blivet

And why is the area code of Apple’s phone number in single quotes?

Yes, the whole thing is especially frustrating because the app was quite nice. Harriette did a really good job really quickly.

Not much good at anything, but incredible at self-promotion so people think he is

A friend of mine once made what I thought was an absolutely brilliant observation: “Self-promotion is the only skill that is consistently rewarded.”

I think governmental organizations should do the same. It’s absurd that FEMA or whoever essentially has to rely of Elon’s goodwill.

Why should a political organization be tax-exempt?

Conservative is a misnomer, really. They don’t want to conserve anything. They are trying as hard as they can to wreck it all.

Palm Pilots seemed so futuristic back then.

You’re correct of course. How could I have forgotten?

Personally I think it’s just the usual incoherent right-wing worldview. Their concept of “the government” somehow doesn’t include the president, the military, or law enforcement.

One reason might be that they couldn’t even be bothered to say what the moment they enjoyed was.

Yes, the name of the company, the logo, and the idea of “tweets” are all a charming evocation of a world filled with brief messages. Twitter has problems, but branding isn’t one of them.

I think we are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of mental illness, and even the wealthiest and most powerful are not immune.

I’m just glad we have an adult at the helm and I don’t have to wake up the next morning to see what bat shit insane thing has just happened.

Exactly. For four years, practically every fucking day it was, “Oh God, what’s he done now?”

Yeah, I think it was Scorsese who said that he did “one for them, and one for me”.

I think it’s strange that it’s categorized as a comedy, though. It has some really funny moments, but on the whole I would call it a very intense drama.

I’m grateful to this strip because reading it caused me to learn the correct spelling of “abstruse”. I’ve never heard anyone say the word, and for some reason I had always read it as “abtruse”, without the first S.

I agree. The information should be easily available if they are interested, but end users shouldn’t be required to know about the underlying mechanics of the fediverse simply in order to create an account and browse.

to the people who read all the things it’s tedious but doable, for the rest it’s “Which one is the RIGHT choice?” and just stay at the door

Exactly. I’m a programmer and I do server administration on a small scale, but when I went to sign up for Mastodon my first reaction was, “How the hell am I supposed to know what instance I want my account to be on?” and I left. After a couple of weeks of absorbing random bits of information about how federation works I went back and completed the account creation process, but I really doubt that the average user who just wants to sign up for a service and use it is going to get past that step.

I remember Damien Chazelle saying that they had considered an intermission for Babylon but that there was no natural break point in the story. Having seen it, I can state with perfect confidence that it does contain an appropriate point for an intermission at just the right time. I suspect that Chazelle just couldn’t bear the thought of the audience not watching his opus straight through.

I haven’t had live TV in years and it’s quite shocking to see what the average user deals with. Junk TV + ads that play 30% of the time is absolutely insane.

Yeah, I’ve had the same experience. We don’t have live TV, and when we occasionally hang out with friends or family who do I’m always flabbergasted at the frequency and length of ad breaks nowadays, and similarly amazed that despite a nearly endless list of channels there never seems to be anything I actively want to watch.