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SwingingTheLamp

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SwingingTheLamp ,

I’ll note here that we Americans have no influence whatsoever on what Hamas does, but allegedly, the President represents us. It makes sense to criticize Biden, whereas criticism of Hamas is just farting into the wind.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Classic selection bias. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I remember reading that the majority of men who have ever lived never reproduced. That’s unfortunately pretty normal.

SwingingTheLamp ,

I have this problem, as well. Distorted amplification, song lyrics, speech against loud background noise? Forget it. Oddly, I got a pair of Shokz bone-conducting headphones recently, and noticed that I have been understanding lyrics for the first time in songs that I’ve been listening to for 30+ years. (I should really listen to that song about how “Shareef don’t like it; Fuck the passport, fuck the passport.”

SwingingTheLamp ,

For what it’s worth, I can’t visualize either, but have excellent directional sense.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Figure out how to make sexual intercourse or masturbation physically pleasurable. Most people seem to get it naturally, but I can’t crack the code.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Oh god, I wish that were true!

SwingingTheLamp ,

Flat design is clinical depression in graphical form, a reflection of the contemporary existential/mental health crisis. It’s a societal cry for help, basically.

SwingingTheLamp ,

It was discontinued only a couple of years ago, so you can still buy that design on Amazon, by the way. It’s the SOLO brand Jazz design.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Apple’s skeuomorphic phase overlapped the Retina display era, though, so I don’t buy that explanation. Also, it’s nothing to do with raster vs. vector. The photos that we take with phone cameras are raster graphics, for example. They look great, and it’s because they’re high-resolution. High-res raster UI elements would look great, except then the versatile manipulation by CSS would not be possible. Vector graphics are very good at that.

But here’s the thing: Complex vector graphics exist, too. There were some pretty fancy PostScript graphics even back in the early 1990’s. With all the pixels that we have now, we could have good design instead of flat, if the developers bothered. But it seems we’ve internalized the feeling that we’re not worth the effort, aesthetics and color aren’t interesting, and life is a joyless slog. Which sounds and awful lot like clinical depression…

(Incidentally, odd that emoji aren’t flat design.)

SwingingTheLamp ,

I’d be so happy for a desktop window manager that didn’t make all of the window borders grey-on-grey, and distinguish the active window by making the title text slightly-darker grey.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Interesting! I see what you mean, but while looking up Win11 emoji, I found this article from Microsoft about adding 3D design elements based on customer feedback. And, indeed, on my work computer (23H2), they’re not-quite-flat anymore.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Kudos to Obama for actually following through, but the withdrawal from Iraq had a deadline set by the U.S. Status of Forces Agreement signed by Bush, per the request of the Iraqi government.

SwingingTheLamp ,

If you can assign a second IP address to the network interface, then just do so, and bind the docker container to one, and Adguard Home to the other. Otherwise, the reverse proxy based on the server name is the way.

‘Exterminate the beasts’: How Israeli settlers took revenge for a murder in the West Bank (www.bbc.com)

What followed was a wave of shooting and arson attacks across 11 Palestinian villages in which a dozen homes and more than 100 cars were torched, thousands of animals were slaughtered, four people were shot dead and scores of others were seriously wounded.

SwingingTheLamp ,

I have no direct evidence, but it’s not at all far-fetched. The Obama administration set up a coordinated effort to share intelligence and plan tactics for the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street across the FBI, state and local police forces, and the banks themselves. The uniformity and brutality of the response to the university anti-genocide protests is… curious, at least.

SwingingTheLamp ,

We also use “taking coals to Newcastle” here in the Midwestern U.S. (Something about being descended from former British colonies…) But I’ve heard plenty of riffs on that idea, like, “bringing corn to Iowa.”

SwingingTheLamp ,

I haven’t forgotten that George H.W. Bush (the President’s father) was literally in a meeting with a member of the bin Laden family when the attacks occurred. The Bush and the bin Laden families were highly entangled in oil business dealings. I remember, too, that the only airplanes allowed to fly in U.S. airspace in the days after 9/11—all other traffic everywhere being grounded, stranding Americans far from home—were the flights taking members of the bin Laden family out of the United States, and back to Saudi Arabia.

I wonder why that attack on Saudi Arabia never happened?

SwingingTheLamp ,

I do not, so I’ll take that back. It was widely discussed at the time, so I remembered it as Bush being there when the attack occurred, not that he left shortly before. I will say that I think it’s close enough for the point to stand that the Bush and bin Laden families had business interests in common, and had had personal dealings prior.

