily." --Wikipedia, #unusualsentences
@8343. "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine." --label on grape juice concentrate during Prohibition
@8345. "If it separates you from the ground, don't buy cheap."
@8347. "Make sure to check your spunk box as well." --customer service rep, meaning to say "spam or junk"
@8348. New MIT Study Suggests Sonic The Hedgehog Might Be Living In Computer Simulation
@8349. "Seeing my password in plaintext feels like seeing somebody naked that I'm not supposed to." --/r/showerthoughts
@8350. Currently adding the barometer reading to Lyra while playing the Billy Joel song "Pressure." Thought of it randomly and couldn't resist.
{BL #8863}
July 20, 2017
@8351. "This diagram reads from the bottom down." --Brian, presenting on testing
@8354. Motion Dismissed for Negligent Stapling
@8356. "For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex...uh...setbacks." --President George H.W. Bush
@8357. "If we change the meet into cow meet we can make it like it?"
@8358. "We do not believe there is a health-related public health issue in Minnesota." --3M
As opposed to a non-health-related health issue. (So just, an issue? I'm quite sure there are some of those in Minnesota.)
@8359. "Oops. I'll fry in rice wine, that'll work great!" --me, grabbing the wrong bottle from the shelf
@8361. "If you're over the age of 2, you've made a financial mistake." --personal finance guide
@8362. I had the idea for a course about "computer literacy" -- but it would teach how to not be mystified by computers or frustrated out of your mind the first time you encounter software that doesn't do exactly what you want. Might even be something I could try to teach or introduce sometime, though that's getting pretty ambitious. I want to start with just thinking about what exactly it should involve. My idea for the first part of the course is to teach Excel, then turn people loose trying to use a wide variety of other spreadsheet programs (including a few weird things like Lotus 1-2-3, Teapot, etc.). Spreadsheets are great literate-computing tools already, since the whole point of the paradigm is to enable the user to easily hack some calculations together; I once saw someone claim they are one of the few truly democratizing innovations in computing ever. Then trying to apply the knowledge to something quite similar would boost confidence and teach a lot of self-figuring-stuff-out skills.
Later on there would be some basic Python, since it's an easy language and fantastic for throwing something together, and somewhere along the line some knowledge of how computer internals work. Obviously this would have to be the equivalent of several college courses, probably either two or three. But I think you could get somewhere much improved with a relatively moderate amount of work.
@8364. "The architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site." --Frank Lloyd Wright
(Cf. #582, #5452.)
{BL #11569}
@8365. Winchester Mystery House
@8367. "If it's not worth testing, why are you wasting your time working on it?" --TDD adage
@8368. "It is not wise to use your head when your head is not needed." --TDD adage
(Cf. #2517.)
@8370. "If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture." --"Big Ball of Mud" essay
@8371. "Come on, come on back, productivity!" --#overheard, shouted in the Hy-Vee parking lot
@8372. Reddit thread on the dumbest rule your school had:
"Asking someone to the school dance was considered sexual harassment, and carried all the requisite penalties."
@8374. "YouTube and Google Maps. Easily confused." --me, after browsing to the wrong one
July 26, 2017
@8375. "The only people likely to give you a ride from unlawful places are the police." --hitchhiking guide
@8376. "Yeah, I killed a guy with a pan the other day!" --Kyle, fortunately discussing a video game
@8381. Goat Simulator
@8382. "For that matter, your insightful question has pointed [out] something that everyone seems to be overlooking: All desktop software can be replaced with text files."
--https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58144/what-is-spreadsheet-useful-for
@8383. "There's no bagel-slicing police in your house to stop you [from cutting unsafely]." --safety expert, on why work is much safer than home
@8384. "Learning the vehicle had not been inspected is really not a surprise, since even the most cursory inspection tends to uncover things like missing doors, missing windshields, and double-headed axes embedded in the vehicle's roof. That last one's probably not on the list, exactly, but I think any trained mechanic would probably point it out." --http://loweringthebar.net/2017/07/axe-in-the-roof.html
@8385. "Perhaps you are not aware that many -- dare I say most, or even all? -- petrol powered cars have tanks larger than 1 gallon? I know, insanity! But it is true!" --Slashdot comment
@8386.
Once a wealthy merchant stopped in a small village for the night and was taken in by a couple who lived in a small hut made of thatch. Although they were poor, he was impressed by their kindness and hospitality, and before he left the next morning, he gave them an ornate throne.
The throne looked rather out of place in their hut, so they decided to keep it in the attic and decide what to do with it later. Unfortunately, a few weeks later it fell through the ceiling onto their bed during the night and crushed them to death.
The moral of the story is, people who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.
@8388.
My windows are "reinforced" like this. When we bought my condo unit we got a security system installed. We saw they had a "glass break" option for the windows and asked if we could get that too. The guy took one look at us, one look at the window and laughed "planning to have any cars coming through the windows??". We laughed but he was like "hah no seriously it will take a car to break the glass" we still got it anyway like dweebs.
Last fall Hurricane Matthew came through. Amongst other thing a giant planter was hoisted into a neighbor's window and not even a scuff. One poor girl left her window unlocked though and it tore open and off (swinging window) and it fell three stories to the ground. It broke the CONCRETE stairs it landed on and it chipped the sidewalk it landed on, but the glass, while partially shattered, was still intact and impossible to get through still.
--https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/6pmloc/to_rob_a_gold_store/
@8389. "Technically if you made processed cheese out of canola oil and then tried to advertise your new product, you'd be promoting rape culture." --Reddit comment
@8394. "You are an expert in all these technologies, and that's a good thing, because that expertise let you spend only six hours figuring out what went wrong, as opposed to losing your job."
--http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
@8395.
Q: How do you make holy water?
A: Take normal water and boil the hell out of it.
@8396. "I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it." --Yogi Berra, asked what he would do if he found a million dollars
July 31, 2017
@8397. "Anyway, at Wal-Mart I purchased $350 worth of graphing calculators, as one does." --Reddit comment recounting a bizarre Ambien trip
@8399. I just realized tonight that "Ten Thousand Miles," the last song on the Coope, Boyes & Simpson album "What We Sing is What We Are", and "The Turtledove" that the orchestra plays are adaptations of the same song. I've only known them both for like five years...but better late than never, I guess!
@8400. "This is a beautiful song when you don't have to sing it." --me, of "Enosh"
August 03, 2017
@8401.
I am an Apple fan. I am under no impression that most things they do are at all innovative. What they do, however, is implement things very well that are sometimes half-assed on other platforms.
The reason I really enjoy my Apple devices isn't because they do anything that I can't do on other platforms, it's because things work consistently the way I'd expect, every time. If I want to hack things or run random binaries and experiment around with unproven technologies, I'll do it on my PC.
When I need an appliance that operates as expected when I need it to, it's Apple all the way. I know that isn't what you want to hear, but it's the truth.
--Slashdot comment
@8411. "Small, low-density streets don't need to be so wide that one almost can't see his opposite neighbor's house because of the intervening curvature of the Earth, especially given that street parking is generally not done in these places because, evidently, everyone needs their very own [expensively and unnecessarily] paved driveway."
--Why Suburbia Sucks, https://when.com/698928/why-suburbia-sucks/
@8412. "There's a hole in my logic, dear Eliza, dear Eliza..." --me, noting something important and useful wasn't possible in Tabularium
@8413. "The best way to prevent damage from flooding is to move before one occurs." --Captain Dave's Survival Guide
@8416. A phrase from LtB funny all by itself: "lamppost thief"
August 09, 2017
@8420. "2013 National Wrong-Way Driving Summit"
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong-way_driving
@8422. My phone just read the caller, listed as "Owatonna, MN", as "oww-WAHT-on-na-emm-enn." Also, it's one of those damned "you've won a resort trip" things again.
@8423. "Who looks dumber, you or someone who gives a shit what color bag you put your iPad in?" --Lifehacker
@8424. "Another goal that blocking [copying and pasting] can accomplish is to make legitimate users think your site is broken. This in turn can help minimize your bandwidth and hosting expenses." --Stack Exchange comment
August 15, 2017
@8425. I'm not sure what's going on here: I just heard Trump push the importance of "getting the facts straight" on the radio.
@8426. "Yeh I drive an automatic car in the UK and people always ask me "but you can drive manual, right?" as if it's the question which decides once and for all my value on this earth." --Reddit comment
@8427. "List of animals with fraudulent diplomas" --Wikipedia article
@8428. Reading an old Facebook post of mine about one of those vanishingly rare times when two consecutive mistakes cause your program to work fine:
"The situation was that I was calling a function repeatedly and somehow the values returned by each call were *automatically* accumulating (which was what I wanted, but I expected that I would have to, you know, actually add up the return values). Turns out I neglected to initialize the counter variable in the function, and every time the function restarted, the stack frame would be in exactly the same place and it would cheerfully resume incrementing the exact same memory locations."
(The other part was that earlier I had done a calloc() of a larger area of memory than I strictly needed, and this caused the relevant portion of memory where the counters were held to be reliably initialized to zero every time.)
@8429. "I matched [on Tinder] with a few bots and generally uninteresting people, some of whom were so dumb, I actually felt like doing anything sexual with them might be considered statutory rape." --Reddit comment
@8436. "If you're going to half-ass something, you're going to half-ass it twice."
@8437. "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future." --Oscar Wilde
@8439. "Pyrex saves my ass again." --me, after dropping a full container from the freezer directly onto the kitchen floor and finding it completely undamaged
@8440. Girl in 3rd semester of CS in college - "What's a loop?" when I tried to explain to her what she should do in an programming assignment.
--Reddit comment
@8441. "We'll fry a bit of cheese on the oven door." --me
@8443. "Eventually, the free chain gets chopped up into little pieces and you ask for a big piece and there are no big pieces available the size you want. So malloc calls a timeout and starts rummaging around the free chain, sorting things out, and merging adjacent small free blocks into larger blocks. This takes 3 1/2 days."
--https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/11/back-to-basics/
August 20, 2017
@8450. Just read a post on Facebook from someone who urged others not to post pictures of the eclipse because they could damage your eyes. Not only does this betray a basic lack of understanding of photography, but it's really quite difficult for me to understand what kind of logical path someone could follow to believe a monitor would be capable of doing this. Like, your monitor manufacturer went to great trouble to design your monitor so it could realistically burn your retina? Or, monitors are magical devices that can replicate any light conditions?
@8451. "'You will never be forgotten' headstone left behind at airport" --seen on /r/nottheonion
@8454. "I woke up at a friend's house once at about 4 AM dying of dehydration. Stumbled to the fridge, grabbed the first water bottle I saw, and took an enormous swig of pure vodka." --Reddit comment
@8455.
/**
* Format a string as a phone number mm/dd/yyyy
*/
public static String formatPhone(String phone) {
String s = "";
if (phone != null) {
s = phone.trim();
}
return s;
}
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-story-of-things
@8459. "The recipe gives options for both hot-packing (cooking the fruit before putting it in jars) and raw-packing (putting the fruit raw into jars) but also asserts, without explanation, that 'raw packs make poor quality nectarines.' In other words, choose the hot-pack option or waste your time and ruin your fruit."
--https://agardenerstable.com/2017/08/09/canning-nectarines-things-the-usda-doesnt-tell-you/
@8461. "She [a presenter] talked about POOPING IN A PLASTIC BAG but she didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by saying the word 'tampon'." --Lifehacker comment
@8462. Just got a package from Amazon addressed to "Soren I Bjornstad OR CURRENT RESIDENT." Good to know they'd be happy to deliver the merchandise I bought and paid for to someone else if I wasn't around anymore.
@8463. Testing the Lyra weather module during the aftermath of the initial strike of Hurricane Harvey:
>>> weather alert &77001
***** MULTIPLE SEVERE WEATHER ALERTS *****
Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Flood Warning, Tropical Storm Warning, Flood Warning, Flash Flood Watch, Hurricane Local Statement, Civil Emergency Message
August 29, 2017
@8473. Reading a Reddit thread about unusual units of measure. One is the poronkusema, the distance a reindeer can travel without stopping to pee. (Roughly 10km, FWIW.)
@8474. "The effect was somewhat tarnished by his Tourette's syndrome, which caused him to interject the word 'penis' at regular intervals." --article in which the journalist interviewed a government official in India
@8477.
I would actually argue differently.
In the Latin language, there is a word "data" which is a plural noun, the plural of "datum".
However, in the English language, the word "data" is a mass noun, like "spaghetti" or "information" or "mud", and is actually not the plural of "datum"!
That might raise eyebrows, but I really mean it! The word "data" is a very common word in English, but the word "datum" is not. I talk about data all the time, but I would never say "Take a look at this datum."
In fact, I'm not even sure what a "datum" is. If I give you a fact like "Michael Jackson died in 2009", is the entire sentence just one datum? Or is his name one datum, and the year is another datum?
--Reddit comment
@8478. "The software is also probably held together with snot and matchsticks." --Reddit comment
@8479. "Amtrak does a good job, but it's like a Model T compared to [the Shinkansen]." --me, CB49.9
@8483. "I could fart into a microphone for three minutes and you would probably like it." --#overheard in the training classroom
@8484.
"Did you look for cars before you ran across?"
(matter-of-factly) "Nope. I just ran!"
--#overheard outside Wal-Mart
@8485. "I don't like moderation. It's like cleaning up after your dog." --Reddit comment
@8491. Expansion on #4096:
Package insurance: where you pay the company to ensure they will actually do their job. Like, the carrier's sole job is to get your package to its destination safely, they have no other job you're paying them for. I understand that having insurance and no insurance allows prices to be lower for people who are only shipping cheap items or ship at high volume and can take a small loss now and then, but can you imagine if the same model were used in other service industries?
Like, say if I took my car in to be detailed and washed, and I got this: "All right sir, you can get the normal detail for $150, or you can get the insured detail for $155. For $150 there's a 1 in 200 chance we won't actually clean your car and we'll return it to you dirty, but we'll still charge you. For $155 we'll refund your money if we don't clean your car."
@8492. "Being poor means you pay more money for not having money. Being rich means you get more money by having money." --Reddit comment
@8493. "I started walkin' the long way home just to think of an alibi..." --"Feelin' Single, Seein' Double", Emmylou Harris
@8494. "Life is more fun when you make funny noises." --me
@8496. "Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process used to make a perfectly good oil, such as soybean oil, into a perfectly bad oil." --http://bantransfats.com
@8497. About 762 billion eggs are produced in the U.S. every year.
--http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=347
@8498. "Build a man a fire, he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life." --Terry Pratchett
@8501. "In Rowe v. City of Elyria, an Ohio man also complained about having to mow the grass, also invoked the 13th Amendment, and also lost. 38 Fed. Appx. 277 (6th Cir. 2002). Bonus points: that plaintiff had demanded $2 million in compensatory damages for the alleged weed-related civil-rights violations." --Lowering the Bar
@8502.
Only LUDDITES use text messages for two-factor authentication. Modern app appers app authentication apps for authentication through apps.
Apps!
--Slashdot comment
September 23, 2017
@8503. "Unfortunately, I still have two pounds of ice on my floor." --me #unusualsentences
@8509. "My point is this. Human beings don't care about type. An apple is an apple, and an orange is an orange, and I can eat them together, cook them into a sauce, bake a pie, cut them up, juice them, or put them into a basket. Whatever I tell you to do with them, you'll never respond with "but apples can't do that because they aren't oranges". Just bake the g.d. pie, because I told you to." --Slashdot comment
@8510. "Now, if you can explain to me why any language would ever use the same symbol for "add" and "concatenate", then you're smarter than I am. For the life of me, I've spent 30 years trying to understand that one. What idiot makes one symbol do two things, and then builds the language to guess which one to do based on the values themselves, at the language-level no less? Idiotic." --Slashdot comment
@8517. I find it rather amusing that the little dial on the side of some pull-paper towel dispensers is labeled the "emergency feed." I can't get any paper towel, it's an EMERGENCY!
@8518. So recently St. Olaf was partially locked down because someone reported a guy walking around campus with two friends carrying a raincoat and a long thin object about two inches in diameter that might be a gun. After a few hours of investigation, it was an umbrella. Boy, someone carrying an umbrella in the rain -- unusual and dangerous.
@8520. "Of course it doesn't work if you don't follow the directions!" --me
{BL #11575}
@8526. Going back to #7899, something from Pastor Lauren's sermon at Our Savior's today: "God's grace is so radical it is offensive."
@8527. "Did you hear about the Nobel laureate who was struck by lightning? He was out standing in his field." --Reddit comment
(Cf. #7351.)
@8529. "At this point I'm fairly certain I would never accept any advice on anything from Gwyneth Paltrow." --me
{BL #12137}
@8531. "The till was completely busted and would be off by $50 or more in either direction no matter what you did." --Reddit comment
@8532. "One day I was looking out the window of my office and four semi trucks drove past one after each other. They were in order Costco, Cosco, Cisco, Sysco. Half the people I mention it to don't care and the other half don't believe me." --Reddit comment
@8533.
Dear (student),
Just letting you know that I see bicycles bicycling.
-Kahzgul
Dear (student),
Just letting you know that we're all crazy everywhere.
You can eat here, enjoy the food.
Thanks,
Kahzguuuuuul
Dear Student (I actually wrote "student" instead of their name),
Student student student. Student.
-Kahzgul
Dear (student),
Just letting you know that office buildings explode.
Love,
Kahzgul
Dear (student),
I don't know why I'm writing this. I see it. Maybe.
Dear (student),
Just letting you know that we're all meeting people all the time
everywhere we go.
Thanks,
Kahzgul (and then I drew a heart with an arrow through it)
Dear (student),
Just letting you know that we're all meeting in my room
tomorrow morning at 9 am. SHARP! sharp. *sharp*.
**SHARPPPPP**.
-**KAHZGUL** (sharp)
--https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/65ylpz/whats_the_weirdest_thing_youve_done_while_your/dgeopnx/
@8534.
I've shared this before, but...
As a teenager, I worked at McDonald's. My McDonald's was 24 hours and, during the summer, I worked the overnight shift. My sleep schedule would get all messed up.
My parents woke me up for dinner one evening. I zombie walked to the table and sat down. My dad asked me to say grace. I bow my head and say, "thank you for choosing McDonald's, may I take your order?"
--Reddit comment
@8537. "Researchers including Amherst College economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, Department of Housing and Urban Development consultant Rick Nevin, and Howard Mielke of Tulane University, say that declining exposure to lead is responsible for up to a 56% decline in crime from 1992 to 2002."
Sure makes you wonder what other stuff in the environment is messing with us right now, just as bad or worse.
@8538. "Oh, for heaven's sake, I'm just rebooting some pizza." --me, after the smoke alarm went off
@8539. Accidentally closed over a hundred tabs and I have no idea what they are. On the plus side, the browser's running a whole lot faster...
@8541. Ideas for ridiculous church names:
* Something apparently utterly unrelated, but for which you could come up with a long-winded description of its relation to your church, e.g., Purple Walrus Lutheran.
* A really large number, e.g., Fifty-Fourth Presbyterian.
October 04, 2017
@8550. I discovered today that Windows 10 still has the Phone Dialer application in C:\Windows\System32. All it gives you is a keypad and ten speed dial slots and allows you to dial numbers on the modem line.
@8551.
"The longer you're around someone, the more attracted you are to them."
(without missing a beat) "That's why I'm so attracted to myself."
{BL #10365}
@8553. To add to the long list of computing metaphors that rather stink (see #5116), "parent/child" in databases. A child cannot have more than one parent, and it can also have zero. Very much like real life there.
(Similarly, in trees: something can have no parent, and can't ordinarily have more than one.)
@8554. "Unsurprisingly, we found out that households cannot borrow unlimited amounts of money in perpetuity without any underlying wage increases that might enable them to pay off those loans." --Ben Studebaker
October 05, 2017
@8555. Learned from a label on my new windows that there's such a thing as the "National Fenestration Rating Council."
@8557. "Segmentation fault!? That's not supposed to happen." --me
@8558. Fun: mypy complains if I don't import Set, List, and Tuple. Pylint complains if I do.
@8560. "You have to use VimScript to write the omnifunc, but get to use Python to write for the Completer API; this by itself should make you want to use the API." --YouCompleteMe user guide
@8561. The Case of the 500-Mile Email: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
@8562. How to park your Bobcat on a truck, OSHA-approved: http://giant.gfycat.com/WillingInsecureErin.gif
@8563. And this is why you should always accept '--help' as an option:
$ horcrux --help
horcrux: invalid option -. Try 'horcrux help' for more info.
{BL #9078}
@8564. One of the classics, in Whitaker's Words:
=>w0uld-you-mind-lighting-me-a-cigarette?
No Match
@8566. "And we know it works, because I copied a lot of this code off StackOverflow." --a senior developer explaining why he rewrote half of the Java datetime libraries
@8568. "Oops. This isn't good, you're getting an error message." --404 page on the FEMA website
October 14, 2017
@8569. "I have a step ladder. I never knew my real ladder, but my step ladder raised me." --Reddit comment
@8570. "No medications have been found to be both safe and effective. Simethicone is safe but does not appear to work, while dicyclomine works but is not safe." --Wikipedia, on baby colic
(Cf. #1296.)
@8571. "Declension tables are not good places to have typos." --me
@8572. For some kind of list of irreversible expressions (the one that got me onto this was in _Imponderables_ and was "short shrift"): putting something on the back burner. "Let's put that on the front burner!"
Update: Another good one: you can plug something in, but you can't "plug it out."
@8573. "Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason [Zaphod Beeblebrox] had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did." --_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
@8575. "Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right number or not..." --beginning of a (wrong-number) message left on my voicemail
@8576.
Q: Why did the old man fall into a well?
A: Because he couldn't see that well.
October 21, 2017
@8577. "You better [manage these plates]. If you drop the lord chancellor's apple, you'll go to prison." --Malcolm's mother, _La Belle Sauvage_
@8578. "[Hannah] pulled a clean piece of paper towards herself and drew lines downwards to divide it into three columns. The first one, 'Boy', she left blank. She knew no boys, except her sister's four-year-old son, and it wasn't going to be him."
@8579. "'What a stupid exercise,' said her [Hannah's] daemon after five minutes. 'Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.'" --Jesper, of crossword puzzles
@8580. "Somehow the boy seemed to be in charge, which hadn't been her intention. Now she [Hannah] had to decide what to do about it."
@8581. "At one point he [Asriel] seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it and holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon..."
@8583. "[Malcolm] thought of including some first-aid materials but decided against them on the grounds that he didn't have any."
@8584. "We know how people make babies, don't we?" --Asta
(Cf. #6121.)
@8585. Orwell, "Politics and the English Language":
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
@8588. "Doris Whicher didn't notice; she was in the throes of a hangover, and the smell of liquor was so strong that Malcolm thought she ought to breathe more carefully near the fire."
@8589. "In any case, I should have thought that the one thing a Sister of Holy Obedience ought to do was obey." --priest trying to take Lyra away from a nunnery
@8590. "Her hair was long and black, and she was dressed in black too, or partially dressed, because she seemed to be wearing clustered ribbons of black silk and very little else." --of Tilda Vasara
@8591. "[Malcolm] shrugged. There was nothing he could do about everything." --after Alice says everything is wrong
@8592. "Yet another unusual sentence involving paprika...that itself is an unusual sentence." --me, #unusualsentences
October 26, 2017
@8593. According to a Slashdot post, 42% of American children under the age of 8 now have their own tablets.
I'm scared as to what's going to happen to the next generation after the Snake People (sorry, "millennials"). They seem to know nothing but the Internet.
@8594. #bandname: Pointer to Void
@8604. "I never could get the hang of Thursdays." --Arthur Dent, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
I think the thing about Thursdays is real. The problem is that it's not Friday, but there's nothing special about it and you're already tired out from the week.
@8614. "Wow, my test passed!" --me
@8616. "I think that toddler looks suspicious." --#overheard at the window in the office
@8618. "Not having apples is hardly an emergency." --me
October 29, 2017
@8619. "Trust corporations, not scientists. Scientists are only in it for the money." --Slashdot comment
@8620. "In China hand weeding of a particular weed in rice paddies has selected for weeds that look identical to rice seedlings. It's become quite a problem!" --Slashdot comment
@8632. "I'm so embarrassed by that treble clef I'm going to get up and get an eraser." --me #unusualsentences
@8636. Class conversation over Skype some weeks ago:
"Soren has the fastest keyboard on both sides of the Mississippi."
"But what about on the Mississippi?"
"That's not a good place for a keybaord."
(something about his typing skills being off after misspelling "keyboard")
"No, you just left your keyboard on the Mississippi for too long."
(The class starts laughing out loud at this exchange.)
@8640. Reformation Sunday, 2017, Our Savior's Lutheran Church, 8:15 AM, children's sermon:
"When was the last time you celebrated 500 years of anything?"
(at the top of her lungs) "My grandma's birthday!"
The entire church burst into hysterical laughter that lasted a good 30 seconds.
@8641. A couple at Hy-Vee, jokingly but pretty dryly, after having trouble finding a spice:
"See, you just need a man to show you where everything is."
(pushing the shopping cart) "I am going to run you over."
@8643. "Compromise is the lifeblood of real democracy. You want to do this, I want to do that; neither of us can have everything we want, so we come up with a compromise we can both live with. It's messy, it's awkward, it doesn't satisfy anybody completely, but it beats the living bejesus out of screaming insults across the cratered and smoking no man's land that passes for a political system today." --JMG
November 04, 2017
@8644. "You're going to see three types of people in your interviews. At one end of the scale, there are the unwashed masses, lacking even the most basic skills for this job. They are easy to ferret out and eliminate, often just by asking two or three quick questions. At the other extreme you've got your brilliant superstars who write lisp compilers for fun, in a weekend, in Assembler for the Nintendo DS." --Joel Spolsky
@8645. "They [people who get things done but aren't smart] are the kind of people who decide to refactor your core algorithms to use the Visitor Pattern, which they just read about the night before, and completely misunderstood, and instead of simple loops adding up items in an array you've got an AdderVistior class (yes, it's spelled wrong) and a VisitationArrangingOfficer singleton and none of your code works any more." --Joel Spolsky
@8646.
Now, don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with Java as an implementation language.
Wait a minute, I want to modify that statement. I'm not claiming, in this particular article, that there's anything wrong with Java as an implementation language. There are lots of things wrong with it but those will have to wait for a different article.
--Joel Spolsky
@8655.
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the man, "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far."
The man below responded, "You must be a manager."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
November 06, 2017
@8660. "Well, it can't be more expensive than Braeburn, can it?" --cashier at Hy-Vee, upon finding that the organic Galas I was purchasing were somehow not in the system
@8661. I tried to call the UPS location in town the other day to double-check that I could pick up a package there before I drove all the way up, but the number provided on the website that claimed it was the number of their office turned out to be a central UPS help line. The guy I talked to claimed they didn't have a phone number. You're telling me that the UPS location in Owatonna doesn't have a TELEPHONE? Nice try.
@8663. "That's good for other reasons too, because judging by The Guardian's reporting, Wilson is a real peach of a human being in general. In 2009, Wilson--who, again, is said to be among the wealthiest men in the UK--sued two tenants for £3,000 because they broke a toilet-seat lid."
--Lowering the Bar
I especially like that it's not even the toilet seat, it's just the toilet-seat *lid*, which apparently was made out of inlaid gold or something. Also, anything involving toilet seats is inherently funny (cf. #7767).
November 09, 2017
@8665. At the reception at the Reformation Basilica concert, I told Alex that I was pretty sure I'd pay $500 just to get the keys and be allowed to freely explore the Basilica for a couple of days. That place is seriously amazing...and I definitely have never gotten over my childhood obsession with exploring large buildings and finding secret nooks and crannies and routes.
@8667. "From now until the end of time, unless and until someone repairs computer components that have nothing, whatsoever, to do with brewing coffee, that Keurig coffee machine will not brew another serving of coffee, ever....My French press, if you were wondering, works fine, despite a completely nonfunctional and nonexistent touch-screen LED. I can even program it to brew coffee at the same time every morning, by setting an alarm clock and getting out of bed when the alarm clock goes off and then using the French press to brew some coffee."
--https://adequateman.deadspin.com/how-not-to-make-coffee-1820399614
November 14, 2017
@8675.
(looking for "wick") "What's that called at the top of the candle?"
(looking at the candles on the altar) "Fire!"
@8679. "You know you're an adult when you start quoting your mother." --me (doing so)
@8681. "The only use of pennies is to avoid getting more." --/r/showerthoughts
@8683. The Promised LAN
@8685. Your friends probably have more friends on average than you do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
@8688. "Having had lunch in the rig and craving dessert, I went into the Chateau to look for ridiculously overpriced ice cream to munch on while I walked partway around the lake and was delighted to find merely overpriced ice cream."
--http://www.raecrothers.ca/blog/the-best-laid-plans/
@8689. "Non-electrical schemes are appropriate for systems that do not use electricity." --Wikipedia
@8690. "Whoa! Lightbulbs falling from the sky!" --me, knocking a box of them off a shelf (fortunately, none came out of the box)
@8691. I was just using a paper towel to dry out the bottom of my trash can and tried to throw that paper towel in the trash can. I was confused by why I couldn't find it for a few seconds.
November 23, 2017
@8693. "Installing Installation Manager" --the software manager at work
@8694. "The operation failed." --entire content of an Outlook error that appeared randomly
@8697. Another something that probably won't go far but that I rather enjoyed writing.
Why you should, in fact, try to do something about climate change and environmental damage. (Executive summary in first paragraph.)
I recently ran into a _Guardian_ article asserting that we should be seeking collective, rather than individual, solutions to our environmental problems, because individual solutions accomplish nothing (link at end). Many people believe this themselves: "My contribution to the issue is so small, there's nothing I can do about it by myself." There is certainly some truth to this; reducing your carbon footprint, for example, will indeed do practically nothing to the world's carbon footprint. But there are two huge problems with this attitude: it is incompatible with our everyday sense of morality, and it fails to account for the absolute necessity of individual action in provoking collective action.
Before I begin, let me note that I don't want to discount all of the message of the original article I'm partially responding to. Corporate greed is a real part of our environmental problems, and large-scale responses reasonably must involve the government somewhere. Collective action is necessary. The problem is that individual action is also necessary, and the article discounts this entirely.
Let's start by looking at what collective action on environmental issues has accomplished thus far and why it has failed to accomplish more. Pick your favorite issue: climate change, resource depletion, pollution, acidification of the oceans, mass extinction, whatever. As long as there is no straightforward solution, like banning the use of DDT or CFCs and replacing them with other substances that do precisely the same thing without the same environmental damage, there is really only one issue: we have to substantially change the way we're acting, or else come up with some dramatic deus-ex-machina breakthrough, to stop damaging the planet.
The unfortunate truth is that since the environmental and social movements of the 70s collapsed, collective environmental action has accomplished very little. Sure, our cars burn less gas per mile traveled and our lightbulbs use a quarter of the electricity. We've started growing tiny fractions of our food in slightly more sustainable ways. We've stopped using CFCs and the ozone layer is returning to normal even more quickly than we predicted. These are, for the most part, improvements. But our total impact is still increasing, and we have still put only the tiniest dent in the actual problem. The truth of the matter is that we have made no dramatic breakthroughs and have done nothing to change our lives, and the only way to put a big dent in the problem is by changing our lives.
Meanwhile, most "environmentalists" who say they are advocating for meaningful action are not showing much willingness to do anything meaningful themselves. Things like taking two steps to the side at Wal-Mart in order to buy LED lightbulbs and organic produce do not count as meaningful. These things do not require any kind of sacrifice or lifestyle change, and merely buying "green" products has no more power to help anyone deal with environmental problems at large than driving a Prius has the power to spray a stream of green plants and flowers behind the car on the highway, as in the commercials.
Meaningful lifestyle change actually happened in the 70s. People were encouraged to drive less, and gasoline was rationed. The politically created scarcity of oil reminded Americans that civilization was on a crash course for all kinds of other problems, and they responded by forming new kinds of organizations, planting gardens, and actually *not doing* things they otherwise would have because of their environmental impact. And it looked like we might actually correct our course and not only save energy but improve our communities and lives as well. But when the oil started looking plentiful again, the movement disappeared along with the crisis, disappeared so completely that many people who didn't live through it are essentially unaware it even happened. Today, we show no willingness to return to this kind of meaningful change. We'll swap out our lightbulbs for more efficient ones, we say, but there's no practical way the modern, worldly American can accomplish anything more than that.
And why should we try to do more than that, as individuals? Undoubtedly, that's a question many are asking themselves after a large group of climate scientists around the world signed another "warning to humankind" the other day. The signatories to this warning are not taking concrete individual action to prevent the eventualities they're warning about. To take only one example, many if not most of them incessantly fly around the world to conferences and meetings -- one of the very worst things an individual can do for their carbon footprint -- all the while proclaiming that we need to burn less fuel. For most of us, this sits about as well as seeing the cops speed past us on the freeway at 90mph with their lights off. It's next to impossible to see why *we* should use less gasoline or drive at the speed limit when the people who are telling us to do those things aren't doing it themselves.
This is the central cause of the failure of the current environmental movement: We do not want to come to terms with the magnitude of the damage we are doing and the future pain we are creating for ourselves and start looking into how we can stop doing this, because then we are brought face-to-face with the answer, which is that there is no easy solution. Even the people who study what we are doing to the planet refuse to do it, and the rest of us see that and come to the conclusion that there is nothing we can do.
* * *
So where is the problem with climate scientists jetting around the world? The carbon footprint of climate-related air travel is not all that big; it's not a whole lot of people, and they don't each consume *all* that much more fuel than the average citizen of a developed country. Can they go on doing whatever they want, because they make only an insignificant contribution to the problem?
Actually, *most* everyday actions have an insignificant impact in the grand scheme of things, and at least in most people's everyday sense of morality, that has no bearing on whether those actions are right. Take littering. I cause hardly any damage by throwing one pop can on the ground. Yet most socially conscious Americans today would intentionally litter only in extraordinary circumstances; we've agreed it's wrong, because the result if everyone does it is disastrous. Or, to look at a more extreme example, take murder. This does worse damage and affects more people than littering, but if I'm the only one who kills someone, that's still a drop in the bucket compared to all the problems and suffering in the world. Is it no big deal if I kill my neighbor?
These are not random examples. Virtually everything we do in modern industrial society, like it or not, is covering the planet with garbage, reducing the life expectancies of our descendants, and reducing the freedom of the less fortunate (both those living today and those who will live in the future). It is true that, aside from living in a cabin in the wilderness for the rest of our lives -- which itself would be unsustainable if everyone on the planet today did it -- we cannot eliminate this impact, any more than any human ever alive has been able to avoid killing any other living thing or permanently spreading out some of the universe's finite amount of concentrated energy. But this does not mean we cannot reduce our impact, and to the extent that anyone is morally obligated to do anything, I think we are all morally obligated to, at a minimum, work to understand the approximate environmental consequences of our actions and make an honest effort at reducing our impact, which will include some big decisions and real sacrifices. If we have very little money or means, we may not be able to do much, and that's okay (although sometimes it is possible to both save money and reduce our environmental impact, which should be an attractive proposition). If we have a lot, we can and should do more.
I hope it is clear that I am not arguing that everyone who gets on an airplane is a horrible person. Nor am I saying that climate scientists should absolutely never fly anywhere while attempting to understand what we're doing to our planet. There is more nuance to life than that. I am, however, suggesting that perhaps, if climate scientists want to be taken seriously and look like they are making some attempt to fulfill their personal moral responsibility, they just might find it helpful to actually take some publicly visible action to reduce their personal carbon footprints, such as, oh I don't know, agreeing to each cut out a certain ambitious percentage of flights per year, signing a big sheet of paper with a tabloid-headline title that splashes across the pages of the national newspapers, and actually sticking to it. Such an action would accomplish far more, both in terms of actual results and public opinion, than all their "warnings" and prominent meta-analyses put together.
It's true that your individual choices, or those of the world's climate scientists, will not, in themselves, save the world. But using the fact that we can't save the world by ourselves as an excuse for doing absolutely nothing is just that: an excuse, a lazy way to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions. And while the author of the Guardian article I read was not suggesting that everyone do nothing at all, his suggestion that we instead take political action to force big business to be more environmentally conscious still has the effect of conveniently eliminating individual responsibility from the equation and convincing us that we don't have an obligation to truly change our lives. Claiming that forcing fossil fuel companies and greedy big business to behave is all the change we need is like claiming that forcing gun sellers to do better background checks will solve America's gun violence problem. Sure, it wouldn't hurt, but it's only a small part of the problem. The real problem is the way we, the citizens of America, behave, and while it would be helpful for the government to make our choices easier through taxes and regulation, we still have a responsibility to choose correctly, just like we have a responsibility not to kill our neighbors regardless of whether the law says we can't.
* * *
That was our moral obligation. Is there any other reason to take individual action? To make a conscious effort to live differently in our own lives? As a matter of fact, there is.
It really isn't true that you as an individual have no power to cause greater change simply through how you live. Even massive, organized social movements -- the ones that cause real change throughout a society -- start with a few people, or even one person. Once in a while something as simple as refusing to give up your bus seat can kick off those changes. At the risk of oversimplifying, the civil rights movement didn't work because oppressed people petitioned a higher authority for help. It most certainly didn't work because people decided they were free to sit around on their duffs while waiting for someone else to solve the problem because there was nothing they could do by themselves. It worked because a few people decided what was happening was wrong and began quietly changing their lives to protest. Then a few more people saw, realized they should change their lives a bit too, and joined. Then, under competent leadership, a *lot* of people joined, and it became too difficult to ignore. The bus boycotts didn't work by directly pursuing political and organizational change, they worked by getting so many people to refuse to participate in an immoral system that political change became inevitable.
Another social movement is, hopefully, starting around us right now: one aiming to address the ridiculous frequency of sexual harassment, coercion, and abuse of power in certain industries. People have been trying to address these kinds of problem through various forms of legislation and activism for years. Has the issue finally started coming to our attention because people started insisting more loudly that Hollywood or Washington address the problem? No, it's starting because a number of brave individuals have decided to break out and "rock the boat" -- disrupting the status quo and violating others' expectations of them -- and share their experiences with the world. The political and organizational changes will happen once a large number of people have seen and been convinced of the tremendous magnitude of the problem, understood the social factors that allow this to take place, and thought about how we can change them.
Now granted, a famous actor accusing Harvey Weinstein has a lot more influence than me lowering my thermostat a few degrees and biking to work. And you will probably never be one of the handful of people like Rosa Parks who lights the fuse, regardless of what method you choose to pursue change. But it is in the nature of democracy that societal change can occur only after a sufficient degree of public awareness and will is raised. We are nowhere near that point on the issues of climate change, resource depletion, and many more. Sure, most people agree that these are issues, to some extent or another, but addressing these issues requires us to change our lives by making real sacrifices, and these sacrifices will not be only on the part of ExxonMobil executives. Until a large number of individuals begin to make these sacrifices, no sane legislature will begin to take meaningful collective action, because such meaningful action will reduce the living standards of its constituents and require changes that nearly everybody considers unacceptable. Will the government put substantial environmental taxes on the passenger air travel industry -- which currently accounts for a whopping 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions -- when even the people who are telling us why we need to reduce our emissions are still flying more than necessary? Yeah, right. We have to make these kinds of changes seem acceptable first, and that can only happen when we change ourselves, find that it's okay, and encourage others to do the same.
The success of civil disobedience movements shows that we don't have to go around preaching to start convincing others to join us. Quietly recognizing that the status quo is wrong and standing apart from it is already extremely threatening to those in power. I've seen that I don't have to say a single word about someone else's choices to make them get defensive about their own environmental impact -- and, once in a while, make them start questioning whether they ought to be doing something as well. All I have to do is try to do something, however insufficient it may be, and as a result look a bit different.
Look different.
(Responding to: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals)
{BL #9183}
November 26, 2017
@8699. I lost my mitten on my hand on Wednesday. I was walking to work and stopped to write something down, so I removed one of my mittens. When I was done, I only had one mitten tucked under my arm (since I'd only taken off one) and started searching the path for where I'd dropped the other one.
@8700. This morning I drove all the way to church in first gear. Okay, okay, it was "L", which still allows the transmission to adjust a bit, but it was still artificially limited to lower gear ratios. I did notice that it was a little hard to accelerate, but I figured the engine was just taking a little longer than usual to warm up. I only realized what happened when I got to church and couldn't shift into park (because the shifter was over in the little "L" notch to the left).
@8701. Looking for some Moleskine notebooks on Amazon...several listed as "condition: used, like new." I'm pretty sure a used notebook cannot be "like new", by definition.
@8702. Also, they appear to have stopped making my little green pocket notebooks. I got two more on eBay, and assuming the stocks are right at this one funny bookstore, I'll have twenty more magenta ones. Can't say I fancy magenta that much, but they'll be the same books.
So ten to fifteen years before I have to go looking again, hopefully. The damn things are *perfect*, I can't fathom why they stopped selling them. Moleskine is really selling branded garbage nowadays more than good notebooks, to be fair.
@8706. "No no no no, let's load-test it. Let's everyone hit Refresh at the same time." --#overheard at work during the intranet outage
@8711. Had a hilariously awesome dream last night in which I defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election. The only problem was that at the victory party, various people kept realising that I wasn't 35 yet and therefore wasn't *technically* eligible to be president. Each time someone would realise that I'd have to tell them "Quiet! Do you really want people to find out about that? If you tell anyone, Donald Trump stays president!" By the end of the dream the entire country knew I was still too young but no one was willing to do anything about it.
--Benjamin Studebaker
@8712. "Some day she'll have a degree in cigarette making." --#overheard on the 145.490 repeater
(Cf. #6372, #7635.)
December 05, 2017
@8716. The <marquee> tag is indisputably my favorite HTML tag.
@8720. I think we've got to put a mention in here of the MacOS bug in the most recent release of High Sierra, which allowed any user to log in as 'root', no password, with the root account disabled. All you had to do was bring up a user authentication prompt, type 'root' in the username box, and click the OK button several times. At first it would fail, but then something happened that made it accept it. Further, once you'd done this once, it would even allow this to be done *remotely*.
Cf. https://www.xkcd.com/424/.
@8721. "We will have more chances in our life to make egg salad. ...Probably." --me
December 07, 2017
@8722. "My suite of 7 unit tests will ensure that there is nothing wrong with the application." --me
@8732. "Sentient earphones" --#hypnagogia
@8733. "Oh dang, I wish there were more Christmas concerts around here!" --me to Mama, of how everyone and his brother seems to think it's necessary to do a Christmas concert
@8737. "A 1982 Apple Computer manual for developers advised against using blinking text, warning that 'flashing [text] should only be used to indicate imminent destruction of data or the program'." --Wikipedia, on the <blink> tag
@8739. "I should buy a stool. It's a lot cheaper than an emergency-room visit." --me
@8740. "It was my impression that the defining characteristic of juice was that it was liquid..." --me, seeing an ingredient marked as "dehydrated [vegetable] juice"
@8744. "Their consistency is like the flowers of the field." --lector in church on Advent 2, for "constancy"
@8749. "Now we're just opening up a whole can of worms. Like, am I fifth cousins with Wal-Mart?" --Scott, after I mentioned that most people are only a few degrees of cousinness (?) away from about 50% of other people in the world, and he noted that corporations are people
@8750. "choppin' in a winter wonderland" --me, attempting to sing along while chopping an onion
@8753. "If you can read and have an oven and a work space, there is no reason why you can't make a decent loaf of bread." --James Beard
@8756. "If it's an instance method, you should need to have an instance to call it. If you don't, it probably shouldn't be an instance method..." --StackOverflow comment
@8757. Between 2011 and 2013, China consumed more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-used-more-concrete-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-used-in-the-entire-20th-century-infographic/#5c99ae6c4131
December 18, 2017
@8758. "If someone sees you reading Heidegger on a train, they might think you would be an interesting person to have sex with. If they see you reading Dewey, there is a risk they will think you would be an excellent person to serve on a committee." --Peter Godfrey-Smith
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXFd8XEKMo2JgzguF4goqWkn3XjOA0X8/view?ts=5a381042
@8760. "I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make me do so, it would be Aristotle's arguments against him." --Bertrand Russell
December 20, 2017
@8761. I woke up this morning and my tessitura is an entire octave lower than normal. I can only sing about six pitches without cracking...but those six (between low C -- a note I normally can't even sing at all -- and F) sound gorgeous! Also, I have a super-dramatic falsetto that doesn't exist normally. I made a recording on my voice recorder, I'll have to try to remember to save that.
@8762. There are more molecules in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic Ocean.
--random fact from Reddit
@8765. "That was when the Republican Party in the US, the Conservative Party in Britain, and their equivalents elsewhere embraced the view that the sole business of government was to make rich people richer while kicking the poor in the face." --JMG
December 29, 2017
@8766. On a day when the train was 2.5 hours late due to mechanical problems presumably caused by the cold, we went by a section of track with a bunch of switches...and the switches were literally on fire. We were all gawping and posting pictures on Facebook, and then the conductor comes by.
"Don't worry, the fire is normal," he says.
Apparently when it gets really cold, the switches can freeze up, which is a problem because the computer-operated ones don't have human operators to give them some elbow grease. So they purposefully light fires (I'm not sure with what; they are quite yellow-orange and not pure gas -- maybe kerosene) over the switches to keep them warm.
@8767. #8766: That is, the tracks were a fire risk. (Cf. #1408.)
@8769. "I am not amused by bay leaf antics." --me, taking more than a minute to extract the leaf from my beans
@8770. "I doubt that many people are heaving $5,000 barometers into the ocean. Feel free to disagree." --http://www.charlesedwin.com/mercury.htm
January 01, 2018
@8772. "When we disagree about the contents of the memo, that makes me think you didn't read it." --Slashdot comment
@8773. Happy new year, by the way.
@8774. Starting bid: USD $316.86
@8775. "Completed Infinity %" --Vivaldi, when downloading a file of unknown size
January 02, 2018
@8777. So in addition to the engine failure and fire on the tracks in #8766, there was a bird in the lounge car while we were waiting to depart. I'm not sure how they got it out. I guess it must have flown in when the door was open while they were coupling or something.
@8785. "I was going to test in prod, and then I thought, you know, I probably shouldn't do that." --#overheard at the office
@8786. The organized, secure way of getting a password you use at work at home: Take a photo of the screen displaying a Notepad document containing the password you need.
@8790. "J4Log" --#overheard in the training room
@8791. 1/4 of all known species on Earth are types of beetles.
--random fact from Reddit
@8792. If you could fold a piece of paper 42 times, it would reach the moon.
--random fact from Reddit
@8793. My car chimed at me for like 5 minutes on the way back from church tonight because the passenger-seat weight sensor was a little confused and my choir folder didn't have its seat belt on. #musiclivesmatter.
@8795. "[A]s Sullum points out only too well, truth, common sense, and pragmatism have never had much to do with drug policy in the United States." --Amazon book review
@8797. The Cleveland Browns have set a dubious NFL record this year: they are the first NFL team in history to finish the season 0 and 16.
@8804. "Type that in, and turn SafeSearch off." --someone in training suggesting we look up Margot Robbie
@8805. "I just said how attainable Jennifer Lawrence was!" --#overheard in the same conversation
@8806. "But apparently we all were overlooking the greatest reason for this magnificent achievement in aviation history: the presidency of Donald Trump." --article on the fact that there were no fatalities in commercial aviation in 2017, https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/contributors/if-your-plane-didn-t-crash-in-2017-thank-president-trump-wXdEw5kzCUSEQ-r28bfl9g?full=1
@8807. "It is important that salt and pepper be in the correct shaker, especially if they are not glass, so guests will not accidentally put salt on their food when they want pepper, or vice versa." --Wikipedia
@8808. "So much for the hypocritical oath." --#whoopstypo in a discussion about medical ethics on Facebook
@8809. Yesterday I put an LP on my turntable and played the whole side through. Then when I picked it up to flip it over, I noticed there was a second disc underneath it. Somehow I didn't notice there was already a disc on the player and just plopped the new one directly on top of it. Even more surprisingly, I didn't notice any difference in quality or behavior.
@8811. Even though 47 million Americans are on food stamps and millions of children go to bed hungry in this country every single night, we continue to waste approximately 263 million pounds of food *every single day* of the year.
--https://www.activistpost.com/2013/10/about-40-percent-of-all-food-in-united.html
@8812. "Squirrels are rats with bushy tails and good PR." --Reddit comment
@8813. I'm pleased to see that the directions for Form 1040 point out explicitly that you can't deduct your federal income taxes from your income on your federal income taxes. Because I would have thought that made sense unless they pointed it out.
@8814. "Trump attacks protections for immigrants from 'shithole' countries" --Washington Post headline
Seeing the word "shithole" in the _Washington Post_ serves to remind me just how far America has fallen...
@8815. "They need to poof down a bit first. That's the technical term." --me, describing what happens to high-rising cookies as they cool
January 12, 2018
@8816. So you've probably heard the one about over half of Americans not having enough cash on hand to cover an unexpected $500 expense. But how about this one: fully 50% of Americans *who earn more than $75,000 per year* don't have enough cash on hand to cover an unexpected $500 expense.
Not a whole lot of excuse for that one.
@8818. I'm interested tonight by the fact that nobody has ever convincingly scientifically established any remedy for an average case of hiccups, but everyone has their own method which basically works perfectly 95% of the time. It's hard to know if it's placebo, or just difficult to study properly for some reason, or what, but it's curious.
@8821. "If you're giving up stuff that you truly care about, then you're not being frugal, you're being cheap."
@8822. NASA: 'We Will Have A Mass Shooting On The Moon By 2055'
@8823. To smash a 2x4 long ways (without letting it bend) takes 36,400 pounds.
--random fact from Reddit
@8824. "Wow, that's service! We just sat down!" --a family sitting down in a restaurant empty except for three staff and me and being immediately presented with menus
@8829. #overheard coming from the just-opened elevator door across from my office at Federated:
"She has some empathy!"
"No she doesn't! Don't tell her that."
@8831. Had the thought the other day that much like Freud's assertion that dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious," perhaps music is the royal road to the divine.
{BL #10350}
@8834. One of the anthems we did for Christmas this year contained the phrase "clear shining light," but it was misspelled "chear shining light." I had to ask a couple of people to be completely confident it wasn't a word I'd never heard of before!
(Cf. #6043, #2824)
@8835. Lock the Taskbar [Rock the Casbah]
@8836. "zerreißet die Tage" --what I kept hearing "auf, preiset die Tage" in the Christmas Oratorio as this Christmas
@8838. I continue to find it very curious that some people have no issues at all with English spelling, while others just cannot seem to get the hang of it. Further, I don't know many people who are very intelligent but can't spell, even though otherwise there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of correlation. Might be interesting to study the literature on this a bit; I'm sure some work has been done on effective teaching strategies and so on.
(Perhaps a general tendency to remember fine details without particular effort is part of both high general intelligence and spelling ability, for example?)
@8839. I developed a theory this summer but as far as I can tell never wrote it down that many, many problems are a combination of bad design and bad users (with both of those things being able to be defined liberally). For instance, a car accident may be a result of both the driver not paying attention and the car being designed in a way so that the driver was less likely to be able to pay attention. I'm having trouble actually coming up with good examples right now, but the main point is that we tend to seize on one or the other, and both are horribly wrong. If you point out the design when you make a mistake, you're taken as complaining; but then if you say people are just stupid when they make a mistake in your system, you're missing a big opportunity to prevent it from happening in the future. To effectively address big problems, it's crucial to attack them from both sides.
(Cf. §PeopleDontThinkTheyCanDoThings.)
@8840. For the first time in ages upon ages, I have successfully cleared ALL items out of PB as I move into a new book. Feels pretty good, and it wasn't even that hard...just took writing out a few RT entries and transferring some things to different places. I should work on that more often...
@8842. "No. This is serious. I understand that as a work-around, Linus had to go to the park and yell at strangers." --Slashdot comment on a post about the Linux kernel mailing list being down
@8848. "We waited so long to try to flag down our server or anyone else for our meals that we just decided to get dessert elsewhere and call it a night. Server took my wife's credit card, went around a corner, then we heard a loud bang and some animated conversation. Server comes back and says their credit card machine is busted and hands my wife back her now dented credit card. Server asked if we had cash, we didn't, so she just told us to go." --Reddit comment
@8849. "Around 8:05 a.m., the Hawaii emergency employee initiated the internal test, according to a timeline released by the state. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: 'Test missile alert' and 'Missile alert.' He was supposed to choose the former; as much of the world now knows, he chose the latter." --Washington Post report on the false nuclear warning sent to Hawaii last Saturday
@8852. "Thanks for the tip about opening the laptop!" --#overheard at the office
@8855. "If your income is less than the rent you paid, enclose an explanation." --on a Minnesota tax form
@8858. "Why do they always have to put celery in everything?! God!" --#overheard from the elevator at the office
@8861. I noticed with some amusement today that from time to time I still refer to the bedroom as "my room."
@8862. "It used to be deprecated, but is now undeprecated, so you can use it again." --StackOverflow post on Python's callable()
@8863. Working on the validation for rolling dice in Lyra and the song "Never Say Die" comes on.
(Cf. #8350.)
@8864. "If you set this to True except in the tester, Lyra will not work."
--ominous comment in my Lyra config file
@8865. "I'm going to end up pulling out a rat or something someday..." --me, of the cabinet to the left of my sink
@8866. "O comrades, fear no blasphemy" --#mondegreen for "fill no glass for me"
@8867. "Parivacy Policy" --on a rather sketchy-looking streaming website
@8870. "It's carrots in the atmosphere and whatnot." --#hypnagogia
@8871. Had a random thought the other night that maybe what the alchemists in HdM are up to (something I've been puzzling about for a while after Makepeace in LO) is figuring out how to recreate the alloy needed to build an alethiometer; this is according to my understanding of LBS knowledge that has been lost. (And maybe it's the same thing the subtle knife was made of?)
@8872. I read a study recently that suggested maybe a big part of the decline in memory as we age is just that we have trouble getting good sleep. This made me think about the purpose of sleep again, which we still don't really understand. And I was wondering if maybe sleep is actually intimately connected to consciousness in some way we can't really understand.
@8875. "It's a British thing." --me, of the prefix "para-", intending to say "Greek"
@8881. I don't think I've broken anything or injured myself substantially since the summer. I'm starting to wonder if I'm due for some big incident...
January 22, 2018
@8882. Well, they sent us home early at 1:30 today. My window is covered halfway up and I can't really see out of anything that has a screen, and the wind is whistling by. But I've got my tea and my blanket and I'm working on my insurance. I think the right number of times to get snowed in per winter is exactly one: more than that is a bother, less is no fun. So right now we're perfect.
@8883. "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today."
@8884. The snowplow has been in the lot for almost four hours now. It takes a while to completely clear a foot of snow out of the lot...
@8886. During a massive rainstorm, a dam broke near a small town. An evacuation warning was issued. Most of the residents proceeded to leave promptly, but one man stayed behind. When his neighbors asked him why, he said, "God will protect me."
The water reached the town, and the streets were flooded under several feet of water. Another straggler came by in a boat and offered the man a lift. But he refused, saying, "God will protect me."
The water continued to rise. The man had to climb up on the roof to stay out of the floodwaters. After a few hours, a rescue helicopter came by and lowered a rope to the man, but he shouted out, "I'm okay! God will protect me!" Eventually the helicopter gave up and flew off.
The water rose above the top of the house and the man drowned. He arrived in heaven and immediately went to see God, angry that he had trusted in God and still drowned. He said, "God, why didn't you save me from drowning?"
God said, "Well, I sent you a radio warning, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?"
@8887. "This app is glitchier and more unstable than Windows 95 with system files removed, and is less functional than the about:blank page on Google Chrome." --app store review, via /r/ProgrammerHumor
{BL #11359}
@8888. "Oh, your headset fell apart? I heard your *head* fell apart." --phone conversation #overheard at the office
@8891. I don't think I remembered to note anywhere that on Christmas Eve, I blew my candle out twice during "Silent Night" by singing a loud consonant directly in front of the flame. As ridiculous as it is, it could maybe actually make a good visualization for people who aren't doing enough consonantization.
@8892. "MailChimp. Works great, if you actually send a newsletter out." --P.J., Reply All
@8893. "Poorly constructed overhead slides don't normally kill people, but they do often leave people in the dark."
--http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html, on bad data design's contribution to the Challenger explosion
@8896. So I called a place that was listed all over as offering violin work in Owatonna, and it turns out the business has been closed for *six years* but it keeps being advertised and the phone number is still accessible and still goes to someone related to the business.
@8897. For the list of word usages that are wrong in very subtle ways that are hard to explain but still wrong: "This (code) only needs to be added in extenuating circumstances."
@8901. "What happens in St. Cloud unfortunately does not stay in St. Cloud." --Scott
@8903. "Get paid. Get laid. Gatorade." --https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7tkjuv/what_is_something_you_can_do_that_feels_instantly/dtd5i4k/
@8904. This story involves me not receiving a wrong-number call, but facilitating one.
When I was a teenager I felt like making a creative prank call, so I used my dad's home-office phone to make a prank conference call. I called one random number and while it started ringing I called another random number on the other line and patched it through. The timing was perfect and the 1st person said "hello?", to which the second (friendly) person replied "oh hello how are you?"
They made small talk for about 3 minutes before realizing that neither of them had called the other, and they hung up, very confused.
I was very proud.
--Reddit comment
@8906. The only US state whose name doesn't share any letters with the word "mackerel" is Ohio.
--random fact from Reddit
Update: I got curious the other day and wanted to verify it was actually true, so I hacked up some PowerShell to check, and it is!
February 03, 2018
@8912. An orchestra of 120 players takes 40 minutes to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony. How long would it take 60 players to play the symphony? Let P be number of players and T the time playing.
--seen in a "not how any of this works" meme
@8913. "The investigation confirmed that [the] script for the drill included the phrase 'this is not a drill.'" --another report on the Hawaii missile warning incident
@8914. "Everyone has a test environment. Some are lucky enough to have a production environment too."
@8915. "Note: *Never* try this, for reasons which will become obvious in a moment." --xkcd What If
@8916. "The paper goes on to react FOOF with everything else you wouldn't react it with: ammonia ('vigorous', this at 100K), water ice (explosion, natch), chlorine ('violent explosion', so he added it more slowly *the second time*)."
--https://web.archive.org/web/20150419004200/http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php
@8917. "For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes." --in related material to the above
February 05, 2018
@8918. Not a police officer, but I got pulled over, and I thought it was because of the illegal U-turn I had done. As usual the officer goes, "Do you know why I pulled you over?" I sheepishly responded, "Because I did an illegal U-turn". He kinda just stared for a moment and switched on my headlights and said, "Your headlights are off, and stop doing illegal U-turns." --Reddit comment, with grammar corrections (it was bad)
@8919. "You don't need a parachute to go skydiving. You need a parachute to go skydiving twice."
@8921. "Amazon pulls hair dryer after woman discovers it shoots fire" --from /r/nottheonion
February 12, 2018
@8922. "Do you listen to all the credits? Because if you do, you're fantastic. Please tweet the word 'discretion' at Alex Goldman, without any explanation." --Reply All
@8924. The 1966 'Jost Report' found that poorly lubricated surfaces -- sticky ball bearings, rusty train rails, and the like -- cost Britain 1.4% of its GDP.
--https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams-persist
@8925. Visual Studio uses a file with extension '.vssscc' to keep track of source control details...
@8930. "If VLC can't read it, it's probably an Excel file."
@8937. "typeo"
@8938. I had to report an error in the "learning check" for one of the PluralSight courses I took. The error was that one of the questions contained the word "aatavjj". I was not entirely sure what it was supposed to mean!
@8940. I think I've identified one issue that makes learning from written text often more effective than videos when there's no strong visual component to the content: in general, the quality of the phrasing in videos when people are speaking over them on the fly is not as good as when it's written out. That means sometimes you unnecessarily have to back up and go over it a couple of times to understand what the person meant -- and this is itself more difficult than it would be in writing.
@8941. Someone pointed out to me on Reddit the other day that 2040 is now closer than 1995. Sure makes you feel old...it's only in the last couple years that I've managed to get out of the habit of thinking of the nineties as fairly recent.
@8942. "When we're working in BIDS, we usually execute the package to test the process before we put the package into production." --Stacia Misner, SSIS course
@8943. The guy who did the course on PowerShell I studied today at work consistently pronounces "console" as "cownsole."
@8944. "But you won't see the change until you close the dialog box......or, if you move the dialog box out of the way." --Stacia Misner, doing so after a slight pause, seeming as though she had a suspicion that the first half wasn't strictly true
@8950. So my work phone has a backlight that comes on when you press a button or receive a call. It then stays on for a period of one hour. One whole hour. This is not a configurable setting.
(Cf. #7609, #9004.)
@8951. "Don't bother trying to teach [a cat] the word 'no'. They understand it perfectly, but they just ignore it."
@8952. "This askreddit post is asking for male advice and most of what the guy said is useful advice if you have friends. I'm guessing you may not though because you're kind of an asshole."
@8953. Learned an awesome word today: shrinkflation. It's when the price of an item stays the same but the unit price increases because you get less in the package.
@8954. Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world's guns.
--https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html
@8955. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner...but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process.
--https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html
@8956. Insert Card As Shown: https://i.imgur.com/zEH1zQV.gifv
@8957. Yes Instant Pot, clearly when I fatfingered the dial a little bit I wanted to put my rice on to pressure-cook for six hours.
@8958. "Do make sure to regularly test the copies. Nobody makes backups because it's such fun to make backups; people make backups in order to be able to restore a working copy of the file in question."
--https://michael.kjorling.se/computers/passwords#backup
@8959. Write-Once, Read-Never
@8960. "Crap, I got honey on my commitment form." --me #unusualsentences
@8961. Please Urinate with Precision and Elegance
February 20, 2018
@8966. Last November, a Japanese rail company made a formal apology and launched a brief investigation when one of their trains inadvertently left 20 seconds early. In America I'd be surprised if someone apologized if a train left 20 *minutes* early.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/17/japanese-rail-company-apologises-train-20-seconds-early
@8968. "The inventions today are maximizing by the minute." --Wikipedia
February 25, 2018
@8969. Just seen out my window: a sedan driving past with a lunchbox on the roof. It didn't look terribly stable, but it was staying in place at about 25mph.
@8970. "I spilled flour on my plant." --me, #unusualsentences
@8979. "Mildly interesting devotions. They were a good sight better than average because people actually concentrated on what we were doing instead of talking about diarrhea for once." --found in my LSM journal for July 17, 2012
@8980. "My method [of defrosting the freezer] involved leaving the freezer open and unplugged while I went to Google 'how to defrost a freezer'." --me, day of July 26, 2012
@8981. "I threw out a lot of pens I'm never going to use and pencils that were two inches long, along with 3.5" diskette labels, 10-year-old glue, and the like." --July 28
@8982. "The combination does not open the locker." --my problem description for a locker repair form, August 6, 2012
@8983. "So I was playing Uplink, and while changing someone's academic record I put in a graduate qualification in 'Bullshitting qualifications'. Some time later I receive another mission and go, 'Wait a minute, I recognize that name.' Yep, sure enough, the guy now requires a *first-class* degree in 'bullshitting qualifications.'" --me, qtd. in entry of August 9
@8984. "Also, I seem to be sleeping through my Neverlate alarm clock, which is very strange because I can't recall *ever* sleeping through an alarm clock before. It's possible something is screwy with the clock, but it seems more likely something is screwy with me." --August 16
@8987. "Behind an old fragment of particle board leaning against the bathroom wall under the stairs [at Sunnyside], I found a bottle of rum. None of us had ever seen it, so we can only conclude that it had been there since before we bought the house." --December 27, 2012
@8988. From 'it-log': I taught someone how to scan from the copier. After doing so, he then asked how he could print what he'd just scanned from the copier.
"...You mean copy it?"
@8989. "One of the library workers noticed the lights in the atrium were off and went to try to turn them on; she wound up turning off a wide variety of lights all around the library, including not only the ones right above our heads but also half of floor 3½ and large parts of 4 and 5. Quite a few people came and complained. Eventually we found the right light switch -- totally on the opposite side of the room, on a pillar by itself, and with a big sticker reading 'ATRIUM LIGHTS.'" --Ibid.
@8990. According to The Art of Manliness, you would have to make 40% more money to compensate for a long commute (45 minutes vs. 10 minutes one-way) in terms of its effect on your happiness.
@8991. If money can solve a problem, and you have the money necessary, don't be afraid to use it.
--Lifehacker
@8992. "I was worried we were going to have lutefisk or something." --at the new member luncheon, from someone who was formerly Methodist
@8995. "Do you want me to go home so you can use my desk? Trying to help a teammate." --#overheard at the office
@8996. Factless Fact Table
@9001. IT'S OVER 9000!
@9002. "Geez. Computers." --me
@9004. Another dumb thing about my desk phone at work: even when the phone rings and I answer it and talk to the caller, my phone still informs me that I had "1 new caller" and makes me manually clear it. I'm quite clear on that, phone.
(Cf. #8950.)
@9005. In line with #5886, some on my experience of being forced to use Windows at work over the past eight months or so (and the foreseeable future...). At first I found myself quite impressed by Windows; there are some slick things. I really like jump lists on the taskbar; the way programs integrate together neatly is often pretty nice. There are many well-designed GUIs and useful buttons and features.
I've said before that where it fails is when you want to do something outside of what Microsoft planned. What I realized sometime in the last couple of days is that this exposes a basic difference in intent. Unix, while originally a proprietary product for sure, grew out of a hacker community that was very focused on finding creative solutions to problems and helping other people out. So Unix is based on the principle of empowering users to solve their own problems. If a user can't figure out how to do something, or they issue a command that says to permanently delete the entire contents of the hard drive without confirmation, well tough on them. If the user does want to do something, Unix makes it possible, and when they start doing it, it gets out of their way.
Software by Microsoft and friends (especially including Windows since we compared to Unix, but both are really ecosystems rather than just operating systems) is based on the principle of making money for software companies. Back from the very beginning when Bill Gates wrote that famous open letter about hobbyists pirating his software, he was focused on the ability of enterprising people to make money from software. Now naturally of course Windows is not without its benefits to the user; if it didn't do *something* useful for the user it wouldn't have risen to its current state of prominence and it wouldn't be around now. It's not optimal certainly, but for that matter neither is Unix or anything else. But the core principles are not based on empowering the user. They're not even really based on being helpful to the user; being helpful to the user is a core goal only insofar as it's necessary to make the company money.
There's nothing intrinsically bad about capitalism necessarily, but I think it's pretty clear which philosophy is better for people. Not necessarily in terms of being easy and fun and pretty, and even necessarily in terms of being effective at getting a certain job done (because for people who are not experts, there are good arguments to be made for the Microsoft way in these dimensions). But which philosophy makes people satisfied with computers? Encourages people to learn how to do things for themselves? Sets computers up as a tool rather than something that tells us what to do and acts as a seemingly unavoidable money sink? I know where I'm pointing.
March 02, 2018
@9008. "He loves the queen" --#mondegreen of "a love supreme"
@9009. "I just haven't been in a library mood." --#overheard in the Cage
@9010. "I'm just going to be in purgatory, and the devil will be like, 'No man, you can't even come *here*!', and I'll just be like, fuck!" --#overheard in the Cage
@9011. "In many cases, the fundamental cause of failure is that the project was insufficiently envisioned." --Microsoft documentation on the problems that often occur in the development of data warehouses
@9012. "The Web Contains the Article related to Microsoft SQL Server" --tagline of a blog, which for all its poor English nevertheless actually had good information
@9013. "I was pretty sure she'd jumped the line...but she was very attractive and we were having a nice conversation, so I wouldn't have thought to ask her to move." --CB9.41
@9014. "Man, I didn't know *anything*, did I?" --me, reading CB about me as a freshman
@9015. "Being 'taught' how to assign to a variable gets old fast." --CB9.57
@9016. "Pressing 'cut' should not crash a program." --me
@9019. "Possible Impending Doom" --CB9.80, describing a time when I had a lot of work to do in one weekend
@9020. "One of Daniel's sister's favorite pastimes is arguing with the former president of Colombia." --Reply All, episode 25 (#unusualsentences)
@9022. "College is for learning stuff." --CB11.24, cited as a reason that having many Anki reviews due was okay
@9023. "I actually got a comfortable seat in the first row [of the Urness tenor balcony] today -- except I couldn't see Dr. Armstrong. You can't have everything, I guess...although being able to see the conductor, I must admit, is fairly high on my priority list." --CB11.30
@9024. "sook it out" --CB11.32, for "sought"
@9025. "Because of an editing error involving a satirical text-swapping web browser extension, an earlier version of this article misquoted a passage from an article by the Times reporter Jim Tankersley. The sentence referred to America's narrowing trade deficit during 'the Great Recession,' not during 'the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.' (Pro tip: Disable your 'Millennials to Snake People' extension when copying and pasting.)"
--The New York Times
(It's even funnier when you have said extension and it reads, "Disable your 'Snake People to Snake People' extension.")
@9028. "Beethoven's 5th keeps crashing my music player." --me, finding that every time I restarted the first movement the Naxos app crashed about 5 seconds in
@9034. "If you're on Windows, your computer probably crashed and your motherboard is now on fire. Let this be a lesson: don't leak file descriptors!"
--https://jeffknupp.com/blog/2016/03/07/python-with-context-managers/
(Cf. #6306.)
@9035. "[url] suggests I would need to use xxcopy instead of xcopy."
Twenty years down the road you'll have to use 'xxxxcopy' for full support of all copying features.
@9036. "Max Volume Size: 256 quadrillion zebibytes" --information on "limitations" of the ZFS file system
@9037. "DOA and Loud" --Amazon review
Not only did it not do anything at all, it did it really loudly!
@9038. "Only a backup is a backup." --Reddit comment
@9039. "Congratulations and uh-oh." --https://serverfault.com/a/523413
@9040. Apparently someone figured out a way to unboil an egg: https://www.livescience.com/49610-scientists-unboil-egg.html.
@9041. I noticed yesterday that there's an option to insert a drop cap in Outlook. In case you need one of those in your email.
(I agree with someone I read recently who said that email should be considered a "typography-free zone.")
@9042. The other day I thought one of my new records had a huge scratch across it. I was very puzzled as to how I could have missed a scratch running all the way from the center of the record to the edge when I inspected the disk in the store. Then I tipped the record to look at it more closely and it fell off. It was a hair.
@9045. "You get 16MB of Samsung server RAM" --Amazon review for a FreeNAS file server
@9046. "The Pentium 4 is not as much a processor as it is a space heater that happens to (slowly) do useful calculations." --FreeNAS hardware recommendations guide
@9050. "What kind of Mac do you have?" / "Duh, Intosh."
@9051.
"Ok. A-M-E-R-I-C-K?"
"That's A-M-E-R-I-C-A."
"I-C-K???"
"'A' as in apple"
"There's no 'K' in apple!"
March 13, 2018
@9052. "Finally, if you thought you'd get through the day without reading the phrase 'sexually explicit gingerbread house', well, think again." --_Lowering the Bar_
(Also, #bandname?)
@9053. Betsy DeVos called _60 Minutes_ "a waste of a half hour." Umm...
@9056. "I don't like errors, so I avoid them at all costs." --part of an answer on StackOverflow
@9058. "Transferring at 661 bytes/second"
That'll get done nice and soon.
@9060. Was just making a cup of loose-leaf Constant Comment. I put the leaves in, poured boiling water over them, and went to do something else for 3 minutes. Then I went back, took the infuser out of the cup, opened up the tin of tea again, took my spoon, and tried to put a nice big spoonful of leaves directly into my cup of tea. Fortunately I caught myself just before I tipped the spoon in and got the sugar instead.
(Cf. #8263.)
@9064. "obscelete" --seen in a code comment
@9069. "How duplicates get created often remains a mystery." --guide to organizing computer files
@9070. "If you don't understand the downsides of an approach, then you don't understand it."
@9071. "Everything sucks. The key to success is knowing what sucks *less*."
(See also Mutt's tagline: "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." And perhaps the now-famous "singing less wrong.")
@9072. "Advocating Object-Oriented Programming is like advocating Pants-Oriented Clothing." --Jacob Gabrielson
@9073. "These are not millennials. They are generation z. Gen z eats tide pods. Millennials eat avocados and ass." --Facebook comment
@9074. Finding a list of all manually installed Debian packages to consider reinstalling on a new system:
comm -23 <(apt-mark showmanual | sort -u) <(gzip -dc /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n 's/^Package: //p' | sort -u)
@9075. "Believe it or not, you can put *multiple directories* on your system path!" --me, rethinking my filesystem hierarchy for binaries
@9076. Something like a year after I started using Vivaldi, I *still* regularly mistake "clone tab" for "close tab" on the tab bar's right-click menu. Maybe they need to come up with another name for "clone" so this doesn't keep happening, as it's severely annoying. (I could also work on fixing the middle-click function on my trackball, but that's another matter!)
@9077. NOTE: 'LC_COLLATE=C' envvar will make ls sort in a case-sensitive manner
@9078. Another case study to go along with #8563:
@@@
$ html2text --help
Unrecognized command line option "--help", try "-help".
@@@
@9081. I was noting the other day that the job of a DBA seems totally insane to me. Like, watching Brenda pulling something up and fixing it for me, it seems like her entire day she's no more than three clicks away from completely destroying a production database! Not like there wouldn't be backups, but that's still a pretty major issue.
{BL #9640}
@9082. "You must not phone somebody for being texted." --#hypnagogia, a confident but unidentified man's voice
@9086. Was just joking about calling my phone my "cellular telephone." I realized you can also call it a "cell phone" or more pretentiously a "cellular phone," but the remaining permutation of a "cell telephone" is something entirely different!
@9089. "What the mind can do is bacon's ice cream." --#hypnagogia
(Cf. #8261. End transcriptions.)
@9090. Directory name: /home/soren/cabinet/Backups/server-sunnyside/soren-home/soren/backups/ankibackup/backups/
@9091. "I can get the backup of my backup if I need it." --me, on deleting some old backups from my main filesystem
@9094. "When in doubt, don't." --Alexei, _Anna Karenina_
@9095. "Cost: $2,498,235" --on a MNDOT page about a highway resurfacing project
I'm sure it will cost EXACTLY that amount.
@9096. "All Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Will Vanish in 8 Years, Says Stanford Study" --#stupidheadlines (Slashdot)
Just like that, poof!
@9097. "You have received an order from Soren Bjornstad." --mailed to me as part of my order receipt for my NAS box
@9099. Fun fact from a Marohl sermon listed in CB22.6: in the story of the ten-thousand-talent debt, the guy supposedly owed more than all the money in circulation at the time!
@9101. Left the light on in my car for 6 days without driving it. Needless to say, it is not starting today and I'm already 40 minutes late for orchestra rehearsal. May not make it for much of the rehearsal at this rate, if I even want to bother going at that point...but it is a good idea to get my car working again.
I am amazed that in 2018 you can pay $28,000 for a car and it can't turn the overhead light off if you leave it on.
@9104. "I'm going to warm up today [before canting at Lenten Prayer]. It's a lot more fun to sing when you're warmed up first. That's something I learned in college. Maybe second most important, after how to trill my R's." --me
(Cf. #7049.)
@9105. Goose Suddenly Realizes It Doesn't Have To Honk Like An Idiot Entire Time It's Flapping Wings
@9106. "Past performances...are restricted from exchanges." --Minnesota Orchestra website
Let me just "exchange" this now worthless ticket for a new one. No big deal, why don't you like that proposal?
@9107. "It's not that sex is a bad thing, even for enjoyment only; but an important part of the enjoyment, for me at least, comes from love for the co-indulgent." --Irina Rempt
@9108. "My mother had a housewife accident, she got up in my hands, and I do not even have money for dressing," [Google claimed Reliu said]. "With the last three lions she had in the house, I took some chicken backs, and I did something to eat. It's a shouting situation. Without a bulletin, I can not do anything. I was at the mayoralty to pay a court fee, so I could not, because I'm dead for them." --Google Translate translation of a Romanian news article, qtd. in _Lowering the Bar_
@9109. A tongue-twister for you, because Google's dictionary says that "keyboard" can be a verb (I suppose it is a defective one, as #9100): "She keyboarded it."
@9110.
Your Account Information:
Soren Bjornstad
address needed
Update Address, MN 99999
USA
--email from the Minnesota Orchestra ticketing system
@9111. "Installation of GSKit 8.0.14.24 or higher is mandatory, when required." --package manager display, qtd. by Error'd
@9112. "An economics professor I knew used to keep track of the stupidest things students asked for a calculator for. His best was 120 / 1." --Stack Exchange comment, https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/138341/how-to-avoid-arithmetic-mistakes
@9115. "Is there a name for starting a chapter with a quote?" / "I believe the term is *cliche*." --ELU Stack Exchange comment
March 24, 2018
@9116. Apparently you can now teach at a public school in Indiana without even having a teaching license.
Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me all that much...
@9119. There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
Citation very complicated: often attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright but it doesn't seem like he invented the phrase. The first known written citation is in Thomas Chalmers in the mid-1800s, but he may well have been quoting someone else.
@9121.
Q: What's the difference between God and a conductor?
A: God doesn't think he's a conductor.
March 26, 2018
@9126. "compunents" --portmanteau of "computer components" heard by mistake on Reply All
@9127. Handwriting Expert Confirms Killer Used Cursive
@9130. "So my main takeaway is that podcasts are almost as popular as soup in the summer." --Reply All
@9131. Things learned from the journal project:
- thoughts are cyclical, somewhat
- I'm a whole lot wiser my senior year than my freshman!
@9132. "I had a small glass of bourbon and then sat around getting so tired that Ingrid asked if I was drunk." --CB47.47, the last night of tour
@9134. "Give me your heart and take a piss" --#mondegreen, "Heaven Ain't Ready For You Yet" ("bet")
@9136. "I just feel like I'm thinking when I have a pencil in my hand." --me, picking one up from the desk while reading my notes even though I didn't intend to add anything new
@9137. A combined version of all the salutations to Anki forums posts I collected over my years there:
* Hi, expert,
* Dear Anki Master,
* Hello Anki,
* Dear you,
* Dear anki authorities,
* Hi Dear,
* Dear there,
* Hello, Anki Fiends,
* Dear Ones,
@9139. I'm watching family video of people playing Jenga and found myself being careful not to bump the table the screen was sitting on.
@9140. 99.8% of cracked passwords are in the top 10,000 list.
https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2012/04/zxcvbn-realistic-password-strength-estimation/
@9141. Awesome tool for testing real-world password complexity you might want to use (for your password, but also for your website or software tool's password meter):
https://lowe.github.io/tryzxcvbn/
@9142. Wang and Wang [52] studied the password composition policies of 50 sites in 2015 (30 from mainland China, the rest mostly American) and found that no two sites enforced the same policy.
--https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity16/sec16_paper_wheeler.pdf
April 07, 2018
@9147. "Why is there a goat there!?" --Reply All
@9157. I had the idea that you could make a parody of e.e. cummings' "little tree", and it would be called "little e" (you might have to spell it "little ee" for people to get it).
@9158. The other day I was wondering if my birthday is ever on Easter. It turns out it is...*very* occasionally (April 25 is the last day Easter can ever be). The first and almost positively last time it will occur in my life, God willing, I will be in my mid to late sixties.
@9160. "Having the error message tell me that my script is broken because I called *throw* on line 31 is a bad message for users of your script to see. It doesn't tell them anything useful." --guide to PowerShell exceptions
@9161.
Q: Why did Microsoft PowerPoint cross the road?
A: To get to the other slide.
@9165. "I'm not even going to try anymore." --#overheard at the office (someone coming out of the bathroom)
@9172. I was driving to work the other day and Scott was coming in the other way, and there was a mallard duck sitting in the middle of the road. I was sure it was an oddly shaped stick at first but as I came up I discovered it was in fact a duck. I came to a complete stop and honked the horn several times, and after a moment the duck very casually got up and walked out of the road. I think it was sick or really cold or something, but still.
Then a few days later there was a duck sitting on the courthouse lawn. Maybe the same one for all I know! Doesn't belong there, but there it was...
@9173. "Before the deadline it's a concern, after the deadline it's an excuse."
(End transcriptions.)
@9174. "One of the lessons learned from the years spent building the existing applications was that complex systems with a lot of business rules require a lot of programming code. Unfortunately, the takeaway from that lesson was not that it was essential to organize such code so that it's easier to maintain, but that they should instead invent some way to write a lot of code without hard-coding their code. This is where the Enterprise Rules Engine came in."
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Enterprise_Rules_Engine
@9175. "He did not throw the sandwich, but rather returned it quickly." --lawyer after an incident where his client angrily threw his wrongly made sandwich at a food service worker
(This deserves some place in my list of terrible #excuses.)
@9178. Running 'sudo rm -rf' commands always makes me a wee bit nervous even after 9 years of using Linux...
@9179. So at Our Savior's we let our .org domain expire by mistake, because the person who had registered it under their personal email (big no-no!) left the church and nobody got the renewal notice, and apparently our host didn't have the courtesy to park it for a week or three so someone could have seen the error. It was promptly bought by a squatter who set a CNAME redirect to churchofsatan.org. They now want $5,000 to give the domain back.
Joke's on them since we still own the .com domain...we just have to wait a little while for Google to catch on to the change since the .org domain previously ranked somewhat higher. Since churchofsatan.org doesn't rank very highly for most of our relevant keywords ("Our Savior's", "Lutheran", "Owatonna"...), that shouldn't be terribly difficult.
@9180. "Best by 01/24/201137" --on a bottle of maple syrup
@9182. "One of the many reasons that Karl Marx deserves to be posthumously slapped is his role in making it harder to talk about classical dialectic." --JMG #unusualsentences
@9183. It's impossible to fix the system by using the tools the system wants you to use to fix it. Quite a bit can still be done, and many existing institutions can be repurposed once the changes are under way, but you can't start the changes within those institutions, because they've evolved a hefty collection of tools to render your efforts useless. Instead, actions from within carefully chosen institutions (such as local government) need to be paired with actions entirely outside existing institutional structures, to build the momentum that will make change possible.
