Blackmoor Vituperative

I wish Americans were a little less fixated on 18th century concepts of political science, civic engagement, and natural philosophy.

A minor example: I got my second shingles vaccine recently at the Walmart pharmacy. The office of my primary care doctor (under the aegis of Sentara) is literally across the street from Walmart.

In order for my primary care doctor to add the vaccination to my medical records, I must:

1) Visit Walmart in person.
2) Ask them to print out, on sheets of paper, my vaccination info.
3) Carry those sheets of paper across the street to my doctor.

There is no second option.

Just another day in #theworldsrichestbananarepublic

I celebrate Epicurus’ Birthday on the third Monday of February, in honor of the philosopher Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia — “peace and freedom from fear” — and aponia — “the absence of pain” — and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

(From Epicurus, Wikipedia)

If there’s not a blog called “Write Or Die”, there should be.

I celebrate Epicurus’ Birthday on the third Monday of February, in honor of the philosopher Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia — “peace and freedom from fear” — and aponia — “the absence of pain” — and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

(From Epicurus, Wikipedia)

“The struggle between profitless simplicity and profitable complexity is eternal in the world of software.”
— https://world.hey.com/dhh/they-re-rebuilding-the-death-star-of-complexity-4fb5d08d

I started my career in programming during heydays of Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE). This was late 90s/early 00s, and there was a rich ecosystem of enterprise vendors hawking application servers, monitoring tools, and boxes upon boxes of other fancy solutions. These tools were difficult to learn, expensive to license, and required an a…

David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails

Interesting article about containers, cloud, etc., by the fellow who created Ruby On Rails.

I had a sombre thought today. The world I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. In some important ways, that’s a good thing. But it’s a bad thing, in a few ways. I feel sad for people who’ll never be able to live in it. Ah, well.

Every second of your life is the most precious, irreplaceable resource you have. Spend it with people you love.

“I have absolutely no idea what we’re doing here, or what I’m doing here, or what this place is about. But I am determined to enjoy myself.”

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“The Second Coming“, W. B. Yeats, 1919

Fun fact! Yeats went on to embrace fascism and authoritarianism — the “passionate intensity” of “the worst“. “The Second Coming” is the most compelling proof I know of that an artist is not their art — and if we insist on conflating the two, or on depriving ourselves of great art by less-than-great people, that it is we who suffer for it.

Yeats, after all, is long dead, and quite beyond our reproachment.

What had me thinking about this was, of course, the results of the election yesterday, in which the “the worst” — angry, hateful, and completely detached from reality — won virtually every election.

I am glad that I don’t have children. The United States is a dumpster fire, and it won’t get better in my lifetime.

If it ever does.

Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

— Rita Mae Brown

On the one hand, it’s my opinion that the specific word someone uses means very little compared to what they mean by that word.

On the other hand, yes, vocabulary changes over time. “Decimate” used to mean “kill one person in ten”; nowadays it means “destroy most of”, almost the opposite of its archaic meaning.

But context matters. Intent matters. Chasing the term-of-the-moment is a distraction from what actually helps or hurts people. This semiotic scavenger hunt is one of the ways in which well-meaning people are kept occupied by trivia, while the Republican death cult burns the United States to the ground.

That being said, if someone from Mexico tells me that they consider “Mexican” to be pejorative because someone, somewhere has used that word as an insult, I will make an effort not to use that word around them. (Note: this is a hypothetical example, but it very easily could be a real-life example tomorrow.)