doodaddy

Look, I am in no position to seriously critique the author’s writing. He clearly has linguistic chops. But what kind of bunk is this? We get it, the flowery, overdrawn language of yore is more expressive. But that kind of writing gets in its own way. Words seem to trump concept. But reading that sort of writing feels like being in a museum; sure that Victorian gown looks pretty but does anyone actually want to wear it?

And then, while arguing against monotony, this piece spends all its time repeating the same structure: a ten-dollar adjective followed by a ten-dollar noun. Ironically, the five passages cited as “good writing” mostly avoid the wordiness that the piece spends all its time arguing for.

> Do not use a thesaurus.

Oh now he’s just taking the piss.

The frequencies are alive with music in Brazil. Among the broad (and excellent) variety of local music are three stations that play an eclectic variety of foreign music from around the world. One station features a lot of rare or more unusual recordings of music from the 60s through the 2000s. Sure you’ve heard Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” a million times on the radio but you probably haven’t heard the version by Heartbreak Klub, an Australian rock-pop band. Or one of the live recordings of “Going to California” with John Paul Jones’ extended mandolin solo.

It’s great because they stream online so when I’m back home and don’t know what to listen to, it’s always an option.

For those interested - https://itapemafm.com.br/

I know that some think this is just some cold hard straight talk but this style of individualistic thinking lacks empathy. And more practically, it’s a trap.

In context, the “doing things” and “opportunities” that we’re talking about are jobs, careers. So by promoting the idea that one must work harder or longer to get or keep a career that they’ve already built sounds like a path to opt-in servitude.

It seems like no one else is bothered by the fact that more and more we are being forced to interact with third party companies - companies with which the consumer has no direct relationship - as a precondition for doing things in daily life.

To eat at a restaurant you give a phone number and suddenly have an account with Resy. Renting an apartment means signing up for a service to access the move-in documents and then another to unlock the door.

These services rarely benefit the consumer. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. Maybe it’s the erosion of agency. Maybe it’s the over-complicating of what should be a simple activity. But it’s becoming more frequent.

There’s a cold reality that we in this profession have yet to accept: nobody cares about our code. Nobody cares whether it’s pretty or clever or elegant. Sometimes, rarely, they care whether it’s maintainable.

We are only craftsmen to ourselves and each other. To anyone else we are factory workers producing widgets to sell. Once we accept this then there is little surprise that the factory owners want us using a tool that makes production faster, cheaper. I imagine that watchmakers were similarly dismayed when the automatic lathe was invented and they saw their craft being automated into mediocrity. Like watchmakers we can still produce crafted machines of elegance for the customers who want them. But most customers are just going to want a quartz.

I’ve supported the EFF for a long time. I think what they do and stand for is important. But I can’t help but feel utterly disillusioned with all of it now. Each press release just reads as naïve to me. At one point it felt like there was a real possibility that their viewpoint would be thoughtfully discussed and actioned on. But now…I don’t know. The lack of notable “wind” doesn’t help and all the trends just don’t give me confidence that the tide will turn any time soon.

Maybe the part that makes me most sad is that for those of us who have been doing this for, well, our entire lives, it’s just not the outcome any of us envisioned but it’s the outcome that (almost) all of us have been party to even if in some small way.

This goes beyond just web design. In Japan, UIs in general steer toward being information dense. At first glance they look positively ancient. And while they take some time to become familiar they seem to be first and foremost, functional. Frankly I wish we in the west would focus more on function and sticking with it instead of hopping to whatever the UI/UX trend of the day is. It seems to me that the more focus there is on UI/UX the worse the experience gets.

These comments kill me. It sounds a lot like the “job creators” argument. If only these pesky regulations would go away I could create jobs and everyone would be rich. It’s a bogus argument either way.

Now for the more reasonable point: instead of being adversarial and disparaging those trying to do their job why not realize that, just like you, they have a certain viewpoint and are trying to do the best they can. There is no simple answer to the issues we’re dealing with and it will require compromise. That won’t happen if you see policy and security folks as “climbing out of their holes”.

[delayed]

Aside from just plain bad luck, the things you list don't happen in isolation. Humans have fought bloody wars over land for as long as we've stood upright. Do you think we'll all neatly organize into the remaining habitable land?

I’m inclined to agree. The goalposts will move once the time is right. I’ve already personally witnessed it happening; a company sells their AI-whatever strictly along the lines of staff augmentation and a force multiplier for employees. Not a year later and the marketing has shifted to cost optimization, efficiency, and better “uptime” over real employees.

I think there is too much associating taste with quality. We can see it in many of these comments and in the post as well:

> And what I mean by taste here is simply the honed ability to distinguish mediocrity from excellence.

And I say, maybe. But more than quality I think taste is a way to discern what’s unique and novel. In my mind it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be “excellent” because, as the post mentions, everyone’s “excellent” may be different.