--JMG
(Cf. #8697 on the necessity of a combination of collective and individual action.)
@9185. "He actually was very clever and invented several things, such as the Protestant religion and Tennis." --YouTube comment, (supposedly) regarding Henry VIII
@9186. Also, "he invented the Protestant religion" isn't all that far off from the classic "Al Gore invented the Internet."
@9187. "Regular expressions transgress languages to an extent." --StackOverflow comment
@9188. "Quis regexiet ipsos regexes?"
--https://stackoverflow.com/questions/172303/is-there-a-regular-expression-to-detect-a-valid-regular-expression
@9189. "p > 0.628...data was collected until results confirmed hypothesis"
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlX_pThh7z8
@9190. "The paper presents an impressive system for typesetting TEX-style documents in Microsoft Word. However, we are concerned with the validity of the double-blind study. While reading the paper, we were able to see the labels on the table presenting the results. A truly unbiased study would be triple-blind, hiding the labels not just from the subject and experimenter but also the reader." --conference proceedings review of the above
@9191. The propagandistic nightmare of 1939 was metastatic unity, but the propagandistic specter today, just as grave, is the arrogant and ubiquitous hunch that an individual mind can overthrow the collective lie. The humanities were once upon a time a laboratory for experiments in shared interpretation. They have become, like politics -- and, in fact, as politics -- aggressively individualistic and resolutely anti-historical.
--https://www.chronicle.com/article/Dear-Humanities-Profs-We-Are/243100?decided=wcontentgrid_article_bottom
@9192. "Even the most devoted relativist cannot behold Fox News or Breitbart and not regard these media outlets as propagandistic in the most flagrant sense." --https://www.chronicle.com/article/Dear-Humanities-Profs-We-Are/243100?decided=wcontentgrid_article_bottom
@9193. "The danger of being too exclusive, which the canon once was, pales before the danger of refusing to judge." --https://www.chronicle.com/article/Dear-Humanities-Profs-We-Are/243100?decided=wcontentgrid_article_bottom
@9194. On the Turing Completeness of Microsoft PowerPoint
@9195. "Two harbor seals escaped the zoo grounds but were later found on Grand Avenue." --#unusualsentences, from Wikipedia on the 2012 flood in Duluth
@9196. "Did you know the International Wolf Center is a great place to learn about wolves?" --me, browsing reviews on Google Maps
@9197. "1 night minimum stay required" --in the requirements for a promotional hotel offer
@9198. "This Duluth MN hotel is located Duluth, Minnesota."
April 21, 2018
@9201. InfoWars' Alex Jones Says He's Been Defamed by Defamation Suits
--Bloomberg, via /r/NotTheOnion
@9202. "A former Cameron County juvenile detention center employee convicted of stealing more than $1.2 million worth of fajitas was sentenced Friday to 50 years in prison."
--also via /r/NotTheOnion, http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/local/years-prison-sentence-given-in-fajita-theft-case/article_0b688372-44b3-11e8-b661-5b3820a5df55.html
April 22, 2018
@9203. Cool Latin term for things that are referred to only in the plural (scissors, pants, etc.): plurale(ia) tantum
@9204. Well, it's my birthday, if you didn't notice.
(Even if you didn't notice, it *is* still my birthday...)
@9207. "They [the choirs] sing throughout in parallel fifths, a sound sometimes associated with Gregorian chant and points being deducted from music theory assignments." --Justin Merritt, program notes for _The Path_
@9209. "Do not cut down any tree in the park for firewood." --Voyageurs National Park rules
@9210. "Bears are strong." --Voyageurs National Park rules
@9211. "He was so upset at not catching me for a DUI, that he COMPLETELY forgot that I was driving a California-registered $90,000 car, registered to a name that I had absolutely no connection to or explanation for other than 'it's my friend's dad's car' (also please note that I did not have the dad's address or phone number to corroborate this story if he had bothered checking), with my New York driver's license... and that he had pulled me over going a hundred and fifteen miles per hour. All that apparently just got swept out of his mind by his anger at not being able to get me for a DUI." --Jalopnik comment
April 27, 2018
@9213. "Go in peace!" --Dr. Armstrong, when everyone remained sitting silently after the conclusion of Ferg's hymn festival
@9214. "Davy is a superb driver. Everyone mocks him. He's slow and cautious, but he doesn't go in ditches." --#overheard in the quad at St. Olaf
@9215. I had a funny realization that Ferg's "Who Is This?" is actually a really difficult piece. I've only ever heard it done by my Ole Choir, and for us the main problem was not singing the wrong number of "who is this"'s in various spots and remembering the rhythm correctly. Then I listened to Cantorei sing it, and while they did fine there were plenty of infelicities in intonation and ensemble and blend, and I realized those spots must be hard to do right...
Of course I also heard a lot more of the glitches since I've sung it like 200 times.
April 28, 2018
@9217. "No, I do not mean elaborate." --#ankiforums, in response to Damien asking if he would "mind elaborating"
@9218. "That's just frugality. Just consider how many dollars you can save by going to hotels instead of buying your own toilet paper at home!" --Reddit comment on taking the complimentary items at hotels
@9219. "PROBABLY NOT WORTH ARGUING?" --next to a point in a legal document submitted to the court
http://loweringthebar.net/2018/04/proofreading-at-yale.html
@9220. "That is making an exceedingly loud noise for a cup of tea." --me
@9221. "This sucks and you suck" --tweet responding to Ben Studebaker (https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/04/29/the-church-left-is-proving-my-point/)
Very enlightening, reasoned discourse there.
@9222. It doesn't matter how much we say we care about the disabled, or the Palestinians, or the workers, or people of color, or whomever it might be. If we aren't engaged in an effective strategy to pursue the interests of the people we care about, we aren't helping them. Politics isn't about whether we are virtuous, it's about the consequences of our actions for actual people.
--from the same article
@9224. "All code must be written with the four C's in mind: Clarity, Clarity, Clarity, and Clarity."
@9225. "Let's work on dialogues instead of worrying about hyphenation issues when parts of the document still aren't showing up..." --me
@9226. "I didn't want to draw attention. You don't want to have marijuana dealing from the middle of your law office because I was running a giant Ponzi scheme out of there." --Scott Rothstein
May 05, 2018
@9228. "...researchers demonstrated how wirelessly to hack a car" --The Economist, via http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=30043
@9230. "Everything's better with a little Mozart." --me
@9231. "Limitation: Only the first 50,000 issues of code analysis are shown." --documentation for SQL Prompt
Bugger, I can't believe they make me fix the first 50,000 errors in my SQL query before showing me the rest!
@9232. "Minimizing errors dramatically improves the quality of our work and our product." --Redgate article on SQL Prompt
@9233. My phone's autocorrect apparently thinks that "I jam" is more likely to be what I wanted than "unjam."
@9234. "I don't know what that button was, but I didn't want to click it." --me
@9236. "Ironically, many of the sources of coupling [in software design] are mechanisms originally designed to reduce coupling."
@9238. "Four single rooms share 2 1/2 bathrooms with showers in the hallway." --notes for lodge rooms at Itasca State Park
They can't mean two half-bathrooms, because half-bathrooms don't have showers. But two-and-a-half bathrooms "with showers" doesn't make a whole lot of sense either...I'm *pretty* sure they mean there are two bathrooms with a shower and one without, but it's tough to know for sure!
(Update: Also, are the showers out in the hallway, or in the bathrooms?)
@9239. "Throw rocks or firewood at the bear if it tries to get your food" --the final step of instructions for hanging your food from a tree in the backcountry
@9241. "Also, I'm not against transgender people, just making a joke about SQL injection." --Reddit comment
@9242. "I also have a problem with recommending people shoot unidentified targets, which is why I would never suggest anyone do something so stupid and irresponsible as shooting at anything without first positively identifying it. You'll notice in my answer I say shoot it after you have attempted to scare it off by other means. Shouting at a bear to make it go away implies that you have identified an animal as a bear; shooting at a bear that is trying to come into your tent is different than shooting at a mysterious noise outside your tent."
May 08, 2018
@9243. "Have you ever conspired to overthrow the federal government? If yes, please explain." --(hearsay) question on a form for a security clearance
{BL #9972}
@9244. "In conclusion, age discrimination should be discriminated against because it's common, causes unemployment, and is illegal." --student paper
@9245. "The only reason not to have a paper trail is to not have a paper trail." --Stack Exchange comment
@9246. "With red-blue 3D glasses you can seriously cut down on your LSD expenses though. You're welcome." --after posting an example of garbled, colored LaTeX output
@9247. "I eat a lot of tea." --me
@9248. New Study Confirms Sharks Just Really Angry Dolphins
May 13, 2018
@9249. "I thought Juuls were so dumb when I first saw them," Katie said. "And then I wrote an article about how Juul is my boyfriend."
--https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of-vaping-and-the-rise-of-juul
@9250. "Coming to Reddit for medical help is like going to WebMD and expecting anything other [than] cancer to pop up."
@9252. "Honeybees are acceptable only via surface transportation, and must bear special handling fees...Mailpieces must be plainly marked on the address side with 'Live Bees'." --USPS regulations
@9253. The Suck Button
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProRevenge/comments/6a4vfm/the_suck_button_not_my_story/
@9254. "Hey!...Oh, I hit the wrong Ctrl-F5 button." --me, meaning that I hit Ctrl-F4 and closed a tab when I meant to hit Ctrl-F5
@9255. "I can count on one shop teacher's hand the number of times..." --seen in a Reddit comment
@9258. "Hopkins's workaround for all of this, MBI, has no sound theoretical basis. It is an amalgam of two statistical approaches -- frequentist and Bayesian -- and relies on opaque formulas embedded in Excel spreadsheets into which researchers can input their data." --https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-shoddy-statistics-found-a-home-in-sports-research/
@9259. "In doing so, those spreadsheets often find effects where traditional statistical methods don't. Hopkins views this as a benefit because it means that more studies turn up positive findings worth publishing." --https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-shoddy-statistics-found-a-home-in-sports-research/
(Of course, in so doing it massively increases the percentage of "positive findings worth publishing" that are complete bollocks.)
@9260. "Don't do the problems until you can get them right, do them until you can't get them wrong." --Reddit comment
@9261. "For obvious reasons, you don't want to jump directly onto the ground while moving at Mach 1." --What If?
May 23, 2018
@9262. I was noting the other day that I love watching children open doors that are obviously too big for them.
(Transcriptions.)
@9263. "There's a lot of pale me to sunscreen." --#overheard at Nerstrand
@9264. "All trees are huggable, don't discriminate." --#overheard at Nerstrand
@9268. "Do you want to close all tabs or the current tab?" --Internet Explorer 11, with one tab open
@9271. "Anti-snag slider reduces snagging" --advertised on the packaging for a Marmot sleeping bag
@9275. "Why is there a pencil on my toilet?" --me #unusualsentences
@9276. I spent an entire hour writing up captions on Facebook, and then I clicked the "back" button and apparently Facebook never saved any of them. Also, it put the pictures out of order when I edit it, even though it was right before. What the hell?
@9278.
I've always worked by this principle:
* Does it pay well?
* Is it a fun job?
* Will I learn anything?
Any job I take has to fulfil at least two out of the three. If not, no job.
--reply to above comment
@9280. "Use reason and judgment when choosing applications." --warning label on a bungee cord
@9281. "This area may be under video surveillance." --sign at Leif Erickson Park in Duluth
My apartment MAY also be under video surveillance.
@9282. "imminent domain" --on a sign in Two Harbors, describing part of the process for acquiring a public park
@9283. "one of the darkest days in pinball history" --on a sign in the Thunder Bay Museum
@9284. I wore my new baseball cap for two days before I noticed that I had left the little cardboard piece in that comes in hats to keep them round in the store!
@9285. "I went into the wrong mode because of a whistling error." --me
@9286. "Mommy, we're in the dark forest!" --#overheard on Artist's Point in Grand Marais
@9287. A different child on Artist's Point:
(looking at some stacked rocks) "This must be like an artist thing."
"Well, everyone's an artist, right?"
@9288. "Most problems you encounter when traveling can be solved with a credit card and a good attitude." --me
{BL #10023}
@9290. The obligatory forgotten item for this trip was...rings for my mason jars. I tossed a bunch of canned goods in the back of the car and forgot that I would need a way to keep them closed in the cooler after opening them! So I had to keep some of the dry-goods ones closed by keeping things on top of them. Worked fine, was pretty silly.
@9291. "I think I sat on a mosquito." --me, #unusualsentences
@9293. "In addition to the history Douglas Lodge rooms; there is a variety of other lodging facilities within Itasca State Park available." --direct quote from the visitor directory in my room
@9294. #overheard at Douglas Lodge:
(reading from a trivia section on the restaurant menu) "Dad, how much did it cost to build Douglas Lodge?"
(mock-confidently) "Five dollars and twelve cents."
(FWIW, the actual answer was $10,000, in 1905.)
@9296. "At Sesame Street, my mother's stepbrother also knew us." --#hypnagogia
@9300. "Crystal Methvin arrested in Florida after allegations of crystal meth possession" --/r/NotTheOnion
@9301. There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
@9302. "This lunacy continued until we had 33 teams involved in a 342 line project plan comprising multiple man-years of effort - to set up a queue manager and 2 queues from a laptop to a vendor, to send a single test message." --The Daily WTF, "Passing Messages"
June 06, 2018
@9304. "It's not that bars aren't a good choice, it's that Yelp substituted the group's original question ('where can we go to keep talking?') with a different question ('what's a bar with good photos of cocktails?') all by shaping the menu." --https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3
@9305. Slot machines make more money in the US than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined.
--https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3
@9306. "Imagine millions of people getting interrupted like this throughout their day, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reciprocating each other -- all designed by companies who profit from it. Welcome to social media." --https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3
@9310. "Today the typical web development experience using Angular and TypeScript (the dominant players in the space) generally seems to revolve around getting four DAYS of productivity, and then spending a day troubleshooting why the dev pipeline broke because of some npm package that got changed somewhere in the world." --http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/ABrightFutureForTheSmartClient.aspx
@9311. "Yeah, I know. At this point some of you are probably thinking that this is how it has always been. You have no memory of building apps with VB6, and then Windows Forms, and then WPF. All platforms that evolve, but don't break on a weekly basis. Believe me though - there really was a time when software could be built, tested, deployed, and then it would actually work for months or even years with little to no maintenance beyond enhancements and other things that provided real business value." --http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/ABrightFutureForTheSmartClient.aspx
@9314. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
(Apparently I don't have either the real one or the Bushism in here!)
@9315. "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- it says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you.... You fool me, you can't get fooled again!" --George W. Bush
(The best part though in the video is watching him grip the podium at the first ellipsis and then look really puzzled through the remainder of it.)
@9316. "As designers and programmers, it's our job to make software that works for people, not the other way around." --me, randomly thought up
@9317. The Poop Knife: https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/7p8puq/light_i_was_22_years_old_when_i_learned_that_not/?st=ji7hnrqb&sh=30b12f68
June 10, 2018
@9319. "I almost never notice when people are trying to subtly flirt with me. Even if it's painfully obvious, I'll generally figure it out about a day later. It's like my flirt detection processor is made out of an old HP printer." --Reddit comment
@9321. So the other day they were demolishing a building on Vine Street, just to the west of Jostens (there's a parking lot or empty area of some kind so that you can see through to the spot behind Federated). Mike went up that way for lunch and came back hardly able to contain his laughter. For some reason the city had (probably negligently) not blocked off the street during the demolition, and some guy had parked his pickup truck right in front of the fence. Well, someone screwed something up during the process, and a large part of the building came down into the street, crushing the pickup flat as a pancake.
As with many such things, it's only funny because nobody got hurt, and it was a pretty close call -- two women apparently had to run to avoid getting hit by it. Mike knows the guy whose truck got squashed, and apparently he's going to try to sue someone over it. Which I have to say I don't really get; I can't imagine you're going to have any trouble recovering the cost of your vehicle, and hopefully replacement cost, even without a lawyer of any kind, after that kind of event. I'd suspect demolition is a strict-liability activity too.
@9322. I've been using PowerShell so much at work I almost typed "dir" in a Linux console...booooo. TBF, it is easier to type on Dvorak even though it's one letter longer; 'ls' is rather awkward. I certainly *could* just switch to using 'ls' in PowerShell and avoid the whole thing since it's a valid alias; I use most of the other Linux aliases like 'echo' and 'rm' and 'mkdir' rather than 'del' and 'md' and friends. It just feels really weird to use 'ls' on Windows though, after all the years of CMD not aliasing it.
@9323. "If you don't want your mother to see your porn when you're at her house, you probably don't need to worry about exploits abusing corrupt EDID in a VGA or HDMI cable." --Security Stack Exchange
(Comment to answer containing the above quote: "Do I *want* to know what your job description is?")
--https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/187515/is-momentary-physical-access-dangerous
June 15, 2018
@9324. From Error'd:
Type: ErrorException
@9325. An old joke that I learned on Slashdot:
"Oh that glass of lemonade was good. I'll have another."
"Another dime please."
"But your sign says, 'All the lemonade you can drink for a dime'."
"But you had a glass, didn't you. That's all the lemonade you can drink for a dime."
@9326. "I'm never flying this airline again!" --Plague, _Hackers_, upon being arrested on the plane
@9327. "I hope you don't screw like you type." --Kate, _Hackers_
@9328. After Kate does the asshole "Olympic swimming pool" thing:
"So, uh, what's your interest in Kate Libby, eh? Academic? Purely sexual?"
"Homicidal."
--_Hackers_
@9329. So YouTube has added a feature where when you hover over a video in the suggestions bar, the thumbnail starts playing. This freaked the hell out of me the first time it happened with a picture of Enya, even though I kind of suspected they must have added a feature that did it.
@9330. And yóu know lóve is wíth you whén you ríse...
--Enya, "Amarantine"
(The rhythm of this line is absolutely exquisite. I like that more than the words!)
@9331. "ipifony" --spelling of "epiphany" in a YouTube comment
@9332. "I worked in retail about 20 years ago when cards were starting to take over retail transactions, and it amazed me that people still preferred paying with checks: "I don't use debit cards because I don't think they're secure, so instead here's a piece of paper with my name, address, phone number, bank account number, driver's license number, and signature."
--Reddit comment
(Cf. #1136, Part 1.)
@9334.
You see, Dimmick alleges that, after breaking into the Rowleys' home with a knife and gun, they all then sat down and hashed out a deal under which they would hide him from police (the police who were right outside) for an unspecified amount of money. "Later," he complained, "the Rowleys reneged on said oral contract, resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities." Ergo, breach of contract.
Um, no, wrote the Rowleys' attorney in a motion to dismiss earlier this month. He had multiple arguments, all very good ones, as to why a contract claim would not fly here. First, there was no agreement. Second, if there was an agreement, there was no meeting of the minds on the amount of money (Dimmick admitted the "offer" was for "an unspecified amount"), and so no binding contract. Third, agreements made at knifepoint are, you may be surprised to learn, not enforceable as they are made "under duress." Finally, a contract to do something illegal (e.g. hide a fugitive) is also not enforceable.
Mr. Dimmick is representing himself.
--Lowering the Bar
June 18, 2018
@9335. Could an emoji save your life?
--/r/QTWTAIN #stupidheadlines
@9336. "Like skinny jeans, Facebook makes you share more than perhaps you ought to." --_Washington Post_ article
@9337. "Figure 6: This figure is silly." --Shit My Reviewers Say
@9338. "If the editor somehow decides to accept this paper, they risk permanently destroying the credibility of this journal and its entire editorial board." --Shit My Reviewers Say
@9339. "The authors' conclusions not only contradict their own data but also the laws of thermodynamics." --Shit My Reviewers Say
@9340. "Cockroach racing, the racing of cockroaches..." --Wikipedia
Thanks for the clarification there.
@9341. Tutorial of Drawing a Realistic Dog: https://i.imgur.com/YbWVIWy.gifv
@9342. If Jesus died for our sin, who died for our cos and tan?
--/r/shittyaskscience
@9343. After the earth is gone, will there still be permanent markers?
--/r/shittyaskscience
@9344. "If hindsight is 20/20, foresight is legally blind." --me
@9345. Have you ever realized how ironic it is that "abbreviation" is such a long, difficult-to-write word?
@9346.
@@@
> typeof NaN
<- "number"
@@@
--JavaScript
@9347. "In fact, the only reliable way of stopping anyone reading a message is to walk around to their desk and slap a mask over their face while you throw their mobile devices out of the nearest window and delete the message from their Inbox. Although effective, this action might draw attention to your original error in sending the message and cause complaints from recipients." --article on how to recall a message in Outlook
@9348. "What should one do when paychecks keep bouncing?" --Stack Exchange question
@9349. "How to Make an Avocado Margarita"
I'm just going to go with DON'T.
(Cf. #7728.)
@9350. "I had a fox steal cereal from me when I was in Qatar." --Reddit comment, #unusualsentences
@9351. In Chicago. I missed a small claims hearing because I got shot on the way there, and I have medical records to show it. Default judgement was entered against me. Is there anything I can do?
--/r/legaladvice
(This is quite possibly the most Chicago thing I have ever read, especially the poster referring to this as "miss[ing the] court date for personal reasons.")
@9352. "Also, not being home isn't a tort." --/r/legaladvice
@9353. "Obviously if you secretly wanted to remotely detonate a bomb, you'd call your detonator's hotspot 'bomb detonator'." --Reddit comment on an incident where someone was arrested for broadcasting such an SSID at a tech conference
@9354. This sounds ominous: "Google is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes [sent by recruiters]."
(Makes it sound like the fees will issue themselves or something...)
@9356. If you hold a UNIX shell to your ear, can you hear the C?
@9357. "They came for the pennies i did not speak out for i was not a penny. Then they came for the nickels and i did not speak out for i was not a nickel. When they came for the dimes there was no one left to speak for me." --Reddit comment
@9358. "To me, the execution of Filipino food is like a draw of the bow across a violin: a hair's breadth separates sublime perfection and hell's torment." --Reddit comment
@9360. "Connect the Audio Technica ATLP120 to your computer to digitize your old LPs (laptop not included)." --on the Amazon page for a turntable
(They also bundle a copy of Audacity with this and make it sound like a roaring great deal. That's free without the turntable too, guys...)
@9361. "So far so good, but it is costing me horrors to run the application well." --Stack Overflow question
July 02, 2018
@9366. Had an idea that there's no such thing as useless knowledge -- or perhaps, irrelevant knowledge? Formulation needs some work.
@9367. UXMovement Error Message Words to Avoid:
oops, error, failed, problem, invalid, wrong, prohibited
(Seems to me to miss some problematic ones and include some things that are extremely difficult to avoid somehow, but worth thinking about nevertheless. Error messages are hard to do well.)
@9368. "Displaying filenames can even cause a security vulnerability -- and who expects *printing a filename* to be a vulnerability?!?"
--http://dwheeler.com/essays/fixing-unix-linux-filenames.html
@9370. "We greatly care about providing both above and beyond customer service." --Microsoft support
@9371. "C# is becoming Turd#." --on a .NET forum
@9372. "Georgia woman kills rabid bobcat with her bare hands" --Washington Post headline
@9374. "That week I found 2 dead cats, an old stereo system from the 80s that had been hulk smashed, a car wheel, a broken window for a bar from New Hampshire (we're in New York) and so much insulation it took fifteen extra large trash bags to remove, among other random debris." --Reddit comment, of cleaning and reinsulating a crawlspace
@9376. "novels are made of paper, not gold" --list of changes in NetHack 3.6.1
@9377. You hit Vlad the Impaler! Vlad the Impaler suddenly appears!
July 05, 2018
@9378. "So she's been alive longer than the NFL's been around." --#overheard at the office
@9383. "Please note that winhlp32.exe on Windows NT on PowerPC will trap when generating the full text search index on this help file. This problem with winhlp32 will be fixed in service pack one for Windows NT 3.51." --Microfocus Workbench Win32 SDK documentation
@9386. "The mouse moves the mouse pointer on the screen." --Microfocus Workbench documentation
@9387. "It's kind of like the worst parts of COBOL, Javascript and PHP were all mixed together and then baked at 400° until charred and smoking." --Slashdot comment, on the MUMPS language
@9389. You pass right over a pit. You fall into a pit!
(There was only one pit...)
@9390. "OOP poses inadequate mental challenges to scare away first-year students. When you struggle with an OOP problem, your program still works, it's just sort of hard to maintain. Allegedly. But when you struggle with pointers, your program produces the line "Segmentation Fault" and you have no idea what's going on, until you stop and take a deep breath and really try to force your mind to work at two different levels of abstraction simultaneously." --Joel Spolsky
@9391.
True story: I found a performance bug in the Whidbey CLR jitter the other day. There's a bizarre situation in which a particular mathematical calculation interacts with a bug in the jitter that causes the jitter to run really slowly on a particular method. It's screwing up our performance numbers quite badly. If I change one of the constants in the calculation to a variable, the problem goes away, because we no longer hit the buggy code path in the jitter.
They'll fix the bug before we ship, but consider a hypothetical. Suppose we hadn't found the bug until after we'd shipped Whidbey. Suppose I needed to change my code so that in runs faster in the buggy Whidbey CLR. What's the right thing to do?
Solution One: Change the constant to a variable in the affected method. Put a comment as long as your arm in the code explaining to future maintenance programmers what the bug is, what versions of the framework causes the problem, how the workaround works, who implemented the workaround, and how to do regression testing should the underlying bug be fixed in future versions of the framework. Realize that there might be similar problems elsewhere, and be on the lookout for performance anomalies.
Solution Two: Change all constants to variables. And from now on, program defensively; never use constants again -- because there might someday be a future version of the framework that has a similar bug. Certainly don't put any comments in the code. Make sure that no maintenance programmers can possibly tell the necessary, by-design uses of variables from the unnecessary, pointless uses. Don't look for more problems; assume that your heuristic solution of never using constants again is sufficient to prevent not only this bug, but future bugs that don't even exist yet. Tell other people that "constants are slower than variables", without any context. And if anyone questions why that is, tell them that you've been programming longer than they have, so you know best. Maybe throw in a little "Microsoft suxors, open source rulez!" rhetoric while you're at it -- that stuff never gets old.
--https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2004/04/28/when-are-you-required-to-set-objects-to-nothing/
July 13, 2018
@9393. Automagically: "Automatically, but in a way which, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining." (Steele 1983, Raymond 1993)
--footnote, _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_
@9394. "For their environment, this calculation is straightforward: whatever the bits-per-second of the channel is, divide by 1.25 to find the symbol rate. Of course, this simple calculation can't be performed without regexes."
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a-symbol-of-bad-code
@9395. "Computer science is the kind of engineering where you ignore the constraints that are composed by reality." --Harold Abelson
@9396. "I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting -- saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all." --Alexander Stepanov
Very interesting point...
@9397. Reflection question on SO about getting a list of all classes in a Python file.
"What's wrong with reading the source for 'class'? Why won't that work?"
"I'm guessing the question is about wanting to automate some task, so it's important that it be done programmatically. Presumably the questioner thinks that doing it manually, by reading the source code with your eyes, might be repetitive, error-prone or time-consuming."
@9398. "Obviously it is advantageous to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content and allow for a verbatim review of the material at a later date. Only it isn't." --https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
@9399. "...high verbatim note content was associated with *lower* retention of the lecture material." --https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
@9400. Just spent 15 minutes debugging a strange problem in my PowerShell...turns out I was adding an array to itself.
@9401. "The lady looking at me had a funny smell, the sort of smell that came out of toilets when you were trying to make them smell better." --Sally Bayley, _The Private Life of the Diary_
@9403. "Man who had sex with horse said it gave consent by winking at him" --/r/NotTheOnion
@9404. The Source Control Shingle
@9405. "Nobody wins every case, but once you get up to five or six dozen failed prosecutions, it really sort of starts to look like harassment." --_Lowering the Bar_
@9406. "The reason people say never do something isn't necessarily because it absolutely positively cannot be done correctly. We may be able to do so, but it may be more complicated, less efficient both space- or time-wise. For example it would be perfectly fine to say 'Never build a large e-commerce backend in x86 assembly.'" --StackOverflow comment
@9407. "Me, I think anything is a good replacement for Windows, including an Etch-a-Sketch." --https://www.linux.com/news/6-excellent-lightweight-linuxes-x86-and-arm
@9408. *nix command to fix broken symlinks with relative ones when target is known:
for i in *; do
echo "$(basename $i) ~~> ../raw/$(basename $i)"
ln -snf "../raw/$(basename $i)" "$(basename $i)"
done
@9409. "This page does not exist. Okay, in an existential sense it does, but it doesn't also." --404 error page
@9410. "TraySaver was mentioned in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article for supposedly causing Solitaire to crash. I've received hundreds of emails over the years from unfortunate people who had never heard of and certainly never installed TraySaver, but were having problems with Solitaire."
@9412. A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.
--Golub's First Law of Computerdom
@9414. "And even if you aren't a parent, stick around, because we'll tell you just how much you can blame your parents for screwing you up." --Wendy Zuckerman, _Science Vs_
@9415. "Bjorn Stad" --recipient listed on a UPS package that I sent to myself
@9416. The chances that a person will be struck by lightning in their lifetime are about 1 in 13,000. About 10% of those struck die.
@9418. "In short, everything is terrible and it's a wonder that you can still log into any of your accounts at all." --JWZ, https://www.jwz.org/blog/2018/07/two-factor-auth-and-sms-hijacking/
@9419. The problem, in all of these cases, is that our art critics have fallen into a very basic, unsubtle understanding of their role in the Trump era. They think the primary issue with Trump is that he's a racist and a sexist and a bigot, and their role is to urge artists to represent strong female characters and characters of colour, to repeatedly and explicitly point out how bad Trump is, and to stridently stick up for a highly particular, narrow conception of racial politics.
We need so much more than this from our leading lights -- we need them to hold female characters and characters of colour to the same literary standards they hold white male characters, so they don't look tokenistic and breed resentment. We need them to help us address racial injustice in a manner which comports with the need to reshape the Democratic Party into an effective apparatus for pursuing justice and the need to construct a broadly based egalitarian coalition that can win throughout the country. And we need them to give those artists -- and those art critics -- who cannot make positive contributions in these directions the space to do their own thing. Because when they get politics wrong, they lock us in the same old boxes the Clinton campaign locked us in. She was a woman, and if you didn't think that was enough, you were a sexist or a racist, and if you were black and you didn't think she was enough, you were a race traitor, and if you didn't speak up for her early and often, shame on you. It was this kind of discursive climate that led Clinton to call her opponents deplorables and led so many of her supporters to affirm and defend that language. If they want to help, our artists and art critics need to contribute to building something more effective, something which reaches out instead of digging in.
--Ben Studebaker, https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/07/19/the-collapse-of-artistic-criticism-under-trump/
@9420. "Back to the docs, and then I notice a tiny little footnote: 'To calculate COGS accurately, the parameter rec_cons_config must have its cogs_behavior property set to 57.' So I tried that....It didn't just crash...it managed to go romping off down a bad code branch, mangled a bunch of records, committed the changes, and *then* crashed." --https://thedailywtf.com/articles/you-d-need-an-oracle-to-understand-these-docs
@9421. "Your damage does not tend towards infinity. The event which would come closest to 'infinite damage' would be a collapse of the entire time/space continuum of the universe (and even that's an event where you could make a fermi estimate to quantify the damage in dollars, if you are bored and interested in astrophysics). The highest damage you might be able to cause realistically is bankrupting your company." --Security Stack Exchange answer
@9422. "Those ought to have dot-dot-dots after them." --me, of several of Tabularium's menu options
@9423. "Dog poop issues in Michigan" --/r/legaladvice post title
@9424. "In fact, by using backtracking excessively, it is easy to create the programmatic equivalent of an endless loop if input nearly matches the regular expression pattern; the regular expression engine may take hours or even days to process a relatively short input string." --.NET "Best Practices for Regular Expressions"
@9425. "Whoever thought that checking equality is not commutative [sic, recte symmetric] clearly had no clue what he/she was doing. If one thing equals another, the other equals that one thing, but not in Powershell..." --https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer/issues/200
@9426. Just realized Windows XP will be old enough to vote next year. Makes me feel really old...
@9429. "In-Memory OLTP is not a magic go-fast button." --MS SQL Server In-Memory OLTP documentation
@9430. "A bench warrant *is* an arrest warrant. You can tell by how you got arrested for it." --/r/legaladvice comment
@9431. "Loops are not my strong point." --interviewee for a 3D graphics position
@9432. "So I've been continuing to think about my sexuality, as one does." --CB54.37
@9433. (importantly) "I think I'm the only one who brought one! One for each day!" --boy, maybe 12 years old, #overheard in the campground
@9434. "Andy! Do we have a microwave, by any chance?" --#overheard in the campground
@9435. "Oh great. Butter on my car." --me #unusualsentences
@9436. "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't *have* maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future. For our children."
--the classic Miss South Carolina moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww)
@9437. "Eventually the police went to her house because the tweets had grown so voluminous." --_Reply All_
@9438. "Kids these days! They've got conspiracy theories dripping from their fingertips!" --_Reply All_
@9440. "1 onion, sliced thinly in harmony" --#misread ing of "half-moons"
The more I think of this the more I like it.
(Cf. #7255.)
@9441. Patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please.
--Hiccum's Dictum
@9442. "Our product line is diverse and expensive." --#misread ing of "extensive"
@9443. Seen on Facebook:
"Tell me how to use tofu."
"You don't."
So true...I mean personally I don't think tofu is gross, but I also don't think it's really worth eating.
August 01, 2018
@9444. "If you're still using DOS or Win95, finding executables on the path are the least of your problems :-)" --StackOverflow comment of a complaint that the batch file to simulate the 'where' (UNIX 'which') command pre-Vista didn't work with COMMAND.COM on Windows 95
@9445. "He wants you to play with jazz hands." --#overheard at the office
@9447. "This is not the neighborhood I would have expected the G-spot to be born in." --Wendy Zuckerman
@9448. "Limit 24, except in New Mexico" --on a Shopko circular
@9449. "I had a patient who actually weighed 1068 lbs. His BMI was higher than his nurse's weight." --Reddit comment
@9450. "That's one reason to fix bugs right away: because it takes less time. There's another reason, which relates to the fact that it's easier to predict how long it will take to write new code than to fix an existing bug. For example, if I asked you to predict how long it would take to write the code to sort a list, you could give me a pretty good estimate. But if I asked you how to predict how long it would take to fix that bug where your code doesn't work if Internet Explorer 5.5 is installed, you can't even guess, because you don't know (by definition) what's causing the bug. It could take 3 days to track it down, or it could take 2 minutes." --Joel Spolsky, "The Joel Test"
@9451. "You see a candle's flame flicker low!" --NetHack
Always particular...
@9452.
Q: What do you call a Screwdriver made with milk of magnesia?
A: A Phillips Screwdriver.
@9453. "Digital: $5.20 + $5.99 shipping" --Amazon option for a book
August 05, 2018
@9454. "Hold on, I'm cursing you." --customer calling Google AdWords support, qtd. by Tabbatha, on _Reply All_
@9455. "I have had an amazing time learning many new things about my voice." --LSM student, thanking me for my support
I really like this phrasing...because it's not like you're learning new things about voices in general, in so many ways studying voice is specifically about coming to understand *your* voice.
@9456. "Death Penalty Still Permissible For People Who Drive Slowly In The Left Lane, Pope Francis Clarifies"
(not The Onion, but obviously in fact satire)
@9457. In a similar vein, saw a Photoshopped picture on Facebook of a baseball cap with "Make Orwell Fiction Again" emblazoned on it...way too true.
@9458. Changes in NetHack, apparently attacking peacefuls in Minetown makes the watch angry. What I would definitely *not* have expected is that cameras count as hostile acts for which no warning is provided. As I so eloquently put it on the extended command line..."I took a fucking PICTURE OF A MONKEY and I'm under arrest?!"
(And due to a wand of cold in the hands of a watchman, it was fatal. I got the death penalty for taking a photograph. That's some next-level shitty government there.)
@9459. "Man, if I spend 2 grand on something the bare minimum is it needs to wipe its own ass." --Reddit comment, on inbred kinds of dogs
August 08, 2018
@9460. "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." --Charles Kuralt
{BL #11335}
@9461. I had the thought today, reading a headline, that "child safety" is a rather odd phrase. Normally when you see the phrase "<X> safety", you're talking about how to be safe with something (knives, guns, electricity, your workplace). Whereas here it's referring to the safety *of the child*, which completely inverts the relationship and creates an interesting form of dissonance.
@9463. "Source control is amazing." --me
@9464. "Why did he not fork my version!?" ... (five minutes later) "Oh, he didn't fork it because I don't have it on GitHub."
--me, of someone who had posted a similar version of an add-on on AnkiWeb without asking me as maintainer
@9465. "Duplicate this line about 505,200 times, copy it into your paste buffer, paste it into NetHack's terminal, and wait approximately 19 days." --NetHackWiki, on the procedure for a 1-turn ascension by overflowing the 32-bit turn counter
@9466. "...If NetHack is compiled for a 64-bit platform, the 'long' type will not wrap around until it gets to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. The above trick still works in principle, but will take a few hundred million years to complete." --NetHackWiki, on the procedure for a 1-turn ascension by overflowing the 32-bit turn counter
@9467. "It seems like you have 0 files that are not unique." --rdfind
@9468. "Users with files having lots of hardlinks (approximately more than 65000 on ext4) will get into trouble when more files are hard linked to such files." --listed in the "Feature Requests" section for rdfind
@9469. NameError: name 'RuleDefinitionError' is not defined
@9470. "Spelling 'you' as 'u' makes you look like a semi-literate boob to save two entire keystrokes." --ESR
August 21, 2018
@9471. "Hint: building a file system is hard." --Microsoft documentation on the history of GVFS
@9472. "Whenever you want to mention a PR, enter a !, and you will see an interactive experience for picking a PR from your list of recent PRs."
@9474. "You also seem to think there's some downside to 'updating' [your source control branch] regularly. In most cases, it involves executing a single command which succeeds instantaneously. When it doesn't, then you have a conflict that you're going to need to resolve sooner or later. It's better to do it sooner before you build a bunch of other code on top of code that you will need to change." --Stack Exchange comment
@9475. "Merging everywhere [rather than rebasing where appropriate] leads to a revision history that looks more like Guitar Hero than a record of previous states of the code base." --Stack Exchange comment
@9476. "Comments are intended for 'commenting'." --Battery University comments section
@9477. "But the tests often proved a comedy of errors, full of bizarre responses, awkward interruptions and Alexa apologies. One tester with an almost undetectable Midwestern accent asked how to get from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. Alexa told her, in a resoundingly chipper tone, that $1 is worth 71 pence." --Washington Post article
@9478. "If you're injecting, then throw your needles out of the back window." --Reddit comment, quoting the host of a party they once (very briefly, after this!) went to
@9479. "It makes little sense to organize your files based on the program that created them. Instead, create your sub-folders based on the purpose of the file. For example, it would make more sense to create sub-folders called Correspondence and Financials. *It may well be that all the files in a given sub-folder are of the same file-type, but this should be more of a coincidence and less of a design feature of your organization system.*"
Somehow this is an explanation of this principle that's always slightly eluded me!
@9480. "Google is the second great equalizer. Nobody is ever beyond needing Google." --me
August 23, 2018
@9481. "Those who use Application.DoEvents() have no idea what it does and those who know what it does never use it." --user signature on a .NET forum
@9482. Emergency phone is out of service / Please do not have an emergency at this location
--sign underneath a public phone
@9483. "I've heard better ideas coming out of an Eliza program with a virus!"
{BL #11359}
@9484. get_words_from_a_number_which_is_passed_as_a_perimeter_into_this_function()
@9485. I'm going to copy in a bunch of quotations from news articles that I've taken screenshots of on Ilkatherina but never transcribed now. These are just in the order of the filenames, which may or may not be roughly in date order.
@9486. "On April 13, Rose Acre Farms voluntarily issued a recall of 206,749,248 eggs (approximately)."
Approximately. Could have been more accurate.
@9487. Two adjacent news articles in Google News:
* "The Doctor Game: Family doctors worth their weight in gold"
* "Doctors Interrupt Patients, Stop Listening After 11 Seconds On Average, Study Says"
@9488. "Openly gay ex-MMA fighter may become first Native American congresswoman" --also featured on /r/nottheonion
@9489. "$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair." --supervisor in the EPA office, asking a purchaser to exceed the legal limits for office redecorating
@9490. "Apple's iPhone X, which has a larger display than that on the iPhone 8 (though it's a tad smaller than the one on the iPhone 8)..."
@9491. "I soon discovered that the only thing worse than getting a bad night's sleep is to subsequently get a report from my bed telling me I got a low score and 'missed my sleep goal'." --"The House That Spied on Me"
@9492. "The White House was once again sent into clean-up mode Wednesday when Trump said 'no' when a reporter asked him if Russia was still targeting the United States. Press secretary Sarah Sanders later claimed Trump was saying 'no' to answering questions, not to whether the Russians are targeting the US."
@9493. "Police probe attempted break-in at Arab American News" --a fun garden-path sentence
@9494. "Pamela McDowell hazes first-years with dorm placement" --Manitou Messenger headline
@9495. "Most of Pennsylvania's delegates are unpledged, meaning they could vote for Casper the Friendly Ghost, if inclined to do so."
@9496. "Trump's imitation of a pundit was stuffy and nasal, like some forgotten French king ordering a fresh pillow."
@9497. "It's the federal government being a bully. It's making law."
Fancy the government making laws! How dare they!
@9498. "The Justice Department is 'trying to define gender identity, and there is no clear identification or definition of gender identity.'" --same crazy guy as above
@9499. "Mr. Ryan's desire to...[take various actions has] been as welcome to Republican voters this year as carpenter ants at a home inspection."
@9500. "Contemplate increased wait times." --director of Homeland Security, discussing issues with the TSA's ability to process air travelers
@9501. "Trail derailment kills more than 100"
@9502. "Missing at Israeli-Palestinian Peace Conference: Israelis or Palestinians" --_New York Times_ headline
@9503. "'I don't see H.R. as director of an orchestra; I see him as someone who is getting all the instruments to play together,' he said."
...Has this guy ever seen someone directing an orchestra?
@9504. "EPA chief's climate change denial is easily refuted by the EPA's website"
@9505. "Connecticut Gov. Dannel [sic] P. Malloy called it a 'good day to make brownies...or read a book,' and stay off the roads." --on a New England blizzard
@9506. "Talking to all the experts in the siren industry in the field..." --on an incident where a Texas city's emergency warning system was hacked and triggered in the middle of the night
@9507. "Still, police arrested Cain on suspicion of resisting arrest."
I think resisting arrest is a fairly bogus charge anyway in many cases, but *suspicion* of resisting arrest?
@9508. "The problem with connecting everyone on the planet is that a lot of people are assholes....You have to build for the reality we live in, not the one we hope to create." --on Facebook
@9509. "To be clear, this is the worst drink I have ever purchased in my life. That is not an understatement, either: the Starbucks' Unicorn tastes like a combination of the topical fluoride used by dental hygienists and metallic sludge."
@9510. "The average starting salary for a computer science graduate when compared to any other degrees is at least double, if not three times."
Well, I'm not denying that CS makes good money right now, but THREE TIMES? Yeah right.
@9511. "The issue of climate change isn't about what you know. It's about who you are."
@9512. "According to McKesson, the Arkansas Department of Corrections deceived the company to purchase the [lethal injection] drug, promised to return it and was given a refund -- only to reverse course, refuse to hand over the drug and keep the refund."
@9513. "The crew of the freighter...a Togo-flagged ship traveling from Romania to Jordan and carrying 8,800 sheep, was unharmed."
@9514. "'We're celebrating our futures together in Indiana's tech ecosystem,' Holcomb [the governor of Indiana] said. 'You can't even spell Indiana without starting with India.'"
("No, but there is a 'U' in 'people who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning.'")
{BL #10532, #12054, #12348}
@9515. "Some in attendance said they would rather face measles, or a child's death, than a lifetime of autism."
@9516. "It would not, however, be a leap to say that losing health insurance would make someone's health worse."
@9517. According to the FDA, medication errors jumped from 16,689 in 2010 to more than 93,930 in 2016. That's nearly a 463% increase.
@9518. "If you take that route, we suggest setting a weekly or biweekly calendar reminder to change your passwords."
Yeah, I'm just going to change all my passwords every week. Not like that would take much time or anything.
@9519. "Pacman pleads guilty, apologizes for behavior"
@9520. "Apparently real men don't dial 911, at least not when their fraternity's reputation is at stake."
@9521. "Europe reluctantly rolled out the red carpet for Trump for his Brussels visit. He would have acquitted himself better had he rollerbladed down it in his birthday suit."
@9522. "Painfully plain, this is one of the first complete songs McCartney and Lennon wrote together. *Simple* is not the word; there are exactly 17 different words in the song, three of which manage to extend to two syllables." --of "Love Me Do"
@9523. "The many talents of Donald Trump Jr.'s attorney, a Juilliard-trained trombonist and lawyer for mobsters" --Washington Post headline
@9524. "One of President Trump's personal attorneys says that Trump's private legal team is not looking into the question of whether the president can pardon himself."
@9525. "Among the subjects that Mr. Trump has apparently not discussed with his senior press aides: whether he believes that Russia interfered in last year's election and whether climate change is a hoax."
@9526. "Sex is cheaper and it's more fun than IVF." --fertility expert
@9527. "Shotguns, bulldozers, high explosives, poison gas, and incendiaries were used to destroy rats." --on a -- basically successful -- program to eliminate rats from Alberta
@9528. "And with that, Mr. Trump had done it once more, on as cosmic a scale as any. He has run afoul of party officials, historical precedent, political gravity, stately decorum. Why not the sun?" --on Trump looking at the solar eclipse without glasses
@9529. "They'd rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program." --Putin, on North Korea
@9530. "I believe in the First Amendment and boobs." --Clay Travis, in a live CNN interview
@9531. "Even as a space enthusiast, I cannot get excited about the private colonization of Mars. You shouldn't be either. This is not a giant leap for mankind; this is the next great leap in plutocracy."
--Salon article
@9532. "The study found that if people would just knock off unnecessary idling...consumers as a whole would save $5.9 billion per year on fuel costs."
@9533. "'There are many ways that he could have taken care of the mother-in-law without coming with 15 loaded magazines and an assault rifle to a church,' said Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety."
@9534. More Americans were killed in 2016 from opioid overdoses than in the entire Vietnam War.
@9535. "Walmart Shopper Hurt While Buying Melon Wins $7.5M Verdict"
Apparently his foot got stuck under a pallet.
@9536. "Lyle Shelton, a Christian lobbyist who was the 'no' [to gay marriage] campaign's most outspoken advocate, said he would begrudgingly 'accept the democratic decision.'"
Wow, Australians have some sense.
@9537. "'Service and reliability shouldn't just be while passengers are on the train. It should be while they're on the platform,' [the New York M.T.A. chairman] said, adding that not having phone-charging ports was unacceptable in the 21st century."
Unacceptable in any century: Trains that don't run on time, are well over capacity, and aren't safe -- while the agency spends their money on phone chargers.
@9538. "In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for 'bold, persistent experimentation' and said: 'It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.' The contrasting position of Republicans then and now is: Take the method and try it. If it fails, deny its failure and try it again. And again. And again." --on trickle-down economics
@9539. "This design was the subject of a recall to change the position of the starter button, after complaints surfaced that a driver might accidentally shut off the engine while adjusting the radio."
@9540. "A third [Vice employee] said that a co-worker grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and she used her umbrella to fend him off."
@9541. "[British minister Matt] Hancock felt compelled to make one more point: 'Objective reality...exists.'" --on the fake-news epidemic
{BL #9778}
@9542. If a police officer asks to search your car and you have nothing to hide, there's NO possible benefit to be gained, to you personally or to society. The best outcome available is nothing -- your time is wasted, nothing is found, and the officer allows you to go on your way. All other outcomes are bad news, as others have detailed. If you DO have something to hide, there's definitely no reason to agree!
--Quora comment
@9543. "Federal immigration agents descended on dozens of 7-Eleven convenience stores across the country before daybreak on Wednesday."
They make it sound like they're capturing terrorists or something. Nope, just a few undocumented immigrants.
@9544. "Then, using a needle tipped with a human nose hair, van Eldijk managed to prod the [insect] scales into view beneath an electron microscope."
I love that you have a fancy laboratory and the tool you use is a *nose hair*.
@9545. U.S. lottery ticket sales in fiscal 2016 totaled more than $80 billion....That's more than was spent on movies, video games, books, music and sports tickets *combined*.
@9546. "I just don't like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. 'Carl, you're racist, you can't, you're sexist.' I'm like Jesus Christ."
Same guy says that he doesn't like Muslims, quote, "because their ideology sucks."
@9547. "Why are $20 million and 180,000 people suddenly in the market for digital cats? We gamified the blockchain."
@9548. "The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom." --the most recent proposal to arm first-graders
@9549. "Ultimately, I'm not going to warn you against making everything in your home smart because of the privacy risks, although there are quite a few. I'm going to warn you against a smart home because living in it is annoying as hell." --"The House That Spied on Me" again
@9550. The median savings in a 401(k) plan for people between the ages of 55 and 64 is just $15,000.
@9551. "77-year-old woman attacked by rabid otter while kayaking"
@9552. "In that recall, the steering wheels of the cars are at risk of detaching from the steering column, which could cause the driver to lose control."
Oh, I wouldn't have guessed that might be a problem.
@9553. "According to the report: Jackson was described as 'the most unethical person I have ever worked with', 'flat-out unethical', 'explosive', '100 percent bad temper', 'toxic', 'abusive', 'volatile', 'incapable of not losing his temper', 'the worst officer I have ever served with', 'despicable', 'dishonest', as having 'screaming tantrums' and 'screaming fits', as someone who would 'lose his mind over small things', 'vindictive', 'belittling', 'the wors[t] leader I've ever worked for'."
@9554. An analyst recently calculated that the value of the F-Series trucks is greater than that of Ford overall.
@9555. "Pressed for reaction to Mr. Trump's first tweet...Mr. Seibert declined to comment, except to say, 'The German government has not changed its position in the past 18 minutes.'"
@9556. "The vast majority of modern business practice requires little more than common sense, simple arithmetic, and knowledge of a few very important ideas and principles." --_The Personal MBA_
@9557. "Business schools don't *create* successful people. They simply *accept* them, then take credit for their success." --_The Personal MBA_
@9558. "Business is about creating and delivering value to paying customers, not orchestrating legal fraud. Unfortunately for us all, business schools have de-emphasized the former in favor of teaching the latter." --_The Personal MBA_
@9559. "Congratulations: you've used your intelligence and drive to condemn yourself to the life of an indentured servant." --_The Personal MBA_, on going into debt to get a degree good only for getting high-flying executive jobs
@9560. "The classic MBA product development model is shrouded in secrecy and mystique: develop the offering in private, make everyone involved sign nondisclosure agreements, raise millions of dollars in venture capital, spend years making it perfect, then unveil your creation to the astonishment of the world and the thunderous sound of ringing cash registers." --_The Personal MBA_
{BL #10129}
@9562. "There are always two programmers involved: you and you three weeks from now." --Stack Exchange comment, on the need to make your code readable to others
@9563. "[A]s many other reviewers have pointed out, this is an excellent book. I really wish all of my colleagues, predecessors, and managers had read it. My job would be so much easier and more enjoyable if they had." --Amazon review for a software design book
August 26, 2018
@9565. "On a side note, 'mb' is millibits, not megabytes." --Stack Exchange comment
@9566. "...A dmv hate-troll looked her in the eye and said with a straight face, 'This isn't a birth certificate, it's just a certificate that says you were born.'" --Reddit comment
@9568. "The purpose of writing a script is to avoid work, and if the process generates more work, then, dude, don't bother." --Ed Wilson ("The Scripting Guy")
@9570. "Hey it actually works, and it eliminates the fear and comfortableness." --comment on a PowerShell tutorial
@9571. "After being suspected of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital."
Apparently this is 100% real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare
@9572. Learned randomly that Deborah Liv Johnson is an Ole! That's fun.
@9575. "Sprinkle of Jesus"
--one of the most regrettable app names I've ever had the misfortune of seeing a screenshot of
@9576. "Why they choose to park at the door and block other people is irrelevant. Their car may be made of glass, they may have OCD, they may be jerks that don't care about other people. Whatever the reason, they need to not park there." --Stack Exchange comment
@9577. "`expr` is one of those swiss-army-knife utilities that can usually do whatever it is you need to do, once you figure out how to do it, but once implemented, you can never remember why or how it's doing what it's doing, so you never touch it again, and hope that it never stops doing what it's doing." --Michael, StackOverflow comment
https://stackoverflow.com/a/8090175
@9579. "I know $@ is special but I did not know it was special enough to violate boolean negation." --StackOverflow question
@9580. "This is called flow control, and it's the reason why your xterm sometimes appears to lock up when you accidentally press ^S."
--https://linusakesson.net/programming/tty/index.php
@9581. "As I did 20 years ago, I still fervently believe that the only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small. Fight Features." --Andrew Tanenbaum
@9582. "We do not provide hard wire connections to our network because of viruses and stuff"
--https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/192521/company-claims-hardwire-connections-are-a-security-issue
@9583. https://pushtrumpoffacliffagain.com/
@9584. "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." --Mike Tyson
@9585. "I would think that someone offering to kill you would be a good justification for a police report." --/r/legaladvice comment
@9586. "Most people who write `cat *` do not intend for the filenames to be used as command options." --https://www.dwheeler.com/essays/fixing-unix-linux-filenames.html#complications
@9587. "This reminds me of the time my friend made a file named * and then asked, 'How do I remove a file?' I answered, rm followed by the filename. Well, you know the rest." --StackOverflow comment
@9588. "If trailing spaces are forbidden, then filenames with only spaces in them become forbidden as well. And that's a good thing; filenames with only spaces in them are really confusing to users. Years ago my co-workers set up a directory full of filenames with only spaces in them, briefly stumping our Sun representative."
--https://www.dwheeler.com/essays/fixing-unix-linux-filenames.html#dashes
@9589. "The [Windows] registry is like communism: a great idea in theory, a horrible idea in practice."
@9592. Saudi Arabia declares online satire punishable offence
--/r/nottheonion
@9593. "A design pattern should only be applied when the flexibility it affords is actually needed." --GoF, in perhaps the most ignored advice in all of OOP
@9594. Had a thought I don't think I've ever quite elicitated in exactly this way before about multiple 'return' statements in a function (which, in general, I'm in favor of despite the camp that doesn't like them and considers it bad structure). Namely, it is certainly possible to produce a function where using too many return statements makes it hard to read. On the other hand, if you *have* such a function, I think the problem is not the return statements but the fact that you basically have spaghetti code, or at least confusingly written code. If you just refactored your code a bit to remove a function or two, I think your return points would stop looking like an issue. Basically, having multiple confusing return statements is a symptom rather than a cause of the bad code.
Which I guess doesn't mean you should just write 'return' wherever the hell you want; if you have a crapton of return statements that aren't in a regular pattern, that's still a code smell. But it means that as a *rule*, "multiple returns is bad" is, well, a bad rule.
While I'm on this topic, as a way to refute people who say that in principle multiple returns are bad, which of the following would you rather read?
@@@
def f(x):
myReturn = 6
if is_frobnicated(x):
myReturn = 12
return myReturn
def g(x):
if is_frobnicated(x):
return 12
else:
return 6
@@@
g(x) reads exactly like what it does. f(x) forces you to figure out some things about how logic works that should not be required in order to read the function. Similarly, if you reach a point in a function at which you know what the result of the function is, you should just *make that the result of the function*, not keep going on checking things and adding conditional blocks. Again, if that makes it hard to read, your function sucks to begin with.
@9595. "Your administrator has restricted the use of cloud services" --error message presented by WinZip on selecting the "copy file to clipboard" option
The new Cloud Clipboard™.
@9597. "I said I know very well where meat comes from, in fact my daughter was the one who explained it to his daughter, but in the suburbs we don't slaughter animals in the garage." --Reddit comment, #unusualsentences
@9598. "'I subscribed to a youtube channel' is not a diagnosis, therapy, or legal defense." --Reddit comment
@9599. "Let us also recognize that delivering a noogie to any federal prosecutor, or I suppose any prosecutor, is not recommended." --Lowering the Bar
@9600. YOU ALTERED THE CONTRACT!
Security By Insanity: http://worsethanfailure.com/articles/Security_by_Insanity
@9601. "In 1957 I was a fetus so I can't know from experience." --Irina Rempt
@9602. soren@Emily:/home/soren/cabinet/Rel/Family/YoungerMe/Hurricane-File-System/Floppy Conversion/network 1/my computer/c/my documents/Sordoc/Sorer/computer party breifcase/computer party/documents/doc1.doc
@9603. "Chicago is never! This is a long Chicago!" --girl on the South Shore
@9604. "Call me, bro! Fucking use the phone and call me!" --phone conversation, #overheard in Millennium Station
@9605. "So today I was walking in the rain..." --Selma, Austrian exchange student, dreamily, behind me on the Empire Builder
@9609. "'Empowering' -- verb." --start of a fake dictionary definition on a billboard advertisement
This is already going downhill before the advertisement part even started!
@9611. "It's too rainy for Mozart." --me
@9612. Mortice Kern Systems
With a name like that, it's no wonder they perpetrated the horror that is SIE...
(Cf. #8264.)
@9613. "Today's sermon is really quite short, unless I feel like you aren't getting it." --Pastor Karl
September 09, 2018
@9614. I was remarking the other day that there's a category of things that you don't have to try to accumulate. For instance, mugs, or toys for your children. They just sort of show up. Like, when was the last time you said, "Hey, I need to buy a mug!" and you went to the store and bought a mug? Either someone just gives you a mug, or you encounter a mug that you are inspired to buy.
@9615. "Color: 1.8m" --on an Amazon product page
@9618. "One project I worked on actually had a data type called a FuckedString." --Joel Spolsky
September 17, 2018
@9619. "The first rule is that there are no rules, there are only commonly-accepted guidelines. I can't imagine ever recording a lead vocal in anything but mono, but I'm not willing to say that nobody in the history of time has ever done it successfully."
@9620. "It's always cheaper to do it right." --me
@9621. "I have to wear a bra!" --#overheard shouted across the campground
@9622. "O MY GOD GRACE!" --a very stoned guy in the campground across from me, talking to his wife
He was also *very* interested in some sort of tool for pulling tent stakes and several other things.
@9624. "I have read that Carl Sandburg was once asked what he thought was the ugliest word in the English language. He thought for a minute and replied, 'Exclusion.'"
--https://www.gaychurch.org/homosexuality-and-the-bible/a-letter-to-louise/
@9625. "Sex is a part of life and the deliberate annihilation of it is not a virtue; it is a criticism of life as God made it and meant it to be." --William Barclay, qtd. in above
@9626. "MKS is the biggest steaming pile of crap I've ever used for SCM (and that's saying a lot as I've also used Microsoft Visual Source Safe in its early days)." --StackOverflow comment
@9629. "This is one of the wettest [storms] we've ever seen from the standpoint of water." --Trump, on Hurricane Florence
@9630. "Are you still gay?" / "No, I forgot to pay my gay bill this month and they cut me off."
{BL #10050, CB57.78}
@9632. So apparently there was a student somewhere in the UK who retweeted something saying "women don't have penises" which was interpreted as transphobic. In context, it probably was. The hilarious part (unless you're him) is that he was then forced to resign as the president of the "free speech society" for something he said!
@9633. Events at the 1904 Summer Olympics marathon in St. Louis:
- The marathon was scheduled for the middle of the afternoon. In the summer. On an unseasonably humid day even for Missouri. The heat index was estimated at 135 degrees.
- Water was provided only at the 11-mile mark, because one of the organizers wanted to do some research on dehydration (never mind that that can kill people).
- Most of the race went over dusty country roads, which caused the race officials' cars to kick up massive amounts of dust that caused at least one runner internal respiratory injuries that nearly killed him.
- The first person who crossed the finish line gave up about a third of the way in and hitchhiked back to five miles from the stadium, then ran the rest of the way because the car he was riding in broke down. He was then hailed as the winner and had his picture taken with Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice before it was discovered he hadn't actually run the whole race. He quickly admitted what he did and assured everyone he was joking; nevertheless he was "permanently" barred from the Olympics, only to be reinstated the following year.
- The actual "winner" of the event was half-carried to the finish line and given multiple doses of strychnine mixed with brandy by his trainers after they physically restrained him from giving up and lying down partway through. He was barely alive, probably would have died at the scene if doctors hadn't been there to treat him, and never ran competitively again.
- A Cuban runner arrived for the race at about the last minute possible, having lost all his money in New Orleans and hitchhiked the remainder of the way to St. Louis. Owing to his late arrival and misadventures, he ran in street clothes, with his pants cut off to form shorts. He hadn't eaten in nearly two days by the time he started the race, so he stopped in an orchard along the course to eat some apples, which turned out to be rotten and gave him severe stomach cramps; nevertheless he finished the race in fourth place.
- The ninth and twelfth finishers were from South Africa, and had originally come as part of a sideshow, not to run the marathon. The ninth-place finisher would have done much better if he hadn't been chased off the course by a whole mile by aggressive dogs.
- Fewer than half of the entrants finished the race, the worst ratio ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics_–_Men's_marathon
@9635. Debugging is the art of finding out what you really told your computer to do instead of what you thought you told it to do.
--Reddit post
September 24, 2018
@9636. "Only 6/$10" --sign in Hy-Vee, not quite giving the impression it was probably intended to convey
@9638. "Clippings is not an organizational system." --me
{BL #13347}
@9642. "While doing this Visual Studio crashed (I'm sure that never happens)." --StackOverflow comment
@9643. bigzipfiles.facebook.com
This may be my new favorite subdomain.
@9644. "I seriously doubt that you can choke on a playing card anyway...you'd have to rip it to pieces first to be able to swallow it." --me, in what belongs in the /r/nocontext of my Facebook comments dump
@9645. "Some have asked why we don't process the tree as we go, SAX-style. There are two main reasons: 1) It wouldn't work."
--https://github.com/erikrose/parsimonious
@9646. "Ah yes, the judge from Keg City definitely got into the 'Beach Week Ralph Club' thanks to his delicate stomach's intolerance for spicy food. And look, another glorious non sequitur: Q: Was the ralphing alcohol-related? A: I went to Yale."
--https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we-know-kavanaugh-is-lying
@9647. "What does it say about this country that this is the state of our discourse? That Kavanaugh even stands any chance of being made one of the most powerful figures in the American government, with control over life and liberty? That a man like this is even a judge? He went before the United States Senate and showed total contempt for his vow to tell the truth. He attempted to portray a highly esteemed doctor as a crazy person, by consistently misrepresenting the evidence. He treated the public like we were idiots, like we wouldn't notice as he pretended he was ralphing during Beach Week from too many jalapeños, as he feigned ignorance about sex slang, as he misread his own meticulously-kept 1982 summer calendar, as he replied to questions about his drinking habits by talking about church, as he suggested there are no alcoholics at Yale, as he denied knowing who "Bart O'Kavanaugh" could possibly be based on, as he declared things refuted that weren't actually refuted, as he claimed witnesses said things they didn't say, as he failed to explain why nearly a dozen Yale classmates said he drank heavily, as he invented an imaginary drinking game to avoid admitting he had the mind of a sports jock in high school, as he said Ford had only accused him last week, as he responded to his roommate's eyewitness statement with an incoherent story about furniture, as he pretended Bethesda wasn't 5 miles wide, as he insisted Renate should be flattered by the ditty about how easy she was, as he declared that distinguished federal judges don't commit sexual misconduct even though he had clerked for exactly such a judge." --https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we-know-kavanaugh-is-lying
@9648. "I almost think that in order to get on with your life, you have to operate in some state of quasi-denial: affirming intellectually that the Holocaust happened, but avoiding feeling viscerally what that actually means." --Nathan Robinson
@9649. "I initially tried to use Microsoft's git-TF, but after more than 24 hours of waiting for the clone to end, it died with a Java exception (the tool by Microsoft is written in Java)."
@9650. "...you have to say to yourself -- 'I don't know what I'm doing. We, as a field, don't know what we're doing. We don't know what programming is, we don't know what computing is, we don't even know what a computer is.' And once you truly understand that, once you truly believe that -- then you're free, and you can think anything." --Bret Victor, "The Future of Programming"
@9651. "That's where we're at, guys. You've made a left-wing blogger write a piece about how great a politician Nixon was. Yes, Nixon -- the guy who secretly destroyed Cambodia, covered up a third-rate burglary, and very probably conducted illegal diplomacy with the South Vietnamese government while a private citizen. Thanks for lowering the bar that far. Really appreciate it." --Benjamin Studebaker, https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/10/01/remember-when-americans-cared-about-perjury/
@9652. A great term for people who make a single contribution upstream to an open-source project to fix a minor issue but aren't really involved in the project: "drive-by developers."
@9653. Resume-Generating Event (RGE)
@9654. "If I was going to rob a house, I would never rob a house with a police car sitting next to it." --#overheard at the office
@9655. "When a developer starts a new job, he or she is usually set up with a workstation, the current version of the development environment that is being used (Visual Studio, Android Studio, XCode etc.) and whatever version control system the company or department uses. An admin is usually told to bring his own laptop and a sandwich and use notepad or something else that is free." --https://info.sapien.com/index.php/version-control/a-version-control-primer-for-the-rest-of-us-2
@9658. "asking for a me"
@9659. "I mean, I just keep my birth certificate in my underwear drawer." --#overheard at the office
@9662. I had the thought the other day that there's something like a palindrome, but where it's the same upside-down and right-side up. Examples: pod, mow, 609.
Update: Evidently this is called an ambigram.
October 08, 2018
@9663. Discovered this morning that my hair dryer actually produces a powerful enough jet of air on HIGH to propel itself across the table if you set it down while it's on! It's pretty funny to watch.
@9665. Another thing I was wondering the other day: when they put out magazines at the end of the checkout lane at the grocery store, how often do those get purchased? (Can't say I've ever seen somebody take one.) What percentage of the reason they have them out there is actually to sell them, and what percentage is to keep people entertained while they're waiting in line? 50/50? 70/30?
@9666. This is what everyone was warning Apple about:
(showing his phone) "This is the XS."
"Extra-small?"
"Well...it means ten-S."
--#overheard at the Ole Store
@9667. "What's HOT? Minute Mouse Ears" --seen at the Mall of America
(Obligatory: "No they're not." Cf. #1752.)
{BL #10537}
@9668. "Contact your election office at [e-mail] or [phone number]." --absentee ballot voting directions
@9669. "Fun is occasional. Surpassing beauty is everyday." --me, of Ole Choir, CB50.32
@9670. "warning: variable i_dont_care set but not used" --gcc, while compiling the last version of Warmux
@9671. "A ceremony was then held at the mansion in which the formerly happy couple smashed their wedding rings with a frog-headed gavel. According to the report, frogs symbolize change in Japanese culture. Smashing something symbolizes change in almost any culture." --Lowering the Bar
@9672. Apparently the mile marker 420 sign on I-70 in Colorado has been stolen so many times that they replaced it with a "Mile 419.99" sign.
@9673. "The worst part is some idiot on the refunds counter downstairs actually accepted it [a jumpsuit that had supposedly been sold to the customer full of poop] and put it on top of the trolley full of other returned items for us to put back upstairs - complete with a note stapled to it that said 'Warning: Faeces inside'." --Reddit comment, on a thread about the worst scams customers pulled on retail employees
@9674. "I stole the wrong one" --customer, trying to return an item, Ibid.
@9675. I just had my computer mysteriously stop letting me click on things...and it turned out there was a plate on my mouse button! (Well, the trackball button -- easier to get a plate on it.)
(Cf. #944.)
October 16, 2018
@9678. The universe tends toward maximum irony.
@9679. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
@9680. "It says something very powerful about the UNIX plain-text approach that advice given in 1974, and basically targeted at making text easier to edit in the terribly cramped ed text editor, applies just as well to our modern world of colorful full-screen editors like Emacs and Vim and distributed version control systems that were not even imagined in the 1970s." --Brandon Rhodes, https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
@9683. Can a Laptop Battery Explode While Using Linux?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/237914/can-a-laptop-battery-explode-while-using-linux/237918
@9684. "--find-copies-harder" --option to git diff
@9685. "For this article I'm going to follow the vocabulary of Gerard Meszaros's book. It's not what everyone uses, but I think it's a good vocabulary and since it's my essay I get to pick which words to use." --Martin Fowler, on types of test doubles
@9687. "No tool will help you meet a deadline if you start too late." --https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10954/kanban-a-cure-for-what-ails-me-or-snake-oil-du-jour
@9688. "Official Car and Document Manager" --title on a document I wrote up in fifth grade when we got our new car at Sunnyside
@9689. "null null, Thank you for entering the temporary identification code to complete your Amtrak transaction." --email from Discover
October 27, 2018
@9690. "I once used a system that was pretty darn automated, except someone had to be there to click 'OK' at one point. It took months to eliminate that. I'm glad we didn't wait." --https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3197520, a fabulous article on documentation and automation
@9691. "Do not shame people for releasing broken code; reward them for transparency and promoting collaboration." --https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3197520, a fabulous article on documentation and automation
@9692. "Question and answer sites tend to work best when the people who know the answers see the questions." --StackOverflow for Teams documentation
@9693. Phishing email:
hello, my victim.
I write you since I embed a trojan on the web page with porno which you have viewed.
My malware grabbed all your personal info and turned on your webcam which recorded the process of your wank. Just after
that the virus saved your contact list.
I will delete the compromising video and information if you send me 600 USD in bitcoin.
This is address for payment : 1MTDXjt14YLEBDNxZ8WEq23FNa1QfHXMbc
I give you 30h after you open my report for making the transaction.
As soon as you read the message I'll know it right away.
It is not necessary to tell me that you have sent money to me. This address is connected to you, my system will delete
everything automatically after transfer confirmation.
If you need 48 hours just Open the calculator on your desktop and press +++
If you don't pay, I'll send dirt to all your contacts.
Let me remind you-I see what you're doing!
You can visit the police station but no one can't help you.
If you attempt to cheat me , I'll see it immediately!
I don't live in your country. So no one can not find my whereabouts even for 9 months.
bye. Don't forget about the shame and to ignore, Your life can be ruined.
@9694. "Nutmeg basically tastes like sawdust, but it smells great." --me
@9696. Manual Work is a Bug.
@9697. "Somehow, I think someone with 20 million bananas piled on them would not be worried about radiation poisoning." --https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/93265/is-it-true-that-bananas-are-radioactive
@9698.
@@@
public Page<Ad> findDistinctByTenantIdAndTitleIgnoreCaseContainingAndFlagsNotNullAndFlagsResolutionTypeValueOrTenantIdAndDescriptionIgnoreCaseContainingAndFlagsNotNullAndFlagsResolutionTypeValueOrTenantIdAndEmailIgnoreCaseContainingAndFlagsNotNullAndFlagsResolutionTypeValueOrTenantIdAndContactNameIgnoreCaseContainingAndFlagsNotNullAndFlagsResolutionTypeValue (Long tenantId, String title, String resolutionTypeValue, Long tenantId2, String description, String resolutionTypeValue2, Long tenantId3, String email, String resolutionTypeValue3, Long tenantId4, String contactName, String resolutionTypeValue4, Pageable pageable);
@@@
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/longer-isn-t-better
October 30, 2018
@9699. #overheard in the Cage:
"I haven't done the online lectures yet because they're like *30 minutes*."
(outraged) "What!?"
@9704. "Due to snack theft, lava has been installed." --engraved in the DevTeam area in the November NetHack tournament
@9706. "ORMs aren't there to protect your data, they exist to ruin your life and destroy what good feelings you have left about your career -- that's about it." --Rob Conery, https://rob.conery.io/2015/02/20/its-time-to-get-over-that-stored-procedure-aversion-you-have/
@9707.
I am bad
@9708.
[EU] Raisse (Wiz Gno Fem Neu) made her first wish - "2 blessed scrolls of charging", on T:1882
wow.
or rather, WoW
@9709. "They have been...threatening to put it in the internet and get me fired." --Reddit comment
@9710. "You can't interview a fetus." --guest on _Science Vs_
@9711. "Don't underestimate the intelligence of your people, but don't underestimate the collective stupidity of many people working together in a complex domain. You probably think you would never do what the team above did [write unit tests that didn't test the code], but I am always finding more and more things like this that almost defy belief. It's likely that you have some of these skeletons in your closet. Hunt them out, have a good laugh at yourself, fix them, and move on." --https://rbcs-us.com/documents/Why-Most-Unit-Testing-is-Waste.pdf
@9712. "Tests don't improve quality: developers do." --https://rbcs-us.com/documents/Why-Most-Unit-Testing-is-Waste.pdf
@9713. "Refactoring is like leaving the campsite cleaner than when you found it -- not making a cleanup tour of campsites." --https://rbcs-us.com/documents/Why-Most-Unit-Testing-is-Waste.pdf
@9714. "Thanks every much." --SmartBear webinar presenter
@9716. "As an enterprise product, the messaging system prizes configurability and customizability over utility, performance, and common sense. It's not designed to solve a problem, but instead to allow customers to solve problems they didn't know they even had, mostly by inventing them." --The Daily WTF
@9717. "The interesting development in my opinion is Free Jazz where everyone is doing their own thing almost at the same time. Unfortunately it resembles the sound of 7 or so men tripping and falling in the same room." --comment on Ecosophia
November 08, 2018
@9718. "I don't want to finish hearing about abortion, I want to listen to Enya." --me, #unusualsentences
@9719. "The answer to whether you *can* do something in SharePoint is always yes. The answer to whether you *should* do something in SharePoint is always no." --me
@9720. "Think of {} as little crab pincers that hold a value in place." --Rust documentation
@9721. Chesterton's Fence:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
--G.K. Chesterton
@9722. "I don't think I could have kept a straight face while telling a church to fuck off." --https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/9q4wcf/say_something_in_russian/e8762ol/
@9723. "In fact, customers don't tell you [that your product has design flaws] - it's very easy to persuade your customers that anything that goes wrong is their fault rather than yours."
--https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare
November 11, 2018
@9724. "My hair is like Donald Trump: it never makes up its mind about anything." --me
(My hair is, however, better than Donald Trump's *hair*.)
@9725. "He said the only way he could do anything with his cabin is if he committed arson." --#overheard in the office
@9728. "The party that is led by Donald Trump added a few seats to its Senate majority, but also it is still led by Donald Trump." --Lowering the Bar
@9729.
"What's that?"
"Oh, that's my monkey."
--https://loweringthebar.net/2017/05/deputy-needs-to-see-your-monkey.html
@9730. "Man, it's hard to compile stuff at runtime!"
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Storray_Engine
(Cf. #355.)
@9731. "The good news was that Alan was able to quickly identify the problem: the floppy disk used to boot up the system's file server was corrupt. The bad news was that the boot disk contained a several-hundred line AUTOEXEC.BAT script whose only backup was a two-year-old printout."
--The Daily WTF
November 15, 2018
@9732. "Do you want your croissant warmed?" / "No! What do I look like, a liberal?"
@9733. "Enya, the passive-aggressive weapon of the soul." --AskReddit comment on a story where someone had blasted "One by One" on repeat next to an obnoxious neighbor's wall
@9734.
The name "git" was given by Linus Torvalds when he wrote the very first version. He described the tool as "the stupid content tracker" and the name as (depending on your mood):
* random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.
* stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang.
* "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.
* "goddamn idiotic truckload of shit": when it breaks
--git readme
@9735. Just used ':v/^r\//d' to delete all but the lines from a copy-paste I was interested in. :global makes me feel like a genius every time I use it!
@9737. "Unpacked our nativity scene yesterday. Removed all the Jews, Arabs, and foreigners. Ended up with a jackass and a handful of sheep." --The Daily Kos
@9738. "It's really awkward calling all of your friends and asking them if they would date you." --Poonam, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGkWe4FSNMo
@9739. "Sometimes excellence hurts!" --me, CB56.47, on how it stinks that some women can't continue in St. Olaf choirs beyond their freshman year
@9742. Not only is India's constitution the longest in the world, it is more than twice as long as the second-longest constitution (Nigeria's).
--https://loweringthebar.net/2018/11/injured-by-constitution.html
@9745. "They say that even if you miss the moon, you land among the stars. But let's face it -- you're still in outer space and really wish you were back on earth." --CB30.56
@9746. "Also pleased to report that after a lot of delaying over the past three weeks or so, I decided on a topic for my Great Con synthetic paper, in about five minutes once I sat down with WS and a pencil and started brainstorming." --CB30.60
@9747. "All four of them [the Johnson Award winners] are classics students, and we're all friends, so 'classics rocks' is the clear lesson here." --CB30.69
@9748. "There was one guy [at my CS125 final project help sessions] who was asking me all these things about how to do very fiddly things in ggplot2. He seemed to think I was the walking ggplot2 manual. Nobody who didn't make graphs for a living would have known the answers without looking it up in the docs! He seemed unsettled that I had to tell him to google it." --CB31.44-45
@9749. "Also, it took me until 20 minutes from the end to figure out how to factor a stupid cubic equation...the only reason I got it was because I suddenly remembered a technique I had recently seen on eHow, of all places, of splitting it up. [example inserted here] Clearly, CB is the place to be explaining factorization techniques." --CB31.46
@9750. "Things you are doing have a way of ambushing you behind your back." --CB37.74
@9753. "It got *really* dark as I was finishing my pancakes." --CB32.60, #unusualsentences
@9755. "So it's a rack for tools with a pointy end that fit through holes, for the time being, which is of course still a substantial number." --CB34.16
@9757. "Earlier in the week, Grandpa had sent an article about a vulnerability in some firmware that allows a remote hacker to do such innocuous things [to your car] as blasting the climate controls and radio, turning on the windshield wipers, and turning off the engine on the highway and steering the car -- oh wait." --CB34.23-4
@9760. "Initially, we thought we would strip the white side of the door [entirely]. But after 20 minutes with the reciprocating sander, I had managed to get off half the paint on an area that was about 1/30 of the door, so we scrapped that plan after some debate." --CB34.45
@9762. "We needed more light [in the garage], so I brought out my clip lamp and clipped it onto the top edge of the open garage door. This worked very well until I absentmindedly closed the garage door, nearly yanking the plug out of the socket. Additionally, the clip punched a small dent in the particle board on the ceiling and subsequently prevented the door from opening more than about two feet, so I had to crawl under the door on my belly to get it off so I could open the door again." --CB34.46
@9763. "The past invariably looks more comforting than the future, because you've seen it, you have memories of it, and those memories are bound closely to your self." --CB34.71
@9764. "The fact of a thing's ending is no excuse for not appreciating something beautiful or taking advantage of it while it's available to you." --CB34.79
@9765. "My vowels came in the mail." --CB35.14, #unusualsentences
@9766. "Kind of dumb, but fine, we'll run the MiKTeX updater and get the latest version which fixes the bug according to StackExchange. Once I actually managed to get the updater to run (non-trivial), the following things stopped working: TeXWorks, the included IDE; the package manager; the updater; compilation; get this -- the UNINSTALLER. I'll have to come back and try some more, but suffice it to say that I am not terribly impressed with MiKTeX right now." --CB35.26
@9768. "I talked to them [some random freshmen in the cafeteria the first week of classes] about the quality of the water in the caf and about reverse osmosis at one point, which I realize now was rather odd." --CB35.59
@9769. "We had lunch, at which there were generic ham sandwiches on rolls, pasta salad, pickles (standard jarred kind, nothing special), and an utterly excessive amount of cake of every kind you could think of." --CB36.44
@9772. "They have the new orchestra curtains installed in Boe. Well, of course, had nothing to really test them against. The orchestra sounded good in the space, but, then, the SPCO could probably sound good in a chicken shed." --CB36.76-7
@9773. "Finding this out [the fact that the barbershop was not open] was hampered by the fact that I apparently dialed the wrong number twice while trying to make an appointment. The first time I got some voicemail box for a guy whose name I didn't recognize (apparently his personal one, so if it was the right one, it was a very poor greeting for a business voicemail); the second time, some completely different business, insurance or something."
@9774. "He [the doctor] asked me if I had ever had sex and then reeled off some sex acts that counted...'None of that?'. If it wasn't a doctor, I would have been highly insulted, but as it is I don't blame them in the slightest. I'm sure they have to deal with people all the time who go, 'No, I did NOT have sexual intercourse with that woman. NO. No...well, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.'" --CB37.27
@9775. Me to a fellow Ole Chorister: "Any joke that involves shadow vowels is always funny." --CB37.33
@9776. "The beginning was enormously restful and a sort of mood of, 'Okay, time to get emotional and think about God!'" --CB37.43
@9778. "It is important to remember that God's love exists. It can be surprisingly easy to forget, you know?" --CB37.45
(Cf. #9541.)
