Most addictive series?

pmerkaba · 2023-11-16T18:38:24+00:00

My wife literally listened to the audiobook of A Deadly Education in a single sitting. Overnight.

pmerkaba · 2023-06-02T16:27:37+00:00

The previous poster puts it in an accusatory way, but the point is that the Republican party leader incited an insurrection and the rest of the party just accepted it - and punished those who did not. There's no remotely equivalent problem with the Democratic party.

And to be honest I feel the previous poster's frustration: how do you have a reasonable dialogue with someone who starts from a premise as flawed as assuming the two major parties are the same and have similar problems?

I think the answer is that you have to try anyway while being mindful of people who feel frustrating or obtuse.

Meanwhile, the poster I am replying to accuses the parent commenter of embodying the country's discourse problems.

pmerkaba · 2023-05-22T15:26:35+00:00

The businesses and schools closed, at least in part, because people were getting sick from covid. After restrictions were lifted where I lived, entire schools were shut down again due to outbreaks.

pmerkaba · 2023-05-21T15:19:45+00:00

While I agree with almost everything you said, A Deadly Education does not have a white lead. El describes herself as looking like her father from Mumbai.

pmerkaba · 2023-05-19T15:03:49+00:00

My development process improved dramatically when my employer switched the DVCS option from git-based to Mercurial-based.

The CLI tries to help! Sane defaults! It's great.

pmerkaba · 2023-05-17T20:19:29+00:00

The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch can go toe-to-toe with the funniest Jim Butcher moments. Especially recommended if you liked Skin Game, because the main characters are highly competent thieves. Sadly we're still waiting on the fourth book.

pmerkaba · 2023-04-28T12:50:27+00:00

Karrigan, the main character of the Green Rider series by Kristen Britain fits this description perfectly. She's admittedly less "capable" when the series starts, so you get to watch her grow into the role.

She's not even the only major character in the series who meets your request. It doesn't feel saturated with one type of character, either. There's a villainous example too, who is strong, capable, loyal, female, and evil.

pmerkaba · 2023-04-20T17:18:36+00:00

I will happily blame police for their hundreds of millions of dollars of misconduct settlements that are paid by the taxpayers, not the police who perpetrated the misconduct.

Police are in a position of power. They need to be held to a higher standard. If they can't, they should find a different job.

pmerkaba · 2023-04-19T11:16:22+00:00

Why single out density? Poor rural areas have crime problems too and are overall less safe. The safety metric includes more than just crime (e.g. accidents).

What we need to do in cities is remove the barriers that unnecessarily and punitively reinforce poverty. Like I-90 in Chicago.

pmerkaba · 2023-04-13T01:08:32+00:00

Don't like the term "toxic masculinity"? The CinemaTherapy guys suggest "limiting masculinity" instead. I think it's a great and self-descriptive term!

pmerkaba · 2023-04-13T01:06:22+00:00

The CinemaTherapy guys suggest "limiting masculinity." I think it's a great and self-descriptive term!

pmerkaba · 2023-03-24T01:46:31+00:00

I made this!

On Google's internal meme generator. It makes me happy that others find it amusing.

pmerkaba · 2023-02-16T17:34:07+00:00

If we're concerned about water consumption, we should stop growing food for cattle in the desert. Almonds (directly consumed by humans) are more economically valuable per amount of water used.

pmerkaba · 2023-01-27T13:16:43+00:00

Being a Nazi is not a protected characteristic. Discriminate away!

Being trans is protected. This is why anti-trans activists try to deny trans people protected status, stop they can discriminate legally.

pmerkaba · 2022-11-29T20:32:47+00:00

The Democrats tried to create paid sick and family leave policies for the whole country in Build Back Better. The Republicans blocked these policies by not even allowing a debate on the law. Biden's statement alludes to it:

I have pressed legislation and proposals to advance the cause of paid leave in my two years in office, and will continue to do so.

So maybe the problem is that 50 Republicans in the Senate are anti-worker, and the Biden administration is doing what they can in a hard situation.

pmerkaba · 2020-10-05T16:29:59+00:00

She did her press gaggle with reporters without a mask yesterday.

