Recent Comments

1. about 2 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   Most places won’t even sell you something if the power is out. They claim it’s because it screws up their accounting — and I believe ‘em, but the other reason is that cashiers — if any :( can’t make change. Rather than do what you do, I now give them a 20, wait for the $1.57 and then ask them if they have a dollar (or a five) and give them an additional 43¢ and maybe 3 ones. They can do it in two steps that way…

2. about 2 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   The purpose of newspapers has always been to promote biased information. Sometimes that is good for us, sometimes not. News and all information is always presented with a bias, intentionally or not.

   The purpose of newspapers has always been to promote the truth AS THEY SEE IT… but even that is secondary to “make profit enough to keep publishing.” It’s been said that all politics is local. Turns out that all news is local too: Whatever they’re telling you has to be palatable (though not necessarily pleasant) to their readership… and their advertisers. There was a time in my life when I completely trusted newspapers — reporters AND editors… even the small town ones… to get the FACTS right, regardless of how they spun ’em. And to some extent how they chose which articles to push to the front. But I was somewhat wrong because you can distort the truth by ignoring things almost as well as you can by printing lies.

3. about 2 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   It’s been clear since… Ronny Raygun more or less that conservatives have a bias toward lies. Thus truth, from their perspective contradicts them and ego has a liberal bias.

4. about 2 hours ago on Stone Soup

   And thence to my Kindle… if it’s worth doing that. (I do a lot of work w/ Python and avoid Libre/Open Office until the last moment… if then. Turns out you can use Calibre to do most conversions, which is quite convenient. I have a nice script for unpacking htmlz files which I use Calibre to make from e.g. the free ones from Baen: Makes an index page if needed, removes link and javascript cruft adjusts layout and font size to my preference… and then Calibre can be used (again) to get it on my Kindle if I wish… or just leave it unpacked for me to read in the browser.

5. about 18 hours ago on Ozy and Millie

   I’ve worked for companies, for “one-man shops” and for myself. Generally the only time I didn’t get paid at all have been when working for myself … and at that only for “self projects”. When I contracted to do something, I generally got paid — though seldom as much as I wished.

6. about 18 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I’m pretty sure that when you got (note the past tense) news from a well edited newspaper, it was real and more or less unbiased… unless it was marked as “editorial” or “readers’ write” … or an ad which is even more clearly marked as not being vetted for truth. But such careful work is extremely rare these days and even places like Public Radio run a lot of “Oh this is interesting” fluff that’s not careful about details.

7. about 18 hours ago on Rubes

   I’m not sure abstract thought is even possible. And I have studied philosophy a bit. Of course I’m not entirely sure it’s NOT possible too. Hmm. Of course I’m a mostly “representational” kinda guy when it comes to art, so it may just be ME who struggles to understand how a material system can think at all much less abstractly.

8. about 18 hours ago on Stone Soup

   I’ve generally avoided “business” software — I use a simple text editor in my programming, and my Firefox browser for doing this kind of reading/commenting. And email of course. But when I DO need a WYSIWYG doc or spreadsheet or the VERY occasional database I generally find it to be written almost well enough to be easy to use. Though I do fairly often have to resort to a web search for “how can I get LibreOffice to…” And I don’t go looking for easter eggs because what I really want is to get done with it and go back to things I enjoy and am at least sort of good at.

9. about 18 hours ago on Phoebe and Her Unicorn

   Mmm. But it’s generally considered bad form to have them in front of the therapee.

10. 1 day ago on Ozy and Millie

    Time passes very strangely in Llewllynland.