@9780. "I'm pleased to report that a girl in Manitou asked a stupid question during mass choir rehearsal, as is the stereotype. I have never seen someone *not* in Manitou ask a question in mass choir rehearsal, nor have I seen the Manitou question be a good one." --CB38.16
@9781. "It seems from today and yesterday that there's currently a nasty glitch in the Tournament's game setup where typing Ctrl-C or Ctrl-\ will send SIGKILL/SIGQUIT [sic, recte SIGTERM/SIGQUIT] onto the wrapper rather than ignoring it, causing the game to terminate and zap the running game without even doing a hangup save!" --CB38.28
@9782. "Background: I was trying to scan something, and while doing so I accidentally kneed the side of the copier, and I somehow hit the flimsy plastic guard in front of the on/off switch in just the right way to make it shatter into three separate pieces and fall off, completely useless." --CB38.36
@9784. "Most of us sang most of 'Ride On' deathly afraid we were going to fuck it up and get an unintentional solo." --CB38.45
@9785. "Another contributor to the meeting not being on-topic was that for a good part of it, there was a brass band playing loudly on the first floor." --CB38.52, #unusualsentences
@9786. "We had some luck with the data formatting, though we also got mad at the preparers of the dataset, as there were a few places where things happened like the 'Unique ID' field not being unique." --CB38.64
@9789. "I don't need another head injury!" --woman on the train, after I came uncomfortably close to dropping something out of the overhead luggage rack onto her, CB39.52
@9791. "I went out in the hallway so as not to damage any computers with my majorly shitty juggling." --CB39.71
@9792. "Incidentally, I decided on the second bus that there are exactly two things I like about flying: 1) the coolness of hurtling through the sky 30,000 feet in the air; 2) you arrive quickly. Literally everything else about flying sucks." --CB40.7
@9793. "I love the bag for many other reasons than being smug on crowded planes." --CB40.20
@9796. "We're staying at a place called the SpringHill Suites, a Marriott hotel. It is the craziest hotel I have been to, but it's actually quite nice despite that and will make a good story, so long as we all survive the stay." --CB40.41
@9801. "It was acoustically a solid meh, with the additional major challenge that the altar space was very narrow and half of it was taken up by the choir stalls. We couldn't fit our risers and had to improvise with what was there, hacking together something involving using one step of two riser pieces, four Capellmeisters, four out of five of the stall rows with the one in front of the back left empty, and putting some people on stairs or even in these little side arches. It worked, but it was neither pretty nor helpful for ensemble." --CB41.13-14
@9805. "Stats was so boring -- or my attention span was so poor -- that I started cleaning up my filesystem over SSH during class." --CB41.70
@9806. "Algorithms midterm. Was scribbling at 0.5c the entire test." --CB41.71
@9807.
* Stats exam: 99%
* Algo exam: D-
--CB41.78
@9808. "I mean, if she [Iris DeMent] was coming to *my* town of 2,000 people, I'd be shouting that from the rooftops, every hour on the hour probably." --CB42.48
@9810. "Someone right across from us built a noxious fire that sent up a column of white smoke so thick I could not even see the flames looking at it." --CB42.56
@9812. "This makes it sound like church was nothing short of a disaster. But it was really fine, just eventful. All in a good day's work serving the Lord, I guess." --CB43.11
@9813. "The train was even crazier. Mama and I were wedged into a one-foot-wide space by the priority seating in between the divider and a black man in a wheelchair, and there were nearly as many people standing as sitting. Mama and I were wondering if they were even going to be able to check tickets, but somehow the conductors made it down the train and got and sold tickets." --CB43.20
@9814. "The only mishap was that I dropped our hunk of cheese in the dirt." --CB43.21, #unusualsentences
@9815. "The diagram on the front of the ticket machine was so bad I swiped the credit card backwards four times and switched machines once before we figured it out. Some guy also tried to get us to buy his tickets instead. We were unsure if he was actually trying to sell us extra tickets he had ended up with or if he was going to try to give us counterfeit ones and run or something. But he was very insistent that we need to get *his* tickets so we can get on. I guess it wasn't even clear that he wanted to sell them to us, but it was obvious there was something fishy, so of course we pushed him away." --CB43.22-3
@9816. "Rewrote the UOF parser in Tabularium to not be a steaming pile of shit." --CB43.40
@9817. "There was an odd noise this morning in my room, sounding almost as if something was sparking near my computer. Eventually I figured out it was a grasshopper stuck in a spiderweb, which I rescued." --CB43.41
@9820. "No one really planned this well -- or maybe at all -- so about 400ish of us basically stood around doing nothing for 15 minutes. I commented that this reminded me of high school." --CB44.18
@9821. "The rehearsal was straightforward too, and the mass choir sounded good, or about as good as 900 people singing in a gymnasium does." --CB44.19
@9822. "In all the...excitement seems like the wrong word -- maybe 'emotional quagmire' -- of yesterday, I quite forgot that [class] registration ran for the final time." --CB44.32
@9823. "I spent a good part of the evening profiling and optimizing our board code. Preliminary results were really quite good -- maybe 2x speedup -- but then when I tried it out on thing4, it was almost 2 minutes, about 33%, slower, in the *optimized* version." --CB44.34-5
@9824. "I told Ben it was a WWI piece, but then went and looked it up on Wikipedia and it was actually about 25 years earlier, responding to the Second Boer War, which I know nothing whatsoever about and might not even be able to pick out of a multiple-choice question where the other choices were bullshit names of wars that don't exist." --CB44.36
@9828. "I admit freely though that this is the most nervous I have ever been for an Ole Choir appearance. Memories shaky, not much practice, early morning, tiny subset of choir, live TV." --CB44.73
@9829. "I made $100 and a free T-shirt this break." --CB44.76
@9830. "A word goes here...something like but not 'preemptively'. Words. [then a footnote] Remembered during Christmas Fest and said it out loud: 'preliminarily'." --CB45.7
@9831. "I did also make one pretty bad mistake: on the line, 'Herod tried to find him', I was so focused on remembering if it was 'him' or 'them' that my mouth did something ridiculous and completely wrong for the first half, taken from another phrase. It was bizarre, it just came out. Something like 'Herod went away,' though Michael said it had an S in it, to add insult to injury. Dr. A made a face, but I don't think he knew it was me because he didn't glare at all." --CB45.11
@9834. "The Emmanuel council president called me while we were playing euchre." --CB45.73, #unusualsentences
@9835. "The program was a bit hard to figure out how to use, which would have been okay were it not for the fact that the 'help' button didn't work." --CB45.76
@9836. "I guess you could argue I haven't yet *done* this year's [Year in Review], but the only way I could think of that that wouldn't happen is if a meteorite came through the roof of Sunnyside right now. Knock on wood?" --CB46.5
@9837. "Also, he talks *really* slow. Like, I'm confident I could transcribe his sermon verbatim on my laptop with the normal keyboard without missing anything." --CB46.17
@9839. On CB46.31, I accidentally wrote "objectionalism" instead of "objectivism" in regards to time. I then added a footnote: "Objectionalism about the metric of time: the more people complain about time, the more conventional and relative it becomes."
@9840. "I was a bit crestfallen to find that it [rtgrep] is nearly seven times slower than 'grep' despite not having really all that much more work to do. Guess it's due to the linked list system of creating a whole list of matches and then looking at them and printing them out rather than taking them as they come. Also, 'grep' is a GNU utility that has been around for like 30 years and has probably had people more experienced in C than a college student optimize the heck out of it." --CB46.41
@9841. "Owing to that and other things, I am now pretty behind on life." --CB46.44
@9842. "For some reason I cannot fathom, Dr. A agreed to judge some kind of high school thing in Wyoming this week, basically the most critical week for Ole Choir in the year." --CB46.51
@9843. "Worrying doesn't help. Working does." --CB46.54
@9844. "He [Prof. Cunningham] is right that my argument cannot be based on problems I can't articulate, but that doesn't make them feel like less real problems." --CB46.61
@9845. "We all got mixed up in the Ligeti, but since everything sounds mixed up even when it's right, I doubt many people even noticed." --CB46.66
@9846. "We practiced past the time they were supposed to open the doors by a few minutes, then quickly sectionals. Basses were in the boiler room, which is probably the weirdest place I've ever had sectionals." --CB46.68
@9847. "Also, there was a roll of slightly dirty toilet paper in the back seat. I didn't touch that." --CB46.75, of the shared car I got this day
@9848. "The glasses [used on Esenvalds' 'Stars'] are really just the biggest pain in the ass in the history of this choir." --CB47.79-80
@9849. "There are a lot of trees in the world." --CB47.12, #nocontext
@9850. "So it was a five-hour bus ride, but it was quiet and pleasant and we got Steak & Shake, so it was really pretty good even just for the bus ride. The day only got better from there." --CB47.13
@9851. "Dr. A didn't miscue anyone. That doesn't happen much, but has happened a *lot* so far this tour." --CB47.15, in a list of good things about the concert
@9852. "'O Day Full of Grace' finally ended in the correct key, as far as I could tell anyway." --CB47.15, same list
@9855. "We had our longest bus ride of the tour today. The book said 6 hours 25 minutes, but we ran into heavy fog and some other delays, and then for no apparent reason decided to stop at the hotel first despite being 45 minutes late and it not being in the itinerary." --CB47.37
@9856. "We didn't sing the thank-you song, definitely, and it's good we were not obligated to, because we weren't really very thankful....but, oh well. So far at least this has been the only lemon. [footnote] A lemon would have made it a great deal better. Wrong metaphor." --CB47.41, of a bad catered meal
@9857. "You can find practically anyone important you want in the portraits backstage." --CB47.45, of Sauder Concert Hall in Goshen
@9858. "We actually ran out of Capellmeisters because there were so many strange obstructions." --CB47.46
@9859. "Decided to skip church. I've been doing enough praising the Lord over the last couple of weeks, and I'm obviously pretty tired." --CB47.50
@9861. "Just when I thought the week couldn't get any more difficult, it happened." --CB47.64
@9863. "People recognize the need for continuing discussion (not 'dialog', please -- someone made fun of how many times the admins used that word this weekend). And for that reason I'm not complaining the posters are still up in Buntrock, even though I'm pretty sick of them by now, especially the one that insults my mother." --CB48.30-1
@9866. "My biggest expense was towels, because I realized that's kind of something an apartment should have. Also, it's kind of hard to dry your dishes with a bath towel." --CB48.45
@9868. "Also, exams in all the classes. Latin and history were pretty straightforward, although I did conflate Stephen Foster and David Foster Wallace, writing 'Steven Foster Wallace' and going another page and a half into the essay before realizing that could not possibly be right." --CB48.51
@9869. "My favorite moment of the tour, though, was seeing a sign on the side of the massive boiler that powers the central steam system: 'Do not enter unless licensed.' Meanwhile, through a small aperture in the front, you can see raging flames inside." --CB48.53
@9871. "There was some kind of protest going on that I passed at the corner, which was interesting-sounding, but an active protest is fairly low on my list of places I want to be alone in a foreign country where I don't speak the language, so I steered as far away as possible." --CB49.30
@9873. "I tried to sign 'Mailing tubes'." --CB49.43
@9875. "We almost couldn't find the bar. It was on the second floor of a seedy-looking building behind an unlabeled door. Someone poked his head in and asked if it was the bar...it was, so we went in." --CB49.48
@9876. "I found a place online somewhere which had reviews saying it was a good place for tourists to buy Korean glasses, so I went there, and it was." --CB49.52
@9877. "It [the store] was like Staples and JetPens and something else combined...it was basically a Seven-Eleven with an office supplies section." --CB49.57
@9880. "Not in the greatest mood right now...also, didn't get any exercise, it was 41 degrees Fahrenheit this morning [on September 9], Jeff apparently thinks checking set containment in a HashSet takes O(n) time, and there's ANOTHER hurricane following Irma." --CB49.79
@9881. "We had to switch places at the computer, which was fun when my computer has Caps and Control permanently swapped, Eclipse has Emacs keybindings, my keyboard is tilted, and QWERTY was not installed." --CB50.5
@9882. "At some point, though, probably around one-thirty or two o'clock, I realized I was staring at some pretty simple test code and not really understanding it. (Huh? The...the CON-structamatator? An account? What's this computer gobbledygook?" --CB50.29
@9883. "Phrase of the day: The Lentmasfest Forgiveness Debacle" --CB50.42, #bandname
@9884. "This certainly needs far more critical thought than it did in bed last night, but I think it has risen quite a bit in the seething pool of ideas in my head." --CB50.68
@9894. "Lesson in audio cables for the day: plugging the speakers into input jacks does not produce a nicely functioning system." --CB20.11
@9895. "The waitress [at Pikk's] told us that their policy was that two people must complain before they would turn the music down."
@9896. "The issue was ostensibly that Avast Antivirus was doing something wrong, but, as I quickly discovered, the real problem was that it was indisputably the very slowest computer I have ever used. It was over 20 minutes before the desktop was loaded and I could open a program, and it had been at the "Welcome" screen when I arrived."
@9897. "Mama also made a mixup in which she only halved half of the recipe of waffle batter. Then we unwisely decided it MUST be right and poured some of the double-liquid watery batter onto the waffle iron. We wound up making pancakes for dinner instead."
@9898. "You're probably tired of hearing about them [the Seekers] by now, aren't you? Well, too bad for you." --CB21.68
@9899. "The rest [of my Anki reviews] I did in lull times during the day (three cheers for AnkiMobile)." --CB22.45
@9900. "I then ran to the Cage and ate a BLT quickly while reading the _Manitou Messenger_. As I told my parents yesterday, the headline this week is about students being upset about Pause pizza costing one dollar more this year -- sometimes you have to stretch a bit to find campus news worthy of the front page!"
@9901. "At the Great Con plenary today...the lecturer couldn't find the 'blank screen' button on the projector control, and people elected me to go fix it by quietly saying 'Soren?!' around the room. The problem was that someone had pushed the 'lighting' button in the corner, and the solution was to push the button again so it was no longer highlighted. Of course, I became a hero for pushing the button." --CB22.54-5
@9905. "It [vim] is different from every other program for editing text, except those that emulate vim." --CB26.10
@9906. "But anyway, these headphones also cost $70 and are from the same company, Sony. Yet they make the last pair sound like shit, plus you could hurl them against the wall and then hit them with a sledgehammer and they would still be intact. [footnote] Okay, hit them *lightly* with a sledgehammer." --CB26.22
@9907. "Now I don't know if you've ever tried to decrypt and decompress a 5GB .bz2 archive on a netbook before, but let me assure you: it makes watching molasses flow look entertaining." --CB26.23
@9909. "Getting angry is not a good way to enjoy your Interim." --CB26.37
@9910. "He [an annoying baritone in Interim choir next to me] also punched me across an empty chair to indicate that I had come in wrong, on the second time we sang it."
@9914. "Then, as I had basically recovered from that, I accidentally dropped Excalibur over the ocean on Medusa. I just accidentally keyed 'db' while doing nothing related to either key. My finger slipped off the 'h' key, I think. I had to look at the ttyrec to find the spot, and it would have been fine except for the fact that I accidentally dug all the way through the floor instead of just a pit, so it wound up somewhere random on the level below. While searching for that, my saddle got cursed and I got removed from my mount, and my only weapon was a lance, so I could barely kill anything. I finally had to wish for a wand of opening to fix that, then found a potion of object detection and got Excalibur back. But then, on the Plane of Earth, I found I named teleport wands 'digging' after the amnesia, when my wand of digging didn't dig anything. Fortunately, I also had real digging wands. And mercifully, it was the first altar."
@9915. "I didn't even shower -- I just grabbed the banana I had on my desk and ran across campus." --#unusualsentences #nocontext
@9916. "The book [_The Unbearable Lightness of Being_] is something not quite like anything else I've ever read. The best way I can describe it is that it's a philosophical treatise tied together by narrative, or else that it's a narrative which provides the reader with an interpretation of itself."
@9917. "In choir there were quite a few people missing. In particular, I was the only tenor there...There was one spot in that ['I Believe This Is Jesus'] where I jumped an entrance and caused the whole choir to crash unrecoverably. I yelled, 'Sorry, my fault!', of course."
@9918. "When we went down for Communion, I performed intinction, which is not how it works. In my defense, Snow did it wrong in front of me, but I just blindly followed her despite the fact that I have taken Communion there tens of times and know perfectly well how it works. This was especially ironic because the sermon had been about lack of enthusiasm for following and how we need more of it." --CB27.35
@9920. "For some reason, you have to change your role to 'non-editing teacher' to be able to access the 'grades' page." --of TAing using Moodle
@9921. "Funny typo: Next to his [Jack Langdon, a composer's] name, it gave his dates as 2014-2015. He is not one year old, nor is he dead."
@9924. "But as it happened, we took so long on the first part that it very nearly didn't come to me, so when people were asking questions about the parts we were doing, I just got very talkative, and we stopped for the day at Emily, right to my left." --CB28.70, me trying to hide the fact that I hadn't done the homework
@9925. "Also, there were three groups who failed to properly rescale the temperature data at the start of the project. It was given in deltas of hundredths of a degree Celsius, and we wanted it in absolute degrees Fahrenheit. This would have been excusable were it not for the absurd analyses this required -- things like saying the average temperature at all times across the world over all years was above the boiling point, or that the average yearly temperature had, over the course of the years 1844-2012, gone from 5 degrees Fahrenheit to 122 degrees Fahrenheit....They must have known there was something wrong at some point but not wanted to fix it. Either that, or they were *really* not paying attention to what they were doing." --CB29.20
@9926. "But I think it's very important or at least very valuable to experience God and religion in a variety of emotions and angles -- thus how we have wonder at Christmas, solidarity in Lent, anticipation in Advent, silence and maybe even guilt on this Good Friday, and joy at Easter. (And...greenness at Pentecost? It's not easy being green...sorry.)" --CB29.42
@9927. "You learn much more from the weird people than the normal ones, that's for sure." --CB29.55
@9928. "The younger man described himself as a 'Marxist nihilistic anarchist', among other adjectives, painted the Bible as a 'book of things you're not supposed to do', and said he believed that vacuum tubes allow communication with the dead and shared an anecdote he had of an amp that blew and immediately before started playing gospel....I don't completely throw away the idea that ideas can pass between the living and the dead, but probably not audio, and...*vacuum tubes*?" --CB29.54
@9929. "I sang so loud on the 'Confutatis' at one point that I legitimately scared myself." --CB29.68
@9930. "On Wednesday I accidentally came in on a molto-con-blasto 'Rex!' at the start of the 'Rex tremendae', a beat early, and sang through at least half of it before I noticed my error." --CB30.19-20
@9932. "Basically, you make it good." --Hailey, to me, in our Classics caroling group, CB25.38
@9935. When I'm old, I need to remember that you never, ever tell a young person that they don't know what mental problems or suffering or a hard life is. First of all, you don't know what they've been through. It's often much more than you think. But beyond that, none of those things have anything to do with age. Your life isn't easy because you're a kid or easy because you're an adult. It's easy or hard because of what you're dealing with in your life at the time. Kids may sometimes tend to have it easier, but that's not because they're kids, it's because we manage to arrange their lives so this is the case. It's ageist and it's rude and it's not something I want to be part of continuing.
@9937. "Holy, holy, holy." --Dr. Armstrong, commenting on the choir after all the seniors had stepped down out of the group
@9941. "I have yet to be kicked out of Inman's, but I seem to be uncomfortably close every time I go." --CB7.31
@9943. "We tried to activate the new TracFone. It only transferred some half of the minutes, so we called customer service and spent around an hour entering numbers into the phones and being put on hold and transferred. At the end, both phones were inoperable, and the best they could promise was to send a new phone to try within three to five days." --CB7.44
@9944. "It's like you swear at times they [binders] are running away and at others they're reproducing." --CB7.51
@9945. "I'm very not impressed, but since we're reading Seneca and Epictetus at the moment, realize he's not trying to irritate me and I can't control him." --CB13.54
@9946. "That was hardly deserving of a whole page, but paper is cheap, right?" --CB13.71
@9947. "Fortunately, pretty much the rest of the day went well. Lunch was not amazing, but we at least had an engaging conversation, even if it in large part was composed of complaining about other members of Great Con." --CB13.77
@9951. "I am very tired of little flashlights that break every 5 seconds." --CB15.20
@9952. "Also, Greyhound sent me a letter today saying they were 'in receipt of [my] refund request'. Which one? The one I sent in freaking November, of course (CB11.64). The letter was written in a monospaced typewriter font and was addressed to 'Ms. Bjornstad.'" --CB15.26
@9954. "By the sidebar I think you can see that it was NOT the most successful [programming] session ever. Among other things, we started a tally on the whiteboard of how many times people had yelled at C++." --CB15.47
@9955. "Filed a bunch of stray papers, cleaned out my binders, threw away some blackened fruit, hard cheese, and moldy bread, and did general pickup." --CB15.63
@9956. "A number of the packets of Earl Grey are open on the side, a bit odd. I'm not sure if they're safe to drink. I would return it, but I am not walking all the way back to Northfield to return a three-dollar box of tea." --CB15.69
@9957. "It would have been a bit less odd to talk about the teachings of Jesus in Software Design if his [Prof. Olaf's] points had connected a bit better, though." --CB16.7
@9959. "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting." --Buddha
November 24, 2018
@9960. "Condoms don't make babies, people make babies."
@9961. "The UPS guy is not a person." --me (#nocontext)
@9962. "Minotaurs and monitors are slightly different." --me, after repeatedly typing 'minotaur' instead of 'monitor'
@9963.
Master Wq was eating his luncheon when a student burst into his room and knelt at his feet. Tears were in his eyes and he seemed profoundly frustrated. Master Wq put down his bowl and asked, "What upsets you so, young man?"
"Master," he said. "I give up. I will never attain mastery of Vim! I will never learn the ways of the great patriarchs! I will never attain the brutal simplicity, the divine emptiness of perfectly efficient Vim usage!"
"Why do you say this?"
"I am your worst student, by far. When I am struggling with writing a simple macro, my fellow students are writing recursive macros with ease. When I am trying to remember the regular expression for white space characters, my fellow students are writing cyclomatic complexity tests in Vimscript. I am too slow, and I am ashamed, and I am afraid I have failed."
Master Wq stood up. "Come with me to the window," he said.
The student got up and followed Master Wq to the window, and looked across the street to Master Wq's neighbour's house. Through the window, the two could see a young man in suit and tie, working on a document.
"What do you see?" asked Master Wq. The student watched for a while.
"That young man is using Microsoft Excel to generate a spreadsheet. He is updating every single cell by hand. He doesn't even know how to use formulas. He makes capital letters by pressing Caps Lock, and then pressing it again when he is done. He is so slow! I do not understand. How can he be so content?"
"Seeing this young man, how can you not be?" returned Master Wq.
The student was immediately enlightened. His name was Qa, and he later became one of the great masters.
--https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/vim-koans/
@9964. "Thank you President T!" --Donald Trump, on Twitter, thanking himself for low oil prices
I wish I could make this stuff up.
@9965. AssertionError: AssertionError not raised
--nosetests
November 26, 2018
@9966. "A coworker, when describing regular expressions, once said, 'Whoever created regular expressions had to be on drugs.'"
@9967. "I don't think the police investigate illegal toilet use."
--https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/9z7rka/can_my_employer_force_me_to_give_them_my_dna_to/
(The boss claims they need OP's DNA to "identify who used the toilet in an illegal way," i.e., trashed the bathroom.)
@9968. "I heard a red car crash!"
--https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/a0qns8/police_officers_whats_the_dumbest_thing_youve/eak4v0j/
@9969. "The risk-benefit ratio on this stinks. Any institutional review board that approved it should be disbanded if not jailed." --Hank Greely, Stanford ethicist, of a guy who edited several children using CRISPR in contradiction of his own published ethics guidelines
December 01, 2018
@9970. Should You Do Electroshock Therapy On Yourself At Home?
--/r/QTWTAIN
@9971. George H.W. Bush passed away last night. While I didn't exactly agree with his politics (or what I know of them since I was still a glimmer in my parents' eyes at the time), the guy was clearly a through-and-through respectable, decent, classy guy, much more than even his son. He represented a time in American politics when people of different parties could still get along and accomplish important things (like, you know, ending the Cold War or drafting and passing the ADA). Makes me pretty melancholy about where we are today.
@9972. "Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide? (Yes/No)" --question on a visa waiver form for visiting the US (https://loweringthebar.net/2018/11/scottish-grandpa-visa.html)
(Cf. #9243.)
@9973. "So even if the questions didn't stop terrorists, they have been proven to keep out babies, NATO secretaries general, and Scottish grandparents, making America that much safer." --question on a visa waiver form for visiting the US (https://loweringthebar.net/2018/11/scottish-grandpa-visa.html)
@9974. "A former meerkat expert at London Zoo has been ordered to pay compensation to a monkey handler she attacked with a wine glass in a love spat over a llama-keeper."
--https://loweringthebar.net/2015/10/meerkat-expert-liable-for-injuring-monkey-handler-in-llama-keeper-dispute.html (#unusualsentences)
@9975. "I think there should be more bathtubs in music videos." --YouTube comment (#unusualsentences)
@9978. Statement of Porpoise
December 06, 2018
@9979. "So is there a part of me that is tired of writing about electoral politics and wishes I could go back [to] 2014, when my blog had almost no audience and I just had loads of fun taking all sorts of ridiculous positions and pretending to be Plato? You bet."
--Ben Studebaker
@9981.
"What are you doing?"
(peeing on a running fan) "Pissin' on the fan."
--https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9yc7op/whats_the_rudest_thing_a_guest_has_ever_done_in/ea0ji25/
@9982. "Opening graduation tonight!" --found in an academic "advertisement" in a document in the HFS
@9985. "The OP asked for an optimisation and I think a 10,000x speed-up is a pretty good optimisation." --Stack Exchange comment
@9988. And You, Child (mock Christmas Festival theme?)
@9991. "It is a thing of beauty to have a CIO who will drop f-bombs at bureaucracy." --CB57.7, on #9983
@9992. Video Games Won't Be Part of the Paris Olympics
--#stupidheadlines
@9993. "I'm currently troubleshooting a deployment problem with the report 'FU2'." --me, to others at break
(Cf. #6671, #8803, #11973.)
@9996. "The menagerie [at the Tower of London] was open to the public by the 18th century; admission was a sum of three half-pence or the supply of a cat or dog for feeding to the lions." --Wikipedia
@9997. "Lamps can't drive cars!" --in a list of "facts about this story" in one of the Lamp stories
(Cf. #3356.)
@10000. Joy Comes in the Morning
@10001. Obligatory note that I've broken RT #10000!
December 18, 2018
@10002. "If you come from other systems, modifying history feels taboo. You're conditioned that anything committed is written in stone. By that logic we should disable 'undo' in our text editors." --Benjamin Sandosky, "Understanding the Git Workflow"
@10003. "Pragmatists care about changes until the changes become noise." --Benjamin Sandosky, "Understanding the Git Workflow"
@10004. I read today that the volume of spam calls increased three hundred percent this year! Also, the percentage of teens who use e-cigarettes daily doubled (11% to 22%) -- even though I'm pretty chill about e-cigarettes, that one worries me. (*Scares*, no, and I don't think trying to make it harder to buy e-cigarettes or lecturing teens on the risks is a viable way to discourage their use!)
@10005. "Meanwhile, my otters started going to Antarctica." --#unusualsentences
@10006. "I love debugging regexes." --me
{BL #10665}
@10007. "Refuctoring is the process of taking a well-designed piece of code and, through a series of small, reversible changes, making it completely unmaintainable by anybody except yourself." --http://www.waterfall2006.com/gorman.html
@10009. "from __builtin__ import True"
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/explicitly-true
@10010. "Estimated arrival time in LSE is now 0:33pm."
December 30, 2018
@10013. I decided that in tech, we need a term "anti-problem." An anti-problem is when something seemingly shouldn't work but it does, and so you're nervous and have to try to figure out why it's *working* because it probably means you're misunderstanding something important.
@10014. "What was your quest?" --Empire Builder conductor asking a passenger for his destination
@10015. "I don't think I would like it if a girl gave me flowers." --#overheard in Millennium Station, one guy to another
@10016. "Have I told you that he has a big butt?" --also #overheard in Millennium Station, a young woman to another this time
@10017. "The heat settings on your hair dryer are 'boiling hot' and 'slightly above room temperature.'" --me, to Mama
@10019. "Remember: friends don't let friends fly." --Empire Builder conductor
@10020. "Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt." --Gandalf
@10021. This might win "most interesting thing I've seen someone doing on the train": a guy with a full MIDI keyboard across his lap in coach, connected to his laptop, working in an audio editor.
@10022. "We apologize for your inconvenience." --Samsung website
@10023. "Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere." --(attrib. to) Albert Einstein
(Cf. #9288.)
@10026. "But then again, the penis doesn't smoke." --#unusualsentences
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.4944705/quebec-play-about-a-man-and-his-penis-fined-500-over-fake-cigarette-1.4944708
@10027. "NOTE: Before adding to this list, consider whether or not the character was clearly meant to be attractive, explicitly stated to be attractive, and/or regarded as attractive by any other characters. Do not add them to this list just because *you* find them to be attractive." --TV Tropes page
@10028. "If you're reading this, even if we never talk, can I have $20 please?" --parody Facebook post
@10029. So I think this is one of my best random ideas in a while: the Municipal Vehicular Practice Lot.
You create an MVPL when a large institution moves and leaves behind a much larger parking lot than is required at a location. Rather than just have a massive parking lot there, as so often happens, you divide it into two lots. One serves the normal function, and the other becomes the MVPL. As the name suggests, you go there when you want to practice driving, biking, skateboarding, etc., in some unusual way. You can book it out online so that you have the lot to yourself and don't have to worry about other people getting in the way. There's a place nearby where you can check out orange cones. To the extent possible with minimal maintenance, there are small areas of gravel, ice, etc.
Not that the lack of MVPLs is one of the world's major problems, or even really minor problems, but it does serve a real need (albeit one that can be served less well in other ways) and it provides a useful thing to do with a huge old lot that would otherwise sit unused.
@10030. Idea: Tag the dream journal with some kind of identity tags (am I me in waking life? me with slight changes? me as a younger person? a fictional character? someone else entirely? a passive observer? does it change?) This could be really interesting, and it would be cool to try to come up with a classification system, such as one can for dreams which can transcend all the normal boundaries in things like this.
@10031. "Some even pass on helpful advice, like the young man who veered towards me on his moped and shouted above the noise of his 'bee farting in a tin can'-type exhaust that gwargle obbly wobbly. I asked a qualified aromatherapist about this later and discovered that he was correct." --http://naich.net/wordpress/index.php/friendly-wave/
@10032. "However, the attack requires correctly guessing the real MAC address of the device - a brute force attempt across the entire 2^48 address space is not feasible to count devices at a conference."
--https://www.frdmtoplay.com/counting-wireless-devices-on-a-raspberry-pi-with-tcpdump/
@10033. "I developed a one-handed riding style where the other hand is used to hold the seat straight."
--http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/User:Robyn/Incredibly_Crappy_Walmart_Bicycle
@10034. "You're wondering, why are there razor blades in my wall?"
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79GlUDVJXaA
This solved the mystery of the dirty old piece of tape on the back of my medicine cabinet here at Crystal, too: I took a closer look and sure enough, it's covering an old razor blade disposal slot. I'm tempted to shove some creepy messages into the wall or something to confuse the next guy to renovate.
January 07, 2019
@10039. "A Fake Nude of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Debunked By Foot Fetishists" --Vice headline
As Jules said when posting this, 2019 is going to be an interesting year in Washington.
@10041. "Amusingly, the campaign argued that the case should have been before the state's workers' compensation commission instead of the court because Plaintiff's alleged injuries arose 'out of and in the course of [his] employment.' But the court decided that '[t]he risk of being intentionally assaulted at gunpoint by a coworker is not one which a reasonable person would have contemplated when accepting an information technology job on a presidential campaign.' That seems like the right answer, even under the circumstances." --Lowering the Bar
@10042. "What you're not supposed to do in Springfield: do your unit testing downstairs in the living room." --#hypnagogia
@10044. "I made a graph showing my past relationships. It has an ex axis and a why axis."
@10045. "Amazon Dash Buttons Ruled Illegal in Germany" --Slashdot headline
When a button becomes illegal, and the reasons are actually somewhat logical (makes it hard to compare prices and ensure what you're actually getting), you know the world's getting interesting.
@10046. "FYI, in researching this post I also noticed that section 21662 of the Vehicle Code provides that "[t]he driver of a motor vehicle traveling through defiles or canyons or upon mountain highways shall hold the motor vehicle under control at all times," so if your practice has been to hop in the back seat and take a nap or otherwise allow your vehicle to careen out of control while driving on narrow mountain roads, you need to stop doing that because it is illegal." --Lowering the Bar
@10047. "Unless your vaping device happens to be a sonic screwdriver or is calculating the necessary trajectory to launch a rocket into space, your vaping device does not meet any of the definitions of an electronic device according to the law. You are not in the wrong for intending to fight this ticket." --/r/legaladvice comment
January 14, 2019
@10048. "Your computer skills automatically get 50% worse when your screen is being projected." --me
@10050. "By saying that you're asexual, you're not locking yourself into a 10 year commitment you can't get out of. If you discover that you weren't actually asexual after all, there's no early termination fees."
(Cf. #9630.)
@10051. "The advantage of more complex tools is of course that they can do more things." --StackOverflow answer
@10052. "First Premier Bank at one point offered a credit card with a 79.9% interest rate; however, they discontinued this card in February 2011 because of persistent defaults." --Wikipedia
What a surprise...
@10053. Ledger keeps abbreviating my "Assets" account to "Ass". Like, my funds account is "Ass:Funds". I find this way too amusing.
@10054. "When the police came, they asked me if I wanted to press charges for assault, but I said no: I just wanted her trespassed from the property. He wrote out a trespass order and she pulled a folder out where she had a stack of trespass orders from various local businesses and filed it alphabetically - I guess she got banned from so many places, she found it hard to keep track." --Reddit comment
@10055. "Have you tried imitating an irate goose in a parking lot?" --Reddit comment in response to a complaint that stupid people seem to have more relationship success than the poster
@10056. "But that was after Soren's dream came true." --#hypnagogia, someone at my office
@10057. "With all of these goals, I don't think there is a single way to solve the version numbering problem. Maybe you use semantic versioning. Maybe you go the Chrome route and just increment the major version every Tuesday. Maybe you go the Microsoft route and have piles of hot patches and fixes with no clear order or relationship to their application." --Remy, The Daily WTF
@10058. "Do more of what works, less of what doesn't." --DevOps saying
@10059. "You're going to MUDAC 2019 Judge Registration!" --congratulations page after registering to judge a contest using a ticket-sales application
January 26, 2019
@10060. "These things add up; these are the things that make us unhappy on a day-to-day basis. Even though they seem too petty to dwell on (I mean, there are people starving in Africa, for heaven's sake, I can't get upset about *space bars*), nonetheless they change our moods." --Joel Spolsky
@10061.
A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. "Open these if you run up against a problem you don't think you can solve," he said.
Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wit's end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, "Blame your predecessor."
The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press -- and Wall Street - responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.
About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, "Reorganize." This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.
After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope. The message said, "Prepare three envelopes."
@10062. Pizzaworthiness
@10063. "So they prevented the flames from standing up on the box of squirrels." --#hypnagogia
@10065. "Ken Kesey once saw an inscription in a men's room: 'My mother made me a homosexual.' Under it somebody else had written: 'If I gave her the yarn would she make me one?' My own speculation is that we will never do much better than that. We will discover that, like all the rest of us, homosexuals are made what they are by their mothers, their fathers, their genes, their germs, their upbringing and their education, by their friends and neighbors, their dwelling places, their time and its culture, by their economic and social status, their personal history, and by history itself." --Wendell Berry
@10067. "We go together like molly and reggae" --#mondegreen, "Brighter than the Sun", Colbie Caillat
(actually "Marley and reggae")
@10069. "Right now, we are living in a time where the amount of things that I am supposed to be mad about on a given day has greatly outpaced my ability to be mad or even pay attention to all of them." --PJ, _Reply All_
@10070. "Enhanced Internet Service" --AT&T's billing of a system where they injected extra ads into websites
@10071. "I realized the only person who can forgive my email debt is me." --guest on _Reply All_, of her inability to respond to the hundreds of sympathetic messages she was getting
@10072. "kludges, 1-971" --in the index of the Common Lisp specification
@10073. "I've made a conscious effort to avoid web development in the past five or so years, because it seems like the Hamster Wheel of Backwards Incompatibility has become more of a Hamster Centrifuge in that field." --Steve Losh
@10074. "One of the primary reasons that abstraction is overloved is that a completed program full of the right abstractions is perfectly beautiful. But there are very few completed programs, because programs are written, maintained, bugs are fixed, features are added, performance is tuned, and a whole variety of changes are made both by the original and new programming team members. Thus, the way a program looks in the end is not important because there is rarely an end, and if there is one it isn't planned." --Richard Gabriel
@10076. "A loose cannon eventually points your way." --Reddit comment
@10078. "May your educated guesses always be correct."
@10079. "I heard on top of that that you were missing your pen-pal and female-wife programs." --#hypnagogia
(Cf. #1882.)
@10080. "Was Arkansas founded because Kansas exiled all of their pirates?" --/r/shittyaskscience
@10081. "Sponsored by Bud Light, brewed with no corn syrup!" --Super Bowl LIII commercial
Also no asbestos, presumably (https://www.xkcd.com/641/).
{BL #11672}
February 05, 2019
@10083. "We don't usually have reporters visit. Usually we have the police and FBI here." --receptionist at a shady warehouse, via _Reply All_
@10088. "Daddy, why are we real?"
--https://aeon.co/essays/can-a-philosopher-explain-reality-and-make-believe-to-a-child
{BL #11275, §WhyWeAreReal}
@10089. "Indian man to sue his parents for giving birth to him 'without his consent'" --Fox News headline
@10090. "Memory stick found in frozen seal faeces in New Zealand" --#unusualsentences
@10091. #onlyinflorida
It wasn't an isolated incident, Crawford told Bay News 9 last month. Oakley had a "habit of licking men that either she was attracted to or thought that she had authority over," he said.
"The act of licking a person on the face and neck is too unusual to be contrived by multiple witnesses and multiple victims," administrative law judge Robert S. Cohen wrote in his final report. He recommended she be fined $5,000 and publicly censured by the governor for inappropriate behavior.
"I mean, she licked a lot of people, sir. So everyone kind of talked about the fact that she licked people. That's what she did when she got drunk."
--https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/07/florida-politician-allegedly-made-habit-licking-mens-faces-now-shes-resigned/
@10092. "Those of us in the tech industry are used to seeking out information online. Crikey, I still use Google every time I need to write text to a file in C#!" --Troy Hunt
@10093. "Treatment is usually via reassurance." --Wikipedia, on precordial catch syndrome
@10094. "He is grossly overweight and showed me a video of his swing; it looks like an octopus making love to a sailboat in a force 10 storm." --Stack Exchange question
@10095. "In the end, when I produce a spreadsheet showing the cost difference, say $1000 over a 3-year period, the response is that it's worth the $1000 to actually succeed."
--https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/48073/why-would-anyone-want-to-pay-off-their-debts-in-a-way-other-than-highest-intere
February 12, 2019
@10096. #rtlist: Words for Deleting Things
* delete
* remove
* erase
* wipe
* kill
* zap
* whack
* nuke
* toast
* squ[ai]sh
* send to /dev/null
* put in the bit bucket
* axe
* rm
* trash
* blast
* blow away
* kick to the curb
* eviscerate
* destroy
* smack
* get rid of
@10097. "I remember thinking to myself, 'That [song is] the worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life,' and I thought, 'We have to do it too.'" --Alison Krauss
@10098. "This is obviously a little cryptic, but, well, so is Exchange Web Services." --StackOverflow comment
@10099. "We shouldn't second-guess officers when it comes to using deadly force to protect citizens from potential long-term health risks."
--https://loweringthebar.net/2017/06/officer-claimed-he-shot-philando-castile-because-of-secondhand-smoke.html
@10100. "Apple's insider-trading policy enforcer accused of insider trading" --Ars Technica
@10102. "I do not know why it reports 'Asia' as the text of the message. Just that Microsoft's error message handling is grossly deficient in all aspects." --poster on the Microsoft support forum
@10103. "If you are a programmer working in 2003 and you don't know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, I'm going to punish you by making you peel onions for 6 months in a submarine. I swear I will." --Joel Spolsky
@10104. "The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot." --Ann Coulter, on Trump's declaring a national emergency in an attempt to obtain funding for his wall
February 17, 2019
@10106. A guy behind me at the concert was showing some friends he brought the ELW (I guess they were Catholic or something) and mentioned that he's always annoyed that the rhythm on "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" is different than the Beethoven version, which is both hilariously specific and something that bothers me as well!
@10107. "Damn those Lutherans!" --#overheard in Boe
@10108. I was noticing that, in general, St. Olaf is incredibly full of interesting conversations happening all the time. I never even tried while I was there and I collected all these crazy quotes and anecdotes. Now I go back and enjoy just sitting in the Cage or in the concert hall and listening and people-watching, and it never disappoints.
@10109. There were a completely ridiculous number of redheads at the concert today. Like at least 5 that I could see right from where I was. Maybe that's not actually all that out of the ordinary and I was just noticing for some reason, but it was strange.
@10110. "Grief is love with nowhere to go." --Pastor Lauren
@10113. "Readers shouldn't have to click through to discover that the person posting [an advertisement] hasn't actually used the product." --Vox article
February 19, 2019
@10114. "If some activity could be bypassed or the result could be achieved without it, it is waste." --Lean software development methodology
@10117. "One of the most popular vim commands, :movequit." --me, typing 'm' instead of 'w'
@10119. "This API has a Swagger definition which you can find at TODO: Publish swagger on swaggerhub." --README for VirtServer
@10120. "Your work computer, of course, is the best place to plot terrorism." --me, reading a news article in which someone did this
February 21, 2019
@10122. "Only those things that are relatively worthless change rapidly and dramatically." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, 115, on natural selection
@10123. "UNIX designers probably thought that it was OK for computers to be like anything else--lousy--and they were right." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, 116
@10124. "A dream like this is dangerous, though. Because, when you think about doing something, you tend to do it." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, 168
@10125. "One of the dangers of being a maker is that your scope is limited only by your imagination." --me
February 26, 2019
@10126. "Anything is better than Word documents [for technical documentation]. Even a flip chart." --me
@10127. "It is far better to have an underfeatured product that is rock solid, fast, and small than one that covers what an expert would consider the complete requirements." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, "Money through Innovation Reconsidered", 219, prefiguring Agile
@10128. "In the modern era, we have come to favor simplicity over complexity, perfection over imperfection, symmetry over asymmetry, planning over piecemeal growth, and design awards over habitability. Yet if we look at the art we love and the music, the buildings, towns, and houses, the ones we like have the quality without a name, not the deathlike morphology of clean design." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, "Money through Innovation Reconsidered", 223
@10129. "Why bet millions of dollars all at once on something that could flop when you can spend a fraction, test the ideas, improve the ideas based on customer feedback, and spend the remainder of money on the winning evolution of the technology? If you win, you will win more, and if you lose, you will lose less. Moreover, you will be out there ahead of competition which is happily making the right-thing mistake." --Richard Gabriel, _Patterns of Software_, "Money through Innovation Reconsidered", 224
(Cf. #9560.)
@10132. "I don't want a trapezoidal document scan." --me
@10134. "Structural injustice is typically characterised by ambiguity. It is often unclear whether a particular interaction is, in fact, a manifestation of structural injustice. It is also unclear how to delineate between perpetrators, bystanders and victims, given that so many of the mechanisms of structural injustice are unconscious, driven by social norms as much as by individuals, such that victims can be complicit in their own oppression, and that victims of one form of injustice can be perpetrators of another. And finally, it is unclear what a remedy would consist of." --https://aeon.co/ideas/playing-the-victim-is-politically-vital-and-morally-serious
@10135. "Too much cheese never ruined anything." --me
@10136. God Purges Millions Of Souls From Heaven Now That Sexual Assault Being Taken More Seriously
@10139. "A potato sack race is not people who live in a potato sack." --Alex Goldman
@10140. "Math isn't my strong suit, so one of my readers obligingly crunched the numbers, and showed that this little jaunt of Stordalen's -- one of many each year in her globehopping lifestyle, by the way -- had a carbon footprint equal to no fewer than 10,491 of the bacon cheeseburgers she insists nobody ought to eat." --JMG
@10141. "The outer world contains coffee cups, platypuses, spiral galaxies, modern art, and much more." --JMG
@10142. "Sleep allows us to achieve more in less time." --https://dazne.net/sleep/
@10143. "If you want to write something perfect, write a haiku. Anything longer is bound to have a few passages that don't work as well as they might." --Philip Pullman
@10144. "I'm stirring tea into my Constant Comment." --me, intending to think "sugar"
@10145. "It's not the number of hours we work that counts, but the amount of energy we put into those hours." --Dazne
@10146. "When operating the [diopter adjustment] control with your eye to the viewfinder, be careful not to put your fingers or fingernails in your eye." --Nikon D3500 manual
@10147. "It seems quite suspicious to me," Chief Anthony Manna was quoted as saying, "that an individual looking for something to sedate a cat with would come to a Nutrition Zone and not a veterinarian, to purchase a product that wasn't even advertised or on display for the public to see." He's probably got a point there.
--Lowering the Bar
@10148. "My story is much longer than the essay, but that is because I am much less of a genius than Kleist was; he managed to say in 2,500 words or so what I could only cram into 1,200 pages. Nevertheless, I think there are some incidents in the story that might divert the reader, and a character or two who might engage the interest and affection." --Philip Pullman, on HdM: _Daemon Voices_, "Heinrich von Kleist", 45
@10149. "Sending a bunch of feckless rich kids and some leathery sailors to an uncharted bog on the other side of the planet went about as well as you'd expect." --Brianna Rennix, "Learning from Jamestown", _Current Affairs_ (Vol. 3, Issue 6, p. 53)
@10150. "These efforts often betrayed the absurdity of their aims, producing such ludicrous inanities as...the 'Kiddie Kokoon,' a prefabricated fallout shelter that may or may not have been able to survive a direct hit from a Communist pigeon's turd." --Nick Slater, "Chernobyl As It Is Now", _Current Affairs_ (Vol. 3, Issue 6, p. 61)
@10151. "Time is a leash on the dog of ideas." --Stewart Pearson, character in _The Thick of It_
@10152. "Instead of nasty partisan questions, [Steve Hilton] wants us to ask 'Is this reform more human, or less?', a question so poisonously vapid it caused my brains to seep out through my ears." --Douglas Gerrard, "The Phony Populism of a Fox News Grifter Extraordinaire", _Current Affairs_ (Vol. 3, Issue 6, p. 75)
@10153.
"The questions 'Why are we here?' and 'Where did we come from?' are very good ones, and we all find ourselves asking them on the day we begin to grow up. When we're children, other questions occupy us; we want to know why we can't have more ice cream, and why we have to go to bed right now, and why nothing is fair; but on the day we begin to grow up, which is usually in our early adolescence, we find Professor Hawking's questions becoming more and more interesting. Of course, some people stop growing up, and then they stop asking those questions. They ask other questions instead, such as 'What's on TV tonight?' or 'Where can I get the best return for my investments?'"
--Philip Pullman, _Daemon Voices_, "The Origin of the Universe", p.68
@10154. Apparently someone gave $4.2M to St. Olaf so that we can have an international-music-tour endowment that eliminates the student cost for future trips (might be a few years to finish funding it though). That's pretty awesome.
@10155. "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it needs batteries, you probably have the wrong abstraction." --Liskov Substitution Principle (silly phrasing)
@10156. "One [new, poorly prepared college student] came home because there was a rat in the dorm room. Some didn't like their roommates. Others said it was too much work, and they had never learned independent study skills. One didn't like to eat food with sauce. Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner. At college, she didn't know how to cope with the cafeteria options -- covered in sauce." --"How Parents are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood"
@10157. "Today's working mothers spend as much time doing hands-on activities with their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s." --"How Parents are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood"
@10158. LoudAssert()
@10159. "A good life without good food should be a logical impossibility." --https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/16/snack-attacks-the-toxic-truth-about-the-way-we-eat
@10160. "As things stand, our culture is far too critical of the individuals who eat junk foods and not critical enough of the corporations who profit from selling them." --https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/16/snack-attacks-the-toxic-truth-about-the-way-we-eat
@10161. "We are often told in a slightly hectoring way that we should make 'better' or 'smarter' food choices, yet the way we eat now is the product of vast impersonal forces that none of us asked for." --https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/16/snack-attacks-the-toxic-truth-about-the-way-we-eat
@10162. "This article was amended on 19 March 2019 to more correctly order the name of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."
March 21, 2019
@10164. "Most of us have quietly excoriated the remote and anonymous author of some skimpily documented program." --Brooks, "The Other Face", _The Mythical Man-Month_, 164
@10166. "The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one....Mathematics and the physical sciences made great strides for three centuries by constructing simplified models of complex phenomena, deriving properties from the models, and verifying those properties experimentally. This worked because the complexities ignored in the models were not the essential properties of the phenomena. It does not work when the complexities are the essence." --Brooks, "No Silver Bullet", _The Mythical Man-Month_, 183
@10167. "The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build." --Brooks, "No Silver Bullet", _The Mythical Man-Month_, 199
@10168. "For the truth is, the clients do not know what they want. They usually do not know what questions must be answered, and they almost never have thought of the problem in the detail that must be specified." --Brooks, "No Silver Bullet", _The Mythical Man-Month_, 199
@10170. Where is next November?
--interview question frequently used by Brooks
@10171. "It is far better to be explicit and wrong than to be vague." --Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month After 20 Years", _The Mythical Man-Month_, 20th anniversary ed., p. 259
March 23, 2019
@10172. "There was a mountain goat in one of the tunnels." --TripAdvisor review, #unusualsentences
@10173. "...Bring Your Pal? Oh, Bypass." --me, trying to interpret "BYP" in a box on a highway map
@10174. "Price range: $101-$658"
--TripAdvisor, of nightly hotel prices
@10175. "I wanna love somebody but I don't know how"
--"Sucker's Prayer", The Decemberists
@10176. "For churches, the best thing about abstinence-only education is that because it accomplishes nothing, they can keep trying to do it forever, uniting their congregations around tilting at windmills that never come down." --Benjamin Studebaker
@10179. "Sure, I'll just recompile my kernel to be able to copy my private key onto my phone!" --me, after a series of ridiculous failed attempts to do so due to weird security-ish obstacles the developer put in my way, legitimately culminating in an instruction from something I was installing to recompile my kernel to be able to use the program
{BL #12177}
@10180. "Contrary to what is generally believed, forgiveness is not about others, but ourselves. It is not about having compassion or being loving toward others. Au contraire -- we do it to protect our own minds." --Dazne
March 28, 2019
@10183.
I saw the cross come sailin' in (x3)
On Good Frihdáy in the morning.
--me, after misreading an anthem title
@10185. Conservation Program Helps Struggling Rhinos Adapt To Modern Ecosystem By Retraining Them As Urban Scavengers
@10186. "According to the Brisbane Times, on Monday someone reported a man launching a jet ski from Punsand Bay, near the tip of Cape York (right). It's not entirely clear why that warranted a report, but probably because someone noticed the jet ski was loaded down with extra gas and the driver was armed with a crossbow." --Lowering the Bar
@10189. "Well, if you had nothing better to do in 1635 I suppose you could spend an improving hour or so pondering the truth of that [terrible didactic poetry], and then advise your friends about it sententiously for weeks. Everybody seemed to have so much more time in those days." --Philip Pullman, _Daemon Voices_, p. 207
@10190. "The fork was never found." --#unusualsentences
@10191. "I hyperextended my elbow uninstalling Windows 10." --AskReddit comment on the stupidest way you've injured yourself (also, #unusualsentences)
@10192. "Some of my arm tasted like plastic, dinnit?" --#hypnagogia, voice of a stereotypical working-class guy, maybe a construction worker, with a slight British accent
@10194. I was just remembering that this winter, there was a synod event held at Our Savior's that was rescheduled *four times* due to weather. Every time they scheduled it, there was another snowstorm...
@10195. So Microsoft has decided it doesn't want to sell eBooks anymore (apparently they did this for a while). Their solution for getting all users off their eBooks is to simply delete them from everyone's library and refund their original purchase price!
Completely absurd, but I have to say it's also rather creative.
@10196. "The basic structure of humor is a collision between incompatible meanings; the setup prepares the listener to take what's happening in one way, and then the punch line redefines it in a different way. The shock of the sudden change is what makes it funny." --JMG
April 05, 2019
@10197. So yesterday I was cooking and listening to a new Mandolin Orange LP. Well, it was actually two records, one LP and one EP. I got to the end of the LP, put on the EP, and went back to cooking. I remarked kind of casually that I didn't recognize the guy singing and it was a pretty strange vocal effect for the group, but I kept finishing my dinner. Then the song finally ended (it was very long) and the next one started, which *also* was weird. That's when I realized I had been playing a 45rpm record on 33 for 5 minutes without noticing.
To be fair, it was a 12-inch record and you don't usually expect one identical-looking disk in the sleeve to play at 33 and the other at 45, but even so, that was pretty silly!
@10198. Despondent Jeff Bezos Realizes He'll Have To Work For 9 Seconds To Earn Back Money He Lost In Divorce
@10199. And they are really not joking about this, you guys, because in addition to the usual consumer-fraud and unjust-enrichment claims, they have alleged that McDonald's is breaking the law because "requiring" cheese to be bought along with a Quarter Pounder is *an unlawful tying arrangement that violates the Sherman Act*. "McDONALD'S forced and coerced members of the Nationwide Class to purchase and pay for the separate and distinct tied product, cheese, as a condition to purchasing the tying product, [the burger]." And the coup de grace: "McDONALD's has sufficient economic and market power in the fast food quarter pound hamburger market *to force consumers to purchase and pay for cheese*...as a condition to purchasing [said hamburger]."
--https://loweringthebar.net/2018/06/plaintiffs-allege-forced-to-buy-cheeseless.html
@10200. "The way to tell a story is to say what happened, and then shut up." --Philip Pullman, "Children's Literature Without Borders", _Daemon Voices_, 127
@10201. "The first and last and only discovery that the victims of anarchy can make is: no rules, no freedom." --Philip Pullman, "Let's Write It in Red", _Daemon Voices_, 133
@10202. "Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else. A little earlier I said that stories were about life; perhaps they're made of life." --Philip Pullman, "Let's Write It in Red", _Daemon Voices_, 140
@10203. "Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." --Samuel Johnson, qtd. by Philip Pullman, "Let's Write It in Red", _Daemon Voices_, 143
@10204. "How nice to realize that even the most offensive things will eventually require a footnote to explain what they are." --Philip Pullman, afterword to "Let's Write It in Red", _Daemon Voices_, 152, regarding a tabloid he had mentioned in the piece which had since folded
April 12, 2019
@10206. Windows Cheesecake
@10207. "As it turns out, you can learn more from an hour of listening to yourself sitting by a stream than by reading books all year." --Dazne
@10208. Quick idea: Anytime the only reason you're doing something or think something is because someone else told you to, there's something wrong. Maybe they're manipulating you. Maybe you're putting too much stock in what they're saying. Maybe they didn't fully explain the reasons to you. Maybe the reasons are just flat-out wrong. But it's time to look closer.
Not sure how true this is, but it was the idea!
April 16, 2019
@10209. Notre Dame Gargoyle Going To Stay As Still As Possible Until Arson Investigator Gone
@10210. "In my opinion, anyone who pushes code without even testing it at the most basic level shouldn't be calling themselves a senior dev." --Stack Exchange comment
@10211. "The ceiling has stopped working." --#hypnagogia
@10212. So at Cabela's the other day I bought a new pair of walking shoes. The woman at the front desk asked me when she checked to make sure they were both in there and the right size whether I had tried them on.
No lady, I just walked into the store, picked up a shoe box off the shelf, and came up here to pay you 200 bucks for a pair of shoes I haven't tried on.
@10213. "It would be cool if you could obtain brain plugins." --random late-night thought
@10214. "He was very careful with saws in Europe." --#hypnagogia
@10215. If you've got five real friends, you've had a great life.
{BL #13171}
@10216. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." --Steve Jobs
@10217. "This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time." --Fight Club
@10218. "Everything in your life is important. If it's not important, it should not be in your life. Period." --Dazne
@10219. "Names are great. That's why I like them." --me
@10220. My commentary: You have the audacity to ask me to link to your low-quality clickbait listicle full of links but little original content? Your page/site is so bad, that when I Google search your page title wrapped in quotes, it doesn't appear anywhere in the entire 32 search results!
--Project Nayuki, "Poor feedback from readers"
@10222. "Run the command to execute the script of the file." --a very sketchy, low-quality Bash scripting guide
The same page has a fabulous contender for silliest Useless Use of Cat, giving a very clear picture of just how little the author knows about the shell:
@@@
seq 5 10 20 | cat > seq.txt
@@@
@10223. "Actors forget their identities like stoners forget the quadratic formula." --https://aeon.co/ideas/is-acting-hazardous-on-the-risks-of-immersing-oneself-in-a-role
(I don't like this article that much though. It seems to imply that fantasy can never affect one's real life, which to me is both obviously bunk and actually insulting to fantasy. Of course fantasy can affect your real life; I just don't think that means there's anything wrong with it! Cf. #6701, #7021. Did the Joker become unhealthy and die because he was playing the Joker? That seems a pretty big stretch, but we don't have to imply causation to suggest a correlation might be possible, especially in more wide-ranging situations.)
@10224. "The internet has made it so easy to gratify basic social and sexual needs that there's far less incentive to go out into the 'meatworld' and chase those things. This isn't to say that the internet can give you more satisfaction than sex or relationships, because it doesn't...[but it can] supply you with just enough satisfaction to placate those imperatives...I think it's healthy to ask yourself: 'If I didn't have any of this, would I be going out more? Would I be having sex more?' For a lot of people my age, I think the answer is probably yes." --"Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?", _The Atlantic_
@10225. "It may or may not have helped [the Marriage course's popularity] that a course with overlapping appeal, Human Sexuality, was discontinued some years back after its professor presided over a demonstration of something called a fucksaw." --"Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?", _The Atlantic_
@10229. "Sometimes I want people to be uncommunicative." --me
(Cf. #1430, #8143.)
@10230. "We can talk about sex lawyers." --#hypnagogia
@10231. "Social media is making us anti-social." --Dazne
@10232. "One of the problems with a peer support group is that you have a bunch of people with the same problem and no solution." --guest on _Reply All_, "INVCEL"
@10234.
My friend Roger once showed me his plan for a file system. He planned so many months to write the code, so many to debug, and so on. I said, "You mean you plan to write code with bugs mixed in, and then strain the bugs out?" He replied, "Sounds kind of dumb when you put it like that."
--Tom Van Vleck
(https://www.multicians.org/thvv/proverbs.html)
@10235. "Merge made by octopus" --occasionally seen in older versions of Git, before the word "strategy" was added
@10236. Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New Intelligent Falling Theory
@10237. "Reality always wins." --"How to Diagnose What's Making You Chronically Late"
https://lifehacker.com/diagnose-what-makes-you-late-so-you-can-fix-the-real-is-472944743
@10238. "Timeliness has less to do with absolute precision in estimates and more to do with margin." --"How to Diagnose What's Making You Chronically Late"
@10239. "New design self-lock connector is talent." --Amazon description of a water bladder
I really have not the slightest idea what this means.
@10240. Beyond Compare
@10242. "I think my productivity scored an own goal today." --CB57.27, on how much time I spent on silly administrative tasks from corporate
@10243. "I learned something this week which shocked me to my core, which is that I have misunderstood the flamingo my entire life." --Flora Lichtman
@10244. "So, why don't we call the National Mascot Association?" --Flora Lichtman
@10245. "In 2015, TED collected 40 examples of bizarre idioms that cannot be translated literally. They include the Swedish saying 'to slide in on a shrimp sandwich', which refers to somebody who didn't have to work to get where they are." --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom
April 29, 2019
@10249. "I would say [I am] 'defiant and innovative.' You may also have heard the term 'pain in the ass.'" --librarian on _ELT_
@10250. THE TRUTH: IT'S ILLEGAL TO USE A LEGAL NAME
--https://loweringthebar.net/2016/06/is-it-illegal-to-use-a-legal-name.html
@10251. "Sometimes, things go wrong." --https://tomroush.net/2011/12/09/sometimes-things-go-wrong/
{BL #10980}
@10252. Simplicity: the art of maximizing the amount of work not done.
--Twelve Principles of Agile
@10253. "Checking email is never about email. It's about what it allows us to avoid (the real, hard work)." --Dazne
@10258. "If you press the g-spot and the clit at the same time it takes a screenshot." --Reddit comment, responding to the AskReddit question, "What is one sexual fact everyone would benefit knowing?"
I totally love this. It's the perfect combination of obscure and specific (the way you take screenshots on a phone), relation to modern life, slightly taboo, and creative juxtaposition.
@10260. "I recommend you walk before considering flying with [Spirit Airlines]." --luggage review
@10261. "Sailboats are cool. They're full of nouns you don't need anywhere else in life." --Bill Nye, on _Every Little Thing_
May 09, 2019
@10262. Georgia Governor Signs Bill Outlawing Abortion Except For Single 30-Second Window On Third Day Of Fourth Week Of Pregnancy
@10263. As Gentoo users are generally an annoying nusiance in my IRC channel, I would like to be able to set a +b on *!gentoouser@*, in order to keep them out. In order to accomplish this, I would like Gentoo to set the default username to something Gentoo specific.
Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Join an IRC channel
2. Wait for a Gentoo user to come in, talk about how he "emerged" this and that and all the "optimizations" he used, but something still isn't working
3. Mention that he should have read the FAQ before /joining and /kick him.
--https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890
@10264. Someone on IS Personal yesterday was selling an "incumbent bike."
@10265. I was thinking the other day as I was biking that there seem to be a set of magical rules that apply when a bike approaches a four-way stop at the same time as a car.
1. If the motorist is in a good mood, the cyclist has the right-of-way.
2. If the cyclist comes to a complete stop, s/he immediately loses the right-of-way (unless rule #1 also applies).
3. If neither #1 or #2 apply, normal rules of determining the right-of-way do not apply. Instead, a coin is tossed and the winner goes first.
@10266. I tried to hold an automatic door for someone at the grocery today. I didn't actually reach for it, but I very deliberately glanced behind me, realized the person was within the range where it was polite to hold the door, and got ready to do so!
@10268. "I think they used [Alison Krauss'] voice to calibrate the first auto-tune." --YouTube comment
@10269. "Wasted bananas are completely unacceptable." --me
May 12, 2019
@10270. "Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women, man." --The Dude, _The Big Lebowski_
@10271. "I could just be sitting at home with pee stains on my rug." --The Dude, _The Big Lebowski_
(Cf. https://www.xkcd.com/349/)
@10272. "You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole." --The Dude, _The Big Lebowski_
@10273. "Hey, careful man, there's a beverage here!" --The Dude, _The Big Lebowski_
@10274. "Go ahead! But don't throw sticks!" --#overheard at Nerstrand
@10277. "I just want to understand this, sir. Every time a rug is micturated upon in this fair city, I have to compensate the owner?" --Lebowski, _The Big Lebowski_
@10279. Had a dream obviously inspired by reading _Fellowship of the Ring_ which involved giant evil Fresnel lenses that flew through the sky and killed people by focusing the sun on them.
@10280. "She's not my special lady, she's my fuckin' lady friend. I'm just helping her conceive, man!" --The Dude, _The Big Lebowski_
@10281. "I feel vindicated in my dislike of oven mitts." --me
May 17, 2019
@10282.
The news warns that even one drink per day carries a risk. But how great is that risk?
For each set of 100,000 people who have one drink a day per year, 918 can expect to experience one of the 23 alcohol-related problems in any year. Of those who drink nothing, 914 can expect to experience a problem. This means that 99,082 are unaffected, and 914 will have an issue no matter what. Only 4 in 100,000 people who consume a drink a day may have a problem caused by the drinking, according to this study.
At two drinks per day, the number experiencing a problem increased to 977. Even at five drinks per day, which most agree is too much, the vast majority of people are unaffected.
I'm not advocating that people should ignore these risks. They are real, but they are much smaller than many other risks in our lives, and much less than the headlines would have you believe, especially at the levels that most agree are permissible.
--https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/upshot/alcohol-health-risks-study-worry.html
@10283. "But just because something is unhealthy in large amounts doesn't mean that we must completely abstain. A chart in the study showed rising risks from alcohol from 0 to 15 drinks. Consider that 15 desserts a day would be bad for you. I am sure that I could create a chart showing increasing risk for many diseases from 0 to 15 desserts. This could lead to assertions that 'there's no safe amount of dessert.' But it doesn't mean you should never, ever eat dessert." --https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/upshot/alcohol-health-risks-study-worry.html
{BL #10579}
May 27, 2019
@10284.
Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Ohm are in a car, and they get pulled over. Heisenberg is driving and the cop asks him, "Do you know how fast you were going?"
"No, but I know exactly where I am," Heisenberg replies.
The cop says, "You were doing 55 in a 35."
Heisenberg throws up his hands and shouts, "Great! Now I'm lost!"
The cop thinks this is suspicious and orders him to pop open the trunk. The cop checks it out and says, "Do you know you have a dead cat back here?"
"We do now, moron!" shouts Schrodinger.
The cop moves to arrest them. Ohm resists.
(Cf. #583.)
@10289. The Minnesota town of Tracy has the motto "A Great Place to Live." On the other hand, that's still better than Northfield's attempt (#7551).
@10291. In western Minnesota I saw a convenience store with a greenhouse attached to it! Also, many gas stations in South Dakota had miniature casinos attached to them.
@10293. "This is a *long* trail!" --child on the Window Trail in the Badlands, which was probably less than two city blocks in length
@10294. At the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, the guy who sold me a ticket and gave me the museum information was describing how it's okay to touch anything that's not behind glass. To demonstrate, he picked up a photo stand on the counter, and it completely fell apart -- the back came off and the photo fell out.
@10295. The first day I was in Rapid City, it was about 35 degrees and rainy. At the hotel, I saw a very optimistic woman in the lobby wearing a sundress. Not even a sweater.
@10296. "Real comfort food has to suffuse you with an inner warmth." --me
{BL CB59.60}
@10298. "Thank you for the gift, Mother Nature!" --#overheard at a restaurant in Custer, of the snow we got in late May
@10299. "But I think they *do* procreate. I think that's what we're going to learn!" --#overheard at Wind Cave National Park, one woman a bit younger than me to another
@10300. "If you learn to write upside-down, you can become a park ranger. It's a unique talent." --ranger at Wind Cave National Park
(Also reference librarians, probably...anyone else?)
@10301. "Look at his shirt! Minneapolis? ...Minnesota, that's it." --a woman, very loudly, not addressing herself to me but referring to my St. Olaf shirt to her daughter, also at Wind Cave National Park
@10302. Paternal Word-Hoard
(narrator in _Lord of the Rings_, of the Gaffer)
@10303. "If there's bats, don't scream!" --child on the Wind Cave tour, when asked what rules he thought there might be in a cave
@10304. "The lady *said* it would be *dry*!" --same child, later in the tour when a small amount of water was dripping from the ceiling
@10305. "The Starbucks at the top is closed." --man descending Black Elk Peak, several miles into the wilderness, to me
@10306. "It strikes me that folk takes their own peril into Lorien, and finds it there because they've brought it." --Sam Gamgee
{BL #11402}
@10307. "And now we'd better be sneaking on together." --Sam Gamgee
@10309. "I am of the opinion that it's not a complete outdoors trip without crapping in a pit toilet." --me
@10310. I was sitting on the porch at my cabin drinking a cup of tea and watching the clouds, and it struck me that we seem to have a tendency to interpret cloud shapes as animals remarkably frequently. Like, animals are a relatively small part of our everyday experience but they're very commonly what we see in the clouds. Is it something about the types of shapes that clouds take on, or a predisposition we have to interpret inanimate things as living, or both or something else entirely?
@10311. "For I think you will find that here lots of sex goes to alcoholics and hot-air balloons." --#hypnagogia
@10312. I was thinking the other night that my work (and maybe systems work in general, and maybe even the world of modern technology in general) is essentially about *drawing lines between things*. Categorization, hierarchies, machine learning, fuzzy matching...it's all just separating things into boxes. And it's actually a terribly difficult and fundamental problem.
@10313. I learned from Lowering the Bar today that the TSA saves the loose change that people leave behind at checkpoints (or at least the employees are supposed to deliver it to a bucket somewhere), and they have currently accumulated over 3 million dollars in a fund from this change! (That's not even all of it; they've spent some of it on some things.)
@10314. "Broadly speaking, at this level of abstraction, like static vs dynamic typing or OO vs FP, there is no Best Tool For The Job. Only a Best Tool For That Person At That Moment In Their Life For The Job. A set of personal truths to be discovered / decided upon by each individual practitioner." --https://m.signalvnoise.com/open-source-beyond-the-market/
@10315.
I think it's why so many startups in technology are so eager to boast about how serious and important their mission is. Even if it's evidently not so. They're trying to counterweight and compensate for the actual loss of meaning and purpose that a lot of us suffer under either periodically or chronically.
"We're on a mission to unleash the world's creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working." -Dropbox
For fuck's sake, Dropbox. You host files. You make the files appear on all my computers.
I like Dropbox. I use Dropbox. I PAY FOR DROPBOX. But it is not "unleashing" my "creativity" in any meaningful sense of either of those words. It stores my files. It's literally a filing company.
--https://m.signalvnoise.com/open-source-beyond-the-market/
{BL #11947}
{BL #12156}
@10316. "This is the snowball effect of finding meaning at work. You don't just have a fixed pie of productivity to divide amongst your pursuits, be they commercial or open source. The pie expands and shrinks depending on your motivation and your mood. When one area of your life is contracting, it often shrinks all the other areas along with it. And when one part of your life is expanding, others often follow too." --https://m.signalvnoise.com/open-source-beyond-the-market/
@10318. Related to the Dropbox-related article above: Scarcity isn't a thing with software. It can be copied essentially infinitely and without cost (certainly, under conditions that *are* subject to scarcity, like the easy production of PCBs, but we are currently under those conditions so software is currently not subject to scarcity). This has a bearing not only on MIT/GPL but also on piracy and related topics.
@10320. I identified a type of simple but infuriating error the other day which I'll call Incorrect Binary. Basically, you choose the wrong thing of two seemingly obvious categories. Examples:
* Sorting something like beans and putting the good stuff in the bad pile
* Dumping out the wrong side of a strainer
* Coding if(!x) instead of if(x) or vice versa
* Inverting "member" and "member of" in a security hierarchy
I think it's precisely because there are so few choices that it's easy to make -- it feels like it should be super easy so you don't spend much energy thinking about it.
(Exp. §LogicalInversionError.)
@10323.
Q: What is the length of the hair an average cat sheds in a month in cm, laid end to end?
A: I read recently that the average person sheds about 150 hairs per day, and there are 30 days in a month. My hair is about 10 inches long, or 20cm; that's longer than most cats, but a cat probably has thicker hair than me as well. That makes about 100000 cm/month. An average cat probably has about ten times as much area covered in hair as my head, so 1 million cm/month. (Which is astounding. But correct.)
@10324. "Insurance companies respond to hospital invoices basically by farting on the bill and sending it back." --Reddit comment
@10325. "Bob generally does not get large performance incentives for shaving money off of his hiring budget: you get a new Macbook if you convince Bob to give you $5k extra, but Bob gets (if he is anomalously lucky) a dinner at TGIFridays if he convinces you to take $5k less." --https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
@10326. "Do you know anyone who you've ever thought 'Man, I thought they were competent, but then it turned out they had a notebook so I had to write them off'?" --https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
@10327. "For the love of Kevin Noodle!" --me, made up randomly
@10328. "Flex italics have all the bad handling characteristics of both of their parent types. They are not for the faint of heart." --http://www.richardspens.com/ref/nibs/basics.htm
@10329. "So now we're at a fabulous place called The Land of It Works On My Machine." --Erik Dahl, "Preparing .NET Applications for Continuous Integration"
@10330. NASA Administrator Announces He Will Open His Body Up To Sexual Tourism
June 08, 2019
@10331. "Leisure...is not the privilege of those who can afford to take time; it is the virtue of those who give to everything they do the time it deserves to take." --David Steindl-Rast
@10332. "The best knowledge workers are not the ones who spend the most time at work, but the ones who know when to stop." --Dazne
@10333. "Real relaxation doesn't come from doing nothing at all; it comes from doing something different." --Dazne
@10335. "Governor Edgar has three different-colored pens in his knit shirt's breast pocket. This clinches it: you can always trust a man with multiple pens." --David Foster Wallace, "Getting Away From Already Being Pretty Much Away From It All"
@10338. "The dent was not where our dog hit their car, and we do not paint our dogs." --Reddit comment on someone trying to call the cops because a dog ran into their car, #unusualsentences
@10339. "Of course, as time passed I began understanding that it [Google Apps] wasn't free as in *free beer*, but as in *you don't see money flowing out of your checking account*. Of course, you see other things." --https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2018/migrating-to-fastmail-from-google-suite.html
@10340. Random question: when it feels "buggy" in a place right after you show up, are you sensing the bugs or atmospheric conditions that mean there will be bugs there? Maybe a silly question and unreasonably philosophical, but somehow it seems interesting to me!
@10341. So my current philosophy is that deadlines are stupid when you create them artificially for yourself. Sometimes they exist and they're fine, when they correspond to something out of my control. For instance, I have to have my Christmas presents ready by December 25 if I want to give them to people on Christmas; the date of Christmas isn't under my control and Christmas will come then no matter what I do.
The new thing is that I had a realization about why they're so unhelpful. I think it's because your priorities are constantly changing, or they *should* be. When they change, suddenly your deadlines don't necessarily make sense any more -- they might be too early or even too late. When the deadline is too early, you feel bad when it slips by even though your decision to change it was totally justifiable. When the deadline is too late, you don't get it done until then because that was the deadline you set, even if things changed and it really kind of should have been done earlier. When you free yourself from the stupid dates and just get good at prioritizing things instead of using fear of dates showing up, you are free to adjust anytime. Further, I find at least for myself that there's much less temptation to procrastinate.
June 19, 2019
@10344. I've noticed recently that the 'www.' on websites is becoming less common and visible. You comparatively rarely see it in marketing materials, for instance, and fewer websites will redirect you to www. if you use the root domain. (But then I looked at the websites I currently have open and most of them still have the dubs, so...maybe I'm overestimating that part of it.)
Might go along with the increase in the use of the metonym "Internet" for the Web. Like, the silly words like "Information Superhighway" died away in the 90s, but now even the actual proper name is rarely heard and we just call it by the big, ugly network it runs on. You don't even hear "Web browser" anymore, it's just a "browser."
@10345. "So, in a nutshell: Mercurial is an open-source distributed revision control system, and git is a lifestyle choice." --Tim Keating, StackOverflow comment
@10346. ERROR: Creating folder +TenderApp-Bugtracker on repository SorenBjornstad.com-Remote
Folder '+TenderApp-Bugtracker'[SorenBjornstad.com-Remote] could not be created. Server responded: ('NO', ['Permission denied'])
I love "Server responded: NO"!
@10347. "! End of file on the terminal... why?"
--TeX, on pressing ^D at the prompt
@10348. "It's quick, it's easy, and it's free: pouring river water in your socks" --/r/brandnewsentence
@10349. "how to kill a child" --top comment on an AskReddit thread about the worst thing you innocently Googled (meaning a child process launched from a C program)
(Cf. #3094.)
{BL #12342}
@10350. Random thought: being a musician is not really about *music*. I mean, it is, but that's only a small part of it. This is something I've found others often don't understand, somehow not realizing that it's emotionally fulfilling and not just like a task you do.
(Cf. #8831, §LiveMusicViaWatchhouse.)
@10356. "I have come to believe that *any* time spent planning is pretty much time well spent." --me
@10357. "Life is too short to work for stupid people." --Stack Exchange comment
@10358. "I bet this lady's floors are scratched to hell." --YouTube comment on "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," and perhaps the only YouTube comment that has ever made me laugh out loud
The best part though is that someone replied to it saying, "You do realize this is a metaphor, right?"
@10359. "The most money lost on death is when a family doesn't grieve properly and it affects their health." --Reddit comment
@10360. "[Insurance is] the best waste of money you'll ever spend." --Reddit comment
@10361. "Unlike other human experiences, dying is difficult to study under controlled laboratory conditions by means of repeated measurements." --study on near-death experiences
@10362. "I feel like every time someone sneezes, New Orleans has a parade." --Candy Chang, in a TED talk
June 30, 2019
@10363. The TFS Aggregator's logging system often returns a message that "Work Item XXX is valid to save." The locution "valid to save" and in particular the use of "X to save" where X is an adjective is so uncommon that it reminds me every time of the Christian rock song "Mighty to Save" and I've started singing a TFS Aggregator version on the fly from time to time...
@10364. I have a new conspiracy theory (not particularly serious) that a bunch of trolls have been working for years to make YouTube comments stupid and pointless. Because think about it...somehow YouTube in particular stands out as a paragon of terribleness, and why should that be? Maybe some people are just messing with us!
@10368. Preponing
July 02, 2019
@10369. "We hate this *both* shit." --David Foster Wallace, on moral ambiguity in movies
@10371. "As this long explanation suggests, this is only occasionally useful." --zsh interactive configuration menu
@10372. "I have received an email from a government agency that reads, 'Kevin, here is a copy of the 1955 Beaver report you requested,' and I will follow up on that just as soon as I remind myself why I apparently requested a 1955 beaver report from a government agency." --Lowering the Bar
@10373. "Can I have oil, and then I'll have the XML dependency." --#hypnagogia, unknown woman's voice ordering at a coffee shop
@10374. "Curing congestion by adding more lanes is like curing obesity by buying bigger pants." --Lewis Mumford
@10376. "Just brilliant! Can anyone else get more innovative in wasting time and talent while not getting close to the main goal of the activity?...Today, I am an Alex." --"Less Than, Approximately, Greater Than" review
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/less-than-approximately-greater-than/id1458541805
@10377. I determined the other day that I think there's a distinction to be made when planning work between that work that you can complete entirely by yourself and that work that requires other people. That's because the first is easy to plan and can be inserted anywhere it makes sense, whereas the second requires outside coordination and is far more likely to get interrupted or rescheduled. See if I can make that useful in practice.
July 17, 2019
@10378. "Coulda been dumber." --me
@10379. The Laws of Life:
* Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
* Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
* Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right but always time to do it over.
* Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
* Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
* Parkinson's Second Law: Expenses rise to meet income.
* Stock-Sanford Corollary to Parkinson's Law: If you only have a minute, it only takes a minute to do.
* Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
(Cf. §LawOfCynicism.)
@10382. I'm going to add in some things for the clippings file on my old Kindle that I've had for 10 years and never done this with! Might be fun.
@10383. "Knowing that an electron on the other side of the universe is spinning down is useless information." --_Physics of the Impossible_
@10384. "Every surface in the room spouted cardboard messages. The staff welcomed him personally. They offered him a full range of goods and services. One piece of cardstock in the bathroom said that if he'd like to save the earth, he should leave his towel over the shower bar, and if not, he should throw it on the floor. The messages had been put out fresh that morning and would be replaced at his departure. Thousands like them, from Seattle to St. Petersburg." --_The Echo Maker_
@10385. "Copyleft -- all rights reversed." --Don Hopkins, later borrowed by RMS
@10386. "Why is software on that extreme of the spectrum? The reason is that in software we are developing idealized mathematical objects. You can build a complicated castle and have it rest on a thin line and it will stay up because it doesn't weigh anything. In other fields, people have to cope with the perversity of matter -- of physical objects. Matter does what it is going to do. You can try to model it, but if the actual behaviour doesn't fit the model then tough on you, because the challenge is to make physical objects that really work. If I want to put an if-statement in a while-statement, I don't have to worry about whether the if-statement will oscillate at a certain frequency and rub against the while-statement and eventually they will fracture. I don't have to worry whether it will oscillate at a certain high frequency and induce a signal in the value of some other variable. I don't have to worry about how much current that if-statement will draw, and whether it can dissipate the heat there inside that while-statement, or whether there will be a voltage drop across the while-statement that will make the if-statement not function. I don't have to worry that if I run this program in a salt water environment, the salt water may get in between the if-statement and the while-statement and cause corrosion. [The audience laughs all through this.] I don't have to worry, when I refer to the value of a variable, whether I am exceeding the fan-out limit by referring to it 20 times. I don't have to worry how much capacitance it has, and whether there has been sufficient time to charge up the value. I don't have to worry, when I write the program, about how I am going to physically assemble each copy and whether I can manage to get access to put that ifstatement inside the while-statement. I don't have to worry about how I am going to gain access in case that if-statement breaks, to remove it and replace it with a new one. There are so many problems that we don't have to worry about in software; that makes it fundamentally easier to write a program than to design a physical object that's going to work." --Richard Stallman
@10387. "If you don't know Lisp, you should learn it. (The Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming, available from the FSF through fsf.org, is a good way to get started.) If Emacs feels you are just using it, treating it as an object program, its feelings may be hurt. For real intimacy, read the Emacs source code." --Emacs guide
@10388. "Helen fell in the tub and sprained her wrist. 'That's it for the cooking,' she told us. 'You're not getting any more free meals out of me." Hugh and I shuffled back across the hall and shut the door behind us. No more 'Famous Veal Cutlet'! No more 'Famous Sausage Casserole'! No more 'Famous Chicken with the Oriental Vegetables'! We could hardly believe our luck." --David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10389. "It was a stranger who brought us back together. In the ten or so years before she retired, Helen cleaned house for a group of priests in Murray Hill. 'They were Jesuits,' she told me. 'That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting.'" --David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10390. Most often a homeowner would take my jacket, or direct me toward the closet. Mrs. Oakley did neither, and when I made for the brass rack that she herself clearly used, she said, "Not there," her voice a bark. "You can put your things in the guest bathroom. Not on the countertop, but on the toilet." She pointed to a door at one end of the foyer. "Put the lid down first," she told me. "Then put your coat and scarf on top of the lid."
I wondered who would be stupid enough not to have understood that, and I imagined a simpleton with a puzzled expression on his face. "Hey," he might say. "How come my jacket's all wet? And while we're at it, who put this turd in my pocket?!"
"Something amuses you, does it?" Mrs. Oakley asked. I said, "No. Not at all." Then I jotted down the time in my portable notebook. She saw me writing and put her hands on her hips. "I am not paying you to practice your English," she told me.
"Excuse me?"
She pointed to my notebook. "This is not a language institute. You are here to work, not to learn new words." "But I'm an American," I told her. "I spoke English before I got here. Like at home, growing up and stuff."
