Thanks! This was a spur of the moment decision, but I have thought about moderating a comm for a while. This seems like a good candidate to start with as I have a decades-long back catalogue of tech nonsense to draw from, I’ll probably sit down an write out a list sometime this week and plan some posts out. At one post a day I bet I could keep it going myself for a few months, before I take into account the eternal firehose of techbrobabble I drink from every day lol.

I hold out hopes that some materials researcher will be able to come up with some material flexible and durable enough that they’d be useful, someday. The technology is new enough that I still feel confident that there are still plenty of breakthroughs waiting to be made. But who knows 🤷

Is there a community for cataloging tech bullshit like “silicon sampling”? If not I’ll make one. First thought c/techbrobabble

EDIT: 'tis done !techbrobabble@piefed.blahaj.zone

I would love to have a tablet that rolls up into a canister so I can scroll on a scroll. I don’t know if they’ll ever be more practical than rigid screens but the tech is very cool.

Unrequited love is a hard thing but I imagine unrequited hatred must be worse.

What turned me off of SO entirely is when you actually do google it and the results are all SO posts with “closed as duplicate” and no actual answers :(

The snake fully ate itself.

The fact that I will die isn’t going anywhere. I’m gonna do the art and comedy while I can.

The best case I can make is that for most everyday uses, watt-hours are useful for estimating power consumption e.g. if I have a 100W light and I leave it on for 8 hours a day, that’s 800 watt hours on my electricity bill. Simple. Sure you can do the same thing with joules but it’s a little bit more unit conversion and I don’t think it makes it any easier to intuit how a device will impact my electric bill.

With all that said it rubs me the wrong way too. Same with VA vs W for AC circuits. I get why you need apparent vs actual loads, w/e, but that naming convention just bugs me. just call it a loss factor or something.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of pastry I understand 
to be embraced within ... ["hard-core paneography"], and perhaps I could never 
succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I mean come on, just look at it and tell me 
you don't want to take a bite outta that sweet loaf.

 - Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Profiteroles v. Ohio

Google should be stalled as long as possible, and they should be held to account whenever the pull a hardware bait and software switch, but Google will always enshittify every thing they have influence over. They can’t not do it, maximizing the extraction money from assets is the company’s entire raison d’etre. For software and platforms to become and remain free they must be taken away from for-profit companies entirely. You cannot fix Google, because it was made broken on purpose, to take money from you and deliver it to its shareholders. It will always do that. If you give them an ounce of trust or a modicum of faith, those become assets on a balance sheet that will be monetized to your detriment because that is what companies must do to survive. If they don’t, or can’t, they will be replaced with one that can.

Fully free software and fully open hardware is the only winning strategy.

A troll is begging for food. Don’t feed the trolls.

When I was 25, I would have said “of course it’s not a problem, they’re both adults. As long as they’re happy it’s fine.” and that is true, but now that I’m closer to 46 I have some additional caveats around “as long as they’re happy”.

You know how in order to really develop a skill, you have to do it for a long time? I think relationships are like that. If I were to compare it to chess, this scenario is kind of like someone who’s been playing chess competitively for 20 years playing against someone playing their first major tournament. It doesn’t mean that the more experienced player is guaranteed to win, or even that they’re better at chess, but it does confer some advantage because playing in a tournament is very different from playing chess casually or in clubs. There’s money at stake, your reputation is on the line, people may be watching you play and commentating in real time. It’s just a different activity altogether, even though it is still technically “just playing chess”. It really helps to get a few tournaments under your belt to get comfortable with the nerves, the additional tournament rules, publicly making a really stupid error, etc. If it’s your first time you might make some rookie errors. That’s part of being a rookie.

Where the analogy breaks down is that with chess, there is a brief competition with clear rules and referees, and there is (almost) always a clear outcome: win, lose, or draw. With relationships, A) it’s supposed to be cooperative, not a competition, and B) if your relationship partner is skilled at manipulation, you could be in a losing position for a long time and not know it, because you haven’t had the time to develop the skills necessary to identify what a dysfunctional adult relationship looks like.

This doesn’t mean that a relationship with a small age gap can’t be toxic, or that relationships with a large age gap can’t be healthy and happy.

