CurtHagenlocher

2,251 karma · joined April 2, 2011

submissions comments

CurtHagenlocher··on Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

This has a lot of echoes to the plot of Godard's _Le_Mépris_.

CurtHagenlocher··on Fastest growing US metro looks to a shrinking reservoir to keep the boom going

"If we stop construction water, that act alone would lay off about 20% of our county."

CurtHagenlocher··on [dead]

I guess you shouldn't start a war if you don't want people to get killed.

CurtHagenlocher··on Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

My impression is that Trump started calling it the "China virus" and then there was an increase in physical attacks on people of Asian-appearing ancestry in the United States and that's when and why the pushback started.

CurtHagenlocher··on Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

Reminds me a little of the long-defunct "ResolverOne" for which the only reference I could find was https://www.python.org/about/success/resolver/

CurtHagenlocher··on [dead]

According to Catholic tradition, the apostolic see of Rome was founded by Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the first century. As neither of these saintly men ever did anything wrong, we should clearly expect the same of their successors.

CurtHagenlocher··on Palantir’s SPAC bets backfire

"You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that each is worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets." (via Michael Lewis)

CurtHagenlocher··on California pulls the plug on rooftop solar

The main contributor to falling trees in the Pacific Northwest is that trees can grow quite large while having relatively shallow roots because of the ready availability of water near the surface.

CurtHagenlocher··on Sam Bankman-Fried Reaches Out to Elon Musk

Grifter "visionaries" with messiah complexes can indeed find common ground across "party lines".

CurtHagenlocher··on Driving a classic car for 37 years produces less emissions than producing 1 EV

I don't understand the goal of this comparison. In what ways is "driving a classic car 1200 miles each year for 37 years" some kind of substitute for "producing one EV"? Is this just about making classic car enthusiasts feel a little better about their hobby?

CurtHagenlocher··on Discovering Azure's unannounced breaking change with Cosmos DB

CosmosDB is not the same as the internal Cosmos system.

CurtHagenlocher··on What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

At least in the parts of the company I've worked -- always on product teams -- the majority of my coworkers were not born in the United States. Given that, even if all the other parts of the world were represented proportionally you'd expect a large percentage of people from China and the Indian subcontinent.

CurtHagenlocher··on Ted Hoff Invented the First Microprocessor (1994)

I used to have an autographed copy of this article -- one of only two autographs I ever received. The other was on a check from Donald Knuth :). Sadly, I seem to have lost both of these at some point in the last 15 years :(.

CurtHagenlocher··on How roasted almonds become marzipan (2018)

I'm afraid I only ever got it from relatives (all of which are now deceased).

CurtHagenlocher··on How roasted almonds become marzipan (2018)

I definitely haven't found anything better which is also relatively available in the US. But I think that Königsberg-style marzipan is way better than Lübeck-style (and would do so even if my mother weren't from East Prussia. :)

CurtHagenlocher··on The Number of ‘Lonely, Single Men’ Is on the Rise Thanks to Higher Standards

There is a term "femcel"...

I think the difference (no matter what you are or what kind of person you're attracted to) is in the way you choose to deal with failure.

CurtHagenlocher··on [dead]

Why is it, then, that people in traditionally progressive countries—my native social-democratic Sweden being a prime example—can believe the same things, read the same books, and propound the same ideas as their American counterparts, without their societies experiencing the same sort of catastrophic polarization afflicting the U.S.?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it's our "winner-take-all" electoral system.

CurtHagenlocher··on Why is a registry file called a “hive”? (2003)

Only the wretched ones.

(Hint: use a search engine.)

CurtHagenlocher··on I don't give party favors at my kid's bday. I wish more parents would join me

I'm not a big fan of the seemingly-obligatory party favors (at least in upper-middle-class parts of the United States), but we never gave out anything other than books.

CurtHagenlocher··on U.S. Political Party Preferences Shifted Greatly During 2021

Unfortunately, the primary system discourages this type of moderation.

CurtHagenlocher··on GameStop Entering NFT and Cryptocurrency Markets

Apparently, they're going for a meme trifecta.

CurtHagenlocher··on Today’s Disneyland is a price gouge, not a magical experience

Yes, I remember the primary way to buy tickets was as packs. Invariably, you'd have leftover A and B tickets (which couldn't be used for nearly anything) and you'd have to buy extra E tickets because the pack came with just one.

CurtHagenlocher··on [dead]

I think the real problem is the advertising-supported business model.

CurtHagenlocher··on Wisconsin Republicans Push to Take over the State’s Elections

This computes:

To compete with the religious fascists of Al-Qaeda, we must become religious fascists. To compete with the single-party state of China, we must become a single-party state. To compete with the autocrats of Russia, China, Turkey, etc., we must have an autocrat.

CurtHagenlocher··on The World Needs a ‘Chronicles of Amber’ TV Show

I've been a huge Zelazny fan since the mid-80s, and it's a bit of a shame that his catalog hasn't caught the imagination of showrunners and moviemakers. Because while his style is somewhat literary, it is so largely in the service of creating an atmosphere -- and one that I think could translate well visually. Maybe the film of Damnation Alley is still being held against him?

CurtHagenlocher··on New Evidence Against the Standard Model of Cosmology

Yes, but a German billion isn't the same as an American billion either... .

CurtHagenlocher··on How the IBM PC Won, Then Lost, the Personal Computer Market

"OS/2 finally came out in late 1987, priced at $340, plus $2,000 for additional memory to run it. By then, Windows had been on the market for two years and was proving hugely popular."

No. Windows was basically irrelevant until 3.0 came out in 1990.

CurtHagenlocher··on How the IBM PC Won, Then Lost, the Personal Computer Market

PS/2s were overpriced and underpowered, and people I knew told me that a surprisingly high percentage of them arrived DoA. That was basically the end of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM".

CurtHagenlocher··on Trump ends blog after 29 days, infuriated by measly readership

So basically he was deplatformed yet again by Big Tech -- this time by Google when they killed Reader in 2013?

CurtHagenlocher··on Trabant: The East German car remains iconic

While I don't know how manufacturing is distributed today, historically the primary Mercedes production facility has been in Sindelfingen which is adjacent to Böblingen.

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