Writers need to be interpreted, because it’s unlikely that they actually understand what they wrote. Therefore, when employing a novel to address a problem, my interpretation is probably more important than the original work.

I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

It’s not even clear that Bram Stoker had a good understanding of the word “Dracula”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2467&v=BvFwqVzEsfw&feature=youtu.be

I believe that a vampire is a representation of exploitative forces that you invite into your own life but could avoid if you chose to. A policeman is hard to avoid, especially if they have a warrant. Therefore, a vampire cannot be a policeman in the first place, since the state of being a policeman overwhelms the state of being a vampire.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trumps-sanctions-on-iccs-chief-prosecutor-have-halted-tribunals-work-officials-and-lawyers-say

I currently see this URL provided by https://thebrainbin.org/u/@[email protected] and it is not identical: https://us.afpnews.com/article/?were-done-with-teams-german-state-hits-uninstall-on-microsoft%2C49PM3G2=

This seems to be the same article, but uses a URL that doesn’t lead to a page that is essentially blank for me: https://us.afpnews.com/article/?were-done-with-teams-german-state-hits-uninstall-on-microsoft,49PM3G2

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/

The default browser for any operating system that isn’t created by Microsoft or Google is probably suitable for most people.

For real-time communication, the most suitable solutions are probably documented around https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/ (note that email is not recommended for person-to-person conversations).

When do you think you should allow a child to have an email address? A Fediverse account is basically an email account, except that the primary inbox is shared with a lot of people rather than only one person (and the same goes for any social media account). If you wouldn’t allow someone to use an email address, you probably shouldn’t allow them to use a Fediverse account either.

At least one person who seems interested in the health of children expressed that “delaying children’s access to smartphones until high school and social media platforms until 16” is a good idea. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/ https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MXgA2sSn8

My opinions are likely to be in accord with information found at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/ and https://www.privacyguides.org/en/android/distributions/

As an alternative to making decisions without direct assistance, you might benefit from contracting with another person to make decisions based on requirements you describe (essentially getting a chief information officer (CIO) for yourself). The main reason I’m suggesting this is that having more people involved will make it more likely that someone will know about established best practices relevant to your situation or that someone will have experience with a problem that is similar to the one you’re dealing with. Additional reasons I could provide for this would be similar to the reasons people give to discourage someone from handling court appearances without a lawyer or doing surgery on themselves. You might be able to use https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops to find information about how to contact people about your computing needs. Alternatively, you could visit a store (for example, one operated by Walmart).

I was thinking about this while I was composing my post. I was thinking that I could cite literally every word with a “wiktionary.org” link, but there’s probably a bootstrapping problem where if you don’t already understand a reasonable amount about “wiktionary.org”, you can’t make use of my citations. Also, if the reader normally uses the “dictionary.com” definitions of words, and a definition conflicts with the “wiktionary.org” usage, that could cause problems.

Some states have an official group of people who determine what the “correct” way to speak is. I know that France has or had something like that. That could be useful for legal proceedings so that people who use language inconsistently don’t stay free much more often than people who do.

I think that we just have to assume that everyone who’s not in prison has some way to communicate with the majority of the people they meet, regardless of whether there is a group of people making prescriptive statements about definitions and/or grammar. That means that dictionaries (and any other detailed documentation like citations) don’t need to be used for day-to-day communication.

Note that dictionaries and things like that will probably always be useful for “technical” interactions, like using a legal court, or making engineering plans, or directing time-sensitive operations (like how a pilot should know that someone saying “mayday mayday mayday” means that an emergency is being declared).

Things started earlier than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dnp7lOObjU&t=3119s&list=PLG1NADbefbENzGtVrh_bh-W6sfSWfopqS

So I’m English. I’m poor, rich, middle; who cares? It doesn’t matter. I get on a ship. I come to Virginia. If I’m free, they will deed me 40 acres of land (40 acres of land they don’t own). There’s a Native American family that owns it. I now have the deed to 40 acres of land that somebody else is using, that is farming. Because, right, we have this double think 1984 thing in our head: the Native Americans didn’t know how to farm, Europeans did; the pilgrims arrive, they don’t know how to farm, so Squanto finds them starving to death; he goes up to them he’s like “dude, what’s happening, why aren’t you growing food” and they’re like “we don’t know how” so Squanto shows them how to do Agriculture, and you may have been in a play about this, and he’s, like, planting fish in the ground to fix the nitrogen into the soil, and at the same time you hold these two contradictory beliefs: first that the Native Americans couldn’t Farm because they’re too dumb, and then second that the Native Americans taught the pilgrims how to farm, and it doesn’t occur to you that they can’t both be true! Anyway, turns out Squanto really did teach the dumb pilgrims how to farm because they were too stupid to grow their own food and were starving to death! So I walk out into Virginia; I got my blunderbuss. I’m walking out, and I see the family of Native Americans farming that land that’s mine, and I take a shot at them. They hear the bang, they run, they fight; doesn’t matter. The land will be mine; I will take it from them. There’s a crop already in the field, which is great cuz then come harvest time I’m already set, and then I just continue to farm the land. Is that amazing? All I need to do is get across the Atlantic; the rest is free (well, except for the ammo). In other words, at some level, the colonial settler project that the British unleash in what will become the United States of America was a wealth transfer scheme. There is no greater asset on the planet than real estate, right? Not Bitcoin, not stamps, not coins, not gold—it’s land! Land you can grow food, land you can build a house, land you can build a factory, land you can find gold, land you can find coal, you can find oil. Land, land, land, land! So to go from having none to suddenly having some with really nothing put into it other than you just happen to be English, and you had to commit a little act of violence, that’s a remarkable, like, leap! That’s a remarkable jump. But then, we added a layer to it. Tobacco is labor intensive. In other words, yeah, I can grow tobacco as a single person not farming, but I’m putting in a lot of hours. Now it turns out tobacco, at the time at least (I don’t know if it’s still true), the tobacco seed was worth more than its weight in gold, so this is going to make me a lot of money, but if I’m a single farmer out there doing this, it’s not really going to make me a lot of money fast. It’s better than growing yams, it’s better than growing wheat, it’s better than raising chickens for sure, but it’s hard. As soon as I have enough money, what I’ll do is I’ll put in for a mail-order bride; once she comes over, she becomes part of my labor team. Now I’m producing even more tobacco, and then she’ll incubate my next generation of labor; by the time it’s 8 or 10 years old, I’ll probably be able to get some work out of my children, and then once I have enough money, I’ll buy a mule or ox or a horse or something, and then once I have enough money, I’ll bring over an indentured servant, three, five year, seven-year contract. I have a conflict of interest with my indentured servant. In three, five, or seven years they’re going to get their freedom; I have to give them a gift as I let them go. They have every incentive not to work hard for the time they’re working for me, but I want to squeeze every ounce of labor out of them, so it’s kind of a violent event, and eventually they just start to run away (becomes a nuisance), but once we’ve developed the level of sophistication that we can support this, we start bringing over slaves (which is almost right away; it did not take long before we’re bringing over slaves).