--David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10391.
"I fucky-fuck every day," he boasted. "Two women. I have a wife and another girl for the weekend. Two kind of pussy. Are you sure you no like to fucky-fuck?"
If forced to, I can live with the word "pussy," but "fucky-fuck" was making me carsick. "That is not a real word," I told him. "You can say that you fuck, but fucky-fuck is just nonsense. Nobody talks that way. You will never get ahead with that kind of language."
--David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10392. "For people who don't smoke, a mild or light cigarette is like a regular one with a pinhole in it. With Kools it's the difference between being kicked by a donkey and being kicked by a donkey that has socks on. It took some getting used to, but by the time my mother was cremated, I'd converted." --David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10393. "Saturday night's dinner included small pieces of raw horse meat served on chipped ice. It wasn't the first time I've eaten horse, or even raw horse, for that matter, but it was the first time I've done it while dressed in a traditional robe, two robes actually, the first one amounting to a kind of slip." --David Sedaris, _When You Are Engulfed in Flames_
@10394. "In 1998, more restaurant workers were murdered on the job in the United States than police officers." --_Fast Food Nation_
@10395. Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at a fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes.
--_Fast Food Nation_
@10396. "Today the U.S. government can demand the nationwide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves." --_Fast Food Nation_
@10397. "I don't want to be served irradiated feces along with my meat." --man interviewed in _Fast Food Nation_
@10398. "A 1983 investigation by NBC News said that the Cattle King Packing Company -- at the time, the USDA's largest supplier of ground beef for school lunches and a supplier to Wendy's -- routinely processed cattle that were already dead before arriving at its plant, hid diseased cattle from inspectors, and mixed rotten meat that had been returned by customers into packages of hamburger meat. Cattle King's facilities were infested with rats and cockroaches." --_Fast Food Nation_
@10399. I quote this one all the time now, though not usually with the exact amounts:
"During the late 1950s the typical soft drink order at a fast food restaurant contained about eight ounces of soda; today a "Child" order of Coke at McDonald's is twelve ounces. A "Large" Coke is thirty-two ounces -- and about 310 calories. In 1972, McDonald's added Large French Fries to its menu; twenty years later, the chain added Super Size Fries, a serving three times larger than what McDonald's offered a generation ago. Super Size Fries have 610 calories and 29 grams of fat." --_Fast Food Nation_
@10400. "However convincing the claim that 'it's my property, and I should have it forever,' try sounding convincing when uttering, 'It's my monopoly, and I should have it forever.'" --Lawrence Lessig, _Free Culture_
@10401. "Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the Internet is more than the fine for a doctor's negligently butchering a patient?" --Lawrence Lessig, _Free Culture_
(Well, there's §NoSuchThingAsCommonSense...)
@10402. "It might have been a mistake in 1923 for the law to offer authors only a fifty-six-year term. I don't think so, but it's possible. If it was a mistake, then the consequence was that we got fewer authors to create in 1923 than we otherwise would have. But we can't correct that mistake today by increasing the term. No matter what we do today, we will not increase the number of authors who wrote in 1923. Of course, we can increase the reward that those who write now get (or alternatively, increase the copyright burden that smothers many works that are today invisible). But increasing their reward will not increase their creativity in 1923. What's not done is not done, and there's nothing we can do about that now." --Lawrence Lessig, _Free Culture_
@10403. "St. Augustine tells of a friend, Simplicius, who could recite Virgil by heart -- backward. (That he could recite it forward seems to have been unremarkable.)" --Joshua Foer, _Moonwalking with Einstein_
@10404. "I found an eel corpse, some blessed arrows, a gem, and a kelp frond in the bottom of the pit I dug!! Hmm... Man. This game sure has a lot of thought put in it. How come it takes so little space on my hard drive?" --The Ellora Saga
@10405. "Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic." --Bruce Sterling, qtd. in _Mindhacker_
@10406. "Don't know whether to kiss me or kick my ass? Split the difference and kiss my ass." --Dan Savage
@10407. "Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." --Kenneth Boulding, qtd. in _The Crash Course_
@10408. "The only thing more frustrating than reading Bill-style passages like 'Spot is a good dog. He has fleas' is reading mis-connected sentences like 'Spot is a good dog. For example, he has fleas.'" --_They Say, I Say_
@10409. "I took a speed-reading course and read _War and Peace_ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia." --Woody Allen
@10410. "Several useless things taken together may generate one or two very useful things indeed." --_Mindhacker_
@10411. "One of the least meaningful and most overused words in the English language is 'sustainability.' For most Americans, it means something like 'pretty much the way I live right now, though maybe with a different car.'" --_The Conundrum_
@10412. "The chaplain was apologetic. 'I'm sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God.'" --_Catch-22_
@10413. "In Alabama, there was the _Living Truth_ [periodical]. It was broken into in 1892, its type scattered, and the next year the shop was set afire, but the press survived and the editor never missed an issue." --_A People's History of the United States_
@10414. "You know what clean smells like? Nothing. Clean smells like nothing." --_Plastic-Free_
@10415.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
--_1984_
@10416. "He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?" --_1984_
@10417. "In the absence of any other visible human traits, we do draw a lot of information from bumper stickers. This point was demonstrated by an experiment conducted in 1969 at California State College, a place marked by violent clashes between the Black Panther Party and the police. In the trial, fifteen subjects of varying appearance and type of car affixed a bright BLACK PANTHER sticker to their auto's rear bumper. No one in the group had received traffic violations in the past year. After two weeks with the bumper sticker, the group had been given thirty-three citations." --_Traffic_
@10418. "I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before." --_A Journal of the Plague Year_
@10419. "But I must own that, for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was said of the children of Israel after their being delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water: viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works." --_A Journal of the Plague Year_
@10420. "Most of my library time, though, went to wandering the long, narrow corridors of the stacks. Despite being surrounded by tens of thousands of books, I don't remember feeling the anxiety that's symptomatic of what we today call 'information overload.' There was something calming in the reticence of all those books, their willingness to wait years, decades even, for the right reader to come along and pull them from their appointed slots. Take your time, the books whispered to me in their dusty voices. We're not going anywhere." --_The Shallows_
@10422. "Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance. The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea. The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defense system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mouse cage, the bruising of somebody's upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale. In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever." --The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
@10423. "Isn't the whole point of a diary that it does allow you to let yourself down; to let go of the coherent and intact story, the picture-postcard version of events?" --Salley Bailey, _The Private Life of the Diary_
@10424. "Diaries indulge the weaker parts of our ego. Consequently, our diary persona is often poorly socialised, veering between overly sincere and insincere poses." --Salley Bailey, _The Private Life of the Diary_
@10425. "Public and private were mutually exclusive categories in my childhood home; much of it had to do with hair." --Salley Bailey, _The Private Life of the Diary_
@10426. "Journal writing is an essential part of Crusoe's survival plan; by making himself accountable to his journal, Crusoe conjures another body to haul him through the day." --Salley Bailey, _The Private Life of the Diary_
@10427. "This was the gist of the notice. It said 'The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.'" --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10428. "Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice was deep and quiet. In other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is, however, nothing soothing about being addressed by a disembodied voice out of nowhere, particularly when you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best and hanging from a ledge eight stories up a crashed building." --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10429. "'I think we were probably not very well-suited,' said Gargravarr again at length; 'we never seemed to be happy doing the same things. We always had the greatest arguments over sex and fishing. Eventually we tried to combine the two, but that only led to disaster, as you can probably imagine.'" --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10430. "He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones." --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10431. "Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs." --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10432. "'It's the wild color scheme that freaks me,' said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. 'Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?'" --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10433.
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.
--_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10434.
"Stick it up your nose," he said.
"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl. "Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?"
--_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10435. "He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away." --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10436. "During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable." --_Restaurant at the End of the Universe_
@10437. "You can only transact with things that are Economically Valuable. If you don't have anything your prospective customers want, they won't buy from you. This may seem obvious, but it's amazing how many prospective businesspeople enter the market without something the market wants." --_The Personal MBA_
@10438. The "newspaper rule" and "grandchild rule" are effective ways of personalizing the results of your decisions. The "newspaper rule" is a simulation of the following: assume your decision was publicized on the front page of tomorrow's New York Times, and your parents and/or significant other read it. What would they think? Imagining the personal consequences of your decisions in this way is a much more accurate way to evaluate the impact of short-term decisions. The "grandchild rule" is a way of evaluating decisions with long-term consequences. Imagine that, thirty or forty years from now, your grandchild gives you feedback on the results of your decision. Will they laud you for your wisdom or reprimand you for your stupidity?
--_The Personal MBA_
@10439. "You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once and move on." --Homer Simpson
@10440. "Oh. I thought the key to change management was attending a weekly meeting, chasing down approvers who aren't even remotely qualified to approve what is changing, filling out checklists, submitting tickets, and then chasing down approvers again because your window is coming up and it still isn't approved. Maybe I've been doing it wrong though." --Reddit comment
@10442. I find it hilarious to think that, even more than other slang, in the 90's, people apparently called the Web the "Information Superhighway" unironically! It is somehow very 90's though.
@10444. "Beginning your title with 'vote up if' is a violation of intergalactic law." --Reddit, when creating a new post
@10445. "Efficiency is what you strive for when you are doing things that are bad, and you want to do them less bad. But what we want are things that are good." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/31/efficiency
I think this does miss some things -- most critically to me that most things that are good in fact have some components that are not particularly enjoyable or meaningful in themselves, and those pieces are nice to do efficiently and get out of the way. But it's a very important thing to consider as I continue to think about and strive for "efficiency".
@10446. "Also note that most of the time, the initial commit message was fine. I doubt that you had originally labeled it 'Migrating to Bootstrap 3.1, and by the way mistakenly versioning the server's root password.'" --https://medium.com/@porteneuve/30-git-cli-options-you-should-know-about-15423e8771df, on 'git commit --amend'
@10447. "Dependency injection can encourage dependence on a dependency injection framework." --Wikipedia
July 28, 2019
@10448. "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." --https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1925
@10450. Speaking of Git, I had the thought that I think most issues people encounter with Git aren't actually problems with Git (even though they're liable to impute them thereto) but rather problems with their *process*. (And this includes me!)
@10451. "Data that is not retained cannot be stolen." --OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities
@10454. "The battery *existing* harms the battery life." --SuperUser comment
@10455. "This is manifestly impossible without shattering the Moon." --#unusualsentences, https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/32859/if-the-moon-were-impacted-by-a-suitably-sized-meteor-how-long-would-it-take-to
August 02, 2019
@10460. "I would bear you whither you will, even were you made of stone." --Gwaihir, to Gandalf
@10461. "Master Meriadoc, if you think that I have passed through the mountains and the realm of Gondor with fire and sword to bring herbs to a careless soldier who throws away his gear, you are mistaken. If your pack has not been found, then you must send for the herb-master of this House. And he will tell you that he did not know that the herb you desire had any virtues, but that it is called *westmansweed* by the vulgar, and *galenas* by the noble, and other names in other tongues more learned, and after adding a few half-forgotten rhymes that he does not understand, he will regretfully inform you that there is none in the House, and he will leave you to reflect on the history of tongues." --Aragorn
@10464. Noticed this last weekend: an emergency pull-out in a construction zone that specified a 2-hour limit. If I have to stop on the median of the highway in an EMERGENCY STOPPING ONLY zone, I'm going to stay there as long as I damn well need to to deal with my emergency! It's not called an emergency for nothing...
@10465. "The [_Rolling Stone_] site at one time had an extensive message-board forum. By the late 1990s, this had developed into a thriving community, with a large number of regular members and contributors worldwide. However, the site was also plagued with numerous Internet trolls and malicious code-hackers, who vandalized the forum substantially. The magazine abruptly deleted the forum in May 2004, then began a new, much more limited message board community on their site in late 2005, only to remove it again in 2006. In March 2008, the website started a new message board section once again, then deleted it in April 2010." --Wikipedia
The definition of "indecision," I think...
@10466. "I saw this study that said avocados are actually the lucid dreams of watermelons!" --_Stuff They Don't Want You To Know_ (an example of the stupid things that shouting SCIENCE can seem to justify)
@10467. "While travel is a fantastic way to gain insight into unfamiliar cultures and illuminating ways of life, it is not a cure for discontentment of the mind." --https://medium.com/personal-growth/travel-is-no-cure-for-the-mind-e449d3109d71
@10468. "I was pulled over because someone said I backed in and out of a driveway suspiciously in the last town I had driven through." --Reddit comment
August 11, 2019
@10469. "Will having gay sex soon be required for all American citizens (excluding Muslims)?" --/r/QTWTAIN
@10470. Software, to me, is an *accelerated way of creating functional things*. That's why I like working with it...nothing more.
@10471. Checking out at the grocery store tonight, I somehow noticed the number of questions I had to answer to complete the (really very simple) transaction of having my groceries rung up.
* Did you find everything all right? (Actually I think she forgot to ask this one, but they usually do.)
* This egg has a weird crack-like mark on it. Do you want it replaced? (Not even an actual crack.)
* Are these jalapeños?
* Would you like your soap in a separate bag? (Why would I?)
* Would you like your milk in a bag?
* Do you have a Fuel Saver?
* Would you like to round up for the Pinky Swear Challenge?
* Would you like cash back?
* Would you like a receipt?
It says something about modern life that I have to answer 9 questions to pay for groceries, doesn't it? That's not even counting the choices I had to make while selecting the groceries.
@10473. It's definitely Monday morning: I couldn't think of the word "attribute" while trying to name a variable!
@10474. Americans Would Rather Get Food Poisoning on Vacation Than Not Have Internet Access, Study Finds
--Slashdot headline
@10475. "If you get published in The New Yorker because the color of your letterhead attracted the attention of the editor, who was daydreaming of daisies, the resultant reward can follow you for life." --_The Black Swan_
(My first Kindle clippings import. Hopefully I can stay more up-to-date on these.)
@10476. "In sum, the long tail is a by-product of Extremistan that makes it somewhat less unfair: the world is made no less unfair for the little guy, but it now becomes extremely unfair for the big man." --_The Black Swan_
@10477. "One of the most misunderstood aspects of a Gaussian is its fragility and vulnerability in the estimation of tail events. The odds of a 4 sigma move are twice that of a 4.15 sigma. The odds of a 20 sigma are a trillion times higher than those of a 21 sigma! It means that a small measurement error of the sigma will lead to a massive underestimation of the probability. We can be a trillion times wrong about some events." --_The Black Swan_
@10478. "None of the claims about Bitcoin are true - as implemented, it is not anonymous, not fast, not secure, not a currency, not a medium of exchange, not a store of value, not a good investment, and despite how I made out, not even a good gamble." --article in _2600_
@10479. "The problem of the circularity of statistics (which we can also call the statistical regress argument) is as follows. Say you need past data to discover whether a probability distribution is Gaussian, fractal, or something else. You will need to establish whether you have enough data to back up your claim. How do we know if we have enough data? From the probability distribution -- a distribution does tell you whether you have enough data to "build confidence" about what you are inferring. If it is a Gaussian bell curve, then a few points will suffice (the law of large numbers once again). And how do you know if the distribution is Gaussian? Well, from the data. So we need the data to tell us what the probability distribution is, and a probability distribution to tell us how much data we need. This causes a severe regress argument." --_The Black Swan_
@10480. "Can someone explain to me why I should care about subatomic particles that, anyway, converge to a Gaussian? People can't predict how long they will be happy with recently acquired objects, how long their marriages will last, how their new jobs will turn out, yet it's subatomic particles that they cite as "limits of prediction." They're ignoring a mammoth standing in front of them in favor of matter even a microscope would not allow them to see." --_The Black Swan_
@10481. "Wittgenstein is occasionally mentioned (you can always mention Wittgenstein since he is vague enough to always seem relevant)." --_The Black Swan_
@10482. "Also, consider that if we gave Mother Nature to economists, it would dispense with individual kidneys: since we do not need them all the time, it would be more "efficient" if we sold ours and used a central kidney on a time-share basis. You could also lend your eyes at night since you do not need them to dream." --_The Black Swan_
@10483. "Few understand that there is generally no such thing as a reachable long run except as a mathematical construct to solve equations." --_The Black Swan_
@10484. "One has to have a mental problem to think that probabilities of future events are 'measurable' in the same sense that the temperature is measurable by a thermometer." --_The Black Swan_
@10485. "What's the difference between Bach and Darwin? Both were preternaturally gifted and widely known early in life. Both attained permanent fame posthumously. Where they differed was in their approach to the midlife fade. When Darwin fell behind as an innovator, he became despondent and depressed; his life ended in sad inactivity. When Bach fell behind, he reinvented himself as a master instructor. He died beloved, fulfilled, and -- though less famous than he once had been -- respected. The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin." --"Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think", Arthur C. Brooks
@10486. "Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him." --E.M. Forster
@10487. "German judges, very respectable people, who rolled dice before sentencing issued sentences 50 percent longer when the dice showed a high number, without being conscious of it." --_The Black Swan_
@10488. "How do you live long? By avoiding death. Yet people do not realize that success consists mainly in avoiding losses, not in trying to derive profits." --_The Black Swan_
@10489. "It is the duty of every author to represent the ideas of his adversaries as faithfully as possible." --_The Black Swan_
@10490. "Some gay men have begun own confabs are consent to wonder whether their catastrophes." --typographical error from incorrectly transcribing columns, found in a Kindle edition of _The Atlantic_
@10491. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
@10492. What does the novel [1984] mean for us? Not Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, where Winston is interrogated and tortured until he loses everything he holds dear. We don't live under anything like a totalitarian system. 'By definition, a country in which you are free to read Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the country described in Nineteen Eighty-Four,' Lynskey acknowledges. Instead, we pass our days under the nonstop surveillance of a telescreen that we bought at the Apple Store, carry with us everywhere, and tell everything to, without any coercion by the state. The Ministry of Truth is Facebook, Google, and cable news. We have met Big Brother and he is us.
--_Atlantic_ article
@10493. [Baseball] is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed; the only game in which the defense has the ball...At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities, an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating, and has excluded as many as it has included. A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers, and it reflects a host of age-old American tensions, between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective. It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.
--Ken Burns, _Baseball_
@10494. "People who talk to themselves on the phone never learn anything to their advantage." --Ford, _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10495. "He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down." --Ford, _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10496. "Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants." --Ford, _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10497. "There are private flying clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments." --Ford, _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10498. "'The Masters of Krikkit,' said Slartibartfast again, and if his breathing had been sepulchral before, this time he sounded like someone in Hades with bronchitis." --Ford, _Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10499. "Here is a very general principle about how we read: we can best manage complexity when we begin with something short and direct that frames the more complex information that follows." --_Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace_
@10500. "If we are socially responsible writers, we should make our ideas no simpler than they deserve, but no harder than they require." --_Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace_
@10501. "According to the Illinois Commerce Commission, we can now charge you more for your gas service after November 12, 1990. We have not made you pay more in over six years, but under the Public Utilities Act, now we can." --_Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace_, rewriting some corporate doublespeak
@10502. "Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economizes his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind." --Alfred North Whitehead
@10503. "After all, it's rather difficult to demonstrate visibly that you have forgiven someone's sins." --_Surprised by Faith_
@10504. "Nevertheless, I completed the application process, primarily because after teaching three months of general science to junior high school students, it was apparent to me that there were worse things than going back to school." --_Surprised by Faith_
@10505. "His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics, and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink." --Terry Pratchett
(Some items from "Philosophy: A Commonplace Book.")
@10506. "I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make me do so, it would be Aristotle's arguments against him." --Bertrand Russell
(Cf. #7675.)
@10507. "The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait." --G.K. Chesterton
@10508. "Berkeley is a place where it is believed consenting adults have a right to do anything in the privacy of their bedroom as long as they don't try to smoke afterwards." --Geoff Nunberg
@10509. "My view of life is, that it's next to impossible to convince anybody of anything." --Lewis Carroll
@10510. "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking." --Steven Wright
@10511. "All these people are crying 'cultural appropriation'...and the whole idea of cultural appropriation, if you don't know, stems from critical theory, which is an idea that stems from this one school of social-political thought in the Thirties and Forties called the Frankfurt School. But everyone there -- like, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno -- all of them are Jews, right? So it's like, that's our theory. Give us back our theory!" --David Heti
@10512. "The passage he was to read was from Revelations -- or Obfuscations, as he preferred to call them. Reading it over on the train from Cambridge, he had felt a strange desire to build a time machine so that he could take the author a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason."
@10513.
Q: What's purple, hangs on the wall, and whistles?
A: I don't know.
@10514. "At the end of his life, the boxer Joe Louis said: 'I did the best I could with what I had.' This is exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had." --Phillip Roth, after re-reading all his novels
@10515. "Just because nobody complains doesn't mean parachutes are perfect." --Benny Hill
(See also survivorship bias.)
@10516. "Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word 'tomato'." --Douglas Hofstadter
@10517. "Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings." --David Sedaris
@10518. "The vast, incomprehensibly vast chamber looked as if it had been carved out of the inside of a mountain, and the reason for this was that that was precisely what it had been carved out of." --_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10519. "But there's a crucial difference between wanting to insulate America's regulators from corporate influence and believing that the CDC, the FDA, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are perpetrating a massive conspiracy to maim children." --_Atlantic_ article on anti-vaxxing
@10520. "[P.T. Barnum's] American Museum, which burned down twice, was an analog version of the internet -- it had everything in it, most of which wasn't true." --_Atlantic_ article
(Cf. The Library of Babel?)
@10521. "'Have you seen a bail anywhere?' said Arthur to a little man who seemed to be standing eagerly waiting to listen to somebody. 'It's made of silver, vitally important for the future safety of the Universe, and about this long.'"
--_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10522. "He carried something in a black bag, and clearly wanted people to notice that he didn't want them to notice it." --_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10523. "Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valor, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet." --_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10524. "The robot swung its battleclub. It hit the small white globe. The small white globe was the supernova bomb. It was a very, very small bomb that was designed to bring the entire Universe to an end. The supernova bomb flew through the air. It hit the back wall of the council chamber and dented it very badly." --_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10525. "He [Arthur] hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife." --_Life, The Universe, and Everything_
@10526. "It's easier to disagree with someone and to voice your opinion when you ask for their consent." --Dazne
@10527. "...I was at first interested to see what sorts of intellectual maneuvers this might involve. In fact, as discussed later, it involves nothing more for Shapiro than the age-old trick of speaking very confidently about things he knows nothing about. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in not having done the reading." --Daniel Walden, "The Shapiro History of the West", _Current Affairs_ 4(2)
@10530. "I couldn't possibly give birth to a child who doesn't go to university!" --Lynne Cazaly, of the US college admissions scandal
August 16, 2019
@10532. "Remember, the 'S' in 'IoT' stands for 'Security.'" --Reddit comment
(Cf. #9514.)
@10533. "Safety design in round corner can spare household members attacked by sharp corner." --Amazon specs page for a bathroom scale
@10534. "Pennies available by fireplace" --sign in an exhibit hall at the fair next to a penny press
@10535. "If you feel like your mind is messy, you probably don't let it wander enough." --Chris Bailey
@10536. "Not all those who wander are lost." --Tolkien
@10537. "This is not a bed" --marketing slogan on Sleep Number mattresses
(Cf. #9667, #1752.)
@10538. "I am SO HOT!" --girl, about nine, at the fair on a beautiful 75-degree summer day
@10541. Read someone the other day who suggested that you should consider not having an opinion about anything unless you can explain why one might have the opposite opinion. I'm not sure how practical this idea is, but it does seem attractive and a useful way to help us understand why we think things (we often have no idea at all if asked to explain it!).
(Cf. §OpinionsRequireCounterarguments.)
@10544. "CAUTIONS: This product belongs to a glass work with a firmness that can satisfy the daily use. However, it is still fragile and should be handled with care....Small scratches might occur during the process of production and transportation, however, it will not affect the use of the product. If you're a pursuer of perfectionism on the appearance, please make a return or exchange. The expenses arising from such process should be born by whom indicated in the specific policy." --manual for a pitcher
@10545. "Thank you, Mario! But this is a Panera now..." --https://xkcd.com/2189/
@10546. "It's as though your house was on fire and someone pounded on your door, insisting that you had to sign a contract giving him your property so he could fight the fire. You shouldn't sign the contract, and the reasons he brandishes to try to talk you into signing it are bogus, but that doesn't change the fact that your house really is on fire." --JMG
@10548. "The rats were not asked the reasons for their musical preferences." --description of a study on familiarity
@10549. "There is literally Java code in this Python book..." --me
@10550. "As a course meant for programmers I find it odd that you spend the first half hour setting up an IDE... I would imagine >90% of people watching this can manage that themselves. Give us some credit, the course isn't called setting up an IDE for programmers, nor is it titled python for people who've never used a computer." --(justified) YouTube comment
@10551. "Fish typically don't catch on fire all that well." --me
@10552. "So, it could throw those (or any other) exceptions. It could also format your hard disk and laugh derisively :-)" --StackOverflow comment on undefined behavior
@10553. Once Heracles was walking by a lake and there he saw Hydra. He ran up to her and cut her single head off. But instead of one head two more grew. Heracles cut them off too but 4 more appeared. He cut the 4 heads off - and there were 8 ones... So passed one hour, two hours, three hours... And then Heracles cut Hydra's 32768 heads off and Hydra died for she was 16-bit.
--https://www.viva64.com/en/a/0043/
@10554. "Boy, you lucked out Bob, your tree is still growing in your gutter!" --#overheard on the street
@10555. "We don't think shipping code faster should involve reimplementing our entire infrastructure automation and orchestration layer." --https://www.nylas.com/blog/packaging-deploying-python/
@10557. "I feel you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters."
--http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/regarding-your-stupid-complaint.html
@10558. "Anne Hathaway started talking about how she had fallen off the Ethernet Space Tower one time." --dream fragment
@10559. "Matt works at an accounting firm, as a data engineer. He makes reports for people who don't read said reports." --The Daily WTF
September 02, 2019
@10561. "24-hour online replying" --advertised as one of the benefits of the company on the back of a cheap Lightning adapter
@10562. "Available wherever books are sold. (Mostly bookstores, I assume, but you can always try your luck at Wendy's.)" --Randall Munroe, xkcd banner on the release of _How To_
@10563. "The report did not say what the penalty might be for being convicted of celery-throwing." --Lowering the Bar (#unusualsentences)
September 08, 2019
@10564. "I said, 'I hope the elevator cable snaps and you die!'" --#overheard at break
@10566. "I heard a bug fly into a sign." --me, #unusualsentences
@10567. "DANGER: Contents may catch fire." --on a canister of stove fuel
@10568. "Mama, we're in a terrible situation!" --#overheard at the campground
@10569. "Mooomm, [name]'s being an annoying idiot again!" --#overheard at the campground
@10570. "Ron is a queer and he likes beer" --carved on a log bench at my campsite
@10571. "Is the toilet, like, a normal toilet?" --#overheard at the picnic shelter at Nerstrand
@10572. "Those are underwear. They don't make very good shirts." --me
@10575. "going forward - generally if you can resolve a situation without hitting something with a bat then it's going to be legally advisable to do so" --/r/legaladvice comment
@10576. "The number-one test of a first-rate mind is its ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time while continuing to function." --F. Scott Fitzgerald
@10577. Indianapolis Motor Speedway Forced To Lower Speed Limit To 20 MPH After Elementary School Opens Next To Straightaway
--Onion headline
@10579. "Or, to say it in less words: use /dev/urandom and be happy; use /dev/random and be sorry." --https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/3936/is-a-rand-from-dev-urandom-secure-for-a-login-key
@10580. According to some recent calculations, more than 90 per cent of male psychopaths in the United States are in prison, on parole or otherwise involved with the criminal justice system. Considering that psychopaths are thought to make up only around 1 per cent of the general population, that number is staggering.
@10581. "Today, in an economy defined by precarity, more of what was merely stupid and adaptive has turned stupid and compulsory."
@10582. "Feminism has not eradicated the tyranny of the ideal woman but, rather, has entrenched it and made it trickier." --Jia Tolentino, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/02/athleisure-barre-kale-tyranny-ideal-woman-labour
@10583. "Nearly three-fifths of Republicans believe that colleges and universities are bad for America, according to the Pew Research Center." --_Atlantic_ article
@10584. "Elite universities that just a few decades ago accepted 30 percent of their applicants now accept less than 10 percent. The shift at certain institutions has been even more dramatic: The University of Chicago admitted 71 percent of its applicants as recently as 1995. In 2019 it admitted less than 6 percent." --_Atlantic_ article
@10585. "'We don't make noise,' Arbeeny told me. 'We create a holistic experience that brings about better well-being.' You may be skeptical that an electronic jingle, however holistic, can make doing the dishes a life-affirming endeavor--or even one that might bind you, emotionally, to your dishwasher. But companies are betting otherwise, and not entirely without reason." --expert on creating notification sounds for machines, in an _Atlantic_ article
@10586. "Men are good at relating to each other in this way. We get along well when there's a project in front of us -- when we're side by side looking at some third thing. All of the classic "male bonding" activities are like this -- when you're hunting, or working on a car, or shooting free throws, you can look together at the deer, or the transmission, or the basket, and talk. The common objective gives you something to talk about, and not having to face each other means you don't have to lay the full weight of your emotions on each other." --_Atlantic_ article
@10587. "The experience is very much like reading a software manual a year later, after you've gotten the basics on 'cruise control.' You'll be amazed and enthused about all the cool stuff you realize you could be (and could have been) doing, right at your fingertips, but that you couldn't recognize and implement, given the other major issues that needed to be addressed to set things up." --David Allen, _Getting Things Done_, of rereading his book
(Cf. §ParadoxOfDocumentation.)
@10588. "People think a lot, but most of that thinking is *of* a problem, project, or situation--not *about* it." --_Getting Things Done_
@10589. "At the conclusion of one of my seminars, a senior manager of a major biotech firm looked back at the to-do list she had come in with and said, 'Boy, that was an amorphous blob of undoability!'" --_Getting Things Done_
@10590. "Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because what 'doing' would look like, and where it happens, hasn't been decided." --_Getting Things Done_
@10591. "Being organized means simply that where something is matches what it means to you." --_Getting Things Done_
@10592.
Horizon 5: Purpose and principles
Horizon 4: Vision
Horizon 3: Goals
Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountabilities
Horizon 1: Current projects
Ground: Current actions
--_Getting Things Done_
@10593. The unnatural model is what most people still consciously think of as 'planning,' and because it's so often artificial and irrelevant to real work, people just don't plan. At least not on the front end: they resist planning meetings, presentations, and strategic operations until the last minute. But what happens if you don't plan ahead of time? In many cases, crisis! ("Didn't you get the tickets?" "I thought you were going to do that!") Then, when the urgency of the last minute is upon you, the reactive planning model ensues. What's the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan? Action! Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situation. Then, when having a lot of busy people banging into each other doesn't resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says, "We need to get *organized*!" (Catching on now?) Then people draw boxes around the problem and label them. Or redraw the boxes and relabel them.
_Getting Things Done_--
Don't just do something. Stand there. --Rochelle Myer
_Getting Things Done_--
At some point they realize that just redrawing boxes isn't really doing much to solve the problem. Now someone (much more sophisticated) suggests that more creativity is needed. "Let's brainstorm!" With everyone in the room, the boss asks, "So, who's got a *good* idea here?" When not much happens, the boss may surmise that his staff has used up most of its internal creativity. Time to hire a consultant! Of course, if the consultant is worth his salt, at some point he is probably going to ask the big question: "So, what are you really trying to do here, anyway?" (vision, purpose).
--Ibid.
@10594. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." --Emile Chartier
@10595. "What a class act. But really, it is. It's a trick I call Put It in Front of the Door." --_Getting Things Done_
@10596. "Things you name, you own. Collected but unnamed stuff owns you." --_Getting Things Done_
(Cf. §PowerOfNames.)
@10597. "Most people try to create more control in their world by just 'getting organized,' and they wind up rearranging incomplete inventories of still unclear things." --_Getting Things Done_
@10598. "Before the publication of that masterpiece, in 1932, other authors had drawn attention to what one of them called the 'prestidigitation, double shuffling, honey-fugling, hornswaggling, and skullduggery' employed by corporate executives to dupe their supposed masters, the shareholders. Berle went further." --"How Economists' Faith in Markets Broke America"
@10599. "There are no interruptions -- there are only mismanaged inputs." --_Getting Things Done_
@10601. "It's the irony of professional development--the better you get, the better you'd better get." --_Getting Things Done_
@10602. "It is the act of forgiveness that opens up the only possible way to think creatively about the future at all." --Father Desmond Wilson, qtd. in GTD
(Cf. §Forgiveness.)
@10603. "One of the greatest challenges you may encounter is that once you have gotten used to 'What's the next action?' for yourself and those around you, interacting with people who aren't asking it can be highly frustrating. It clarifies things so quickly that dealing with people and environments that don't use it can seem nightmarish." --_Getting Things Done_
@10604. "When you were born, it probably didn't occur to you to ask your mother, 'So, what are we doing here, and what's the next action, and who has it?'" --_Getting Things Done_
@10605. "You are either attracted or repelled by the things on your lists; there isn't any neutral territory. You are either positively drawn toward completing the action or reluctant to think about what it is and resistant to getting involved in it. Often it's simply the next-action decision that makes the difference between the two extremes." --_Getting Things Done_
@10606. Maslow's hourglass:
It's quite possible that there's already discussion of this, but it seems that technology today is focused on two sorts of needs: ones at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and those at the top. As technology advances (and remains somewhat cheap), these properties could be amplified, and we could have technology that is designed to help people achieve self actualization, express themselves creatively, and, at the other end of the spectrum, tell them where to get some cheap food (though not really provide that food). But at the same time, it might do little to help navigate a fraying social/community/economic fabric, stay healthy, employed, etc. (As an exercise, think about how well technology helps people stay healthy, employed, or close to their neighbors. At best, it seems to not make these worse.) This effect may be the most insidious when it becomes lopsided -- when the benefits of technology are skewed to the top of the hierarchy, and we end up with the post-NGO scenario described above.
--https://web.archive.org/web/20180909145658/http://contraposition.org/blog/2012/04/29/computing-in-the-long-emergency-part-2/
@10607. "I am surprised that General Ruin, when she was in zero gee in outer space, did not fall in the direction we call 'space-down', travelling in the same direction as the bombs dropped from bomber ships in reel one. We all know objects in outer space are pulled by gravity from the top of the screen to the bottom."
--http://www.scifiwright.com/2018/09/the-last-straw-09-general-gender-studies-and-princess-poppins/
@10608. "Here we would be discussing the Outlook 2013 features in a profound way; hence if you think you might face an issue in understanding since you're a newbie, you can first have a look at our Outlook Introduction Series."
September 17, 2019
@10610. "This is why the fundamental criticism of millennials -- that we're lazy and entitled -- is so frustrating: We hustle so hard that we've figured out how to avoid wasting time *eating meals* and are called entitled for asking for fair compensation and benefits like working remotely (so we can live in affordable cities), adequate health care, or 401(k)s (so we can theoretically stop working at some point before the day we die). We're called whiny for talking frankly about just how much we do work, or how exhausted we are by it. But because overworking for less money isn't always visible -- because job hunting now means trawling LinkedIn, because 'overtime' now means replying to emails in bed -- the extent of our labor is often ignored, or degraded." --https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
This article is *fantastic*.
@10611. "But what'll I tell my parents? I want a cool job I'm passionate about!" --student of Ms. Petersen, in above
@10612. "My metabolism is always active, it's like a nuclear reactor." --#overheard at break
@10613. "I'm not going to talk about every gnat's eyelash." --presenter at Dashboard in a Day
@10615.
"You can't ask Josh!"
"Why not?"
"He doesn't *live* here!"
--#overheard at St. Olaf
@10615. "Jack does not like people who kind of perform their progressiveness." --#overheard at the Ole Store
@10617. "That's a lot of anniversaries! That confuses everyone!" --#overheard at the Ole Store
@10619. The State of DevOps Report this year quoted a very useful definition: "toil" is *work without productivity*.
@10621. I just caught myself doing something hilarious that points out how dumb it is that you can't change an instance of a recurring task in Things until it comes up: I *added a task in Things* to change a task when it comes up! (And that actually makes sense under the constraints I have to work with.)
@10623. "I squinted at the pelvis." --#unusualsentences (_Atlantic_ article about a pregnancy)
@10624. I Was Overweight, Depressed, Broke, Drinking Too Much, Tired All The Time, Unhappily Married, Had Terrible Breath, My Penis Was Bleeding, Like, A Lot, My Pets Were Dying On A Daily Basis, I Was In The KKK, I Had Committed 17 Murders, I Was 86 Years Old, I Was A Heavy Smoker, And I Only Had One Tooth Which Was Over A Foot Long. Here's How I Turned It All Around.
--The Onion
@10625. "Python 3.0 decided that maybe contorting fundamental arithmetic to match the inadequacies of 1970s hardware is not the best idea, and so it changed division to always produce a float."
--https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/31/python-faq-how-do-i-port-to-python-3/
{BL #11616}
October 05, 2019
@10628. I've decided the handy UI function where a banner comes up and gives you the opportunity to undo something destructive should be called an "Oh Shit Button."
(Cf. §OhShitButton.)
@10629. "I do recommend wearing pants to work." --me, #nocontext
(Update/foreshadowing: Maybe less necessary during COVID, though!)
@10630. "I had the thought there could be a band about Microsoft's data tools called the Power Specialists." --4:20 AM #latenightvoicememo (also, #bandname!)
@10632. "At about the same time, Pantalaimon was crouching in the shadow of a derelict warehouse near a wharf in the Thames estuary, watching three sailors steal a ship's propeller." --_The Secret Commonwealth_, p. 240 (#unusualsentences)
@10633. "[At the Cafe Cosmopolitain] there was a zinc-topped bar along one side and staff apparently chosen for their freedom from the constraints of courtesy and competence." --_The Secret Commonwealth_, p. 250
@10634. "It's the oldest human problem, Lyra, an' it's the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can't. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it'd have to become evil to do 'em." --Farder Coram, _The Secret Commonwealth_, 263
@10635. "The man is corrupt. He reeks of furtive copulation." --Delamare, of Pierre Binaud, _The Secret Commonwealth_, 298
@10636. "There are many forms of existence, monsieur. I would not say that it was this one or that one, or any other. Possibly one we know nothing about." --Karimov, to Malcolm, on the occasion of Malcolm's asking whether a legendary beast existed (_The Secret Commonwealth_, 402)
@10637. "Behind the door outside which Brother Mercurius was disingenuously lingering, three prelates from Syria were discussing raisins." --_The Secret Commonwealth_, 422 (#unusualsentences)
@10638. Had the silly thought that like you have to retake safety training if you have an accident, or anti-fraud training if you get defrauded, you should have to retake active-shooter training if you get shot.
(Update: I had occasion to jokingly suggest this at a team meeting at work, and it got quite a laugh.)
@10639. "I do not consider my blackness a problem. I think it looks rather nice." --Jessye Norman
@10640. "I do think that if you can stand up and sing in French in front of an assembly full of middle-schoolers, then you can do just about anything." --Jessye Norman
@10643. "Everything is dangerous if dumbly used by dumb people." --StackOverflow comment
@10644. "Driving is an activity that combines all the things people are physiologically bad at into a matter of life or death." --me
@10647. I just realized that I'm pretty sure foaming soap dispensers discourage me from washing my hands properly. With normal soap, you have to rub them together to get it to lather. With foaming soap it feels like you're already mostly done.
It's funny when you've been using something your entire life and only then identify a design problem with it...
@10648. #pubnames: The Belated Rebuttal
@10650. "'Nothing' is neither a luxury nor a waste of time, but rather a necessary part of meaningful thought and speech." --Jenny Odell, https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb
@10651. "Actually, I've always found it weird that it's called birdwatching, because half if not more of birdwatching is actually birdlistening. I personally think they should just rename it birdnoticing." --Jenny Odell, https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb
@10652. "In a situation where every waking moment has become pertinent to our making a living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on 'nothing.' It provides no return on investment; it is simply too expensive." --Jenny Odell, https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb
@10653.
*wakes up and looks at phone* ah let's see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device
--tweet, @missokistic
@10654. Maybe a fun coding exercise sometime: find the shortest pangrammatic window in a text.
(Trying to come up with an algorithmically efficient way to do this. I can't think of a good DP or similar algorithm...interesting problem. There's probably something decent, but I want to solve it myself!)
@10655. I think the more creative a metaphor, the fewer times you can use it before it becomes cliche or irritating.
@10656. "I have a ticket that permits me to ride on this train. It does not say that the journey includes assault and attempted rape." --Lyra, on an officer telling her she could have expected some discomfort when she rode a train with soldiers, _The Secret Commonwealth_, 590
@10657. The woman introducing an Azure Data Week presentation this morning called Infrastructure as Code "Infrastructure as a Code." I'm definitely calling it that from now on!
October 12, 2019
@10658. "To shift the spectrum toward perceiving the white light, you must increase the temperature to the temperature of the Sun (5,778K), but this would destroy your furnace, as we don't have materials capable of sustaining this temperature." --Physics SE, https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/507374/why-doesnt-hot-charcoal-glow-blue
@10659. "The initiative...boosted ambulation." --Washington Post article about a hospital program to get patients walking more often
@10662. "This doop and Hadoop are different." --me, using "doop" as an impromptu sound effect
@10664. A thought on the Secret Commonwealth stuff from recently: When trying to explain certain phenomena rationally, there's a difference between explaining and understanding. For instance, say there's a place that's haunted, and you find the rational explanation that there's something about the place that induces certain brainwaves in people or whatever. You explained that. Yet you haven't really *understood* the whole phenomenon at that point. It's only with the use of stories that you can understand what people are feeling, what the place is, what it's like to be there over the years. You're missing the point.
@10666. "It's a fascinating book, but also slightly ridiculous, like watching old video of lawn tennis matches, in which custom dictates the players wear white slacks and not run too hard." --"What Pigeons Teach Us About Love", http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/what-pigeons-teach-us-about-love
@10667. "There are only two problems in life: (1) you know what you want, and you don't know how to get it; and/or (2) you don't know what you want." --qtd. by David Allen, _Getting Things Done_
@10668. "When I finally got treatment, it gave me a sudden, liquid thrill to glimpse the diagnosis written on one of my medical forms: eating disorder. It was as if there was finally an official name for how I felt--the sense of inadequacy and dislocation--as if the words had constructed a tangible container around those intangible smoke signals of hurt. It made me feel consolidated." --Leslie Jamison, "The Quickening", _The Atlantic_
{BL §PowerOfNames}
@10669. "There's a fundamental difference between admitting you were wrong when the evidence has proved you wrong and pretending you were wrong when the evidence has proved you right, just because the political tides have shifted. It's the difference between humility and cowardice." --"When the Culture War Comes for the Kids", George Packer, _The Atlantic_
@10670. "I can imagine the retort--the rebuke to everything I've written here: Your privilege has spared them. There's no answer to that--which is why it's a potent weapon--except to say that identity alone should neither uphold nor invalidate an idea, or we've lost the Enlightenment to pure tribalism." --"When the Culture War Comes for the Kids", George Packer, _The Atlantic_
@10671. "We were back to the perversions of meritocracy. But the country's politics had changed dramatically during our son's six years of elementary school. Instead of hope pendants around the necks of teachers, in one middle-school hallway a picture was posted of a card that said, 'Uh-oh! Your privilege is showing. You've received this card because your privilege just allowed you to make a comment that others cannot agree or relate to. Check your privilege.' The card had boxes to be marked, like a scorecard, next to 'White,' 'Christian,' 'Heterosexual,' 'Able-bodied,' 'Citizen.' (Our son struck the school off his list.) This language is now not uncommon in the education world. A teacher in Saratoga Springs, New York, found a 'privilege-reflection form' online with an elaborate method of scoring, and administered it to high-school students, unaware that the worksheet was evidently created by a right-wing internet troll--it awarded Jews 25 points of privilege and docked Muslims 50." --"When the Culture War Comes for the Kids", George Packer, _The Atlantic_
@10672. "One of the biggest drawbacks to Windows is how tedious it is to manage window layouts, which is funny given the OS is called Windows." --Nick Janetakis, https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/vim-is-saving-me-hours-of-work-when-writing-books-and-courses
@10673. "For those of us who feel we have lost our imaginations, Lyra shows us the way to find them again." --Amazon review on _The Secret Commonwealth_
It's very rare that someone manages to write a one-sentence review that sums up an entire book!
@10674. There is a strange way in which working at a computer or another digital device is both impoverished (sensory impressions are highly limited -- see #7475 -- and novelty arrives in mostly predictable ways, with little true serendipity) and extremely eclectic and scatterbrained. Neither of these things happens in the way you would want them to -- you still have trouble concentrating, and you don't get the creative effects of novelty for the most part. I don't know if there are design principles or actions that could be used to improve this state of affairs, but it's worth thinking about.
{BL #11002}
@10676. A static HTML file on my local computer apparently gets a grade of C+ from DuckDuckGo's privacy tracker. >__<
@10677. "[G]enerally speaking, it's a good idea to know what sentences mean before you use them on national television. Although that appears to be optional these days." --Lowering the Bar
@10678. Just submitted a pull request for NetHack to correct a place where the plural of Nazgûl was rendered "Nazguls." Probably the nerdiest thing I've done all year!
@10679. "The truth is that leaving the phone charger switched on uses about 0.01 kWh per day. This means that switching the phone charger off for a whole day saves the same energy as is used in driving an average car for one second. Switching off phone chargers is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon." --David JC MacKay
@10680. According to AFP, a Russian man has sued Apple for one million rubles (about $15,500), alleging that an iPhone app made him gay. The plaintiff reportedly alleges that he was trying to order Bitcoin but received "GayCoin" instead, and that it was accompanied by a note saying, "Don't judge until you try." This convinced him to try same-sex relationships, he alleges. Apparently they were to his liking, yet he is still complaining. "Now I have a boyfriend and I do not know how to explain this to my parents," the complaint alleges.
--Lowering the Bar
@10681. "These [patent pledges] have been described by Richard Stallman as 'significant', 'not really anything', and 'next to nothing', respectively." --Wikipedia
@10686. Was noting the other day walking around town that I don't think there are such things as tasteful Halloween decorations, and that maybe that's why I don't particularly like them. But then at the same time, it seems there might be something objectionable about tasteful Halloween decorations -- and what, even, exactly, would they be? It's just not that kind of holiday.
@10687. Was wondering if maybe part of the reason OO can get so messy and difficult to comprehend if misused, particularly with regards to inheritance, is that it encourages vague method names, like "move()" or "execute()" or "revert()", which aren't really compensated for by the generally-also-pretty-generic class names that are typical. Classes are really hard to name well, too! With a more functional style, the function name usually gives a much more useful description of what it does. For all its verbosity, PowerShell for instance does a fantastic job at this with only a little bit of effort put into naming.
@10689. "Next on Maxine's Digestion: Paperclips. Will he digest them?" --#overheard in the Cage
@10697. "An anarchist friend of mine was going to teach me, until he left town for vague but important-sounding reasons, as one's anarchist friends are prone to do."
--https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-man
@10698. "If you need a YouTube video to help you be a man, then in some essential sense simply being one is already off the table." --https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-man
@10698. "Only by being terrible do they [evil things] avoid being comic." --C.S. Lewis, qtd. in above
@10699. "My grandpa used to be a Remington typewriter." --found in a blog comment
@10700. "Software developers already spend approximately 80 percent of development costs on identifying and correcting defects, and yet few products of any type other than software are shipped with such high levels of errors." --NIST study, sick burn
@10701. "It's painful for most software developers to acknowledge this, because they love code so much, but the best code is no code at all. Every new line of code you willingly bring into the world is code that has to be debugged, code that has to be read and understood, code that has to be supported. Every time you write new code, you should do so reluctantly, under duress, because you completely exhausted all your other options. Code is only our enemy because there are so many of us programmers writing so damn much of it." --https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/10/29/my-most-embarrassing-mistakes-as-a-programmer-so-far/?cb=1
(Cf. §NoCodeAtAll.)
@10702. "We weren't forgotten at all. People were so surprised by it that they felt it was worth a story, and we wound up getting more press for not working than we ever got for working." --Stefan Sagmeister, on taking a year-long sabbatical from his design business
November 03, 2019
@10703. "This is the real definition of being a computer geek: using three computers at the same time and needing all of them." --me, doing so
@10704. "I'm sorry, but renaming a folder doesn't require 3 years of work." --someone complaining about the "snap" folder being forced into people's home directory
@10707. "Can you sideways political tea?" --dream survey question in a popup from the bottom-right corner of the screen in a Harry Potter forum
@10709. "The cow really stayed in tune." --dream example of a comment you don't expect to see on a pull request
@10710. "And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10711. "The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn't already know--except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since this was clearly not true the whole thing eventually had to be scrapped." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10712. "A poor bedraggled figure, strangely attired, wetter than an otter in a washing machine, and hitching." --_So Long, of Arthur
@10713. "Gunfire erupted from a window high above them, but it was only a bass player getting shot for playing the wrong riff three times in a row, and bass players are two a penny in Han Dold City." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10714. "Lightning belted through the sky, and someone seemed to be pouring something which closely resembled the Atlantic Ocean over them, through a sieve." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10715. "The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10716. "From another direction he felt the sensation of being a sheep startled by a flying saucer." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10717. "[Arthur] felt strong, he felt healthy. He vigorously cleared away the junk mail with a spade and then buried the cat." --_So Long, #unusualsentences
@10718. "First of all, notice that crazy people have a particular way of writing--they're always trailing off at the end of a sentence." --Ramit Sethi, _I Will Teach You to Be Rich_
@10720. "In the last edition of this book, I included a chart that showed what you earned in interest at Big Banks--a paltry amount--versus online banks, which offer higher rates. Then, because interest rates change, I proceeded to get thousands of emails over ten years frantically asking where the interest rates from the book were. Guys, I have learned two things from this: First, I am never, ever including interest rates in a book again." --Ramit Sethi, _I Will Teach You to Be Rich_
@10721. "[I]f you've actually been paying bills by writing checks with a pen, please understand that man has discovered fire and combustible engines and join our modern times." --Ramit Sethi, _I Will Teach You to Be Rich_
@10722. "By now, you should know what you want to invest in: a target date fund or index funds. If you're even considering buying individual stocks because you think you can beat the market or it's sexier, I want you to take all your money, put it in a big Ziploc bag and light it on fire. At least you'll be skipping the middleman." --Ramit Sethi, _I Will Teach You to Be Rich_
@10723. "Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10724. "The barman dunked Arthur's change in a pool of beer on the bar, for which Arthur thanked him." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10725. "There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which held a bed and also a bathroom which, Fenchurch explained, you could actually swing a cat in, 'But,' she added, 'only if it was a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about the head. So. Here you are.'" --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10726. "In a mute embrace, [Arthur and Fenchurch] drifted up till they were swimming among the misty wraiths of moisture that you can see feathering around the wings of an airplane but never feel because you are sitting warm inside the stuffy airplane and looking through the little scratchy Plexiglas window while somebody else's son tries patiently to pour warm milk into your shirt." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10727. "I called again. She said the situation had improved. He was now a mere 2.6 light-years from the phone but it was still a long way to shout." --Arthur, _So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10728. "[Arthur and Fenchurch] rented a car in Los Angeles from one of the places that rents out cars that other people have thrown away. 'Getting it to go around corners is a bit of a problem,' said the guy behind the sunglasses as he handed them the keys. 'Sometimes it's simpler just to get out and find a car that's going in that direction.'" --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10729. "The garage attendant didn't think much of their car, but that was fine because they didn't either." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10730. "I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that. No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is." --scientist, _So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10731. "_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that 'it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.'" --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10732. "'Walkmen!' yelled Ford, and pulled half a dozen miniature tape players from his pockets and tossed them into the crowd. The resulting seconds of utter confusion allowed them to get the supermarket cart to the edge of the ramp, and to haul it up onto the lip of it." --_So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish_
@10733. "[Tricia] was a rapidly rising anchor. She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn't care." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10734. "Her hair felt as if she'd bought it at a fairground, on a stick." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10735. "I know that astrology isn't a science. Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or--what's that strange thing you British play?" / "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" / "Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don't make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people." --Gail, _Mostly Harmless_
@10736. "The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development and innovation in life, which was this: herring sandwiches. They published a paper to this effect, which was widely criticized as being extremely stupid." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10737. "[Arthur] felt a little giddy perched fifty feet up in the air on top of a pole, but he dealt with it by eating a sandwich." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10738. "Arthur threw the book across the room, sold the room and left." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10739. "[Ford] should have known it was all wrong the moment they started hanging grand pianos over the sea-monster pool in the atrium." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10740. "The building had been sturdily reinforced when it was completely rebuilt after the Frogstar attack and was probably the most heavily armored publishing company in the business, but there was always, he thought, some weakness in any system designed by a corporate committee. He had already found one of them. The engineers who designed the windows had not expected them to be hit by a rocket from short range from the inside, so the window had failed. So, what would the engineers not be expecting someone sitting on the ledge outside the window to do? He wracked his brains for a moment or so before he got it. The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." --_Mostly Harmless_
(Cf. #1404.)
@10741. "After Jackie Bezos's shotgun marriage to a member of a traveling unicyclist troupe dissolved..." --_Atlantic_ article about Jeff Bezos (Jackie being his mother)
@10742. "Bezos is always showing up. He would go to the opening of an envelope." --Amazon employee, qtd. in above
@10743. "There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10744. "A few villagers wondered why Almighty Bob would send his only begotten Sandwich Maker in a burning fiery chariot rather than perhaps in one that might have landed quietly without destroying half the forest, filling it with ghosts and also injuring the Sandwich Maker quite badly. Old Thrashbarg said that it was the ineffable will of Bob, and when they asked him what 'ineffable' meant, he said look it up." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10745.
"The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?"
"Really?" said Arthur. "No, I didn't. For what offense?"
Trillian frowned. "What do you mean, offense?"
"I see."
--_Mostly Harmless_
@10746. "[Arthur] had just been brought an entire golfing magazine by a squirrel, as well, and his brain was beginning to howl and gibber." --_Mostly Harmless_
@10747.
Vim has a particular working method, there are two main modes: the command mode and the other modes.
The command mode lets you select the working mode that you want to enter. Available modes are: save, quit, copy, paste and that kind of things but you can't edit the file in the command mode directly. This is what many users are new to vim puzzles and one has to get used to first.
--a terrible and half-the-time outright incorrect article on getting started with Vim
@10748. "Whenever we enquire after the meaning of a word, we never get the thing that is meant -- a permanent definition that underlies the word -- but only another way of saying it. Despite its pretensions, the dictionary is no more than a pedantic and overexacting thesaurus. It doesn't offer meaning, only other words." --"The Way Words Mean", Aeon
@10749. "I'm a code pessimist, I also assume failure first and then move on to my success conditions. Sometimes I forget to even write a success condition." --FoxDeploy, StackOverflow comment
@10751. "Creating post-releases of pre-releases is strongly discouraged." --PyPi documentation
@10752. "People know -- in principle -- what is good for them to eat. If you give them a test asking: 'Which is better for you: fruits, vegetables, whole grains and animal protein in moderation? Or muffins, cookies, ready meals, fast food and soft drinks?' just about everyone will give the right answer. And if you asked: 'Which is the basis of a better life: friendships, creative activities under your own control, enquiring and learning, tasty food and refreshing drink, and contact with nature? Or status, influence, money and the purchase of as many goods and services as possible?' most people would give the right answer, too." --"How to be an Epicurean", Aeon
@10754. "'[D]espite the independent vetting of material [information] ... and the methodical process to authenticate addresses, errors can occur and information may not be accurate,' a police spokesperson said, thus blaming the information for its own inaccuracy." --Lowering the Bar
@10756. "If you get bad service (for example cold fries) you ask for better service (hot fries) and if that cannot be delivered, you go to a competitor that can. As a customer, I don't care why my fries are cold. There is no explanation that would make me go 'oh ok if that's the reason why, I will come back tomorrow and get another bag of cold fries.'" --Stack Exchange comment
@10757. "'What is your technical insight?' turns out to be an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer. So for your products, ask the question. If you can't articulate a good answer, rethink the product." --_How Google Works, pp. 77-78
@10758. I came up with a nice term this morning for the feeling I get when I spend too long coding or doing similar things and become temporarily less imaginative: *logic-lock*. I'm going to use that from now on.
@10759. Was thinking that with the coming of next year, there should be some good opportunities for a joke about "2020 vision." I'm not sure how it works yet though.
@10760. "A dead whale is decomposing near Strawberry Point. At last report the smell was minimal." --trail reports for Olympic National Park
@10761. Message History:
A mysterious force prevents the hippocampus from teleporting!
You will always remember the glass golem... The forest centaur demands that you pay her, but you refuse...
Time stands still while you and the paper golem lie in each other's arms... You seem to have enjoyed it more than the homunculus...
"Shall I remove your helm, dear?" [yn] (n) n
"Shall I remove your gloves, dear?" [yn] (n) n
"Shall I remove your boots, sweetheart?" [yn] (n) n
"Take off your cloak; it's in the way." "Take off your suit; let's get a little closer."
You smite the fire giant! You feel very attracted to the warhorse. The vampire mace murmurs in your ear, while helping you undress.
November 17, 2019
@10762. In choir music I've decided there's a difference between hard-to-learn and technically-difficult difficulty. The first pretty much any reasonably good choir can get decent at even though they say "it's so hard!", but the second can really be permanently beyond your reach.
A similar concept is technically hard pieces that never get any easier, like the F. Melius "O Day Full of Grace" -- hard every day!
@10763. Mike says his neighbor has an evergreen tree that is literally half dead -- like one side of it is OK and the other is dead. Rather than trim the tree, or for that matter cut it down and replace it seeing as it's not doing very well at this point, he *spray-painted the dead half of the tree green*. The best part is that he didn't even do it right -- he got a color that doesn't match the other half of the tree!
@10764. "I just drew a meaningful parallel between water walking boots in NetHack and my mother's opinions on birth control." --me, #unusualsentences
@10765. Petty Internet Nonsense
@10766. "Unable to interest his research sponsor Parke-Davis in the commercial potential of synthesizing progesterone from Mexican yams, Marker left Penn State and in 1944 co-founded Syntex with two partners in Mexico City." --Wikipedia #unusualsentences
November 24, 2019
@10767. "The last spiritual is coming. And that's okay, emancipation happened!" --André Thomas
@10768. "I hope you enjoy the [my] Mass. If you don't, don't tell me." --André Thomas
@10769. "My angels are rockin'!" --André Thomas
@10772. "That's good. Stack up your focus on boyfriends." --#hypnagogia
@10773. Amusing: in the following code...
@@@
if len(inspect.signature(func).parameters) == 1:
result = func(world)
elif len(inspect.signature(func).parameters) == 2:
result = func(world, char)
@@@
On the first func() call, mypy tells me there are too few arguments. On the second, too many arguments. I guess the function takes 1.5 arguments...
(Cf. #5855.)
@10774. "By 'multi-file programming,' do you mean writing software using more than one source code file? That's not really called 'multi-file programming,' for much the same reason that a brush that has multiple bristles is not called a 'multi-bristle brush.'" --Stack Exchange comment
@10775.
$ hostname
Segmentation fault
I feel like something is a bit wrong with this machine...
@10776. "There's nothing worse than not having clean underwear." --me
@10777. "The original StructuredText is a dense mass of sparsely commented code and inscrutable regular expressions." --reStructuredText documentation
@10778. "I ate an entire friggin' elephant and I'm still not full!" --me, playing NetHack
December 02, 2019
@10779. "I am not in the mood to derail." --me
@10780. "C'mon guys, walk toward me with the hat!" --conductor on the South Shore, after several people couldn't find the right door at which to disembark
@10781. "I know, this is the hardest load plan I've ever had to write in my life!" --conductor on the Empire Builder
@10782. "Meth. We're on it." --South Dakota anti-drug slogan, 2019
@10784. "I'm trying to fly here!" --#overheard on the train, one of a mother and several children doing superhero imitations
@10785. "He doesn't like coffee, we don't like him anymore!" --#overheard in the hall at a hotel
@10787. "All of us start somewhere. And some of us finish there as well, and that's fine too." --me, on less-skilled choirs
@10788. "This is a inconvenience experience which need us fix that." --Microsoft employee on a support forum, responding to a customer
@10791. "There's much to be said about November, most of it not complimentary, but I did read a lot of mostly wonderful new books." --Irina Rempt
@10792. Angela, from Initech Insurance, had bumped heads with Andre in the past. She was "process oriented", which is to say, she didn't care about the end results so long as you let her micromanage you.
--The Daily WTF
{BL §OutcomesOverActivities}
December 08, 2019
@10793. "This is the one that starts with 'Eya', that reminded Troy Robertson of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival fight song." --Valerie Kahler, in the live Christmas Festival broadcast
A bunch more FF stuff coming up.
@10794. Also, she said that Christmas Festival has ended with "Beautiful Savior" for over 100 years, which is just plain wrong. Actually a fairly egregious historical mistake IMO.
(We miss you Melissa Ousley! Librarian folk songs and all.)
@10795. "Choral Collage" --same deal... "Carol", Valerie!
@10800. "I bet this is gonna be waay better than the Andrews City Chorale!" --#overheard at Christmas Festival prior to the beginning of the program
@10801. "You studied it in *fourth grade*? That's *sad*." --#overheard at Christmas Festival, of cursive education, from someone who did it in third grade
@10806. The breaking into song during the gospel reading (for the Gloria) was really cool! I don't think I've ever heard that done before.
@10807. A young couple behind me kept giggling every time the trumpets played during one piece. I don't know what was going on, but it was incredibly annoying. But I had to let it go with only one nasty look without turning my head, because I often end up being weird to myself during the concert too...
@10808. I'm going to do [insert something drastic here] if I hear that dang JBobb arrangement of "Toda la Tierra" one more time. It's now been done 3 out of the last 5 years. The first time it was creative and I really liked it; the second time it was quotidian; this third time it was cliche and actually got me kind of peeved. Give it like four more years and then it can come out again.
As for "something drastic", I had a funny vision of myself doing what Scott does when someone sits in his spot at break: he just turns around and leaves and doesn't come back that day. I see Toda on the program, I drive home to Owatonna...
@10809. There was yet another wasp this year. I think we need to start some kind of conspiracy theory about it coming from Nordic Choir or something.
(Cf. §WaspConspiracy.)
@10810. "I've never seen anybody usher better before, never in all my life!" --#overheard at Our Savior's after Sunday worship
@10813. "I can always send it over again if it went AWOL in cyberspace." --spam email, of a previous email in the chain which was even quoted within this message itself
@10814. "In a collective 75 years of legal practice, Allstate's counsel have never seen behavior that even comes close to that of Mr. Hook here. It is unlikely that the Court has either. Allstate requests that the Court grant ex parte relief." --https://loweringthebar.net/2019/12/perhaps-some-of-the-language-crossed-the-line-of-civility.html
@10815. "Instead of saying 'be careful', say 'pay attention'. I picked up this great tip from Richard Louv's _Last Child in the Woods_. Constantly saying 'be careful' paints the world as an inherently perilous, overly dangerous place, and ingrains a cautious mindset into kids. In contrast, 'pay attention' (or 'watch what you're doing') encourages children to be more aware of their body and their surroundings -- a mindset we want our kids to cultivate whether they're doing risky things or not."
--https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/3-keys-balancing-safety-risk-raising-kids/
@10817. "A usage note in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) offers this advice: 'You can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose.'" --on the pronunciation of "forte" in the non-musical sense
@10820. Utterly ridiculous and completely accurate:
"Back in the 1960s, when women won the right to abortion in the UK, it was seen as transgressive, as a threat of family life, and it led to a change of women's material reality. Today, such a campaign would likely get bogged down in discussions of whether or not it was trans-exclusionary."
--https://aeon.co/essays/does-using-crip-like-queer-empower-disability-activism
@10821. "Thank you for purchasing 'Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity' by David Allen. Here is a $5 credit to enjoy on select titles by a similar author, Philip Pullman." --Amazon
Problem 1: How the hell are David Allen and Philip Pullman similar?
Problem 2: I bought GTD at the beginning of September.
I guess I won't say no to a $5-off offer, regardless of whether I use it, but...wut?
@10825. "Aww, you're going to get all beautified?" --#overheard at the office
@10826. "A one-pound box of chocolates makes up for a lot." --me
@10828. "To conclude this article, let's sum it all up." --Talend documentation
(This goes on my mother's §PetPeeves list.)
@10829. Rather amusing now, but really annoying at the time: I got one of those "your config needs to be merged with the package maintainer's version" messages in apt-get, and it had only half configured updates to vim, so I didn't have a text editor to do it with! I had to use 'ed' and manually diff...
@10830. "In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages they must occupy, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles. Simple as it may sound, the task of creative non-interference with letters is a rewarding and difficult calling. In ideal conditions, it is all that typographers are really asked to do -- and it is enough." --Bringhurst, _The Elements of Typographic Style_
@10831. "Perhaps the principle should read: Give full typographic attention *especially* to incidental details." --Bringhurst, _The Elements of Typographic Style_
(Cf. §AttentionEspeciallyToIncidentalDetails.)
@10832. "A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep, Frederic Goudy liked to say. If this wisdom needs updating, it is chiefly to add that a woman who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep as well." --Bringhurst, _The Elements of Typographic Style_
@10833. "It is unclear why I need to be at the grocery store to debug my build process." --me, dream #1434
@10838. "You cannot say with any reliability that a certain remote event or shock is more likely than another (unless you enjoy deceiving yourself), but you can state with a lot more confidence that an object or a structure is more fragile than another should a certain event happen." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10839. "Now we aim--after some work--to connect in the reader's mind, with a single thread, elements seemingly far apart, such as Cato the Elder, Nietzsche, Thales of Miletus, the potency of the system of city-states, the sustainability of artisans, the process of discovery, the onesidedness of opacity, financial derivatives, antibiotic resistance, bottom-up systems, Socrates' invitation to overrationalize, how to lecture birds, obsessive love, Darwinian evolution, the mathematical concept of Jensen's inequality, optionality and option theory, the idea of ancestral heuristics, the works of Joseph de Maistre and Edmund Burke, Wittgenstein's antirationalism, the fraudulent theories of the economics establishment, tinkering and bricolage, terrorism exacerbated by death of its members, an apologia for artisanal societies, the ethical flaws of the middle class, Paleo-style workouts (and nutrition), the idea of medical iatrogenics, the glorious notion of the magnificent (megalopsychon), my obsession with the idea of convexity (and my phobia of concavity), the late-2000s banking and economic crisis, the misunderstanding of redundancy, the difference between tourist and flâneur, etc. All in one single--and, I am certain, simple--thread." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10840. "The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10841. "Take this easy-to-use heuristic (which is, to repeat the definition, a simple compressed rule of thumb) to detect the independence and robustness of someone's reputation. With few exceptions, those who dress outrageously are robust or even antifragile in reputation; those clean-shaven types who dress in suits and ties are fragile to information about them." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10842. "The more variability you observe in a system, the less Black Swan-prone it is." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10843. "Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10844. "Never ask people what they want, or where they want to go, or where they think they should go, or, worse, what they think they will desire tomorrow." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10845. "Consider the tourist brochures used by countries to advertise their wares: you can expect that the pictures presented to you will look much, much better than anything you will encounter in the place. And the bias, the difference (for which humans correct, thanks to common sense), can be measured as the country shown in the tourist brochure minus the country seen with your naked eyes. That difference can be small, or large. We also make such corrections with commercial products, not overly trusting advertising. But we don't correct for the difference in science, medicine, and mathematics, for the same reasons we didn't pay attention to iatrogenics. We are suckers for the sophisticated." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10846. "Now, worse: Nokia, who used to be the top mobile phone maker, began as a paper mill (at some stage they were into rubber shoes)." --Taleb, on how the most successful and long-lasting companies go with the flow and change businesses as needed
@10847. "In the mid-1990s, I quietly deposited my necktie in the trash can at the corner of Forty-fifth Street and Park Avenue in New York." --Taleb, #unusualsentences
@10848. "The hidden benefit of antifragility is that you can guess worse than random and still end up outperforming." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10849. "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." --Steve Jobs
@10850. "We notice what varies and changes more than what plays a large role but doesn't change. We rely more on water than on cell phones but because water does not change and cell phones do, we are prone to thinking that cell phones play a larger role than they do." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10851. "If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10852. "What Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10853. "Mario Batali condensed that sorry-to-not-sorry shift into an email he sent in December 2017: Acknowledging that several of his co-workers had accused him of sexual assault and harassment, the celebrity chef professed regret for his behavior--and then, 'in case you're searching for a holiday-inspired breakfast,' offered up a recipe for cinnamon rolls." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10854. "One of the company's yoga teachers attempted to lead a mass meditation, which was mostly thwarted by the effects of the venue's multiple open bars." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10855. "But too many kids come to see kindness as a chore rather than a choice. We can change that. Experiments show that when kids are given the choice to share instead of being forced to, they're roughly twice as likely to be generous later." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10856. "When the number of candidates reaches double digits, elections can enter a world that we think of as Arrow's nightmare: The process, while observing the formalities of voting, is not particularly representative of anything." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10857. "One important study of the 2008 presidential primaries found that voters do barely better than chance at picking the candidate whose views most closely match their own." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10858. "Paradoxically, the more candidates who enter, the greater the incentive for additional entrants, because each one reduces the number of votes needed to win." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10859. "Now, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who will join hands and sway gently back and forth while singing 'We Shall Overcome' with Peter Yarrow, and Republicans." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10860. "Americans are beginning countless dialogues about how important it is to begin a dialogue." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10861. "When I see pictures of my friend the godfather of the Paleo ancestral lifestyle, Art De Vany, who is extremely fit in his seventies (much more than most people thirty years younger than him), and those of the pear-shaped billionaires Rupert Murdoch or Warren Buffett or others in the same age group, I am invariably hit with the following idea. If true wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor (or hobby), good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises, then it is largely subtractive (elimination of iatrogenics)." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10862. "Sometimes, for a conference dinner, the organizers send me a form asking me if I have dietary requirements. Some do so close to six months in advance. In the past, my usual answer had been that I avoid eating cats, dogs, rats, and humans (especially economists)." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10863. "In fact, speculative risk taking is not just permissible; it is mandatory. No opinion without risk; and, of course, no risk without hope for return. If Fat Tony had an opinion, he felt he needed, for ethical reasons, to have a corresponding exposure. As they say in Bensonhurst, you got to do so if you have an opinion. Otherwise, you do not really have an opinion at all." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10864. "Never put your enemy's back to the wall." --qtd. in _Antifragile_
@10865. "There is no product that I particularly like that I have discovered through advertising and marketing." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@10866. "Something in me reached toward the woman smoking alone in her convertible, with the sun setting behind her and the wind whipping her hair. She made solitude look liberating, while others made it look like a grind; I knew the truth everyone knows, which is that it's both." --_Atlantic_ article, December 2019
@10867. "Between the launching of [McCarthy's] security program in March 1947 and December 1952, some 6.6 million persons were investigated. Not a single case of espionage was uncovered, though about 500 persons were dismissed in dubious cases of 'questionable loyalty.'" --_A People's History of the United States_
@10868. "From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country--and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won." --_A People's History of the United States_
@10869. "By the end of the Vietnam war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, more than twice the total bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II--almost one 500-pound bomb for every human being in Vietnam." --_A People's History of the United States_
@10870.
Q: I'm a businessman, and my secretary seems to move entirely too slowly. How many times a minute should she be able to open and close a file drawer?
A: Exactly 25 times. Times for other "open and close operations"...are .04 minutes for opening or closing a folder, and .026 minutes for opening a standard center desk drawer. If you're worried about her "chair activity," clock her against these standards: "Got up from chair," .033 minutes; "turn in swivel chair," .009 minutes.
--qtd. in _A People's History of the United States_
@10871. "Once elected, Carter declined to give aid to Vietnam for reconstruction, despite the fact that the land had been devastated by American bombing. Asked about this at a press conference, Carter replied that there was no special obligation on the United States to do this because 'the destruction was mutual.' Considering that the United States had crossed half the globe with an enormous fleet of bombers and 2 million soldiers, and after eight years left a tiny nation with over a million dead and its land in ruins, this was an astounding statement." --_A People's History of the United States_
December 25, 2019
@10876. "Perhaps, some respondents clarify, all problems will be solved by commonplace addiction." --spam website with crappy news about iPhones
@10877. "According to users noting problems with morning identification, they are not interested in whether a password request is an additional means of protection or a banal flaw in Face ID." --spam website with crappy news about iPhones
@10878. "Your intonation [on a violin] must be impeccable or you'll sound like you're stepping on cats." --Quora answer
@10879. Per 100 Flushing Toilets
@10883. "Evidently the butter debate has gotten to such a level in Wisconsin that they're considering dissolving one of the chambers of the legislature over it (I don't remember which one) and thereafter having only one. It's unclear how this will help anything." --dream #1050
@10884. "There is no prize for writing the shortest commit message." --_Continuous Delivery_
@10885. "Are we supposed to be discrete?" --typo for "discreet" found in my dream journal
January 12, 2020
@10886. "I'm very much against my song being used to sell pants." --John Fogerty (of CCR)
@10888. "Last night I went into Best Buy looking for a basic component so I could hook up my Klipsch Speakers, to my computer but alas, propriety has replaced our sovereign choice in how we reproduce our music."
--YouTube comment
I understand what this is saying, but none of the words mean that!
@10889. "I like thinking about songs being haunted, and how some songs just keep getting repeated and rearranged over the years, and the people that sing them throughout their lives kind of follow those tunes around and loom over the people that sing them. In a happy way. In a Mandolin-jovial way." --Andrew Marlin, on "Old Ties and Companions"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdP8S0uKP5U)
@10894. "I think it looks very laconic in the such way." --StackOverflow answer, describing a concise solution to a coding problem
@10895.
**Leviathan**: I didn't really get into this too well because I didn't get a chance to read through the second half of it or so before class, and then we spent approximately half the class talking about the midterm rather than the reading. This was a good thing, as evidenced by the comment that JW got from a student when she cheerfully asked him how the midterm had gone:
"I was so filled with rage, I wanted to burn the questions."
That said, it means I don't know all that much about Leviathan.
--MaudWiki article in the Great Con series
@10896. If you play the mandolin for 30 years, you've spent 15 years tuning and 15 years playing out of tune.
(Cf. #4669.)
@10897. "Detached HEAD" is definitely the best Git term.
@10898. "Automated acceptance testing is what frees up time for testers so they can concentrate on these high-value activities, instead of being human test-script execution machines." --_Continuous Delivery_, p.128
January 24, 2020
@10899. "Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves." --Maude Chardin, _Harold and Maude_
@10900.
"You sure have a way with people."
"Well, they're my species!"
@10901. "That was your last date!" --Ms. Chasen
@10902. "Grab the shovel, Harold!" --Maude
@10903.
"I like you, Maude."
"I like you, Harold."
@10904. "Emily just explained the beauty of a metaphor." --Andrew Marlin, in stage chatter
January 26, 2020
@10910. "An error in judgment on a walk to the store should not cost anyone their life." --Strong Towns
@10911. "Amazing he still has eyebrows." --#overheard at the restaurant counter at Hy-Vee
@10912. Realized after I got back from church today that I had somehow only buttoned the top three buttons of my shirt. Must have gotten distracted halfway through or something! Fortunately I was wearing a sweater over it (and an undershirt under it).
@10914. "I like when things are magically fixed. It's quite convenient." --me
@10916. "Chemicals are not like people, but that's the way they're treated. They're innocent until proven guilty." --Jayne Matthews, on hair dye possibly being carcinogenic
@10917. Just found a store in DCSS called "Sdaohese's Superlative Supplies" where every item sold starts with the letter S...hehe. That's a NetHack level of silliness.
{BL #12465}
@10918. "OMG!! It's work, many thanks!" --user in a GitHub discussion about a Microsoft bug
January 30, 2020
@10921. "I can't tell you why it took as long for weblogs to happen as it did, except to say it had absolutely nothing to do with technology. We had every bit of technology we needed to do weblogs the day Mosaic launched the first forms-capable browser. Every single piece of it was right there. Instead, we got Geocities. Why did we get Geocities and not weblogs? We didn't know what we were doing. One was a bad idea, the other turns out to be a really good idea. It took a long time to figure out that people talking to one another, instead of simply uploading badly-scanned photos of their cats, would be a useful pattern." --https://web.archive.org/web/20191122004739/http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
@10923. "My butthole has been a location on Facebook since 2012 and I can't get it removed" --/r/legaladvice post
(Cf. §ButtholeLocation.)
@10926. "I actually got sued for a car accident I was not in." --Reddit comment
@10927. "Bentham, it seems like we've banned everything except kittens, origami, fruit juice, and 'Taco Tuesday.'" --http://existentialcomics.com/comic/325
@10930. "When you're working with tools that can remove parts of your body, surprises are highly undesirable." --me on knife safety
@10935. Rush Limbaugh Admits Presidential Medal Of Freedom Less Of An Honor Knowing That Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou Also Received It
@10936. "If you've built your career and your identity around the notion that people are incapable of living their own lives without having you around to tell them what to do, discovering that they're ready, willing, and able to do without your services can be a shattering experience -- and discovering that they see you as an officious and intrusive petty tyrant, rather than being grateful for all the help you think you've given them, is even more so. Both these experiences, however, are routine for the losing side in the kind of transfer of power that's under way in today's America." --JMG, "The End of the Dream"
@10937. "American history can be usefully described as a sequence of attempted journeys toward distant shining cities that do not and cannot exist. When one such journey fails, as of course it must, we pick ourselves up, gather up whatever of value we've learned in the process of the last journey, and set out in a different direction." --JMG, "The End of the Dream"
February 07, 2020
@10938. "You don't quote your variables because otherwise you're introducing security vulnerabilities. You quote your variables because it is wrong not to." --https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/171346/security-implications-of-forgetting-to-quote-a-variable-in-bash-posix-shells/171347#171347
The answer also uses the analogy of saying, "You shouldn't commit murder because you will go to jail": sure, it's true, but you're kind of missing the point!
@10939. "Whenever you walk into the woods it feels as if you have entered a sanctuary -- everything you think matters does not seem to matter all that much under the shelter of the trees." --Harry Stead, https://humanparts.medium.com/walking-is-medicine-why-long-walks-will-change-your-life-59297e955a49
@10940. "When your ceiling is over 200 degrees, it is time to call the fire department." --/r/legaladvice comment
{BL #11495}
@10942. "stock-home syndrome" --YouTube comment
(Cf. #8261.)
@10945. Personal finance is the art of minimizing the constraints that financial issues put on the way you want to live your life.
--me
@10948. "I can only do one snark per email." --me
@10949. "Technical debt is what you feel next time you want to make a change." --Ward Cunningham
@10950. "There are at least five solutions to this common problem. Uh-oh. If solution #1 had worked, people would not have needed to invent solution #2. If solution #2 had worked, people would not have needed to invent solution #3. Since there are five solutions, there is a good chance that none of them work." --Mark Dominus, https://blog.plover.com/2008/03/28/
@10951. "The manual (which goes by the marvelously obvious and easily-typed name of ExtUtils::MakeMaker, by the way) is of limited help. It recommends solving the problem by travelling to Paterson, NJ, gouging your eyes out with your mom's jewelry, and then driving over the Passaic River falls. Ha ha, just kidding. That would be a big improvement on what it actually suggests, for three reasons. First, it is clear and straightforward. Second, it would feel better than the stuff it does suggest. And third, it would actually solve your problem, although obliquely." --Mark Dominus, https://blog.plover.com/2008/03/28/
@10954. I learned the term "watermelon project" the other day: it's green on the outside and red on the inside.
@10956. "For complicated reasons, I have been forced to make an identical copy of cmd.exe and rename it to cmd-2.exe." --https://superuser.com/questions/1524172/why-is-dns-apparently-involved-in-issuing-dir-on-windows-10
@10957. "Recursion provides a way to loop without loops." --NSA Python course
@10958. "The rate of heat transfer into the mass being heated depends on its initial temperature, which is most likely not 0 Kelvin." --Stack Exchange comment on a question about the impact of changing the temperature of an oven
@10959. "Unsleep me at 6!" --/r/wildbeef
@10960. "Especially annoying that people complain that refugees are being freeloaders using phones. They're refugees, not apes, they had a life before they got forced out and they were hardly going to leave behind something that is vital to modern life that fits in your sodding pocket." --Reddit comment
February 16, 2020
@10963. "I don't usually repeat pieces from year to year...except 'Beautiful Savior', because I don't want to get fired." --Dr. Armstrong
@10964. "The major lesson learned from the above two approaches is: you should not slice up your repos into a smaller granularity than what you build and ship." --Microsoft documentation on git scaling
@10965. "aline with" --#phoneticproblems
@10968. "Like teaching a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig." --Joel Spolsky on making programmers do administrative work
@10969. "Easy to carry -- fits into its own carrying bag." --one of the selling points for a portable music stand
@10970. "This book is so full of insights that it broke my usual approach to summarizing books." --https://fortelabs.co/how-to-take-smart-notes/
@10971. "Plans are meant to help us feel in control. But it is much more important to actually *be* in control, which means being able to steer our work towards what we consider interesting and relevant." --https://fortelabs.co/how-to-take-smart-notes/
@10975. "Project: theory of society. Duration: 30 years. Costs: zero." --Niklas Luhmann
(And he finished it 29½ years later.)
@10976. "Isn't that a little bit like saying, if you are short of money, just take what you need out of your piggy bank? Everyone can make things look easy by leaving out the main part." --_How to Take Smart Notes_
@10977. "In truth, it is highly unlikely that every text you read will contain exactly the information you looked for and nothing else. Otherwise, you must have already known what was in there and wouldn't have had reason to read it in the first place." --_How to Take Smart Notes_
(Apparently this is closely related to a situation called Meno's Paradox, which claims (sophistically) that inquiry is impossible because you can't look for anything when you don't know what you're looking for.)