Why do I think this distinction is important? Because if taste is about seeing the nuances that make something interesting instead of what makes it “good” then getting to good taste promotes open minded exploration (healthy exploration) over status seeking.

He also has a record label, Luaka Bop, that is a great source of discovery for anyone with diverse and eclectic music tastes.

https://www.luakabop.com/

Is this supposed to be sailor rage bait? Running ALL the lights. Sleeping three hours at a time. Not even a mention of checking the weather?

I love this car already. It has character, a personality. It’s the friend who’s kind of a pain in the ass but someone you usually have a good time with.

Reminds me of the car I learned to drive manual on. It would only start when the drivers side door was open. So if you stalled the car the process was: open door, clutch in, start engine, clutch out and go, close door. You learned not to stall…

> There are no guardrails, no warning signs, and definitely no liability waivers - just you, the weather, and whatever route the sheep decided made sense.

I absolutely love places like this; places that treat you as a discerning, rational adult. The sense of being responsible for yourself feels freeing. It is an invitation for you to experience something entirely in your own way.

You realize that a sentence can be both factual and misleading, right?

“Unfortunately, Senators have not agreed on the terms to pass HR 5371 leading to a lapse in appropriations.”

Wouldn’t something like this still be factual, informative, and-importantly-NOT misleading?

Even as a jaded person I’m surprised how many people read this and immediately go to statements about hypocrisy, having no integrity, or bad leadership. Get a grip! Real life doesn’t always let you be a crusader. It’s called choosing your battles and it’s something that most of us have to do almost every day.

Nothing in this advice suggests being two-faced. Nothing suggests lying or being deceitful. What it does suggest is to try and do the least bad thing in a set of less-than-ideal circumstances, most of which are outside any of the rank-and-file’s control.

Edit to add: nothing says you have to publicly agree with an unpopular policy while disparaging it in private. Staying quiet is an option and probably the most sensible one.

> Instead of the clear, itemized pricing system that passengers currently rely on, airlines could hide fees until later in the booking process…

They call what we have now “clear”? Where when looking at a page of flights I don’t know how much the multitude of economy/economy+/economy++/premium economy/business/business++ seats will cost until I click on each flight? Where every carrier offers slightly different variations of these seats such that I can’t cross-shop on Google Flights?

Is that the clear and transparent system the airlines are complaining about?

As an Olympus shooter this is good to know.

But good gravy that troubleshooting path got expensive real fast. Replacing the laptop and the camera? Why not start by trying something other than Photos? It doesn’t even need to be a paid product; the Olympus software is free not to mention a good baseline since it - of all the applications - should be able to import photos without corrupting them.

Edit to add: delete on import seems pretty risky. My workflow is to import and only delete from the camera after 1) the imported photos are backed up 2) I’ve done a first pass culling.

You’re only looking at the most recent couple of years. Going over the entire set and Tokyo shows up toward the top frequently. Having lived there for a short while I would agree - Tokyo is very livable. I think it’s because the city is composed of smaller “cities” and the concentration of goods and services is distributed among neighborhoods.

Zero trust states that you don’t implicitly trust an entity even if they were previously authenticated. So is this a critique of zero trust? More productive might be to say that we shouldn’t blindly force reauth if our risk profile doesn’t warrant it - just like any security mechanism.

For all the writing there is about writing, Orwell’s six rules have yet to do my wrong:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. (To add: short words are best, and old words when short are best of all)

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Though there is one more that is deserving of seventh place: 7. Edit ruthlessly. “Murder your darlings.”

Very strange. Not only do I never see people using a phone being used to pay at full service restaurants but what happened to the lowest-tech solution of all - wave at the nearest person to come over and settle the bill.

Is this where we’re at? The goalpost is now at eating human meat?

> CIC was to notify Lieutenant Commander Stanton if the Essex deviated more than 10 nautical miles (nm) from the planned track.

Pretty impressive! USS Essex would cover 10nm in about half an hour, so not much tolerance for going off-course.

I agree that there seems to be, on the whole, a downward trend of educated, critically thinking populace. The statistics and anecdotes align to make this clear. But I struggle to pick the cause. Certainly I don’t buy into the idea that there are rooms of politicians and school board members discussing how to keep the population uneducated.

Behind every outcome is an incentive. So what do you think is the incentive that’s behind the decline?

Though, couldn’t you say that the boom and bust cycle is the equilibrium; it’s just charted on a longer timeframe? But when the booms get bigger and bigger each time, there’s no longer equilibrium but an all-consuming upward trend.

There is some truth to this crippling power and I don’t doubt that there are examples of it. But social media has been the vector for massive amounts of propaganda. Sorry to say I’d rather just have the commercialized editorial boards. At least that’s a single problem that can be reigned in. Instead we have the worst of both worlds - commercialized media plus a million-headed hydra spewing falsehoods and nonsense.