@vkc I totally agree. I'm trying to be extra nice to the n00bs. If we want them to feel happy and welcome, then we need to do things that make them feel happy and welcome.
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paco@infosec.exchange
@paco@infosec.exchange
A forum for discussing and organizing recreational softball and baseball games and leagues in the greater Halifax area.
Posts
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My comments are littered with folks asking "why is it a problem if your blocklist is public on Bluesky?" -
Ants are the graph theory of biology.@futurebird I learned a tiny bit of queueing theory and that’s the one I can’t get out of my head. I see it everywhere, of course. Traffic. The grocery store. The airport. Restaurants. I know enough to say “I bet there’s some queuing theory principle that explains this” but not enough to know more than that.
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers@futurebird Of course. I wouldn’t ever say that to someone trying to learn. But you could tell them the story about the grumpy professor who was a jerk, and they can laugh while learning what printf() debugging is.
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Wanted: Advice from CS teachers@futurebird I’m pivoting off this just to share a funny story. An old CS prof shared this with me when I was staff in a CS department at a university.
One of his undergrads had come to him with a big printed listing of their code (back when that was how you did that! It was probably FORTRAN printed on fan-fold paper). They obviously wanted him to find the problem in their code. It became clear quickly that they hadn’t done anything to debug it themselves.
He started point at various places in the listing. “Right here, add PRINT ‘I am a dumbass’. And here: PRINT ‘I am a dumbass’” and so on. “Then run it and see how many dumbasses you get.”
Now, did he really do that? Is that just how he tells the story? Who knows. But it’s funny. And anyone who has ever written code will agree that this works sometimes.
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Few things are more confusing and potentially off-putting than something that's aspirational (class based) in a section of culture or society that you don't have much contact with at all or don't understand.@futurebird I’ve had some weight ups and downs and one of the things I noticed was:
- your punishment for gaining weight is buying new clothes
- your reward for losing weight is buying new clothes
I absolutely hate shopping for clothes. So I tend to just have clothes that fit badly for one reason or another.
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It's middle school in the 90s or 80s and it's PIZZA DAY.@grumble209 I don’t remember the radio ever telling us school lunch menus. But since snow was rare in our beach city, I remember plenty of mornings where it snowed a tiny bit and I would sit impatiently waiting for them to list any school closures or delays.
I remember thinking I don’t care about “two-for Tuesday” or where “The Bod Squad” is giving out T-shirts this weekend! Tell me if school is closed!!
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In the most general sense who is *more* likely to remember and hold to account a famous person who cheats on their committed partner having been transparently dishonest with them about the nature of that long term commitment?@futurebird The difference, in my opinion, is the notion of authority/hierarchy. That is a really strong value for right-leaning folks. There are times, it seems, when it overrides something like fairness/truth.
Sometimes one cannot uphold truth without violating authority. That seems to be a conflict that resolves in favor of authority a lot for the right and rarely on the left.
The left has famously very little regard for authority unless truth, justice, fairness, etc are all upheld. The left values fairness and truth above all else.
So liberal folks tend to be less conflicted about what to do when an important person violates fairness, truth, justice, etc.