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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • Yeah, this is one of those constant annoyances that you kinda just live with. It doesn’t matter that much, because compound words were at some point not one word, and there may be separate words that you use today that will join together during your career. Electronic mail became e-mail became email. As long as the casing doesn’t hide the meaning, you’re doing it right. Also be consistent. Don’t recreate such monstrosities as XMLHttpRequest.






  • On Tuesday afternoon, researchers’ fears were confirmed. The pod of almost 100 long-finned pilot whales rushed to the shore, stranding themselves on Cheynes Beach near Albany, in southern Western Australia.

    By Wednesday, 52 of the whales had died, the authorities said. A team of local volunteer and conservation officials managed to move the remaining 45 back into the water and attempted to herd them back out to sea, using boats and kayaks to guide them. However, that afternoon, the whales re-stranded themselves further along the beach, the authorities said. The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that the whales had again formed a huddle before drifting back to shore.





  • Wildfires driven by an extreme heatwave have encircled Palermo after temperatures in the Sicilian city climbed to 47C (117F) on Monday.

    But while the heat stifles the south, northern regions continued to bear the brunt of bad weather caused by the arrival of cooler air from northern Europe, with more torrential rain and gales forecast in Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.

    Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, said residents endured a sleepless night as winds exceeded 63 mph (100 km/h).

    Sala said: “What we are seeing is not normal. We can no longer deny that climate change is changing our lives. We can no longer turn a blind eye, and above all, we can’t not do anything.”

    The civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci, said: “Climate change is not just a contingency and Italy must realise that it now has a tropical climate. On one hand, we are paying the price of climate change, for which we should have paid more attention several years ago, and, on the other, of infrastructure that does not seem to be totally adequate for the new context.

    The COP28 will certainly be interesting.



    1. Code in Emacs or Jetbrains (depends on language and laptop cpu)
    2. Run make to build, run, debug, or clean (I like makefiles for documenting basic tasks)
    3. Commit with git when chunk of work is done

    I tend to do everything locally on bare metal. I never liked putting stuff in containers or running a vm.

    VS Code is a great editor, though. It actually feels a bit like Emacs.


  • The “personal responsibility” re: climate change bullshit is toxic and plays straight into the capitalist narrative.

    I totally agree, but people also need to be careful when they’re trying to place blame in general. My main question is: how could it have possibly been any different? Anger and blame are pointless and unhelpful. Unless it’s like the oil company situation where they knew and then actively deceived. Those fuckers should be beaten to death in front of their families (this is totally a joke, of course, or is it? idk).

    Much of this comes down to human nature and one thing leading to the next like dominoes. The US is setup as a representative democracy & humans can’t see beyond the tip of their noses -> people vote for today and ignore the future -> politicians don’t risk their jobs over something their voters don’t care about -> climate change kills a shitload of people, eliminates snowmelt, and scorches bread baskets -> mass migrations, war, famine, chaos. The most important questions is: what will we do with today to shape the future?




  • Who’s saying “nuh uh”? It could go both ways.

    I’m saying (in winey child voice), “nuh uh! I’m not a communist! I’m an anarcho-blahblahblah, and there are nuanced distinctions between blah blah blah! Nyah!”

    Marsupial is saying, “nuh uh! China doesn’t blame Western capitalism for the opium trade! They only blame the Brits!”

    I have no disagreement that typical “tankies” would call the Five Eyes an empire and Western hegemony, but calling the idea “tankie” is just using a thought-stopper to avoid talking about the idea that empires serve those with power and not the other way around.

    And I just fucking disdain fervent communists, so Marsupial struck a nerve. I’d rather be dismissed for what I actually think.


  • lmao, just to be clear, I think tankies are little CCP dick-sucking bitches, but anyone who throws around a thought-stopper like “tankie” really doesn’t deserve respect. C’mon, you can engage with the merits and flaws of an argument, right?

    If you want to get into a whole ad hominem thing: I’m suspicious of communism (free markets are great for almost everything), and communist revolutions are a joke. I haven’t finished reading Das Kapital, but I’ve heard that the capitalism will inevitably create communism out of the consequences of its own actions, so any revolution is just trying to force the wheel of time forward. I also think it is plain to see that you can’t have a communist government without democracy (preferable direct democracy), because how can everyone be equal otherwise? China’s communism is just capitalism in a trench coat, which is why you see the same effects on its populace as elsewhere. Fundamentally, I’m an Anarcho-syndicalist or Anarcho-socialist. No hierarchies, free association, worker solidarity, and mutual aid.


  • In the US, climate change/global warming has rarely been important to voters.

    Here are the “issues of the day” for the presidential elections since the 60s (scraped from here):

    • 2020: COVID-19 pandemic, racial tensions, deeply polarized electorate
    • 2016: Health care costs, Economic inequality, Terrorism, Foreign policy (Russia, Iran, Syria, Brexit), Gun control, Treatment of minorities, Immigration policy, Shifting media landscape
    • 2012: Role of government, Spending & tax rates, Nuclear Iran, Arab Spring, Global warming, Campaign finance
    • 2008: Great Recession, Financial panic, Bailouts, Iraq War
    • 2004: Terrorism, Iraq War, Job growth
    • 2000: Impeachment, Presidential ethics, Good economy
    • 1996: Waco standoff, Oklahoma City bombing, Good economy
    • 1992: Persian Gulf War, Fall of Berlin Wall and Breakup of Soviet Union, Recession
    • 1988: Stock market crash, Iran-Contra, Progress in US-USSR relations (INF Treaty)
    • 1984: Recession and Subsequent Recovery (start of bull market for stocks), Defense Spending
    • 1980: Iran hostage crisis, USSR invasion of Afghanistan (Summer Olympics boycott), Inflation
    • 1976: Watergate (Impeachment, pardon of Nixon)
    • 1972: Vietnam War, International Relations (Detente with USSR, Visit to China), Watergate
    • 1968: Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Assassinations (Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King)
    • 1964: Great Society (Civil Rights), Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin), Good Economy
    • 1960: Sputnik/space (keeping up with USSR technologically)

    Regular people aren’t totally innocent here.

    EDIT: fixed some formatting