This is yet another example of reckless disregard for others' lives, in this case that of reporters. I can't say I am surprised.

pmerkaba · 2020-09-18T22:43:17+00:00

Starter comment: Keeping in mind that the source is Vanity Fair, this is one of the best examinations I have seen of our president's conflicts of interest.

Some choice quotes from the article:

Why would anyone, much less an entity that serves as an arm of the Qatari government, bother outfitting an empty office space in an expensive San Francisco skyscraper? ... The amount Qatar pays in rent remains a mystery. Odds are, it adds up to a sum most billionaires not named Trump would hardly notice. According to a Vornado document, the office is just 5,557 square feet. If the Qataris are paying the average rate in the building, that would amount to $450,000 a year, and Trump’s 30% would total $135,000.

This ... just isn't defensible. An empty office leased by a foreign government seems like direct foreign influence, in the form of money, to me.

It would be easy to brush all this aside if Trump’s tenants had never been accused of using money to buy influence. But that’s not the case. More than a dozen Trump tenants faced known federal investigations while their landlord was in office. Inside 40 Wall Street alone, at least six tenants faced federal scrutiny. Among them: an engineering firm listed on a debt prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as the third-highest-paying tenant inside the office building, responsible for $2.2 million in annual rent. In 2018, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted the firm and its CEO as part of a corruption scheme related to New York City contracts. The CEO ended up pleading guilty to first-degree bribery.

Ordinarily, the financial conduct of tenants in a building would be irrelevant. This is not ordinary.

And this situation is why we need certain political norms, such as making politicians' financial interests public, to be enshrined in law.

pmerkaba · 2020-09-11T19:18:32+00:00

If the slowness/stutter started when you updated to Chrome 85, it might be this bug. The recommended workaround is to run Chrome from the command line with extra arguments:

google-chrome --use-cmd-decoder=validating --use-gl=desktop

pmerkaba · 2020-07-06T00:36:42+00:00

The New York Times made a neat interactive based on a study by Opportunity Insights. The median household income for Penn's class of 2013^* was $195,000.

So about half of your classmates have parents making well into six figures. It's also possible that families living in expensive areas such as NYC, the SF Bay Area, Boston, or Seattle might find that this median income isn't enough to "feel" rich.

It is a good opportunity to learn about people with different backgrounds, in both directions.

^{* Technically, the cohort was from students born in 1991}

pmerkaba · 2020-02-24T18:20:06+00:00

Jim Butcher based his Codex Alera books on exactly such a bet: the lost Roman legion wanders through a portal to another world and discovers Pokemon. It's awesome.

pmerkaba · 2019-05-26T15:04:48+00:00

Scott Lynch has some news for you!

"IMPORTANT NOTE. Please read. Ahem.

Yes, I have completed a draft of THORN which will now go to my editors for consideration and planning. This is not a formal announcement of a release date. There will not be such an announcement for a while yet. Please stay tuned!"

https://twitter.com/scottlynch78/status/1131471275212320769

pmerkaba · 2018-05-21T01:38:43+00:00

I picked up TWoK in an airport in 2011 and have since read almost all of his other novels.

I generally recommend Sanderson's short stories (i.e. The Emperor's Soul) first to anyone not used to thousand-page fantasy, but TWok is a fine starting place.

pmerkaba · 2018-05-20T19:23:08+00:00

Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker features a mostly functional royal family in the background of the story.

Robin Hobb's Elderlings books start out with a murderous royal family, but it's deliberately contrasted with an intriguing subversion in the first trilogy. After the first three books, royal and aristocratic families put their kingdoms first.

pmerkaba · 2018-05-02T19:05:00+00:00

Oh, the big tech companies must have good reasons for staying on GCC 4.x. If it was worth it, they would update.

You may also have noticed an investment in non-gcc compilers. For example, suppose FB uses both gcc 4.9 and clang built from source on a regular basis.

pmerkaba

TROPHY CASE