rlamacraft @rlamacraft@qoto.org

My gingerbread for this year. Merry Christmas and happy Voyages to all!!

1. "Considers" is the wrong word here. Trump hasn't considered anything in his entire life, and he certainly hasn't started now. He consistently acts without thinking, such as his recent threats to the President of Panama via social media. The correct word for that is "threaten".

2. "Expansion" is the wrong word here. Expansion implies peaceful or at least negotiated growth. What Trump has threatened is taking land by force. The correct word for that is "invasion".

3. "If he's serious" is the wrong phrase here. Under no circumstances should anyone suggest threatening war with our allies is an unserious action. He's not a clown. He's the president elect. The correct phrase to describe his actions is "If he's not lying".

4. "Territorial" is the wrong phrase here. Panama, Greenland, and Canada are sovereign nations, who have roundly rejected outright any attempt at annexation by the US. The correct word for a military annexation is "occupied territory".

5. "Louisiana Purchase" is the wrong phrase here. The Louisiana Purchase was the result of a purchase agreement. What Trump is threatening Panama, Greenland, and Canada with is military occupation. The closest historical example is the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and Germany's annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938.

With that in mind, here's your corrected, now accurate title, CNN:

"Trump Threatens US Invasion.
If he isn't lying, an occupied territorial invasion and military annexation of Panama, Greenland, and Canada, would rival the Anschluß of Austria by Nazi Germany."

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED BUT REPULSIVE", "WRONG BUT WROMANTIC", "FREQUENTLY MISUNDERSTOOD", "NOBODY BOTHERS WITH THIS BIT", "SHOULDN'T REALLY BUT WE WON'T JUDGE", "REQUIRED IN ORDER TO WORK AROUND EVERYONE ELSE'S BUGS", "YOU DO YOU", and "OBVIOUSLY ABSURD BUT VERY COMMON FOR SOME REASON" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

MPs pay should be tripled. It's an extremely high profile, high pressure career with a lot of responsibility. But no second jobs. No consultancy gigs. No alternative income of any description.

"the fleet of five single-decker buses had the capacity to carry 10,000 passengers a week but needed two crew on board for safety reasons"

I have to use my go-to question for dev teams here: what problem does this solve?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/17/driverless-bus-service-in-scotland-to-be-withdrawn-due-to-lack-of-interest

The hardest problem in computer science is avoiding the temptation to imagine a more interesting problem to solve instead of the one someone is asking for help with

@Crow @anon_opin
“Life hack: Get vaccinated to avoid harmful diseases.”
“Life hack: Inform yourself about a candidate’s actual policies, before you vote.”
“Life hack: Reduce carbon emissions to keep the planet habitable.”

I think we should double down on these things.

"LLMs are helpful with boring, repetitive work"

I can't help wondering if, in the long run, the better strategy is to address the repetition?

"kids these days don't know how to fix anything"

Kids these days have never in their lives encountered anything that was meant to be fixed rather than thrown away.

Cars are responsible for thousands of deaths each year, thousands more serious, sometimes life-changing injuries, all whilst polluting our air with asthma-causing and carcinogenic particles - if any other consumer item caused this much damage, it would be banned.

Misread "composable" as "compostable" in a programming context, and now I want to throw all my functions in a pile and turn them over with a pitchfork once in a while.

Between 2:00am and 7:00am this morning, electricity exports and storage exceeded fossil fuel power generation — in other words, Britain could (in theory) have been powered entirely without fossil fuels for these five hours. See the live data at https://grid.iamkate.com

Pebble alphabet by Belgian typographer and designer Clotilde Olyff

#alphabet #typeface #typography #ClotildeOlyff #design #pebbles #stones

But if the rubber ducks can find the problems in the code by themselves then why do we need to pay the programmers

Every single IT platform / service / software package is objectively worse now. Nothing has been improved in the past 10 years.

We need a world symposium on pockets. It will establish standards for the correct size and capacity of pockets, share manufacturing techniques to ensure they don't turn inside out when you're pulling something out, introduce treaties to make fake pockets illegal, and so forth.

It may be triangling outside, but I just finished my first willow basket of the winter!

Looking forward to making lots of these this winter - I love love love that I can make something useful with stuff that grows prolifically in the woods on my farm and one single tool (clippers).

Of course, I can't possibly sell them for a price that makes it worth my time, so I'll just be giving lots away as presents and storing everything in my house I possibly can in baskets...

Buses should be free to use, or at least unreasonably cheap, and be paid for by people who insist on driving cars.

3/6

#3011 - Europa Clipper