Thanks for the correction.

SwingingTheLamp ,

“Ties” and “links” are favorite weasel words of media manipulation. They’re factual and imply causality without stating it so they’re not technically wrong. Like, “Schools linked to school shootings”.

SwingingTheLamp ,

“Connected.” Another weasel word. A genealogy web site that I use can tell me how I’m “connected” to King Charles. (At least 32 degrees of separation, including through many marriages.) What are the specific allegations here?

SwingingTheLamp ,

And Charles was the Prince of Wales before he took the throne. Is that just an interesting factoid, or are we supposed to infer something from it?

SwingingTheLamp ,

Exactly. Those are weasel words, designed to lead the reader to infer things, warranted or not.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Correct. If journalists know something as a fact, they should state it, and share the source of that fact. If they don’t know something, but have a guess, they can say that it’s their own inference.

But to use weasel words to lead the reader to infer things that are not factually supported is, well, not a good look.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Don’t forget: The perps had traces of drugs in their systems.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Remember, it’s only genocide if it originates from occupied Poland. Otherwise, it’s just sparkling mass extermination.

SwingingTheLamp ,

What, specifically, do you think South Africa got wrong in its filing with the ICC laying out the case that it is a genocide? They were pretty thorough.

SwingingTheLamp ,

What if the IDF is pursuing a strategy of plausible deniability? What might that look like? The current violence is seeing Israel losing support throughout the world. If the IDF were to start a straight-up Holocaust, those countries that are protesting now might take direct military action to stop it. Plausible deniability might include, say, fostering the creation of a radical militant group, and directing funds to them in order to create a Big Bad to fight against as cover for genocidal land theft.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Seriously, due to Poe’s Law, I have to ask, are you trying to cement the perception Israel and it supporters as complete monsters?

SwingingTheLamp ,

Hmm, is this an Eliza-type chatbot?

SwingingTheLamp ,

Seems to me that the people who support Israel unconditionally fall into two groups: The people who’d never vote for him no matter what he does (Republicans), and people who have no choice but to vote for him no matter what he does (Democrats). He can’t gain any votes by giving aid to Israel.

SwingingTheLamp ,

The full story is that Turks and Caicos Islands has struggled against gun violence for years, so it passed much stricter gun laws in 2022. American tourists were violating this law by bringing guns and ammunition in their bags, but the courts in all of the previous cases recognized that prison was a harsh punishment for lapses like this, so they’d reduce the sentence to a fine. But it just kept happening, and perhaps in frustration, in February an appeals court ruled that the lower courts could not exercise that kind of discretion.

Given that those courts had been lowering the penalty to a fine, it seems unlikely that they’ll sentence people to long prison terms. (Any prison time does seem like an overreaction, but it also seems that the country got frustrated and wants to send a message about following its laws.)

SwingingTheLamp ,

Kind of a self-selecting phenomenon, isn’t it? The haters won’t approach you IRL to berate it, and the admirers aren’t going to seek out an online forum to gush about it.

Why Didn't Democrats Do More When They Controlled Both Houses of Legislature, The White House, and The Supreme Court During Obama's First Term?

I’ve been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama’s first term in 2008 more wasn’t accomplished. Shouldn’t that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but...

SwingingTheLamp ,

Right, which is why I’ve been saying that the Democrats should restore the filibuster. What they have now is not a filibuster, in practice, it’s more akin to an administrative hold. One Senator indicates an intent to filibuster via email, and they move on to other business.

Make 'em do it. Pick a popular issue, and lean into it. Make the Republicans actually stand up there at the podium and talk for hours. Get them on camera on the news every night as obstructionists, blocking the will of the people. Yes, it will waste Senate session time; that’s a perfect opportunity for all of the Democrats to roast them non-stop to reporters. It’ll be painful for a while, but at least has a chance of breaking the log jam. (And if the GQP doesn’t take the bait, hey, popular thing gets passed!)

Do we need to create increasingly more children for a stable economy?

So in the whole anti-natalism/pro-natalism conversation (which I’m mostly agnostic/undecided on, currently), my friend who is a pro-natalist, argued that the success/stability of our world economy is dependent on procreating more children each year than the previous year, so that we not only replace the numbers of the people...