But

I have observed a pattern of older people (usually, but not exclusively, men) who serially date young adults because those young people don’t recognize the signs of a toxic relationship. These are rookie errors, and there is no shame in them. Everyone that does anything new has a rookie period, and this includes adult relationships. These older people take advantage of that naivete instead of working on themselves to become the kind of partner that people want to stay with after really getting to know them. As soon as these young partners begin to understand these problems and challenge them, they end the relationship and trade them out for a younger model. You can be unhappy in a toxic relationship for a long time and be unable to identify why you are so unhappy, because they know the tricks. Undercut your partner’s relationships with their other friends or family, accuse them of not being smart enough or loving enough or patient enough, make them financially dependent on you. There are a lot of tricks, and people refine their techniques with each partner. And when you’ve just started having adult relationships, you are at a serious disadvantage if you wind up in a relationship like this because you just haven’t lived long enough to see firsthand how this kind of thing plays out.

It’s not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it, but it does ping my danger radar. My danger radar sometimes gets false readings, but I still pay attention to it.

Yeah phew good thing they haven’t repealed the CRA otherwise the US might start oppressing minorities.

I will, but first I’m gonna prove real quick that the US also doesn’t oppress minorities:

An Act

To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the “Civil Rights Act of 1964”.

TITLE I–VOTING RIGHTS SEC. 101. Section 2004 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C. 1971), as amended by section 131 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (71 Stat. 637), and as further amended by section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (74 Stat. 90), is further amended as follows:

(a) Insert “1” after “(a)” in subsection (a) and add at the end of subsection (a) the following new paragraphs:

"(2) No person acting under color of law shall–

"(A) in determining whether any individual is qualified under State law or laws to vote in any Federal election, apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote;

"(B) deny the right of any individual to vote in any Federal election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election; or

"© employ any literacy test as a qualification for voting in any Federal election unless (i) such test is administered to each individual and is conducted wholly in writing, and (ii) a certified copy of the test and of the answers given by the individual is furnished to him within twenty-five days of the submission of his request made within the period of time during which records and papers are required to be retained and preserved pursuant to title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (42 U.S.C. 1974–74e; 74 Stat. 88): Provided, however, That the Attorney General may enter into agreements with appropriate State or local authorities that preparation, conduct, and maintenance of such tests in accordance with the provisions of applicable State or local law, including such special provisions as are necessary in the preparation, conduct, and maintenance of such tests for persons who are blind or otherwise physically handicapped, meet the purposes of this subparagraph and constitute compliance therewith.

"(3) For purposes of this subsection–

"(A) the term ‘vote’ shall have the same meaning as in subsection (e) of this section;

“(B) the phrase ‘literacy test’ includes any test of the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter.”

(b) Insert immediately following the period at the end of the first sentence of subsection © the following new sentence: “If in any such proceeding literacy is a relevant fact there shall be a rebuttable presumption that any person who has not been adjudged an incompetent and who has completed the sixth grade in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico where instruction is carried on predominantly in the English language, possesses sufficient literacy, comprehension, and intelligence to vote in any Federal election.”

© Add the following subsection “(f)” and designate the present subsection “(f)” as subsection “(g)”: “(f) When used in subsection (a) or © of this section, the words ‘Federal election’ shall mean any general, special, or primary election held solely or in part for the purpose of electing or selecting any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the Senate, or Member of the House of Representatives.”

(d) Add the following subsection “(h)”:

"(h) In any proceeding instituted by the United States in any district court of the United States under this section in which the Attorney General requests a finding of a pattern or practice of discrimination pursuant to subsection (e) of this section the Attorney General, at the time he files the complaint, or any defendant in the proceeding, within twenty days after service upon him of the complaint, may file with the clerk of such court a request that a court of three judges be convened to hear and determine the entire case. A copy of the request for a three-judge court shall be immediately furnished by such clerk to the chief judge of the circuit (or in his absence, the presiding circuit judge of the circuit) in which the case is pending. Upon receipt of the copy of such request it shall be the duty of the chief justice of the circuit or the presiding circuit judge, as the case may be, to designate immediately three judges in such circuit, of whom at least one shall be a circuit judge and another of whom shall be a district judge of the court in which the proceeding was instituted, to hear and determine such case, and it shall be the duty of the judges so designated to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date, to participate in the hearing and determination thereof, and to cause the case to be in every way expedited.

