lennivelkant @ lennivelkant @discuss.tchncs.de

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Unrelated to the topic, but I deal with a database storing timestamps.

In local time.

For systems all around the world.

You'll see current entries timestamped 12:28 from eastern Europe followed by ones 6:28 from America and then another 11:28 from central Europe.

Without offset.

You can, but why would you? Reality has enough examples to make fantasy obsolete

High at 14h

Sure sounds Arbeitslos to me

(This is a joke, not an insult or criticism)

Also, the naivety that Trimp won't eventually turn on him:

First, they came for the Haitians...

Jesus is the son of god

I always hated this sentiment. I don't think sons should automatically inherit their fathers' sins. Jesus seemed to be a mostly cool dude, albeit with his own human flaws (including the common blindness to his father's abusive nature) and it really doesn't seem fair to lump him in with his dad.

Nobody is immune to propaganda or above error, particularly those who believe they are

Way off the mark then, embarrassing. Particularly since I'm from Southwest Germany, you'd think I'd recognise Schwyzerdütsch. I definitely need more exposure to dialects.

In my classes on analytics, we were taught to prefer using normalised axes starting at 0 to more accurately put changes into perspective.

Ah right, a walk around nature! Because I have so much nature around me!

(Also, I'd prefer to get meetings and impromptu requests from colleagues in the morning, because I tend to get way in the zone around 14h-15h, with the drawback that I often run way in excess of 17h when I'm supposed to leave so I'm home by ~1815.)

What dialect is that? Sounds like Pfälzisch to me but I never was good at placing other dialects

Computers are as much ritual and magic as they are understanding. The Tech Priests of WH40k had the right of it.

Then do some digging and find that the GitHub instructions omitted some particular dependency, make a mental note to contribute a PR to the documentation later once you've got it working, get it working, promptly forget contributing that documentation, move distro later, try to reinstall the same program, make the same mistake, same discovery, learn nothing, repeat ad nauseam.

It's even older: The myth of individual excellence is at least as old as the phenomenon of a distinct class of a warrior aristocracy. All throughout history, you'll see the elite (as most historians and poets were, because a peasant working for subsistence doesn't have the time to write deep musings about that time he got conscripted for war and stood in a line with all the other common peasants) writing of this or that great general or warrior, despite most of just about everything being done by groups.

You might know about the great heroes of the Iliad, excelling in battle by taking down a key figure of the opposing side, but most people probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the mass of "common" infantry on either side, let alone about the servants carrying the hoplites' stuff.

You might find a lot of medieval works focused on the glory and honor of a knight, but the (comparatively) poor spear-and-shield conscripts receive attention mostly in official documents detailing the way their army was to be raised (see the section "Ninth-Century Rohirrim" here.

Even when thinking about heavy cavalry charges, for the longest time I never gave much thought to the value of coordinated cohesion between them. The knights' charge is still a group effort, where an isolated warrior - great hero or not - would be doomed. And while we may be aware that knights had a squire, the rest of the retinue wouldn't be clear to everyone:

Clifford Rogers notes one (fictional and lavish, but not outrageous) war party “suitable for a baron or banneret” included a chaplain, three heralds, four trumpeters, two drummers, four pages, two varlets (that is, servants for the pages), two cooks, a forager, a farrier, an armorer, twelve more serving men (with horses, presumably both as combatants and as servants), and a majordomo to manage them all – in addition to the one lord, three knights and nine esquires (C. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives through History: the Middle Ages (2007), 28-9).

(Citation copied from this entry of the same blog as before)

Ever since there has been an elite with the leisure to write and document, served by a lower class who didn't, there has been a tendency to emphasise these elites' individual value and omit the group effort of all the invisible people contributing to that value.

I don't know if that is the cultural inspiration for the modern trend of focusing on single individuals or simply a symptom of a similar cause, but there is a certain resemblance that I suspect isn't pure coincidence.

Pretty sure the Nazgûl use stabby weapons, where chainmail is less effective (not completely useless, but an unlucky thrust may split the rings).

who aren't [...] fucking children.

This works on two levels. One is embarrassing, the other horrifying.

I'll take the right thing for the wrong reasons over the wrong thing for even worse reasons.

I mean, if you ignore the parts about giving away your wealth, being a good samaritan, looking for fault in yourself before criticising others, more stuff about collecting treasures in heaven instead of on earth, humility and patience in the face of adversity, honesty, forgiveness, even more stuff about throwing out moneylenders and people making money from religion...

Basically, take away the entire gospel and a solid chunk of the epistles, focus on the "If I regularly ask for forgiveness of whatever unspecified sins I might have committed, Im a good person and won't burn in hell like all these bad people", squint a little, account for a margin of human error, and he does look a bit like a Christian!

But if I have nothing of substance to add to the point? "This. Also..."? I don't have a Cybertruck or know anyone that does; I can't comment on their quality.

Besides, it wasn't even particularly important to me, just a quick aside. If I care deeply about making people use "they" for inclusion reasons, I'd have written more than a sentence.

I'm not sure they ever doubled down on it.

They didn't. Hence my insistence: the original comment probably wasn't intentional as such, nor do I ascribe any malice.

Plenty other people felt the need to ascribe intent, however. That's what I don't understand - why are people so eager to defend a phrasing and potential intent without ever consulting the original commenter?

I just don't want to limit how people express themselves

I made a suggestion and argument why I find "they" better, without ideological insistence or being forceful about it. There's no limiting going on.

Its more important to me that someone express themselves honestly rather than they are politically correct.

The above note and specific context aside, I don't categorically agree. While reasonable argument should be the first resort, there are honest sentiments rejecting reasonable argument that deserve no expression, no space and no opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. I think it's more important to foster a tolerant environment, suppressing intolerance if necessary to preserve that environment, than to grant universal freedom even to enemies of freedom.

Again, this probably doesn't apply here - I doubt the original comment made a point of exclusion. We're getting way off topic here when all I wanted was to offer an alternative argument for inclusive phrasing.

Some horse fly blankets and hoods have a zebra pattern, probably for the same reason.