Nope. Just so that you don’t starve in a crisis. Grass tastes gross. ;)

Humanitarian crisis for sure.

Tangent. If I was a mad genetic scientist with no ethics, there are a few things I’d do – engineering a virus to deliver a few “software patches” to our DNA. One of those things would be to engineer the production of cellulase as an enzyme in our digestive system – so we can get energy from grass and such in an emergency. Probably the Law of Unintended Consequences will make this worse for humanity somehow (Begun the Grass Wars have!). Mosquitos also get blood sucking removed, in an attempt to make them purely pollinating insects. Vote for Troy as mad scientist!

Won’t help the hungry in Sudan now, though. So I’m open to better ideas. Sadly, I largely have bad ideas. If I’m on the side of full external military intervention, it would be considered “colonial”. It’s hard to propose any solution that isn’t just “send aid” – and you don’t want to do that because it gets seized by the parties involved to support their conflict. Do we just watch it play out and accept refugees? That’s lame – how many millions will die in each of the above scenarios. Fuck.

No one commenting on your playlist? You’re cathartic music experience is showing :)

Not after reading their comment history.

All people who think porn is bad are bad. They are projecting their own unhealthy suppressed sexualities onto others because of the shame they associate with their own sexuality

– DancingBear, 7 days ago

Thus I am concluding you are pro Russian and taking all opportunities to block all porn starring Ukranians. Which will be basically every site on the internet. A pity, since you seem to like it a lot.

NSFW, but the next obvious thing to do is…

https://www.xnxx.com/search/Josephine+Jackson

I spent an hour today trying to find a real source for this quote, often misattributed to Churchill. And failed. Found some sources saying it predates Churchill, but no direct references. Seems an adage that is quite old though.

Out of curiosity, how is this ratio relative to some place like North Korea?

We called it “Beetle Bump” but same thing.

After the release of the redesign, it sort of stopped. Only really made sense for the classic version.

Easier to infiltrate terrorist networks – networks are, well, networks. Most school shootings are independent actors, even if radicalized online.

Now, if you’re asking about why they haven’t implemented decent gun control laws…

That reminds me…

In circa 1995 I was running a dial upBBS service – as a teenager. So if course, it was full of bootlegged video games and such, and people would dial in, download a game, log off.

Someone uploaded Descent or something like that. But they had put "deltree /y C:" or similar into a batch file, used a BAT2COM converter program, then a COM2EXE program, then padded the file size to approximately the right size with random crap (probably just using APPEND)… And uploaded it. Well, fortunately for the rest of my users, I say the game and said: oh, that’s neat, I should try it and copied it to another computer over my internal network and launched it. It started deleting files right away and I hit CTRL-C to abort. I lost only a few dozen files.

Banned the user, deleted the package. Got lucky.

Threading intensifies

I’m excited about this, even if it is just baby steps. It’s been one of my very few complaints about python, having spent two decades using it.

I’m hoping that pyside and QThreads can be made to work with noGIL. That would be super sweet. :)

4D conspriacy theory: was actually killed by Airbus, because the negative press for Boeing will push the Airbus stock price up…

I feel bad for the guy. This is going to put a wet blanket on future whistleblowers, regardless of the actual cause.

I’ve met the devs in person. They keep turning down literal suitcases full of cash from people who want to bundle adware and crap in one of the most popular programs ever. Don’t assume VLC is going down that road – they’ve stuck to their ethics for decades.

Hopefully not too depressing of a take, but:

On the scale of the planet as a whole system (looking at the forest, and not the trees): humans are commodity – there are billions upon billions of humans. But there is only one planet, with one atmosphere. If we wait for every human life to have unlimited value in every jurisdiction on earth – we will wait forever. And then it will be too late and we’re all going to fry in our utopian hell on earth.

In whatever jurisdiction you’re in, you should be pushing for large scale planet-affecting changes to how the civilization behaves with regard to our stewardship of the planet.

And yes, you can do both at the same time.

(I’m a huge fan of Iain M Banks’s Culture series. There is a Utopian future that is possible, where everything is simultaneously carefully managed, but individual freedom and prosperity coexists.)

Fire control is going to be a major engineering challenge on a civilization scale in the upcoming centuries if we want to preserve our carbon sink forests. Should be an interesting challenge, politically, to direct money into it. It’s large scale geoengineering…

So – pure curiosity… Which countries could yet still potentially join NATO.

Switzerland doesn’t join anything ever, so it’s the dark horse. But since everything is done by referendum there, it could change on a dime if the public demanded it.

Austria literally has it in their constitution that they aren’t allowed – but in theory they could change their constitution (unlikely).

Moldova has the whole Transnistria incentive – but NATO would be shy about that one, because that could potentially immediately put them in hot conflict. However, suppose they backdoored their way in by creating a union with Romania (not impossible, but complicated).

Ireland has been neutral forever – but the public support for Ukraine is extremely high. So they might even be possible. Higher than Switzerland anyway ;)

Bosnia and Herzegovina is sort of a special case where they’re sort of partially engaged already.

Serbia is extremely unlikely while they continue to be extremely contemptuous of everyone. That’s fine. Although Kosovo is sort of under NATO protection.

In theory, Georgia or Armenia would be candidates, but Turkey would pooh-pooh Armenia right away, and Georgia has contested territory.

In order of odds, I wager: Ireland, Moldova (via Romania), Georgia+Ukraine (in that order chronologically).

Coup after coup

Once in a while, you think to yourself: civilization is self organizing – given enough time, it will develop institutions and such that will tend toward stability, whether that stability is autocratic or democratic or whatever. Then there is Haiti – a country that decided that The Lord of the Flies is a template for a civilization. And it seems that no amount of outside effort does anything ever. Why is that? Why Haiti in particular when pretty much all their neighbours have at least mostly figured it out? Anyone got a pet theory?

Jokes on you – I use non-magnetic brass nails when I drop them on the road in Atlanta.