“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”

• the derived question, theoretically

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (book 2 of the 5-part trilogy)

Windows 10 has had that for a few years now too, it was just less visible and a little clunkier.

He had some decent political views, but his child-rearing advice wasn’t always very evidence-based.

I don’t care what he thinks, but I care that he has a platform that others in his class listen to and may respect. It’s not a position you hear often from those with a lot of wealth. I’m ok with progress coming from any direction, even if it’s self-serving in some form, and I do think it’s self-serving.

Change my mind.

Sure. Even regularly installing a new OS doesn’t necessarily keep you secure if someone wanted to discreetly install malware on your device. In addition to firmware-level rootkits that re-install themselves on fresh OSs (even platform-agnostic ones), it’s possible that someone might interdict whatever hardware is bought and implant it with additional small hardware that compromises it in some way.

I mean, being trans is perfectly valid, but I think gender dysphoria itself should be classified as a mental illness so long as it brings significant pain/distress to the individual, the solution there is just gender reassignment, surgery, hormones, etc. I don’t think there should be stigma in calling it such, it needs treatment the same as anything else. People with ADHD have a mental illness and get meds, sometimes therapy, people with poor eyesight have an ocular dysfunction of some kind and get glasses or surgery or whatever, none of it should be that big a deal. The point is it can be diagnosed and treated.

I think the response to shit like “transgenderism” being a mental disease should be “well at least their/our dysphoria can be treated now, what’s your excuse?”

I’ve always preferred IBM’s Plex Mono, specifically the Nerd Fonts version.

I mean, that seems like the best solution to rejection: cloning the patient’s germ line and chimerically colonizing the replacement.

I hadn’t heard about that, what a shame.

Probably UUIDs based on fingerprinting the browser/machine. With enough js there’s usually enough to qualify a person’s activity as unique even with minor changes regarding updates or whatever. You can mitigate it by changing user agent strings or disabling some/all js or site permissions, but they can also block you from using the service for doing so, so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯.

Along those lines, remember when Indiana almost wrote the value of π into law, using a value of 3.2?

All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

I think a high score might mean fibrillation depending on the runner, so please be choosy with your scare victim.

I’m with you there, though I would push that button like every other day. I like being a guy, and I think I would like being a girl about half the time, though ideally I’d control two bodies simultaneously all the time.

Yep, that’s emergence, where the models of simple systems, interacting en masse, generate complexity/‘chaos’ more easily predicted by different models within that set of parameters/scale. Basically, it’s like modeling the behavior of fractals from their appearance instead of the underlying ruleset, because what the rules generate is unexpected to our human brains, so we need to make new rules that allow us to more easily predict things, even if those rules aren’t as perfect as the ruleset itself.

I hope we get there soon with RISC-V.

I prefer defying whatever gods exist by living in darkness and cold. Sunlight causes skin damage, I’d prefer getting by with vitamin D supplements.

My wife is my ex-girlfriend, but we’re still dating. She gets mildly amused when I point this out, but she might just be humoring me.

‘E pluribus unum’ was pretty good, but I liked ‘mind your business’ too.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other.