..

blah!

ideas with no tangibility;
ideas with irrelevant supports;
ideas without value;
ideas' witlessness;
ideas' witnesses;
ideas-

2022-06-21

	Some things I learned this week

	Instead of grating vegetables, you can peel very small sections off of
them to get essentially the same effect. It works better if you dice the
peelings after you're done. A grater will do the job much better but in a pinch
the peeler will work fine.
	A teaspoon is 5mL, a tablespoon is 15mL. They aren't the same.
	You can never have enough paper towels. If you think you do, you're
wrong. Aspirin is bad for you, acetaminophen is especially bad for you,
ibuprofen is bad for you, you can have either pain or pain.
	The GNU debugger is awesome. Compile programs with `-g` and run gdb
[program], then execute `start`, then `step` through statement by statement and
inspect variables with `print`. I've been printf(3) debugging since I was eight
years old (about a decade ago). This is a total game changer.
	The first pancake is always the worst. Don't be afraid to screw up the
first time, instead ensure the environment is controlled so that when beginners
make that first pancake the customers don't eat it.
	People believe the dumbest stuff because they're so used to dumb things
happening. You can't be sane in an insane world.

	Food I'm craving

	Pizza (good pizza, not something from Pizza Johns or Papa Hut). I could
make it myself but dough seems hard and I'm procrastinating learning how bread
and stuff works. I also don't wanna go to the store, carry the ingredients
home, and figure out what to do with the leftover stuff. Perhaps all my
problems could be solved with one of those Hello Fresh startups or whatever but
the point of pizza is that it's cheap and delicious and I don't wanna pay more
for less.
	A bagel, but I could always go for a bagel. I'd like some veggie cream
cheese right now on a dark toasted bagel.
	Pancakes. I haven't had pancakes for a couple seasons now. I like
pancakes with good maple syrup, maybe not the really expensive stuff in glass
jars (I haven't tried that stuff so I wouldn't know) but the stuff that comes
in the gray-cream colored pitchers with the small handles and black caps, with
instructions on the back for what to do if there's a skim on top of the syrup.
Thin, Maine maple syrup, no corn involved in the process. Though Aunt Jemima
(or whatever name by which she goes nowadays) is alright in a pinch.
	I'm trying not to eat so much meat. The exceptions are (a) trying
something new, (b) home-cooked meals by someone else, and (c) East asian
restuarants. And of course food that would otherwise go to waste. I've found
that limiting myself to these situations gives me a pretty good amount of meat
in my diet ("pretty good" being a small amount, I eat meat maybe thrice a week
at most). I don't have a moral stake in this in terms of animal cruelty, though
I do believe farming animals is cruel, because I didn't kill the thing and
Capitalists will never voluntarily decrease the amount of product they churn
out. I just don't see a future where humans can have meat in nearly every meal
and I'm trying to acclimate in advance. As past, so will pass - I'm sure we'll
go back to some sort of primarily-grain diet, though maybe "grain" will be corn
and corn derivatives and not much else. Meh, could be worse.
	That being said, I could go for some turkey mixed with egg. In a pan,
put a couple of slices (or even just the giblets left over from the slicing
process) of turkey beast on some butter as the oil, and crack an egg over it.
Break the yolk if the yolk isn't already broken and keep flipping the egged
turkey until the egg is cooked. Serve alone or as part of a breakfast sandwich.
It's the perfect mix of texture and flavor. I had this with some turkey that
would have otherwise gone to waste and it was very good.


2022-06-20: Some thinks I've been thinging about

	The world would be a more interesting place if any biologists or
researchers focusing on transmissable diseases took a look at Internet memes or
"fake news" (cognitoviruses).

	If a policy tangibly hurts people it's not a good policy. Whether or
not I believe it's good, if something I supported takes food out of a mouth, I
was wrong. Humans come before statutes.

	Nobody's applied the second amendment to the abortion debate. The
intent of the founding fathers regarding the second amendment was clearly to
allocate for the self-defense of the populace even if it may be to the
detriment of an offending party. Does a pregnant individual not have the right
to stand their own ground and fend off entities that will do them harm?

	Plastic is the new lead. Humans shouldn't be drinking animal milk (I
drink a lot of chocolate milk, so this is a dig at myself too). Meat is as
essential to the culinary arts as sugar, but it's also as essential to human
sustenance as sugar. The next "got milk?" will be disseminated through Internet
memes.

	I'm not in favor of banning anything; abortion or firearms. I think a
national firearm ban to some extent may be inevitable but I'm not too torn up
about it. A bullet doesn't have much practical use beyond taking a life or
practicing for it.

	I want a Nintendo Wii powered through USB-C.

	A holocaust will happen before 2050. This game of "telephone" that is
generational education didn't impress upon this generation the gravity of the
Holocaust committed by the Nazis in the 1940s. The Nazis had a fetish for
documentation; the next holocaust will be recorded literally in 4K Ultra HD.
In a desensitized world, will that even make a difference for the children of
2160? In the information war that will be World War III, who will win - the
Americans, who can't tamp down obvious misinformation such as "Pizzagate" or
that the COVID-19 vaccines have microchips, or the Russians, who manufactured
these rumors? "Americans" and "Russians" here are not literal names.
	To me it's conceivable that gender nonconforming and non-heterosexual
individuals would be targeted as scapegoats for a future manufactured
"struggle" in the same way the Nazis chose Jews to be the primary scapegoats
for "degeneration". Outliers are routinely paraded as examples of the queer
community by those who wish to discredit it. External parties try to break the
LGBT+ umbrella into the "LGB and others" or "lesbians and gays, but not
bisexuals". The latter for acceptance (exceptance?) from those who conduct the
former. All wins temporary at best.


2022-06-19: Some things I've been thinking about

	The UNIX philosophy ("create things that do one thing well") is a
mandate rather than a suggestion; programs can and will fall under their own
weight if you allow them to become too complex with too many things dependent
on other things. From a software design standpoint I've found this to be very
useful.
	However, I think focusing on software complexity is treating the
symptoms of Bad Computing rather than the disease. The core issue is that
humans should not have to change themselves for a machine - the machine should
only ever be changed for the human. After all, a computer is simply a tool.
Interchangeable (right?), repairable (right?), intuitive (right?), and a means
to an end (right?).
	Lately humans have been having to change themselves for machines. There
are easily comprehendable issues - e.g. "I don't have a first name, how do I
fill out this form?" - but there are also denser, deeper problems in this
regard - in fact, even computer literacy education is itself changing humans in
favor of machines. Software should be designed to be basically intuitive to
someone that's never used a computer and ideally need no further skills.
	This probably started with the Old Engineers who were basically
breathing computer before computers were even existent in their modern form.
Graybeards (women and nonbinary fellows included within this word, use your
imagination) didn't need to change themselves for computers because they and
machina were already kin. Then they made simple interfaces for the restivus and
hoped it was enough, and it was for a while.
	Once we defeat the status quo, the rest will be easy.

	The Center for Disease Control in the United States isn't perfect but I
trust them a bit more than a bald guy on Spotify.

	Today's Juneteenth, which is a memory to a pretty cool event, the end
of lawful slavery in the United States.