Fun vaguely related fact: the 1800s are often hailed as the century of steamships, but in reality steamships had pretty short range and required frequent re-coaling in order to get anywhere and back. The coaling stations around the world were mostly stocked by sailing ships since there was no way to economically transport coal by using vessels that burned coal for their propulsion. So it’s more accurate to say that the worldwide transportation revolution of the 1800s was a steam/wind power hybrid.

I hate this kind of premature defeatism

This is what “the tragedy of the commons” was all about in pre-Victorian England. Rich people decried the existence of land held and used by all the people of a community, claiming that it couldn’t work in practice because eventually some asshole would always take it all for themselves. Turns out they were the some asshole, seizing all the commons for themselves as private property (a process known as “enclosure”), ending many centuries of actually successful common usage of land.

1491 by Charles Mann. The book everyone should read instead of Guns, Germs and Steel which is a bunch of hooey.

Kind of reminds me of my favorite episode of Ren and Stimpy when Ren split himself in the two opposite sides of his personality: his evil side and his indifferent side.

Literally “any other questions?”

One time in high school we had an Army recruiter come in to speak to our class. After his presentation he said “any questions?” Rob raised his hand and said “I have a question: does napalm still stick to kids?” I recently talked to him (this was 40 years ago) and he didn’t remember doing this, but he’s proud of his younger self - as am I.

Adam Something does a good job of savaging Musk’s bullshit as well, along with lots of other “tech bro” bullshit in the same vein (and no misogyny that I’m aware of). He does talk a bit too fast, however, so I always slow his videos down a bit and they come out alright.

I mean, it got the case right on every other letter.

You used to could, on Blackberry at least.

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At least it got the last letter kinda wrong.

:(

I grew up next to the Cuyahoga river in the '70s. I have no idea why that river wasn’t on fire every day.

You kids today. In my day we used Visual Source Safe and would accidentally leave a critical file checked out when we went on vacation and nobody else could get anything done until we came back.

Borland IDEs

Ugh, you just gave me Turbo Basic flashbacks. My favorite thing was that variable names could be as long as you liked and mixed case, but the compiler only used the first two letters and case insensitive at that. So “BatShitCrazy” and “BALLPARKESTIMATE” actually referenced the same variable.

I mean, it might be driving in the bike lane.

The double-space between “Excel” and “of” is what hurts me. Such a boss thing to do.

StrikeThree

why is it always the monitor to get beat

Because it’s within arm’s reach and the developers aren’t.

You push a button and it makes Little Leaguers do whatever you tell them to do. Very potent, should never be misused.

Yes, testing the new Little League control module on a field full of Little Leaguers was not the best plan.