tal

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Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.

---Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTTP and HTML

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/03/internetnews.observerfocus

The dirty secret that drives new technology: it's porn

The Guardian, 24 years ago

2

tal @lemmy.today 4h ago

If you're using bash and haven't modified the readline default, which is to use emacs keystrokes:

$ ls foo/bar/baz

Just what I wanted!

Control-P Control-A Alt-D cd Enter

tal @lemmy.today 6h ago

Go away, Elon.

1

tal @lemmy.today 8h ago

My understanding is that paint is only very rarely stripped out of existing houses. It's normally just painted over.

In the US, lead paint prohibitions went into place in 1978.

So unless you've avoided being in buildings constructed prior to 1978, you have probably been in buildings with lead paint.

That's not to say that there aren't benefits to painting over lead paint. I'm sure that it reduces the amount of leaded paint dust and such. But a chip can still contain paint from an earlier coat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-based_paint_in_the_United_States

In 1971, Congress banned the use of lead-based paint in residential projects (including residential structures and environments) constructed by, or with the assistance of, the federal government.[3] The Consumer Product Safety Commission followed with implementing regulations, effective in 1978.[4] Additional regulations regarding lead abatement, testing and related issues have been issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

tal @lemmy.today 20h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright

In 2011, he founded Liberty Energy, then known as Liberty Oilfield Services.[15] As of February 2023, the company was valued at $2.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.[16] As the CEO of Liberty Energy, Wright earned $5.6 million in 2023.[11]

Despite Herculean efforts on his part, Chris Wright was ultimately unable to live up to voter expectations of delivering lower fuel prices.

tal @lemmy.today 21h ago

I feel like the target audience here isn't lesbian.

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tal @lemmy.today 21h ago

The strategy has been attributed to U.S. President Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon.[4][5][6]
The strategy came to public light after Bannon told Michael Lewis in 2018 that "The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit".[7] Trump adopted the strategy during the 2016 presidential election,[3][8] followed by other right-wing political figures such as Éric Zemmour and Elon Musk.[9][10][1][11]

That article should really reference the dead cat strategy. It's not the same thing exactly, but it's close. I don't think that Bannon likely deserves credit for originating the idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.[1][2] The term is popularly associated with political strategist Lynton Crosby's work on the successful London mayoral campaigns of Boris Johnson.

In 2013, while he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote a column for The Telegraph in which he described a political manoeuvre known as "throwing a dead cat on the table":
To understand what has happened in Europe in the last week, we must borrow from the rich and fruity vocabulary of Australian political analysis. Let us suppose you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case. Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as "throwing a dead cat on the table, mate".
That is because there is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don't mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout "Jeez, mate, there's a dead cat on the table!"; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.[3]

tal @lemmy.today 21h ago

Starcraft had the Ghosts.

That may be based on something in Warhammer 40k, which you already mentioned, as I understand that some elements of the game were based on Warhammer 40k. I'm not really super-familiar with the lore of the two enough to know, myself.

tal @lemmy.today 1d ago

Rocco: Fuckin'- What the fuckin'. Fuck. Who the fuck fucked this fucking... How did you two fucking fucks...[shouts]Rocco: Fuck!Connor: Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.

---The Boondock Saints

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tal @lemmy.today 1d ago

It's been a long time since I've bought a skein of yarn, but surely one can get one for less than that.

hits Amazon

It looks like on Amazon, they start at about $4 individually. If you get a pack, it goes under $1/skein.

Those brick-and-mortar stores much have a pretty substantial markup, unless we're talking premium yarn of some sort.

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tal @lemmy.today 1d ago

I have not, myself, been there, but San Francisco has the Pirate Supply Store.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/826_Valencia

826 Valencia is a non-profit organization in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, United States, dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

826 Valencia runs San Francisco's "only independent pirate supply store". The store is the front entrance of the tutoring center and has the look and feel of an authentic pirate shop.[5] It sells pirate clothing, eyepatches, compasses, spyglasses, pirate dice, skull flags, and secret treasures. It features handmade signs, scattered around the store, offering tongue-in-cheek wisdom, such as "Uses for Lard" (#5: "Lard Fights") and "Guidelines for New Shipmates" (#4: "No forgetting to swab"). Unsuspecting visitors are sometimes treated to surprise "moppings."
Shoppers can also find back issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, books published by McSweeney's, and literary compilations written by 826 Valencia students. The books of student writing published by 826 Valencia include forewords, illustrations and interviews from public figures such as Former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and actor Robin Williams.
The Pirate Supply Store was originally created through necessity. After being turned down for regular use of church basements and school facilities, the founders discovered an empty store on Valencia Street. City ordinances required businesses in that area of the city to be either retail or catering, so the Pirate Supply Store was opened in 2002 as the "legitimate" business front for the writing center. It also helps fund the tutoring program.[6]

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tal @lemmy.today 1d ago

Malta was driving me nuts; couldn't think of the name.

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tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

Yes!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Flag_Assembly

However, the US is a member of the Outer Space Treaty, so it can't claim celestial bodies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Article II of the treaty explicitly forbids any government from "appropriating" a celestial body such as the Moon or a planet, whether by declaration, use, occupation, or "any other means".

tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

I think that SDL can do aalib and libcaca.

searches

Hmm. No. I must be thinking of mpv.

SDL 1.2 could do aalib, but apparently 2 cannot:

https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL2/FAQUsingSDL

tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

It's got California origins in the US, but it's spread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl

A valley girl is the stereotype of a materialistic upper-middle-class young woman, associated with unique vocabulary, vocal mannerisms, and California accent features, who comes from the Los Angeles commuter communities of the San Fernando Valley.[1] A youth subcultural identity and stock character in American popular media, it originated in and is most associated with the 1980s and 1990s.

Valleyspeak, or valspeak, is a (stereotypical) California English social dialect and accompanying vocal features, best associated with Valley girls, though elements of it may be used by other demographics, including some men of a similar background ("val dudes").[3] This sociolect became an international fad for a certain period in the 1980s and 1990s. Valleyspeak is popularly characterized by both the steady use of uptalk, certain vowel sounds, and its vocabulary. The vowel sounds are in fact part of the larger California vowel shift becoming more common in the American West and Canada, as well as elsewhere in the U.S. Certain features once associated with Valspeak are now simply mainstream in many American speakers born since the late 20th century.[4]

Features and qualifiers

"Like" as a discourse marker. "Like" is used as a filler word, similar to "um" or "er", as in, "I'm, like, totally about to blow chunks." When "like" is functioning as a discourse marker, the word itself does not semantically change the phrase or sentence. Instead, it provides time for the speaker to formulate what they will say next. The word is always unstressed when used in this way. "Like" does not always function as a discourse marker in Valspeak. Consider the following two sentences: "It was like eight feet deep," and "I think that, like, it is entertaining." Even though both sentences contain the word "like," they employ it differently. In the former, "like" serves as an adverb that is synonymous with "approximately", whereas the latter "like" is a discourse marker, adding no additional meaning to the sentence.[15] Furthermore, "like" is frequently used to introduce quoted speech. For example, a person can recount a conversation by stating, "So, uh, I'm like, 'Where did he go?' And she was like, 'I don't know, I haven't seen him.'"[16]

tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

I, like, totally do!