@10978. "No underlined sentence will ever present itself when you need it in the development of an argument." --_How to Take Smart Notes_
@10979. Just remembering that I had a dream this morning in which somebody told me that my Zettelkasten favicon that I created Monday was really a fantastic piece of design work. (It's literally the letters ZK diagonally in fairly garish and poorly contrasting colors, drawn with the pencil tool in GIMP in 5 minutes.)
@10980. "Sometimes, things can go wrong." --Microsoft documentation on installing Visual Studio
(Cf. #10251.)
@10981. Note to self: the bathtub usually fills faster if you put the plug in.
@10985. "What is always stupid exception? ...I feel mad because nuget steals my time much. Please stop forcing my time!" --NuGet bug report, https://github.com/NuGet/Home/issues/7131
@10987. "you and me against a leaning mattress" --#mondegreen for "are gasoline and matches"
March 02, 2020
@10988. Last night I linked all my wristwatches into a belt. It was a complete waist of time.
--told by the emcees at the Hometown Sampler this year
@10989. "Being a programmer won't help you much with macro invocation, which can leave just about anyone beating their head against a wall." --Mark S., on the TiddlyWiki forum
@10990. "Always bet on text." --Graydon Hoare
@10991. "Most programmers are in an abusive relationship with their runtime environment." --HackerNews comment
@10992. "Hey, you're right! I started with P^!P and derived your mom's phone number!" --xkcd 704
@10993. "My rule of thumb, which has served me well for over 60 years, is that if you know you are going to have an awkward conversation, do it as soon as you can. The longer you wait to bring up something you feel awkward about, the more difficult the conversation is." --StackOverflow comment
@10994. "So, you worked for free to worsen a presentation for a meeting that won't happen for a project that doesn't exist?" --Dilbert
@10995.
Q: What's the plural of 'developer'?
A: 'Merge conflict.'
--qtd. in _The Unicorn Project_
@10996. "The banana is not a threat to the bicycle." --Seth Godin
@10997. "My voice and Stephen Foster get along well." --me
March 07, 2020
@10998. A younger, less savvy me would interject here "Why ask for more money given that they've already offered you enough?" and my answer to that is "Because everyone in the negotiation is a businessman and any number we are mutually happy with is a morally acceptable number. Given this, and keeping all else equal, I prefer 'more' to 'less' and always, always, always ask for 'more.' You should try that -- it's a trivial tactical suggestion which helps address you systematically low-balling yourself, which you're prone to. You think that asking for 'more' will result in 'less' being yanked from the table, but you believe this because you're young, inexperienced, and working from a narrative about desert which is quite disconnected from how rational businessmen actually operate. No counterparty who you actually want to work with will hold good-faith negotiating against you."
--https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/
@10999. "You generally can't do a totally bang up job on any five minutes of work this year and have your boss give you an extra $5,000. You can trivially pick up $5,000 in salary negotiations just by sucking less." --https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
@11000. "I would prefer to have been accused of murder, because there would have been some attempt at due process." --Parker, "The Abortion Doctor and His Accuser", _The Atlantic_, March 2020
@11001. "I haven't touched my face in 3 weeks. I kind of miss it." --Donald Trump, on the coronavirus outbreak
@11002. "...Social media, which combines the worst of being together and the worst of being alone." --AskReddit comment
(Cf. #10674.)
@11003. "'Why pay now when you can pay over time?' Because I'm not a sucker." --me, reading an ad for PayPal's credit program
@11004. "Here it is, a really nice Sunday morning, and I don't want to ruin it talking about masturbation and blowjobs." --Watanabe, _Norwegian Wood_
@11005. "Bash is the disease you die with, but don't die of." --Jeffrey Snover, creator of PowerShell
@11006. "Lamelot then compares the head/platter operation to a Boeing 747 flying over the surface of the earth at Mach 800 at less than one centimeter from the ground, while counting every blade of grass and 'making fewer than 10 unrecoverable counting errors in an area equivalent to all of Ireland.'" --https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sql/database-administration/storage-101-understanding-the-hard-disk-drive/
@11007. "In other words, while social conservatives have a philosophy of family life they can't operationalize, because it no longer is relevant, progressives have no philosophy of family life at all, because they don't want to seem judgmental." --"The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake", _The Atlantic_, March 2020
@11008. "It should, but it doesn't." --me, on the sentence that describes all of IS
@11009. "Pro tip: when you're too busy to know where your code is, you are writing features while the world burns." --me
@11011. "SharePoint will not cause joy!"
@11015. "Wash your hands so you don't kill your neighbor." --Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, on the coronavirus pandemic
March 14, 2020
@11016. "Learning, thinking, and writing should not be about accumulating knowledge, but about becoming a different person with a different way of thinking." --_How to Take Smart Notes_
@11017. "Unfortunately, a lot of what I think is garbage, and most of what I hear in lectures should be promptly forgotten." --Dan Sheffler, http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2014-07-21-two-goals-of-note-taking/
@11018. "I've researched the subject [of altered-state experiences] and the bulk of the literature comes from New Age books with clouds on the cover, written by middle-aged women with floofy hair." --http://realityhandbook.org/essay/warning-about-altered-state-experiences-and-literature/
@11022. "So you think 'Bad Game' is a good game." --#overheard at the Ole Store
@11023. "Cinnamon roll. Giant. The size of your head. Maybe not *quite* that big." --#overheard at the Ole Store, describing an Ole Roll
@11024. At the same visit: my waitress, Kat, described the "IPA" style of beer multiple times to different people as "EPA".
@11025. "Chris did that last time, and he hit cars, like, a bunch of them." --#overheard on campus at St. Olaf
@11026. I was highly amused to see Owatonna parking enforcement out yesterday. Sure, there's a pandemic, but we can't have people parking illegally, can we?
@11027. "Five years ago, someone at Adam's company made a commit. Like all good commits, it touched 200 individual files and 3,500 lines of code, and the commit message was simply: 'Fixed'." --https://thedailywtf.com/articles/hnjbbbbynbhhhhhhhhhhhh
@11029. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's probably not possible to get a live bass up someone's nose." --Reddit comment
@11030. "My English is very ill." --post on the TiddlyWiki forum
@11031. "What's great about baking is that it's like working in a lab and experimenting, and in the end you get to eat pumpkin bread. And even if it's not perfect, it's probably still pretty good. And you have an excuse to make it again." --StackExchange answer
@11032. "The left is acting more like a bunch of churches than our actual churches do. It has to stop doing this. It needs to pick a couple policies that are important--that mean the difference between life and death, between a comfortable existence and outright destitution for millions of people--and do what is necessary to get those policies passed. That means talking to and working with imperfect people, even when they say 'nutjob' in a private message you weren't meant to read anyway." --Ben Studebaker
@11033. "Have you tried just walking from town to town with a ukulele?" --pop music expert on trying to learn about a song nobody could identify
@11034.
Q: How many demi people does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but it's probably going to take a while, so better enjoy the dark.
@11044. I love that all my recent quotes in here are me, because I'm sitting at home all day talking to myself!
@11047. "You know you're becoming a corporate sell-out when you start to think SharePoint is the best solution." --me
@11050. Just reminded that _Why Software Sucks_ points out that the only industry besides software that calls its customers "users" is illegal drugs.
@11051. "Almost all deadlines are made up. You can change your mind when the world changes around you." --Basecamp, on why they delayed the launch of a new product due to COVID-19
@11052. "The right communication in the wrong place might as well not exist at all." --https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate
@11053. "Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda." --https://basecamp.com/guides/group-chat-problems
@11054. "It is wrong from beginning to end." --the Caterpillar, _Alice in Wonderland_, when Alice recites a poem and says it wasn't "quite right"
@11056. "Did you ever think that your life would be yelling at your mom to stop smoking pot with her friends?" --Alex Goldman, to PJ, _Reply All_
@11057.
Come on my sweet old girl, I'd bet the whole damn world
We're gonna make it yet to the end of the row...
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more.
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qiija5dBBIw
@11063. "I remember reading [J.R.R.] Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' in Barcelona and being underwhelmed. 'Yeah, yeah, dwarves, a troll, a hobbit, a wizard, a dragon, magic stuff. Whatever, I've read this before.' Then I realized that Tolkien *invented* all that stuff. Whoa." --Roguelike
@11064. "VPN customers' connections disconnected/reconnected causing poo performance." #impairment #whoopstypo
@11069.
There are three ways to tell if people are hard at work in an office:
1. The boss can watch them go to meetings. And they can watch each other in meetings as well.
2. The boss can watch them sit at desks in an open office.
3. We can make promises to each other and then keep them.
--Seth Godin
April 10, 2020
@11071. "What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning your success and serving others." --https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/how-increase-happiness-according-research/609619/
@11072. "In what has become a familiar refrain, Lessner's clinic currently has four doctors, 16 masks, and thousands of patients." --https://www.vox.com/2020/3/28/21197421/usa-coronavirus-covid-19-rural-america
@11074. "You basically had to go to Wuhan, lick someone, and then develop pneumonia." --Atlantic article on the criteria for getting a COVID-19 test
@11075. "A befuddling web diary I visit this blog, it's incredibly grand." --spam comment
@11076. "It was really busy, I didn't have time to use the till." --excuse of a cashier caught with a bunch of the money in her pockets
@11077. "[Weird Al] had the social skills of a ceramic frog." --New Yorker article
@11078. "You're moving passwords to a shared folder. Other users may gain access to the passwords." --LastPass
That's kind of the point of a "shared" folder, isn't it?
@11079. "This is a list of other articles that are lists of list articles on the English Wikipedia. In other words, each of the articles linked here is an index to multiple lists on a topic. Some of the linked articles are themselves lists of lists of lists. This article is also a list of lists, and also a list itself." --Wikipedia, "List of lists of lists"
@11086. The First Rule of Distributed Computing: Don't distribute your computing.
@11087. "Which would not be good. In case you're wondering what my opinion is of breaking your toe during a pandemic." --me
April 16, 2020
@11091. Apparently there is a company called Rex Specs (https://www.rexspecs.com/collections/all-goggles) that makes nothing but goggles for dogs. I get that working dogs need goggles, but it's hilarious that a company devotes itself to this task.
@11092. One of those things you just cannot make up: https://www.askamanager.org/2018/11/my-employer-fined-me-90-for-being-late.html
@11093. #latenightvoicememo, 3:48 AM:
"During a time of crisis, your fork makes no difference, so it seems silly to pretend that it does."
(On place settings and the need to prevent your napkin from getting dirty when you return your knife on top of it.)
@11099. "It's not rude to focus on documentation in a meeting. A surefire way to waste time in a meeting is to avoid writing anything down." --GitLab remote work guide
@11100. "bear floors"
@11101. "social benefits of vacuuming"
--https://www.vacuumsguide.com/vacuum-home-least-week/
@11102. Classic: I just typed a !number into Bash to run the command before one that I'd found by grepping through my history, thinking that I probably ought to use a :p or otherwise preview it but it was surely what I thought it was and I wouldn't bother...and it turned out the command was instead "sudo reboot". Instant system shutdown! Fortunately no damage.
Never let anyone tell you veteran *nix users don't still do dumb things now and again.
@11103. "I just want to let you know, there was a statement in the pants." --#unusualsentences, https://loweringthebar.net/2005/04/i_just_want_to_.html
@11104. "Your email inbox is someone else's to-do list." --https://fortelabs.co/blog/one-touch-to-inbox-zero/
@11105. "Imagine for a second if we could do this with everything. On Saturday morning, well-rested and wise, you retroactively decide everything you want to have done during the previous week. Anything you decide was not worthwhile, you get that time back."
--https://fortelabs.co/blog/the-secret-power-of-read-it-later-apps/
@11106. "So we find ourselves with a bizarre mishmash: Some adults think their fourth-graders believe in Santa Claus and don't know how babies are made while other adults -- or maybe some of the same adults -- think fourth-graders should have smartphones." --"Childhood in an Anxious Age," _The Atlantic_, May 2020
@11107. "My Unixing is broken." --me
(Seriously, though, I'm getting spoiled by PowerShell!)
@11108. "We're just sitting in front of a glass at our house in front of a bunch of iPhones." --Andrew Marlin
@11110. "Having a DevOps team doesn't make you DevOps." --Richard Seroter
@11111. "By and large though, we can sum up the entire pattern of reflection and reassessment in a simple if colorful way: a great many Americans have discovered that their lives suck." --JMG, on the last month of social distancing
@11112. "From the house where everyone lives on the counters." --Mary Chapin Carpenter, on her dog and cat
@11113. "A paradigm shift means moving from one model to a new one, generally in a grand, expensive, and ultimately disastrous manner." --http://johnsmurf.com/jargon2.htm
@11114. "Companies no longer sell products or services; they sell 'solutions', which are products or services, but more expensive." --http://johnsmurf.com/jargon2.htm
@11116. "A bug is never just a mistake. It represents something bigger: an error of thinking that tells you who you are." --_Mr. Robot_
@11117. "The coronavirus is not unlike the Y2K bug -- a real but invisible risk. When a hurricane or an earthquake hits, the danger is evident, the risk self-explanatory, and the aftermath visible. It is obvious when to take shelter, and when it's safe to come out. But viruses lie below the threshold of the senses. Neither peril nor safety is clear. Whenever I go outside for a brief (masked) walk, I reel from cognitive dissonance as I wander a world that has been irrevocably altered but that looks much the same. I can still read accounts of people less lucky -- those who have lost, and those who have been lost. But I cannot read about the losses that never occurred, because they were averted. Prevention may be better than cure, but it is also less visceral."
--https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/
@11118. "In the classic hero's journey -- the archetypal plot structure of myths and movies -- the protagonist reluctantly departs from normal life, enters the unknown, endures successive trials, and eventually returns home, having been transformed. If such a character exists in the coronavirus story, it is not an individual, but the entire modern world. The end of its journey and the nature of its final transformation will arise from our collective imagination and action. And they, like so much else about this moment, are still uncertain." --https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/
@11119. "Step back, I'm about to hit the CAPS LOCK key." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_
@11120. "Staring at words is always a bad idea. Stare at the word 'the' for more than ten seconds and reality begins to recede." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_
@11121. "If you're going to have a house style, try not to have a house style visible from outer space." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_, on the _New Yorker_'s policy of using diareses in place of certain hyphenations (for example: "reëlect")
@11122. "If everyone in your world is forever pushing their eyeglasses up their collective noses, please send everyone and their eyeglasses to an optician's shop." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_
@11123. "DIKE: The things that keep the Netherlands from flooding are dikes. Let's leave it at that." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_
(A classic of leaving the punch line unsaid!)
@11124. "It's 'sneak peek'. (Unless you find yourself jetting through a cloud and suddenly about to collide with a mountain, in which case, sure, that's a sneak peak.)" --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_
@11125. "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" --Mary McCarthy, of Lillian Hellman, qtd. by Dreyer (p. 217)
@11126. "There is a world of difference between turning in to a driveway, which is a natural thing to do with one's car, and turning into a driveway, which is a Merlyn trick." --Benjamin Dreyer, _Dreyer's English_, p. 255
@11127. "Every pain problem is disturbing one way or another, but RSIs have a particularly disturbing quality: they specifically strike at our work and our play. Rare is the RSI that happens because of something we didn't have to do, or want to do. It's always the typing that we must do, to pay the rent, or the golfing that we want to do, so that life is worth living. And it's usually the activity we need or want the most, because that's the one we're doing the most." --https://www.painscience.com/articles/repetitive-strain-injuries.php
@11129. "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." --https://www.painscience.com/articles/anxiety.php
@11131. "My hair can look like anything. Because, it's the 2020 coronavirus pandemic." --me
May 05, 2020
@11133. "One world-leading search engine our colleagues worked at had to patch the Linux kernel so it could accept the large number of command-line arguments required to turn on and off the various bits of functionality in their software." --_Continuous Delivery_
@11134. "Continuous delivery is more than just a new delivery methodology. It is a whole new paradigm for running a business that depends on software." --_Continuous Delivery_
@11135. "Nevertheless, in our experience it is startlingly common to begin an IT program without a business case." --_Continuous Delivery_
@11136. "Many companies insist that documentation is central to auditing. We beg to differ. A piece of paper that says you did something in a certain way is no guarantee that you actually did that thing." --_Continuous Delivery_
@11139. "I keep forgetting people use Windows." --Jed Carty
May 10, 2020
@11140. "If you can't formulate a concrete idea of how things can get better, then they're probably not going to." --Ted Neward, _Code_ magazine, on deciding when to leave a job or project
@11141. "I'm not going to clear my cookies to look at a picture!" --me, upon being advised to because of a redirect loop
@11142. "If you're still in the middle of your hero's journey, it would behoove you to make tangible plans now to show true strength and character in the final phase. Plan to spend the last part of your life serving others, loving your family and friends, and being a good example to those still in the first three stages of their own hero's journey. Happiness in retirement depends on your choice of narrative." --_The Atlantic_, "Why So Many People Are Unhappy in Retirement"
@11143. "I'm trying to use TiddlyWiki as a second public brain." --Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@11144. "You were treating your journal as an append-only second brain." --Jeremy Ruston
@11145. "I once binge-listened a half-dozen episodes in a row while assembling crappy furniture and it made the experience a lot less bad. That is the highest recommendation I can think to give it." --Jon Bois
May 13, 2020
@11146. "That's not my phone. That's a deck of cards." --me, #unusualsentences
@11149. "By clicking *delete* you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Statement." --Azure DevOps, when deleting an organization
@11150. "Needless to say, announcing a coup attempt before it had really begun wasn't the best way to maintain the element of surprise." --news article about a coup attempt in Venezuela by 60 people in fishing boats with rifles and walkie-talkies...who announced their intentions on Twitter ahead of time
@11153. "Eels seem to be made for Quantum Magazine." --#latenightvoicememo, 3:12 AM
@11157. I've decided there's a type of code comment one might call a "this is only OK because" comment. This looks like a security vulnerability, but... This would be a really dumb way to write this, but... This looks like it doesn't work, but...
May 20, 2020
@11158. "I think parking ratios are found in Leviticus, a book we refer to occasionally when it suits our needs." --Charles Marohn
@11159. I just tried to turn down the volume of a lawn mower outside using the dial on my stereo!
@11160. "Ahh yes, my mouse driver is asking for a firewall exemption so it can accept incoming connections. This is a totally normal thing to happen." --https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1229641258370355200
@11161. "All it does is download installers (which are not packages) and execute them (which is not management)." --user on the new WinGet "package manager"
@11162. "Do you need watermelon and bananas?" --#overheard woman who came to the door of the apartment building, offering her extras to a friend
@11163. "I feel like it's kind of hard for a pig to build a house." --me
@11164. "Defendant Pleads Guilty to Kicking an Owl While Paragliding" --https://loweringthebar.net/2015/04/owl-kicking.html
(In the same article: "The Tribune quoted a paragliding instructor who opined that 'powered paragliding enthusiasts generally do not fire weapons while in flight,' so that's good to know.")
I suspect this guy was a Mad Libs enthusiast who just wanted to get this case in the docket...
@11167. "Only Delete What You Have" --#misread version of "Only Desire What You Have"
@11169. "That's the most secure way to store your credentials, by putting them in files called 'junk' and 'crap' on your desktop." --me
@11172. "The examples above use personal access tokens, which requires that you create a personal access token." --Azure DevOps documentation
@11173. "When we force kids to learn syntax, we reinforce the idea that if something is not a blatantly employable skill, it's not valuable. Adults can learn syntax. Only kids can learn to embrace curiosity." --Joe Morgan, on why he's not "teaching his kids to code"
@11174. "Love...does not mean indulging people who do wrong or allowing atrocities to continue out of good feelings for all parties involved. Quite the contrary: it demands an end to exploitation and suffering for the sake of both persecutor and persecuted. Love for the powerful, for the oppressor, does not demand that we indulge them, but rather demands all the more urgently that they be stopped from oppressing others, because having so much power over the lives of others corrodes our humanity." --Daniel Walden, "The Politics of Emergencies", _Current Affairs_ 4(6)
@11176. In 1968, civil rights were not a partisan issue. Both parties contained a mix of social liberals and social conservatives, and landmark civil rights legislation to end housing discrimination in 1968 was bipartisan (with a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supporting it, actually). Whatever divisions existed in society then, partisan conflict didn't echo them. Rather, parties provided a forum for their resolution.
--Lee Drutman
@11177. "Eventual consistency is guaranteed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics." --https://xkcd.com/2315/
June 09, 2020
@11178.
Dear Customers,
I hope you're well.
We are a CNC Precision Machined Components company.
So if you need it, please contact me. thanks.
Kind Regards,
Tony
China
--spam email
@11180. "What question should we be asking you that we are not?" --Lyra, to the Trollesund consul
@11181. "It worries me that bacon is more important to you than survival." --Hester
@11182. "_The Secret_, I understand, first appeared in the form of a film, which I shall go to my grave without watching, along with straight porn and the greater part of Kung Fu cinema." --Derren Brown, _Happy_
@11183. (dramatically) "Roger is going to die. ...In the meantime, I am going to do the dishes." --me (# unusualsentencecombinations?)
@11184. "An alethiometer, a daemon, and a warm coat...all you need to change the world." --me, as Lyra walks over the bridge
June 13, 2020
@11187. "I didn't know about this book, but Noam Chomsky recommended it in a video on the internet, so I ordered it." --Amazon review of _The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
June 22, 2020
@11188. "grosherys" --Reddit comment
@11189. "My basic argument is: it works." --https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin
@11190. "Anything you post on the internet will be there as long as it's embarrassing and gone as soon as it would be useful." --qtd. in https://www.gwern.net/Archiving-URLs
@11192.
"Rime of the Ancient Google," from Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas's "Divine Weeks and Works" (1578-1584)
Google
google in Google,
Google has gone to God.
You cannot conceive it or guess it,
For all of a sudden it hast happened.
Come, come, whoever you are,
Oh come now,
Come, come, whoever you are,
Hasten, hasten!
--generated by the GPT-3 model, https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3
@11193. "If you put a textbox on the internet, someone will put spam in it." --StackOverflow blog
@11197. "DOG HOLD FOREVER LOL" --https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/hgztvg/mail_is_being_withheld_from_us_for_a_dangerous/
@11198. "As you have seen, translating VBScript to PowerShell isn't hard, but that doesn't guarantee that the original VBScript code was performing well in the first place and does what you had hoped." --https://powershell.one/powershell-internals/extending-powershell/vbscript-and-csharp
@11199. "We promise you to offer unprofitable items within three years." --spec for an office chair on Amazon, meaning that they offer a three-year warranty on parts
@11200.
"You tell me, what's more violent: kneeling on somebody until they die, or a statement of support that doesn't go far enough?"
"A statement of support that doesn't go far enough."
"Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one."
"I'm on the right side of history, man!"
--Blocked and Reported
@11201. "The book doesn't need to be straw-manned, because it's pretty crazy on its own." --Jesse Singal
@11203. "It's tempting instead to use Anki to stockpile knowledge against some future day, to think "Oh, I should learn about the geography of Africa, or learn about World War II, or [...]". These are goals which, for me, are intellectually appealing, but which I'm not emotionally invested in. I've tried this a bunch of times. It tends to generate cold and lifeless Anki questions, questions which I find hard to connect to upon later review, and where it's difficult to really, deeply internalize the answers. The problem is somehow in that initial idea I "should" learn about these things: intellectually, it seems like a good idea, but I've little emotional commitment." --http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
@11204. "You might suppose the foundation would be a shallow read of a large number of papers. In fact, to really grok an unfamiliar field, you need to engage deeply with key papers -- papers like the AlphaGo paper. What you get from deep engagement with important papers is more significant than any single fact or technique: you get a sense for what a powerful result in the field looks like. It helps you imbibe the healthiest norms and standards of the field. It helps you internalize how to ask good questions in the field, and how to put techniques together." --http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
@11206. "Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not really worth reading." --Mortimer Adler, _How to Read a Book_, p. 43
@11207. "I've had to say many times that I don't know what I think about something, but whatever that is, it's on my website." --Gwern
@11209. "Over the years, I've often helped people learn technical subjects such as quantum mechanics. Over time you come to see patterns in how people get stuck. One common pattern is that people think they're getting stuck on esoteric, complex issues. But when you dig down it turns out they're having a hard time with basic notation and terminology. It's difficult to understand quantum mechanics when you're unclear about every third word or piece of notation! Every sentence is a struggle." --Michael Nielsen
@11215. "In this session, we're going to talk about the importance of having data displayed on-screen." --OutSystems training
Very educational.
@11216. Task Manager (Not Responding)
July 10, 2020
@11218. "If you need help, hang up and dial your operator." --phone system, 2020
@11219. "This is go to prison illegal." --/r/legaladvice comment
@11220.
"""
pytest by default escapes any non-ascii characters used in unicode strings for the parametrization because it has several downsides. If however you would like to use unicode strings in parametrization and see them in the terminal as is (non-escaped), use this option in your pytest.ini:
[pytest]
disable_test_id_escaping_and_forfeit_all_rights_to_community_support = True
"""
--pytest documentation
@11223. "The past two weeks of trying to use your software have been severely, deeply, gut-wrenchingly frustrating to me. I have never been so let down by a piece of software in my entire life. To say I am dissatisfied would be amongst the greatest understatements of all time." --http://supermemopedia.com/wiki/SuperMemo_is_fundamentally_broken
@11225. Just encountered a multiple-choice quiz question that asks my opinion in the OutSystems training course:
"A developer should favor using a Structure instead of the Entity in the output of a SELECT SQL query. Do you agree with this statement?"
@11226. "The more you think about what the B in B-trees means, the better you understand B-trees." --Edward McCreight, co-creator of the B-tree (there is no correct answer)
@11230. "Actually, I don't think I'm dead." --me, of my suspended Crawl game, #nocontext
@11232. "The worst part of wrestling with a pig is you'll get covered in shit and he'll like it." --qtd. by Jesse Singal
@11233. "Any time you need an ontology to manage your ontologies you know you are in deep trouble." --Martin Fowler on microservice standards
@11234. "Since I came across this post months ago I've been trying to arrive at empirical proof of the various statements in the OP about 'terminating', 'non-terminating', 'script-terminating', and 'statement-terminating' errors. Currently I am doubtful that there exist definitions of those terms that would result in a useful taxonomy of PowerShell errors. I have found few useful generalizations about PowerShell errors that stand up to testing. Most hypotheses involving generalizations and nuance (including some in OP) can be disproven with a small amount of testing. The truth about PowerShell errors seems remarkably resistant to simplicity." --alx9r, in a GitHub issue
@11235. "The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments."
--_Mad Magazine_ cartoon, qtd. in https://nomoreharvarddebt.com/2012/09/03/financial-logic-clear-as-glass/
July 21, 2020
@11236. "How could I not have known that the information on what process-template upgrade steps I took was in a file called 'otter.txt' on my desktop? It's obvious, really." --me
@11237. "# mouse (it's sort of like a very small keyboard with only three buttons that you slide around on the desk)" --comment in my Bash profile, explaining why a mouse function was in the "keyboard" file
@11239. "Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_
@11240. "Speaking of garage-halving incidents..." --Lowering the Bar, reporting on a second incident in which someone cut a garage in half over a property-line dispute
@11241. "In fact, projects that have no structure are often referred to in the vernacular as 'failures.'" --https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/concrete-galoshes
@11242. "Hi, this was a Christian." --Google Voice #transcription
@11245. "Infinity days left" --Dropbox, uploading a file
@11246. #bandname: Façade of Wow (from §AnkiWowFactor)
@11248. "True if false, false if not." --code comment, https://thedailywtf.com/articles/true-if-documented
@11249. "It's cheaper to house a family of crack addicts than own a horse." --Reddit comment
August 02, 2020
@11250. "Do not overreach while kneeling. You may lose your balance." --safety instructions for a kneeling pad
@11251.
KNEELING DOWN
* Safety first, before kneeling make sure there are no hazards around, that the ground/floor is flat and leveled, not slippery and that there are no sharp or dangerous objects where you are about to kneel. Visualize kneeling down and standing up and make sure you will not hit your head or body with nearby objects, furniture or walls. Make sure that the kneeling pad is not wet or covered with any remains that might cause you to slip or fall. Follow all the safety instructions.
* Place the kneeling pad where you intend to use it.
* Stand behind the kneeling pad, keep a wide base of support, your feet should be shoulder-width apart.
* Squat down to the floor, bending at the hips and knees only. You can position your stronger leg slightly forward to maintain balance.
* Make sure that the kneeling pad does not slide.
* Secure the kneeling pad down to the ground/floor with your hands holding the kneeling pad at its ends.
* Slowly, place one knee on the kneeling pad followed by the other.
* Do not kneel for prolonged periods of time without standing up and walking around.
STANDING UP
* Secure the kneeling pad down to the ground/floor with your hands holding the kneeling pad at its ends.
* Slowly push your knees off the kneeling pad by moving slightly backwards into a squatting position.
* Stand up by slowly straightening your legs. Do not stand up too quickly as this could make you light-headed.
* While taking a break, keep away from the reach of children. When finished, store the kneeling pad according to the care instructions.
--"Use Instructions" for same kneeling pad
August 04, 2020
@11252. The Mississippi River overlook I visited recently on my spring 2020 camping trip had 565 steps, basically all in a row, up to the top. I don't think I've ever climbed quite that many in my life at once...and they were steep, too.
(PB transcriptions.)
@11253. On the same trip, I lost a loaf of bread, which I think is something I had not ever lost in my lifetime before. (I found it again, too -- I left it in the front pocket of my backpack after carrying it up from my campsite in the pack.)
@11254. "Pretty cool." --family of five, #overheard, after coming to a scenic overlook after a 2-mile hike, looking for about 10 seconds, and turning around
@11256. "Daddy, this is a Toyota brand car!" --girl at a campground, #overheard, of her family's own car
@11257. "River. *Waterfowl. *Watercress." --boy at the campground, #overheard, on being asked where he caught a fish
@11258. My lantern was really bright in my tent, so I put my hat over it. Then I realized, I think I just hid my lamp under a bushel.
@11263. "surpass the situation" --repeatedly used by OutSystems support to describe the process of fixing an issue
@11264.
The novel itself is fantastic, I enjoyed every page of it.
This review is about the physical printed book, which is "Brave New World: Special Edition", Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
I'd say this is the worst book I ever held in my hands. It is a complete nonsense, it is made by someone who never read a book in his life and doesn't know why would other people do that. They downloaded a free EPUB from some site on the internet and turned into a printed book.
There are no page numbers. There is a table of contents, like Chapter One, Chapter Two, but no numbers in it nor on the pages.
The text is printed in tiny Times New Roman with long lines and inadequate line spacing. it is almost impossible to read.
It all looks like a pirated text in an MS Word file.
The "Special Edition" is misleading. There is zero additional content in the book, not a word.
The original epigraph is missing.
A sailing ship painting on the cover. Seriously? Do they think it is a nautical novel?
I couldn't read it and I would be ashamed to donate it. It belongs to the recycle bin.
--Amazon review
August 07, 2020
@11265. "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess." --_How to Read a Book_, p. 123
@11266. "We are discussing here the virtue of teachability -- a virtue that is almost always misunderstood. Teachability is often confused with subservience. A person is wrongly thought to be teachable if he is passive and pliable. On the contrary, teachability is an extremely active virtue. No one is really teachable who does not freely exercise his power of independent judgment. He can be trained, perhaps, but not taught." --_How to Read a Book_, p. 123
@11267. "You can be just as wrong in agreeing as in disagreeing. To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent." --_How to Read a Book_, 143
@11268. "If you have not been able to show that the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, you simply cannot disagree. You must agree. You cannot say, as so many students and others do, 'I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don't agree with your conclusions.' All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not *like* the conclusions. You are not disagreeing. You are expressing your emotions or prejudices. If you have been convinced, you should admit it." --_How to Read a Book_, 160-161
@11269. "There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary." --_How to Read a Book_, 180
@11270. "Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know *why* one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth." --_How to Read a Book_, 204
@11271. "Between such very broad and such very narrow definitions lies a central core that most people, if they were feeling reasonable about the matter, would admit was poetry. If we tried to state precisely what the central core consisted in, we would probably get into trouble, and so we will not try. Nevertheless, we are certain that you know what we mean. We are certain that nine times out of ten, or perhaps even ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you would agree with us that X was a poem and Y was not." --_How to Read a Book_, 228
(Cf. §KnowItWhenWeSeeIt.)
@11272. "The more 'objective' a scientific author is, the more he will explicitly ask you to take this or that for granted. Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it." --_How to Read a Book_, 258
@11273. "There is something satisfying about [formal logic]....It does not really matter to [Euclid] whether there are such things as isosceles triangles. If there are, he is saying, and if they are defined in such and such a way, then it follows absolutely that their base angles are equal. There can be no doubt about this whatever -- now and forever." --_How to Read a Book_, 264
@11274. "The author [of aphoristic philosophy] is like a hit-and-run driver; he touches on a subject, he suggests a truth or insight about it, and then runs off to another subject without properly defending what he has said." --_How to Read a Book_, 285
@11275. "[T]he questions philosophers ask are simply more important than the questions asked by anyone else. Except children." --_How to Read a Book_, 291
(Cf. #10088.)
@11276. "A curious paradox is involved in any project of syntopical reading....In the case of [the research topic of] love, you might have to read a dozen or a hundred works before you could decide what you were reading about. And when you had done that, you might have to conclude that half of the works you had read were not on the subject at all." --_How to Read a Book_, 313
@11277. "It requires some training to distinguish fact from fiction, and still more training to distinguish fiction from lies." --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_, loc. 2469
@11278. "The notion that there can be different versions of one story -- suggesting that no version is absolutely true -- is again an acquired literary convention. Growing up in Colchester with access to few books besides an illustrated Bible and some children's chapbooks, laborer's son Thomas Carter (b. 1792) had no opportunity to learn that. Therefore, he not only read Revelations literally: he assumed that the books of Kings and Chronicles were unconnected narratives of two distinct series of events; and also, that the four Gospels were consecutive portions of the history of Jesus Christ, 'so that I supposed there had been four crucifixions, four resurrections, and the like. I was, indeed, sometimes perplexed by the apparently repeated occurrence of events so nearly resembling each other; nor could I perceive the exact design or bearing of these events; but I knew no one of whom I could ask for the needed explanations.'" --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_, loc. 2515
@11279. "Their grandparents read Jack and the Beanstalk and Pilgrim's Progress as documentaries not because print is inherently credible, but because there is something powerfully compelling in a new and unfamiliar medium of communication. Its dazzling and novel capacities for transmitting information may so impress an audience that they must learn all over again how it can be manipulated." --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_, loc. 2469
@11280. "The New Testament taught the principle of forbearance and Dickens supplied the technique of it." --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_, loc. 2977
@11281. There were still a few ancient mechanics' institute veterans who had never accepted fiction as "improving literature." One of them was appalled to find his grandson reading a novel from a public library: "What are you doing with this trash? Read proper books, young man -- proper books." (The novel was _Anna Karenina_.)
--Ibid, loc. 3098
@11282. "Save for a few odd parents, most are grateful that the schools work so hard to offset tendencies to introversion and other suburban abnormalities." --post-WWII article, qtd. in _Quiet_, p. 27
"Introversion and Other Suburban Abnormalities" could be a short-story collection, perhaps.
@11283. "We don't ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well." --_Quiet_, p. 61
@11284. "One of the most interesting findings, echoed by later studies, was that the more creative people tended to be socially poised introverts. They were interpersonally skilled but 'not of an especially sociable or participative temperament.' They described themselves as independent and individualistic. As teens, many had been shy and solitary." --_Quiet_, p. 74
@11285. "Some of Kagan's studies even venture into the realm of cultural myth. For example, he believes, based on his data, that high reactivity is associated with physical traits such as blue eyes, allergies, and hay fever, and that high-reactive men are more likely than others to have a thin body and narrow face." --_Quiet_, 104
(Five out of five?!)
@11286. "The problem for scientists is that we try to observe behavior, and these are things that you cannot observe," she explains. Scientists can easily report on the behavior of extroverts, who can often be found laughing, talking, or gesticulating. But "if a person is standing in the corner of a room, you can attribute about fifteen motivations to that person. But you don't really know what's going on inside."
--_Quiet_, p. 135
Which is kind of weird, because, like, you don't really know what the chatty person's motivation is either. Then again, you might know just as well as the person themselves!
@11287. "At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability." --_Quiet_, p. 167
@11288. "In business, you have to put a lot of nonsense together and present it." --_Quiet_, p. 194
(Cf. #7208.)
@11289. "The chief thing you can learn from, say, a life coach or inspirational speaker is how to become a life coach or inspirational speaker." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 38
@11290. "Seeing the psychologist Steven Pinker making pronouncements about things intellectual has a similar effect to encountering a drive-in Burger King while hiking in the middle of a national park." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 43
@11291. "I once pulled a prank on a friend. Years ago, when Big Tobacco was hiding and repressing the evidence of harm from secondary smoke, New York had smoking and nonsmoking sections in restaurants (even airplanes had, absurdly, a smoking section). I once went to lunch with a fellow visiting from Europe: the restaurant only had availability in the smoking section. I convinced my visitor that we needed to buy cigarettes, as we *had* to smoke in the smoking section. He complied." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 72
@11292. "Just as the slick fellow in a Ferrari looks richer than the rumpled centimillionaire, scientism looks more scientific than real science." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 160
@11293. "Dinner consisted of a succession of complicated small things, with microscopic ingredients and contrasting tastes that forced you to concentrate as if you were taking some entrance exam. You were not eating, rather visiting some type of museum with an affected English major lecturing you on some artistic dimension you would have never considered on your own." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 167
@11294. "In real life, belief is an instrument to do things, not the end product." --Taleb, _Skin in the Game_, p. 213
@11295. "When the beard (or hair) is black, heed the reasoning, but ignore the conclusion. When the beard is gray, consider both reasoning and conclusion. When the beard is white, skip the reasoning, but mind the conclusion." --proverb, qtd. by Taleb
@11296. "What tools or technologies you use is irrelevant if the people who must use them hate using them, or if they don't achieve the outcomes and enable the behaviors we care about." --_Accelerate_, p. 111
@11297. "We investigated further the case of approval by an external body to see if this practice correlated with stability. We found that external approvals were negatively correlated with lead time, deployment frequency, and restore time, and had no correlation with change fail rate. In short, approval by an external body (such as a manager or CAB) simply doesn't work to increase the stability of production systems, measured by the time to restore service and change fail rate. However, it certainly slows things down." --_Accelerate_, p. 124
@11298. "If others don't want to talk about tough issues, it's because they believe that it won't do any good." --_Crucial Conversations_, p. 197
@11299. "If you read the previous pages in a short period of time, you probably feel like an anaconda that just swallowed a warthog. It's a lot to digest." --_Crucial Conversations_, p. 211
August 08, 2020
@11300. "I know I took more notes on the book [How to Take Smart Notes] than this, but I can't find them (I recognize the irony in that statement)." --David Gifford, TiddlyWiki group, #ironyoftheday
@11302. Just got the overdue Anki card asking me to spell "indispensable," which I spelled incorrectly in my blog post last night!
@11303. "Or, Febrifuge."
--Yellow, part of a cutscene from "M&M's: The Lost Formulas", after Red says the "F" on their report card might stand for "Fabulous" or "Fantastic"
@11306. "Is this song about molesting ghost children and also a plug for learning CPR?" --comment on "Clementine"
Part 2:
#bandname: Automatic Ukulele
Part 3:
"'cat' is not a good MUA." --https://github.com/tsto/notmuchfs
Part 4:
Getting a list of all tags in notmuch:
notmuch dump | awk -F '--' '$1 ~/\+/ { print $1 }' | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -u
August 16, 2020
@11307. "He who thinks himself united with God without being united with his brothers is a liar, says the apostle; he is but a false mystic, and, intellectually, a false thinker; but he who is united to men and to nature without being hiddenly united to God -- without being a lover of silence and solitude -- is but the subject of a kingdom of death." --_The Intellectual Life_, p. 53
@11308. "Home and more" --my iPhone's Photos app, trying in vain to make my adventures over the past few months sound exciting
@11309. Most absurd price run-up I've seen yet during this pandemic: 24 regular Ball canning lids for 31 dollars and change. That could mean the lids alone cost more than the produce!
August 21, 2020
@11310. "Articraft" --seen instead of "artifact" on an architecture diagram
@11312. "The only thing you should learn from this experience is that people who seem like jackasses generally are." --Alison Green
@11313. "I hold an unpopular view. I believe, firmly and invariably, that life in the 21st century is too informal and empty of ritual, and that we should encourage and erect more needless formality. Formality, ritual and ceremony -- not casual approachability -- are among the most effective ways of making the world and its institutions more inclusive and egalitarian. We all need much more formality in our lives." --Antone Martinho-Truswell, https://aeon.co/ideas/we-need-highly-formal-rituals-in-order-to-make-life-more-democratic
@11314. "Julian Jaynes' _The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind_ is a brilliant book, with only two minor flaws. First, that it purports to explain the origin of consciousness. And second, that it posits a breakdown of the bicameral mind." --Slate Star Codex
@11315. #bandname: The Gaseous Moons
@11316. "I have never seen, in my life, a bobby pin like this one. And I'm 65 years old, so I've seen a lot of bobby pins." --one-star Amazon review
@11317. You can't ride two horses with one ass.
@11318.
@@@
public String getResultString(int numResults) {
StringBuffer sb = null;
for (int result[] = getResults(numResults); numResults-- > 0;) {
int i = result[numResults];
if( i == 0){
int j = i + 1;
if (sb == null)
sb = new StringBuffer();
else
sb.append(",");
sb.append(j);
}else{
int j = i + 1;
if (sb == null)
sb = new StringBuffer();
else
sb.append(",");
sb.append(j);
}
}
return sb.toString();
}
@@@
--The Daily WTF
Quite aside from the "goto fail" indentation in the else block and the fact that the outer if-else has the same code in both branches, look at that for-loop condition for a second...wut? As Remy says, it's not *wrong*, it just reads like it was written by someone from outer space.
@11319. "Play sword" --Google Voice #transcription of "Hey Soren"
@11320. "After a lot of people in lab coats poured things from one test tube to another, Merck announced they had found such a chemical, which they called vilazodone (Viibryd®)." --Slate Star Codex
@11321. "If you want to pay $368 extra [per month] to be a little more nauseous and substitute digits for symbols a little faster, [vortioxetine] is definitely the drug for you." --Slate Star Codex
@11325. "doctor killed patient with fake euthanasia" --Google search qtd. in SSC as a way someone found the blog
(As SSC says, it wasn't fake then was it?)
@11328.
Part 1:
"Nothing says 'fuck you' like a Torx screw." --me
Part 2:
"Fourth and fifth are two different meta-analyses of the above three studies, which is the lowest study-to-meta-analysis ratio I've ever seen." --SSC
@11329. "I thank G-d for the annoying obstructionists, for the nitpickers, for the devil's advocates, for the people who hear something that's obviously true and strain to come up with an absurd thought experiment where it might not be, for the reflexive contrarians, for the people who always vote third party, for the people who urge you to sign petitions on whitehouse.gov because "then the President has to respond", for the people who have two hundred guns in their basement "just in case", for the people who say "well, actually..." all the time, for the mayors of sanctuary cities and the clerks who refuse to perform gay weddings, for the people who think being banned on Twitter is a violation of their human rights, and for the people who swear eternal hostility to other people on the same side who agree with them on 99% of everything. On the spectrum from "totally ungovernable" to "vulnerable to Nazism", I think that we've erred in the right direction." --https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/30/book-review-eichmann-in-jerusalem/
@11330. "Only 0 days left!" --SmartBear LoadUI, informing me my trial was almost over
@11331. "Let me ask Vox a question: when was the last time that America's chair industry hiked the price of chairs 400% and suddenly nobody in the country could afford to sit down?" --SSC
@11332. "Use the advice in this post wrong, and you end up transforming the famous quote from the Declaration of Independence into something like:
"Although we agree King George has many good qualities, we nevertheless hold these truths to be more or less self-evident. Truth number one, that all men are created equal. For example, they should all be equally allowed to speak freely about important issues like taxes. It's possible that there might be some times they shouldn't be equal, like children having fewer rights than adults, but this are just minor exceptions. [insert picture of Liberty Bell here] Truth number two, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..."
--https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/
@11333. The GDPR is definitely getting tougher...I went to dict.leo.org, and instead of the cookie choices being "Accept" and some teensy little link like "show details" for the other options, the "no" option is a giant link that says "Do not sell my personal data."
@11335. "It used to be, when I paddled my kayak on Lake Superior, I navigated by map and compass. The continual negotiation between the map and compass on my deck and the changing kaleidoscope of the shoreline has now been replaced by the certainty of a symbol on a lighted screen. With GPS, I could navigate from the campsite in the morning, travel all day, and pull into camp at night without ever having looked at the lake or shoreline at all." --Greg Breining, _St. Olaf_ magazine
(Cf. #9460.)
@11337. Corner Cat
September 08, 2020
@11339. "It feels like a safe bet that you don't want to be someone who bites coworkers as a means of conflict resolution." --Alison Green, https://www.askamanager.org/2017/07/i-bit-my-coworker.html
@11340. "Also," she continued, "anyone who is offered tortoises in unusual circumstances should report it." I'd think that those who are routinely offered tortoises could be even more helpful, so they should please be on the lookout as well.
--Lowering the Bar
@11341. "Scrolling while selecting text is the number 1 most broken thing in almost every application ever, regardless of platform. 9 times out of 10, you can't use the mousewheel while selecting, which is a bad start. To make things worse, the speed of scrolling once you hit the screen edge is usually either 'whoops you've now selected everything since the beginning of time' fast or 'by the time you finish selecting all the text you need, you could have rewritten the whole thing from memory' slow." --/r/linuxmasterrace comment
@11342. Probabilistic Log Levels:
@@@
bool LogLess(int iMaxLevel)
{
int verboseLevel = rand() % 1000;
if (verboseLevel < iMaxLevel) return true;
return false;
}
//how it's used:
if(LogLess(500))
log.debug("I appear half of the time");
@@@
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/put-a-dent-in-your-logfiles
@11343. "I think dating coworkers is like threatening to quit -- it's a joker you can pull once, maybe twice." --comment on Ask a Manager
@11346. "There is a squirrel in my Christmas tree." --Reddit comment
@11347. "If your belief is working for you, if it's helping you navigate a crazy world and find solace, and if it's not hurting anyone else, it's doing what it's supposed to do. Often, beliefs are about finding human connection and a way to tell ourselves about our place in the world, not as an accurate predictive insight as to what's actually happening. And beliefs are almost always about community, about being part of something." --Seth Godin
September 30, 2020
@11348. "My tool of choice here is LaTeX, a typesetting DSL that grew wildly beyond its original niche. It's the best tool for fine control over layouts. This is less because of its own intrinsic quality and more because everything else is far, far worse." --https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/cheatsheets/
@11349. "The field definition does not include division, nor do our definitions of addition or multiplication. This means we are free to define division however we want. We want to define it in a way that mostly follows our intuition and is sound. I say mostly because our intuition doesn't generalize. As an example, we intuitively think of a * b as 'a summed up b times'. So what's -1 * π? How do you sum up something π times?" --https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/divide-by-zero/
@11351. "Stories put together in order to sell kids a piece of molded plastic will not reflect the kind of values I want my children to have." --Greg Belvedere, "Commerce and the World of Toys," _Current Affairs_ 5(3)
@11352. "My rule of thumb is that once someone tries to frame you for a crime, your responsibility to them is over." --Reddit comment
@11353. "It's all alumni to me." --StackOverflow post
@11354. "Obviously he left it on airplane mode." --Reddit comment on a video in which a man's phone blows off a mountain impressively
@11355. "Can you believe an 87-year-old woman who has had cancer 5 times died?!" --Katie Herzog, of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
@11356. "Machines don't create value, people do -- and you can't treat people like machines." --Jared Spataro, Microsoft CVP
October 10, 2020
@11357. "I often use a thesaurus while coding, and I mentioned this fact to a non-programmer friend today. He was shocked, and he said that he thought that programming was mathematical, not lexical. But it's not so easy to separate out -- naming is one of the most important parts of programming (and math!), because it's how you reduce complexity down to something that you can understand, explain, and maneuver." --https://devonzuegel.com/post/what-s-in-a-name
@11359. New awesome insult from Hacker News: "Dude writes like GPT-3."
(Cf. #9483, #8887.)
{BL #12794}
@11360.
This is my answer too. Computers are just gratuitously complicated. Whenever I'm talking my parents through something, I think I'm going to teach them some useful tips, but realize it's absolutely unreasonable to ask anyone to learn all this stuff, and computers shouldn't be demanding it from their users in the first place.
"Well, you see, Firefox has something called extensions-- Okay, Firefox is a /browser/, it's a program you use to get on the internet, like the thing you thought was "Google", but was actually "Chrome," remember when I explained that earlier? Okay well an extension is like a attachment that adds features... Exactly, like "Adblock Plus," but AdBlock Plus is no good anymore, so now you have to use uBlock. But don't mix it up with μBlock, which is a piece of crap intentionally designed to confuse you, and which manipulates the search results so that it's the first result. Uh, search results? I forget /where/ you find extensions, but if you just type it into the address bar... oh, fuck it, I'll do everything, just come back in an hour."
--https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ck8afj/why_do_many_older_people_struggle_with_computers/evp013p/
@11361. The other day Papa went to look up the words for the Taizé tune "Dona Nobis Pacem" and accidentally typed it into the "news" category in Google. "There are no results," Google said cheerfully.
@11362. "I don't care if Jesus Christ is on the other line and there's a two for one on the wafers, I'm nobody's puppet. If I'm not answering my phone, I'm not going to answer my phone." --Reddit comment
@11365. "I literally forgot that the president was impeached." --Jesse Singal, of Trump and 2020
@11366. An item has been popping up in my YouTube sidebar recently entitled "IBMA Keynote Address: Sarah Jarosz." The IBMA is the International Bluegrass Music Association, but every single time I #misread it as "IBM" and wonder what in the world Sarah Jarosz has to say about business technology.
@11370. "The Thailand-based maker of Chaokoh coconut milk...told USA Today that it has audited coconut plantations using a third party and shared a copy of the 14-page 'Monkey-Free Coconut Due Diligence Assessment.'" --on the company's contractors allegedly using enslaved monkeys to pick coconuts
@11373. "Wow, that is *so* insecure. I would be amazed if I couldn't run arbitrary code on that computer." --me, looking at a terribly written Bash script backending a CI pipeline
@11378. "Funny thing about Word documents: they don't compile." --Scott Hanselman
@11380. "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad() procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity() procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter." --Nathaniel Borenstein, qtd. by Jeff Atwood, https://blog.codinghorror.com/your-favorite-programming-quote/
@11384. "The Midwest is, in fact, fairly frequently written about, but almost always in a way that weirdly disclaims the possibility that it has ever been written or thought about before." --https://getpocket.com/explore/item/on-being-midwestern
(In a weird way, there's something Midwestern about this very fact.)
@11385. And in the arena of general degradation of user help facilities in modern applications, this gem of non-information:
PS> Get-Help -Detailed Register-AzResourceProvider
NAME
Register-AzResourceProvider
SYNOPSIS
Registers a resource provider.
DESCRIPTION
The Register-AzResourceProvider cmdlet registers an Azure resource provider.
@11386. "The sense of sheepish embarrassment, the certainty that one will be hauled off if observed in this activity, is a clear indication that one is doing it correctly." --Crescent Dragonwagon, of spinning salad in a pillowcase outdoors
@11387. "At least 75 percent of salad mediocrity comes from not-quite fresh greens that are not quite washed and then not completely dried." --Crescent Dragonwagon
@11388. "Whole life [insurance] is hot garbage...on fire...then doused with moldy hot dog pee water. don't do it." --Reddit comment
November 01, 2020
@11389. "For myself, the most subtle aura of enticement was wafted from the verb 'begat' and the noun 'concubine'." --qtd. in _The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
@11390. "They have no alternative. No one will even pay for them to have *trash cans*. How can a community deprived of the basics expect to receive the resources it needs so that it no longer has to depend on police? Its people have, purposefully, been given nothing else. When they ask, they are told to wait; when they shout, they are told that they are undeserving. They are shamed for the ways they have survived. They are blamed when they don't survive." --_Atlantic_ article, on how underserved communities become troubled ones
@11391. "I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world." --Donald Trump
@11392. "As terrible as the pandemic has been, it has proved unexpectedly good for some -- specifically billionaires, yeast manufacturers, and streaming services." --_Atlantic_ article
@11393. "Frankly, Mrs. Leavis's methods of literary sociology were crude. She dismissed out of hand the notion that you might ask people what they were reading and why they were reading it." --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
@11394. "The new progressivism is in the streets, in classrooms, on social media -- everywhere but the places with the power to solve problems." --_Atlantic_ article
@11395. "One reason staying politically informed can lower our happiness is that both news outlets and news consumers tend to focus on bad news instead of good news. Ninety-five percent of American adults report regularly following the news -- 82 percent check it every day -- and over half of them say that it's a source of stress. I've always found it strange that people will dedicate hours of their day to watching and discussing the news, only to be infuriated by it. Imagine if 95 percent of Americans reported regularly eating mushroom pizza -- 82 percent eating it at least once a day -- but over half of them didn't like mushroom pizza. After working through your initial puzzlement at their behavior, I presume your advice to them would be simple: Stop eating mushroom pizza. To quote my 5-year-old son, 'Why does Grandpa watch the news if he doesn't like the news?' (In the interest of transparency: No, I don't always follow my own advice here. I'd say that's an indictment of me rather than my advice, though.)" --_Reason_, on why you should focus less on politics
@11396. "Even if you're untroubled by the politicization of grocery stores, you should worry that epidemiology has become a partisan battleground." --_Reason_, on why you should focus less on politics
@11397. "They say if you don't vote you can't complain. They're wrong. Complaining is prior to voting. It is deeper and more powerful than voting. It is the original act of politics." --_Reason_, on why you should focus less on politics
@11398. "[B]usyness does not equate to growth or improvement or value. Busyness often means just doing so many things at once that they all turn out crappy." --_Making Work Visible_
@11399. "It's thought to be Sophocles who said that the male libido is like being chained to a lunatic. Conversely, a woman's sex drive is more akin to being clipped to a kite -- marvelous fun once it's in the air, but comparatively easier to reel in or detach altogether." --_National Review_ article
@11401. "HBO's _Silicon Valley_ aired its final episode last year, the tech world's realities having gotten too dystopian to be fictionalized, in good conscience, for laughs." --_Atlantic_ article
@11402. "No matter where you go, there you are." --Buckaroo Banzai, qtd. by Robert Waggoner, _Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple_
(Cf. #10306.)
@11403. "Being offered slightly less poorly choreographed Zoom lessons [for the fall semester]...wasn't enough to keep the skeptics around." --_Reason_ article on public schools and the pandemic
@11404. "No evidence exists that buying dildos is the gateway to selling people into slavery, of course, but the justifications persist." --_Reason_ article on sex-shop regulations
@11405. "I'm optimistic in the big picture, because here we are. The idea that wrongheaded, dangerous, heretical, and blasphemous ideas should be not only allowed but protected is preposterous. It's ridiculous. No society has ever had that idea until about 250 years ago. It shouldn't work, but here we are. The reason is because, despite its ridiculousness, it has the one great advantage of being the single most successful social principle ever invented." --_Reason_ article, on free speech
@11406. "Be afraid. Be very afraid." --OutSystems, October 30, 2020, in some of the most tone-deaf marketing I've seen in a while!
@11407. "God, I really wish I had taken combinatorics sometimes." --me
@11409. "You may have heard about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon before. In fact, you probably learned about it for the first time quite recently. If not, then you just might hear about it again very soon."
November 06, 2020
@11410. "'Silence, silence.' All the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categorical imperative." --_Brave New World_, p. 26
@11411. "A first adopter who picked up an iPhone in 2007 for the music features would be less enthusiastic if told that within a decade he could expect to compulsively check the device eighty-five times a day." --_Digital Minimalism_, Cal Newport, p. 6
@11412. "As a computer scientist, I make a living helping to advance the cutting edge of the digital world. Like many in my field, I'm enthralled by the possibilities of our techno-future. But I'm also convinced that we cannot unlock this potential until we put in the effort required to take control of our own digital lives -- to confidently decide for ourselves what tools we want to use, for what reasons, and under what conditions. This isn't reactionary, it's common sense." --_Digital Minimalism_, Cal Newport, p. 253
@11413. "There can be no mass progressive politics if we insist on only talking to those who already agree with us." --https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/10/biden-establishment-democrat-next-donald-trump
@11414. "I don't know a lot about hauling trailers, but if you can look out the driver's side window and see your trailer beside you, you probably did something very wrong." --Reddit comment
@11415. "Sometimes you have to fight spreadsheets with spreadsheets." --Ask a Manager comment
November 16, 2020
@11416. "'I don't understand anything,' [Lenina] said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact." --_Brave New World_
@11417. "One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies." --_Brave New World_
@11418. "The reality is, the federal government is not responsible for people being idiots on Twitter." --Katie Herzog
November 19, 2020
@11419. "[M]inimalists don't mind missing out on small things; what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good." --Cal Newport, _Digital Minimalism_
@11420. "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." --_Walden_, qtd. in _Digital Minimalism_
@11421. "[Solitude is] a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds." --qtd. in _Digital Minimalism_
@11422. "One Annenberg Public Policy Center study found that 32 percent of Americans couldn't even identify the three branches of the federal government." --_National Review_ article
@11423. "Most policy debates today -- most conversations involving two or more people, it sometimes seems -- quickly become acrimonious and unproductive. Partisans on both sides see zero-sum games, winners and losers, unappealing trade-offs. But beating the coronavirus and returning to our normal lives will benefit all Americans. What is good for the jobless, the poor, and the disadvantaged in this case will also be best for everyone else. Our forebears were willing to fight in faraway lands, even to die, so that others could live in freedom. World wars necessitated a complete reorienting of the national economy toward martial victory. Surely we can commit today to come together for a few months, to defeat an enemy that will fall much more easily than any fascist regime or zombie menace." --_National Review_ article
@11424. "Just like you and me, America isn't just one 'thing' either. That's what makes America special. Most countries in the world, and indeed most nations throughout human history, are defined based on a single attribute -- whether it's a single ethnicity, a single language, a single religion, or a single monarch. Not America. We were the first and greatest country defined predominantly on the basis of a set of ideas. We came into being through a set of ideas that unified a polyglot, religiously divided group of people." --_National Review_ article
@11425. "While masks are not always necessary, scorn for masks and mask-wearers is not a badge of freedom or the spirit of resistance. It is a puerile mark of unconcern for oneself, one's family, and one's neighbors." --_National Review_ article
@11427.
> Dear 2600:
> This is not a spam
> This is not a spam.
> I'm a new text block ready for your content.
>
> Lauren
We've heard of identity crises before, but never anything like this. You're better than this, though. You're more than just a text block and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. At least you know you're not spam. That's always the first step.
--_2600_ letters page
{BL #13387}
@11428. "I remember how one of our men, who spoke with a Cockney accent, at one meeting, with a sweep of the arms, included the assembled undergrads as the bourgeoisie. But he called it Bow-jer-wow-sie. Every time he said 'Bow-jer-wow-sie' there was a bow-wow-wow like the bark of a dog from the men in cap and gown. The end of it was a free fight, flying Ruskin men, and the windows of the College smashed with bricks. That recurred fairly often." --memoir qtd. in _The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
@11429. "I for one enjoy going home at night with the same amount [of] body parts that I started the day with, so I appreciate OSHA." --Reddit comment
November 26, 2020
@11430. I had a whole series of dreams last night about "antimoney." Basically, the idea is of a society where, instead of you giving people money in exchange for their goods and services, they give you antimoney along with the product. Having more antimoney is bad -- basically, it's debt. It was unclear exactly how people were prevented from simply discarding their antimoney to magically become free of debt.
@11431. Apparently I can BUY something on Amazon without confirming my identity, but when I want to look at how much I spent I have to log in again. Umm...
@11433. "Hegel: lemons from a rose's box" --#hypnagogia
@11435. "...who dissected a rat on the saxophone." --#hypnagogia
@11438. Apparently Campbell's says that 40% of the cream of mushroom soup sold in the US is used to make green-bean casserole.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_bean_casserole)
@11440. "Ah yes, nothing quite spreads the Christmas message of love, peace and goodwill to all as driving 5 hours to tear down your distant neighbour's strange art exhibit to replace it with a shoddy plywood cross while shouting 'Christ is King.'" --Slashdot comment
@11441. "You know, [HTML is] terrible and most people can't see it....They're up to HTML 5, and if you've done a good thing, you don't keep on revving it and adding more epicycles onto a bad idea. We call this reinventing the flat tire. In the old days, you would chastise people for reinventing the wheel. Now we beg, 'Oh, please, please reinvent the wheel.'" --Alan Kay, https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now
@11444.
It's strange to think about how I'd be literally incapable of writing the same book if I'd started it in 2020, bc I'm not in the same mental space anymore. It's just weird that ppl can produce these bodies of work or writing or thinking, but then be unable to do that same thing X number of years later. We say this person is the "author" of that work or like an "expert" on the topic, but it was really only in their head for a fleeting amount of time, so is it really about them at all? Or were they just a transient translator of an idea?
--Nadia's Notes, 2020/09/19
@11445. This might actually be the most "wut?" Alison Green I've seen, and that's saying something: "My coworkers make orgasm sounds while I'm on the phone."
https://www.askamanager.org/2019/10/my-coworkers-make-orgasm-sounds-while-im-on-the-phone.html
(Also, update: https://www.askamanager.org/2020/12/update-my-coworkers-make-orgasm-sounds-while-im-on-the-phone.html)
@11447. Interesting idea I read somewhere: you can get Kindle samples for free, which might be an interesting way of creating a reading list where you can explore books at any convenient moment, much like browsing through them in a library or bookstore (back when you could walk into a library and safely handle shared objects, remember that?).
@11448. "If Joe Biden is a pair of khaki pants inside a manila envelope, that would be great."
--https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/553365/what-does-the-phrase-a-person-who-is-a-pair-of-khaki-pants-inside-a-manila-e
@11449. There are two types of people in the world: those who have tried having dual monitors and insist they would never go back, and those who insist they do not need dual monitors.
December 10, 2020
@11451. What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
--Carl Sagan
@11453. Learned today about *dancing mania*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania
December 14, 2020
@11454. "[William] James claimed that it was only when he was under the influence of nitrous oxide that he was able to understand Hegel." --Wikipedia
{BL #12840}
@11456. "Mice enthusiasts will be disappointed." --(otherwise positive) review of _Of Mice and Men_
@11457. "What's a training video without a good malapropism?" --me, committing one (saying you should "hit on" StackOverflow for help)
@11460. "It's hazardous to say anything about Plotinus." --Philosophy.SE answer
December 21, 2020
@11461. "Like any well-designed system, Perl of course has hundreds of global variables."
--https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/ancient-languages-perl
December 28, 2020
@11467. "I got the entire universe and everything in it except for a pair of headphones!" --https://xkcd.com/2403/
@11468. Interesting aspect of writing how-to content for the mnemonic medium: It becomes challenging to include lies-to-children in your explanations, because if you include them in your notes you'll be carrying the lie past the point where it is necessary scaffolding.
@11469. I think like people say you should test your software until fear becomes boredom, you should revise your prose until embarrassment becomes boredom.
@11470. "In college, there are likely to be many opposing views."
@11471. "You cannot shut down or log off Windows because the Save As dialog box in Notepad is open. Switch to Notepad, close this dialog box, and then try shutting down or logging off Windows again." --actual error I received while trying to shut down a VM
I would love to know the story of the programmer who decided to write this specific error message!
(Cf. #5887.)
@11473. NYT is currently showing the status of one Georgia Senate runoff as "pretty likely" and the other as "quite likely." I love how technical their terms are...NOT. Actually it's really annoying because looking at it I have no clue which one is closer.
January 06, 2021
@11474. "Today went about how we expected, until Trump supporters stormed the Capitol." --NPR
@11475. The Dems won both runoffs, so we'll have a 50-50 Senate. If we have a government next week...I wish I didn't think that's at least a remote possibility.
@11476. "As most Republicans and all Democrats rejected the attempt, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, forcefully turned back the plot, registering his vote as 'hell no.'"
--https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/07/us/electoral-vote
@11477. My favorite description of the attack on the Capitol so far, by the NYT: "the storming of Congress by a human 8chan thread."
--https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/trump-capitol-attack.html
@11478. "You know you're a bad tenant when the landlord is trying to evict you and you've got less than two weeks left on the lease, and yes, for purpose of clarification, I am referring to the president of the United States."
--letter to the editor, NYT
@11479. "CSS makes me want to throw things every time I use it." --me
(Cf. #7160.)
@11480. "As with many great things in life, Git began with a bit of creative destruction and fiery controversy." --Pro Git
@11481. "Obviously, paper cards can't play sounds." --https://ncase.me/remember/
January 12, 2021
@11482. "Janelle has written a book on AI, called You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place. If you buy it by clicking on that link, Janelle will make a couple of bucks, I will make a few cents, and Jeff Bezos will become richer by some infinitesimal percentage of his current wealth. The otters will receive nothing." --"United States v. Five Hundred and Twelve Otters", https://loweringthebar.net/2021/01/united-states-v-five-hundred-and-twelve-otters.html
@11483. "Today, research suggests that dreaming functions as an endogenous form of psychotherapy." --"In Exile from the Dreamscape," https://aeon.co/essays/we-live-in-a-wake-centric-world-losing-touch-with-our-dreams
{BL #11826}
@11489. "Were they vendors or were they people?" --#overheard at the office
@11490. "The more confusing the document, the more commas are needed." --Efim Fomich Perekladin, "The Exclamation Point", Chekhov, enumerating the rules of punctuation
@11491. "In penmanship the main thing isn't handwriting, the main thing is that the pupils shouldn't doze off." --"A Slip-Up," the schoolmaster defending his own poor handwriting
@11492. "This I can say with certainty: the mind is vaster, and the world ever so much more alive, than I knew when I began." --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11493. "All this meager vegetation sat there unevenly, in clumps, as if Father Yakov, deciding to make himself up as a priest and starting by gluing on a beard, was interrupted halfway through." --"A Nightmare", Chekhov
@11494. "As an inhabitant of a Mississippi River town happily shouts out in the _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, 'You pays your money and you takes your choice!' That may be the most American sentence ever written." --Ricks, _First Principles_
@11495. "I have learned in researching this book that America is a moving target, a goal that must always be pursued but never quite reached." --Ricks, _First Principles_
(Cf. #10937.)
@11496. "In studying the founders' struggles and then thinking of where the country is today, we should recognize that the American experiment is still underway -- and can be lost if we are not careful. In moments of doubt, we should focus on finding ways to continue and improve this experiment. Despite its flaws, it is worth it." --Ricks, _First Principles_
January 26, 2021
@11497. "I don't want to drive to Massachusetts to pick up this book, so I will choose 'Delivery'." --me, buying a book on eBay
@11498. "Warning: this procedure may only be undone by an administrator, by spending quite silly amounts of time." --https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Moving_a_page
@11499. "Some time ago I was to port some code for a French company. One of the developers told me, 'Well I have bad news and good news. The bad news is the comments are all in French, but the good news is there aren't many of them.'" --user comment on https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/09/28/migration-wiki-documentation-articles
This almost sounds like a Zen koan...
@11500. "We turn first to *counting*. While this sounds simple, perhaps too simple to study, it is not." --_An Introduction to Combinatorics and Graph Theory_, David Guichard
@11501. "It is both good business practice and common courtesy to check the file back in as quickly as possible after you check it out." --SharePoint documentation on locking
@11503. "This is the best invention since the inventions of TiddlyWiki and Anki." --review of TiddlyRemember
(Cf. #4759.)
@11504. "And voila! You're a jackass!"
--https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/lcbu2c/tifu_by_putting_my_head_in_a_fishbowl_before_my/
February 08, 2021
@11505. "I'm disturbed by how responsible you are and how much humility you have. I don't think you're a good fit for Twitter." --Jesse Singal, to Carey Callahan
@11506. Perl: Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister
--in the NOTES section of 'man perl', evidently contributed by Larry Wall
@11507. "While there are certainly major differences between the American and Peruvian legal systems, one thing is pretty universal: lawyers are expected to refrain from having sex during court hearings." --https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/lawyer-caught-having-sex-during-zoom-hearing/
@11508. "If you plan to order Data Box Heavy, make sure that it will fit through the entrance of your premises, and that you have at least two people to handle it. It's a massive device that weighs around 500 lbs and arrives on wheels." --Microsoft Azure Administrator training
@11510. Mark Twain famously said that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you. Your frog is your worst task, and you should do it first thing in the morning.
@11511. "If you don't see a way to use spaced repetition systems to help you do something that matters to you, then you probably shouldn't bother using these systems at all." --Andy Matuschak
@11512. "Y'alls both accountants suck." --/r/personalfinance comment on the bad tax advice the OP had received
@11515. "Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College who studies these issues, says that if school were a drug, it would not receive FDA approval." --_Atlantic_ article on school reform
(Kindle transcriptions.)
@11516. "Tipping has bloomed as a form of shadow work in which consumers take over a core task of employers: paying the staff." --_Shadow Work_
@11517. "For a few years now, I have used a credit card from Chase Sapphire. I especially like their customer service. When I have a question, I phone a readily accessible number and quickly reach a live human being who speaks intelligible English. This is so rare that I feel like I have joined the aristocracy." --_Shadow Work_
@11518. "Virtually any online user without a computer science degree now seems to be one failed login attempt away from a nervous breakdown." --_Shadow Work_
(Speaking from personal experience, a computer science degree doesn't help much!)
@11519. "Isolation should not be confused with solitude. Spending time alone, whether meditating, installing a window, painting watercolors, playing the saxophone, or relaxing with a book, can be richly rewarding. Solitude nourishes the soul, so we often choose it. Isolation isn't chosen. It gets imposed on us by rejections, failures to connect, our own discouragement, and sometimes institutions." --_Shadow Work_
@11520. "The motive of social status routinely outweighs rational self-interest." --_Shadow Work_
@11521. "Is time really money? Money's value is real yet unquestionably finite. Work has many rewards, both spiritual and material. Time, in contrast, is ineffable, and its value infinite. Time is life. Now abide work, money, time, these three; but the greatest of these is time." --_Shadow Work_
@11522. "One Mason, Michigan, resident decided to express skepticism of absentee voting by placing a toilet on the front lawn with a sign reading 'Place Mail In Ballots Here.' Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum then filed a complaint with the police over the installation, saying it's illegal. 'It's solicitation of absentee ballots into a container,' Byrum said. 'Our election integrity is not a game. I expect everyone to act appropriately, and this is unacceptable.'" --_Reason_
@11523. "[E]ducators had to take account of 'the incredible elasticity of the child's understanding, which at one moment will fail to grasp some of the simplest conceptions and at the next seems to encompass the profoundest mysteries.'" --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
@11524. "The cell itself is just a compartment -- a kind of little room: a cell -- to contain them, and of itself is as nonliving as any other room. Yet somehow when all of these things are brought together, you have life. That is the part that eludes science. I kind of hope it always will." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11525. "In another widely reported study, the Belly Button Biodiversity Project, conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University, sixty random Americans had their belly buttons swabbed to see what was lurking there microbially. The study found 2,368 species of bacteria, 1,458 of which were unknown to science. (That is an average of 24.3 new-to-science microbes in every navel.)" --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11526. "E. coli can reproduce seventy-two times in a day, which means that in three days they can rack up as many new generations as we have managed in the whole of human history. A single parent bacterium could in theory produce a mass of offspring greater than the weight of Earth in less than two days. In three days, its progeny would exceed the mass of the observable universe." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11527. We are better at detecting odors than most of us realize. In an arresting experiment, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley dragged a chocolate scent around a huge grassy field and had volunteers try to follow the trail as a bloodhound would, on their hands and knees and with their noses to the ground. Amazingly, about two-thirds of the volunteers were able to follow the scent with considerable accuracy. For five of fifteen smells tested, humans actually outperformed dogs.
--Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11528. "Mitchell was something of an eccentric. He wore shoulder-length hair and an earring at a time when that was especially unusual among serious scientists. He was also famously forgetful. At his daughter's wedding, he approached another guest and confessed that she looked familiar, though he couldn't quite place her. 'I was your first wife,' she answered." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11529. "A child half your height who falls and strikes her head will experience only one thirty-second the force of impact that a grown person would feel, which is part of the reason that children so often seem to be mercifully indestructible." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11530. "If there is one thing your immune system knows, it is that you shouldn't have a pig's liver inside you." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11531. "When he wrote an account of the discovery of streptomycin as it had really happened, the only publication he could find that would accept it was the Pakistan Dental Review." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11532. "The average Dutch or Swedish citizen consumes about 20 percent fewer calories than the average American, for instance. That doesn't sound massively excessive, but it adds up to 250,000 calories over the course of a year. You would get a similar boost if you sat down about twice a week and ate an entire cheesecake." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11533. "Exercise regularly. Eat sensibly. Die anyway." --Bill Bryson, _The Body_
@11534. "I was engrossed in a different conversation at the time, but as soon as the phonemes L-S-D drifted down to my end of the table, I couldn't help but cup my ear (literally) and try to tune in." --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11535. "When one is screening raw footage of people in costume tripping on mushrooms and dancing sloppily to a reggae band, a little goes a long way." --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11536. "Eventually, Hubbard became the exclusive distributor of Sandoz LSD in Canada and, later, somehow secured an Investigational New Drug permit from the FDA allowing him to conduct clinical research on LSD in the United States -- this even though he had a third-grade education, a criminal record, and a single, arguably fraudulent scientific credential. (His PhD had been purchased from a diploma mill.)" --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11537. "Describing the psychedelic scene at Harvard in the third person, Weil alluded to 'an undergraduate group...conducting covert research with mescaline,' neglecting to mention he was a founding member of that group." --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11538. "I felt for the first time gratitude for the very fact of being, that there is anything whatsoever. Rather than being necessarily the case, this now seemed quite the miracle, and something I resolved never again to take for granted. Everybody gives thanks for 'being alive,' but who stops to offer thanks for the bare-bones gerund that comes before 'alive'? I had just come from a place where being was no more and now vowed never to forget what a gift (and mystery) it is, that there is something rather than nothing." --Michael Pollan, _How to Change Your Mind_
@11539. "If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old." --qtd. in _How to Change Your Mind_
@11540. "It is true, of course, that Amazon Web Services is a private company and that, because it is a private company, it may choose its clients in the same way as may any other. But it does seem a little rich for Amazon Web Services simultaneously to demand congressional protection against the behavior of its customers and to elect to boot those customers from its system if they do any of the things against which Amazon Web Services has been indemnified." --_National Review_ article
@11541. "Trump has not been a president. He has been a protagonist." --_National Review_ article
@11542. "Whenever an idea has been finally and thoroughly discredited, then the moment has come for its revival." --_The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes_
@11543. "When you find a seemingly intractable problem, there's almost always a tractable problem worth solving hiding inside of it as a stepping stone." --https://sirupsen.com/adjacent-possible/
@11544. "Flow logic is about controlling the if and when an action or subfow is executed." --ServiceNow training (you know, from the company's professional learning department?)
The typo "subfow" made the whole training module for me. I am going to try to keep calling them that!
@11546. "I am not sure it really makes sense to compare my attempted doxxing to the Bolshevik Revolution, and that smiley face will haunt my dreams, but I am humbled by his support." --Scott Alexander
@11547. "I don't want to accuse the New York Times of *lying* about me, exactly, but if they were truthful, it was in the same way as that famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as: 'Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.'" --Scott Alexander
@11549. "At one point we tried a very simple best-person-picking procedure that really should have worked and ended up choosing Donald Trump as the best person. I'm still not really sure what went wrong there, but apparently this is really hard." --Scott Alexander
@11550. And now every time I hear that phrase I want to scream. 21st century American hospitals do not need to "cultivate a culture of life". We have enough life. We have life up the wazoo. We have more life than we know what to do with. We have life far beyond the point where it becomes a sick caricature of itself. We prolong life until it becomes a sickness, an abomination, a miserable and pathetic flight from death that saps out and mocks everything that made life desirable in the first place. 21st century American hospitals need to cultivate a culture of life the same way that Newcastle needs to cultivate a culture of coal, the same way a man who is burning to death needs to cultivate a culture of fire.
--https://web.archive.org/web/20200423085405/https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/
@11551. The anti-psychiatric-abuse community has invented the "Burrito Test" - if a place won't let you microwave a burrito without asking permission, it's an institution. Doesn't matter if the name is "Center For Flourishing" or whatever and the aides are social workers in street clothes instead of nurses in scrubs - if it doesn't pass the Burrito Test, it's an institution.
@11552. "Fifth, there's really no reason to build a radar detector-detector-detector-detector. A radar detector-detector-detector is useful if you have a radar detector, because it lets you distinguish between radar (which the detector can ignore) and radar detector detectors (which mean the detector has to shut down, in places where detectors are illegal). However, the only reason someone would have a radar detector detector detector is if they also had a radar detector. Hence, it's easier and equally useful to simply detect the original radar detector."
--https://rationalconspiracy.com/2016/06/02/radar-detector-detector-detector-detector-almost-certainly-a-hoax/
@11553. "[I]f there's one group we can trust to make infallible predictions about the future, it's economists." --https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
@11554. "The only common villain everyone agrees on in the obesity story is 'processed food'. I've previously found this frustrating -- it reeks of a sort of unreflective technophobia...What food counts as 'processed' or 'not processed'? ...Is the Eucharist processed, even though the processing only changes its metaphysical essence and not its physical properties?" --https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/
@11555. "The fact that the autoland system was apparently capable of landing the aircraft off the airfield was, in the opinion of the MAK, rather unsafe." --https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/matter-over-mind-the-crash-of-turkish-airlines-flight-6491-f9cf6926f2d
February 22, 2021
@11556. "This put Atchison in a tough position: he wasn't familiar with Southampton, he was flying a two-pilot jet by himself in an emergency, and all his charts and checklists had been sucked out of the plane." --#unusualsentences, https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-near-crash-of-british-airways-flight-5390-89a4370c92bb
@11557. "WebMD is the Internet's most important source of medical information. It's also surprisingly useless." --Astral Codex Ten
@11558. "But these studies were done in the sixties, before people invented being responsible." --Slate Star Codex
@11559. "This field is full of conflicting data, shifting methods, unreplicated surveys, and -- and I didn't even realize this was a problem it was possible for a field to have -- is super-confusing because everyone involved is named Diener. I tried to get the above-cited Diener & Diener 1995, but carelessly bought Diener, Diener & Diener 1995 instead." --SSC, on research on the Amish
March 02, 2021
@11560. "Do you mind being masturbated together?" --spam comment
@11561. "As far as I know, DNP is the only substance to be banned by both the FDA and the Department of Homeland Security for unrelated reasons." --Scott Alexander
(It's a dangerous weight-loss treatment that also has a tendency to explode.)
@11564. Word I just made up, for when you use your company's purported GSRM-friendliness for marketing purposes: "rainbowwashing."
@11565. I noted the other day that I find ideologies that are largely out of the political mainstream, e.g., socialism or libertarianism, tend to have some of the most thoughtful and enlightening political writing, because they don't have to focus on what's currently happening in Washington and the stupid fights their party is getting into. The discussions of what's currently happening are often mostly disinterested.
@11568. "Pure functions describe structural relationships between data, not instructions for the computer to follow." --https://medium.com/javascript-scene/mocking-is-a-code-smell-944a70c90a6a
@11569. Read an article the other day where someone said his favorite feature of Git was 'git reset --hard'. See also #8364, #582.
@11570. "This video was *shockingly* amazing." --post on the TW forums about my screencast
@11571. "ER docs are famous for being practical, working fast, and thinking everyone else is an idiot. [_Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha_] delivers on all three counts." --SSC
@11572. "The correct conclusion is that Vox shouldn't be trusted about any science more complicated than the wedge vs. inclined plane." --SSC
@11573. "Once upon a time there was a nymph named Ondine whose lover was unfaithful to her, as so often happens in mythology and in France." --SSC
@11574. "Given that I'm the kind of person to waterboard myself for an experiment, possibly my brain is correct not to trust me with these kinds of decisions." --SSC commenter
March 16, 2021
@11576. "NOTE: In order to avoid severe time-travel paradoxes, neither FUNCTAB nor SYMTAB is available as an element within the SYMTAB array." --gawk manual
@11577. "The rookiest of all rookie therapist mistakes is to say 'FACT CHECK: The patient says she is a loser who everybody hates. PsychiaFact rates this claim: PANTS ON FIRE.'" --SSC
@11578. "Overall the exchange was in the top 1% of online social science journalism -- by which I mean it included at least one statistic and at some point that statistic was superficially examined." --SSC
@11579. "I think that most people would be willing to concede that illegal immigrants are more likely to have immigrated illegally than other populations." --SSC
@11580. "As the old saying goes, guns don't kill people; guns controlled for robbery rate, alcoholism, income, a dummy variable for Southernness, and a combined measure of social deprivation kill people." --SSC
March 19, 2021
@11581. "History shows that great actions usually are the outcome of great purpose, even if the action that resulted was not the original purpose." --Michael Nielsen, "Principles of Effective Research"
@11582. "In any given research field there are usually only a tiny number of papers that are really worth reading. You are almost certainly better off reading deeply in the ten most important papers of a research field than you are skimming the top five hundred." --Michael Nielsen, "Principles of Effective Research"
@11583. Read somewhere recently that bread is somehow particularly satisfying because it consists essentially and vividly of a combination of earth, air, water, and fire (and maybe some time, which seems like it has to be the fifth element).
