calcifer @calcifer@hackers.town

Hello H.T

I've recently arrived from the Bauhaus, because you all have built a pretty sweet community here

I'm old, I'm all over the place, I get nerd-sniped on the regular, and I'm very enthusiastic about tech ethics

I like to fiddle with embedded stuff, particularly making stuff out of Arduino and LED pixels. I get cranky when "modern" means "we added complexity for no real reason". I think tech should aim for legibility and serve as a human enhancer; I get cranky when it's used to control or oppress or replace humans

I have no patience for stupid tech holy wars -- all hardware sucks, all software sucks, the documentation is provably incorrect, and the vendors all tell lies

I'm a dad -- so there will be dad jokes. I'm queer and polyam -- so there will occasionally be venting about that. I'm a nerd -- so there will be references and in-jokes aplenty

I don't know why it seems so common that people confuse "this implementation is bad" and "this concept or idea is bad". And I don't know how to address the issue when bringing it up at all tends to make people combative.

I'm not clear on the veracity of this, since the study is so poorly cited, but it is a good reminder that underemployed is just as big a concern as unemployed.

(Aside: I don't like the suggestion that we include underemployment in the definition of unemployed; that muddies the waters in unhelpful ways. But I would like to see more attention paid to inadequate employment rates)

https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html

6+ hours automating a thing. Show it off. "You know that product already has that feature right? Your admin just needs to enable it."

Sigh. I wish the admin had known about it (I asked) or the product had anything resembling documentation, so I could have not wasted my day, but hey.

I signed up for a service via a company's website. They have my money. They have begun snail-mailing me adverts to sign up for their service

Dear left hand, please talk to right hand about data quality

In golf, there is a "par", which is a target for how many hits to sink the ball on a hole. If you get it in one fewer, this is a "birdie" and you drink a beer (the "birdie beer")

If you get it exactly, you drink tea. This is the "par tea"

This practice, being invented by politicians (who famously love golf), is the birth of the "political par tea"

A friend sent

It so frustrates me: people who I know had authoritarian parents, hated it, and were traumatized by it; and now they're doing the exact same things to their kids. Even though I know this is exactly how abuse cycles work, it's still sad and frustrating.

Partner: I made French Onion Dip

Me: how do you know it's French?

Partner and both my kids, in unison: *Monty Python fake French accent* because it has an OUTRAGEOUS accent

If you have ratio, Khajiit has warez

What is it with far-right white supremacist organizations co-opting Norse/Germanic paganism? It goes back before the Nazis even.

I feel genuinely sorry for people who have been conditioned to believe that accepting help is shameful or otherwise reflects poorly on them

It causes them to be blind to so much good in the world, and it seems to lead to such a cynical world-view. It's so amazing to me that people around me help me freely; even when it's just in the form of them participating in social contracts (eg when my neighbor is out pulling out invasive plants from their back garden, they're helping all their neighbors)

Sweet Maria’s “Peru San Francisco David Garcia” right on the edge of 2C

Unrefined sweetness of demerara and sugar-in-the-raw, a baked apple flavor that straddles a sweet/winey edge, cocoa-dusted walnut, dark grape and chocolate torte.

Someone in my circle asked what I use for a laptop. Told them I use a 13” MBP as a daily driver, and a bit about why.

“Doesn’t carrying all the dongles bother you?”

Uh… what dongles? I dock at my desk, so literally one USB-C cable connection

When more mobile, Headphones go in headphone jack, power in USB-C, and the couple of peripherals I use (like a mouse sometimes) are either Bluetooth or USB-C anyhow. It ain’t 2016 anymore.