China. The people are super nice, sweet, helpful, lovely people. It’s just their government I hate. I don’t know if they hate it too or not since they’re not free to say but I think they’re nice people and they deserve better.

There are some parts of it that aren’t great and maybe it could be streamlined, like the cookie warning which should be implemented technically in the browser and part of the cookie protocol. Transition it to making it legally the responsibility of tech giants and advertisers like Microsoft and Google to comply and be honest about what they’re tracking, rather than the sole burden falling on each individual website. Somehow I doubt that’s the only thing they’ll be interested in discussing but I’m going to wait and see what they actually do before I judge.

I appreciate your attempt to engage in good faith, but no, my question was very rhetorical. I am not really interested in discussing any answers to that question that neither you nor I would support. If you do have an argument to make, feel free to do so. I may or may not respond. But in case my own point’s not clear, I think most of the opposition to solar panels comes from disingenuous efforts by companies with a financial interest in fossil-fuel, and I think they try to cast it in as negative a light as they possibly can, and I don’t think their perspective is even worth considering as they continue their ghastly sprint to destroy the future of life on this planet so they can earn money.

Why is this always worded in such a shitty way that makes it sound like a bad thing. “swamps the grid” “overwhelming the region” “prices slumping”. Fuck all the “energy companies” and their bought politicians and journalists who think or at least talk this way.

Here let me fix it for you: “France now has abundant solar energy, providing free electricity to all homes and businesses that want it, while plenty of solar capacity remains in reserve, available for meeting increased demands or storing for later or night-time use by refilling hydroelectric reservoirs”

Who would’ve ever thought we would’ve ever needed something like this. I am glad my veteran father never lived to see this happen, it would’ve broken him. This is what he fought against.

Yeah when I first started there was one guy whose code reviews I dreaded, he would nitpick every detail and he would stand by it, he would tell me to do it a completely different way that was 10x more work. It felt like I would never get my stories done because I had drawn “that asshole” in the code review lottery.

Years later, I came to realize that he was actually the best, he taught me so much about the way I should be thinking of things and structuring things, that have saved so much time and trouble later on, I now specifically reach out to him for a review when I am trying to do something complex because I know he’s going to give me an honest, thorough and useful review. Nobody’s doing anyone any favours in the long run by rubber stamping things, it may help you keep your sprint velocity up, but it’s not going to result in high quality code, and the bad quality code will inevitably bite you.

I actually dare them to try. I’m really looking forward to the massive paychecks I’m going to get when companies are panicking to try to untangle all the absolute nonsense bullshit these AI companies are about to unleash into corporate codebases. The AI-slop bugfest will make the Y2K issue seem trivial. I’m so excited, the future looks very bright for human software developers.

My advice: Practice going over other people’s code with a fine-tooth comb looking for bad architecture, flaws and inefficiencies. You won’t always be right, you won’t find them all, but you’ll learn lots of skills you’ll need in the future. Whatever you do, don’t undersell yourselves, remember that your experience is valuable, and AI has no experience, it just has a huge library it can shotgun “solutions” out of. Half the time they don’t even compile, nevermind work properly, or efficiently.

There is always going to be some level of interpretation. You are looking for an absolute truth that, while it may theoretically exist, cannot be reliably perceived through a human lens, which you are guaranteed to have at least 1 of (yourself), and almost certainly 2 (the source), and maybe many, many, many more in between.

Imagine you had a time machine that could bring you back into whatever time you’re interested so you can watch it unfold first-hand. Ok, great. But do you trust your eyes? Did you see everything that happened? Even if you can invisibly go and explore the aftermath. Even if you can go back to the same point 100 times, 1000 times, and meticulously detail everything you find. Do you now have the perfect and unambiguous truth? Of course not. You can make mistakes, you can misunderstand. Even our eyes lie to us. Even our brain misremembers things. Different people using the same time machine to travel to the exact same point in time may see what happens in an entirely different way, may see things that you did not see. Who’s right?

