This makes me think of the commandment “thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” from the Dune series.

Seriously, though, I suspect a lot of technologies we currently experience in society only in the context of oppression of average people and widening of the income gap might be able to be put to better use. Not even necessarily because we have rules in place so much as because people won’t be baking their selfish asshole agendas into the tech they build.

That all kindof assumes that humanoid robots would be “tools” for humans to “use”. If of course they (or at least some of them) are more like sentient creatures with hopes and dreams and emotions, that might make for a much different conversation. And that feels like the kind of conversation that’d be hard to even comment on today.

What’s worse is when that asshole tickles my sinus nerves just a little, never actually letting me sneeze, but still being an annoying piece of shit.

Right?!

I’ve dabbled in learning Japanese enough to know that learning a second language as an adult has a way of driving home to you how little I really understand about my own native language. And learning what little I have of a second language definitely has taught me more about English.

Well, the whole saga is longer. We got a bathroom redone and the sink never worked right. It dripped. I took the faucet apart several times trying to fix the drip, but eventually concluded the faucet itself was just cheap crap and couldn’t be repaired.

So I bought a nicer one and replaced the faucet entirely. I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of replacing it ahead of time. Usually the drain and faucet “match”. (As in, the finish of them matches and if the finish on the drain is a different style/color/etc than the faucet, it’ll stand out.) And so they come as a set. But in this case, the drain that was part of the old/cheap faucet a) worked fine and b) was so similar in color/finish/style that you couldn’t tell it didn’t come with the new faucet. So I didn’t end up having to replace the drain, which made the whole process considerably easier.

Oh, I did need to slightly modify the drain closure plunger to fit the old faucet’s drain… lever… thing. Heh…

There was definitely a moment once I’d assembled the whole thing and was turning on the valves under the sink that I was a little worried it’d all explode and soak the whole bathroom. Lol. But everything’s been fine for months now!

As for how long it took, probably three sessions of a couple of hours each to finally convince myself the old faucet was too defective to try to salvage. And then another thirty minutes to find a new faucet on Amazon and another three or so hours to replace faucet. And about the only roadblocks were the time I spent trying to fix the old faucet and the time I spent procrastinating before undertaking the actual replacement. Heh.

Coming out the other side of that experience, I do feel like I understand the sentiment better now that “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” And I think it largely applies even if you don’t have any particular amount of expertise. Someone who doesn’t have to live with the results may not really care about something like a dripping faucet. If they can check the “replaced the faucet” box, they can say “job’s done”, charge the customer, and be on their merry way. (And I’m not saying I blame them, really.)

(Of course, that only goes so far. I wouldn’t think you ought to DIY things that might be dangerous, for instance.)

I think if someone referred to “the Travises shared given name” without adding the extra “es”, my brain would get stuck on that for a bit. I don’t know that that would be the case for most people or not. But if someone were talking to me about the name shared by multiple people named “Travis”, my brain would churn less, get " stuck" for a shorter time, and be less likely to have to catch back up to the conversation if the extra “es” was included.

Without the extra “es”, it feels like it could get a little “garden-path-y.” Like:

• “The Travis…”
• “The Travis” sounds like a pretty pretentious way to be referred to.
• “…es”
• Possessive. 'k. What does he have?
• “shared given name…”
• Oh, so “The Travis” was magnanimous enough to offer his name for consideration when it came time to decide the name of… maybe one of his relatives’ newborns…?

Right? Not to say I wouldn’t expect to catch on in a couple more words there. And also more realistically, my brain wouldn’t be stuck on this interpretation in the conversation, but more “suspending judgement” and holding both possibilities for interpretations in mind until something resolved the question. But speaking just for myself, I think my brain would have to go through all those machinations if the extra “es” wasn’t there. And that requires more wetware cycles than if the extra “es” wad there. If it was, it’d be unambiguous immediately after the second “es” that “Travis” was both plural and possessive.

(To be fair, after the second “es” another possibility would be that we were talking about multiple groups of people named “Travis”. Chapters of a club only open to people named “Travis” for instance. Kindof like the word “peoples” which is similarly “double-pluralized”. But it seems to me unlikely my brain would jump to that possibility the way it might jump to a possessive form of the title “The Travis.”)

Also, it’s very possible my brain works differently than most. I think I have a pretty “stilted” manner of speech. People occasionally poke gentle fun at me about it. (All in good fun, mind you.) And it’s possible my brain doesn’t process speech quite like most people’s do.

Probably rudimentary plumbing repair? (More specifically, replacing a bathroom sink faucet.) Via Youtube.

There’s a linguistics professor at MIT who I once heard say in a class (an Open Courseware class… I didn’t attend MIT or anything):

“We’ll speak no more of prescriptive linguistics except to mock it.”

However you want to say it, say it. Your particular style of speech is unique and beautiful and you should keep speaking that way.

I personally would pronounce it like “Travises”. As if pluralizing it. (“There are multiple Travises in the phone book.”) Makes it fairly clear. I guess that brings up the question what to do if there are multiple Travises who co-own something. “The Travises’ shared given name.” I think off the top of my head, I’d probably pronounce it like “Traviseses.” Cool!

Brag about being an Arch user (BTW.)

A straight up hand cannon.

The live-action web series “There Will Be Brawl” is really good. It’s got a little bit of the same energy as this comic, only grittier.

Goodbye

Depending where you are moving to, snow may not be the only sort of inclement winter weather you may have to deal with. For instance, ice may build up on trees, power lines, and/or roads.

If on roads, don’t drive unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, be way more careful than you think you need to be. Look up safety tips for driving in icy conditions before you have to put them into practice.

If you have any trees that might fall on anything of value, kindof watch their condition. If any are splitting down the middle, hire someone to treat them before the winter season to avoid major problems like this.

Or it’s possible you’ll live somewhere ice buildup is unlikely to be an issue. Maybe look into the history of the area or talk to someone who has been there a long time to find out what conditions might be an issue.

Also, the ability to work remotely is kinda nice, I guess. It’s a double-edged sword, though. If you can work remotely, you never get days off due to weather. But if you can’t, you may be pressured to drive into the office when it’s very dangerous.

At work, I switched my work machine from the PC-Support-department-imaged Windows OS (I think it was Windows 7 at the time) to Arch Linux on a foregiveness rather than permission basis. (Several of us did it at the same time and kindof dared them to fire all their best developers over it. It was glorious. But that’s a story for another time.)

Then came the day I needed to print to the network printer. I apparently misconfigured CUPS. I hit the print button. And then I got distracted by something. After that got resolved, I went to the printer, which had been printing pages of gibberish for the past like 20 minutes straight. The stack of papers in the “out” tray was approaching phone book levels of thickness.

Ewps.

Nobody ever figured out I had anything to do with it. (The printer was off in another part of the office anyway.) I fixed my CUPS configuration and was able to print correctly thereafter. But it’s a good story.

It’s not Yo-“he”. It’s Yo-“she”. It’s right in the name.

(/s)

I mentioned this to my mother just a minute ago. I said I’ve never seen anyone use “are” instead of “our” and she was like “oh god that drives me nuts; I see that all the time!”

Cthulhu for president 2024. Why settle for a lesser evil?

Until it makes shit up that the original work never said.

The victims of this attack should just call up their credit card companies and contest the charges.

Wait…

I wonder if when he says “necessary” he’s referring to some longtermism weird BS.

I mean, he’s definitely referring to some weird BS. But I wonder whether specifically it’s longtermism BS.

I don’t know what TTT is, but that reminds me of this story that I just posted in response to another comment.