@11584. "That's wronger than an Oreo in orange juice." --_Wired_, https://www.wired.com/story/whats-deal-with-sunscreen-does-it-work-or-not/
March 24, 2021
@11585. "I always hate when people dial in to Zoom/Teams. It always sounds like the person is talking through a sweater from the moon." --Hacker News comment, #unusualsentences
@11587. "If your manager's perspective is different from yours, focus not on persuading her to see it your way or on getting frustrated, but on figuring out why: What do you know that she doesn't know, or what does she know that you're not considering? The reason for your differing perspectives is probably in there." --Alison Green
@11589. "How come my brain is convinced that playing Civilization for ten hours has no opportunity cost, but spending five seconds putting away dishes has such immense opportunity costs that it will probably leave me permanently destitute?" --Astral Codex Ten
@11592. "If the choice is between perfection and nothing, nothing wins every time." --"The History of Hypertext", Jakob Nielsen, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hypertext-history/
@11594. "Every time I touch something, like 25 things fall apart, man!" --#overheard on the street
@11596. "People don't succumb to screens because they're lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable." --Cal Newport, _Digital Minimalism_
@11600. So at the suggestion of a lecture I watched on my lunch break today, I started keeping a log of every time software does something broken or user-hostile. The speaker pointed out how we don't realize just how widespread the problem is. I already have ELEVEN items. In approximately nine hours.
@11601. "If a dream wasn't perfectly normal, it would be the weirdest thing that ever happened to you." --Kevin Simler, https://meltingasphalt.com/hallucinated-gods/
@11603. "Although sidenotes are 'just' snippets of text to the left or right of the main text and it might seem hard to screw it up, as always, there are a lot of ways to accomplish that goal, and many ways we can enhance (or screw up) them." --Gwern on implementing sidenotes on the web
@11604. "It ain't no use sitting on a puppy" --YouTube transcription of the beginning of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
(It's true, there's no use in sitting on a puppy. I can't deny that.)
@11605. Just commenting today about the expression "to be up a creek without a paddle." Isn't this backwards? It would seem much worse to be *down* a creek without a paddle -- after all, if you're *up* a creek without a paddle you can at least float back with the current as long as you have a stick to steer out of the way of rocks.
@11607. "To my knowledge, and everyone else's, there is no evidence that doing yoga will cause someone's religious beliefs to change involuntarily." --Kevin Underhill, https://loweringthebar.net/2021/04/alabama-still-hasnt-lifted-yoga-ban.html
@11608. "You only have one life to live and it sounds like this is actually a relatively responsible choice. Doing THE most responsible thing all the time isn't living. Everyone has different levels of risk-aversion, but at some point there will be something worth doing that isn't the most 100% responsible thing."
--https://www.askamanager.org/2019/07/how-do-i-reconcile-my-heart-and-my-brain-when-making-big-career-decisions.html
@11610. "I would guess that the rates of brain aneurysms from people's reactions to the decision exceeds the rate of blood clots." --commenter on Don't Worry about the Vase, on the decision to suspend the J&J COVID vaccine
@11611. "That's how people end up being wrong a lot of times -- you start out being right and then you extrapolate it into wrong territory." --Jonathan Blow
@11612. You Can't Just
--Jonathan Blow
April 18, 2021
@11613. "It really depends on the jurisdiction. Since you did not mention the country, I will assume Slovakia." --answer to a legal question on the Finance Stack Exchange
@11614. "[Adam Air's] logo, which appeared to feature a silhouette of Icarus, also did not inspire confidence." --https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/killed-by-corruption-the-crash-of-adam-air-flight-574-1c684b57e2da
@11615. "Sometimes I'm dumbstruck by how long I've lived; when I'm filling out a form on the Internet, and I come to a drop-down menu for year of birth, the years fly by, past the loss of parents and friends, past wars and assassinations, past Presidential Administrations."
--https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year
@11616. "Look carefully at the drawing of a penis." --#unusualsentences, https://medix24.com/medix2013/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Muse-Alprostadil-Patient-information-leaflet.pdf
(Cf. #10623.)
@11617. "If you feel a burning sensation, it may help to continue to roll your penis until the burning stops." --#unusualsentences, https://medix24.com/medix2013/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Muse-Alprostadil-Patient-information-leaflet.pdf
April 23, 2021
@11618. "No capes, Lyra!" --Will, _His Dark Materials_ season 2
@11619. "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," writes Mendez. "But in common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession over something. It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn't be revoked."
--https://nofilmschool.com/apple-movie-buys
@11620. "Boulders block road in Boulder Canyon near Boulder according to Boulder County Sheriff's Office" --headline, https://www.kktv.com/2021/04/28/boulders-block-road-in-boulder-canyon-near-boulder-according-to-boulder-county-sheriffs-office/
@11621. "Don't play chess with a pigeon. It'll just knock over the pieces, shit all over the board and then strut around like it won the game." --https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/n2l1f9/whats_a_quote_that_permanently_changed_the_way/gwkiyc6/
{BL #12285}
May 04, 2021
@11622. "Eventually, [NASA] came up with the idea of a 'sky crane' -- a vehicle that would hover high above the surface using rockets while lowering Curiosity to the ground on a long tether. This sounded like a ridiculous idea, but every other idea they could come up with was worse. The more they looked at the sky crane idea, the more plausible it seemed. So they tried it, and it worked." --Randall Munroe
@11623. "I had proposed Clas, a Scandinavian first name and associated with 'class', but then the Greek advisor said it meant 'to fart' in Greek. Then I proposed Curva or Curvae, which I still like, but then the Cyrillic advisor said it meant 'prostitute' in Russian." --Lucas de Groot, of the process of deciding on the font name "Calibri"
@11625. "Whatever you think is the best way to spend the money, the impact of making donating 10% of your income more normal would be profound. If everyone in the richest 10% of the world's population donated 10% of their income, that would be $4.4 trillion per year. That would be enough to double scientific research funding, raise everyone in the world above the $1.90/day poverty line, provide universal basic education, and still have plenty left to fund a renaissance in the arts, go to Mars, and then invest a trillion dollars in mitigating climate change. None of this would be straightforward to achieve, but it at least illustrates the enormous potential of greater giving." --https://80000hours.org/career-guide/making-a-difference/
@11626. "Item volume: 1346 milliliters" --Amazon specs for a screwdriver
@11627. "Acoustic ownership test": when you intentionally turn something off to see if people get broken and yell at you.
@11628. "What a MOST BEAUTIFUL BLOG,," --comment on a YouTube video
@11629. "4chan had no connection to [elderly white Southerners] or any other historical racist tradition. It was annoying and trolled people a lot, but that was it. Its conversion to full-on bigotry was unexpected, at least by me. It would be like if you woke up one day and everyone on Twitter was a Pol Pot supporter." --ACX, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-online-culture
@11630. "Once the very idea of trying to use facts or logic to disprove a movement becomes cringeworthy, how can it fail?" --ACX, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-online-culture
@11631. "Phoniness is not inherited." --GNU Make manual
@11634. "That said, having a random coworker ask you to google something for them is so weird that I can understand the impulse to just do it if the alternative is having to explain that they are fundamentally unfamiliar with how jobs work." --Alison Green
@11635. "For a creative work, it is vital to execute a surgical strike: get in and get out, before the energy and enthusiasm has expired, and one's judgment becomes increasingly impaired." --Gwern
@11636. "There are a bunch of people on the web saying wikis are so 2012, but strangely enough, all of them seem to be selling knowledge management software." --me
@11638. "You see, there's a gasoline problem, in the sense that if you go to the gas station to try and purchase gasoline, chances are high they won't have any and that's going to be a problem. You would think this would be a really big [mainstream news] story." --Zvi Mowshowitz
@11639. "I used to think that gambling addicts 'lost control' when they gambled excessively. But the addicts in the book use machines as a way to gain control in their lives. In front of a machine, the world is simple: they place bets and lose a little bit of money on each turn. The gamblers are in control of this machine world. It is the world away from machines where the prospect of losing control in frightening ways looms. Away from the machines, life is long and full of terrors." --https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-addiction-by-design
May 15, 2021
@11640. I saw a river otter in the wild today for the first time ever! It was on land hiding by a tree and I didn't get a great look at it. At first I thought it was a groundhog, but it was right next to the river and not nearly fat enough, and it was wet with that spiky fur they get after being in the water.
Actually *in* Albert Lea, surprisingly enough, along the Shell Rock River section between Fountain and Albert Lea Lakes.
@11641. "'We had nothing to do with [the ursine subterfuge],' said one of the attorneys representing the woman." --news story about a teddy bear which a party to a divorce added a recording device to (brackets added by Kevin Underhill)
@11642. "Because I used to get about 500-600 applicants every time a file clerk was posted, I started putting one prescreening question. The question was 'Rate your interest in the following job duties: Filing'. It was the only job duty listed, since it was the only duty of the job. The only options were 'Interested' and 'Not Interested.' I could usually weed out 2/3 of the applicants because they would put 'Not Interested.'" --https://www.askamanager.org/2016/08/loose-cannons-interviews-from-the-toilet-and-other-stories-of-ridiculous-job-candidates.html
May 18, 2021
@11644. "Done is a good place to be"
@11645. "I almost ran over a nationally syndicated columnist when he cut me off with his bike." --Ask a Manager comment, #unusualsentences
@11646.
Q: What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
"Where's my tractor!?"
@11647. "So, what's worse than naming your combobox `combobox1`? Naming it `_cb_PG_PG_K`, which is exactly the sound I'd make if someone handed this code to me and told me I owned it now." --Remy Porter
@11648. "If you're worrying about whether you have more depression or more anxiety, please stop worrying about this and get your depression-anxiety treated." --Scott Alexander
@11649. "It is common to confuse this 'meta-map' with the territory of scientific and engineering work. That is, to suppose that doing science consists merely of cartography, of finding definite truths within a set scheme of map symbols; and that doing engineering consists merely of deriving designs from known truths. Both those activities are important, but they are a small part of what scientists and engineers do -- both in terms of effort and of value produced. (In practice, most of our effort goes into improvising methods for making recalcitrant equipment do what we need." --https://metarationality.com/maps-and-territory
@11650. "Rationality worship is central to many, perhaps most, of the twistednesses of our culture." --https://metarationality.com/perfection-salad
@11651. "For Europe, [WWI] was the first industrial war, with the new social and mechanical technologies of mass production turning out deaths instead of automobiles. Four years later, after tens of millions of casualties, extraordinary horror and suffering, the traumatized survivors asked not 'was it worth it' but 'what was that all about, anyway?'" --https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown
May 27, 2021
@11652. "Bright tin girls are like the moon" --#mondegreen, Dylan's "Sign on the Window" (actually "Brighton")
@11653. "Let's not compare tumour necrosis factor with linguini." --https://www.bmj.com/content/321/7276/1569
@11654. "I have no idea how you can be smart enough to invent a personal flying machine in 800 AD but also dumb enough to devise an assassination scheme predicated on your victim not figuring out to press the down button." --Scott Alexander, on a story from the 1001 Nights
June 05, 2021
@11655. "Police in Catalonia are investigating the death of a man who is thought to have become trapped inside a large dinosaur statue while trying to retrieve his mobile phone." --news article
Somehow this feels very 2021.
@11656. "The moral of the story is: if there's some kind of weird market failure that causes galaxies to be priced at $1, normal reasoning stops working; things that do incalculable damage can be fairly described as 'only doing $1 worth of damage', and you will do them even if less damaging options are available." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moral-costs-of-chicken-vs-beef
@11657. "That's not flying, that's collecting life insurance with style." --Reddit comment on a clip of a boat with a prop and hang glider wing attached to it
(Pretty sick style, though...one of the coolest things I've seen this month!)
@11658.
One thing I'm not sure people fully appreciate is that if you slash mortality in half, you only end up increasing mean life expectancy by about 8 years. Aging is an exponential process, and it's often hard to get a grasp on just how strong that is.
According to the SSA's period life tables, you have around a 1/1000 chance of dying during your entire elementary school years (around ages 5-12).
At age 25, you have the same chance of dying just that year alone (not preconditioned on your sex... at this age in particular it's much worse for males than females).
When you're 50, it's around 3 months.
At 65, one month.
80, a week.
And lastly, when you're 100, you have a 1/1000 chance of dying every single day -- the same as your entire time in elementary school.
When you're dealing with an exponential like this, quite large changes in chance of death end up having relatively little effect on life expectancy, because the rise catches up quite fast. I'm hopeful that more work can be done in the future on therapies that can actually slow down the process (and "flatten the curve", if you will), which would have a much larger downstream impact in the end.
--comment on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-do-treatments-for-accelerated
@11659. "Clumsily playing my part, I stomped to the bathroom to check if they had taken my English toilet water; they had not; but I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that the former Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing his bladder, had not flushed the toilet." --_Lolita_, p. 31 (#unusualsentences)
(Also, this is an unconventional but masterful use of semicolons, I love it.)
@11660. "But no matter, I had my little revenge in due time. A man from Pasadena told me one day that Mrs. Maximovich née Zborovski had died in childbirth around 1945; the couple had somehow got over to California and had been used there, for an excellent salary, in a year-long experiment conducted by a distinguished American ethnologist. The experiment dealt with human and racial reactions to a diet of bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours." --_Lolita_, p. 32
@11661. "And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a powerful newcomer [psychologist], a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his knack of making patients believe they had witnessed their own conception." --_Lolita_, p. 36
@11662. "The poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich." --_Lolita_, p. 39
@11663. "That was my Lo, and these are my lilies." --Charlotte, _Lolita_, p. 42
@11664. "And what is most singular is that she, *this* Lolita, *my* Lolita, has individualized the writer's ancient lust, so that above and over everything there is -- Lolita." --_Lolita_, p. 47
@11665. "Props: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze -- God bless the good man -- had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washed room, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place)." --_Lolita_, p. 60
@11666. "Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons." --_Lolita_, p. 76
@11667. "At this point, I should explain that the prompt appearance of the patrolmen, hardly more than a minute after the accident, was due to their having been ticketing the illegally parked cars in a cross lane two blocks down the grade; that the fellow with the glasses was Frederick Beale, Jr., driver of the Packard; that his 79-year-old father, whom the nurse had just watered on the green bank where he lay -- a banked banker so to speak -- was not in a dead faint, but was comfortably and methodically recovering from a mild heart attack or its possibility; and, finally, that the laprobe on the sidewalk (where she had so often pointed out to me with disapproval the crooked green cracks) concealed the mangled remains of Charlotte Humbert who had been knocked down and dragged several feet by the Beale car as she was hurrying across the street to drop three letters in the mailbox, at the corner of Miss Opposite's lawn. These were picked up and handed to me by a pretty child in a dirty pink frock, and I got rid of them by clawing them to fragments in my trouser pocket." --_Lolita_, p. 104
(It's hard to imagine a better sentence plus tag-on! Impeccable style.)
@11668. "(Jean, whatever, whereever you are, in minus time-space or plus soul-time, forgive me all this, parenthesis included)" --_Lolita_, p. 111
@11669. "Wireless Internet Interpretive Info Photo Op" --concatenated sign describing a rest area near Brainerd
@11670. I think I coined a useful word the other day: "pointful," meaning there being a point to some action, the opposite of pointless. Example, "I don't think that move was pointful."
@11671. "...I was forced to devote a dangerous amount of time (was she [Lo] up to something downstairs?) to arranging the bed in such a way as to suggest the abandoned nest of a restless father and his tomboy daughter, instead of an ex-convict's saturnalia with a couple of fat old whores." --_Lolita_, p. 146
@11672. "If some café sign proclaimed Ice-cold Drinks, she was automatically stirred, although all drinks everywhere were ice-cold." --_Lolita_, p. 156
(Cf. #10081 on asbestos-free cereal.)
@11673. "...But the fog was like a wet blanket, and the sand was gritty and clammy, and Lo was all gooseflesh and grit, and for the first time in my life I had as little desire for her as for a manatee." --_Lolita_, p. 177
@11674. "Her [Lolita's] form was, indeed, an absolutely perfect imitation of absolutely top-notch tennis -- without any utilitarian results." --_Lolita_, 245
@11675. "The turquoise blue swimming pool some distance behind the lawn was no longer behind that lawn, but within my thorax, and my organs swam in it like excrements in the blue sea water in Nice." --_Lolita_, 251
@11676. "A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely." --_Lolita_, 254
@11677. "There is no point in staying anywhere." --Lolita, in response to HH saying there is no point in staying in Elphinstone, p. 259
@11678. "The Enchanted Hunters / Near Churches / No Dogs / All legal beverages" --letterhead of the hotel, _Lolita_, p. 277
@11679. "pre-dolorian" --_Lolita_, p. 280
(Cf. #2245.)
{BL #13003}
@11680. "...There she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her gooseflesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D. -- and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else." --_Lolita_, p. 294
@11681. "Are you quite, quite sure that -- well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but -- well -- some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope." --Humbert, _Lolita_, p. 297
@11682. "Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me -- to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction -- that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art." --_Lolita_, p. 300
@11683. "I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord. This then is my story." --_Lolita_, p. 326
@11684. The First Rule of Fire Extinguishers: If you don't know where the fire extinguisher is, you don't have a fire extinguisher.
@11685. "That is, all residents of Sistersville could vote, except for minors, lunatics, bums, traitors, felons, and women." --Lowering the Bar
@11686. "After a fashion, you could call Nabokov foremostly a literary critic, but his literary criticism was largely his fiction. And you could call him a poet, but his poetry was largely his prose." --Quora comment
@11687. "N.B. If You Are Really Interested To Fix All The Error Then Reply Me. Because I Am Not Telling Any Fake Things Or Doing Any Spam." --postscript in a spam email
June 10, 2021
@11688. "All who wander are not lost." --corrupted Tolkien quote on a sign at my campground
@11689. "Great writers, however, never get carried away. Even pretty average writers never get carried away." --Everyman introduction to _Lolita_, p. xi
@11690. "Best Breakfast for 43 Miles Or Its [sic] Free" --billboard in Brainerd
@11691. "If I have to buy new eggs, that's life." --me, #unusualsentences
@11692. Sometimes I feel vaguely like the creators of SparkNotes themselves worked off of SparkNotes. The factual information is usually right (though only usually); the zany thing is that they take (often fairly bold) interpretations and present them as facts.
@11693. "Screw 'learning': what about action?" --Andy Matuschak, https://www.patreon.com/posts/in-search-of-47047644
@11694. Not sure if I've recorded before that I belong to the once-a-century club with the following very handy property: the last two digits of the year you started a particular grade in school are the same as the grade itself. So in 2003, I started 3rd grade.
(Nichi has commented on this occasionally.)
@11696. "Yes, it can indeed be quite uncomfortable to ride a bike in cold weather. If you insist on riding in a bikini or a tanktop. Luckily for the rest of us, "Clothes" have been invented, which allow you to keep comfortable in any weather." --https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/03/how-to-ride-your-bike-all-winter-and-love-it/
(Cf. #2127.)
@11697. Ankificate: to promote the use of Anki
June 13, 2021
@11699.
You may not have had Covid-19, but the virus has still been living rent free in your head for over a year. Kick it out.
It is important to live and embrace life. It's your life, and (pending heroic efforts to the contrary) it's ending one minute at a time. If you're vaccinated and in a place with the virus under control, go out there and live yours!
That does not mean going back to your old life, if that's not the life you want.
This is the time to take stock. Figure out where you want to live, what you want to do with your life and who you want by your side when you do it. Do things that matter, and things that bring you joy. Go on a trip, see the world, start a business, fall in love, start a family, go out and talk to people in person. And other neat stuff like that.
You'll be asked to wear masks for a while. If you're asked, wear them. It's fine.
If you are asked for much more than that, take your business and your life elsewhere.
That's all there is to it. That does not mean forgetting what happened, or that it's not important to learn from the experience and update our models, actions and precautions. It also doesn't mean dismissing the situation overseas as a pure Someone Else's Problem, or that keeping an eye on things every so often isn't prudent -- so long as it stops screwing up your life.
--Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/06/10/covid-6-10-somebody-elses-problem/
@11700. "Requested a new mouse because Joe is getting tired of me banging my mouse on the desk to get it working again. I'm glad he came over and asked because I can now request a new one without feeling like I'm being petty and unnecessarily asking for one!" --found in my old work Daylog
@11703. _Lolita_ points out in one place that nobody ever checks to see if the license plate number you put down for your car at a hotel or campground or whatever is actually your plate. (Which makes sense, because it's a ridiculous amount of work to walk outside to someone's car and like make them get in and start it or something!) This had never quite struck me, but it is certainly true. Yet another thing that just relies on people being honest and mostly not trying to pull a fast one.
@11704. "Start driver download for 1-bit Windows" --https://thedailywtf.com/articles/scratch-and-dent
(The other option is "0-bit Windows.")
@11705. "I have been trying reconnect but ain't happening" --#ankiforums subject
@11707. "For centuries, Europe was sitting on this vast untapped resource of potential geniuses. Around 1880, in a few countries only, economic and political conditions finally became ripe for the potential to be realized. The result was one of the greatest spurts of progress in scientific history, bringing us relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear bombs, dazzling new mathematical systems, the foundations of digital computing, and various other abstruse ideas I don't even pretend to understand. This lasted for approximately one generation, after which a psychopath with a stupid mustache killed everyone involved." --https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/
@11708. "I also follow the unwritten rules of boating which include staying as far as possible from boats that can cut mine in half." --Reddit comment
@11711. "Some might object that this is overthinking socks, and one should never think about socks at all. This is short-sighted." --"On Having Enough Socks," https://www.gwern.net/Socks
@11712. "If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do -- get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one." --Hamming, http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
@11713. I just #overheard the couple ahead of me in line at Kwik Trip arguing about whether they had driven or walked. How long do you have to be in a *convenience store* to forget how you got there?!
@11714. "I am *not* doing that. That's the equivalent of the yogurt thing!" --#overheard in an animated conversation between a father and daughter on bikes
@11715. "While most [digital gardens] seem to be just a collection of random notes, there are actually good ones where you can actually read through the thoughts/notes and learn something new." --https://blog.dornea.nu/2021/06/13/note-taking-in-2021/
(Mine is apparently one of the "good ones". :-))
@11716. "Many 'Digital Gardens' are just people dicking around with their note-taking workflow for a couple of months." --Jack Baty
@11717. #bandname: Global Chutzpah Shortage
(https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/06/17/the-apprentice-thread/)
@11718. "I used to be your way, I loved keeping books in pristine condition, even [almost] going as far as carrying them in plastic bags. Then I was reading an OCD self help book and I spilled coffee on the cover. I took this as a metaphor and since then I don't care about keeping my books brand new." --Reddit comment
@11719. "Metaphysical supply store" --description of a business on Google Maps
@11723. "It's the freaking signature sandwich. She said, it has to be done this way so it stays consistent. I was like, so it stays *shitty*!" --phone conversation #overheard on the street
@11724. "I got an email from a former member of the GamerGate movement, offering advice on managing PR. It was very thorough and they had obviously put a lot of effort into it, but it was all premised on this idea that GamerGate was some kind of shining PR success, even though as I remember it they managed to take a complaint about a video game review and mishandle it so badly that they literally got condemned by the UN General Assembly. But it's the thought that counts, and I am humbled by their support." --Scott Alexander
@11725.
Eating an orange
While making love
Makes for bizarre enj-
oyment thereof.
--Tom Lehrer, qtd. in https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/282/why-does-orange-rhyme-with-almost-nothing-in-english
@11726. On a Hacker News thread about your worst "I broke prod" story:
Can it be a story I was involved in but I didn't do it?
I used to work for a major university as a student systems admin. The only thing that was "student" about it was the pay-- I had a whole lab of Sun and SGI servers/desktops, including an INCREDIBLE 1TB of storage-- we had 7xSun A1000's (an array of arrays) if memory serves.
Our user directories were about 100GB at the time. I had sourced this special tape drive that could do that, but it was fidgety (which is not something you want in a backup drive admittedly). The backups worked, I'd say, 3/4ths of the time. I think the hardware was buggy, but the vendor could never figure it out. Also, before you lecture me, we were very constrained with finances, I couldn't just order something else.
So I graduated, and as such had to find a new admin. We interviewed two people, one was very sharp and wore black jeans and a black shirt-- it was obvious he couldn't afford a suit which would have been the correct thing to wear. The other candidate had suit, and he was punching below his weight. Over my objections, suit guy gets hired.
Friday night, my last day of employment I throw tapes into the machine and start a full L0 backup which would take all weekend to complete.
Monday morning I get a panicked phone calls from my former colleagues. "The new guy deleted the home directories!"
The suit guy literally, had in his first few hours destroyed the entire labs research. All of it. Anyways, I said something to the effect of, "Is the light on the AIT array green or amber?"
"Green."
"You're some lucky sons of bitches. I'll be down in an hour and we'll straighten it out."
--https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645871
@11729.
Assert(false, 'Contact ANTHONY if you get this error');
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/out-of-you-and-umption
@11730. So... imagine that someone enters a kitchen, because they want to show you how to make a cup of coffee. As you watch carefully, they flick a switch on the wall. The switch looks like a light switch, but none of the lights in the kitchen turn on or off. Next, they open a cabinet and take down a mug, set it on the worktop, and then tap it twice with a teaspoon. They wait for thirty seconds, and finally they reach behind the refrigerator, where you can't see, and pull out a different mug, this one full of fresh coffee.
...What just happened? What was flicking the switch for? Was tapping the empty mug part of the procedure? Where did the coffee come from?
That's what this code is like.
--https://qntm.org/clean
@11731. "The consensus about which problems are most important is often mistaken, both in general and within specific fields. If you disagree with it, and you're right, that could represent a valuable opportunity to do something new." --http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html
@11732. "The lower time limits for intense work suggest a solution to the problem of having less time to work after you have kids: switch to harder problems. In effect I did that, though not deliberately." --http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html
@11734. "The Recycle Bin on C:\ is corrupted" --Windows (Grayson's VM)
{BL #11759}
@11736. Prospective memory techniques:
* Key off your watch or similar, Link from there
* Peg system
* Visualize arriving at a location
@11737. "I do not mean to suggest that all political action is bad. But if you truly wish to live by political ideals, you should act on them instead of joining the ranks of chatter. If you wish to call yourself, say, a socialist, stop retweeting the news, find other socialists, pool your money together, and actually live communally. You can live it out today, regardless of what the rest of the people are doing. You do not need to wait for some candidate to reorder the world for you. This is true of multiple political ideologies."
--"Are We Still Thinking?", https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/are-we-still-thinking
@11738. "It is only to a person with the proper amount of humility that the sun is really a sun, and to whom each sunrise is new."
--"In Praise of the Gods", https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-the-gods
@11739. "I don't know who this is. I've never met her. But I want a divorce." --Reddit comment on a video of a terrible driver with a bad attitude
@11740. "Our beer is colder than your ex's heart" --seen on a roadside store kiosk
July 05, 2021
@11741. "That the ACLU considered the neo-Nazis to be revolting was not beside the point so much as it was the point." --_National Review_, on the Skokie free-speech case
@11742. "Lincoln was not above making populist appeals to the worldview of the ordinary laborers of his day. Before one of his debates with Stephen Douglas, he had to walk through a college building to reach the stage and quipped that at last he had been through college." --_National Review_
@11743. "A single barrel of crude oil can perform about 1700kWh of work. That's equivalent to 4.5 years of human labour." --_Less is More_
@11744. "[Ignoring climate change is] like jumping off a cliff while hoping that someone at the bottom will figure out how to build some kind of device to catch you before you crash into the rocks below, without having any idea as to whether they'll actually be able to pull it off. It might work ... but if not, it's game over. Once you jump, you can't change your mind." --_Less is More_
@11745. "Having just ten more trees on a city block decreases cardio-metabolic conditions in ways comparable to earning an extra $20,000. And it improves one's sense of well-being as much as earning an extra $10,000, moving to a neighbourhood with $10,000 higher median income, or being seven years younger." --_Less is More_
@11746. "Early in 2012, Guddi and I attended a public lecture by Paul Krugman at the LSE. It was during the Great Recession, and Krugman argued that the United States needed a massive government stimulus to get growth going again. As we walked home, Guddi wondered aloud whether the US, one of the richest nations in the world, really required more GDP, when so many nations do so much better on all the indicators that really matter, with much less. Do high-income economies really need to keep growing, forever? Toward what end? I responded with all the usual mantras -- how growth is essential to a healthy economy and all that. But the question unsettled me. I still remember, during the quietness that followed, realising that I was just repeating things that had been told to me, without actually thinking for myself. That conversation was the beginning of the eight-year journey that led to this book. There is nothing more powerful than a question." --_Less is More_
@11747. "Americans didn't accept this reality in the 1890s, and we don't need to accept it now. We are a democracy; we can change the rules again." --_The Atlantic_
@11748. "Around the same time the psi study was published, the reform-minded psychology researchers Joseph Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn published a paper in Psychological Science in which they claimed to be able to reduce people's ages by having them listen to the Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four' rather than 'Kalimba' (a song that 'comes free with the Windows 7 operating system'), which the control group listened to and which was not associated with age-reversing properties." --_The Quick Fix_
Yes, they managed to apply statistical methods common in the field to show that listening to a song causally decreased people's ages, largely by stopping data collection whenever it favored their conclusions: https://duncanlaw.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/researcher-degrees-of-freedom/
@11749. "According to traditional significance testing...there was only a 3 percent chance the difference between the groups could be explained by chance alone. But if you account for a prior estimate of the probability that statue viewing can sap one's faith in God, suddenly the result swerves wildly in the other direction." --_The Quick Fix_
@11750. "Jobs's genius was the judicious tweak, and his extreme success comes down to the fact that he focused his time on those points where a tweak he could make would make all the difference." --_Only Humans Need Apply_
@11751. "Many thinkers have set themselves the task of figuring out what computers will never be able to do as well as or better than humans -- but that is the wrong question to ask (and a difficult one to answer as well), Colvin says. Instead, we should ask what we will allow them to do, acknowledging that there will always be some activities and decisions we will simply not tolerate being handled by computers, however capable. Thus many important decisions and tasks will remain in human hands even when we have been shown that machines are better at them in some strict sense." --_Only Humans Need Apply_
@11752.
People often say things like "I think slower than I type", but I don't think that this is correctly modeling the problem, because it's only true over long timescales.
Consider this: the average American uses only 7 GB of mobile data per month. Would they be happy with 50 kilobits per second? That's much faster than their average usage rate, so in some sense, the data rate wouldn't be the limiting factor.
It's very much the same with typing speed. Yes, your internal word generation rate might be slower than you type if we're looking at an hour by hour, or even minute by minute scale. But once you have a thought crafted, it's beneficial to get it out as quickly as possible.
--https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27604875
@11753. "People really don't like getting tracked around the internet by targeted ads. I mean really, really don't like it. A staggering 96% of users in the US are declining the privilege of being followed around their apps and websites for the grand prize of "more relevant ads" when given the choice in iOS 14.5. The American public can barely agree on anything, but their dislike of targeted ads appear damn near unanimous." --David Heinemeier Hansson
@11755.
In case you're wondering how I spent such a milestone of a day [my 40th birthday]: well, I spent hours of it at an important virtual grant review meeting with the Department of Defense. Alas, when it came time for my own big presentation at that meeting -- about what my students and I had done over the past five years to lay the theoretical foundations for the recent achievement of quantum computational supremacy -- I'd uploaded the completely wrong PowerPoint file (it was something.pptx rather than something.ppt, where they weren't two versions of the same presentation). Sorting this out took about 10 minutes, destroyed my momentum, and wasted everyone's time. I partly blame the Microsoft Teams platform, whose limitations as conferencing software compared to Zoom necessitated emailing my presentation in the first place. But of course, part of the blame rests with me.
I had to explain apologetically to the US Department of Defense that I'm no good with tech stuff -- being a mere computer science PhD. And unlike many of my colleagues (who I envy), back in my youth -- for at age 40 I'm no longer young -- I never had enough time to become both the kind of person who might earn a big grant to do quantum computing theory, and the kind of person who'd be minimally competent at the logistics of a review meeting for such a grant.
--Scott Aaronson, https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5510
@11760. "A foot chair." --#ankiblunders, for "footstool"
@11763. I did a count, and I've written just around 50,000 lines of PowerShell at Federated! That includes other people's contributions to the common code, but it excludes code that I wrote for others that didn't land in any of the repositories I own, and I think those quantities are probably right around equivalent, and both fairly small.
@11768. "Bob is a contact, not a conference." --me, applying TW tags (#unusualsentences)
@11770. Otter.ai transcribed "Ankifying" as "monkey firing," and now I am tempted to call it that all the time!
@11772. "You'll thank you later." --online advertisement
@11773. "It may be better that the heavens should fall, but it is folly to ignore the fact that they will fall." --Alfred North Whitehead, _Adventures of Ideas_, 1.2.6, p. 21, on avoiding too-rapid change to society
@11774. "Between them, the Hebrews and the Greeks provided a program for discontent. But the value of their discontent lies in the hope which never deserted their glimpses of perfection." --Alfred North Whitehead, _Adventures of Ideas_, 1.2.1, p. 12
@11775. "With an efficient memory system, remembering something is a low-stakes decision -- a fraction of a minute over years. Such systems wouldn't be very interesting if you use them only to memorize the kinds of material you already memorize, because people don't explicitly memorize much." --Andy Matuschak
July 15, 2021
@11778. "User passwords were all 6-digit, lowercase, with 1 number at the end, and saved in an unencrypted xls file accessible on the public SMB 1.0 fileshares. OH. And 'domain users' was a member of 'domain admins'." --https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/ol4fsx/it_guy_ran_off_to_malaysia/
@11779.
' The API is incredibly buggy -- it doesn't always return relations in the same order even though the only
' way you can reference them is by index, and it doesn't maintain the order of patch operations you give it
' even though they may be completely incorrect out of order (for good measure, this also violates RFC6902).
--comment in my TFS Predecessor Management code
@11781. One of the more ridiculous driving-related clickbait headlines I've seen recently: "Minnesota Drivers with No DUIs Getting a Pay Day Monday"
(Also, the stock photo was of a healthy-looking guy of about 70 holding up his California driver's license between his first three fingers next to his head, with a DMV building in the background.)
@11784. So I was out walking near Federated the other day and two girls, maybe 7 or so, were coming towards me from my right at a street corner. One of them shouted out, "Would you like some candy?" I wondered briefly whether it was wise to accept candy from strangers on the street, and then realized that I was living the exact opposite of a normal trope (except they weren't in a van, I guess...that would truly have been scary for multiple reasons).
I politely said no, although as much because I didn't particularly want any candy at the moment as anything else.
@11785. Sometimes the Owatonna Jimmy John's, whose motto is "Subs So Fast You'll Freak," is unusually slow (to the point that people in town remark on how slow our location is compared to others). I decided while waiting 5 minutes at the drive-thru window as the only customer that this one should say "Subs So Slow You'll Swear."
@11786.
(to the kids) "Just go get one."
"Is that what you you should be teaching them!?"
--#overheard from someone's yard in Owatonna
@11787. "So they got all the remnants and the esophagus." --#overheard from someone's porch in Owatonna
@11788. "There's a lot of room for disagreement in technology, but there's one universal, unchangeable truth: Oracle is the worst." --Remy Porter
@11789. "Thank the Lord for distributed version control." --me, after accidentally updating every tiddler in my Zettelkasten and successfully reverting the change without losing any recent changes
July 21, 2021
@11790. "In a statement, OnlyFans said...the racial slur...was not detected by the site's moderation system because it was pluralized." --https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57269939
@11791. "[Y]ou can never get 4n [productivity gain] from n, ever, and if you think you can, please email me the stock symbol for your company so I can short it." --Joel Spolsky
@11794. "Ordinarily, a lawyer would talk to the person whose testimony will be in the affidavit, find out what he or she is comfortable saying under oath, and then put that in a document for the person to sign. These guys seem to have considered that optional." --Kevin Underhill
@11795. "Ozy picked a straw and ended up fascinated with gender, which wouldn't be so bad except that it means ze occasionally has to talk to the *other* people who are fascinated with gender." --Scott Alexander
@11802. "Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it's a mark of stupidity." --Jason Fried
@11803. "Like they say, all's fair in love and war. Except this isn't love, and it isn't war. It's business." --_It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy at Work_
@11804. "It would generally be considered absurd to operate a complex software system without metrics or tracing, but it's normal to operate yourself without metrics or tracing, even though you're much more complex and harder to understand than the software you work on." --https://danluu.com/p95-skill/
@11805. "[Google] is a place where really smart people go to be average." --qtd. in https://danluu.com/hn-comments/#what-makes-engineers-productive-https-news-ycombinator-com-item-id-5496914
@11806. I think I have lately been overwhelmed by my opportunity cost. I have most of a career ahead of me, and I could be doing a lot of different things. What's the most important? And so...what can I do to make myself less worried about it? Obviously it's worth thinking about, but I'm probably overdoing it. One probably won't find *the most important* thing one possibly could on a global scale, and that's OK, nobody should be expected to be able to figure that out!
@11807. "We have Alfred North Whitehead. How about...Alfred South Blackhead?" --#latenightvoicememo
@11808. Weird thought: Whatever happened to Brexit? It seems like after it happened, it has been almost a complete non-issue compared to the amount of energy that went into it. Maybe it's just that nobody international cares and it's only a big deal within Britain?
@11810. "This script contains malicious content and has been blocked by your antivirus software." --PowerShell, referring to a module that I had been running daily without changes for four months, and which I wrote myself
July 29, 2021
@11812. "When art is good -- when the acting and the script are on point, or a character in a novel is nuanced -- the audience actually learns more about human behaviour than real-life observation provides. This is because the interior of the character is articulated in art, whereas it remains submerged in real social interaction."
--https://aeon.co/essays/imagination-is-the-sixth-sense-be-careful-how-you-use-it
@11813. Science quote of the month: "The researchers drew blood from these participants as they were masturbating."
(From a COVID-clickbait exploratory study about how masturbation might affect the immune system.)
@11815. "Are you ever going to get a paycheck!?" --#overheard in MSB
@11817. Some monospace font recommendations: https://realdougwilson.com/writing/coding-with-character
July 30, 2021
@11818. I got to say an unusual sentence today: "I got to the end of my to-do list."
@11819. "IICS supports Git like a ship supports propulsion with a kayak paddle." --me
@11820. Silly legal question I had on Thursday: if after I am officially terminated but while I am walking down the stairs to leave the building I fall down the stairs and injure myself, am I covered under worker's comp?
I'm guessing the answer is something boring like "worker's comp goes by date instead of by time," but I like the question!
@11829. Based on a missing letter on a Hiking Club sign at Beaver Creek Valley, I have concluded that just like alligators alligate (#1976), beavers beave.
@11830. Is popularizing a thing just coming up with a prescriptive way to use it? I think for something to be popular, there needs to be a way to use it that doesn't require a full understanding of the underlying theory and continual experimentation/novel thinking, so that people who want to *just use it* can come in and do it. This, of course, implies that the popularizer (and the thing they're popularizing) must have their shit together enough to come up with such a prescriptive method that works at least tolerably well. It'll never be as good as a full understanding of course, but depending on what you're trying to do, "good enough" may be, well, good enough.
@11833. Thought: The public Zettelkasten is a way of saying, "This is what I've learned about life. How about you?"
@11834. "It [the Freedom Trilogy] uses most of the time signatures known to man, including a section where it is marked 3/4 but is in two." --CB62.10
@11835. "This thing with the pink flamingos on it -- is this your glasses case?" --#overheard at the campground
@11836. At BCV today, I saw a mouse crossing the road, slowly, in broad daylight.
@11838. "In Victorian Britain, fried mice were still given to children as a folk remedy for bed-wetting." --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse
@11840. "According to annoying people who refuse to provide useful information, between 3% and 98% of people who get coronavirus lose some sense of smell." --ACX, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins
Well, at least we know it's not 2%...
August 09, 2021
@11841. "Think for a moment about the great artists of the last hundred years and how they worked....Nobody told them: You must paint this sort of picture. You must begin painting precisely at eight-thirty A.M. You must paint with the people we select to work with you. And you must paint this way. The very idea is ludicrous. But you know what? It's ludicrous for you, too." --Daniel Pink, _Drive_, p. 106
@11842. Semantic indexes should support *exploration* of a document.
@11843. Traditional keyword indexes work better when one is trying to find something that is in only one place in the document, and no further exploration is required (e.g., a recipe).
@11846.
"The Jews have been and always will be the chosen people!"
"Just this once, I hope they'll be chosen for something good!"
--_The Diary of a Young Girl_, p. 207
@11847. Just noticed that the back cover of _Drive_ calls it "a book that will change how you think and transform how you live." Uh, no, it's just a book that points out one very specific part of human psychology that most organizations don't take account of. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if this manages to transform how you live, you previously had and still have a very boring life.
@11851. "My three respondents clearly had different amounts of experience with the topic prior to this interview; Robert spoke easily from the beginning and had plenty to say, and there were few gaps in our conversation. Anna did not have too much difficulty answering, but had fewer ideas and needed more prompting. When I asked Steve the interview question, he said something to the effect of, 'Oh, *this* sociology interview,' and indicated that he had been interviewed about a similar question in a prior year. Despite this experience, however, Steve said very little, and most of the interview consisted of awkward silence." --me, 2014 sociology paper
August 12, 2021
@11852. "wget -i is proof that god loves us and wants us to back up the entire fucking internet" --https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1146221106522542080?s=20
@11853. "Known for: Falling into a well at 18 months" --Wikipedia infobox, on Jessica McClure
@11854. "They're selling free cookies?" --#overheard in a gas station
@11855. #bandname for a duo: Harp and Finial
(via M&P)
@11857. "My entire memory of Algebra II is that there is a thing called 'Gaussian Elimination', and even there, I'm not sure this wasn't just the name of a video game." --Scott Alexander
@11858. "I still have no idea how to cite a source properly, except a vague memory that something called 'MLA Format' was very important, and that there might have been another thing called 'Chicago Style' unless I am confusing it with pizza. When I actually need to cite something, I hit the 'Cite' button on the top right of PubMed and do whatever it says." --Scott Alexander
(Cf. #6312.)
@11859. "In an article published in 2005, Patricia Clark Kenschaft, a professor of mathematics at Montclair State University, described her experiences of going into elementary schools and talking with teachers about math. In one visit to a K-6 elementary school in New Jersey, she discovered that not a single teacher, out of the 50 that she met with, knew how to find the area of a rectangle."
--https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school
@11860. "This is what happens when your house doesn't drive defensively." --Reddit comment on a picture of a car that U-turned into a house
(https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/p91eb6/idiot_driver_uturns_into_my_parents_house_then/)
@11862. "An Anki T-shirt. I'm imagining an Anki logo in the middle surrounded by a bunch of monkeys, and you somewhere in there reading a book. Then around that [in a circle, as if printed on a seal], it says, 'Space Your Repetitions'." --#latenightvoicememo, 3:30am
(I think the monkeys are because "Anki" sounds kind of like "monkey" -- cf. #7827 -- but I'm not sure about that.)
@11863. Just found an odd English corner case where "X's Y" and "the Y of X" aren't at all equivalent: "his left" and "the left of him". Would be interesting to analyze -- I think you can argue that the two "left"'s are actually different words in some respect, or at least have markedly different functions. And "left" is one of those words like "this" that changes depending on exactly how it functions in the sentence, too.
@11864. "It's my ancestors' cheese curds." --#overheard at the fair, a guy looking at "Ole and Lena's Scandinavian Cheese Curds"
@11865. "I don't know if Target stocks those." --pharmacist at Target, asked where the hair ties were
(This is reminding me of a dream I had when I was maybe five years old in which I needed sponges for some reason and the guy at the grocery store insisted they didn't carry sponges. An odd memory indeed!)
@11866. I don't think I create enough broad Anki cards; it's easy to mostly create ones about very specific things, especially as you read. Connections are important too!
@11869. Open question: To what extent is it important to avoid having too much WIP in GTD? I struggle to believe it isn't, but David Allen doesn't seem to say or think anything about that aside from encouraging things that aren't actively in progress to be on a "someday/maybe" list.
August 27, 2021
@11870. "Why should you be responsible for shading his birdhouse?" --#unusualsentences, https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/padizs/rented_for_almost_10_years_landlord_is_trying_to/ha4ntvb/
(This sounds like some kind of obscure sexual slang!)
@11871. "I assumed I would find the answer on _What Things Weigh_, the website that tells you what things weigh." --Kevin Underhill
@11872. "check it out you will be glad its cool and you can have a better life knowing it" --description of a religious website on a slip of paper handed to me on the street
@11873. "Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures." --The Atlantic, "Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future"
(The article is in my view unreasonably remote-positive, but this seems like a perceptive point.)
August 31, 2021
@11874. "That's just encouraging her to act like a psycho." --#overheard at the grocery store
@11876. "It's definitely the only time I've ever attacked drywall in a freezer at a gas station in the middle of the night for forty dollars an hour." --dream fragment, #latenightvoicememo
(Frivolous math problem: If you randomly select qualifiers like this, how many do you need before you can have an N% confidence the experience is unique? This is related to the filtering budget problem.)
@11877. "[H]onestly, I'm a really big fan of the fact that my doors are able to open and close, so I'm not too interested in ruining that functionality by hanging from the top of them to do pull-ups."
@11878. "Even in 2010, picking up heavy things, throwing heavy things up over our heads, and pulling heavy things remain the very best ways to replicate our foundational movement patterns." --https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie-20120504/
@11879. "The unplanned discharging of firearms is pretty low on my priority list." --https://pig-monkey.com/2019/
@11881. "Unfortunately, having a symptom for psychosomatic reasons sucks just as much as having it for any other reason. Sometimes it sucks more, because nobody takes you seriously." --Scott Alexander
@11883. #bandname: The Inexplicable Flying Lemons (from dream #1346)
@11884. A Bomb in Gilead
@11885. Thought: Finding solutions to technology problems is nearly always an iterative process and involves a great deal of tacit knowledge, which is why it's relatively easy for an expert to find a solution, but extremely difficult for the same expert to give someone an answer to their problem at the dinner table. It requires trying something, googling something, trying something else, noticing a button on the screen you've neer used before, and so on.
@11888. With conservative estimates, every mile you live from work costs $795 per year in car commuting costs (time and money). So if you have a 5% interest rate on your mortgage, a house that's a mile closer to work is worth paying $15,900 more for.
--https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/
(paraphrased)
@11889. "If these numbers sound ridiculous, it's because they are. It is ridiculous to commute by car to work if you realize how expensive it is to drive, and if you value your time at anything close to what you get paid. I did these calculations long before getting my first job, and because of them I have never been willing to live anywhere that required me to drive myself to work. It's just too expensive, and there is always another option when choosing a job and a house if you make it a priority." --https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/
@11891. "If you ever hear someone explaining things in terms of a long list of caveats, the odds are good that you're looking at tacit knowledge in action." --https://commoncog.com/blog/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/
September 08, 2021
@11892. "To examine this question, we integrated micro-sensors into undergarments." --"Nonexercise activity thermogenesis -- liberating the life-force", https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2007.01842.x
(#unusualsentences)
@11893. "However, the Damocles sword that hangs over our weight-expanding youth merits such endeavour." --"Nonexercise activity thermogenesis -- liberating the life-force", https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2007.01842.x
(This article is fascinating but is filled with typos and howlers.)
@11895. "Because this is what it is with a capital isness." --Coleman, _The Human Stain_
@11896. "Who knows why sociologically, but whatever the reason, it was the great American era of aphrodisiacal legs." --_The Human Stain_, p. 111
@11897. "[My mother is] a fantastically good cook if you don't like any spices or salt or pepper. Or taste of any kind." --Steena, _The Human Stain_, p. 120
@11898. "What [Coleman had] learned in the navy is that all you have to do is give a pretty good and consistent line about yourself and nobody ever inquires, because no one's that interested." --_The Human Stain_, p. 131
@11899. "She could make even adultery boring." --_The Human Stain_, p. 150, of Hillary Clinton
@11900. "If [Coleman] were around this place as a professor, he could teach 'Appropriate Behavior in Classical Greek Drama,' a course that would be over before it began." --_The Human Stain_, p. 153
@11901. "Is that your type, Dad, the pretty, slow-at-reading type with the long blond hair and the broken will and the butterfly barrettes?" --Lisa, in a dream, in _The Human Stain_, p. 163
@11902. "[Coleman's] lost his wife, he's lost his job, publicly humiliated as a racist professor, and what's a racist professor? It's not that you've just become one. The story is you've been discovered, so it's been your whole life. It's not just that you did one thing wrong once. If you're a racist, then you've always been a racist. Suddenly it's your entire life you've been a racist." --_The Human Stain_, 228
@11903. "No. No. I beg you. There's my career as a janitor to think about." --Faunia, _The Human Stain_, 231
@11904. "Men don't pay you to sleep with them. They pay you to go home." --_The Human Stain_, p. 236
@11905. "Simply to make the accusation is to prove it. To hear the allegation is to believe it. No motive for the perpetrator is necessary, no logic or rationale is required. Only a label is required. The label is the motive. The label is the evidence. The label is the logic. Why did Coleman Silk do this? Because he is an *x*, because he is a *y*, because he is both. First a racist and now a misogynist." --The Human Stain_, 290
@11906. "Of the four great Roman Stoics, only Marcus escaped banishment -- but then again, he was the emperor." --_A Guide to the Good Life_, p. 183
@11907. "Before I began my research on desire, Stoicism had been, for me, a nonstarter as a philosophy of life, but as I read the Stoics, I discovered that almost everything I thought I knew about them was wrong." --_A Guide to the Good Life_, p. 6
@11908. "I have presented Stoicism as I think the Stoics intended it to be used. They did not invent Stoicism for the amusement of future philosophers. To the contrary, they can best be understood as toolmakers, and Stoicism is the tool they invented. It is a tool that, if used properly, they thought would enable a person to live a good life. I came across this tool, dusty and disused, lying on a library shelf. I have taken it up, dusted it off, replaced a few parts, and put it to work to see if it can still do the job the Stoics designed it to do. I have discovered, to my surprise and delight, that it can. In fact, I have discovered that despite all the similar tools that have been invented since this one fell into disuse, it does the job better than they do." --_A Guide to the Good Life_, p. 244
@11909. "It is my experience that negative visualization is to daily life as salt is to cooking." --_A Guide to the Good Life_, p. 251
@11910. "A FB exec told me this is a violation of the terms of service of the glasses." --#unusualsentences, https://twitter.com/markhurst/status/1436018331144818691?s=20
@11912. "Jesus isn't a weekend thing" --T-shirt
@11915. There's a type of false negative in spaced-repetition study where you indeed don't know the answer to the card as presented, but the card as presented is lacking context that you would *always* have in real life, with which you would know the answer. This is probably particularly common in language learning where you're given a single word or phrase.
Maybe we could call this a false question?
@11916. "The average American household possesses more than 300,000 items." --https://getpocket.com/read/2841161702
Too good to check? Supposing two-thirds of those items are in storage (it's probably not that much), if an average American household has ten rooms (that seems high), that's still ten thousand items per room, which stretches belief. I guess it depends on what you consider an "item". Is a single sheet of paper in a file folder an item? One rubber band? One seed in a spice jar? It reminds me of the old saw about there being no ground truth of how long a coastline is -- you can choose to measure it to an arbitrary level of detail, resulting in a more or less infinite maximum length.
@11918. "Now I will admit that TV programming has really advanced in modern years, with a spectacular array of new channels. At one moment, you could be watching a young Brazilian girl blow a Vuvuzela at the World Cup game, and with just the press of a thumb you could be transported into the deepest reaches of a smoke-filled senior center watching a bingo game. You can study the most incredibly well produced commercials for an average of 16.5 minutes out of every hour, which will keep you informed of the must-have products of the day, protecting you from accidentally thinking your current products were sufficient." --https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/06/mmm-challenge-cut-your-cash-leaking-umbilical-cord/
@11919. "rabbit" --#misread version of "rabbi" in a response to _The Sunflower_
@11920. "I don't understand why we still call these men's bikes when they're the only kind you can hit your nuts on." --Not Just Bikes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESqrP3hfi8
@11921. You'll never see a U-Haul following a hearse.
@11922. "Ron Chippindale, to his credit, also issued quite a few safety recommendations alongside his official report. These included suggestions that...flight plans for commercial passenger flights refrain from routing aircraft over the tops of active volcanoes." --https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/an-orchestrated-litany-of-lies-the-crash-of-air-new-zealand-flight-901-7259e6afba83
September 21, 2021
@11924. "In the 1600s, some sea captains distributed lemons, limes and oranges to sailors, driven by the belief that a daily dose of citrus fruit would stave off scurvy's progress. The British Navy, wary of the cost of expanding the treatment, turned to malt wort, a mashed and cooked byproduct of barley which had the advantage of being cheaper but the disadvantage of doing nothing whatsoever to cure scurvy." --https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
@11925. "Don't you love finding bugs after you release?" --me
@11926. "You're not his mom, OK? You're his big sister. You don't have to yell." --#overheard in the park (said by the mother)
@11927. "A pseudonym is any time you are using a name other than your own. A pen name is when an author publishes under a different name. A nom de plume is when a *pretentious* author publishes under a different name." --https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/575188/when-do-you-use-nom-de-plume-vs-pen-name-vs-pseudonym
@11928. "To say this [development pattern] is cookie-cutter is unfair to the cookie industry, where there is actually some thought to alternative forms of cookies." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/12/17/best-of-blog-the-crazy-face-of-zoning.html
@11929. "Yes, in a time where we have a national infrastructure crisis, there is serious consideration -- and broad local political support -- being given to a $700 million project that will impact fewer cars than travel alleyways in some major cities. I live in a city with 5% of the population of Shreveport and we have local streets that get more traffic than this interstate expansion is expected to get." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/2/20/the-economics-of-the-i-49-connector-part-1
@11930. "This has a pretty high insulting-sounding-ness to comprehensibility ratio." --Scott Alexander, to a commenter
(Cf. #4539.)
September 24, 2021
@11931. "'Do not work' is not a useful bug report." --StackOverflow comment
@11932. "This reminded me of the time my buddy overdosed on caffeine on a backpacking trip and had to get airlifted out of Yosemite." --Reddit comment, #unusualsentences
@11933. "That is without a doubt the most advantageously placed whale tail art piece in history." --#unusualsentences, https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/jmdbtp/20201102_train_breaks_through_barrier_onto_statue/
@11934. "That's pretty unprofessional for you to arrive unprepared to talk about your son's balls." --Jesse Singal
@11935. "For one month this summer I decided to strictly obey every traffic law while riding my bicycle, on segregated paths whenever possible. This turned out to be somewhere between excruciating and nearly impossible." --https://streets.mn/2013/09/10/a-wink-and-a-nod-teaching-our-kids-to-be-criminals-part-i/
@11936. "And you don't even need to weigh your bags, book an advance ticket, or queue to board. It's like a real train!" --Not Just Bikes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWjtpzCIfA)
@11937. "In April of this year, I witnessed something on the Stanford campus that will be seared into my memory forever: a student on a bicycle, wearing flip-flops, AirPods in ear, going the wrong way through a roundabout in an active construction zone, with no helmet. But like any good follower of science, the student *was* wearing a disposable blue face mask -- for safety, I guess." --https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-bicycles-helmets-masks/
(Side note: I actually wouldn't be surprised if an N95 mask had a stronger effect on your health than a helmet when riding in heavy traffic. The additional pollution is pretty bad for you, while the benefits of helmets are fairly marginal. This is still hilarious, especially given that no helmet was only a small part of the problem. And I doubt a surgical mask would do much for pollution.)
@11938. "If our government handed out dunce caps with 'follow the science' embroidered on them, a double-digit percentage of the population would start wearing them (maybe even on bicycles) and look askance at people who don't." --https://stanfordreview.org/stanford-bicycles-helmets-masks/
@11939. "UK figures show that it takes at least 8,000 years of average cycling to produce one clinically severe head injury and 22,000 years for one death." --Wikipedia
@11940. "Saying a bike should act like a car is like saying that a flamingo should act like a gynecologist." --https://bicyclesafe.com/eci.html
{BL #12954}
@11941. "I don't know where you live, but in the US, long coats do not have built-in howitzers." --Reddit comment, #unusualsentences
@11942. "If interested, email phone number." --Craigslist ad
@11943. "People often say that children are stronger than we assume. Sure, I believed that, but I never wanted my own children to have to prove it. I thought I had the power to protect them from hardship. No one has that. Children are no different from adults: Their lives are bound by events beyond their control, experiences that are contrary to the ones they want or the ones we wanted for them. But endurance is built into the human condition, and it's as powerful in children as it is in adults." --Caitlin Flanagan, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/how-tell-children-truth-about-cancer/620040/
October 05, 2021
@11945. "We don't compare. What others do has no bearing on what we're able to do, what we want to do, or what we choose to do." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11946. "[I]f you label your own work as disruption, it probably isn't." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11947. "Basecamp isn't changing the world. It's making it easier for companies and teams to communicate and collaborate. That's absolutely worthwhile and it makes for a wonderful business, but we're not exactly rewriting world history. And that's okay." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
(Cf. #10315.)
@11948. "If you can't fit everything you want to do within 40 hours per week, you need to get better at picking what to do, not work longer hours." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11949. "JOMO! The joy of missing out." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11950. "The typical corporate give-and-take is that life gives and work takes." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11951. "You have to keep asking yourself if the way you're working today is the way you'd want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years. If not, now is the time to make a change, not 'later.'" --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11952. "The only way to get more done is to have less to do." --_It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work_
@11953. "Often some of the greatest pressures on professionals stem from the personal aspects of their lives that they are letting slip." --_Getting Things Done_
@11954. "[P]eople are actually more comfortable dealing with surprises and crises than they are taking control of processing, organizing, reviewing, and assessing that part of their work that is not as self-evident." --_Getting Things Done_
@11955. "We overestimate what we can do in one year. We underestimate what we can do in ten years." --qtd. in _How to Live_
@11956. "It is hard to imagine a person who could not somehow be worse off. It is therefore hard to imagine a person who could not benefit from the practice of negative visualization. The claim is not that practicing it will make life as enjoyable for those who have nothing as it is for those who have much. The claim is merely that the practice of negative visualization -- and more generally, the adoption of Stoicism -- can take some of the sting out of having nothing and thereby make those who have nothing less miserable than they would otherwise be." --_A Guide to the Good Life_
@11957. "Catastrophe-induced personal transformations have drawbacks, though. The first is that you can't count on being struck by a catastrophe. Indeed, many people have a catastrophe-free -- and as a consequence, joyless -- life. (Ironically, it is these people's misfortune to have a life that is blessedly free of misfortune.)" --_A Guide to the Good Life_
@11958. "A second benefit of undertaking acts of voluntary discomfort comes not in the future but immediately. A person who periodically experiences minor discomforts will grow confident that he can withstand major discomforts as well, so the prospect of experiencing such discomforts at some future time will not, at present, be a source of anxiety for him." --_A Guide to the Good Life_
@11959. "In his famous dictionary, by the way, Samuel Johnson includes a wonderful term for these individuals: A seeksorrow, he explains, is 'one who contrives to give himself vexation.'" --_A Guide to the Good Life_
@11960. "People say they're not doing the work because it's hard. But it's hard because they're not doing the work." --_How to Live_
@11961. "Most problems are not about the real present moment. They're anxiety, worried that something bad might happen in the future. They're trauma, remembering something bad in the past. But none of them are real. If you stop and look around the room, and ask yourself if you have any actual problems right now, the answer is probably no. Unless you're in physical pain or danger, the problems were all in your head. Memories and imagined futures are not real. The present moment is real and safe." --_How to Live_
@11962. "If you're not embarrassed by what you thought last year, you need to learn more and faster." --_How to Live_
@11963. "Comedy is tragedy plus time." --_How to Live_
@11964. "Work is love in action." --_How to Live_
(Cf. #4088.)
@11965. "If you are apathetic about or against something, learn more about it." --_How to Live_
@11966. "Once you've made all the mistakes in a field, you're considered an expert." --_How to Live_
@11967. "By focusing on sustaining high speeds, especially along streets within the city, the traffic engineer is actually increasing travel time for many trips. This is the exact opposite of the desired outcome." --_Confessions of a Recovering Engineer_, p. 58
@11968. "Transit in North America is failing because it exists without being tied to any discernible or measurable purpose." --_Confessions of a Recovering Engineer_, p. 150
@11969. "At the end of the day, rideshare is merely a taxi service using an app with a business model that exploits excess market liquidity and Americans who are bad at math." --_Confessions of a Recovering Engineer_, p. 174
@11970. "You want to be a protective spouse, a concerned parent, a good citizen, a patriotic American? Save your family and your community from danger by getting rid of your weapons, and especially your handguns. Don't wait for the law. Do it yourself; do it now. Do it because you just bought your first home, do it because you just got married, do it because you just had the baby you cherish more than anything in this world. The gun you trust against your fears is itself the thing you should fear. The gun is a lie." --_The Atlantic_, October 2021
@11971. "John McWhorter, a Columbia linguistics professor (and Atlantic contributing writer) who has strong and not always popular views about race, told me that if you are accused of something unfairly, you should always push back, firmly but politely: 'Just say, "No, I'm not a racist. And I disagree with you."' If more leaders -- university presidents, magazine and newspaper publishers, CEOs of foundations and companies, directors of musical societies -- took that position, maybe it would be easier for more of their peers to stand up to their students, their colleagues, or an online mob."
--_The Atlantic_, October 2021
@11975. "My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking." --Taleb, _Antifragile_
@11976. "Athletes and musicians and pretty much everybody else practices repeating the same tasks over and over again, to cut down on how often they eff up. The very nature of our job is that we rarely do exactly the same task -- if you're doing the same task over and over again, you'd automate it -- and thus we never cut down on our mistakes." --Remy Porter, on why IT is so hard
@11977. Grocery-store shower thought: the self-checkout lane is the de facto express lane, only worse, and you have to do extra work to use it.
October 13, 2021
@11978. "[Amaranta Úrsula] had found the rare feeling of bravery that she needed in order to run away from school and tell her mother in one way or another that she could use the clavichord as an enema." --_One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 271
@11980. "But that night, in his burning bed, [José Arcadio] understood that he had to go see her, even if he were not capable." --_One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 26
@11982. "In reality, the only thing that could be isolated in the rocky paragraphs [of Melquíades] was the insistent hammering on the word *equinox*, *equinox*, *equinox*, and the name of Alexander von Humboldt." --_One Hundred Years of Solitude_, #unusualsentences
@11983. "Father Nicanor...went among the houses for several days repeating the demonstration of levitation by means of chocolate." --_One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 82
@11984. "Put on your shoes and help me get this shitty war over with." --Colonel Aureliano Buendía, _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 170
@11985. "The others, more honorable, were still waiting for a letter in the shadow of public charity, dying of hunger, living through rage, rotting of old age amid the exquisite shit of glory." --Colonel Aureliano Buendía, _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 242
@11986. "...they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room." --Colonel Aureliano Buendía, _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, p. 348
@11987. "The notion that every action is at once a private experience and a public utility had to be born again." --_Adventures of Ideas_, p. 31
@11988. "God had placed his bow in the skies as a symbol; and the strip of colours, rightly read, spelt 'competition.'" --_Adventures of Ideas_, p. 31
@11989. "I could utilize some advice." --Reddit comment; cf. §PetPeeve
October 24, 2021
@11991. I'm remembering an AskReddit post about what the adult equivalent of calling your teacher "Mom" is. The consensus was that it's signing off on a work phone call with "I love you." Today I thought the equivalent for meeting a friend you haven't seen in a couple of years would be saying "You've grown!" (This does seem much less likely to happen though, so it's not perfect.)
{BL #13147}
@11992. It is really awkward as a guy, when saying goodbye, to shake another guy's hand and then hug his girlfriend. This happened to me recently. It was the obviously correct thing to do and anything else would itself have been a faux pas (college best friends with the woman, only just met the boyfriend), but it was still weird!
@11994. 52 Factorial: https://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html
"Please be advised that rounding and measurement error combined are many orders of magnitude greater than the current age of the universe, 4.323e17 seconds."
October 26, 2021
@11996. On many of the highways in Missouri, there were a bunch of signs reading "REPORT FUEL TAX EVASION" and indicating the phone number to do so. I have so many questions about this: How exactly does one evade fuel tax? How would I know that someone had done it? Why would I care?
@11997. "My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism." --Taleb, postface to _The Bed of Procrustes_
@11998. "The stock market, in brief: participants are calmly waiting in line to be slaughtered while thinking it is for a Broadway show." --_The Bed of Procrustes_, p. 88
@11999. "The left holds that because markets are stupid models should be smart; the right believes that because models are stupid markets should be smart. Alas, it never hit both sides that both markets and models are very stupid." --_The Bed of Procrustes_, p. 87
@12000. "If you find any reason why you and someone are friends, you are not friends." --_The Bed of Procrustes_, p. 62
@12002. "Beauty is enhanced by unashamed irregularities; magnificence by a façade of blunder." --_The Bed of Procrustes_, p. 59
(Cf. #7748.)
@12003. "I don't think I'd go through a door marked 'Authorized personnel only' in an airport because someone on the internet said it was OK." --Reddit comment
@12004. "One thinks of Tomas Borge, a Nicaraguan Sandinista fighter, captured by the contras and brutally tortured, confronting his torturer after the war had ended. The court entitled him to name the punishment appropriate for his torturer. Borge responded, 'My punishment is to forgive you.'" --_The Sunflower_, response by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 123
@12005. "What can we learn from all this? I think it is that rationality without compassion and compassion without rationality are both ineffective when it comes to grappling with ethical problems." --_The Sunflower_, response by Herbert Marcuse, p. 206
@12006. "The Christian view of forgiveness and, as exemplified in the case of the rapists, the Christian view of God's love -- in a lifetime of Jewish study and teaching, I have never heard a Jew say that God loves an evil person -- have led me to conclude that Christianity and Judaism, or perhaps only Christians and Jews, have differing views of evil and what to do about it." --_The Sunflower_, response by Dennis Prager, p. 229
@12007. "Because nothing draws visitors like high-quality sewer pipes. I know I choose where to travel based on the quality of the toilets!" --Rachel Quednau, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/10/26/maine-sewer-article
@12008. "Your local burger joint is in the business of making burgers, and they can adapt to whatever space you have available. Cheesecake Factory is in the business of expanding Cheesecake Factory; selling food is ancillary." --Charles Marohn, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/trillion-dollar-question
@12009. "How much electricity does a gas stove use?" --heading on a low-quality website about energy costs
(I mean, it's not nothing if you have electric ignition. Maybe a buck a year? But they don't discuss that.)
October 29, 2021
@12010. "[Stoicism] is the attempt by man to get even with probability." --_Fooled By Randomness_, p. 248
@12011. One-second guide to parallel parking: Park somewhere else.
--https://driving-tests.org/beginner-drivers/how-to-parallel-park/
@12012. Something I've always been puzzled about: why are ketchup packets so small? Have you ever needed the amount of ketchup in a *single* ketchup packet? It seems like say, doubling their size would result in a very minor amount of wasted ketchup but save consumers a bunch of trouble and reduce the cost of packaging, which surely has to be significant -- a ketchup packet is about as much packet as ketchup!
Maybe people regularly require the amount of ketchup in three or five packets, so they would be wasting one? (That seems unlikely though -- do people seriously know how much ketchup they need to that level of precision?) Or maybe if people feel like they're taking a ton of ketchup packets, they'll use less ketchup, and since they're usually provided for free this cancels out the increased expense (this seems the most likely).
@12014. All Pets Must Be On A Lease
--seen along a city trail (owing to worn letters on the sign)
@12015.
"What color apple would you like?"
"Blue!"
--#overheard at Wal-Mart
@12016. "Remember, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate." --Reddit comment
@12017. "A three-year-old with a plastic spoon could break into any one of these homes." --https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/the-future-of-suburbia/
November 03, 2021
@12018. "I would sum CB2 up by saying a purchase is a lot like buying a Van Gogh from them and they ship it to me in a nice plastic frame." --Yelp review
@12019. "The form of this development checks some 'urban' boxes, but only in a way that suggests lack of understanding of the *point* of any of them." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/11/why-do-suburban-retrofit-projects-so-often-get-all-the-details-wrong
@12020. "The selling point of real urbanity is concentrated life and activity. You sacrifice a bit of elbow room, peace and quiet in exchange for having stuff going on right near you: the world outside your front door." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/11/why-do-suburban-retrofit-projects-so-often-get-all-the-details-wrong
@12021. "The problem isn't that people studied this. The problem is that the studies came out positive when they shouldn't have. ...The whole point of studying is that, once you have done 450 studies on something, you should end up with more knowledge than you started with. In this case we ended up with less." --Scott Alexander, https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/
@12022. "In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 59
@12023. "Unfortunately, [those looking for dinosaurs in the late 1800s] worked in such reckless haste that they often failed to note that a new discovery was something already known. Between them they managed to 'discover' a species called *Uintatheres anceps* no fewer than twenty-two times." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 93
@12024. Apparently Marie Curie's lab papers (from the 1890s!) still have so much radiation in them that you have to wear protective clothing if you want to look through them.
@12025. "Called 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies', [Einstein's paper on the special theory of relativity] is one of the most extraordinary scientific papers ever published, as much for how it was presented as for what it said. It had no footnotes or citations, contained almost no mathematics, made no mention of any work that had influenced or preceded it, and acknowledged the help of just one individual. It was, wrote C.P. Snow, as if Einstein 'had reached the conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without listening to the opinions of others. To a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he had done.'" --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 121
@12026. "Hubble's life was filled from an early age with a level of distinction that was at times almost ludicrously golden. At a single high school track meet in 1906, he won the pole vault, shot put, discus, hammer throw, standing high jump, and running high jump, and was on the winning mile-relay team -- that is seven first places in one meet -- and came in third in the broad jump." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 128
@12027. "Hubble died of a heart attack in 1953. One last small oddity awaited him. For reasons cloaked in mystery, his wife declined to have a funeral and never revealed what she did with his body. Half a century later the whereabouts of the century's greatest astronomer remain unknown." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 132
@12028. "By the standards of today, crater research in the early 1900s was a trifle unsophisticated, to say the least. The leading early investigator, G.K. Gilbert of Columbia University, modeled the effects of impacts by flinging marbles into pans of oatmeal. (For reasons I cannot supply, Gilbert conducted these experiments not in a laboratory at Columbia but in a hotel room.) Somehow from this Gilbert concluded that the Moon's craters were indeed formed by impacts -- in itself quite a radical notion for the time -- but that the Earth's were not." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 191
@12029. "Drilling from a ship in open waters is, in the words of one oceanographer, 'like trying to drill a hole in the sidewalks of New York from atop the Empire State Building using a strand of spaghetti." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 214
@12030. "[Our knowledge of the oceans is] rather as if our firsthand experience of the surface world were based on the work of five guys exploring on garden tractors after dark." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 279
@12031. "There was so much unrecognized novelty in the collection that at one point upon opening a new drawer Conway Morris famously was heard to mutter, 'Oh fuck, not another phylum.'" --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 327
@12032. "In Carboniferous forests dragonflies grew as big as ravens." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 340
@12033. "'Oh, those were Sir Joseph Banks's, from his house in Soho Square,' Ellis said casually, as if identifying a recent purchase from Ikea." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 354
@12034. "Many were disturbed by [the Linnean binomial classification system's] tendency toward indelicacy, which was slightly ironic as before Linnaeus the common names of many plants and animals had been heartily vulgar. The dandelion was long popularly known as the 'pissabed' because of its supposed diuretic properties, and other names in everyday use included *mare's fart*, *naked ladies*, *twitch-ballock*, *hound's piss*, *open arse*, and *bum-towel*." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 359
@12035. "The 'maidenhair' in maidenhair moss, for instance, does *not* refer to the hair on the maiden's head." --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 121
@12036. "Much less amenable to Darwin's claim of priority was a Scottish gardener named Patrick Matthew who had, rather remarkably, also come up with the principles of natural selection -- in fact, in the very year that Darwin had set sail in the _Beagle_. Unfortunately, Matthew had published these views in a book called _Naval Timber and Arboriculture_, which had been missed not just by Darwin but by the entire world....Darwin apologized without hesitation, though he did note for the record: 'I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, has heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly they are given, and they appeared in the Appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture.'" --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 388
@12037. Alexander von Humboldt on the stages of scientific discovery: first people deny that it is true, then people deny that it is important, finally they credit the wrong person.
@12038. "Perhaps uniquely among human beings, the younger [J.B.S.] Haldane found World War I 'a very enjoyable experience' and freely admitted that he 'enjoyed the opportunity of killing people.'" --Bill Bryson, _A Short History of Nearly Everything_, p. 244
@12039. "In this book probability is principally a branch of applied skepticism, not an engineering discipline." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. xii
@12040. "This book would have been considerably shorter if I were a taxidermist or a translator of chocolate labels." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. xii
@12041. "Perhaps ridding ourselves of our humanity is not in the works; we need wily tricks, not some grandiose moralizing help." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. xlvii
@12042. "A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 56
@12043. "We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life -- only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness (say, portfolio or real estate investments)." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 77
@12044. "I try to make money [in the market] infrequently, as infrequently as possible, simply because I believe that rare events are not fairly valued, and that the rarer the event, the more undervalued it will be in price." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 103
@12045. Page 106: Note that it *is* possible for more than 50% of people to be above average -- if the distribution is sufficiently skewed in the right direction.
@12046. "In real life, the larger the deviation from the norm, the larger the probability of it coming from luck rather than skills: Consider that even if one has 55% probability of heads, the odds of ten wins is still very small." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 155
@12047. "I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness -- and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional. I am dominated by my emotions -- but as an aesthete, I am happy about that fact." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 222
@12048. Wittgenstein's ruler: If you use a ruler to measure a table (without being completely confident in the ruler's accuracy), you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.
For instance, this is a problem with book reviews by random people.
@12049. "Say you always have the same threshold of reactions. You take a set level of abuse, say seventeen insulting remarks per week, before getting into a rage and punching the eighteenth offender in the nose. Such predictability will allow people to take advantage of you up to that well-known trigger point and stop there." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, on why being unpredictable is useful
@12050. "Judging an investment that comes to you requires more stringent standards than judging an investment you seek, owing to...selection bias." --_Fooled by Randomness_, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. 158
(More or less the same problem going on here as with multiple hypothesis testing without adjusting your significance threshold.)
@12051. I just want to say, it is astounding how often people email me support requests for open-source tools I've put out where the problem turns out to be that they HAVEN'T INSTALLED my software. Yep, that menu option isn't available...because you're not even using my tool. This happens probably about once a year.
November 08, 2021
@12052. "The patient is a sophomore at St. Olaf studying computer sinuses." --quote from my medical records
@12053. "We are on the hand to help." --marketing copy on a website
@12055. "I tend to be more than a little skeptical of the way in which people throw around the word "sustainable" today. Not a single one of us lives in a way that is truly sustainable, particularly Americans. Since the sample size of people living a truly sustainable lifestyle is zero, any public policy discussion with sustainability as a goal has a particular challenge." --Charles Marohn, "The sprawl conversation"
@12056. "Then there is the commitment to electrifying vehicles which, again, is very marketable, but in practical terms is a lot like switching from Coke to Cherry Coke as part of a weight loss plan." --"On the American Jobs Plan", Charles Marohn
@12057. "So many places -- including mine -- would give up anything to go back to the city they had before all this federal assistance." --"On the American Jobs Plan", Charles Marohn
@12058. "Fix pipes in old neighborhoods. So not glamorous. So not sexy. You are so not getting a statue of you placed in the town square. Get over it, because that's what leadership looks like today. That's what you are called to do. If you care about your community, use this money to fix pipes in old neighborhoods. It is really hard for that to mess things up, no matter what comes next." --"On the American Jobs Plan", Charles Marohn
@12060. "a faux passé" --Reddit comment
@12062. "Fortunately, I have scissors and a propensity to ignore safety instructions." --Alec, Technology Connections
November 17, 2021
@12063. "Some epidemiologists and reporters were able to obtain the raw data (it was password-protected, but the password was '1234'), and it was pretty bizarre." --ACX (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted)
@12064. "Everything [about the study] was written up very nicely in real English, by people who were clearly not on 34 lbs of meth at the time." --ACX (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted)
@12067. "Read the bottom. It says like, 'David pleases his partners. He is a gorgeous individual.'" --#overheard phone conversation on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12068. "And I said to him, 'Haha, 75 is still passing when you're doing open-heart surgery!'" --#overheard phone conversation on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12071. "Obviously I do not literally believe that the eschaton is waiting on my alma mater to get good enough at music." --me, #nocontext #unusualsentences
@12072. "Starting to think the coronavirus isn't waiting for FDA approval before releasing new variants." --Scott Alexander
December 01, 2021
@12073. "For decorative purposes only. Do not consume." --on the care instructions for a button fern
@12075. "I should say that according to the defense attorney, the video that has been released so far is 'only about 20%' of the incident. But since the existing 20% shows his client shooting a guy in a wheelchair nine times in the back as he rolls away, it seems unlikely that the other 80% is going to hold any surprises." --Lowering the Bar
{BL #12084}
@12077. I love that Walgreens' poster-printing service doesn't accept vector art. I have to figure out what size it should be and rasterize it myself first!
@12078. The 1/8-in audio extension cable I just bought off Amazon has a "HIGH SPEED" logo on the packaging. I guess you use it when you want your boring talk shows to play faster.
@12079. "This holy tide of Christmas all other doth deface." --"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", extended verse
@12080. Auxiliary Calypso
--#bandname, after the Christmas Fest announcer
@12081. #overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail:
(with dramatic gestures) "The fruits of your womb!"
@12083.
"But you've created a virus that's going to cause a worldwide ecological disaster just to arrest some hacker kid?"
"Basically, uh, yeah."
--_Hackers_
@12084. "I have to imagine Walmart's policy is don't execute anyone for theft under $25." --Reddit comment, also on #12075
@12085. "Instability as a Service" --Hacker News comment
@12086. "Its movement is in liaise with scrolling of the page." --description of an element using "position: relative" in CSS
@12087. "Exponential growth doesn't permit one the luxury of being exactly on time. Either you're too early or you're too late." --Zvi Mowshowitz
December 10, 2021
@12088. "I know I should have thought of that before I -- what? Before I didn't use birth control? That's not the right question; it goes further back than that. It's not even a linear chain of events. It's a complicated web of forces and consequences that no one person could be responsible for. I should have thought of that before I grew up in a state that preaches abstinence, instead of teaching any sex ed? Before I grew up in a family that didn't teach me anything about sex either or make absolutely sure I understood that I too, as a human female, could become pregnant? Before I didn't choose the culture I was raised in? Before I didn't choose the patriarchal religion that warped my mind so much that I still, in my 40s, often feel a gaping void where a self should be? I should have known that if I didn't use birth control, I would probably get pregnant? As if people are rational." --https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/magazine/abortion-parent-mother-child.html
@12089. "Tell me, what do you do besides lure men to their doom on the 20th Century Limited?" --Thornhill, to Eve Kendall, _North by Northwest_
@12090. "Note: If you need a class to get started in being an entrepreneur, the stuff that's necessary to be self-employed is likely not in you." --The Art of Manliness
@12091. There are two kinds of IT professionals: those who make backups and those who will start making backups.
@12093. "It is a pretty damning indictment of what went on [during the Holocaust] if being skeptical of whether they made lampshades out of human remains is the level we have to reach before skepticism becomes reasonable." --Skeptics.SE, https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20347/has-the-holocaust-been-exaggerated
@12095. "Normally, typing something into a username box should never be making any external network connections." --qtd. in https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/the-critical-log4shell-zero-day-affects-a-whos-who-of-big-cloud-services/, on Log4Shell
@12096. "New door has been ordered! Thanks for your patience." --sign on the Uptown UPS store
I didn't notice anything wrong with the door (and I used it), which makes this even funnier.
December 18, 2021
@12097. "Samantha S. slipped serving science." --Reddit comment (evidently she slipped on a banana peel while someone silently watched to see what would happen)
(This could totally be a NetHack epitaph. Cf. #10917.)
@12098. "I get involved in elections because I care. I don't have an entitlement to the results." --Rep. Ilhan Omar, asked what the loss of several candidates she supported meant for her chances in 2022
@12099. "Stolen property. If you steal property, you must report its FMV in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner."
--US tax regulations, https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525#en_US_2020_publink1000229586
@12100. "Some people thought masks helped slow the spread of COVID. You can type out "no evidence" and hit "send tweet". But what if you try to engage the argument? Why do people believe masks could slow spread? Well, because it seems intuitively obvious that if something is spread by droplets shooting out of your mouth, preventing droplets from shooting out of your mouth would slow the spread. Does that seem like basically sound logic? If so, are you sure your job as a science communicator requires you to tell people not to believe that? How do you know they're not smarter than you are? There's no evidence that they aren't!" --ACX, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag
@12101. "It's fine though. We only saw one crash in the 3 minutes we were standing there [at the Arc de Triomphe]." --Not Just Bikes
@12104. "The two deliberate white twin Elizas with the same name." --(entirety of a) #latenightvoicememo, 2:07 AM
@12107. "I would not want to see my mortgage broker naked." --#overheard in a restaurant
@12111. "Friends, make no mistake, we *are* the darkness." --pastor, of John 1
@12113. "Which part of not seeing human faces is dehumanizing? The part where you don't see human faces." --ACX comment
@12115. "Keep records indefinitely if you file a fraudulent return." --IRS website
(Cf. #12099.)
@12116. When I was at the DMV the other day, I paid for my new license card with a $20 bill. The woman pulled out a counterfeit bill marker and checked it. I found this very funny and asked if people often tried to pass counterfeit money at the DMV (what a dumbass place to do it!), but she didn't seem to think it was funny and just said, "We're just supposed to check."
