mariodiana

Just yesterday I was rewatching an old Star Trek episode, "The Menagerie," where the story centers around this poor victim of an accident ("delta rays") who is confined to a wheelchair, in a near-vegetable state, with only the ability to trigger a light: once for YES, twice for NO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menagerie_(Star_Trek:_The_...

Okay, still no flying cars—but we really ought to take stock in the many ways our present has already exceeded expectations from our recent past of even our distant future.

So, I watched the clip, and honestly that sounds more Norm MacDonald than Jerry Seinfeld.

I'll tell you when I lost faith in The New Yorker. I was a subscriber for many years. I get that the people over at The New Yorker could not stand Donald Trump. But during the four years he was president (and even before, during the months of the campaign), it seemed like every other cover of their magazine was a grotesque and febrile caricature of the man. It made the magazine seem a bit unbalanced—and by that I don't mean "politically."

This piece did not seem to be written by a human. The writing style would arguably escape notice, though it was an even a little too twee for a children's book. But the plot was so far out there that it's hard to argue that it seems natural. I think even most children, after having experience with children's books, would find something odd about the sequence of events.

There is something else that points to. Not everything is measurable.

My understand is that a dog's psychology is that of a pack animal, and that the stress of being put alone in a room every night is the stress of being separated from "the pack." Being separated from the pack equals the looming threat of death—to a greater or lesser extent—for a pack animal.

What this whole scenario illustrates is that the dog's suffering depression was due not to any chemical imbalance but to it being in an environment radically unsuited to its deep-seated psychology. So, the dog's case, I would argue, is a case of anti-depressants being over-prescribed. The people were being cruel to the dog. They should have stopped being cruel.

I'm writing all this because the dog's owners were on anti-depressants too, presumably to ameliorate their suffering. Perhaps they've created just as bad an environment for themselves as they have for the dog. Is it better for them to have the medication or to suffer? I say, that may be a false alternative.

Was it on Slashdot that the custom began of posting a warning along with links to TV Tropes—a warning that you risked losing anywhere between 2 and 5 hours of hour life, clicking your way down the rabbit hole?

I understand "ossification of systems consolidation of power" as centralized planning, which is socialism, as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism. But, I'm guessing you mean something else. What do you mean?

Essentially, yes—they're both examples of centralized planning, where the conceit of politicians drives complex economic systems arbitrarily, resulting in chaos.

The purpose of Newspeak was to bypass the rational faculty and trigger an emotional reaction in the listener (as well as confining the speaker to the appropriate emotional state). The purpose of Nicespeak is the same.

Anyone else remember learning about the "Five Year Plans" of the old Soviet Union?

I also recommend Lost Moon (which is sometimes published as Apollo 13). I've joked with people it's the same story, except in outer space. If by "story" you mean getting the feeling every 20 pages or so of "they are dead now for sure," then it's not really that much of a joke.

I read both of these around the same time and loved them both.

I basically didn't secure reliable, gainful employment until age 40. Prior to that I had, depending on how you count, two or three false starts at a career. But, I had become a hobbyist programmer in my early 30's. Briefly, in my late 30's I took a job as a software tester, but stayed only 9 months to give one last try at the career I was hoping for. When that didn't pan out and I finally had to rule it out, I returned to my software tester job. I was at the time a few months shy of my 41st birthday.

I stayed there 6 years, doing a tiny bit of programming professionally, and continuing to learn about programming as a hobbyist. I think I was 46 or 47 when I got my first programming job. I'm on my third now, and I'm 55.

I have been bitter, angry, and disillusioned—just like you. The only thing that helps is committing to something that will move you forward. Best of luck to you!

I used to read it years ago when it was run by the editor who promoted ending every article with a witticism. I missed that when they killed it off and stopped reading it around that time. Did they ever bring it back?

I think you're right, now that I think about it again.

I feel like it is a mistake to bring what is effectively React to native development.

