I have never given Jeff Bezos a moment’s thought before this week. I am always interested in extraordinary achievement and often admire it. I am fascinated by what extraordinary achievers understand, and how evolved they are as people. Looking at him in his astronaut costume, and his cowboy hat, and…
For those asking from around the world how Britain has gotten into this mess: The Conservative Party has always been obsessed with Europe This caused divides making the party hard to manage Back in 2015 then Prime Minister David Cameron had an idea He promised a referendum on the UK’s membership of…
Someday aliens are going to land their saucers in a field somewhere in New Jersey and everything is going to go just fine right up until we try to explain our calendar to them “yeah we divide our year into a number of sub units called ‘months’ made up a number of days, and they’re not all the same l…
Americans are paying a quarter million dollars more for healthcare over a lifetime compared to the most expensive socialized system on earth. Half a million dollars more than countries like Canada and the UK. One in three American families had to forgo needed healthcare due to the cost last year. Al…
I see I’ve been summoned. Your comments in this thread make it clear that nothing will change your position. It’s a difficult position to combat, because it’s in such a defiance of literally anything written on the topic in at least the last 50 years. You are not operating off the same foundations o…
The Art of Node An introduction to Node.js This document is intended for readers who know at least a little bit of a couple of things: a scripting language like JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc. If you aren’t a programmer yet then it is probably easier to start by reading JavaScript for Cats. :c…
Amdahl’s Law The speedup gained from running a program on a parallel computer is greatly limited by the fraction of that program that can’t be parallelized. Augustine’s Second Law of Socioscience For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction. Brooks…
The Borremose Man died in the 7th century BCE. He was bludgeoned to death from the back of his head and had a rope with a slip knot tied around his neck. It is believed that he was a human sacrifice. He was found in the Borremose peat bog in Himmerland, Denmark in 1946. Shortly after, two other, le…
If the world were a village of 1000 people: 584 would be Asians 123 would be Africans 95 would be East and West Europeans 84 Latin Americans 55 Soviets (still including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, etc.) 52 North Americans 6 Australians and New Zealanders The people of the vill…
My university just announced that it’s dumping Blackboard, and there was much rejoicing. Why is Blackboard universally reviled? There’s a standard story of why “enterprise software” sucks. If you’ll bear with me, I think this is best appreciated by talking about… baby clothes! There are two types of…
Once a year, I spend $75 on a good bottle of Scotch Whisky and bring it to Karla’s birthday party. Last year, I brought Talliskers; this year, I brought Cragganmore. I break open the bottle, and ask everyone to take a taste. In this way, we can slowly get an idea of the difference between the variou…
Translation copyright 2001 John T. Quinn; all rights reserved. Introduction Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) is a collection of some 265 jokes1 likely made in the fourth or fifth century CE. Some manuscripts give the names of the compilers as the otherwise-unknown Hierocles and Philagrios. Other manu…
Ablative absolute Ablaut Abulia Acephalous ACTH Adit Adumbrate Agrapha Ailanthus Aleatory Alfresco Algolagnia Alpestrine Ament Anecdotage Androsterone Anemone fish Anneal Antiphon Antipode Apathetic Apercu aphagia Aphotic Apocarpous Appoggiatura Aquavit Arc-boutant Archimedean screw Archine Arcuate…
Ayn Rand is to philosophy what Twilight is to horror fiction - being that the only people who like it have absolutely no experience of what the subject is really about and as a result have nothing to compare it to. Her influence only extends to the general public and she is pretty much ignored by ac…
Aquarius (Jan 23 - Feb 22) You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a fucking jerk. Pisces (Feb 23 - Mar 22) You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads.…
A New Hampshire family says that after a night out to eat at Friendly’s didn’t go so well, a restaurant staffer decided to express their inner feelings through the increasingly preferred medium of the restaurant’s billing system, dropping the phrase “100% sh*t show” at the bottom of the dinner bill.…
This is how I use the good parts of @awscloud, while filtering out all the distracting hype. My background: I’ve been using AWS for 11 years — since before there was a console. I also worked inside AWS for 8 years (Nov 2010 - Feb 2019). My experience is in web- sites/apps/services. From tiny persona…
The Alt-History YouTuber Whatifalthist decided to dip his toes into real history again and made a YouTube video in which he supposedly breaks down his top 11 historical misconceptions, in which he says a section entitled “7: All of Pre-Colonial Africa.” As a massive enthusiast of pre-colonial Subsah…
