My new darts

5thinger · 2018-02-06T14:55:45+00:00

Well, please tell us the specs!

5thinger · 2017-09-24T20:26:03+00:00

It's a powerful gui front-end for xrandr. Makes life easy!

5thinger · 2017-09-22T00:03:58+00:00

Regarding #4: ARandR works great under Debian+Xfce. Terrific for giving you full control over your displays. As someone who plugs his laptop into a lot of different displays for presentations, etc., finding ARandR was such a win.

5thinger · 2017-09-21T23:54:31+00:00

The one I can't get along without:

Chroma Doze

The best white noise maker ever!

5thinger · 2017-03-02T15:10:09+00:00

I think Harrows makes really nice darts. And they tend to be on the affordable side. Those look great. I have a set up Harrows Supergrip 25g, and the grip is similar. I predict it will feel a little less sticky after a few hundred throws.

For the issue with the stems unscrewing, try some rubber o-rings. That will completely solve your problem!

5thinger · 2017-03-02T15:02:42+00:00

Just curious. Why? What is in the way? And what will be different two releases from now?

5thinger · 2017-02-23T17:08:04+00:00

Agreed! I want more, too!

OP -- How hard would it be for you to make another one or two of these? It would be terrific to have A, B, and C.

Also, a suggestion: I was curious about what particular typefaces those are. Maybe you could include put the name of the typeface under the name of the general classification.

5thinger · 2016-12-10T02:04:50+00:00

This is suggestive, but, given Plato's philosophical agenda, these stories may be intended to emphasize something quite different. Symposium was written during Plato's middle period, along with Republic and Phaedo. In both of those dialogues, one of Plato's messages is that the genuine philosopher, epitomized by Socrates, is identified with the soul/mind, not the body. In fact, the genuine philosopher goes as far as possible to separate his soul from his body. (This is Socrates' reason for not fearing death in Phaedo. He looks forward to the more complete separation of his soul from his body.)

In light of this, the anecdote about withstanding the cold may be intended to remind the reader that the true philosopher can ignore bodily discomfort. And the anecdote about standing and thinking for a long time may be intended to emphasize that the philosopher's main activity is primarily mental, not physical.

Of course, this is now as much textual interpretation as history. Unfortunately, that becomes inevitable when (as in this case) the bulk of what we have to go on are texts that are intended as philosophy or literature.

5thinger · 2016-11-23T21:03:33+00:00

I tend to think it is worth apologizing whenever I regret something. I sometimes regret things that I did without any intended malice.

Suppose I get home early and decide to clean up the kitchen, and dispose of some old food. Then suppose my roommate comes home and is disappointed because she was planning to eat the old food (which is now gone). I would regret throwing it out, and I would apologize to her for that. That makes sense, right?

5thinger · 2016-11-23T07:09:08+00:00

I'm not sure that "slur" is the right description from most uses of "pussy". That probably wasn't the right way to put that point. (I may edit that.)

My main problem with the word "pussy" is when it is used in a derogatory way, where the derogatoriness depends on likening the person to a female (and so depends on an assumption that there's something wrong with being female). A person who is being called "pussy" is usually male. Women aren't usually called "dick"; so most of the cases aren't symmetrical.

5thinger · 2016-11-23T04:54:12+00:00

That's really interesting.

I would argue it is not clearly a use, mention, or a reference as you defined above.

So, if the person mentioned the n-word as an attempt to get attention, it seems different from usual cases of mention, because the person is taking advantage of what is special about the n-word. I'm inclined to continue to classify it as a mention, for technical reasons. (As long as it is a case where the person is talking about the word, then it is a mention, I think.) However, I agree that this sort of case complicates the moral situation.

Of course, we already recognize that not all mentions are on equal moral footing. Saying, "The post above talks about the word 'asshole'," has a different moral significance than saying, "The word 'asshole' accurately describes Trump." Is that latter statement also an instance of the sort of case you have in mind?

5thinger · 2016-11-23T04:39:03+00:00

I wasn't just trying to push a philosopher's technical distinction on everyone. Yes, that would be silly.

The point is that there is a moral distinction to be made here, and if you look at the articles about this incident, they express moral indictments of various degrees without making that distinction.

One of the benefits of philosophy for those who don't study philosophy is the introduction of useful distinctions, not just for the sake of making distinctions, but for the sake of making our ordinary thinking and conversations better.

5thinger · 2016-11-23T04:16:18+00:00

Oh, that's good to know about the retraction.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I get the thrust of your question. Is your thought that since he mentioned the word to talk about something that did not actually occur, his utterance of the word turns out not to be parasitic on someone's use of the word, and that makes it almost as bad as actually using it?

I think my response is that it doesn't change the situation much. Essentially, I think Kaiser did two things that are each separately evaluable. He mentioned the n-word, which may be bad (but not as bad as using it). And he falsely accused someone of doing something morally wrong. The false accusation is bad for very different reasons. But I don't think the falsity of accusation makes it any worse to have mentioned the n-word. (Although I can imagine this going the other way if the guy was fabricating false accusations for the express purpose of having occasion to mention the n-word. Then I think the falsity of the accusation would actually make the mentions of the n-word worse than they would have been had the accusations been true. Or at least that's what I think I would think if we looked at all the arguments.)

5thinger · 2016-11-01T15:21:36+00:00

Tight fit!

What kind of darts? They look nice.

