My liberal bubble has collided with conservative bubbles a couple times this week. I don't think we can be friends. One sharp contrast is the way conservative women approach life. Because they're not valued for their mind, they're far more focused on their appearance (and the appearance of […]

Being in a volunteer organization means having to work with some people who would be fired if it were a paid job.

Growing up, I acquired every remotely affordable cool thing as soon as it came out, and I was STILL chronically bored. There is now more cool shit in existence than I could ever have time to play with. And yet I'm compelled to acquire everything I can. My childhood did not prepare me for this.

Me: "Alexa, What time does Southwest Airlines flight 1234 land in Phoenix?" Alexa: [answers accurately] Well, that's handy!

35 years later, Nintendo's SNES games Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid all hold up really well in graphics and gameplay. And you can emulate them on really low-powered hardware.

https://downdetector.com went down. Out of concern that it might happen again, someone created Down Detector's Down Detector, which detects whether Down Detector is down. https://downdetectorsdowndetector.com/ I am alarmed to report that Down Detector's Down Detector's Down Detector's Down […]

Furries got that dog in 'em

Oh, Amazon

Future Crew's "Second Reality" was a pivotal work in the 90's PC demoscene. It's been ported to C++, which evidently enabled a port to run directly in your browser: https://www.jsr-productions.com/secondreality/index.html

I think Shopify has an even better article than this somewhere regarding "grepability"/"grep driven development". But this is what turned up in a search. (I see the irony.) "I realized that when I searched for the word Job that I would have also missed any of these backgroundable modules. The […]

So, yeah, I see why Disney took significant liberties with this story. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19860/19860-h/19860-h.htm#THE_STORY_OF_ALADDIN_OR_THE_WONDERFUL_LAMP

After trying out many, many brands of 0.8-inch magnetic blocks from Amazon, I've settled on a rule that 25 cents per block is a reasonable price. More than that, and you're getting a bad deal. Also, do NOT use these in households with young or mentally handicapped children. The magnets […]

I hate most things. Which is why when I love something I *worship* it.

I don't have time to get good at any software tool because employers keep forcing new ones on me. Learning where all the preferences and features are in a modern app takes time.

Wizard Zines is doing another Big Zine Sale again this year on Friday, November 28th! One day only. here’s a google calendar link for the duration of the sale if you want a reminder: https://wzrd.page/cal (or an ICS link: https://wzrd.page/cal.ics)

"I do want to say this wonderful quote my late friend Mark Buck said. He used to drive these really wonderful Japanese motorcycles. And at one point I said 'Are you going to repaint the motorcycle?' And he said 'Why would I make any assumption that I'm better at design than a TEAM full of […]

@kenney You're awesome but I'm already following you on Bluesky so unfollowing here to reduce repetition!

Snowbirds are s*** drivers.

On my employer's Slack

Consumer GPS chips shut down if they MIGHT be attached to an ICBM. WTF is this horseshit? The bad guys probably had this circumvented within days. Only people getting screwed are innocent civilians trying to do science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtbzJlcNKc

"there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks […]

Comments: "My 6 year old daughter is hardly allowed to walk out of the house, not because I fear for her safety, but because Amber & I have a pretty good idea of what our society will think of us (and do to us) if we let her out, unattended." https://communitywiki.org/wiki/DoOcracy

I have absolutely loved having a Steam Deck docked to my television. But I never even remove it from the dock. And when making a system portable, one makes sacrifices in hardware capability. So what if one could have the same experience with more capable hardware? […]

Just realizing that I saw this at a formative time in my life. Maybe I took its anti-capitalist messaging a lot more seriously than I was meant to? https://youtu.be/LCz4FNe_S1U?si=qKomsZ_RuV_1O3zX&t=38 Just as well. Capitalism has metastasized from a joke into a threat to our way of life.