Here’s some Buzzword Bingo based on these words by the same company. accelerate accountability action items actionable aggregator agile algorithm alignment analytics at the end of the day B2B/B2C bandwidth below the fold best of breed best practices beta big data bleeding edge blueprint boil the oc…
2217 Time Zone V (EST) 7 Nov. 1970–NTC-- “Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10:17 P. M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must. The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty–five ye…
Rabies. It’s exceptionally common, but people just don’t run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats. Let me paint you a picture. You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the “rage” stages of in…
Back in the good old days – the “Golden Era” of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called “Real Men” and “Quiche Eaters” in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that…
::Deadly pandemic rages:: Texas: “Let’s mismanage energy so thoroughly that our citizens are compelled to congregate en masse in heating centers designed to keep warm air and breath inside.” Here’s the problem with deregulation and privatization of public services. The primary directive of a governm…
It’s important to state though, particularly since our current economic structure has pushed that “there is no such thing as society”. That might sound insane, but it is not hyperbolic. In 1987, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK, said that “There is no such thing as society. There is [a] l…
I find even many people who don’t vote Republican and don’t see themselves as conservatives use this type of response when discussing programs like Affirmative Action. They see themselves as arguing for the “meritocracy”, yet don’t recognize how fraudulent the idea of the US as a meritocracy is. To…
Surprising in many ways! A dinner at REDACTED is an unforgettable experience, not to be missed. It’s a beautiful restaurant, the food is fantastic, and you’ll be thinking about it long after the meal is over. We started with the Date & Almond Naan, which was sweet and delicious. The Butter Chick…
I’ve gotten a lot of bad advice in my career and I see even more of it here on Twitter. Time for a stiff drink and some truth you probably dont want to hear. 👇👇 College isn’t worthless for everyone. All of the successful folks who tell you college is worthless went to college. What does that tell…
Okay. So let’s say you put your whole heart into something. You dig into your chest like you’re carving out a pumpkin, you scrape out every little piece of your heart, all the gunk and seeds, the stuff most people would keep private, and you put all that heart inside a THING. You give yourself fully…
This week NN Group released a video by Jakob Nielsen in which he attempts to help designers deal with the problem of customers being resistant to their new site/product redesign. The argument goes thusly: Humans naturally resist change Your change is for the better Customers should just get used to…
JENNY HOLZER A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS ARE CRACKPOTS A MAN CAN’T KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE A MOTHER A NAME MEANS A LOT JUST BY ITSELF A POSITIVE ATTITUDE MEANS ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD A RELAXED MAN IS NOT NECESSARILY A BETTER MAN A SENSE OF TIMING IS THE MARK OF…
I’ve started reading the RotS novelisation and it’s already so good. Full credit to Matthew Stover: "This is Obi-Wan Kenobi: A phenomenal pilot who doesn’t like to fly. A devastating warrior who’d rather not fight. A negotiator without peer whofrankly prefers to sit alone in a quiet cave and me…
Child of divorce, professional who dealt with divorcing couples for many years, Adult who went through a divorce, remarried and volunteer counseling/mentoring for couples today. Here are the most common mistakes I’ve seen (my own as well as collectively) in the failed and struggling marriages I’ve s…
Well, we could go on forever listing various critiques from both the Left and the Right, so I’ll just cover a few and maybe other people will stop by and list more. The Left Marxism/socialism There are lots of criticisms of liberalism from the Marxist and socialist corners. We could be here all day…
I’ll try and cover a few of your specific points, starting with the fact Apocalypto did not intend to portray the Aztecs, but the Maya. The film does (poorly) mash in some aspects of Aztec sacrifice, if only to further its goal of being colonialist apologia and torture porn. Fortunately, the sheer a…
I am so proud to be an Iowan. Iowa is fucking awesome, and here is why: In 1838, before we were even a state, our Supreme Court upheld the law that in Iowa escaped slaves couldn’t be forced to return to a slave state. The same year it became law an unmarried women could own property. In most of…
THE influence of Pisces upon the Sun does not make specially for strength, except in the last decanate, which is ruled by Mars. Otherwise, there is a certain softness and placidity which diminish the vitality. The Pisces type is extraordinarily psychic, more so than is the case with that of any othe…