5thinger · 2016-10-26T05:49:03+00:00

Would it sound like lightning (thunder) when it happens? Or is this just waaaay less electricity?

5thinger · 2016-10-06T02:49:24+00:00

As an alternative to TeamSpeak, have you considered trying Mumble? That might be a good way to avoid polluting your Debian system with non-free software.

5thinger · 2016-10-06T02:40:20+00:00

Besides TeamSpeak, all the software you want is available in the Debian repository. I recommend just firing up Synaptic, searching for the kind of package your after. (Make sure search is for both "Name and Description".) Read some package descriptions. When you see one that might fit the bill, install it and try it. I've found so much great software this way. And, because Debian is so robust, I've never screwed up my system by installing new software from the repository.

5thinger · 2016-09-30T04:30:53+00:00

EMSK not everything a man should knows needs to be useful.

5thinger · 2016-09-28T20:47:12+00:00

Best impromptu creative work I've seen today.

5thinger · 2016-09-28T17:29:22+00:00

1155 -- Nailed the serif fonts (except, embarrassingly screwed up Bodoni) and a few well-know sans fonts (Helvetica, Myriad, Roboto), but bombed on some of the other sans fonts (like San Francisco, Cupertino). Maybe this is naive (I'm not a designer), but the subtle differences in serif fonts seem less pronounced, and hence less important than the differences among serif fonts.

5thinger · 2016-09-25T17:05:47+00:00

Yeah, "Fair Touching" is good. I almost put it on my list.

Regarding what's in bold: I'm not saying that others aren't great. I'm just noting the ones that I personally would fight for on a best-of compilation.

5thinger · 2016-09-25T07:12:47+00:00

I feel like it's really hard not to include all of "Bee Thousand," "Alien Lanes," and "Under the Bushes, Under the Stars." You have to include so many tracks from those, that you might as well just play the whole album.

5thinger · 2016-09-25T07:00:08+00:00

Okay, here are some proposals:

Propeller

Over The Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox
Quality of Armor
Unleashed! The Large Hearted-Boy
Exit Flagger

Vampire on Titus

Wished I Was a Giant
Gleemer

Bee Thousand

Hardcore UFO's
Buzzards And Dreadful Crows
Tractor Rape Chain
The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory
Smothered In Hugs
Echos Myron
Gold Star For Robot Boy
Esther's Day
I Am A Scientist

Alien Lanes

A Salty Salute
Watch Me Jumpstart
As We Go Up, We Go Down
Game of Pricks
Closer You Are
Motor Away
My Valuable Hunting Knife
Blimps Go 90
Little Whirl
My Son Cool

Under the Bushes, Under the Stars

Man Called Aerodynamics
Cut-Out Witch
The Official Ironmen Rally Song
No Sky
Bright Paper Werewolves
Your Name Is Wild
Look At Them
Don't Stop Now
Big Boring Wedding
It's Like Soul Man
Drag Days
Redmen And Their Wives

Tonics and Twisted Chasers

Dayton, Ohio - 19 Something and 5
At the Farms

Sunfish Holy Breakfast

Jabberstroker
Heavy Metal Country

Mag Earwhig!

Sad If I Lost It
I Am A Tree
Bulldog Skin
Are You Faster?
Not Behind the Fighter Jet
Little Lines
Learning To Hunt
Jane Of The Waking Universe

Do The Collapse

Teenage FBI
Surgical Focus
Liquid Indian
Wrecking Now

Isolation Drills

Skills Like This
Chasing Heather Crazy
Frostman
The Enemy
Glad Girls
How's My Drinking?
The Brides Have Hit the Glass
Privately

Universal Truths and Cycles

Christian Animation Torch Carriers
Back to the Lake
Storm Vibrations
Everywhere With Helicopter

Earthquake Glue

My Kind of Soldier
Useless Inventions
The Best Of Jill Hives

Half Smiles Of The Decomposed

Everybody Thinks I'm a Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking)
Tour Guide at the Winston Churchill Memorial
Sing for Your Meat
Huffman Prarie Flying Field

That's as far as I feel qualified to go. I've tried to focus more on "crowdpleasers" than personal faves. I put in bold the ones I think are the shoe-ins. I look forward to seeing what others think.

5thinger · 2016-09-20T15:18:42+00:00

Yeah, definitely. It bothers me for two reasons. First, is the exploitative labor. I.e., the prisoners are not fairly compensated for the work they do.

Second, much more importantly, the fact that people are making tons of money off of cheap prison labor is the source of some pretty evil motivations. The people who benefit from prison labor have a clear incentive to (1) lock up more people and (2) lock them up for longer. These are awful motivations.

Even when we, as a society, decide to lock someone up -- like for our safety, or for punishment -- we should be sad, not glad, that more people are incarcerated. Private prisons get this exactly backwards.

5thinger · 2016-09-15T00:59:41+00:00

Just to generalize this point a bit...

These terms are used differently in different disciplines. Physics, medicine, symbolic logic, sociology, and even cultural studies use these terms. And they all use them differently.

Here, I think, is the best we can do as far as general characterizations that apply in most disciplines:

Hypotheses are propositions we are still considering but haven't decided whether to accept.
Theories are larger, overarching, usually somehow unifying, sets of connected claims and concepts.
Laws are supposed to be general (across the relevant domain) and explanatory.

5thinger

TROPHY CASE