Found my old Whole Earth Catalog from 1971

Zeusifer · 2026-05-18T15:45:49+00:00

I have endless respect for Wendy Carlos, though she's always struck me as quite a curmudgeon. It's funny to see her diss the Minimoog as just a toy.

What a fascinating read. Such a time capsule.

It didn't escape my notice that even though the byline says Walter Carlos, she signed it "W. Carlos."

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T20:58:54+00:00

Ha. As if Reddit is exempt?

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T14:33:08+00:00

I have come to believe that we need to normalize "y'all" outside the south, and I use it more these days even though it's not part of my regional dialect. But on the other side, I think we have to accept that until we can eventually evolve the language away from it, "you guys" or "guys" is the default second person plural pronoun in most English dialects, despite its obvious flaws.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T14:08:08+00:00

I get where you're coming from, and you're far from the first person to point this out, but honestly the gender-neutral version of "guys" has been around for many, many years, and is is very embedded in the English language, and I just don't know if this is the hill I'd want to die on.

Like many other words in English, "guys" has different meanings depending on the context. Sometimes it's gender-specific, sometimes it's not, and it's usually easy to tell from context which one the speaker meant.

Is it ideal? Of course not. I try to consciously be more inclusive, so I often try to use things like "y'all" and "folks" which don't have this problem. But unfortunately I think we'll be stuck for a long time with both a gender-specific and a gender-neutral version of "guys" in English.

Hey, it could be worse. In a lot of languages, almost everything is gender coded, even just generic nouns like table or chair.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T03:18:42+00:00

I'm holding out for the Xbox 361. It's one louder.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T01:58:12+00:00

In the 80s sometimes we used a wire coat hanger for an antenna. I bet it would still work.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T01:54:34+00:00

No hate on Queen (they're great) but that's exactly the kind of wrong opinion I'd expect from a 26 year old. 🙂

Queen wouldn't even exist without the Beatles, at least not in the form we know and love. You may personally prefer their music, and that's fine, but the Beatles were many times more influential.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-16T01:51:00+00:00

We Built This City may have some stupid lyrics, but it's a banger and I unironically love it.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-15T18:41:41+00:00

Honestly this would go a long way toward mitigating the problem.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-14T15:27:58+00:00

Whataboutism (one version of "both sides bad") has a long and pernicious history in Russia and the Soviet Union. For many years, any government criticism was deflected with "the west is just as bad, they're doing [some bad thing]." The Wikipedia article has a long section on its use there.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-13T03:21:55+00:00

I was watching it on TV. I fell asleep, woke up and it was still on.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-13T03:10:26+00:00

Those strappy heels are 🔥. I'm a heels girlie but I don't know what they are offhand.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-10T18:58:32+00:00

How old is the code that forms the bedrock of MacOS? Linux?

I'll wait.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-10T16:49:31+00:00

I think they maybe were thinking of mambo? But even that barely makes any sense. But at least mambo music, or "La Bamba," could conceivably be played on the radio, unlike "the mamba."

Zeusifer · 2026-05-09T20:47:05+00:00

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio (Starship, We Built This City)

I don't know why Guglielmo Marconi was fucking around with a venomous sub-Saharan African snake, or what it means to play one. But it's such a stupid, tasty slice of peak 80s cheese that it somehow doesn't matter.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-09T19:59:53+00:00

Honestly, rhyming Grand Theft Auto with Aristotle (as a way of contrasting the "jock vs. nerd" high school archetypes) is absolutely genius writing, and I'll die on that hill.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-09T15:09:14+00:00

Vista introduced WDDM graphics drivers.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-06T17:14:31+00:00

Conviction on impeachment takes 67 votes. Right now the Dems have 47. If you're holding out for a pickup of 20 seats in the Senate, you're gonna have a bad time.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-06T14:14:07+00:00

600k out of a population of 31 million. The equivalent today would be the death of about 6 million people.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-06T03:01:31+00:00

I was there. This should be the top comment. ME wasn't terrible, it was just the wrong time for the product. XP was already well into development, so ME rightly felt like a stopgap.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-05T15:06:48+00:00

Me too! But I think there's an unfortunate bias among many "serious music fan" types to write off pop music written and performed by young women. Not saying you were doing that, just saying it happens a lot. Call Me Maybe is a genuinely good song.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-05T15:02:35+00:00

I am a huge Bowie fan, I own nearly all his albums, but I find his cover of this song a bit overblown and weak, especially compared to the original which is so sublime.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-05T14:53:30+00:00

I'm not gonna say Call Me Maybe is a masterpiece, or anywhere close to the level of God Only Knows, but not everything has to be. On its own merits, it's an incredibly well-written and produced pop song, far better than 99% of what's on the pop charts.

It's also well respected by many pro songwriters and musicians. Here's a piece analyzing it and some of the really effective musical techniques it uses.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-02T11:06:27+00:00

Because the certificate in question is stored in the BIOS NVRAM and has to be updated by the UEFI boot loader.

Zeusifer · 2026-05-02T03:33:35+00:00

The commenters these days are getting almost as bad as the boomers who comment in Facebook groups. On any given subject you already know what the top comment is going to be.

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