blivet

Not much good at anything, but incredible at self-promotion so people think he is

A friend of mine once made what I thought was an absolutely brilliant observation: “Self-promotion is the only skill that is consistently rewarded.”

Palm Pilots seemed so futuristic back then.

One reason might be that they couldn’t even be bothered to say what the moment they enjoyed was.

Yeah, I think it was Scorsese who said that he did “one for them, and one for me”.

I think it’s strange that it’s categorized as a comedy, though. It has some really funny moments, but on the whole I would call it a very intense drama.

I’m grateful to this strip because reading it caused me to learn the correct spelling of “abstruse”. I’ve never heard anyone say the word, and for some reason I had always read it as “abtruse”, without the first S.

I agree. The information should be easily available if they are interested, but end users shouldn’t be required to know about the underlying mechanics of the fediverse simply in order to create an account and browse.

to the people who read all the things it’s tedious but doable, for the rest it’s “Which one is the RIGHT choice?” and just stay at the door

Exactly. I’m a programmer and I do server administration on a small scale, but when I went to sign up for Mastodon my first reaction was, “How the hell am I supposed to know what instance I want my account to be on?” and I left. After a couple of weeks of absorbing random bits of information about how federation works I went back and completed the account creation process, but I really doubt that the average user who just wants to sign up for a service and use it is going to get past that step.

I remember Damien Chazelle saying that they had considered an intermission for Babylon but that there was no natural break point in the story. Having seen it, I can state with perfect confidence that it does contain an appropriate point for an intermission at just the right time. I suspect that Chazelle just couldn’t bear the thought of the audience not watching his opus straight through.

I haven’t had live TV in years and it’s quite shocking to see what the average user deals with. Junk TV + ads that play 30% of the time is absolutely insane.

Yeah, I’ve had the same experience. We don’t have live TV, and when we occasionally hang out with friends or family who do I’m always flabbergasted at the frequency and length of ad breaks nowadays, and similarly amazed that despite a nearly endless list of channels there never seems to be anything I actively want to watch.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8EKtLHTfDiM/XA3JXIv9naI/AAAAAAAAZDA/K_A17p8Uj_cvVI6xpwujsLvYXcbZ75HywCLcBGAs/s1600/Kong.jpg

An early production still.

They should go with Kubrick’s original idea of having the same actor portray Major Kong as well. Sellers hurt his leg toward the start of filming and claimed he couldn’t move around the B-52 interior set easily, but he was also having trouble with the character’s accent and was glad to bow out. He had an easier time with the president’s accent because he just imitated Kubrick himself.

Also, they’ve really doubled down on the interconnectivity. You used to be able to follow the main arc without difficulty if you saw most of the movies, but now you have to watch absolutely everything including the TV shows or you have no idea what’s going on.

One of the most enjoyable bits in REAMDE was about how the users of an MMORPG split into two warring factions over whether they preferred the default color palette or a custom version.

Also the two handguns.

Yeah, 10 or 15 years ago I read an article about how Google brings up new storage modules when they need to expand, and their modules are essentially shipping containers full of hard drives.

Yeah, I don’t see how anyone could have taken a photo from this angle at that time. Back in the late 70s a performance art group called Ant Farm staged a re-creation of the Kennedy assassination on site at Dealey Plaza. Maybe this is a shot from that. Some of the bystanders in the photo appear to be wearing bellbottoms, so the period would be right.

Probably elegant variation.

It’s really hard to fathom how Google’s decision makers don’t understand that in addition to being confusing, their failure to settle on one messaging app makes them look stupid and flaky in the eyes of average users. This isn’t some niche app for specialists that Google can get away with killing because the user base is relatively small. The general public uses instant messaging all day every day, and after having Google pull the football away two or three times, they’re just going to decide to use something that’s going to stick around instead.

Each state gets a number of electors equal to its congressional representation (senators plus representatives). If the number of representatives weren’t capped it would go a long way towards making the Electoral College more representative of the population.