🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

TIL about "thought-terminating clichés". https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9

A thought-terminating cliché is a saying, often a tautology, that is repeated in order to relieve the stress of cognitive dissonance by avoiding all further consideration of a matter. Everyday examples include "it is what it is," "it's just common sense," and "you gotta do what you gotta do."
Thought-terminating clichés are an important aspect of mind control as used by cults. For example, the Unification Church uses the cliché "you think too much," while Alcoholics Anonymous says "your best thinking got you here" and "utilize, don't analyze."
Examples:
* The Lord works in mysterious ways.
* All's well that ends well.
* You never know until you try.
* You never succeed for not trying.
* Do, or do not, there is no try.
* Make of it what you will but…
* If you don't like it, don't buy it.
* That's just your opinion.
* I'm just saying.
* Do your own research.

📎 Clippy 2000: "It look's like you're writing a letter - would you like help?"

📎 Clippy 2022: "It looks like you wan't to leave the company so I secretly informed the admins to have a closer look at you."

https://www.microsoft.com/en-my/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=93251

(Via https://twitter.com/coolharsh55/status/1532658299069505536)

@freemo

Are you sure you're not a dyslexual?

First explainer I've ever seen of Taylor series that really clicked for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6DsjIBzJ4

In general, I wish more of calculus had been taught to me not as a fundmental math that is abstractly internally-consistent, but from its historical origins: "Physics and engineering are hard, here's some brilliant hacks people came up with to make the estimates and calculations tractable." Then you can go from those to why they work to get to the theoretical context-free calculus.

@freemo @niconiconi I don't know if the Emacs for Game Boy to the right is real, but there is at least a Game Boy emulator for Emacs: https://github.com/vreeze/eboy

I haven't found #fountainpen Mastodon yet. Who else is into #fountainpens here?

@vwbusguy @freemo Also into fountain pens: @librarianguish .

Haskell Libraries I Love

https://evanrelf.com/haskell-libraries-i-love

Discussions: https://discu.eu/q/https://evanrelf.com/haskell-libraries-i-love

#haskell #programming

Indeed!

#preservation
I'm downloading a dead wiki from the wayback machine using a script I found on GitHub.
I then plan to restore it using the tool html2mediawiki to then host it on my server.
Did anyone already do something like this and has any advice?

Is this a (cute) Possum?

New on mastodon, time for an #introduction!
I'm eqyo from the Netherlands 🇳🇱, I'm in my twenties and studying #mathematics & #computerscience. I am also: a semi-agnostic churchgoer ⛪, not exactly straight but still figuring things out 🏳️‍🌈, and very much into #classicalmusic 🎻.
(Expect the frequency of emojis and hashtags to drop drastically after this post)
I see myself posting about my life, about #philosophy & #politics, maybe about some #foss-related stuff...

Thanks for the warm welcome, @Pat, @trinsec, @freeschool and @MamGrac !

I probably won't be that active, I'll usually be here once or twice a day and sometimes I'll disappear for a while...
On that note, if you ever notice that I'm posting after midnight Dutch time, please do tell me to get my shit together 😅.