I know you think you’re looking for the absolute unvarnished truth, but you are chasing a phantom. Your goal is not realistic. At some point you have to arbitrarily accept and define what errors and limitations the sources you’re drawing your understanding from might have, and attempt to make your own interpretation of what the facts actually are. You will never know what really happened with absolute certainty. Absolute certainty is its own kind of myth and there’s some very fundamental metaphysical reasons for that. You’re not going to find a magic textbook of trustworthy history that solves that problem.

Understanding history is a process that requires connecting many different pieces of variously flawed contexts and information to paint your own, interpreted but hopefully relatively accurate picture. No matter what book you read, you cannot guarantee its accuracy and it is a fool’s errand to try, but you can continue to try to collect more evidence, more pieces of context, more clues to add more details to your picture. Perhaps you will never be satisfied with the detail of the picture you’ve created, sometimes you will have to throw your whole picture away and start to create a new and different picture on the basis of some details you find that don’t fit. You’re never going to have a perfect picture, but I think a lot of people have managed to create really pretty good ones based on a whole lot of research of many different sources and pieces of detail, not just written records alone but cultural references, archaeological artifacts, scientific analysis, and sometimes just assumptions about basic human behavior. You just have to learn who and what you can trust and how far you can trust them. Both as sources, and as interpreters. And you are always welcome to argue you own interpretation.

I have never understood why people are so unequivocal and quick to take sides in this conflict. Either people insist on “No criticism of Hamas” or “No criticism of Israel”. It has always seemed clear to me that both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are victims of their and each other’s respective warmongering hardline governments. It is possible for both sides to be completely in the wrong, and arguing about which is “more wrong” and trying to tally up historical injustices to debate who has the biggest total is fruitless and counterproductive. Until both sides are willing to admit they’ve been wrong and done wrong to each other and accept that very justified criticism, the violence is never going to end. Criticism of both sides is not only deserved it is necessary and probably the only answer. Both sides need to be forced to take responsibility for what they’ve each done wrong instead of justifying and defending it and acting like they’re completely innocent before this is ever going to have a chance at resolution.

The only conclusion I can draw is that some people REALLY don’t want it to ever have a peaceful resolution, and I think that’s probably closest to the actual truth of the situation. Really sickening and sad, for everyone victimized by this conflict. And I’m not even going to start getting into all the various foreign governments “supporting” both these sides. These are the ones who don’t want it to ever have a peaceful resolution, I suspect.

I am hoping that maybe these protests are at least a sign that Gazans are willing to start vocally criticizing Hamas’ role in perpetuating this violence. Now for us to be getting somewhere we’d need to start to see the same from the Israeli people too. But I’m not holding my breath. These protest efforts may be too little too late. Israel is clearly the better equipped and supported regime here; globally we seem to be returning to the horrible principle of “might makes right”. As we know history is written by the victor, and genocide is an unfortunately practical and well-tested way of silencing your critics.

Of course the US would rather get its fertilizer from Russia than Canada. Sanction nasty Canada, free trade with Russia. Bring fertilizer from the other side of the world instead of across the border. Burn more oil in the process, Russian oil. This is sensible and wise!

When did I go through the portal into the Evil Alternate Universe?

The Marshall Plan was one of the most ambitious and apparently successful contributions to global peace, prosperity, and safety that has been made in modern history. Probably one of the greatest contributions of all time. Perhaps more importantly for the self-centered people out there, it cemented American hegemony for three quarters of a century.

Why would anyone want to try to repeat something like that? /s

That said, Europe will probably do an even better job, and it’s their turn anyway.

Violence is an intrinsic part of fascism. It is the inevitable consequence of “might makes right”. Be prepared for a lot more violence. Probably on both sides.

“I used to think the complete breakdown of laws, government and society was just funny when was only happening on TV! I never thought it would happen in my town! This is outrageous!” --Person outraged about 50 years too late.

They … rejected … anti-DEI … making them … pro-DEI … and anti-Trump? Am I getting that right? Sorry, there are just getting to be a lot of double-negatives these days it’s hard to keep track.

Wired takes a sober but meaningful look at what’s happening from the context of 20th century history. I learned some new terminology there, “electoral autocracy” which is what they’re calling most modern dictatorships that continue having mock but ineffectual elections.