An appeal from the final judgment of such court will lie to the Supreme Court.

"In any proceeding brought under subsection © of this section to enforce subsection (b) of this section, or in the event neither the Attorney General nor any defendant files a request for a three-judge court in any proceeding authorized by this subsection, it shall be the duty of the chief judge of the district (or in his absence, the acting chief judge) in which the case is pending immediately to designate a judge in such district to hear and determine the case. In the event that no judge in the district is available to hear and determine the case, the chief judge of the district, or the acting chief judge, as the case may be, shall certify this fact to the chief judge of the circuit (or, in his absence, the acting chief judge) who shall then designate a district or circuit judge of the circuit to hear and determine the case.

“It shall be the duty of the judge designated pursuant to this section to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date and to cause the case to be in every way expedited.”

TITLE II–INJUNCTIVE RELIEF AGAINST DISCRIMINATION IN PLACES OF PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

(b) Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce, or if discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action:

(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;

(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the

premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;

(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment; and

(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment.

© The operations of an establishment affect commerce within the meaning of this title if (1) it is one of the establishments described in paragraph (1) of subsection (b); (2) in the case of an establishment described in paragraph (2) of subsection (b), it serves or offers to serve interstate travelers or a substantial portion of the food which it serves, or gasoline or other products which it sells, has moved in commerce; (3) in the case of an establishment described in paragraph (3) of subsection (b), it customarily presents films, performances, athletic teams, exhibitions, or other sources of entertainment which move in commerce; and (4) in the case of an establishment described in paragraph (4) of subsection (b), it is physically located within the premises of, or there is physically located within its premises, an establishment the operations of which affect commerce within the meaning of this subsection. For purposes of this section, “commerce” means travel, trade, traffic, commerce, transportation, or communication among the several States, or between the District of Columbia and any State, or between any foreign country or any territory or possession and any State or the District of Columbia, or between points in the same State but through any other State or the District of Columbia or a foreign country.

(d) Discrimination or segregation by an establishment is supported by State action within the meaning of this title if such discrimination or segregation (1) is carried on under color of any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation; or (2) is carried on under color of any custom or usage required or enforced by officials of the State or political subdivision thereof; or (3) is required by action of the State or political subdivision thereof.

(e) The provisions of this title shall not apply to a private club or other establishment not in fact open to the public, except to the extent that the facilities of such establishment are made available to the customers or patrons of an establishment within the scope of subsection (b).

SEC. 202. All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin, if such discrimination or segregation is or purports to be required by any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, rule, or order of a State or any agency or political subdivision thereof.

SEC. 203. No person shall (a) withhold, deny, or attempt to withhold or deny, or deprive or attempt to deprive, any person of any right or privilege secured by section 201 or 202, or (b) intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person with the purpose of interfering with any right or privilege secured by section 201 or 202, or © punish or attempt to punish any person for exercising or attempting to exercise any right or privilege secured by section 201 or 202.

SEC. 204. (a) Whenever any person has engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage in any act or practice prohibited by section 203, a civil action for preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order, may be instituted by the person aggrieved and, upon timely application, the court may, in its discretion, permit the Attorney General to intervene in such civil action if he certifies that the case is of general public importance. Upon application by the complainant and in such circumstances as the court may deem just, the court may appoint an attorney for such complainant and may authorize the commencement of the civil action without the payment of fees, costs, or security.

(b) In any action commenced pursuant to this title, the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs, and the United States shall be liable for costs the same as a private person.

© In the case of an alleged act or practice prohibited by this title which occurs in a State, or political subdivision of a State, which has a State or local law prohibiting such act or practice and establishing or authorizing a State or local authority to grant or seek relief from such practice or to institute criminal proceedings with respect thereto upon receiving notice thereof, no civil action may be brought under subsection (a) before the expiration of thirty days after written notice of such alleged act or practice has been given to the appropriate State or local authority by registered mail or in person, provided that the court may stay proceedings in such civil action pending the termination of State or local enforcement proceedings.

