techwooded @ techwooded @lemmy.ca

Posts

7

Comments

67

Joined

2 yr. ago

About time in my opinion, but “later next year” sounds to me like this will be iOS 18. Hopefully I’m wrong with that though

I mean, the absolute cheapest place to put it would be DC if the constraint of not moving the capitol is in place. About 4 million federal employees in the US, DC metro area has about 9 million, so plenty of room, plus most of the federal buildings and offices are right there already. Fairly urban and with a reasonably robust public transport system too. Think you were going for someplace like Kansas, but whatever savings you get on real estate evaporate after you have to take into account cost of transportation to and from DC plus building out the new city’s infrastructure

No in the strictest definition of SAD, where the winter and fall depress you. I have reverse seasonal affective disorder, where the same happens to me but in the spring and summer. The sun saps all my energy away and I thrive in the cold and the dark. All of my positive emotions dull from April until around mid-October every single year. Give me snow and clouds any day over shorts and sunlight

Think it's just a familiar form factor for the product given that most are used to how the former birdsite's apps (both first and third parties) looked and operated. A few of them are even made by the same developers who had made third party apps. May eventually drift towards something else, but at least for the time being, telling people "instead of logging into this website, you log into this website" and everything else works and looks the same is an easier sell especially during the mass adoption and scaling phase of the platform

My degree and professional training is all in physics. Biggest one for me is that they use "high temperature" when relating to superconductors like we're going to have superconducting phones next year, when in reality high-T superconductors are still colder than 100 K (-173°C, -280°F). Also they gotta stop flipping out over Water on Mars. That's so passe, there's a literal list on wikipedia on how many times that's happened. On the plus side though, most have just stopped trying to explain anything around physics and instead go for a more "x does y cause physics" approach

I'm still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn't looking good. I don't like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.

I'm not sure I buy this whole "third party votes are wasted votes" or "third party votes are a vote for the opposition". The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn't mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they're not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren't the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won't be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you're approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn't a useful method of change to say "I don't agree with anything the Democrats say, but that's the world we're in". That's how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.

Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they're the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I'm sure the same is true for Republicans. Don't tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don't give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.

For me, I'll generally find the theses and arguments of books like this interesting so I'll try to read them. In the end, I could have gotten as much out of the books if they had been 90% shorter and I'll quit less than halfway through

Just in case

Late stage Led Zeppelin was definitely affected by Robert Plant’s affinity for country music that not many of the others shared. I agree that Plant’s preferences mixed with everyone else’s was what led to their initial and enduring popularity. I doubt they become one of the best Rock bands ever if they didn’t have everyone pulling in very different directions

You can notice some slight style differences between the Scott and Johnson eras, but that’s probably more to suit their singing styles than more “artistic” reasons

Firewatch is a very beautiful game

Combination of free bookmarks I’ve gotten from book orders and old Pokémon cards

Not part of the Fediverse, but The Movie Database is a good alternative to IMDb without all the adds and stuff like that. A lot of the information is user added and supported, so you can contribute as well as consume. Also for iOS, there's a new app for it called Callsheet that gets its data from TMDb

“The Snowman” by Jo Nesbø. Most of the Harry Hole series are pretty great

Capitalism has become such a bore Wish waged labor existed no more I’d rather pay taxes Take billionaires assets And distribute some wealth to the poor

Swiss Army knife, bottle opener, pocket pen, and most important of all: one of those wavy keys to open toilet paper and paper towel dispensers

In my opinion, most Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle is an amazing songwriter, and he tackles very difficult subjects, especially in his earlier stuff. The Sunset Tree album is all about growing up with an abusive step-father, Tallahassee about a couple who fall apart, Full Force Galesburg about a small town you can disappear in, etc. Some of my favorites include “The Mess Inside” about two people that can’t find the love they lost, “No Children” about a couple that hate each other, and “Jeff Davis County Blues” about a sort of meditative experience after a breakup. I’d give it all a listen. To go even deeper, the albums All Hail West Texas and In League With Dragons have sort of companion podcast seasons (I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats) where Darnielle and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale go through each song, the inspiration, the meaning, stuff like that.

I have read receipts on with my wife, but no one else. Too much pressure, especially for someone like me who habitually clears notifications even if I haven’t addressed anything

Also check Weir's book Artemis. Not as good as the Martian or Project Hail Mary, but still pretty good.

Depends a lot on your interests! Some good ones I've aggregated over the years:

• Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow: Daily links for reading by a very pro-decentralization and free web person
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: History and Pop Culture, usually one post per week on Friday
• Pedestrian Observations: Public transportation and urban design
• People's Policy Project: RSS feed for articles from the only crowd funded think tank (Lefty if you're interested)
• Bartosz Ciechanowski: Great blog with interesting animations, all very well researched. Only downside is that you usually have to use the RSS feed as a method of knowing when the article is posted and following the link to the website, plus he usually only posts one every 3 months or so
• xkcd: Old guard web comics, always fun to read

There are a lot of great RSS feeds out there though! I encourage you to see if your favorite blogs or news sites or things like that also have RSS feeds and suggest consuming them on there (for example I read CBC and Radio Canada exclusively through RSS) as it usually streamlines the whole reading experience.

If you use Apple's Ecosystem, I would also suggest using MacStories' Find RSS Feed Shortcut which will grab any available feeds from any website you feed it and let you copy the link to your clipboard to add to your favorite app. Enjoy!