This one is new to me! https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=imba

The balance of power shifted in February 2021 when New Ideas (Nuevas Ideas), the party Bukele had helped found in 2017, and allied members of GANA captured 56 seats in elections for the 84-seat legislature. That two-thirds majority meant that Bukele had the legislative support he needed to replace both the country’s attorney general and five of the Supreme Court’s justices. With some of the checks on his power minimized, Bukele began to take an increasingly authoritarian approach to addressing some of El Salvador’s pressing problems.

I suggest making some reforms to state institutions before someone else gains control of at least two thirds of the political power. Having support from two thirds of a legislative body is sufficient to completely rewrite a constitution in many cases, so the only question is whether a “supermajority” can reach some consensus.

I personally don’t have a lot of hope for peaceful reform, given what I see from https://ballotpedia.org/Results_for_ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)_and_electoral_system_ballot_measures,_2024

There has been some confusion about this question: https://www.thewisedrive.com/turn-signals-in-dedicated-turn-lanes/ https://www.thewisedrive.com/yes-you-have-to-use-your-turn-signal/ https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/12/26/watch-live-trooper-steve-explains-whether-you-need-to-use-turn-signals-in-turn-only-lanes/

I think the idea of a “direct course” is useful:

No person shall turn a vehicle at an intersection unless the vehicle is in proper position upon the roadway as required in RSA 265:42, or turn a vehicle to enter a private road or driveway, or otherwise turn a vehicle from a direct course or move right or left upon a roadway unless and until such movement can be made with reasonable safety. No person shall so turn any vehicle without giving an appropriate signal in the manner hereinafter provided.

I do pay extra attention to giving a signal when I intend to make a U-turn rather than a typical left turn.

I use openSUSE because I want to see the license used with a package before installing it, and I can do that by using YaST. Also, it seems that version numbers are used consistently which enables elegant downgrading (I found that the pacman system is probably capable of supporting this too, but the operating system(s) that use it don’t seem to use version numbers consistently and I’ve had a bad experience with downgrading in the past). I reviewed packaging systems other than rpm but it seemed that rpm while used with openSUSE was the most robust.

I also like having a bootable image with a streamlined installation process that is clearly supported by the operating system maintainers: I was tired of worrying about whether I set up LUKS correctly while setting up Arch Linux, and just having a checkbox for “encrypt the disk” makes me a lot calmer. Knowing that I can use a guided process if I want to reinstall the operating system also gives me some peace of mind.

It’s also nice to get practice with an operating system that is more similar to “enterprise” Linux distributions: it’s probably useful to get practice managing my personal computer(s) and at the same time get knowledge that is probably re-usable while interacting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise itself. However, this was not a primary consideration for choosing an operating system for myself.

Luckily, my choice can currently also get some support from https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/

I also like NixOS, but it doesn’t seem to use secure boot by default, and I’d prefer to have that handled without needing input from me, so I only use it when that feature isn’t available at all.

Are you saying that some functionality is not federated but some functionality is?

I suppose my main problem is lack of meaningful decentralization. I prefer to use networks that allow me to contact people using a local public Wi-Fi service or someone’s home internet connection, and I believe it would be expensive or impossible to do that using ATProto without depending on infrastructure maintained by Bluesky.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/

Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either.

When I swear, I tend to use “fuck” or “bitch”, and maybe “shit”

Maybe the author meant to express, “Regardless, if the global system of interconnected computer networks is functioning properly and you have a connection to it, you can host a document on the web.” since a “global system” and “your connection to it” are separate things, and either can have a problem while the other does not have a problem. That’s me being charitable though, and I agree that it’s more likely that they were being redundant.

I also find it interesting that the original sentences reference “the internet” (with a lowercase “i”) rather than “the Internet”. “The word is sometimes still capitalized to distinguish the global internet from smaller networks”, so it’s interesting that the author might be referencing an internet that is not global rather than a global network. They probably are referencing “the Internet” though, since “many publications, including the AP Stylebook since 2016, recommend the lowercase form in every case”.