Browser-based web apps are basically punching above their weight class. Compared to the power of native UI's, the browser is broken. React understood this and created two innovations:

  1. The Virtual DOM
  2. The reactive UI

Now, I'm no expert, but Number 1 seems like a terrific idea; and Number 2 seems like it's needed in order to implement Number 1.

But, to my thinking, a reactive UI is a big problem of leaky abstractions, which is what I think you're saying.

To me, iOS/macOS UI development needed neither the baby nor the dirty bathwater. I feel like the whole thing is a mistake. As a programmer, I want control over updating the UI.

> [Y]our post reads like an apology for the behaviour.

I wager you are unable to explain how, because it doesn’t.

I don't see people "spamming" racial slurs. The most inflammatory thing I see is videos of young groups of African-Americans behaving badly. In the replies, I see comments like "usual suspects," or various memes that are admittedly racial slurs: for example, Jane Goodall with a pair of binoculars and the caption "Interesting behavior." I'm not saying that's nice. That's bad. But it's the most easily avoided thing.

If you see a video posted like that, what do you expect to see? Thoughtful social commentary about marginalized peoples of our urban ghettoes?

Twitter is so much more than the above. To me it, seems like the charge of "racial slurs" is itself a kind of defamation.

There have always been dark corners of the Internet. Twitter's dark corners are so easily avoided, and a fraction of the traffic on the platform, as far as I can tell. Is there actually any data allowing people to make sense of it all, as opposed to allowing them to make a biased argument?

I worked as a teacher for a little while. Discount my anecdote if you like, but it always seemed to me that girls are more likely to be grade grubbers than boys.

(For those unfamiliar with the idiom, it means someone who pleads to the teacher to be given a higher grade. I don't know if there's a word in Italian.)

You're right. But, one, those parents are unlikely to homeschool. And, two, it would seem from looking around that it isn't a core competency for a lot of schools.

Kanye makes me think of someone I knew. I knew a young woman once whose conversation was impossible to follow. She was a college graduate, and seemed intelligent. But, I think either her mind wandered, or else she simply lacked the capacity to reliably establish context in conversation.

I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental illness" likely went no further than that.

I can't follow Kanye either—though I am far less motivated to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the young lady in my story, he may know what it is he's saying.

Ever read Bradbury's "The Veldt"?

Makes you wonder if Bradbury wasn't a real life John Titor.

How are the bagels and the pizza, where you live? Go ahead and call it a feeling of entitlement, but that's a deal breaker.

I don't care so much about paying rent. What I care about is what happened to me, back in 2020. During the pandemic, the wealthy fled Manhattan and created a buying frenzy in Upstate NY, where I live. My landlady decided it was in her interest to cash in on that; and, so, when the whole world was being turned upside down, I got the news that I would have to look for another place to live. I bought a condo solely for the control it offered me. As far as I'm concerned, nobody gets to do that to me again.

It would be largely independent if interest rates represented market rates. However, given the power and actions of the Federal Reserve, that will never be so while that institution exists.

I have only one data point to go by, and that's from memory, but I'm not so sure about what you're saying.

The house I grew up in is a raised ranch ("high ranch") in a suburb within easy commuting distance to Manhattan (Rockland County, NY). My parents bought the house in 1969 for $40K, which seemed high to them at the time. Right now it probably fetches $450K easily, in this arguably inflated market. But I remember conversations from the last '80s where the house was thought to fetch $350-400K. The price dropped a bit after that period, and then went back up.

Maybe my memory is faulty. But I do remember a period in the "go-go" days of the waning Reagan Era where prices in that area were quite high.

The average rate since 1971 has been over 7 percent:

https://themortgagereports.com/61853/30-year-mortgage-rates-...

Yeah, I'm no psychologist, but I thought the same thing. It seems related.

> In a better world, I would have built this in a day, using some kind of modern, flexible HyperCard for iOS.

>

> In our actual world, I built it in about a week, and roughly half of that time was spent wrestling with different flavors of code-signing and identity provisioning and I don’t even know what.

Are you listening, Apple?

I recommend the travelogue Arabian Sands, by William Thesiger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Sands