Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧 @pieist@qoto.org

Whenever someone says "I hate to <x> but ..." you're dealing with someone who absolutely never misses a chance to <x>.

If you're always the smartest person in the room, it's probably because anyone with any sense walks out when you walk in.

The name Brosnan is a contraction of Brosnahan. Which is in turn a contraction of Brosnahanahan. And so on.

Somebody mentioned Douglas Adams over on Bluesky, and before the day was out found I had to re-watch the South Bank Show episode about him for the first time in many years.

It completely holds up, still brilliant, a lesser-known and absolutely worthy part of the DNA canon. There's no credit given for the original writing present in it, but it seems pretty obviously his own.

Dismantled the clothes dryer yesterday evening to replace worn-out bearings, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should paint Tibetan prayer wheel symbols on the drum. It'd be useful to accrue merit and purify thought whilst drying clothes.

Happy Fourth, everybody

https://www.theverge.com/policy/697301/trump-supreme-court-founding-fathers-july-4

I stopped using my Chevron credit card out of sheer distaste for the company, and after two years of that they cancelled it. Well and good. But my (until then perfect) credit rating was promptly reduced. What a stupid way of life we've created for ourselves.

If someone hasn't gone through the William Gibson canon and registered all the business names like "Lado-Aacheson" and "Ono-Sendai" I'll be deeply disillusioned. I mean talk about free brand equity: your Culture ship names can't touch that.

For reasons not worth going into I looked up Samuel Beckett, and couldn't stop laughing at a description of his father as "a quantity surveyor of Huguenot descent". Never change, Wikipedia.

I still think somebody needs to write an engine that automatically threads fediverse postings into usenet groups

This guy always strikes me as the answer to the question: what would you get if you molded 1/8th of a ton of house brand canned luncheon meat into the approximate shape of a human?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-border-czar-tom-homan-living-separately-from-wife-due-to-death-threats/

Product branding quality labels just get sillier and sillier. Take SSDs and storage cards. How do I distinguish between "Ultra" and "Extreme" from one brand, or between "Elite" vs "Premiere" on another? The assortment of performance labels such as A1, V3 U3, etc are often the same. Even comparing the price tells you nothing, as the retailer is constantly playing with those.

It's like the companies have the equivalent of Main Character Syndrome: they think everyone is paying close attention to them all the time, at the expense of living their own lives, like nerdy fanboys. Who is that invested? I don't know any nerdy SanDisk or PNY fanboys. At least, I hope I don't.

It's a nice day so I'm working with the door open. The thing is, hummingbirds always announce themselves with some happy chirps when they arrive at the feeder, so I have to get up and go look at them. So I'm getting less work done than I might...