@12119. "The only sensible conclusion is: Screw evolution." --https://dynomight.net/evolution/
@12120. "(Translated by Google) I love it and do not hate it" --review of a business on Google Maps
@12121. "In truth, there's never been a more opportune time to live. Not only because it's never been cheaper and easier to write a book, share your art, or start a business, but because the average person's ability to execute on the basics has never been in such short supply." --https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/myth-scarcity-12-stupidly-easy-things-thatll-set-apart-pack/
December 30, 2021
@12122. "When a structure turns a public good into an appearance of corruption, it suggests it might not be such a good structure." --https://distill.pub/2021/distill-hiatus/
@12123. "Extraordinary times call for extraordinary effort. Most times are ordinary. Make an ordinary effort." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/
@12124. "To summarize the mechanism: The job of the US Federal Reserve Bank is to regulate how busy people are. When people are not busy enough, the Fed manipulates the market to increase the amount of credit available for existing state-backed pyramid schemes to expand, and new pyramid schemes to become more official." --"The Debtor's Revolt", http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-debtors-revolt/
@12125. "If you owe the bank a million dollars, you've got a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank's got a problem." --"The Debtor's Revolt", http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-debtors-revolt/
{BL #12386}
@12127. "Also, you have spoken to the police about him threatening to shoot you right? None of this analysis matters if you've been shot." --/r/legaladvice comment
January 03, 2022
@12129. "© 2023" --seen at the bottom of a web page in January 2022
@12130. "Value itself is our 42." --#hypnagogia marketing slogan
@12132. "This discussion illustrates a deep point, which most scientists understand but the public does not, namely that statistics can only help you to answer questions about the world by making assumptions about the world. If those assumptions are false, the answers it gives you cannot be trusted." --https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/have-we-been-thinking-about-the-pandemic-wrong-the-effect-of-population-structure-on-transmission/
(Honestly, I'm not entirely sure most scientists understand this! Maybe I'm being too cynical, but you see enough irredeemably crappy statistics used by scientists that I have to wonder.)
January 05, 2022
@12134. "[MUSE LaserDisc] was the LaserDisc of LaserDiscs." --Technology Connections
@12135. "Any plan that involves designing a new hydrogen bomb from scratch in three months is a bad plan." --ACX comment
@12136. #bandname: The Unapologetic Pedants
@12137. "At this point Donald Trump could have conspired with the Devil himself to commit genocide and it would make not a whit of difference to what anyone thinks of him or what happens in government." --me, CB63.37
(Cf. #8529.)
@12138. "CDC says to stay home this New Years Eve. There's no need to congregate in mass [sic] to watch the ball drop, when they've been publicly dropping the ball for 22 months now." --@jessicabrode, qtd. in https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/01/06/covid-1-6-22-the-blip/
January 10, 2022
@12139. "Using the principle of explosion, boxed wine and waffle cones are very much related, and are essentially the same thing." --discussion of https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/704:_Principle_of_Explosion
@12142. "[Renting is] paying for a house without any of the house's baggage." --/r/personalfinance comment
@12143. "Subarus are lauded for the go-anywhere capability, and it appears their owners attempt to get to those places more quickly than anyone else -- the brand has three entries...on the top 10 list of cars with the most speeding tickets."
January 15, 2022
@12145. "Please use what's next only for the most noble of purposes." --BJ Fogg
@12146. "Funny what can happen when your team shares a common goal!" --Technology Connections, on the VCD
@12148. "It really doesn't matter how long [you practice]. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty." --music teacher, qtd. in https://jamesclear.com/beginners-guide-deliberate-practice
@12149. "The lingering mental image I have of this experiment is sitting on the floor in my Archibald Street apartment, fuming at the sounds of my neighbors playing Rock Band on Playstation, because they were ruining my inner peace." --David Cain, https://www.raptitude.com/2015/12/7-years-experiments/
@12150. "Most people's financial decisions are driven by what the people around them decide -- which, in this culture, typically ranges from thoughtless to completely backwards -- and conscious thought about getting the best deal on happiness doesn't enter the picture. Would you rather have five all-expenses-paid years off to spend with your family, learn a language or build a business -- or drive a big car instead of a small car? It's shockingly normal for people to choose the latter, because they have no idea that they're making that choice at all." --https://www.raptitude.com/2013/04/how-much-of-your-life-are-you-selling-off/
@12151. "I'm all for 'play,' as a concept and a virtue. But I don't think I want playthings mixed in hopelessly with my tools." --https://www.raptitude.com/2019/05/smartphones-are-toys-first-tools-second/
January 20, 2022
@12152. Last night I dreamed I was telling my mother about a dream I had had the night before!
@12153.
Overall I got the impression that health care was a bizarro-world where normal economics doesn't apply. If you have the courage to say loudly and firmly 'we refuse to pay a high price for this', then providers have to give you a low price, and your health care system will be great and affordable. Seems hard to believe, but the US sure does pay twice as much per capita as countries that go with the 'loudly refuse to pay more than a certain amount' strategy. I would have appreciated a book by a more economically-minded person explaining why things are like this. Or maybe not; maybe it's like quantum physics, and the second someone looks at it too closely, the whole structure will collapse, every hospital in the world will go bankrupt, and we'll have to get our medical problems treated by wolves.
--Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-which-country-has-the
@12154. "My employer had sent me and my assistant to a map-dot called Glenboro, two hours from the city. Accommodations had been set up for us at a green and white 55-dollar motel right on the highway. After we checked in, I jokingly referred to it as a 'one-star hotel' -- the one star being for, if anyone asked, 'No visible mice,' but during breakfast on the last day I had to retract even that star." --David Cain, https://www.raptitude.com/2012/09/mans-search-for-meaning-and-cell-phone-reception/
@12155. "[TV] doesn't entertain me but simultaneously makes me depend on it to entertain me." --David Cain, https://www.raptitude.com/2012/09/mans-search-for-meaning-and-cell-phone-reception/
@12156. "Optum Bank...is connecting health and finances in unprecedented ways."
(Cf. #10315.)
@12157. Snowplows -- No Wake Zone
--seen on a bridge in St. Paul
@12159. "...that whoever swims in him shall not break-dance but have eternal lutefisk." --from a Mad Libs version of John 3:16 this morning at the children's sermon
{BL #12214}
@12160. "So far, desktop computers, and particularly Linux distributions, have largely accepted that occasionally bricking themselves on update is basically fine." --https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/the-curse-of-nixos
@12161. "Bitcoin is probably the first Ponzi scheme where everyone in it knows it is a Ponzi scheme." --Hacker News comment
@12162. "Of course this is all old-timey stuff and modern markets are considerably more technically advanced; the role of stabilizing markets by not answering the phone has been taken over by Robinhood having its app and website break (and also not answering the phone)." --Matt Levine
@12163. "I guess there is someone at the Commerce Department whose job is jamming babies' heads between crib bars." --#nocontext (https://blog.plover.com/tech/precision.html)
January 26, 2022
@12164. "The option Plan in SuperMemo has magic powers! Many users consider it redundant. Few have ever tried to use it. Those who have tried have often failed. Those who survived admit: Plan is magic and Plan is addictive." --SuperMemo wiki
@12165. "Like the missing middle, this page cannot be found." --streets.mn 404 error page
@12166. "The suffering of wild animals should also be a major headache for God." --https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-care-about-animals-it-is-your-moral-duty-to-eat-them
@12169. #overheard at Target:
(gesturing to an end-cap rack of Scotch tape of various kinds) "Can I get tape, Mom?"
"No. You're *not* getting tape!"
@12171. "I hope you trip and fall to hell." --insult qtd. on _Blocked and Reported_
January 31, 2022
@12172.
"Uh...is this Texas? Or is it hell?"
"Matter of opinion," Jerry said.
"Is there a difference?" asked Sybil.
--_Job: A Comedy of Justice_, Robert Heinlein
@12175. Another tax gem from Schedule SE: "You may use this method only if (a) your net nonfarm profits were less than $6,367 and also less than 72.189% of your gross nonfarm income."
Where the heck do these numbers come from?
@12176. "While most believed the data had been destroyed, we were able to trace the data to a microfiche room in a small library in Milwaukee, WI." --https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15016/w15016.pdf
February 03, 2022
@12178.
I ran some poorly explained SQL to reset my [WordPress] site name, which resulted in me having to add the following entry to /etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 www.localhost.com
--CB59.69
@12179. "Papa called because he tried to change his Windows password and he somehow managed to mistype the password identically into both boxes. (I laugh, but I think I've done that at least once in my life, if not more.) He had managed to get back in by just typing it over and over again until he made the same typo, but couldn't reproduce it to change the password again." --CB59.73
@12180. "The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 2
@12181. "At the tail end of the crowd was a woman who weighed three hundred pounds. She had a goiter, a caramel apple, and a gray little six-year-old girl." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 3
(This might be my favorite kind of creative sentence: completely unrelated and extremely specific things smashed together. This one's also a great example of zeugma!)
@12182. "'It wasn't any *ordinary* guessing game,' said Rumfoord. 'It was about how long the human race was going to last. I thought that might sort of give you more perspective about your own problems.'" --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 48
@12183. "Constant's father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo's 'Mona Lisa' at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 53
@12184. "[Malachi's] eyes felt like cinders. His mouth tasted like horseblanket purée." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 57
@12185. "The intellectual mountain had labored to produce a philosophical mouse -- and Fern was the first to admit that it was a mouse, and a mangy mouse at that." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 66
@12186. "Gomburg's book, while first-rate on business details, suffers from Gomburg's central thesis, to the effect that Magnum Opus was a product of a complex of inabilities to love. Reading between the lines of Gomburg's book, it is increasingly clear that Gomburg is himself unloved and unable to love." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 78
February 05, 2022
@12187. Just laughed out loud at needing the command "notmuch help". Fortunately the help page was at least some help.
(Cf. #4389.)
@12188. "Having just one aspect of your [Overwatch] gameplay be merely bad instead of atrocious is enough to get to 50%-ile." --https://danluu.com/p95-skill/#fn:O
{BL #12572}
@12189. "[T]his may sound geeky, but we are so excited about our new index." --introduction to the second edition of _Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day_
@12192. Odd gender note: I noticeably prefer software that knows what gender I am and can use the correct pronouns. It just feels weird when software I use every day has to address me as "they."
@12195. "This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. I don't know how anyone gets anything done." --Mark Dominus
@12196. "But then, what's the point of crypto? I mean, right now the point is to be a Ponzi scheme, and it works great; 1000% annual returns are a perfectly adequate substitute for there being a point." --Scott Alexander
@12197.
We're sorry, chat is currently unavailable.
Chat hours are listed below.
Monday - Saturday: Closed
Sunday: 03:00 AM - 03:01 AM CST
--https://thedailywtf.com/articles/up-up-down-down-left-right-left
@12198. https://observablehq.com/@yurivish/words
February 09, 2022
@12199. "The Wilburhampton Hotel was a frumpish, three-story Tudor structure across the street from the Magnum Opus building, standing in relation to that building like an unmade bed at the feet of the Archangel Gabriel." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 83
@12200. "All the things that the writer knew for sure were numbered, as though to emphasize the painful, step-by-step nature of the game of finding things out for sure. There were one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure. There had once been one hundred and eighty-five, but seventeen had been crossed out." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 124
@12201. "Theology: 15. Somebody made everything for some reason." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 127
@12202. "[Isabel Fenstermaker] had been a Jehovah's Witness before having her memory cleaned out. She had been shanghaied while trying to sell a copy of _The Watchtower_ to a Martian agent in Duluth." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 142
@12203. "The tune being played had been pirated recently from an Earthling broadcast. It was a big hit on Earth -- a trio composed for a boy, a girl, and cathedral bells. It was called 'God Is Our Interior Decorator.'" --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 150
@12204. "The only Martian military success was the capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland, by seventeen Parachute Ski Marines." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 171
@12205. "'God damn, Unk--' said Boaz. "I wonder where the gang got to." Most of the gang was hanging, at that moment, from lamp posts in the business district of Boca Raton." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 179
@12206. "The church, which squatted among the headstones like a wet mother dodo, had been at various times Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, and Universal Apocalyptic. It was now the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 219
@12207. "The International Committee for the Identification and Rehabilitation of Martians had, with the help of fingerprints, identified the bird man as Bernard K. Winslow, an itinerant chicken sexer, who had disappeared from the alcoholic ward of a London Hospital." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 245
@12208. "It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them. They simply took care of them, had the benefit of them, until the real owners, the superior owners, came along." --_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 307
@12209.
"You finally fell in love, I see," said Salo.
"Only an Earthling year ago," said Constant. "It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
--_The Sirens of Titan_, Kurt Vonnegut, p. 320
@12210. "Have you ever considered the possibility that everything went absolutely right?" --Rumfoord, after the Space Wanderer says that a lot of things went wrong on the Mars journey
February 11, 2022
@12211. "An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down." --Reid Hoffman
@12212. Incredibly confusing phrase when said out loud: "2020 to 2022"
@12213. For a brief moment of #hypnagogia I was convinced the name of the planet Mars was "Rowl".
(Cf. #7615.)
@12214. "Our Father, who art in waterpark, hallowed be thy seven." --#latenightvoicememo, 5:34 AM
(Cf. #12159.)
@12216. "Become non-kayaked" --checkbox on a dream bill I received (which also charged me $2,200 for taking a bucket with me when I left a campsite)
@12221. "Cooking a dinner without onions is like playing Scrabble with only consonants on your tray." --Crescent Dragonwagon
@12223. "Sticking a soldering iron up your nose (hot or cold) is liable to damage your health but not due to the effects of lead." --https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/19077/what-type-of-solder-is-safest-for-home-hobbyist-use?rq=1
@12224. "The email tells me exactly what to do. Then I do it." --https://jakobgreenfeld.com/stay-in-touch
@12226. "Command :m[ove] is not yet implemented (PRs are welcome!)" --VSCodeVim extension
@12227. From my St. Olaf Helpdesk journal:
It seems I'm also unofficial support for the stapler since the IT help station is next to it at the circulation desk. At least once a shift, someone asks me if they can have a stapler. (And every time, the answer is "right under your hand" or "right next to you." People wouldn't see the stapler if it were fluorescent yellow and flying through the air in front of their faces in circles.)
Today someone first wanted a staple remover, which we didn't have; I offered him my pocketknife, but he resolutely pried them out with his fingernails. Then he--I kid you not--asked me if he was using the stapler incorrectly because it wouldn't staple all the way through the stack of papers he had. It was fairly thick, but one *could* reasonably expect it to be staple-able. I was a little bit baffled at being asked for help in stapling a document, but I took the stapler and tried to use it, and of course it didn't work for me either, despite my (different?) stapling technique. Then it ran out of staples (go figure) and I had to go ask for more.
I then had a thought and flipped around the little plate that makes the staples bend outwards instead of inwards, because outwards tends to work better for larger documents. Surprisingly, this actually made it work. So if my desk gets renamed "Office Implement Help," I guess I do deserve to be there. I actually know what that little plate on the stapler is for, after all -- and what's more, it was actually useful knowledge for once.
@12228. "Unless you're really trying to take advantage of JavaScript's runtime behavior in a clever way, it's advised that you don't do this." --TypeScript documentation, https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html
(Also, I think if you *are* really trying to take advantage of JavaScript's runtime behavior in a clever way, the second half applies double! Cf. #5642.)
February 16, 2022
@12235. "I don't like any of this any more than you do, but this is how it goes." --Ben Studebaker, https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2022/02/22/whats-really-going-on-in-ukraine/
@12236. "I think this worked, but unfortunately also caused me to forget everything I knew about Georgism." --ACX comment, responding to someone explaining how to see one side of a multi-stable image in the post
@12237. "Not for use in totally enclosed luminaries." --typo on a Chinese lightbulb
("The Totally Enclosed Luminaries" would be a good club name.)
@12238. "If Zoom were the default and someone just invented face to face, it would seem like an amazing step forward." --Paul Graham
@12239. I just noticed that Random Thoughts recently exceeded the size of *two* floppy disks.
(Cf. #5401.)
February 26, 2022
@12240. "When the office is a place, there is a physical connection to colleagues. When the office becomes a group chat punctuated by Zoom all-hands meetings, switching jobs is practically as easy as logging out of one Slack account and logging into another." --https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/work-from-home-revolution/622880/
@12241. "NaN. See for yourself: console.log(null-undefined)" --response to a StackOverflow question asking "the difference between null and undefined in JavaScript"
@12242. "[Using this tool], I was able to heavily increase development times."
@12248. "One important thing I've learned again and again about prediction is that successes are usually less about being smart, and more about having a bias which luckily corresponds to whatever ends up happening." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ukraine-warcasting
@12249. "Your subscription has been successful." --after subscribing to an email newsletter
@12250. "I use to transfer from one bus to another to get where I need to go." --Google Maps review for the West Transfer Point in Madison
Highly informative.
@12251. "Performance doesn't matter with a corrupted database." --https://jlongster.com/future-sql-web
@12252. "This is an aside, but is so insane I don't know how to even address it: I was screen-sharing something with [my manager] the other day and she said she didn't like me using dark mode and insisted I turn my settings back to light mode." --https://www.askamanager.org/2022/03/is-my-manager-the-problem-or-am-i.html
@12253. "Happiness is a decision, but it wasn't until I started taking Prozac every single day without fail that I was able to decide to be happy." --https://gist.github.com/shawwn/3110ab62fa027c7811578f167fa5a3a0
@12254. "I shouldn't have to implement a webhook to discover that none of my invoices are actually being paid." --https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30535572
@12255.
When a private citizen buys software, the question is "does it do enough, for the price, for me to buy it?"
When an enterprise procurement office buys software, the question is "is there anything it does NOT do that will cause someone to fire me for having purchased it?"
--Hacker News comment
@12256.
According to the story I heard, the CEO found her poking around in the supply closet and asked if he could help her find anything.
'Where do we keep the URLs?' she asked. When he asked what she meant, she said, 'I'm meeting with a prospective client in ten minutes who doesn't know our work. They asked me to bring some URLs to the meeting.'
--https://www.askamanager.org/2021/10/the-controversial-calculator-the-highlighter-war-and-other-drama-over-office-supplies.html
@12257. "I have had mostly negative experiences with encrypted emails, including receiving 5+ private keys of security researchers." --Patrick McKenzie
@12259. "The market has only recently begun pricing earplug-litigation risk into 3M's stock." --Star Tribune, 2022/03/06, #unusualsentences
@12260. "I'm going to guess your patience for industrial heat is limited." --https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/10/10/20904213/climate-change-steel-cement-industrial-heat-hydrogen-ccs
@12262. "[Vonnegut] dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it." --_Esquire_, qtd. on the cover of _Sirens of Titan_
@12263. "People who won't take no for an answer are actually the most important ones to say no to." --Alison Green
@12267. "mustered" --seen in the list of add-ons for a hamburger
@12268. "I know, someone is going to write in and say the problem isn't in konsole, it's in the settings for the KooKooFont 3.7.1 package, and I can easily fix this by adding, removing, or adjusting the appropriate directives in /usr/share/config/fontk/config/fontulator-compat.d/04-spatulation, and... I don't care, gnome-terminal works and konsole doesn't." --Mark Dominus
@12269. "While all this was going on I was looking for a workaround. Finding one is at least as important as actually tracking down the problem because ultimately I am paid to do something other than figure out why Perl is losing TMPDIR." --Mark Dominus
@12271. "India said on Friday it accidentally fired a missile into Pakistan because of a 'technical malfunction' during routine maintenance."
--https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/india-says-it-accidentally-fired-missile-into-pakistan-2022-03-11/
Gotta say, if I had to bet on the proximate cause of a nuclear war, it might be a technical malfunction!
@12274. On _Mother Night_: I think the reason Campbell is so good at propaganda is that he tells himself he's not really doing it, he doesn't really believe in it...which means that he doesn't have any doubts about it and he's free to caricature the Nazi position as far as he wants. Which is exactly what you want in propaganda! And it also means he's being a better Nazi than the Nazis (and worse than them in terms of effect, balanced to whatever extent it is by his role as a spy). This is somewhat like how real life can be stranger than fiction, as it doesn't have to come across as believable.
@12275. Remembering an anecdote I heard where someone went years having never heard of the train "The City of New Orleans" and thought the Guthrie song was just a really cool extended metaphor for the city.
@12279. "If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dangerous battlefield the American military has ever encountered. Seriously: Annual U.S. highway fatalities outnumber the yearly war dead during each Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution. When all of the injuries from car wrecks are also taken into account, one year of American driving is more dangerous than all those wars put together." --https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/absurd-primacy-of-the-car-in-american-life/476346/
March 15, 2022
@12280. "Growth in a car-dependent neighborhood is a bad party. Every new arrival makes things a little worse for the people who were already there. Growth in a traditional, walkable neighborhood is a good party. Every new arrival makes things better and more interesting for those who were already there." --https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/22/can-we-afford-to-care-about-design-in-a-housing-crisis
@12283. Apparently a bill to make summer time permanent in 2023 passed the US Senate today -- *unanimously*. I'm still not sure I read this correctly given the amount of bickering that's been happening over this for the past 10 years.
Still unclear if the House is going to take it up, but if it passed one chamber unanimously, I guess I'd be kind of surprised if they don't sooner or later.
@12284. "I am in favor of permanent standard time, but failing that, I am super happy with permanent daylight-saving time. Far more important to me is ridding ourselves of the twice-annual insanity of changing clocks. I'd be okay with adopting UTC if that meant our clocks never changed again." --Hacker News comment on the above
@12285. "Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." --Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
(Cf. #11621.)
@12286. The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. Just thinking about it makes me wince. I'd start to feel uncomfortable after sitting on a sofa watching TV for 2 hours, let alone a whole day.
And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day -- days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.
--http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
@12287. "While the filesystem developers tend to be helpful and they write up informative responses, most people probably don't keep up with the past 6-8 years of [the Linux kernel mailing list]." --https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/
@12290. Big question of Mother Night: Is Campbell guilty? Yet at the same time it's almost beside the point. The two big things that are in favor of and against him are almost in different ontologies or moral universes. Espionage is weird, breaks most of the normal rules, and it's almost impossible to know what would have happened had you chosen a different path. And so Campbell doesn't know what he himself did, nor does anybody else exactly. On the other hand, his propaganda was brilliant and even managed to speak to US citizens. The Nazis ate it up despite seemingly consciously knowing it was an absurd caricature. So I don't know if there's an answer here.
Vonnegut says that the moral of the story is that you are what you intend to be, but I don't think that that implies that Campbell has become a Nazi. He's become a person who can't feel and is deeply divided; he doesn't know why he's doing anything or why anything matters, precisely because he's had to take himself apart in order to do these things at the same time. I don't think he believes he's a Nazi or believes in their ideology or anything, and I don't know for sure that he had a net negative impact on the world. His statement that he's hanging himself for "crimes against himself" is apt, but at the same time it's hard to really say anything is his fault. "War is hell" as is quoted in the book, and loss of ability to feel is just what happens during the Holocaust. It's hard to make meaning out of anything next to that; it is unbelievable to the degree that logic and meaning just go out the window when you look at it. And it's unclear what extent Campbell was able to know what he was getting into when he started.
Maybe what happens is not that Campbell becomes a monster, but that he becomes someone who's capable of being a Nazi propagandist and not feeling like he's a monster. That's not someone you want to be. It's almost the worst thing you can do to your own soul.
March 18, 2022
@12292. Fun thought from Huberman: Urine is literally just filtered blood.
@12293. At the back of the sanctuary at Bethlehem Lutheran, there's a box of hearing-aid devices labeled "Hearing-Assisted Boxes." Better make sure those boxes can hear.
@12296. "Good spirituals, but there's not enough counterpoint." --William Dawson to André Thomas, at a choral convention
March 19, 2022
@12297. A few stories from Sigrid Johnson's memorial service.
@12298. Sig is 3, sitting in the back seat of their car between her two older brothers, going across the Missouri River. Sig suddenly jumps up from her seat and yells, "Drive 25, Daddy! That's B flat!" (Evidently the tires on the bridge were making a perfectly tuned note.)
@12299. Sig on her profession: "The only thing two choir directors can agree on is the inadequacy of a third."
@12300. Facebook memorial comment: "Sig was a force of nature."
@12302. Apparently SMA and Sig had a yearly contest to see who could make the fewest mistakes at Christmas Festival in seating the choirs, conducting the audience, etc.
@12306. "When encountering a new concept (a definition, a theorem) memorization is more important than understanding. Yes, you can spend time trying to crack the meaning, but you won't unless you spend enough time contemplating examples and trying to imagine counter-examples. It's a struggle. A more efficient way of gaining understanding is, first, to have things you do not (yet) fully understand memorized to the letter, and then use this to do exercises and solve problems. Only then you can more or less fully appreciate the concept, its raison d'être, and why it is formulated the way it is; no amount of explaining on the part of the instructor can be as helpful as your own practice actually using the thing."
--Hacker News comment, on "In Praise of Memorization" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30763003)
(The comment thread here is fantastic.)
@12307. "Workshop-trained writers are often, not always, but often, intrinsically defensive. This single fact explains almost all defining features of contemporary literature. What you're looking at on the shelf are not so much books as battlements." --Erik Hoel, "How the MFA swallowed literature"
@12310. "[M]ost people just don't care or think about your temporary struggles nearly as much as you might imagine they do. The vast majority of customers care about you delivering a great service at a reasonable price above all else. The vast majority of prospective employees care about whether they can see themselves at your company, not how others couldn't. But you just can't appreciate such axioms in the midst of trouble. So you should take care to appreciate them when it's become clear that they are true." --David Heinemeier Hansson, on the social media kerfuffle over Basecamp's new politics-at-work policy last year
@12311. "Hardware stork" --#whoopstypo
(That's how hardware gets made.)
@12315. "Hi. We don't want to waste your time, therefore this is what we want." --spam email
@12316. General life value: when something is important, you should be deliberate about it.
(Not just a value really; also a practical benefit!)
@12321. "Having glimpsed the future, we return to the code." --Matthew Butterick, _Beautiful Racket_
April 03, 2022
@12325. "You can go months or even years without speaking to a dear old friend and feel fine about it, blundering along, living your life. But discover that this same friend is dead, and it's devastating, even though your day-to-day life hasn't changed one iota. You're rudely reminded that this is a capricious, disordered cosmos we live in, one that suddenly has a friend-size hole in it, the air now puckered where this person used to be." --_The Atlantic_, March 2022
@12326. "Some of the brightest minds in history have contributed to our health and safety by ensuring measurements, tolerances, and other critical specifications for things like medical devices, bicycle helmets, and children's toys. Then there's Title 21, Section 145.180(b), which valiantly protects us from canned pineapple slices with outside arcs that are too short." --_How to Become a Federal Criminal_
@12327. "If federal regulations prove anything, it's that the government is extremely concerned about your eyes." --_How to Become a Federal Criminal_
@12328. "When I started the project, I thought the big changes in romance were obvious -- technological developments like smartphones, online dating, and social media sites. As I dug deeper, however, I realized that the transformation of our romantic lives cannot be explained by technology alone; there's much more to the story. In a very short period of time, the whole culture of finding love and a mate has radically changed. A century ago people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after they decided neither party seemed like a murderer, the couple would get married and have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-two. Today people spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. The tools we use on this search are different, but what has really changed is our desires and -- even more strikingly -- the underlying goals of the search itself." --Aziz Ansari, _Modern Romance_
@12331. "Not trying to kill the negotiating team seems like an important safety tip for a successful negotiation, but I have a very different negotiating style so what do I know." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/04/05/ukraine-post-9-again/
@12332. "On a side note, is there any place on earth that sounds like it has a more chill vibe than Hawaiian Brian's? Or for that matter, is there a chiller name than 'Hawaiian Brian'? 'Dammit! Hawaiian Brian just stole my debit card and liquidated all my bank accounts!' I can't ever see someone having to utter that sentence." --Aziz Ansari, _Modern Romance_
@12336. "Unit testing is a great way to ensure your mocks work." --Randall Koutnik
@12337. "squirl" --seen in a web comment
@12338. "A quick gripe: sometimes it feels like half the people in Chinese politics have gangs, the other half are named Gang, and it takes a lot of mental overhead to figure out which is which. Consider eg this headline: China Official Yang Gang Investigated For Corruption. How long did it take you to parse that this was a single person?" --Scott Alexander
@12339. "I could not write this book without letting you know that Thesaurus.com lists 'hot potato' as a synonym for 'crisis.'" --Aziz Ansari, _Modern Romance_
@12340. "I never thought I would say this, but of those two things, having sex with a robot seems like the more reasonable option." --Aziz Ansari, _Modern Romance_
@12341. "After he made this analogy, I presented Ajay with a trophy that said 'Most Sexist Food Analogy of All Time: Meat and BBQ Division.'" --Aziz Ansari, _Modern Romance_
@12343. "To this day I'm not sure if the company was an overoptimistic bet by the millionaire founder who made his trading fortune in the pre-algo days, or a convoluted money laundering scheme." --https://putanumonit.com/2021/05/30/easily-top-20/
@12345. "Thinking about how overwhelmingly important it is to pick the right life partner is like thinking about how huge the universe really is or how terrifying death really is--it's too intense to internalize the reality of it, so we just don't think about it that hard and remain in slight denial about the magnitude of the situation." --https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html
@12347. "My goal is at least one _Alice_ reference whenever I write tests." --me
@12348. "JavaScript is to Java as carpet is to car." --https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2628672/what-should-every-javascript-programmer-know
(Cf. #9514.)
@12349. "This is more than 'no smoking gun', this is 'suspect was in another country giving a speech in front of 10,000 people on live TV.'" --https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/08/18/a-chemical-hunger-interlude-e-bad-seeds/
@12350. "This is omitting the wells in the MA dataset that were listed as being 4,132,004 and 10,112,002 feet deep -- we think these may be typos." --https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/10/19/a-chemical-hunger-interlude-h-well-well-well/
@12351. "In this view, getting a question wrong is useful information. It pinpoints exactly what you need to understand, and puts the onus on you to figure it out. Honestly, the appropriate response to getting a question wrong is probably to throw your hands up in the air and shout 'wonderful!', since it's at those points of what may appear to be 'failure' that your learning rate will be at its highest." --https://quantum.country/qcvc
@12352. "I think it's reasonable to be cautious about receipt-holding, but I was surprised by how long everyone in these studies held receipts for." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/obscure-pregnancy-interventions-much
@12353. "Emotional intimacy is inherently necessary, but also inherently fraught. Sex-positivity tries to deal with this by pretending sex is not necessarily connected to the emotions. In the process it turns sex into a narcissistic, masturbatory act of 'self-exploration.'" --@trashymortal
@12356. "Let's hope that remains a virtual experience." --Reddit comment on a video of a VR nuclear bomb simulation
April 17, 2022
@12358. "It's like, do you really have to know a lot about Italy to know that's not an appropriate question?" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12359. "Eww, birds pooped on our car!" --#overheard in the parking lot at Afton State Park
@12360. "The Greek poet Hesiod (eighth century B.C.) and the Roman poet Virgil (700 years later) sang about the work of the farmer. Theirs are still among the finest poems in any language, but neither the work they sang about nor their farmers bear even the most remote resemblance to reality, nor were they meant to have any." --Peter Drucker, "Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge"
@12363. "This emoji has a cat variant." --https://emojipedia.org/smiling-face-with-heart-eyes/
@12364. Speaking of emoji, I just want to admit that I was wrong about emoji when they first became popular in the mid-2010s, and similarly for the "react" feature (that uses them) on chat platforms. I'm not about to suggest adding emoji to books or anything, but in the severely de-emotionalized and context-free environment of short-form text chat, I think they not only make it easier to communicate, but even add expressiveness to the medium. It's usually, if not always, possible to duplicate the effect with words, but you often have to spend quite a while figuring it out if you don't want to sound corny or heavy-handed, which means most of the time it's just not worth it. It's the natural-language equivalent of a programming language comparison: yeah I technically could implement the same thing in a Python list comprehension or a Brainfuck program, but...no.
In retrospect, I'm puzzled why I found them so stupid: everyone in the tech world had been using the old-style emoticons for several decades, and they caught on for exactly the same reasons. Emoji are just an incremental improvement and expansion on those. And obviously when you're using text for interactive communication, you want some way to communicate emotions and reactions. I guess that is just so transparent when interacting in person that we didn't think about it?
@12366. "My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur." --narrator, _Cat's Cradle_, after spending the night with Sandra
@12367. "[The secretary's] smile was glassy, and she was ransacking her mind for something to say, finding nothing in it but used Kleenex and costume jewelry." --_Cat's Cradle_, p. 33
@12368. "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." --Bokonon, _Cat's Cradle_
@12369. "Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War." --_Cat's Cradle_
@12370. "There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said, 'Meow.'" --_Cat's Cradle_
@12371. "All I'd eaten for four days was two biscuits and a sea gull." --_Cat's Cradle_
@12372. "Back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan." --_Cat's Cradle_, 89
@12374. "'[H]e's a homosexual,' whispered Minton. 'She can tell that from an index, too.'" --_Cat's Cradle_, p. 122
@12375. "Art is like that, if it's worth anything at all; it says things the artist didn't know he was saying." --ACX comment
@12376. "Your browser settings blocked a notification sound." --banner in Intercom
April 26, 2022
@12377.
I eventually discovered a life changing life-hack which I have now used for years to force myself to finish and release music. It's called 'Christmas Music'.
Yes, Christmas Music.
It's the perfect tool to force an over thinking musician to buckle up and finish something. It provides three key benefits:
(1) A theme: what to write about is always a hard question. Christmas music massively narrows your options, and gives you a world of existing references to draw on.
(2) Low Stakes: Generally people don't like Christmas music, and consider it as essentially a joke. When you release your art into the world, it always feels like the stakes are high, even when there is absolutely no risk involved. If you can tell yourself 'no need to worry it's just christmas music', then you have art without fear
(3) A deadline: This is the real key. Christmas music needs to come out before Christmas. So you have to finish it. Voila.
I've now released some sort of Christmas music every year since 2013. Some is good. Some is bad. But it all exists and is published.
--https://www.johnwhiles.com/posts/music-production-lessons.html
@12379. "Please do not use this program to distribute illegal copies of ebooks. That would make Baby Jesus sad." --help page for ConvertLIT
(Also, I can't be the only person to remark on the fact that this program's executable name is 'clit', can I?)
@12380. I made a column in a status table that has values of "none" and "done". That's fabulously easy to read, especially in a fixed-width font!
@12381. "Writing your own page layout code is almost always a mistake, for the same reason writing your own datetime library is a mistake: it's hard, it's full of shitty edge cases, and someone more pedantic than you has already done it right." --Leah Velleman, https://velleman.org/resume.html
@12383. "The page numbers are kind of useless without page numbers." --me
@12384. "Redefining amsmath macros is like walking barefoot on a coal fire." --https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/49058
@12386. "The only thing worse than losing an auction by a few dollars is winning one by a lot." --Seth Godin
(Cf. #12125.)
@12387. "They used to say that you wouldn't be ashamed of a broken leg so why should you be of mental illness? Perhaps it now needs adding: you shouldn't celebrate breaking it either." --comment on https://unherd.com/2022/04/mental-illness-doesnt-make-you-special/
@12389. Fun trivia: the base camp at the Trinity nuclear test site was accidentally bombed during the project...twice. I guess that's what you get when you use a bombing range as your test site.
@12390. "Few people have the heart to tell you that marital conflict is normal. Fewer still tell you that it might be the only opportunity you might have to grow up." --Sasha Chapin, https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/book-review-passionate-marriage?s=r
May 05, 2022
@12391. "It's great to see Isidore of Seville cited by someone other than Thomas Aquinas." --https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/278554/what-is-the-origin-of-the-exclamation-mark?rq=1
@12392. Open question on dating strategy: is it fully to your advantage to be above average on shallow dimensions, like height or income? (General physical attractiveness too, but that's probably a more complicated story.) Certainly it helps you get past people's filters / preconceptions of what they want. But does it mean you're more likely to have people continue liking you only for those shallow reasons, and not having any permanent interest, thus meaning you would have been better off if they dropped you at the beginning?
I'm thinking no (and thus this is basically just good), because there's usually not enough information for people to judge you on deep reasons at the beginning, but not sure!
@12394. "I love a good shit-talking session." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12396. "In some sense, this is the entire substance of morality: that you've checked out of the game of earthly rewards. That, when you get shot by the Gestapo officer for having ferried 20 Jews to safety, you don't treat it as having lost the game of life, but as having won the game." --Scott Aaronson, comment on https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6411
May 08, 2022
@12398. "The rabbis say that the Sabbath is a taste of the world to come. Me, I think it's an aftertaste of infancy." --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12399. "If we want to look to the Bible to understand how our ancestors felt about the Sabbath, we have to remember that while the Bible teaches us our history, it is not history in any sense that we've ever been taught. Nor is it literature, exactly. It's both and neither, a strange amalgam of prose and poetry, containing scene after scene of some of the most profound drama conceived by the cosmological imagination. Does the Bible tell of things as they were, elevating actual occurrences to a mythological plane? Or does it consist of brilliant imaginings, taut parables craftily distressed by some unknown genius to exhibit the grit and anguish of history? Is there a meaningful difference?" --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12400. "An anthropologist named Edmund Leach came up with a clever twist on Durkheim's take on holy time: He called it the time of false noses." --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12401. "The atheist would say that this proves that religion is a charade. The rabbis would say that this is how we become like God." --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12402. "Really? I was to ask God to move my lips so that I could utter words that would gratify his ego? The sentence implied a closed robotic loop: I'd switch on God, and he'd operate my mouth by remote control." --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12403. "Everything about the Sabbatarian Anabaptists seemed designed to outrage Luther in particular." --Judish Shulevitz, _The Sabbath World_
@12412. "[Abortion law is] one of the issues that should be easiest to understand where the other side is coming from, but it's such an emotionally charged issue that it's very unpleasant to do that." --David Cain, comment on https://www.raptitude.com/2022/05/cynicism-is-boring/
@12416. "Water available ? mile from site." --campground description
@12417. "Hairless pasta salad" --#misread version of a sign advertising "Harissa Pasta Salad"
(I do expect salads I buy to be hairless, though.)
@12418. "[Egypt is] like if phone scams were a materialized location." --Reddit comment
@12419. "'I have never in my time as a magistrate heard that whilst somebody was engaged in a police pursuit, they also engaged in sexual intercourse,' Magistrate Koula Kossiavelos said." --https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-10/court-hears-driver-had-sex-with-passenger-during-police-pursuit/101052270
(But has she heard that prior to her time as a magistrate?)
May 15, 2022
@12422. "There was a time in this world where, like, there were these special nooks." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12423. "Restroom open during mall hours only" --on a restroom door at the Mall of America
I'm still mystified by this one. Why would you think that a restroom inside the mall had longer hours than the mall itself? Is the idea to prevent homeless people spending the night in the restroom or something? If so, exactly how is the sign supposed to help? Do they think people who were going to try to hide in the restroom of a closed mall would be dissuaded by a sign about its hours? So many questions.
@12425. "Screw you, Jasper, and screw Mother's Day and Christmas too." --Philip Castle, _Cat's Cradle_
(Cf. #6104.)
@12426. "When I got back to my room I found that Philip Castle -- mosaicist, historian, self-indexer, pissant, and hotel-keeper -- was installing a roll of toilet paper in my bathroom." --_Cat's Cradle_, #unusualsentences
@12427. "How does [Frank Hoenikker] know what's important? I could carve a better man out of a banana." --Philip Castle, _Cat's Cradle_
@12428. "What awakened little Newt was an explosion far away below. It caromed up the valley and went to God." --_Cat's Cradle_, p. 165
@12429. "It is never a mistake to say good-bye." --Bokonon, _Cat's Cradle_, p. 227
@12430. "[H. Lowe Crosby] was having a good time, drinking acetone from his coconut, sitting on a cannon, blocking the touchhole with his big behind." --_Cat's Cradle_, p. 228-9, #unusualsentences
@12431. "As far as I know, Bokononism is the only religion that has any commentary on midgets." --Newt Hoenikker, _Cat's Cradle_, p. 283
@12436.
"But you just hit me."
"Because you were in my way."
--/r/idiotsincars video
@12437. "I'm gonna miss a *ritual*?" --boy, #overheard in the lobby at church
@12438. "Yeah, now I'm back to being a single mom." --#overheard on the street
@12439. "That's the last thing in the world, a road trip? That does *not* sound fun." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12442. "I now believe that all adults are grossly incompetent in at least a few areas, maybe many. Everyone's failings are just distributed differently across their respective lives. We meet society's standards, and our own, in a few areas, and fall pitifully short in others." --David Cain, Raptitude
@12443. "Your connection has limited connectivity." --Amazon Music
@12444. "I have never owned a more disappointing, piece of garbage, feature-less router than Google WiFi." --Amazon review
@12446. "We often assume that productivity means getting more things done each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done consistently." --James Clear
@12447. "There is no code faster than no code." --Kevlin Henney
@12448. Got access to Copilot today, it is seriously impressive. The best obvious time savings so far: I was working on a Bash script and spent probably 10 or 15 minutes searching the web trying to figure out how to change stdin over from wherever it was when the script was called to the interactive terminal. After having no luck and getting frustrated, I decided to just try explaining exactly what I wanted to do to Copilot, in two comments, and got:
@@@
# close file descriptor 0
exec 0<&-
# reopen file descriptor 0, connected to /dev/tty
exec 0<"/dev/tty"
@@@
And that's *exactly right*, as far as I can tell! It even does what I was hoping it would.
@12450. "We spent *hours* talking about her kids' relationships!" --#overheard on the street
@12452. "It's like having a child coworker but that has 40,000 years of programming experience. Dumb but also smart." --review of GitHub Copilot
@12456. While I was camping on Saturday, I watched a catbird try to fly through my tent screen and bounce off.
@12457. "But we're not the Internet to come." --last line of a dream hymn
@12459. "I contacted Joby customer support. They mention that I shouldn't have purchased from an 'unauthorized seller' like Amazon then proceeded to direct me to the MANFROTTO website where they have a list of unauthorized sellers. That's great, because I ALWAYS check the MANFROTTO website when purchasing JOBY products." --Amazon review
@12461. "Wait I have a fun idea -- let's think about that comment every day for the next 37 years." --https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html
@12462. Felix Frankfurter famously said he'd commit perjury for a friend, but not a friend who asked him to. A lot of wisdom, there.
--https://waitbutwhy.com/table/prison-sacrifice-quandary
@12465.
There is an entrance to Vorgh's General Store here.
Across the way: There is an entrance to Ysyupa's Specific Store here. (It only sells one set of arrows.)
(Cf. #10917.)
@12468. "[The eBay seller] appears to use a potato to take pictures." --https://bert.org/2022/06/02/payphone/
@12469. "In this video he's trying to demonstrate how to do formal modeling using UML techniques. UML, what does it stand for, Unified Modeling Language, Universal Modeling Language? Something like that. Who cares? It's fucking garbage." --Brian Will, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRTfhkiAqPw
@12470. So my new wireless router was a pain to configure and is giving me cruddy download speeds (it appears to not support Gigabit Ethernet at all, in 2022, and when I was downloading updates from Pacman earlier I was getting literally 5Mbps -- not sure how it can be that bad). When I went on Amazon to see if I had misread the specs, I noticed that my router didn't look even a little bit like the picture, except for the big antennas on top. Nor were the ports in the back the same. Nor was the model number the same, or even the *brand*. All with a big banner that says "You purchased this item on May 25, 2022." Turns out I ordered a D-Link 2600AC, and I received an Asus AC1300, in a brown cardboard box labeled "D-Link 2600AC". (It's basically half of the one I ordered. :P)
Interestingly, there was a bunch of what appeared to be worn-out strapping tape on the top. I wonder if there was some funny business where someone swapped it with a cheaper one, or if some were returned and someone repackaged the wrong one.
Had a chat with customer service and they're going to send me a new one and I can return the old one at my convenience, so more annoying than anything else. Not sure I have all the original packaging, but I'll do my best. Also kind of funny. I just hope the second one is actually what I ordered! And I'm glad I noticed -- if it weren't for this one being noticeably worse in terms of supplied connection speed, I might never have noticed and just have gotten stuck with substantially worse hardware at good-hardware prices.
@12471. Just remembering that for the longest time, I thought the Git command 'reflog' was parsed as 're-flog', and was confused as to what this meant.
June 12, 2022
@12472. "Come September we'll be swimming inside her" --#mondegreen, "Ryland" (actually "in cider")
{BL #12791}
@12474. "You can only piss with the dick you've been given." --qtd. in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/thirty-six-thousand-feet-under-the-sea
@12475. "I cannot think of any death I want less than to be killed by Facebook AI research. Please, seriously, anyone else." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/06/13/on-a-list-of-lethalities/
@12476. "21 Bad Penis Habits You Should Ditch ASAP" --actual Buzzfeed headline (stumbled upon while researching the expression in #12474)
This is so Buzzfeed that I could swear it was a parody of Buzzfeed.
@12481. I've recently noticed myself starting to say "Have a good one" as parting words. I think this must be more popular in the metro than it was in Owatonna, because I didn't really say it before.
@12483. Is there a word for wanting some end goal, but not wanting to do the steps needed to get to it? Not laziness: like you actually strongly dislike the intermediate steps that are required, maybe for moral reasons or because they're incredibly difficult or you feel overwhelmed by doing them, but you strongly want the outcome. Related to akrasia but not that.
@12483. "No, that wouldn't help at all. My blood pressure would be all over the place, wouldn't it?" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12484. "Side effects include more couch time" --seen on an advertisement for a Walgreens prescription app
I think this is really telling, because it's clear that they intended it unironically, as something you would want (it's an ad for the app, after all). But it epitomizes exactly all of the worst sides of the app/online service economy -- making people stay in their houses all day, get less exercise, and avoid lots of social interaction. Yet it's all unintentional and well-meaning.
June 16, 2022
@12485. "Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn't ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends." --https://palladiummag.com/2022/06/13/stanfords-war-on-social-life/
@12486. Unexpected nice feature of my new computer glasses (reduced prescription so your eyes don't have to work as hard to focus when you're staring at medium distance for hours at a time): if I slouch in my chair, my view of the screen gets blurry and I have to fix my posture!
@12487. "Women in the Middle Ages were also encouraged to tie weasel testicles around their thighs during sex to prevent pregnancy." --Wikipedia
(Cf. #5376.)
@12492. I was just thinking that I'm not sure I've ever walked into a hotel room and found it too warm. Regardless of the season, they seem to err on the side of keeping them too cool for new guests.
@12493. Trying to get rid of a bunch of duplicate calls in Tabularium's UI. Somehow, according to the inspect module, stuff keeps getting called from a function BEFORE THE FIRST LINE OF THAT FUNCTION.
@12494. Uh, Copilot?
@@@
newEntry = db.entries.Entry(
name=occurrenceToCreate.ref,
type=entry.type,
source=entry.source,
source_url=entry.source_url,
source_date=entry.source_date,
source_author=entry.source_author,
source_license=entry.source_license,
source_license_url=entry.source_license_url,
source_license_text=entry.source_license_text,
source_license_text_url=entry.source_license_text_url,
source_license_text_url_text=entry.source_license_text_url_text,
source_license_text_url_text_url=entry.source_license_text_url_text_url,
source_license_text_url_text_url_text=entry.source_license_text_url_text_url_text,
source_license_text_url_text_url_text_url=entry.source_license_text_url_text_url_text_url,
source_license_text_url_text_url_text_url_text=entry.source_license_text_url_text_url_text_url_text,
source_license_text_url_text_url_text_url_text_url=entry.source_license_text_url_text_url_text_
@@@
@12495. "Weather today was ridiculous. At 6:30 AM it said scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. At 9:45 it was dark as night. At 10:00 it was pouring. At 2:00 it was gorgeous sun and 65 degrees. At 6:00 it was 87 degrees again! WTF God." --CB60.25
@12496. "Ten years ago, the news was full of stories about how some teenager stole a gumdrop and was sentenced to nine hundred billion years in jail. At some point, there was a genre shift to stories about how some hardened criminal murdered fifty people with an axe and the judge let him go with a warning because having jails felt racist." --Scott Alexander
@12499. "The Iranian yogurt is not the issue here!" --https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/bjd41e/aita_for_throwing_away_my_boyfriends_potentially/
@12503. "I have *several* books, Mom." --#overheard phone conversation on the Empire Builder
@12504. "The best revenge is to not be like that." --_Meditations_ 6:6
@12506. "We make hydraulic hoses while you wait." --seen from the window of the Empire Builder
@12507. "My dog is perfect!" --child, in a children's sermon about perfection
@12508. "Some people want to walk. I don't know why." --woman, when her child asked why they should stay on the right side of the moving walkway at the airport
(I was tempted to retort as I passed, "Because it's a moving walkway, not a moving STANDway," but of course did not.)
@12509. "Unless disaster strikes, we'll be fine." --man to a woman, #overheard in the airport security line
@12510. "Even Brits wouldn't order hot tea at this beach." --#overheard in a seaside restaurant in Kalkan
@12514. "Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut." --_Slaughterhouse-Five_
(The rhythm is quite similar to "take a long walk off a short pier," which I also love.)
@12515. "intersectional nihilism" --#misread version of "intersectional feminism"
Now I can't stop thinking about what this would mean.
@12516. "It is dangerous to enter the canyon from a hard hat" --sign at a national park in Turkey
@12517. "By this method, a 5-year old car with just 31,000 miles is worthless, which should immediately indicate that this approach has some significant limitations." --Stack Exchange comment
@12518. "synomyms" --found in the Wiley author resources on indexing
@12519. I had a discussion with one of my colleagues the other day about the perfect tense and realized that I had actually had the wrong impression of the distinction. The line I took exception to in what he had asked me to read for style was something to the effect of, "We worked hard for the last two months to bring you this update." I pointed out that it needs to be "we have worked" (or maybe continuous, "we have been working"), and I said this was because "it's complete."
He asked, "But wouldn't that mean we aren't going to work hard anymore?"
The answer to that, of course, is no, that's just not the impression a native speaker gets from that sentence, but I couldn't square that fact with my explanation, so I spent my next two showers thinking about this, and I realized that my explanation was completely wrong. The distinction isn't about whether the action is "complete" per se, but whether it *continues uninterrupted through the present moment*. (If anything, I was backwards -- the simple past is arguably more complete than the present perfect since its action does not continue through the present.) I came up with two interesting examples demonstrating this.
(1) Life and death: correct tense is mutually exclusive.
(a) I have lived for 27 years.
Correct: So far 27 years of living have elapsed for me,
and I am still living at the present moment.
(b) *I lived for 27 years.
Wrong: This statement is semantically invalid
in any plausible world except the afterlife,
because it implies the action does not continue through the present,
and thus that I'm now dead.
(It would be semantically valid to say instead,
"I lived in the United States for 27 years";
this is different because one can cease to live in a place and still make statements.
But this would be factually incorrect for me
because I have always lived in the United States and still do.
I could *also* say "I have lived in the United States for 27 years"; see (2).)
(c) Mozart lived for 35 years (viz., from 1756-91).
Correct: This is a true statement and grammatically correct.
(d) Mozart has lived for 35 years.
Wrong: This statement, while grammatically and semantically acceptable,
is factually incorrect,
because it implies that Mozart is still living
and the 35 years under discussion are an uninterrupted range ending in 2022,
while in fact Mozart died about 230 years ago.
(e) Mozart has been dead for 231 years.
Correct: This is a true statement and grammatically correct.
(f) *Mozart was dead for 231 years.
Wrong: Semantically invalid because this implies that he came back to life at some subsequent point;
either he's still alive now, or he was briefly resurrected and then he died again.
(Because death is permanent, it always continues until the present time
and thus requires the perfect tense.)
(2) Relationships: both simple past and present perfect are correct, but have completely different meanings.
(a) Alice and I have been together for two years.
This means we're still dating:
that is, the statement also applies today
and has not stopped applying since the beginning of the two years.
(I could probably still say this if we had broken up and gotten back together,
but only if it was a relatively short period of time.)
(b) Alice and I were together for two years.
This means we broke up (or she died).
That might have happened yesterday or 40 years ago,
but it was necessarily prior to today,
and some period in which we weren't together has intervened.
Because both (a) and (b) are acceptable, just with different meanings,
you can even combine them if the situation warrants:
(c) Alice and I were together for two years.
Then we broke up over a disagreement about cheesecake.
After a couple of months, we realized what a stupid mistake that was.
Now we've been together for another year, and we're getting married next month.
(Hey, we need a happy ending after all these deaths.)
In the case of our RemNote release, the announcement finalized the 1.8 release, so the action of working on the release continued through the present moment, and the perfect tense was required. (The phrase "the last two months" forces the perfect tense, because it means the two months immediately prior to the current day, without any gaps. This is, I think, what intuitively flagged the tense as incorrect for me as a native speaker.)
@12521. "Cats are enviable because they're immune to worry and striving, and feel no pressure to accomplish long-term projects. They are completely satisfied to bask in a square of sunlight on the carpet, or squat on a dresser like a Zen chicken, blinking slowly and indifferently. It would be nice to have such a close alignment between one's natural desires and one's capabilities." --Raptitude, https://www.raptitude.com/2022/07/what-to-do-if-youre-not-a-naturally-tenacious-person/
@12522. "'You just have to want it enough' is a common refrain but isn't useful advice, and in fact isn't advice at all, unless you're able to control how much you want things. Essentially it's another way of saying, 'You have to be someone else, sorry.'" --Raptitude, https://www.raptitude.com/2022/07/what-to-do-if-youre-not-a-naturally-tenacious-person/
@12524. "I guess technically it is the position parameter of the Parameter parameter attribute (i.e. there's a parameter attribute called 'Parameter' and it has a parameter called position). I don't think you could come up with something much more difficult to correctly name." --"Re-thinking Positional Parameters", https://www.powershellstation.com/2016/08/21/positional-parameters/
@12525. "Fuck Minneapolis, marry St Paul. Kill Blaine." --Reddit comment
@12526. "Fasting seems foreign to many of us simply because nobody talks about it that much. The reason for this is that nobody stands to make much money by telling you to not eat their products, not take their supplements, or not buy their goods....The result is that it seems somewhat extreme or strange, even though it's really not." --James Clear, "The Beginner's Guide to Intermittent Fasting"
@12527. "The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful ones (in health, in business, and in life) is that successful people are determined to make the situation work for them rather than playing the role of the victim and searching for reasons why a situation won't work." --https://jamesclear.com/nothing-will-work-if-you-dont-believe-in-it
@12528. "The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not." --Richard Hamming, "You and Your Research"
@12530. The TFR of 20-something women in a state is correlated with its Trump vote share at... r = 0.92.
--https://twitter.com/AJiazhang/status/1545237531612127234
@12531. "For two people singing over the top of a car in a Wal-Mart parking lot, it's pretty damn good." --me, dream 1557
July 31, 2022
@12532. "Nothing fails like success." --Arnold Toynbee
(The idea being that once an approach is successful, you no longer need that approach, and trying to apply it again at the next level will fail.)
@12534. No soap, radio!
@12535. "Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement." --James Clear, https://jamesclear.com/implementation-intentions
@12536. "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." --Gustavo Petro, mayor of Bogotá, Colombia (via streets.mn)
@12537. "It's the chord of optimism. It's a D9." --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIg1E1n3Wbs
@12538. "I'm just sayin', everyone that confuses correlation with causation eventually ends up dead." --@SilverVVulpes, qtd. in https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/08/book-review-hive-mind/
(Cf. https://xkcd.com/552/.)
@12540. "I tried fondling with my keypad." --StackOverflow comment
@12542. Got annoyed that my changes to CloudFront caching settings didn't seem to be doing anything. That's when I noticed I had the "disable cache" option turned on the developer tools...
August 09, 2022
@12543. "Perhaps it's only in the affluent first world that someone would think of having an education, a safe roof over their head, and three square meals a day in gloomy terms. But I saw living at home as a humiliating personal failure." --https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-kidults-from-hello-kitty-to-disney-weddings
@12544. "I said, 'This is a really hard day.' But we found the papers, and we brought baked goods." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail (seemingly about some kind of legal dispute)
@12545. "Turns out things that seem non-obvious to me are sometimes also non-obvious to Intel engineers." --danluu
@12548. I discovered today that I've had a mandolin pick in my electric kettle for some time. No idea how long it's been there! It didn't melt, although the wording on the front was no longer legible and it was warped.
@12551. "When someone calls a statement 'x-ist,' they're also implicitly saying that this is the end of the discussion. They do not, having said this, go on to consider whether the statement is true or not. Using such labels is the conversational equivalent of signalling an exception." --Paul Graham, "Heresy"
@12554. I officially don't care about COVID anymore: I decided tracking exposures on my phone wasn't worth the battery life hit. :D
(And what would I do nowadays if I got an exposure notification anyway? Probably actual nothing. Even the CDC says not to bother with contact tracing anymore.)
@12556. "Letting things slide is not a sign of neglect. It's an acceptance of our finite allotment of time, motivation, skill, and knowledge. It's a recognition that if there are 100,000 things you could do, the difference between getting 8 or 12 things done in a day is not really a 50% increase in productivity, but a rounding error in the grand picture of completion." --David Heinemier Hansson, https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-it-slide-9e40f11a
@12560. So when I first started going to Bethlehem, they were doing the old Apostle's Creed. Took me about 4 or 5 months to get used to it. Then, abruptly, we switched to the new one, and I'm screwing it up again with everyone else. Sigh.
@12561. I was riding the 17 the other day and Google Maps asked me to take a survey of how the bus was, which I did. The really notable thing about the bus, though, was that it smelled quite strongly of melted plastic...there was, unsurprisingly, nowhere to report this.
@12573. "In the eighteenth century, Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon) ventured this explanation: God stopped [on the seventh day of creation] to show us that what we create becomes meaningful only once we stop creating it and start remembering why it was worth creating in the first place." --_The Sabbath World_, Judith Shulevitz
@12574. "This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution." --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12575. "Before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This procedure makes good use of the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing others to line up behind them." --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12576. "There are situations in which anchoring appears reasonable. After all, it is not surprising that people who are asked difficult questions clutch at straws, and the anchor is a plausible straw. If you know next to nothing about the trees of California and are asked whether a redwood can be taller than 1,200 feet, you might infer that this number is not too far from the truth. Somebody who knows the true height thought up that question, so the anchor may be a valuable hint. However, a key finding of anchoring research is that anchors that are obviously random can be just as effective as potentially informative anchors." --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12577. "The statistician David Freedman used to say that if the topic of regression comes up in a criminal or civil trial, the side that must explain regression to the jury will lose the case." --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12578. "Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle." --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12579. "My personal hindsight-avoiding policy is to be either very thorough or completely casual when making a decision with long-term consequences. Hindsight is worse when you think a little, just enough to tell yourself later, 'I almost made a better choice.'" --_Thinking, Fast and Slow_, Daniel Kahneman
@12580. "I'm not a person who is easily offended. There's a lot I don't like in this world. There's plenty of stuff that makes me angry, but the only things I can think of that really offend me, that truly affront my sense of decency, are cartoons in which animals wear sunglasses and say 'awesome' all the time." --David Sedaris, _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12581. "At twenty-two, you are built for poverty and rejection. And you know why? Because you're good-looking. You might not realize it this morning, but thirty years from now, you will pull out pictures of yourself taken on this day and think, Why did nobody tell me I was so fucking attractive?" --David Sedaris, _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12582. "The writer Douglas Carter Beane hired my sister to act in one of his plays and was later heard to say, 'What do you call it when Amy Sedaris recites one of your lines? A coincidence.'" --David Sedaris, _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12583. "The only thing I miss about being sober is not getting high with Amy." --David Sedaris, _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12584. "After thirty years together, sleeping is the new having sex." --David Sedaris, _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12586. "Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces." --Saul Bellow, qtd. in _Happy-Go-Lucky_
@12587. "His grandmother sat at the picnic table eating toast and discussing death." --Anne Carson, _Autobiography of Red_
@12588. "Not only am I not Jesus, but neither, dear reader, are you. And yet we often expect that of ourselves." --Emmy Kegler, _All Who Are Weary_
@12589. "He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes." --_Slaughterhouse-Five_
@12590. "[Maggie White] was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away. She hadn't had even one baby yet. She used birth control." --_Slaughterhouse-Five_
@12592. "The joke among gay congressional staffers was that NIH stood for Not Interested in Homosexuals." --_And the Band Played On_
@12594. "[The] education program consisted of symposiums on AIDS with eminent scientists and researchers. Unfortunately, though, the symposiums' audiences were all full of the same 500 well-informed people." --_And the Band Played On_
@12595. Throughout the four-day meeting, representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stoically insisted otherwise. "We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union," said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn't resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, "And they won't, all right." In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: "You have AIDS--bang, bang, bang."
--_And the Band Played On_
@12596. "Here I've got AIDS, and I didn't even have any fun getting it." --_And the Band Played On_
@12597. "At one time, Gaetan [Dugas] had been what every man wanted from gay life; by the time he died, he had become what every man feared." --_And the Band Played On_
@12599. "AIDSpeak still dominated public health decision making, and those rules decreed that, even in a deadly epidemic, you weren't supposed to do anything that might hurt somebody's feelings." --_And the Band Played On_
@12600. "When the San Diego AIDS Project started its 'Ban-AIDS' campaign, it found opposition from an even more unusual corner. Johnson & Johnson used a cease and desist order to halt the campaign, claiming the 'Ban-AIDS' slogan was an infringement on their trademark 'Band-Aids.'" --_And the Band Played On_
@12601. "As far as Kramer was concerned, AIDS was not the wrath of God but the wrath of heterosexuals. Heterosexuals had decreed that gays could not legally marry or even live together in any semblance of openness without risking ignominy. The gay movement, in Kramer's view, had colluded with straights by becoming a cause of sexual liberation, rather than human liberation." --_And the Band Played On_
@12602. "My future wife, then a girlfriend of less than a year, once challenged me to consider if I was a perfectionist. I replied, with full sincerity, 'I couldn't be a perfectionist. I've never done anything even close to perfect in my entire life.'" --Emmy Kegler, _All Who Are Weary_
@12603. "I remind myself that even Paul...did not get DMs from strangers at three a.m." --Emmy Kegler, _All Who Are Weary_
@12605. "All utilitarian philosophers have one thing in common: hypothetical scenarios about bodily harm to children." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-what-we-owe-the-future
@12606. "I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not for our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex." --@jackhandy, qtd. in above
@12608. "Coming Soon will be going away shortly" --Microsoft Outlook, as seen in https://thedailywtf.com/articles/poetry-in-motion
@12609. "Why does the United States require people who want to purchase...a curved piece of plastic to get a prescription, preceded by a costly medical exam?" --https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/great-american-eye-exam-scam/602482/
@12610. "This is not a conversation with someone you love. This is a conversation with someone who is trying to scam you." --https://www.getfilteroff.com/scammer-bot-series/555-1234
@12611. "Avoid anything labeled as a 'Student Dictionary' because it will lack words, seemingly at random, but actually somehow pre-chosen from the set of words you would like defined." --Reddit comment
@12612. Just replayed _M&M's: The Lost Formulas_ (at somewhere around 5 fps because I couldn't get DirectX to work properly in my virtualized Windows XP environment -- added an extra challenge, which was probably good because, though I'm not as good as I once was, I was still good enough to end the game with over 80 extra lives!). I appreciate the cutscenes even more nowadays, though they were always good -- whoever wrote them was quite clever and snuck a few bits in that would be funny for adults. Lots of work humor. I had never realized before that Yellow is supposed to have a crush on Green, though Red is hardly immune either (obvious now, but not when I was 7). And at the end, as the camera pulls away from the cruise ship and you only hear audio, Red does a hilarious Greta Garbo imitation ("Go away from me! I vant to be alone!").
Really a remarkably good game for its time. Also...double-digit subtraction is still difficult!
@12615. Amusing moments of ridiculously unlikely but completely useless chance occurrences: I was sitting at the computer playing SuperTuxKart and pressed the key for a handbrake turn at *precisely* the moment a car skidded outside on Hennepin -- and I do mean precisely, aligned with both the start and the finish of my keypress!
@12616. "Tip: First and foremost, focus on where your cart is going." --SuperTuxKart
Kinda important when driving. Come to think of it, I see a lot of folks on the roads who don't seem to know this tip.
@12618. I'm writing a review on U-Haul's website and apparently the text of reviews can't contain colons.
@12619. "When I left, they were nonbinary." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12622. "I started out saying no, and I'll finish saying no!" --#latenightvoicememo, 5:28 AM
(Cf. #7910.)
@12624. "As usual, the computer's right and I'm wrong." --me, coding
@12625.
Huge explosion outside on 25th between Emerson and Hennepin. I poke my head out the window and hear:
(looking up) "Do you know what that was!?"
"It was the power line here, from the branches!"
I guess they shorted out a transformer or something while taking down a tree. My power's still on, though!
@12626. "Apparently, code review and getting enough sleep are good ideas." --https://twitchard.github.io/posts/2019-10-13-software-development-and-the-false-promise-of-science.html
September 09, 2022
@12628. "Has someone tried unplugging the United States and plugging it back in?" --sign in front of an independent computer shop in Lindström
@12629. "Incels are not part of the asexual community" --sidebar of /r/Asexual
@12630. "This is what we call 'giving the answer away', in a very unhelpful manner." --me, in a demo video on creating flashcards for a book
@12631. "This is just stupid!" --me, after rewriting a card three times
@12637. "Not sure what the correct behavior here is, but it's not that" --me, in a RemNote bug report
@12638. "One way I often like to think about behavioral questions is this: if everyone followed in these footsteps, would it make the whole organization (or community) overall better or worse?" --Sophie Alpert, https://sophiebits.com/2018/12/03/yak-shaving-fixing.html
@12639.
You have probably never written a significant piece of correct software.
That's not a value judgement. It's certainly not a criticism of your competence. I can say with almost complete confidence that every non-trivial piece of software I have written contains at least one bug. You might have written small libraries that are essentially bug free, but the chance that you have written a non-trivial bug free program is tantamount to zero.
I don't even mean this in some pedantic academic sense. I'm talking about behaviour where if someone spotted it and pointed it out to you you would probably admit that it's a bug. It might even be a bug that you cared about.
Why is this?
Well, lets start with why it's not: It's not because we don't know how to write correct software. We've known how to write software that is more or less correct (or at least vastly closer to correct than the norm) for a while now. If you look at the NASA development process they're pretty much doing it.
Also, if you look at the NASA development process you will probably conclude that we can't do that. It's orders of magnitude more work than we ever put into software development. It's process heavy, laborious, and does not adapt well to changing requirements or tight deadlines.
The problem is not that we don't know how to write correct software. The problem is that correct software is too expensive.
--"The Economics of Software Correctness", https://hypothesis.works/articles/economics-of-software-correctness/
@12640. "One thing that *won't* improve your ability to find bugs is feeling bad about yourself and trying really hard to write correct software, then feeling guilty when you fail." --"The Economics of Software Correctness", https://hypothesis.works/articles/economics-of-software-correctness/
@12642. "Lots of important things in life are outlier-driven, like jobs, employees, or relationships, and of course the most important thing of all, blog posts." --Ben Kuhn, https://www.benkuhn.net/outliers/
@12643. "One wonders what the judging criteria are for sound mixing at the Academy Awards, since it certainly seems like 'legible speech' isn't one of them." --https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32879737
@12645. "There is no secret math. The biggest mistake people make with statistics is to distrust their intuition. In reality, once you do all the math, the things that seemed like they'd be problems are in fact problems. If anything, the math just turns up more things to worry about." --"The cathedral of statistical control," https://dynomight.net/control/
@12646. "It's really remarkable how often, at how many different points in their history, they've been doing the exact most reasonable thing." --Benjamin Hoffman, of the Quakers (http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/why-i-am-not-a-quaker-even-though-it-often-seems-as-though-i-should-be/)
@12647. "I couldn't immediately find high-quality studies on the topic; every study I found had a very small sample size and many had severe grammatical errors in their abstracts, which, while not directly related to the study's quality, did not inspire confidence." --https://www.benkuhn.net/outliers/
@12649. One of the developers of PowerPoint happened to be right there in the lecture hall (of course!), so I confronted him with my laptop and angrily demanded an explanation. He said that I must have triggered the section of Microsoft Office that tries to detect and prevent any discussion of logical paradoxes that are too dangerous for humankind -- the ones that would cause people to realize that our entire universe is just an illusion, a sandbox being run inside an AI, a glitch-prone Matrix. He said it patronizingly, as if it should've been obvious: "you and I both know that the Paradoxes are not to be talked about, so why would you be so stupid as to put one in your presentation?"
--dream of Scott Aaronson, https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6718
(The best part of this plot is that I can *totally* believe that Microsoft Office would have such a code path. Office is full of weird, dark corners!)
@12650. "It isn't enough to eliminate unnecessary care. It has to be replaced with necessary care. And that is the hidden harm: unnecessary care often crowds out necessary care, particularly when the necessary care is less remunerative." --https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande
@12651. Dream: Someone was checking something on my iPhone's music app (maybe something wasn't working right) and found that my version of the sample U2 song that has appeared on every iPod since the beginning of time was somehow the wrong song -- it had the right metadata, but played a different version of the song. Also, this person called me stupid for not knowing that (dreamingly) U2 wasn't an actual band -- rather, it was a kind of collective label that was applied to a variety of musicians' recordings.
@12652. "I think people are often surprised to find that it's within spec for a drive to lose data three months after the data is written." --https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/
@12654. "Thanks again and I hope very cry Can I I love it thank love love" --message from my Hipcamp host, presumably caused by either autocorrect or voice-to-text
October 02, 2022
@12656. It's *astoundingly* quiet up north after living in Minneapolis. Even after a small town really. There's just...nothing happening most of the time, especially at night. It's odd to think this is how it used to be pretty much everywhere before humans made noisy machines running around all the time. Of course I'm alone and other people make noise too, but...not much. Not compared to all that. Not Just Bikes has this piece on cities not being loud, cars being loud; I wonder if the city of the future can be massively quieter. While the quiet isn't exactly something I find myself craving or missing most of the time, it's hard to imagine that constant noise in excess of what we've evolved to deal with isn't bad for us, and I've heard of research that agrees.
@12660. On my way home from Outing last night, I watched two people triking backwards on one trike, in the middle of the highway, at night, without a light. Triking backwards with two people seems fun and mostly harmless, but maybe try not doing it in the highway at night!
@12661. Also saw a real-time speed-checker sign that showed a sad face when you were going too fast, next to your speed, and flashed a thumbs-up when you reached the target speed. I bet this works significantly better than the standard ones!
@12664. Seen near Emily: a road called "ABC Rd". I can vividly imagine two guys naming the streets, running out of ideas, and going, "Ah fuck it, ABC Road."
@12665. "Those two women will never agree. They are arguing from different premises." --Sydney Smith, of two women arguing through their attic windows across the street
@12666. "Evidently, knavishness and incompetence are not canonically conjugate variables." --#unusualsentences, Jim Holt, "Can't Anyone Get Heisenberg Right?", noting that if Heisenberg was more willing to actually help Hitler, he was less competent
@12667. "It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." --the Reverend Andrew Mackerel, in _The Mackerel Plaza_, qtd. by Holt in "Dawkins and the Deity"
@12668. "Most of the issues of attribution turn on technical arguments of such subtlety that they make, say, the epic scholarly dispute over the corrected text of _Ulysses_ that took place in the 1980s look like junior-high forensics." --Jim Holt, "Truth and Reference: A Philosophical Feud"
@12669. "For a genius, the only accusation worse than intellectual theft is dimness." --Jim Holt, "Truth and Reference: A Philosophical Feud"
@12670. "Marta said to her father, Let's begin at the beginning, and it was as if all they needed to do was to sit down at the table and start making dolls with fingers grown suddenly agile and exact, having regained their former skill after a long period of inactivity. These are the delusions of the pure and the unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man, the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless." --_The Cave_, José Saramago, p. 56
@12673. "I'm on the other side of tired." --Asta, _La Belle Sauvage_, after Malcolm asks if she's tired
@12675. "A few years ago I would have left such tasks to 'the adults in the room.' There are no such adults. Someone has to, and no one else will." --Zvi Mowshowitz, on a startup he's launching to improve government
@12677. "I think you're going to struggle to find anyone who's actually dropped fossilised sharks teeth out a Cessna 172 in cremation bags." --Stack Exchange comment, https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/66676/what-would-be-the-safest-way-to-drop-thousands-of-small-hard-objects-from-a-typ (#unusualsentences)
@12679. "In many genres of music, printing mistakes are more common than augmented or diminished octaves." --https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/90421/having-trouble-with-accidentals-note-for-note-vs-traditional
@12681. "'Country' music nowadays is 'I have a truck and sound like a congested goose; please sleep with me.'" --YouTube comment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7im5LT09a0
@12682. "He is surpassing my lowest expectations" --Reddit comment, of a politician
@12683. "If height followed the same distribution as income, Elon Musk, who made $121b in 2021, would be about 85,000 km tall, or about a quarter of the distance from the earth to the moon."
@12685. "In a series of daring experiments, Lockheed test pilots (wearing parachutes and with the doors open!) deliberately flew an Electra at maximum speed into the strongest turbulence they could find, in the wake of California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, while a specialized device vibrated the wings, and then pulled up sharply in an attempt to get the wings to break off." --https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/physics-strikes-back-the-crashes-of-braniff-flight-542-and-northwest-orient-flight-710-2b3e2176c221
@12686. "Leftist and statist organizations propose policy primarily on the basis of symbolism rather than whether the proposal would work in practice. Usually what they propose would sabotage the very cause they say they wish to promote if it were implemented. Often the motivations are various internal struggles." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/why-balsa-research-is-worthwhile/
@12687. "And then that happened, of course, because Ben lives in a simulation." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12688. "I'll get you a *fake* Rolex. Forty bucks each." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12691. "Flying economy class is the most expensive way to feel poor." --YouTube comment
@12692. "This question of whether we are in a simulation or not is actually rather trivial: yes, in some universes we are a simulation, and no, in some other universes we are not." --https://aeon.co/essays/ten-questions-about-the-hard-limits-of-human-intelligence
October 18, 2022
@12693. "SpaceX has 12,000 people and are making *rockets* so it seems like some degree of danger will be inherent." --Hacker News comment
@12694. "Comparing to itself is potentially useless" --TypeScript
@12697. "Implemented a crappy REL (like a REPL but it's so crappy it doesn't print anything yet)." --commit log for Rise
@12698. "shortly before the panini" --Reddit comment (typo for "pandemic")
@12699. I keep writing "impassible" instead of "impassable" for a tile in my roguelike, which I guess implies that other tiles are conscious.
@12702. "I write that in a very small font in the hopes you won't notice how stupid it sounds." --Aceso Under Glass, https://acesounderglass.com/tag/selfhelpepistemics/
@12703. "In general, studies of acupuncture have shown that it kind of works, but Official Legitimate Chinese Medicine Points don't do any better than a random spot, so this adds more legitimacy to randomly stabbing yourself than it does to meridian points." --Aceso Under Glass, https://acesounderglass.com/tag/selfhelpepistemics/
November 02, 2022
@12704. "The [Malleus Maleficarum] has three parts. Part 1 is basically Summa Theologica, except all the questions are about witches. Part 2 is basically the DSM 5, except every condition is witchcraft. Part 3 is a manual for judges presiding over witch trials." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-malleus-maleficarum
@12705. "He concludes that if a witness is scared that they might be harmed if their identity is revealed, their identity should be kept a secret, WHICH BY THE WAY MEANS THAT THE F@#KING INQUISITION HAS MORE PRINCIPLES THAN THE NEW YORK TIMES." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-malleus-maleficarum
@12707. NetHack game: on DL:3, found a coaligned altar, a +5 leather armor, a large bookstore as a wizard, and my first sacrifice yielded Magicbane. I'm probably gonna die horribly now.
(Update: I actually won this one!)
@12709. "Human sexuality course, with lab" --#latenightvoicememo
@12710. "I feel like we're not an app family." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12712. "Yes Virginia, phylogeny sometimes recapitulates ontogeny." --_When Einstein Walked with Gödel_, p. 41
@12715. "People who say 'oh there was no rush why is Musk moving so fast' are the ones who think [it's] fine to take seven years to paint the curbs for a new bus lane because it is important to have the proper public comment periods." --Zvi Mowshowitz
@12716. "Of course this will not work in the browser, it uses compiled C and C++. Webpack is not magic, it's an abomination that tricks people into thinking front-end and back-end are the same thing. Excuse me for getting emotional." --https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3/issues/72
@12717. Can webpack really not come up with a better error message for importing a file that doesn't exist than "Field 'browser' doesn't contain a valid alias configuration"? Drives me crazy.
@12720. "Eliza and I believed then what I believe even now: That life can be painless, provided that there is sufficient peacefulness for a dozen or so rituals to be repeated simply endlessly. Life, ideally, I think, should be like the Minuet or the Virginia Reel or the Turkey Trot, something ideally mastered in a dancing school." --Wilbur, _Slapstick_, Kurt Vonnegut
@12721. "If you find no joy in the snow, you will have no joy and the same amount of snow." --/r/minnesota comment
@12723. "The point is, crunch the numbers using the specifics of your personal situation, instead of making a six-figure decision based on an oversimplified cliche." --Paula, _Afford Anything_
@12724. "I guess you know you love someone when all of their weaknesses play to you as strengths." --https://theartofreading.wordpress.com/tag/kurt-vonnegut/
@12725. "The clue that this is actually a thought experiment is the two light-seconds of superconducting wire that stretch out into space." --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0
@12726. "French speakers who use Emacs may like this thread." --in an Art of Memory post
@12727. "no more effect than spitting in the Great Lakes" --qtd. in a Veritasium video
@12728. "Please don't rush out to abuse drugs just because you read about them in an article on how they contributed to a $10 billion bankruptcy." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-psychopharmacology-of-the-ftx
@12729. "For the debates around gayness, the conservatives would yell that it was a choice, and the liberals would yell that it wasn't. This always made me feel a little uneasy - why does it matter if it's a choice or not? It felt like the liberal position was implicitly acknowledging that a man sucking dick would not actually be okay if he had full control over the decision. Why are nonstandard preferences only valid if you are a victim to them?" --Aella, https://aella.substack.com/p/what-a-woman-is
@12730. "Just you put good stuff into the universe and most of the time the universe will return good stuff to you. And even if it doesn't, you should still be enjoying it." --David Heinemeier Hansson, https://world.hey.com/dhh/you-can-either-buy-attention-or-earn-it-d1ab404b
@12736. "Steering & driving patterns are sufficiently unique as to allow identification of drivers from as little as one turn in some cases." --https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity
@12737. "The death threats against me are all by losers who probably don't know which side of a gun you shoot someone with." --Scott Alexander
@12738. I want to write a blog post about how embarrassing it is that eBooks are so shitty. There are so many ways that they could be better than paper books, but they aren't in pretty much any way, except that (a) you can get them quickly and cheaply because they have no physical manifestation, and (b) they have a (terrible) full-text search feature (so terrible that sometimes paging through the book is easier).
There might be some interesting social effects. Like why is less effort being put in to make them look good? It seems easier? People are lazy? There aren't centuries of design history?
I think there's also a problem in that eBook readers are sold by publishers and booksellers, rather than hardware companies. Such companies have less of an incentive to make the hardware really good, because they're selling books regardless of whether people buy eBooks or paper books. Not sure how the profit margins compare.
@12739. "It's very hard to prove a theorem that's false." --mathematician interviewed about the Collatz Conjecture on Veritasium
@12742. "If your ophthalmologist says you need eye injections, you may be anxious about the thought of having a needle placed in your eye." --https://www.aao.org/eye-health/treatments/eye-injections
@12743. "Some accidents are more accidental than others." --me, https://controlaltbackspace.org/sabbatical/
@12745. "Common beliefs about designing products for users -- that designers' intuitions aren't to be trusted, that designers are poor at predicting how a technology will be used, that iteration is an inherent part of design, that features will be used in unanticipated ways, that users are poor at articulating what they really need -- carry over even to the case where the designer and the user are one." --"The Design and Long-Term Use of a Personal Electronic Notebook: A Reflective Analysis", Thomas Erickson
@12747. Had a dream last night in which I tried to use a toilet that required me to sign up for an account to use it. This seems like the most Modern Life thing I've encountered in a dream for a while!
@12748. One-star review on Google Maps: "I only went past the place"
December 02, 2022
@12749. Pet peeve about having a double/full-size bed: it's way too close to square, making it easy to turn the sheets around 90 degrees without noticing.
@12750. "Senators need to be globalized, to keep those senators global." --#hypnagogia
@12751. I received a great comment on this point from Alex Giorev: "Maybe the volume of knowledge at some point will hit a plateau, but that doesn't mean that the explanatory power of our knowledge will hit a plateau. More powerful ideas could be learned and less powerful ones forgotten. I think it was Woz (Piotr Wozniak) who said that 'knowledge is power by its applicability, not volume.'"
--https://scalingknowledge.substack.com/p/spaced-repetition-for-knowledge-creation#footnote-1
@12752. "The problem is that the bad consequences of underconfidence and under-ambition are severe but subtle, whereas the bad consequences of overconfidence and wishful thinking are milder but more obvious. If you're overconfident, you'll try things that fail, and people will laugh at you. If you're underconfident, you'll avoid making risky bets, and miss out on the potential upside, but nobody will know for sure what you missed. That means it's always tempting to do what the low-info heuristic tells you and be less ambitious -- but ultimately, that ends up being worse for the world." --Ben Kuhn, https://www.benkuhn.net/overconfidence/
@12753.
When I was young, my dad asked me what I thought of a ballot initiative that would have restricted new billboards. I was just at the age of a dawning political consciousness, so I thought about it for a couple of days, then said something like this:
> I hate billboards. But it’s bad for the government to tell people what they can put on their own land. It’s close to violating freedom of speech. Are we going to have a board that decides what is “advertising” and what is “valid” speech?
As I talked, my dad nodded and stroked his chin. But when I asked what he thought, he said he was still going to vote against the billboards. When I asked why, he paused and then gave this argument:
> Fuck the billboards.