(d) In the case of an alleged act or practice prohibited by this title which occurs in a State, or political subdivision of a State, which has no State or local law prohibiting such act or practice, a civil action may be brought under subsection (a): Provided, That the court may refer the matter to the Community Relations Service established by title X of this Act for as long as the court believes there is a reasonable possibility of obtaining voluntary compliance, but for not more than sixty days: Provided further, That upon expiration of such sixty-day period, the court may extend such period for an additional period, not to exceed a cumulative total of one hundred and twenty days, if it believes there then exists a reasonable possibility of securing voluntary compliance.

SEC. 205. The Service is authorized to make a full investigation of any complaint referred to it by the court under section 204(d) and may hold such hearings with respect thereto as may be necessary. The Service shall conduct any hearings with respect to any such complaint in executive session, and shall not release any testimony given therein except by agreement of all parties involved in the complaint with the permission of the court, and the Service shall endeavor to bring about a voluntary settlement between the parties.

SEC. 206. (a) Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that any person or group of persons is engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of any of the rights secured by this title, and that the pattern or practice is of such a nature and is intended to deny the full exercise of the rights herein described, the Attorney General may bring a civil action in the appropriate district court of the United States by filing with it a complaint (1) signed by him (or in his absence the Acting Attorney General), (2) setting forth facts pertaining to such pattern or practice, and (3) requesting such preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order or other order against the person or persons responsible for such pattern or practice, as he deems necessary to insure the full enjoyment of the rights herein described.

(b) In any such proceeding the Attorney General may file with the clerk of such court a request that a court of three judges be convened to hear and determine the case. Such request by the Attorney General shall be accompanied by a certificate that, in his opinion, the case is of general public importance. A copy of the certificate and request for a three-judge court shall be immediately furnished by such clerk to the chief judge of the circuit (or in his absence, the presiding circuit judge of the circuit) in which the case is pending. Upon receipt of the copy of such request it shall be the duty of the chief judge of the circuit or the presiding circuit judge, as the case may be, to designate immediately three judges in such circuit, of whom at least one shall be a circuit judge and another of whom shall be a district judge of the court in which the proceeding was instituted, to hear and determine such case, and it shall be the duty of the judges so designated to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date, to participate in the hearing and determination thereof, and to cause the case to be in every way expedited. An appeal from the final judgment of such court will lie to the Supreme Court.

In the event the Attorney General fails to file such a request in any such proceeding, it shall be the duty of the chief judge of the district (or in his absence, the acting chief judge) in which the case is pending immediately to designate a judge in such district to hear and determine the case. In the event that no judge in the district is available to hear and determine the case, the chief judge of the district, or the acting chief judge, as the case may be, shall certify this fact to the chief judge of the circuit (or in his absence, the acting chief judge) who shall then designate a district or circuit judge of the circuit to hear and determine the case.

It shall be the duty of the judge designated pursuant to this section to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date and to cause the case to be in every way expedited.

SEC. 207. (a) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of proceedings instituted pursuant to this title and shall exercise the same without regard to whether the aggrieved party shall have exhausted any administrative or other remedies that may be provided by law.

(b) The remedies provided in this title shall be the exclusive means of enforcing the rights based on this title, but nothing in this title shall preclude any individual or any State or local agency from asserting any right based on any other Federal or State law not inconsistent with this title, including any statute or ordinance requiring nondiscrimination in public establishments or accommodations, or from pursuing any remedy, civil or criminal, which may be available for the vindication or enforcement of such right.

Those darn propagandists and their giant monologues about how their bankrollers totally aren’t doing ethnic cleansing, am it right?

I was pretty fluent with the earlier internet, and I definitely saw things that messed me up, but at least I didn’t have massive international corporations trying to addict me to services from the jump. Or at least, they weren’t as good at it then. The part that goes

Mommy let you use her iPad; you were barely two.

And it did all the things we designed it to do...
now look at you.

Gets me choked up when I hear it. We, adults generally, have let a lot of awful things happen to the kids. Even now I don’t think we really understand the scope of the damage. The fact that I, and my parents, and their parents and so on were fucked up and abused in their own unique contemporary fashions doesn’t make the pill any less bitter.

There it is, again :(

If you ever find yourself in international cyberwaters, I think it’s worth it to watch the whole thing. I love his other specials but I think Inside is in another class altogether. But yeah, fuck Netflix.

“20,000 years of this; seven more to go” is a line that floats through my head more often than I wish it did :/ It’s a great song and all but I really wish it aged less well.

Another personal favorite: Art is Dead