SwingingTheLamp ,

We’d need at least four Earths to sustain humanity if everybody lived like the average middle-class American. That’s probably an underestimate. We’re completely blowing out our fair share of resources.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Not really, the average isn’t skewed much, simply because there are so few super-rich in a population of 380 million people. And even then, men like Jeff Bezos and his rocket ship are outliers, most of the billionaires have 1000x more money than the median, but they don’t use anywhere near 1000x the resources. (Warren Buffett, in particular, leads a pretty middle-class lifestyle.)

From what I learned from my environmental sciences degree, the environmental impact comes from hundreds of millions of people living in big houses, driving big cars, eating meat for most meals, and buying scads of consumer goods. (Amazon shipping boxes are a significant environmental challenge all on their own.)

SwingingTheLamp ,

No, it’s actually not true. First-past-the-post voting mathematically tends to result in 2 dominant parties, but there’s no mathematical rule that determines which 2 parties. The first two in American history were the Federalist Party, and the Democratic Republican Party. The duopoly has changed several times over the years, and it could change again if we wanted it. Democratic voters have affirmatively made the choice that supporting genocide is better (read: easier) than trying to shake things up.

SwingingTheLamp ,

I think Ben-Gvir’s latest comments about a “true solution” put to bed any debate about whether it’s a genocide.

SwingingTheLamp ,

I say that if you want to appreciate the Beatles for the first time in 2024, spend a solid month listening to nothing but popular music from the 1950’s (and earlier), then put on one of their albums.

The older music is fine and enjoyable, but you’ll hear why, the Beatles still get regular airplay today, and e.g. Pat Boone does not.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Taylor Swift is fine, her music is enjoyable, but ultimately kind of forgettable. Her popularity comes from the social-cohesion function of popular music.

SwingingTheLamp ,

My take is that people value music both for the music itself, and for the social identity that comes from how we relate to it. The Beatles benefited from Beatlemania back in the day, which was the same as the Swifties phenomenon today: a social-identity group of fans. There might have been better bands in the early '60s, but the music of the Beatles was really quite good, and still holds its own today. Tons of great music has come along since then, so the Beatles catalogue no longer stands out, but they still benefit from the social-identity hype of Beatlemania, and are still revered because they were (lucky enough to get to be) pop-music pioneers.

SwingingTheLamp ,

That’s very sad to hear. I have lots of albums that I love all the way through, and although I am full of crap, I’ll have you know that that is a natural biological process.

SwingingTheLamp ,

Little-known fact: These crabs sometimes camouflage themselves on top of the heads of rabbits.

SwingingTheLamp ,

It’s one of the earliest memes, from over 20 years ago. Google “rabbit with pancake on its head.”

SwingingTheLamp ,

Huh, how about that? The pro-genocide side using terroristic tactics. Weird. /s

SwingingTheLamp ,

At first, I considered it one of those proverbial baby-splitting decisions, and thus a dumb move. The Israeli government and its partisans in the U.S. are going to flip out as if this is the worst betrayal ever, because it’s their M.O. to flip out over anything slightly critical. It’s also not going to satisfy the “Genocide Joe” faction.

After some reflection, I think (hope!) that this is a warning shot to get IDF to take protecting civilians seriously. And because they won’t (ethnic cleansing is the whole point of the operation), the Biden team better be ready to back it up with real consequences.

And the idiot Republicans have already jumped straight to impeachment talk, the New War Times is hyperventilating about antisemitism. They have no room to escalate, he’s taken the big political hit. Now there’s not so much further downside to bringing the hammer down on the Netanyahu regime.

SwingingTheLamp ,

What, do you have assburgers syndrome?

SwingingTheLamp ,

Neom, Noem, so hard to tell the difference, since they’re both stupid and evil.

SwingingTheLamp ,

This just sounds like a bad idea, a solution in search of a problem. Sure, sudo is a setuid binary, but it’s a fairly simple program, and at some point, you have to trust the code. It’s also a very fundamental piece of the system that you want to always work, even (especially!) when other things get borked. The brief description of run0 already has too many potential points of failure.

Turning Point or Breaking Point? Biden’s Pause on Weapons Tests Ties to Israel (www.nytimes.com)

The message was not getting through. Not through the phone calls or the emissaries or the public statements or the joint committee meetings. And so, frustrated that he was being ignored, President Biden chose a more dramatic way of making himself clear to Israeli leaders. He stopped sending the bombs....

SwingingTheLamp ,

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