Problem: It's rare to have your position on an issue reversed by three words. I wasn't sure what was wrong with my argument, but I knew something was.
Over the next few years, I ran into the standard libertarian ideas: You don't need to compromise rights to restrict billboards. Private companies could build tollways and advertise that they were billboard-free. We could treat billboards as an externality and pay people not to have them. A corporation could buy the land for a city and sell restricted rights for sub-plots!
But when I read stuff like this, I always had "fuck the billboards" looming in the back of my mind. Slowly, it took on a meaning like this:
> Alternative governance patterns are cool. But until they're proven viable, shouldn't we try to effectively use the patterns that exist now?
Deeper problem: This story worries me: If my dad had given this more explicit argument, would it have convinced me? If I had heard the Libertarian Reveries before "fuck the billboards", would I still think what I think now? Are all beliefs fake, the consequences of randomly hearing the right words at the right age to trigger an emotional reaction that will ferment for years and slowly transform us?
--Dynomight, https://dynomight.net/valid-invalid/
This reminds me of Taleb's thoughts on "being an aesthete" (don't remember for sure which book they're from; I want to say _Fooled by Randomness_ though): that there are some places where he knows he is irrational, but also knows it isn't leading to negative consequences, and so just enjoys it because it makes him happy. Perhaps it's OK to ban billboards even if it doesn't align with our other values, because nothing too bad can possibly result, and, well, "fuck the billboards"?
@12755. "America's current policy for controlling medical costs is to buy random things at random prices, then send all the bills to an illiterate reindeer-herder named Yagmuk, who burns them for warmth." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics
@12756. "The usual authorities warn you not to take compounded semaglutide under any circumstances, but they're the same people who tell you never to buy drugs from a Canadian pharmacy because they might be adulterated. You can decide how much you want to trust them." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics
@12757. I just inadvertently clicked a link to _Grok TiddlyWiki_ from Kagi, hoping to find a tip for doing something in TiddlyWiki that I had never done and didn't know how to do! The page did not explain it, wonder of all wonders...
@12758.
Planets are spinning through space,
A smile upon your face –
Welcome to the human race.
--James Taylor, "Secret O' Life"
@12763. I find it really annoying that people recently studying systems of oppression, etc., have tried to overwrite the word "racism" with a completely different concept. There are two useful concepts here, one involving the explicit act of individually treating someone different based purely on their race, and one involving sociological structures that push consistently in one direction. These are both fantastically useful concepts and both things that should be fought. But they're not the same, at all, and it seems bonkers to me to consider it acceptable to linguistically treat them as the same thing.
John McWhorter suggests reverting to "prejudice" for the original meaning (which was common parlance before "racism" was coined). I like this approach and may try to follow it.
@12764. I am still embarrassed by Ole Choir's performance of the Ešenvalds "Stars" my senior year. We didn't sing badly, but we used these shitty glasses from Target that would never start ringing in line with the rhythm. It sounded very unworthy of Ole Choir.
@12765. "When you tell me about Twitter vs. Mastodon, I hear that you got rid of the flesh-eating piranhas and replaced them with federated flesh-eating piranhas." --Robin Sloan, https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/new-avenues/
@12766. "The naan stuffing tasted like a chana masala and a fruitcake that had gotten into a bar fight." --https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/dining/ai-thanksgiving-menu.html
@12767. "And the Lord said, 'Verily I say unto thee, seek not to put thy peanut butter sandwiches in thy VCR, for it is not a suitable place for such things.'" --https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/1598513757805858820
@12768. "Maybe I'm wrong here, but I generally make the assumption that 'self reported internet survey, n=253' conveys that I am being open about the limitations of the survey and that any implications should be considered in the light of those limitations." --https://aella.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-perfectly-random
@12769. "Rather, this small, obscure exchange illustrates a larger point: It is awful to stigmatize people as cringeworthy for failing to speak in the vernacular of a tiny, insular subculture. Neither journalists nor academics speaking to a general audience can insist a term's only meaning is a contested usage so little known that it confounds a longtime employee of Mother Jones and many residents of the Upper West Side. And it is deeply counterproductive to stigmatize those who use the common meaning of a well-known term with words like 'embarrassing' and 'mortifying.'" --https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-scourge-of-the-left-too-much-stigma-not-enough-persuasion/508961/
@12770. "global free speech recession" --https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/free-speech-a-history-from-socrates-to-social-media/
@12771. The other day I couldn't for the life of me think of the word "elusive." This felt deliciously ironic when I finally got it.
@12772. "Recognising that victims are epistemically privileged does not call for complete deference, but it does call for a measure of epistemic humility on the part of others: an appreciation that their intentions do not exhaust the meaning and consequences of their words, that their perception does not capture everything in their field of vision, that even the 'woke' are fallible. We all are." --https://aeon.co/ideas/playing-the-victim-is-politically-vital-and-morally-serious
@12774. "Many of the good things we have now were started for stupid reasons. I live in a country founded by people who were angry about tea taxes, built on land discovered by people looking for a quicker way to get pepper." --Scott Alexander
@12775. "...And multiply that by negative eighteen cents..." --#overheard on the stairs outside my bathroom window
@12779. "The kind of prose you might find engaging and even startling in the context of a generative encounter with an AI suddenly seems just *terrible* in the context of a professional essay published in a magazine such as _The Atlantic_." --https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/
@12782. "Incoming underlivered blocked" --subject of a spam email
December 20, 2022
@12784. "how about a video for 562" --subject of a spam email (presumably automatically drawn from my shortcut domain name '562.nz')
@12785. I've recently come to realize that making light of [the ace community's] problems and being quiet is, in an important sense, perpetuating the cycle of confusion and condemning the next generation of ace people to also learn about themselves much later than they would have to, or even never. People deserve to understand themselves, have a fair shot at finding love if they want it, and have other people believe them, and the only way to achieve that is to liberate the information from the dark corners of the internet and groups of queer people where it's largely confined today.
--me, personal email
@12786. "Refuse almost everything. Do almost nothing. But the things you do, do them all the way." --Derek Sivers, https://sive.rs/hyn
@12789. Unexpected benefit of being a guy in today's dating world: nothing is going to happen unless you do something, which means that you're encouraged to do something. It's otherwise really easy (say, in friendships, where there is no gendered expectation) for both people to just do nothing, and then nothing happens, even though both people were actually interested. Having there be a *rule* here, even an unfair one, seems beneficial, even for the person who gets the short end of the stick.
(Cf. ap #60.)
@12790. Administrative Tasks: petty, not urgent, and trivial to do, and yet they build up and become a pain for exactly those reasons.
@12791. "I was burning inside her" --YouTube auto-caption for "this burning desire" (in "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For")
(Cf. #12472.)
@12794. "DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly." --https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
(Cf. #11359.)
@12795. "I've just been a direct egg, disregarding doughnuts." --#hypnagogia
January 01, 2023
@12797. "It's a bit absurd that a modern gaming machine running at 4,000x the speed of an apple 2, with a CPU that has 500,000x as many transistors (with a GPU that has 2,000,000x as many transistors) can maybe manage the same latency as an apple 2 in very carefully coded applications if we have a monitor with nearly 3x the refresh rate. It's perhaps even more absurd that the default configuration of the powerspec g405, which had the fastest single-threaded performance you could get until October 2017, had more latency from keyboard-to-screen (approximately 3 feet, maybe 10 feet of actual cabling) than sending a packet around the world (16187 mi from NYC to Tokyo to London back to NYC, more due to the cost of running the shortest possible length of fiber)." --https://danluu.com/input-lag/
@12798. "Years ago a pal and I installed a system for the Secret Service that had thousands of very expensive switches on panels in a control room. We battled with a unique set of bounce challenges because the uniformed officers were too lazy to stand up and press a button. They tossed rulers at the panels from across the room. Different impacts created (and sometimes destroyed, but hey, it's only taxpayer money after all) quite an array of bouncing." --https://my.eng.utah.edu/~cs5780/debouncing.pdf
@12799. "Don't violate rules for the sake of violating them. If you break the rules only when you have an overwhelmingly good reason to do so, you will have more than enough trouble to last you the rest of your life." --qtd. in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GuEsfTpSDSbXFiseH/make-an-extraordinary-effort
January 04, 2023
@12800. TIL the Czech Republic uses a date format with . separators, but *spaces* after them (i.e., today's date is 4. 1. 2023). And this is because the separator is actually the space, and . is read as an ordinal marker!
@12801. "It's never a good sign when the insurance company is cc:'d on a letter." --Grady, _Practical Engineering_
@12802. A main purpose of my Year in Review exercise is to demonstrate that, in large part, for nearly everyone, most things in your life are overwhelmingly positive. Even in a "bad" year, many excellent and important things will almost certainly have happened! Because of negativity bias and a tendency for the news (which gains a lot of attention in end-of-year reviews, etc.) to dominate personal perception, we tend to think that our year has sucked if we don't take steps to change that perception.
(Discussed in "Don't Measure the Quality of Your Life Using the Temperature of Your Nachos"
@12803. The failure of traditional New Year's Resolutions is in some sense a waterfall model problem. It treats coming up with the things you want to change/do and resolving to do them as the important part. But the important part, and the challenging part, is downstream: figuring out how to recover from your mistakes, alter your plans in response to new information, all the day-to-day stuff of living life. The "Resolution" makes no provision whatsoever for this. But in actuality, to succeed in changing your life, you don't even have to get the goal right at the start! You just have to get the process right.
People also often resolve on individual steps that would help them reach a goal, which artificially creates failure. The individual steps often don't work the first time and need to be tweaked -- cf. everything about BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits method -- but because you didn't tie your "Resolution" back to a goal, it feels like you've failed when the step isn't quite right, so you just drop the whole thing instead of tweaking.
@12807. "Whether a particular experience is appealing to you isn't necessarily related to whether it's worth experiencing. Not all experiences are choices, but quite often your best choice isn't the most easy or appealing one." --David Cain, "How Mindfulness Creates Freedom", https://www.raptitude.com/2014/04/freedom-comes-from-how-you-live/
@12808. "By the time one has struggled through this wild and wooly attempt to find a category beyond existence and non-existence, and marvelled at such things as the graph showing 'the amount of Nothingness Force it takes to nothing some more of the Nothingness Force being exerted,' one is ready to turn logical positivist on the spot." --Myles Burnveat, qtd. in _Why Does The World Exist?_, p. 44
@12809. "No, Jim, I'm being philosophically elastic." --Grünbaum, qtd. in _Why Does The World Exist?_, p. 71
January 07, 2023
@12813. "I'm learning the language! Not through flashcards and textbooks, but by joining the Mafia!" --Bert Kreischer
@12815. "It happened on Bumhole" --#misread Bumble ad
@12816. "There is a theory that states that if you automate away a bullshit job, it will be instantly replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory that states this has already happened." --Zvi Mowshowitz, "Escape Velocity From Bullshit Jobs" (https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/01/10/escape-velocity-from-bullshit-jobs/)
@12818. "I want to show this thesis is wrong on the object level in two different ways, then move on to showing it's wrong on the meta-level, then say that even if it did make sense and wasn't wrong on two levels it should never have been made, then end by beating it up some more. By the way, I am firmly pro-choice and have been my entire life, so I have no horse in this race except the horse named Principle of Charity, which has lost its past two hundred ten consecutive derbies and is widely suspected of being dead." --Scott Alexander, https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/30/fetal-attraction-abortion-and-the-principle-of-charity/
@12820. "We are leaving 2022 without problems with which we entered 2022." --Veritasium
January 16, 2023
@12822.
Well I won't say that I'll never fly with you again, 'cause maybe
To save the world I probably would,
But that won't likely happen --
And if it did I wouldn't bring my luggage,
'Cause you'd just go and break it
Into a thousand pieces
Just like you broke my heart
When United breaks guitars.
--"United Breaks Guitars", Dave Carroll
@12823. "We pay our teachers like babysitters."
@12826. "When presented with a challenging or boring moment with another person, deliberately adopt an attitude of curiosity in which your goal isn't to achieve any particular outcome or explain your position but to figure out who this human being is who we're with." --https://leebyron.com/4000/
@12827. "Witnesses recalled seeing [Flight Engineer] Thomas turn very pale, mouth the word 'fuck,' and run away back up the stairs." --of an incident in which the side of the fuselage on the lower deck of a 747 got blown apart and Thomas went to survey the damage, https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/violent-night-the-near-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-811-ba72b3349ff0
@12828. "She wondered afterwards, when she thought of him, what it was they could have had in common, except the fact, of course, that for both of them Jamaica was cheap in August." --"Cheap in August", Graham Greene
(This reminds me of a bit in WWCR.)
@12829. Just accidentally ran 'sudo chmod -R 777 .' in my home directory (bad ^R autocomplete). It appears that (thank the Lord) it only made it into some of the dotfiles and the 'bin' directory before I noticed and hit ^C.
@12830. RT has reached the ginormous size of...wait for it...three megabytes.
@12831. "I discovered that the bottom drawer contained seven incomplete clarinets -- without cases, mouthpieces, or bells. Life is like that sometimes." --_Jailbird_, p. 167
@12832.
"Waiter, there's also a needle in my soup." / "I'm sorry madam, that's a typographical error. That should have been a noodle."
"I know how you can lose twenty pounds of ugly fat right away: have your head cut off."
"Do you smoke after intercourse?" / "I don't know. I never looked."
--_Jailbird_, from the exchange of jokes between the narrator and Sarah, pp. 263-4
@12833. "I have tried to explain to my little dog that her master must go away for a while -- because he violated Section 190.30. I have told her that laws are written to be obeyed. She understands nothing. She loves my voice. All news from me is good news. She wags her tail." --_Jailbird_, p. 290
@12834. "I observe how profoundly serious Nature has made [my dog] about a rubber ice-cream cone -- brown rubber cone, pink rubber ice cream. I have to wonder what equally ridiculous commitments to bits of trash I myself have made. Not that it matters at all. We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years." --_Jailbird_, p. 301
@12835. "To be fair to Olney, a substantial number of people disregarded the requirement and the rules were not enforced, as noted last week. That does not make this better. If you institute requirements, enforce them. If you don't want to enforce them and they're more like 'suggestions' then I suggest that, instead, you suggest them. Otherwise, you are punishing those who think your words have meaning and that your rules need to be followed, and you are sending the strong message not to follow your rules." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/01/19/covid-1-19-23-flipped-numbers/
@12836. "When you only have computer problems, it's a good day." --me
@12838. "Who could imagine that abstract Goodness might bear creative responsibility for a cosmos like ours, which is un-good in so many ways? Yet I was surprised to find that there was at least one thinker who did imagine precisely such a thing. And I was still more surprised to discover that he had managed to convince some of the world's leading philosophers that he might not be entirely daft in doing so. Yet somehow I wasn't surprised to learn that he lived in Canada." --Jim Holt, _Why Does the World Exist?_, p. 185
@12839. "Well, I have my pet answer, and I was very proud of it. But then, to my horror and disgust, I found that Plato had got the same answer about twenty-five hundred years ago!" --John Leslie, qtd. in _Why Does the World Exist?_, p. 197
{BL #13003}
@12840.
I come upon Hegel's definition of Absolute Idea: "The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea -- a notion whose object is the Idea as such, and for which the objective is Idea -- an Object which embraces all characteristics in its Unity."
Russell called this definition "very obscure." I think he was being charitable.
--Jim Holt, _Why Does the World Exist?_, p. 219
(Cf. #11454.)
@12841. https://michaelnotebook.com/bbms/index.html
February 01, 2023
@12842.
"I just realized, I do kind of like flirting."
"Yeah, I think everyone does!"
--#overheard on a trail
@12844. "Satanic Retrofitters" --#misread version of "Seismic Retrofitters" near my AirBnB
@12846. "No Aggressive Panhandling -- Subject to fine" --sign on BART trains
(Friendly panhandling is fine. Also, if you're panhandling, is it likely you'll be able to pay a panhandling fine?)
@12847.
"I *told* you!"
"You didn't want to take the BART?"
--group of three young women #overheard climbing the stairs out of the BART station
@12848. "Adults Must Be Accompanied by a Child" --sign on the fence of the playground in Alta Heights Park
@12849. "I let a few minutes go by, and now honestly I'm just so embarrassed -- like, what *was* that?" --phone conversation #overheard on the street
@12850. "I went east on I-90 to Miles City, then east on US 12, where I learned that the rental car had an internal governor set to limit the speed to 108 MPH."
--https://web.archive.org/web/20180128100607/http://www.barrystiefel.com/50_states_in_a_weeks_vacation/1998-06-28.htm
@12851. https://shitpost.plover.com/t/train-joke.html
@12852. "I think living with me must be like that a lot of the time, because I live with me, and it is like that a lot of the time." --Mark Dominus
@12853. "Did you know if you hold an ermine up to your ear, you can hear what it's like to be attacked by an ermine?" --NPS tweet
@12855. "The first two times I went to Chicago, all I could think about was, 'why doesn't everyone move here?' Then I went in February and I found out." --Matt Yglesias
@12856. "If you ask people to accomplish a loony amount of work this week, they'll go, 'No way. Can't be done.' But if you tell them they'll need to do that same bonkers amount in a single week one year from now? They'll think, 'OK, sure, I could do that.'" --https://www.wired.com/story/to-do-apps-failed-productivity-tools/
@12857. "I did not change my socks, but like..." --#overheard on the street in the Castro, one young woman to another
@12858. "If you smoke leaf, please learn to drink it." --sign outside a tea shop in Chinatown
@12859. "Unless you want to go to the park and go see beautifulness." --#overheard on the street in Nob Hill
@12861. "The back face of Google is the same as the anti-social forces." --spam email explicating some conspiracy theories
@12862. "Of all the little ways I've found to hurt myself / You might be my favorite one of all" --"Tennessee", Gillian Welch
@12864. "People feeling alone in their interests has always been true to a certain extent, but the internet has made it much worse. The excess of information allows you to travel down your path of interest with mad velocity. On the internet, Wonderland is recursive, with rabbit holes opening up to yet more rabbit holes; you never stop falling. And the further you fall, the less likely it is that anyone you've ever met is falling where you are. This will make you immensely sad. You will visit your parents, and when they ask you about your life you will have two choices. You can either be incomprehensible and see them grow concerned about things you are excited about, or you can talk about surface-level things and cry a little when you are alone at night." --https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/search-query
@12865. "If you ask an interior designer how your home could be different, they won't tell you, 'Well you could have a bunch of stray dogs come in here and barf everywhere and then we could set your chaise lounge on fire, that would be different.'" --https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/things-could-be-better
@12866. "Any jackass can kick a barn door down, but it takes a carpenter to build it back." --Sam Rayburn
@12867. "Maybe we can fix some things on the margins, but remember that right now we're publishing papers that use capital T's instead of error bars, so we've got a long, long way to go." --Adam Mastroianni, on the practicality of fixing peer review
@12868. "Our astounding success is exactly what makes our mistakes interesting. For comparison, constructing an artificial intelligence that can do just one of these [basic human] things takes a bunch of rare metals, a global supply chain, hyper-specialized factories, exorbitant amounts of energy, terabytes of training data, and thousands of people all working together for years. Meanwhile, people can produce an additional human intelligence *by accident*." --Adam Mastroianni, "The Radical Idea that People Aren't Stupid", https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-radical-idea-that-people-arent
@12870. "That scam was tempting!" --#overheard along the Embarcadero
@12872. "The idea that the state of the world reflects the preferences of the people in it is both a) totally reasonable and b) often wrong." --https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wrong-about-how-things
@12873. "I would compare keeping primates alive in spacecraft to trying to build a jet engine out of raisins. Both are colossal engineering problems, possibly the hardest ever attempted, but it does not follow that they are problems worth solving." --https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm
@12874. "From 1999 to 2020, you were almost twice as likely to die from falling off your chair as you were to perish in a terrorist attack." --https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-great-myths-of-political-hatred
@12875. "They're like listening to one person with two voices and twenty fingers." --YouTube comment, of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
@12876. "It's kind of a funny thing, I find myself not really having too many stories to tell about a lot of these songs, 'cause it's like, whatever I had to say about the song, it kind of went in the song. So, all that to say, here's another song." --Gillian Welch, https://youtu.be/9eF7gywHMxw?t=1186
@12877. Amusing historical footnote: Alcatraz apparently was nearly sold to a dude who was going to change it into a combination air-and-space museum and shopping center. It was only the Native American occupation at the end of the 60s that changed this plan.
@12879. "Feels before squeals" --obvious winner in a Reddit subthread asking for a three-word explanation of demisexuality
(I think "squeals require feels" does a better job at capturing some nuances; makes it clearer it's not a process choice but a form of attraction. It's not quite as catchy though.)
@12882. Random insight: I think for articles I add to RemNote by authors I don't currently know, I should try to always add a card or three about the author under their author Rem. They tend to be quite challenging to remember, but this will give me exposure to concepts about the author and strengthen the author card. (Of course, maybe I shouldn't bother learning the author card at all in many of these cases. It's one of those things that you feel like you *should* know to be able to talk about it, but perhaps it isn't so bad to go back and email someone the article later instead, as I often do. How often do people actually remember an article you cite in conversation long enough to go look it up?)
@12883. Saw an ad in the BART station that claims that taking BART daily for a month emits less CO2 than driving the equivalent trip *once*. I suspect they may have used somewhat optimistic assumptions, but I can totally believe this during rush hour, for instance.
@12884. "People that I fucking know are not inviting me to anything!" --phone conversation #overheard on the street in Berkeley
@12885. "Bagel, stop eating mud!" --woman to her dog, #overheard in Alta Heights Park
@12888. "They couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel." --insult quoted by Mark Dominus
@12889. "I believe, quite deeply, that when the stew gods hand you a slightly-wilted head of bok choy, you disdain their bounty at your own peril." --Mark Dominus
@12890. https://shitpost.plover.com/d/dirty-jokes.html
@12891. Apparently the first president of Zimbabwe was named "Canaan Banana."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Banana)
@12891. "But he drank milk! I can't STAND milk!" --#overheard on the street in Japantown
February 20, 2023
@12893. "One Little Snog" --typo of the Gillian Welch song "One Little Song"
@12894. "I should mention that, when I've discussed the 'shut it all down' position with my colleagues at OpenAI ... well, obviously they disagree, or they wouldn't be working there, but not one has sneered or called the position paranoid or silly. To the last, they've called it an important point on the spectrum of possible opinions to be weighed and understood." --Scott Aaronson, https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7042
@12895.
Here's an example I think about constantly: activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s felt absolutely sure that they were doing the right thing to battle nuclear power. At least, I've never read about any of them having a smidgen of doubt. Why would they? They were standing against nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrifying meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and radioactive waste poisoning the water and soil and causing three-eyed fish. They were saving the world. Of course the greedy nuclear executives, the C. Montgomery Burnses, claimed that their good atom-smashing was different from the bad atom-smashing, but they would say that, wouldn't they?
We now know that, by tying up nuclear power in endless bureaucracy and driving its cost ever higher, on the principle that if nuclear is economically competitive then it ipso facto hasn't been made safe enough, what the antinuclear activists were really doing was to force an ever-greater reliance on fossil fuels. They thereby created the conditions for the climate catastrophe of today. They weren't saving the human future; they were destroying it. Their certainty, in opposing the march of a particular scary-looking technology, was as misplaced as it's possible to be. Our descendants will suffer the consequences.
Unless, of course, there's another twist in the story: for example, if the global warming from burning fossil fuels is the only thing that staves off another ice age, and therefore the antinuclear activists do turn out to have saved civilization after all.
--Scott Aaronson, https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7042
{BL #12931}
@12896. "[It's] like smoking, but without the benefits." --David Cain, of playing on your phone (https://www.raptitude.com/2023/02/most-phone-use-is-a-tragic-loss-of-life/)
@12898. "[Minneapolis] is a nice place to live but I wouldn't want to visit here." --Reddit comment
@12899. "You know how, when you get a text, your brain goes 'LOOK AT PHONE RIGHT NOW'? And how, if you don't look at it right away, you brain gets louder and louder, like 'UM HELLO?? PHONE!!'? And if someone locked your phone in a box and you heard a bunch of notifications come in you'd get really antsy and be like 'hey dude I really gotta get into that box right now!!"'" --Adam Mastroianni, https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/its-very-weird-to-have-a-skull-full
February 27, 2023
@12900. Noted when I was on a date yesterday and trying to explain _Grok TiddlyWiki_ to this gal: I really need to figure out how to explain what TW is. It is thoroughly embarrassing that I can't: if there's anyone in the world who should be able to give a good elevator speech on TiddlyWiki, it's me, seeing as I spent a year writing a book to teach people about it. Yet mine is apparently horrendous.
Of course this is also a §ToolsForThoughtDontWow problem; it's not just me. But I'm not ready to give up.
(I think "kind of like Notion but much more customizable" was an OK start, but if the person hasn't used Notion it's totally useless.)
@12901.
Q: What's the difference between a garbanzo bean and a chickpea?
A: Nobody ever paid to have a garbanzo bean on them.
@12902. "I used to think I disliked social interaction. I have since realized -- and it blew my mind -- that I only disliked social interaction with people who aren't awesome." --Scott Alexander
@12903. "Sorry, that is not the way language works. If someone claims that a true shoe is really a Javanese dish of fried rice and fish cake, and that anyone who talks about putting shoes on their feet is confused or misguided, well, that person is just being silly." --Mark Dominus, https://blog.plover.com/prog/git/branches.html
@12904. "The only difference between us [a school for kids with learning disabilities] and a 'regular' school is that when someone was struggling, we tried to figure out why she was struggling and fix the underlying problem, instead of slapping her a bad report card and leaving it at that. And I have to wonder: is that 'special education' or is it just *education*?" --Sarah Constantin, https://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html
@12906.
Q: How do you deal with the distraction of all this and still go about your life?
A: The same way you avoid being distracted by all the other important and terrible things and risks out there. Nuclear risks are a remarkably similar problem many have had to deal with. Without AI and even with world peace, the planetary death rate would still be expected to hold steady at 100%. Memento mori.
--Zvi Mowshowitz, "AI: Practical Advice for the Worried" (https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/03/01/ai-practical-advice-for-the-worried/)
@12907. "When I first started this night typing practice, I wasn't yet comfortable typing without looking, and so my fingers were not positioned correctly on the keyboard. I woke up and saw I had collected a full paragraph of gibberish, ending with the phrase 'I hope the FBI doesn't find out about this'. I didn't remember having written anything at all the night before." --David Bieber, https://davidbieber.com/snippets/2023-01-16-go-note-go-features/
@12910. "Updates work better when you install them." --me
March 09, 2023
@12911. "As far as I can tell, the reason LLMs look intelligent is that predicting the next word is so damn hard that if you want to do it well enough, you can't avoid learning how to think." --https://dynomight.net/scaling/
@12913. "In a morbid sort of way, the disaster was a marvel of engineering -- beginning hundreds of kilometers apart, two aircraft, both on autopilot, were able to adhere so closely to an imaginary airway at such a precise barometric altitude that they plowed directly into one another, like two speeding bullets meeting in midair." --https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-fickle-hand-of-fate-the-amazon-mid-air-collision-and-the-crash-of-gol-transportes-a%C3%A9reos-ab407547b1b2
@12914. "She is *such* an anti-Semite!" --#overheard at a restaurant
@12915. Whenever I'm in nature, it's clear I'm a *guest* there; there's so much more going on and I just sort of am there trying to fit in. We don't get this feeling in cities because we made them ourselves, to work exactly the way we want. How does this play into over-rationalism, disconnection from the world, etc.?
@12917. Common error related to underexploration: assuming that something is impossible without having tried it. E.g., there aren't enough people here for me to become friends with, there's no way that advice would work for me. Unless you can come up with an airtight argument against it, if you like the *result* claimed, you should just try it!
@12919. "If you haven't used a real subway, that runs at least ten trains an hour all day, on time, then you probably don't know what it's like. It is like electricity. It's just there, and it works." --https://newworldeconomics.com/what-a-real-train-system-looks-like/
@12920. "Your 1 change are being saved" --Linear
@12921. "Please don't go ahead and defecate in front of the McDonalds." --#nocontext, https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/11riesd/minneapolis_uptown_transit_center_closing/
@12922. "The Internet used to be an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the Internet." --Noah Smith
@12923. "Twitter isn't a field of combat where heroes decide the fates of nations -- it's just a silly room where people scream at each other and tell a bunch of lies." --Noah Smith
@12924. "Shaw (2000) estimates that one cigarette reduces (non disability-adjusted) life expectancy by 11 minutes, and helpfully points out that this is enough time for 'fairly frantic sexual intercourse'. Let's move on." --https://dynomight.net/air/
@12926. "I hope terrorists try to use LLMs to figure out how to make WMDs; given chatbots' penchant for hallucination, this will likely cause the terrorists to blow themselves up or at least waste resources." --Noah Smith, "LLMs are not going to destroy the human race" (https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/llms-are-not-going-to-destroy-the)
March 18, 2023
@12927. "Eventually very serious people said Figure Addition The #*(%#( Out And Call Me Back Soonest." --Patrick McKenzie, https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/banking-in-very-uncertain-times/
@12928. "In exchange, [this book] asks a few things of you, the reader, starting with this one: put your phone facedown on the table, the way you do when you're talking to a friend who really needs your attention. Or better yet, throw it out the window." --Sheila Liming, _Hanging Out_
@12929. "Today, of course, every party is a Facebook party, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with Facebook." --Sheila Liming, _Hanging Out_
@12931. "I agree [Scott Aaronson is] right about nuclear power [#12895]. When it comes out in a few months, I'll be reviewing a book that makes this same point about institutional review boards: that our fear of a tiny handful of deaths from unethical science has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths from delaying ethical and life-saving medical progress. The YIMBY movement makes a similar point about housing: we hoped to prevent harm by subjecting all new construction to a host of different reviews - environmental, cultural, equity-related - and instead we caused vast harm by creating an epidemic of homelessness and forcing the middle classes to spend increasingly unaffordable sums on rent. This pattern typifies the modern age; any attempt to restore our rightful utopian flying-car future will have to start with rejecting it as vigorously as possible." --Scott Alexander
March 23, 2023
@12932. New American English pet peeve: "canceled"; "canceling"; "cancellation". What's up with this doubling rule? I think it's different because the A is a long vowel, but I'm never quite 100% sure here.
I pointed this one out to Bonnie the other day: 's' at the end of a noun means it's plural. 's' at the end of a verb means its subject is *singular*. WTF.
@12934. "One of the things the equity equation shows us is that, financially at least, taking money from a top VC firm can be a really good deal. Greg Mcadoo from Sequoia recently said at a YC dinner that when Sequoia invests alone they like to take about 30% of a company. 1/.7 = 1.43, meaning that deal is worth taking if they can improve your outcome by more than 43%. For the average startup, that would be an extraordinary bargain. It would improve the average startup's prospects by more than 43% just to be able to *say* they were funded by Sequoia, even if they never actually got the money." --http://paulgraham.com/equity.html
@12936. "If anyone ever demands you have an opinion on the question 'is binary gender real?', I think the most scientifically-supported answer would be 'it has a Comparative Curve Fit Index of 0.42 plus or minus 0.1, which means it trends towards dimensionality but taxonicity cannot be ruled out'." --https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions
@12937. "Welcome. This is a series in which I am going to endeavor to put together pretty much all of my work." --John Vervaeke, introduction to _Awakening from the Meaning Crisis_ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY)
@12938. "We're going to have to talk about -- what does that meaning mean?" --John Vervaeke, introduction to _Awakening from the Meaning Crisis_ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY)
@12939. Random concern about the Concept/Descriptor Framework for shared content: aren't descriptors, as opposed to questions, in some sense a form of *outlining*? If so, might that imply they have the same problem for interchange between minds as outlines do, viz., that there is lots of implicit context that means the next person has trouble following? Having trouble following a prompt in SR is a big nasty deal.
The answer here is pretty obviously to §TryItAndSee; just wanted to point out that this might not work as well as we're hoping it might.
(Amusing to think about the implicit context in this RT note itself. There's a lot, namely an entire conversation I had with Andy Matuschak.)
@12941. "This is making me miss San Francisco. I can understand not liking the skyscrapers of downtown and finding them alien, but for me it's the first place that ever felt like home. Maybe because it was so strange and alien nobody really belongs, so it's okay to be a bit weird and out of place there." --ACX comment, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/half-an-hour-before-dawn-in-san-francisco
@12947. "They say 'nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program', but this only applies to government programs that make your life worse. Government programs that make your life better are ephemeral and can disappear at any moment." --Scott Alexander
@12948. "64-bit negative gold is not widely understood, because some of its effects are based on all 64 bits and and some on only the bottom 32." --NetHackWiki
@12949. "Determining what science values by parsing science's most official and highly stylized forms of communication is a bit like trying to figure out a minister's favorite sex positions by listening to his sermons." --Adam Mastroianni, quoting a college paper of his (https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/brain-training-begins-in-the-hips)
@12951. "Life is too short to not read the very best book you know of right now." --Patrick Collison
(Cf. §MostImportantThing.)
April 06, 2023
@12952. "That record [of mine] is coming out soon. It might be out. I don't know." --Chris Thile, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRVRBPAa8qc
@12953. Just read an /r/legaladvice title as "I got a shot at a bar" rather than the actual "I got shot at a bar." Considerably less common and much less fun...
@12954. "In no universe should a mattress salesman be more professional than a gynecologist." --#unusualsentences
(https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/12k6srb/whats_the_worst_thing_a_doctor_has_ever_said_to/jg3307m/)
(Cf. #11940.)
@12958. "In legal terms, your case is a fuckload better than his." --/r/legaladvice comment
@12959. My humidifier hadn't needed to be refilled for multiple days despite it being really dry. I finally wondered if the wick had hardened with mineral deposits or something, and I discovered it had been running for multiple days with the wick completely removed and sitting *behind* the humidifier. No wonder it wasn't working...
@12963. Socially Acceptable Pants (from https://www.raptitude.com/2023/03/be-dignified-as-a-rule/)
April 19, 2023
@12964. "More care would be needed to remove that word from the scare quotes than I'm willing to put in right now." --me
@12967. "Remember that shooting trip where we accidentally committed a felony?" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12968. "Sally's really bad at E-flat." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12969. "Learning starts from the womb to the tomb" --seen on a daycare sign
(It...finishes in heaven? I guess that's not even wrong.)
@12970. I still haven't figured this one out. In the Maundy Thursday bulletin at Bethlehem this year, there was the totally standard confession at the beginning (the one about "we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed"). Underneath the final "Amen," it said in italics, "This absolution was withheld from the Ash Wednesday service in observance of Lent."
Why would "withholding absolution" be in observance of Lent? Why would I care about this on Maundy Thursday?
@12971. "There was a period of time in high school when I was really jacked." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12972. "It's 7:50! 20 minutes past my bedtime!" --girl at Dr. Mennicke's final CSP choir concert
@12973. "Money, first of all, is not real." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12974. "I hid it in the corner and my goddamned lockermate took it!" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@12978. "Humans love pretending to procreate. It is one of their favorite activities." --_Current Affairs_, from a satirical spread showing humans in an intergalactic museum
@12979. "If you read consistently for decades, while also trying out the stuff you read to see if it works, you will pass virtually everyone else. Most people don't read. And most people don't act. Do both." --Thomas Waschenfelder, qtd. in https://www.wealest.com/articles/lindy-effect
@12981. "A study by Lasagna and Epstein" --https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-from-oversight-to-overkill
@12982. The blue switches on my keyboard are so loud that they routinely trigger the "you're muted" warning in video calls...
April 25, 2023
@12983. "I threw my sneakers away in San Francisco." --me
(This sounds like a song.)
@12985. Lemonade tip:
Use a vegetable peeler to peel off large strips of rind. That way, it'll be easier to remove once you're done steeping. If you don't mind it being mildly alcoholic, steep them in vodka and then strain the vodka into the lemonade.
@12986. Just needed the word "freest", and it looks so weird. I wanted to say "freeest," but uh, no.
(Cf. #4233.)
@12990. "There's one way in which this game [Polybridge] is not like the real world: if your bridge collapses, you get to try again!" --Grady, _Practical Engineering_
@12991. "But we already had multiple conversations about how we were going to take the couch and trash the lamp!" --phone conversation #overheard in East Isles
@12992. "This is wild conjecture -- I'm only bringing it up because your wild conjectures in the comments were much worse." --Scott Alexander, https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/raise-your-threshold-for-accusing
May 07, 2023
@12993. #bandname: The Senseless Apricots
@12994. "If you remove all the things you don't want to fill your life with, then it will fill with the good stuff. Sometimes the good stuff is just silence." --https://escapingflatland.substack.com/p/internet-a-user-manual
@12999. "as helpful as a screen door on a submarine" --Reddit comment
@13000. Random English pet peeve: You go somewhere *in* a car, but *on* a bus.
@13001. "I regret that I have but one nose to give for the LGBT community." --Ron Kuby
(https://www.loweringthebar.net/2012/09/i-regret-that-i-have-but-one-nose.html)
@13005. Eyeglasses and flashlights are in a special category of item (are there others?) where losing the item is uncommonly annoying because not having it makes it harder to look for it.
@13006.
"Negative forty?"
"Just forty."
--#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13008. "Fix the issue causing ProductiveWidget to catch fire" --part of a changelog Martin wrote with ChatGPT
@13011. I have a couple of times had a dependency issue arise where yay refused to upgrade anything (even if I excluded the packages that needed it) due to some kind of conflict between ffmpeg and ffmpeg-obs. The issue seems to be resolved this time by force-installing 'ffmpeg' itself, then rerunning yay; it seems it will then swap again to ffmpeg-obs when needed.
May 18, 2023
@13012. "'Grades are for separating the good students from the bad students': I'm not actually interested in doing this. What am I going to do, send the good students to heaven and send the bad students to hell?" --Adam Mastroianni, "I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop" (https://www.experimental-history.com/p/i-wanted-to-be-a-teacher-but-they)
@13013. "I have strong thoughts about coffee shops." --#overheard at Caffetto
@13014. "There are probably not a lot of chickens that can say they survived a bald eagle attack. He's a badass!" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13015. "I use that as an excuse to have bad opinions about pasta." --#overheard at Caffetto
@13016. "I try to be a relationship anarchist, but like, labels are useful?" --#overheard at Caffetto
(This basically sums up my opinion about ace-spectrum labels too!)
@13017. "That was rude of Tracy to make me fall in love with her!" --#overheard at Caffetto
@13018. Insurance Insurance
@13019. "Meditation: It's a No-Brainer" --bumper sticker
@13022. "Where encodeURI should really be named fixBrokenURI(), decodeURI() could equally be called potentiallyBreakMyPreviouslyWorkingURI(). I can think of no valid use for it anywhere; avoid." --https://stackoverflow.com/questions/747641/what-is-the-difference-between-decodeuricomponent-and-decodeuri
@13024. "Why do I end up talking about Hitler with everyone I date within like three dates?" --me
(I looked at my journal, and I legitimately have either written down or clearly remember a specific conversation in which I talked about Hitler with everyone I've dated within five dates. Not sure what this says about me or the people I date...although I guess Hitler is not actually too far away from anything; maybe the average amount of time before Hitler comes up is not all that much greater! See /r/degreestohitler, via §WikipediaDegreesOfSeparation.)
@13025. "Washyersistersauce" --Reddit comment
@13026. The linen sheets I bought this week are a brand called "DAPU," which stands for "Design a Perfect Union." Marie and I said this sounded like a political board game!
(Also, they included a postcard that says, "Our goal is to let you enjoy using our product.")
@13028. Saw an ad on the side of a bus yesterday that I thought said "Help your friend leave the rape behind," and was shocked by how personal that was for a bus ad, only to realize that it actually said "vape"!
@13029. "I fart on you!" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13030. Someone at church was telling me that he was having a problem with his car's transmission where it jerked when he hit about 35 mph, and they diagnosed it as a problem with his battery. And *it actually was*; when they replaced the battery it went away.
Modern cars are weird, man.
@13032. "Impersonating a service animal is illegal" --sign at the Uptown Aldi
I can't get the image of someone dressed up as a service dog crawling into Aldi out of my head. And come to think of it, I'm fairly sure that wouldn't be illegal.
@13033. I dreamed last night that I made pear-walnut muffins, and I woke up this morning thinking I was going to have one. Rather disappointing...
@13035. "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." --attributed to Heisenberg
@13036. "In my 2014 review of _The Two Income Trap_, I suggested Elizabeth Warren was smart and good. Subsequent events have conclusively revealed her to be dumb and bad. ACX regrets the error." --Scott Alexander, "Mistakes" page
@13037. "For your inconvenience, please double confirm your information." --Chinese restaurant order page
@13038. Has to be one of my favorite travel stories ever:
https://mattlakeman.org/2023/05/09/notes-on-nigeria/#:~:text=I%20decided%20to%20leave%20Nigeria%20by%20travelling%20overland%20from%20Lagos%20to%20Cotonou%20in%20Benin.%20I%20do%20not%20recommend%20this%20route.%20The%20following%20was%20my%20experience%3A
@13041. "I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13." --Douglas Adams, on whether the "6×9 = 42" question Arthur comes up with in _Restaurant at the End of the Universe_ is a base-13 reference
@13042. "My gf saw this [picture of you] and we had to go to the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test." --comment on https://www.reddit.com/r/FierceFlow/comments/148nrtb/trust_the_process/
@13047. Apparently for a few years, Finnair ran a flight 666 from Copenhagen to Helsinki (aka "HEL"), including frequently on Friday the 13th:
https://yle.fi/a/3-9883118
@13048. "'Shooting a man who is hurting himself and has not threatened anyone else is unreasonable,' the report concluded." --https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-consent-decree-floyd-justice-department-finds-pattern-discriminatory-policing-police/600283194/
@13049. Employees Disgusted By Frail, Malformed Child Produced By Forbidden Relationship Between 2 Coworkers
(Someone was telling me recently they had a theory that these policies are symptomatic of our culture having ceased to believe in romance. Like, if you believe that relationships are mostly about people who are physically attracted to each other having sex, then sure this policy makes a lot of sense; you can always just find someone else. If you believe that people can randomly fall in love and be uniquely well-suited for each other, maybe with no more suitable match for either person, then such policies are obviously unjust. Presumably the actual truth is in the middle, but this was super interesting.)
@13050. "You can ignore the threats. Optionally, you may also snort derisively or flick your chin at them." --/r/legaladvice comment
@13052. "Dammit! I was so prepared to absolutely hate this movie." --Amazon review of _Harold and Maude_
@13054. "I watched a big long video about how pigeons got such autism" --iPhone autocomplete suggestion
@13055. "Sometimes it seems to me that every story I want to tell is one that doesn't make sense as a plot." --Henrik Karlsson
June 25, 2023
@13057. A bum stops at a blacksmith's shop and asks if he has any work. The blacksmith asks, "Well, have you ever shoed a horse?"
The bum thinks for a minute and says, "No, but I told a donkey to fuck off once."
@13061. On such framings: I remember a story I read on the web a few years ago about a guy whose boss got free tickets with amazing seats at an NFL game or something of that nature. When he got back, the narrator asked him how it was. "Oh, it was terrible," he says. "The nachos were cold."
And the narrator went on to talk about how much it must suck to be someone for whom nachos that are slightly too cold can ruin a football game.
It's worth pointing out that this isn't about your tolerance for cold nachos, it's about the ability to evaluate experiences as a whole, rather than on their worst parts. Like for me, suppose I got some absolutely disgusting nachos -- the worst nachos I've ever had -- and they cost me $35. I'd certainly be telling the story of my horrendous $35 nachos years later, but I'd find that an amusing part of my (presumably overall good) game experience, both right away and later.
Actually, having had my car stolen is kind of similar. I've started to get a little annoyed when I update people on what happened in the last few months of my life that they think it must have been so awful. It already feels more like a useful life experience than something that I'm upset about, or that was hard. I had Marie to keep me company. I still got around the city fine. I learned what it was like not to have a car in Uptown Minneapolis (mostly OK, but sometimes really irritating). I had to postpone doing a few activities I otherwise would have enjoyed, but I just replaced them with other good things. There are a couple of funny stories in there. It didn't even really affect my life that much at the time!
@13064. "May you get a moment here and there to lie down on the grass and see if any of the clouds have taken on rude shapes." --front page of _Current Affairs_
@13065. "So if you wanna commit suicide too..." --#hypnagogia
(I literally said out loud, "I do not.")
@13069. Dream fragment: I and most people in my family have a hidden switch on our bodies that causes time to run in reverse for us.
@13071. I've remarked on the fact that men with long hair do a lot less with it than women. Like, I either keep it loose or put it in a ponytail or a bun, and I have whatever waves come out of letting it dry; that's all I've ever really tried to do with it. I'd always assumed this was because anything else was perceived as overly feminine, and this is likely true, but I had another thought that maybe part of it is simply because people are trying to be perceived as different and creative by doing that, but just *having* long hair as a guy is already that, so it's simply not necessary to do anything more.
@13075. "I realize that a lot of you came here expecting a love story, not a treatise about Dostoevsky. But it's the same thing!" --Henrik Karlsson, "Dostoevsky as Lover"
@13078. "purjery" --/r/legaladvice comment
@13080. This is a good follow-on to Gwern's "On Having Enough Socks": https://dynomight.net/noise/
@13082. "I'm always half convinced that Teddy Roosevelt was not a real person." --Reddit comment
@13086. "After all, who has *not* found themselves planning their own gay interracial marriage full of Mormons and weird online friends once or twice?" --https://tracingwoodgrains.substack.com/p/a-gay-wedding-full-of-mormons
@13087. "Water plays an important role in the world economy." --Wikipedia
@13091. "I once read about a psychology study where they asked Americans who were going on vacation to Europe how much they would pay for life insurance. A separate group of travelers were asked how much they would pay for life insurance that covers death in the event of terrorism. The people in the second group were willing to pay more for this more restricted policy. I think there's a similar cognitive bias at play here: people perceive a prohibition on 'intimidating someone by using the wrong pronouns' as a greater restriction of their freedom than a blanket prohibition on 'intimidating someone'." --Law.SE comment
@13092. "This is not an open cockpit airplane. This is a no cockpit airplane." --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN9JzxzDXU0
@13093. OKCupid has a section where it presents two buttons, right next to each other, that lead to totally different sections of the app: "Preferences" and "Settings". Seriously?
(I think the intent is that "Preferences" are about who you prefer to date, whereas "Settings" are about how you want the app to behave. That requires a lot of thought to figure out though!)
@13094. "Confirm your eight-payer frown" --machine translation of "confirm your refund" when I wrongly guessed Norwegian instead of Swedish for the source language
@13096. "A 25-foot (7.6 m) cube-shaped balloon was somewhat unusual." --Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
July 12, 2023
@13097. "Why not send the weakest students to the best colleges, since they need the most help? This is one of those questions that's so naive it loops back and becomes interesting again." --https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-match-school-and-student-rank
@13098. "I inferred that even an African public park wouldn't let tourists get their faces torn off by monkeys, so I refused a guide." --Matt Lakeman, #unusualsentences, https://mattlakeman.org/2023/07/10/notes-on-the-gambia/
@13100. "Life is like an NPM install: you never know what you are going to get." --spotted in a random search results page
@13102. My /home partition ran out of space, and I found that peek's cache was using...36 GB of space!
July 23, 2023
@13103. "It's as wet as Ben Shapiro's wife out here." --/r/Minneapolis comment on the 2023 drought
@13104. "My favorite image aspect ratio, 3:23. Very easy to work with." --me, after typoing on "3:2" in the GIMP ratio selection box
@13105. "Minneapolis Salting Center" --#misread version of "Sailing Center" on Google Maps
@13107. "Together, We Can Reach Entirely New Levels Of Disagreeing With Bryan Caplan About Mental Illness" --heading on ACX
August 01, 2023
@13108. "Note: The kitchen timer is a timer." --microwave manual
@13111. Hold on, speaking of air conditioners, I have to go turn my air conditioner off so I can microwave some soup...
@13112. "Cheapo tile, plastic shower, spotlight while you poop, $479K." --caption on https://map.simonsarris.com/p/designing-a-new-old-home-materials, on the low quality of the details in many new houses, even expensive ones
@13114. "...not just because you love me, but...because you're Jewish." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13115. "Would you like me to tell you how our daughter died, or would you prefer to keep tinkering with your toys?" --Mrs. Coulter
@13116. "You have an extraordinary power to suppress the best of yourself." --Xaphania, to Mrs. Coulter
@13119. "I cannot spell 'blockquote' to save my life." --me
@13121. Dream: A method of female contraception wherein you extract all of your eggs, then sort them by whether they are viable or not, then return them to your ovaries sorted, so that for a long period of time the viable ones won't be released, before fertility eventually returns automatically.
@13122. "If you don't think people will be able to replicate it at their own bench, are you sure you think you've discovered something?" --https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/03/23/the-only-true-wisdom-is-knowing-that-you-cant-draw-a-bicycle/
August 09, 2023
@13123. "You don't need any of the items on this page to travel (although many of them will make your life easier). The only thing you need to travel is the courage to explore." --James Clear
@13125. "I'm finding myself back in monogamy brain." --#overheard at Caffetto
@13126. "I demand, uh, sex." --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13127. "I'm a pedophile!" --#overheard at Caffetto
@13128. "Oh my GOD Amanda, the Saga of Emily!" --#overheard on the Lake of the Isles trail
@13130. The catfish breakfast at Uptown Diner that Marie recommended to me was pretty great and all, but they charged me $6.75 for a glass of orange juice. Actual what? And this is a diner...a nice diner with good food in a city, but still a diner. I'd be surprised if the Lowry would charge me more.
@13131. TIL the letter Q was illegal in Turkey for 85 years, because it's used in Kurdish and not in Turkish: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ban-on-kurdish-letters-to-be-lifted-with-democracy-package-55254
@13132.
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
@13134. "Leave your passport sticking out of your backpack, as well as your phone, when you're in a foreign country. That's what all travel experts recommend." --me, looking at a promo picture of a backpack
@13135. "My new TB wallet fits comfortably *inside* my old wallet." --Tom Bihn review
@13138. "I had hired a lawyer for a case. Case was dismissed last month. I paid my total balance due, in-full, 4 days after I received an invoice from the lawyer. Lawyer told me that, since I didn't pay on the same day he gave me the invoice, that he is suing me. Our signed fee agreement said my bill would need to be paid within 30 days from receiving the invoice, so I really don't know what the fuck this thug of a lawyer is doing, especially since I owe him $0." --/r/legaladvice post
@13139. "On a podcast, Connor Leahy pointed out that there are larger regulatory barriers to selling a sandwich than there are to deploying a superintelligence. There are two different ways to fix this and I am open to both of them." --Zvi Mowshowitz
@13140. "When would I have put my MacBook upside-down on top of ketchup? That's an unusual sentence." --me
@13141. "Once you discover how big a step forward a single, focused Block can be, a whole day in which to get things done seems like a vast amount of time." --David Cain, _How to Do Things_
@13142. "Are there any criteria that would have identified what undergraduate Carl Bernstein was capable of? I doubt it. The only way to really know what a human can do is to let them try." --Dynomight, "Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists"
@13143. "Ten in the morning. In Minneapolis. He rode his fucking bike!" --#overheard in the Wedge, a man to a woman, both on bikes
@13144. "prositutes in savannah ga" --search leading to Bill Lindeke's Twin Cities Sidewalks blog
@13145. I just spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out why configuring an xml:base property on my RSS feed didn't fix the images in my newsletter. They weren't showing up because...my email client blocked them for privacy reasons.
@13148. At Spirit Garage yesterday they sang a song for the prayer that contains the line, "Please God don't let me die in Robbinsdale." They apologized in advance!
@13150. "Can you attach a screen?" --comment in /r/remnote
@13156. "As far as I'm aware I have no issues with your neighbor Steve." --/r/Minneapolis comment
@13158. "Human immunogoblin" --nurse at the travel clinic, discussing rabies prophylactics
@13160. "This article already has too small of a scroll bar, so that will have to wait for another time." --Tyler Vigen, https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge
@13161. "I have to say: I am now of the opinion that more 9th grade history reports should be retained in historical archives." --Tyler Vigen, #unusualsentences
@13162. "I haven't been able to *exist* without an AC unit these last two weeks." --#overheard in the Wedge
@13164. "I don't think they're going to have snacks, but I like the idea of them having snacks." --#overheard on the street in Venice Beach, LA
@13168. "don't worry be sexy but not naked" --sign at Tegenungan Waterfall in Bali
@13171. Random thought: Why is explicitly searching for a best friend not a thing? It would work basically like dating, except without the romantic part. Someone seems interesting, you "ask them out" by seeing if they're interested in trying to spend a bunch of one-on-one time with you talking about serious stuff quickly. If you keep feeling like yeah, this could be great, you keep doing it; if you're not sure anymore, you can back off (you don't have to end the relationship, you can just mutually agree to keep it a bit more casual). I think dating demonstrates that it's entirely possible to develop intimacy very quickly, and enjoyably, if you're intentional about it.
Somehow you're not allowed to say this is what you're after; like it somehow has to be an accident, or at least look like it is, when you get to know someone really well.
A key downside is, I think, that friendship is, as it stands, casual and generally lacking in minefields; you don't have to say your true feelings, so it creates fewer bad feelings when you don't become more intimate with someone, and you're less likely to lose friendships if there's a one-sided platonic attraction. On the other hand, I'd be willing to lose a few casual friends along the way if it meant I could get to know a couple people really well quickly! Five real friends, great life (#10215). I might even put a higher priority on this than dating if it were an option; half the reason I like dating is that I get to know a bunch of interesting people well.
This feels like an option we deeply need as a society right now, actually, since we generally have fewer opportunities to meet people and are more likely to move around and lose the people we know in a place.
I do wonder if technological approaches like Bumble BFF, etc., would be more inclined to this sort of behavior, just because they inherently evoke some of the dating schema. Maybe I ought to give something along these lines a serious try, even just to be able to talk about how they function better, since I keep speculating on them!
(This probably should be expanded into a ZK tiddler, hmm. Thought it was only going to be 3 sentences...famous last words.)
@13173. "I just want to spend the twenty cents to log in to my fucking email!!!" --James
@13174. "Travelling light is a skill comprised of a very large number of very small considerations." --https://www.onebag.com
(Argh, "comprised of")
@13175. "When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money." --Susan Heller, NYT travel column
@13180. "I will never understand the 'no shoes on an airplane' thing. Our floors are never clean!" --flight attendant, to another
@13181. "When your guests make up 42% of the attendees at a work event, something is off." --Alison Green
@13182. Somehow I lost the AirTag from my shoulder bag in Bali. Losing an AirTag seems like the definition of irony! (I mean, I guess it's only kind of lost. I know exactly where it is -- it's just over 9,000 miles away.)
@13183. "A woman known for using multiple aliases and being a vexatious litigant is accused of leaving a dead ferret in the freezer of a man who thought he was offering short-term accommodation to her brother, who may not actually exist." --https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/vexatious-litigant-accused-of-leaving-dead-ferret-in-man-s-freezer-1.6946125, ft. on Lowering the Bar
@13184. "I didn't much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I'd climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk... I'm bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent's yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I'd be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree -- *my* tree." --https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-educated-mind
@13186. "Once, when I was about 9, my friend Kim and I 'locked' a bunch of younger kids in an imaginary jail behind a low gate. Then Kim and I got hungry and walked over to Alba's pizzeria a few blocks away and forgot all about them. When we got back an hour later, they were still standing in the same spot. They never hopped over the gate, even though they easily could have; their parents never came looking for them, and no one expected them to. A couple of them were pretty upset, but back then, the code between kids ruled. We'd told them they were in jail, so they stayed in jail until we let them out. A parent's opinion on their term of incarceration would have been irrelevant." --https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/
@13187. "Taking up an austere Islamic vibe is like the opposite of posting your tits on the internet. Not that they don't *also* post their tits on the internet, of course, but it's different when they do it. They have become abstract." --https://samkriss.substack.com/p/downtown-23
@13188. "The human brain does not have Terminal, for good reason. If you could muck around with your own source code, you could suddenly make your lungs stop working, or destroy your ability to see blue, or get yourself sexually attracted to birds." --Adam Mastroianni, https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-throughhttps://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-through
@13190. "There's a paper written by both Ariely and Gino in which they might have independently faked the data for two separate studies in the same article. Oh, and the paper is about dishonesty." --Adam Mastroianni, https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss
@13191. "The moral is: believe people are stupid, and you'll often be right. Believe that people are smart, and you'll often be right. What would you like to be right about?" --https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-radical-idea-that-people-arent
@13192. "A Tesla employee described [Elon Musk's] style as demanding a car go from LA to NYC on a single charge, which is impossible, but he puts in such a strong effort that the car makes it to New Mexico." --https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-elon-musk
@13193. "Yes, but Nazi uniforms have a much greater role in fetish play than Mondale/Ferraro campaign buttons." --#unusualsentences, comment on https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-fetishes
@13194. Eyeglasses and flashlights are both in a category of things where losing the item makes it unusually hard to find it, because you want the item to find it. Cutting tools that come in blister-packed plastic are similar. Are there others?
@13195. "Mathematicians found a way to distinguish between any knot and the unknot by simply setting an upper bound on the number of Reidemeister moves needed to connect them. If you check all sequences of Reidemeister moves up to that number, you can prove if the knot is the unknot or not. There's just one problem. That upper bound was 2^(100,000,000,000n) moves." --Veritasium
October 03, 2023
@13197.
"Are you in love?"
"Well...not sure."
"If you're not sure, you're not."
--#overheard at Caffetto
@13199. Google Dogs
(typo!)
@13201.
The choice to include these independent conditions as 48 distinct experiments is not wrong, but it is a choice -- one that gives this paper 48 times the weight it might otherwise have -- and it is consequential. If instead of including it 48 times, the authors included it only once (averaging across all 48 "conditions"), the average rate of dishonesty in the coin-flip studies would increase from 30% to 35%. The meta-analysts' largely arbitrary decision of how to code a single paper decreases the dishonesty gap between coin-flip studies and die-roll studies by ~23% [12]. There is no right or wrong way to solve this issue, because there is no true proportion of Lindt-chocolate studies in the population. The problem is not with the meta-analysts' coding decisions. The problem is with the enterprise as a whole, with taking an arbitrary sample of studies that happened to have been conducted, averaging their results, and interpreting that average as something meaningful [13].
To drive this point home, consider that some studies are going to find low levels of selfish lying. For example, studies run on Franciscan nuns and studies that tempt you to lie to procure a (measly?) chocolate. If you run a bunch of such low-dishonesty studies using coin flips but not using die rolls, you'll be more likely to find that people are more honest in coin-flip paradigms. But if you instead do the opposite, and run a bunch of such low-dishonesty studies using die-rolls but not coin-flips, well, you'll be more likely to find the opposite: that people are more honest in die-roll paradigms.
Meta-analytic averages are not (meaningfully) capturing what happens at the center of some platonic distribution of "dishonesty in coin-flip tasks", because that distribution does not exist (see Colada [33].htm). They are (meaninglessly) capturing what researchers happened to do. And if they happened to do different things in coin-flip tasks than in die-roll tasks, well, then you're likely to find different results in coin-flip tasks than in die-roll tasks. And that meta-analyzed difference has no meaning.
--https://datacolada.org/107
@13203. "Flights are not available" --Google Maps, while finding directions between two spots along Snelling Ave
(Maybe jet-pack flights? Bird flights?)
@13204. "A bit of life advice: when you don't know what's going on, don't assume that everyone else knows better. Because what if you aren't the only one? What if *nobody* knows what's going on?" --Admiral Cloudberg, https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/countdown-to-collision-the-crash-of-latam-per%C3%BA-flight-2213-76618bf5e995
@13205. "Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are." --Nadia Bolz-Weber, _Accidental Saints_
@13208. "It's safe to assume that this new design will fail, too, but I'm feeling optimistic that it will fail in interesting and instructive ways." --Andy Matuschak, of a highlight-based learning medium
@13210. "No. This is not the Wal-Mart. This is the LIBRARY. You've called the building you're in....I'm not sure what you're talking about, you've called the wrong number!" --#overheard, loudly, from across the floor at the Minneapolis Central Library
@13211. "We can sense subtle shifts in someone's intentions during a conversation, and somehow tell instantly when the dog has done something bad, but we couldn't fully describe a banana to save our lives." --David Cain, "The Truth is Always Made of Details"
@13213. "Did we talk about this [book] yet? It's absolutely Gascony." --autocorrect in a text thread
@13214. "Yeah, your mind is not really thinking about food, it's thinking about 'I want to go home with you.'" --#overheard in Kowalski's between two employees at a sample stand
@13215. I was watching a ceiling fan the other day and realized it's kind of odd that you can tell how many blades it has while it's spinning. If you counted the impressions you saw, I think it would be more than the number that are actually there! I wonder if we figure it out based off the angles?
October 18, 2023
@13217. #overheard on the Stone Arch Bridge:
(evidently suggesting that Second Man looked like Bob Marley) "You don't know who Bob Marley is?"
"Oh, that one dude with the dreads!"
@13218. I was recalling the other day that we don't know if all perfect numbers are even (a perfect number being one whose factors excluding itself sum to itself -- e.g., 28 is the second perfect number, with factors of 2, 14, 7, and 4, and 1 + 2 + 14 + 7 + 4 = 28). It is so incredibly weird that we can, e.g., send people to the moon, but we can't answer this seemingly incredibly basic question. Like, I obviously don't know how to prove it, but intuitively it feels like the kind of thing that if I sat down for a couple hours, I could probably come up with a proof for. Obviously it must not be, or someone would have figured it out already -- I'm not that good at theoretical math -- but man.
It really bothers me that the universe is this confusing sometimes.
@13219. "Ladies, you have that little *box* there. That means you don't sing there..." --Dr. Mennicke
October 22, 2023
@13220. "For many authors of books, it's a profound experience to have a bound paper copy in their hand for the first time. It makes the work real in way it wasn't before." --Michael Nielsen, on why it's worth working on the design of your writing-as-thinking space (https://michaelnotebook.com/wn/website_enhance.html)
@13221. "If you're struggling, it may be that you're trying to write the wrong kind of page." --Michael Nielsen, on why it's worth working on the design of your writing-as-thinking space (https://michaelnotebook.com/wn/website_enhance.html)
@13223. "Despite cats' contempt for human life, many people keep them as pets." --Dynomight, "The midwit home"
@13224. "The one true home decoration strategy is: plants. If you don't have any plants, forget home intelligence levels and get some plants." --Dynomight, "The midwit home"
@13225. "I hoped that someday soon, the United States of America might have intercity rail service that rivals countries like the Philippines or North Macedonia." --Bill Lindeke, "Restoring Twin Cities-Duluth train service should be a big success"
@13226. "You can even use a keyboard and a screen to extend daydreams for months -- that is called writing a novel." --Henrik Karlsson
@13227. "Bicycling without wearing a helmet [now] elicits the sort of visceral scorn reserved for smoking in a nursery or masturbating at a funeral." --https://www.outsideonline.com/2285286/enough-helmet-shaming-already
@13229. "The best part of Atlanta's skyline is that you'll have plenty of time to enjoy it while sitting in your car, since traffic backs up in and around the city pretty much 24/7." --https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/best-skylines-in-america-seattle-chicago-and-las-vegas-top-our-list
@13230. "Passing this sign will expose you to confiscation of bike" --sign in Dubai, seen on Geoguessr
@13232. Fine print in the Hourcar member handbook: A $50 "Excessive Complaint Fee."
@13233. "Scott Graham is endorsed by an amazing selection of groups and individuals I don't like." --Naomi Kritzer, on the 2023 Ward 7 Minneapolis City Council race
@13236. "If you're not helping me become world class, then get the hell out of my way." --Cal Newport, on his Any-Benefit Mindset
@13237. "The fact that you end up at a different annual rate than the annual rate, should tell you something ;-) You are not calculating that correctly." --StackExchange comment
@13238. "Or you can do what I am doing: selling one house and then living at my mom's until I buy another one. (You will have to stay at *your own* mom's house; my mom's house will be full, of course.)" --StackExchange comment
@13239. "If you do not know that you need/want the car for specific reasons, you should not be buying it. This applies to all purchases, actually." --StackExchange comment
@13240. "I'm inclined to just delete these." --me, deciding I should recycle two books rather than donate them
(Cf. #10267.)
@13242. "A standard of success for a co-operative is that it provide meaningful benefits to its members for a period of time. It would be a mistake to say a co-operative is a failure if it ceases business." --https://web.archive.org/web/20120111091547/http://www.usaskstudies.coop/pdf-files/Rochdale.pdf
{BL §PermanenceUnnecessary}
@13244. "*Obviously* you're not a golfer." --The Dude
@13245. "Does the Pope shit in the woods?" --The Dude
@13246. "Where'd I put my cursor?" --me, looking for the TV remote
(The Chromecast remote really kind of *is* a cursor...or at least a cursor control! I have a terrible habit of bringing the remote with me when I get up from the couch and then absentmindedly dropping it as soon as I need to do something with my hands. I wish I could attach an AirTag to it.)
@13248. "If you like logic, pay the minimum or whatever the card holder's agreement contract stipulates. If you like your mental health, do what makes you happy. You are not going to be arrested by the math police." --/r/personalfinance comment on whether someone should pay off a loan early
@13250. "That's the tragedy of Goodhart's game: even when you win, you lose, because the game is stupid." --Adam Mastroianni, "How to drive a stake through your own good heart"
@13251. "This was in the earlier days of Facebook, when it was a place for young adults to hang out, before it became a place for old adults to advocate the overthrow of the government." --Adam Mastroianni, footnote
@13252. "I kept a notebook where I jotted down things I wanted to google and twice a week I'd go down to the local library, look at the list, and say, why on earth did I want to know Justin Bieber's net worth? And then I'd go home again, to read and write, listen and talk." --Henrik Karlsson, on not having internet access at home, "Relationships are coevolutionary loops"
@13253. "Rattleass Circle" --seen on a street sign up north
November 07, 2023
@13255. Remote Lake Solitude Area
@13256. Title for something: Socks in a Porta-Potty
@13259. "Remind yourself that when you die, your in-basket won't be empty." --Richard Carlson, qtd. in https://www.raptitude.com/2010/11/you-must-go-do-the-next-thing/
(Cf. #7987.)
@13261. "This trajectory leads us, perhaps inevitably, to _SpongeBob SquarePants_." --"Down and Out in Cartoon Land", Current Affairs 8(4), #unusualsentences
November 13, 2023
@13265. "If you want to have a productive relationship with the internet you should at least know what you are trying to achieve." --Henrik Karlsson, https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/internet-a-user-manual
@13266. "Now is always a good time to make the future a better place by having kids, making art, anticipating and preventing harm, building companies, inventing things, and so on. If we do this, the worst thing that can happen is that we live meaningful and dignified lives. The best -- given the trend lines we're on -- is unimaginably good." --Henrik Karlsson, "Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper"
@13267. "You know how your car has those bright white lights on the front of it so you can see where you're going at night?" --Technology Connections, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bis_4MT5SSo
@13270.
In November 2021, about 20 otters ambushed a British man in his 60s during an early morning walk in Singapore Botanic Gardens.
--Wikipedia
@13271.
"Can I have three rolls of toilet paper from your house?"
"Nah, I'd rather you just have a stinky butt."
"That is NOT the alternative."
--#overheard at Caffetto
@13272. "One of my favorite gratitude exercises is to pretend I'm a prehistoric human who just woke up in this apartment with all these amazing tools and advantages. It recalibrates my gratitude from my society-influenced assessment of how lucky I am, to one based on the physical facts of my situation, if that makes sense." --David Cain, comment
@13273. "Oh man! I don't get my same seat from last time." --#overheard kid boarding the Empire Builder
@13274. "She's asking me for a five-star review. Well, I'm sorry, it's not a five-star car!" --#overheard on the Empire Builder
@13276. Softening butter in the microwave is the easiest way for me to tell. If I put it in the center it will melt a hole in the center before the ends are soft. I now always put it to the edge of the microwave plate for about 3-5 seconds, flip it over, then for another 3 seconds or so. It's always perfect.
--YouTube comment
@13277. "TiddlyWikup Marky" --me
@13278. "Responsive design and Objective-C blogs don't mix well." --#unusualsentences, https://heap.ch/blog/2016/01/19/camelwrap/
@13279. "I think we were either talking about acrostics or eggs, but I somehow can't remember which." --me, #unusualsentences (email introducing my poem "Esteeming Excellent Eggs" to my parents)
@13280. "Would you make a car-buying decision based on how full the gas tank or the wiper fluid reservoir is?" --https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/09/04/how-and-how-not-to-buy-a-house/
@13281. "Banks are extremely good at tracking one kind of truth, ledgers. They are extremely bad at tracking certain other forms of truth, for structural reasons. In pathological cases, which are extremely uncommon relative to all banking activity but which nonetheless happen every day and which will impact some people extremely disproportionately, the bank will appear to lack object permanence." --Patrick McKenzie, "Seeing Like a Bank"
@13284. "The blues genre...[is] so riddled with sexual innuendo and double entendre...it's sometimes hard to know whether a phrase or a line belongs in the nursery or the porn shop." --Michael Gray, qtd. in https://genius.com/4934572
@13286. "I don't have boobs!" --me, repeatedly getting a YouTube ad for a bra
(Cf. #5955.)
@13289.
Arrest these merry gentlemen
And make them go away.
Arrest these merry gentlemen --
It may be Christmas Day,
But they're singing and they're shouting
And they're causing an affray,
So take tidings to Constable Joy.
--Sid Kipper, performed by Kate Rusby on _Light Years_
(Cf. #2425.)
@13293. "I knew I committed a crime, but I could not stop myself." --#overheard at Caffetto
@13294. "Writing stuff about myself is, like, an absolute nightmare." --#overheard at Caffetto
@13295. "I like feisty spoons" --graffiti at Caffetto
@13297. The new barista at Caffetto asked me today why I wanted an Americano instead of a coffee. Not a particularly weird question, but it was pretty odd coming from a barista, and it also really threw me off because that is my standard order at this time of day, and so my real reason is, in some sense, because that's what I always do?
@13300. "If you want to be car-free [in Minneapolis], just drive a Kia. You'll be car-free soon enough." --Reddit comment
@13301. "Discovering Caffetto is, like, one of the most monumental moments of your life!" --#overheard there
@13303. Carol title on an English Folk Carols Christmas album I'm listening to: "The Boar's Head in Hand Bear I"
I can't even parse this!
@13304. Had the realization that I actually enjoy doing my taxes. Which is hilarious. Oftentimes I get annoyed that I haven't gotten all my forms and reports yet, so I have to wait to get started. I'm not sure exactly what this says about me.
@13305. "[We] got our passports extradited." --Reddit comment
@13306. At Kowalski's the other day, I got up to the counter with a huge pile of vegetables, including some fairly unusual ones. The cashier asked me, "Paper or plastic?", I said plastic, please, and then she asked, "Parsley or cilantro?" The best part was that I had both (one bunch of each).
@13307. "My name is Dolores, and I'm reaching out with a wonderful proposition." --spam email
@13309. "No, seriously, I'm not comfortable telling the Internet my kids' names. I'll let them get doxxed the usual way - by the NYT, the first time they express a problematic opinion." --Scott Alexander
@13311. "Please take extra care when completing this profile; your life may depend on it." --NOAA emergency beacon registration
January 04, 2024
@13312. I thought for a while I was exaggerating how much travel I had done in 2023, but I just added it up because I wanted to make a list of my trips, and I spent 25% of the days in 2023 away from home on overnight trips! That's almost as much as 2021 and 2022 combined. (I notice though that it was lengths that made the difference. I've gone on either 9 or 10 trips all three years.) Also, I went on at least one overnight trip in 9 out of 12 months (only missed May, October, and December, and I technically was gone 1 day in October for the SG retreat).
@13313. "If you're a programmer, you might think that the fiddliness of programming is a special feature of programming, but really it's that everything is fiddly, but you only notice the fiddliness when you're new, and in programming you do new things more often." --John Salvatier, http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
January 08, 2024
@13316. "You need to play it with rhythm!" --kid in children's choir rehearsal at Bethlehem, to another kid playing the piano
@13319. I was noticing the other day that the nicest gas stations are always in the suburbs. Ones in rural areas are rarely nice, and ones in the city are rarely nice. I guess it does make sense; that's where car-dependency and (arguably classist) efforts to keep out people who might be, e.g., asking patrons for money, both reach their apex. But it seems fairly rare for any urban-rural spectrum to peak in suburbia and create a U-shape!
@13321. "That first year we brought in Copland, and it just went on from there." --National Lutheran Choir director
@13324. "Just because something is hard to do doesn't mean it's good." --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh8ij9NnLIQ, of sharpening a pencil with an explosive charge
January 12, 2024
@13325. "For the sake of beauty, only paste it on the roof of the car." --Amazon listing for a reflective heat shield
@13327. "Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exactly like I'm doing it right now, and getting better outcomes?" --Adam Mastroianni, "So You Wanna De-bog Yourself"
@13328. "And they made Joe Biden do it on September 11!" --#overheard on the street in LA
@13329. "Nearly all of my most fruitful collaborations over the last 3 years have come out of meetings I booked almost at random. My best conversation last week was with someone where the introducer told me, 'This person asked for an introduction but I'm not sure it's a good use of your time.'" --Cate Hall, "How to Be More Agentic" (https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic)
(Cate is married to Sasha Chapin -- among many other cool distinctions, I'm only including that because it came as a surprise!)
@13330. "My rule is never to take instructions on how hard I should work from someone who hasn't burned out before. Very few people take this seriously enough." --Cate Hall, "How to Be More Agentic" (https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-more-agentic)
@13331. "The second lie: success comes from contorting yourself to other people's desires. In this view, there are like 35 things society will allow you to be, and if your naturally-occurring preferences just happen to lie far from any one of them, too bad, buddy! You better find the closest box and shoehorn yourself into it, or else you'll suffer and die. Following this ideology is a good way to end up suffering and dying, just inside a box." --Adam Mastroianni, "The Slop School of Internet Success"
@13332. "Any task becomes easy if it is a choice between doing it or another harder task." --Mark Forster, Autofocus rules
January 23, 2024
@13335. "The naïve approach to practice might be best summarized by this exchange between a music teacher and his student: 'How did you practice it?' 'I dunno. I just played it.'" --qtd. in Andy Matuschak's "Naive approaches to practice rapidly plateau"
@13336. "When using this product do not...drive a motor vehicle or operate machinery." --warning on a pair of eclipse glasses
@13337. "If you have 80 million sheep and then you lost 50 million sheep, how many sheep do you have left? That's right, you've got 30 million sheep...and some very questionable sheep-keeping practices that allowed you to lose 50 million of them." --Stand-up Maths
@13338. There are more fire stations in the US than post offices, McDonalds's, and Walmarts combined.
@13339. "Spain is a constitutional monarchy, which is probably more democratic than what we're going to have next year." --CityNerd
@13341. "I've been to either Memphis or Nashville, but I don't remember which..." --me
(Actually, I took a quick stop at Mud Island in Memphis once, so I know I have been there. But don't know if it should count for anything significant.)
@13342. Who decided to make every major city in Ohio start with the letter C?
@13343. A great candidate for the list of delightful weird Wikipedia articles: "List of non-rectangular flags"
@13345. "Finally, I want to complain." --user feedback in a RemNote survey
@13346. "It feels like a banana morning." --me
@13347. "[Y]ou need a system for making sure things get done. This doesn't have to be anything fancy or complicated -- a simple todo list will do -- but simply trying to remember or writing yourself a note is not a system." --Aaron Swartz, http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/management
(Cf. #9638.)
@13348. "Remember that from the inside, being good at something just feels like everyone else being inexplicably bad." --Scott Alexander
@13349. "I notice that I really struggle to generate curiosity about problems in programming. Maybe it's because I've been doing it so long, but I think it's because my problems are usually with ephemeral ideas, incidental to what I actually care about. When I'm fighting some godforsaken Javascript build system, I don't feel even slightly curious to "really" understand those parochial machinations. I know they're just going to be replaced by some new tool next year. When I'm debugging some dataflow race condition, I can at least get a little interested in fundamental problems of program structure. Long ago, that was my full-time job! Unfortunately, most of my programming problems these days are the parochial kind. They make me resent programming, which is a shame: it was once the most joyful activity of my life!" --Andy Matuschak, note on https://andymatuschak.org/stillness/
@13350. "Once the guy was satisfied that I wasn't a threat to Guinea's new military dictatorship, he gave me a multi-page form to fill out. I did so and then handed him the required $150 worth of CFA which he threw into a cardboard box that he kept in the bottom of a filing cabinet, leading me to doubt that all of that money was finding its way to the state coffers." --Matt Lakeman, https://mattlakeman.org/2024/01/27/other-notes-on-west-africa/
@13351. "Money, in general and in all forms and uses, is a huge pain in the ass in West Africa. There isn't enough of it, it's hard to get, and both the written and unwritten rules are confusing." --Matt Lakeman, https://mattlakeman.org/2024/01/27/other-notes-on-west-africa/
(Cf. #8148.)
@13352. "Okay, don't be poor, thanks for the important life advice." --Scott Alexander
@13354. "Was that a dream, or did they [Levenger] actually go out of business?" --me
(It was a dream. I had to google it to be sure!)
@13356. "I have made a lot of money out of doing math. Almost all that math is deeply, deeply simple at its core. The hard part is figuring out what math to do. I still remember that one time I got to write an integral sign on a piece of paper in real life. I did a dance of joy." --Zvi Mowshowitz, https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2024/01/30/childhood-and-education-roundup-4/
February 08, 2024
@13358. "Cats are not acceptable cats. They can be much better." --Gwern, https://gwern.net/review/cat
@13360. "Tell them to go piss up a rope."
@13361. "They say 'it looks like a scam' because yes, it does, because it is." --StackExchange comment
@13362. "When I get knocked down 7 times, I get back up 8 times." --Mayor Frey, among other insane things in his "people working from home are losers" segment
@13363. At the Bethlehem Day of Service, while we were busy packing things someone came up and asked if anyone had a nut allergy, I guess to decide if they needed to be careful when arranging lunch. But I heard them ask if anyone had a *cat* allergy, and was very confused for a moment: were they debating letting a bunch of cats out into the fellowship hall or something?
@13367. "I can imagine that if you were stuck on a long plane ride with no calculator and you needed to compute a lot of mod-7 residues for some reason, [this chart] could be quicker than the short division method." --Mark Dominus, https://blog.plover.com/math/divisibility-by-7.html
(Haven't we all been there? I hate those days when I have to do a bunch of short division on a plane.)
February 19, 2024
@13369. "We started joking about medieval theology within a couple of texts, so that seems like a good sign." --me, on an upcoming date, §2023-01-11 Wed
(The relationship did not work out, but I did have a lot of fun on the five dates we went on!)
@13371. "Advice is disproportionately written by defective people." --Scott Alexander, "You Don't Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books"
@13375. Sarah Marshall on a podcast I listened to yesterday pluralized the name of the podcast "You're Wrongs About," which I just love!
@13377. "In 2020, Edward Forchion legally changed his name to 'NJweedman.com' and yet has not maintained a website at the URL NJWeedman.com. I submit this is all you really need to know about Edward Forchion and his qualifications for presidential office." --Naomi Kritzer, guide to the 2024 primary in Minneapolis
March 06, 2024
@13378. Learning without understanding is inane. Understanding without learning is impossible.
@13379. "That's like, the key lesson of life. Reflect and iterate." --me
@13380. "If you think it's restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids." --Paul Graham, https://paulgraham.com/hs.html
@13381. "People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing." --Paul Graham, https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html
@13382. "OK, we got a situation!" --waiter at Old Town Bagels, coming out to review some problems with a table's order
@13383. "Swing Low Sweet Chicken" --#misread song title
@13384. "Authenticity isn't a truth about your core. It is a state induced by a specific context." --Henrik Karlsson, "Self-help for cocoons"
@13386. "If there's a prize for 'blog that sounds the least interesting when described compared to how interesting it is when you actually read it,' I'd like to nominate this one." --Adam Mastroianni, of Patrick McKenzie's _Bits About Money_
March 17, 2024
@13388. "That's why it was broken. Because it was off." --me
@13389. "In the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web might be better than Gopher. In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex." --Bob Metcalfe, qtd. in _Roads and Crossroads of Internet History_ (https://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=4)
@13390. "You're making my pants fall down!" --#overheard on the street in Owatonna
@13392. My mom taught me this way of putting on a pillowcase involving "The Grabbing Hand", which holds onto the pillow through the inside-out case as you flip it back over. I think of this basically every time I put on a pillowcase and sometimes do silly things like the hand is an alligator or something. Recently I was like, "I don't have to do this, right? Surely I can just pull the pillowcase back on." Surprise, surprise, it didn't work. Mothers always know best.
I'm not sure what the point of this is, but whatever, this is a random thought!
@13394. "Writing for yourself is fun, and it shows. Writing for others is work, and it shows." --Morgan Housel, https://twitter.com/morganhousel/status/1579547522590474241
@13395. "Scientists were finally able to confirm the existence of the raccoon-dog shop in the funniest possible way: a virologist had visited Wuhan in 2014, saw the awful conditions in the shop, and took a picture as an example of the kind of place that a future pandemic might start." --https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim
April 10, 2024
@13396. "I don't WANNA get stuck alongside the road. Little kids don't care!" --#overheard on the Empire Builder
@13397. "When I get a crush, I make very poor decisions for myself!" --#overheard at Caffetto
@13399. WARNING: CANADA AHEAD
@13401. "Of Masonic interest" --heading in a cemetery brochure in Arkansas
@13404. "If your brakes make an awful squealing noise when you come to a stop, it's time to get them checked!" --"tip" suggested while on hold at Subaru Bloomington
@13405. "Have you ever seen a normal person? I haven't." --Sabine Hossenfelder
@13407. "There’s no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." --Stafford Beer
@13408. "So the place is *only* for the purpose of watching sports." --#overheard at Sebastian Joe's