Central premise of indie movie Boys Go to Jupiter is that the American Dream is a lie. (And an ending spoiler in the thread...) https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.46325882-65ab-401e-9393-77b72196c025?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

If you've ever used Mac System 7, watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXfgQjwND_c

Peter Cooper, publisher of many newsletters for developers: "Struggling to remember a tougher week, content-wise for putting together the newsletters. Developer space devoid of serious news and developments in the past week for some reason. Usually this is an August problem.. 😅 Wondering if […]

My father had never played or even seen Tetris. So I rectified that tonight. He said it was "really... different". 🤣

I've basically given up all hope of ever publishing a game. Between the demands of work and family, it's laughable how little time I have.

Management of your company has a legal, fiduciary duty to their investors to pay you as little as possible, and demand as much work as possible. Nothing personal. Which is why you need to form a union, and tell them to go fuck themselves. Nothing personal.

How it started: How it's going: Literally cried in front of my financial advisor yesterday.

Shame on these well-known companies for using these deceptive user interface patterns. https://hallofshame.design/collection/

"Social media feeds can also be a source of information on others’ feelings towards a company or unions in general. Mining coworkers’ feeds for that kind of information may require extra time and effort, but can increase your chances of finding those sympathetic to unionizing. Once you have a […]

"Someone just sent me a character from my assets which they 'improved' using generative AI giving a detailed description on how my original character was lackluster." https://bsky.app/profile/kenney.nl/post/3m4fx7tdxr22u Yeah, pretty lame. But the replies quickly escalate: "Pls name and shame […]

Some pretty good in-browser games here! https://www.google.com/search?q=google+doodle+games

Strudel has been updated to self-host all its default samples via bunny cdn (rather than use microsoft github who were randomly rate limiting them). Please shout if you notice anything broken or strange! https://strudel.cc/ #strudelcc #livecoding

Prepare to have your mind blown

What not to buy at a thrift store. And a corollary: if it's not on this list then it's probably not commonly known to be high-risk. (But use common sense!) https://www.cheapism.com/things-never-buy-thrift-store/

"[Online interactions] take place within communities that have a low bar for entry and exit, so people can block others or just quit when they are not pleased. Communities tend to be short-lived, and relationships are often disposable." -- The Anxious Generation

Like Minesweeper? You'll love nonograms (aka Picross). Probably the best of many free-to-play apps: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meow-tower-nonogram-puzzle/id1579122980 (there's an Android version too)

The Super Mario World hack "Same Sprites Different Levels" is of better quality than the name would suggest. No tasteless fan-made artwork, just decent, playable level design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK1FzUL5oQ4&list=PLyLdgAh4zMOjxJ9ZMbpSQ-i0cvACKElvI

Need audio feedback that an osascript command ran? Just add an extra "-e 'beep'"! osascript -e 'beep' -e 'set volume input volume 70'

OMG, the Louvre thieves are probably going to break down the (priceless) jewelry they stole, melt down the precious metals, and re-cut the gems. Any heist-movie romanticizing I had is done. 😡 […]

As far as I'm concerned, the *sole* responsibility of a Rails model class is writing valid records to the database. Heck, even the "valid" portion of that mandate increases its scope immensely. Don't tack instance or class methods with business logic onto the model. Instead, put that in a […]

Getting real tired of apps being dumbed down for the technically illiterate to use, to the point that it hobbles those of us who know what we're doing.

I have this in ~/.pryrc to load a "my_console_methods.rb" file: if defined?(Rails) my_console_methods_file = Rails.root.join('my_console_methods.rb') require my_console_methods_file if File.exist?(my_console_methods_file) end That allows a different "my_console_methods.rb" for each of your […]

Atlassian products suck, almost every single one. This is the best insight I've seen as to why. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27971639 "Project managers on the other hand likes the control, many even prefer the extensive tools to looser forms of project management. If you’re not careful […]

D20 nets: A lot of copy/pasting of tabs and slots. Inkscape was a HUGE help getting everything aligned right. And it looks like it's all working! Can surely be made even easier to assemble, but even now they hold together nicely with zero glue!

So I've finally looked into Signal Private Messenger. It's encrypted, it's run by a non-profit (unlike WhatsApp), and it's based in the USA (say what you want but that's still better than alternatives for now). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) https://signal.org/download/ I […]