GeePawHill

Christ, I'm so close to the red line these days.

Bug in Signal, wouldn't let me close a notification. No worries, save my game, reboot.

It comes up with a) a 1kx768 screen, b) on only one monitor, c) no mouse cursor, and d) asking for Virginia's PIN, not mine.

Tried reconnecting this, reconnecting that, rebooted about a half-dozen times. (Windows is hard to use when you have no mouse.)

Went out to the deck more or less crying.

*All* I wanted to do tonight was play my game and surf.

Indigo Girls, "Least Complicated"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOBZ_dkGpJ4

Professor Longhair, "Every Day I Have The Blues". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_bHt1r8J2o

One reason I ain't wish nobody dead and I ain't celebrate nobody dyin' is cuz Trump frequently does.

I do not want to be like him, or his, in any way.

I follow a lotta lefties, cuz I'm one, too, and I get pretty down sometimes reading them wishing for and then celebrating someone's death.

It's just not who I want to be, not how I want to live.

Albert Ammons & His Rhythm Kings, "Tuxedo Boogie".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYABxElQur4

Everlast, "What It's Like". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqkIO86ezHM

The SAVE act is a simple and direct attack on American democracy. It simultaneously imposes a poll tax and a "literacy test" on American citizens. It is a return to Jim Crow, and an effective abolishment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It is the next step in the oligarchs' ambitious effort to reinstate American slavery.

Everyone who advocates for it is a liar, a fascist, a racist, a sexist, a mercenary, a transphobe, a coward, and a raving-mad anti-American.

People who characterize DOGE as having failed in its mission startle me.

Of course, that mission wasn't what the thoroughly and repeatedly documented straight-faced liars said it was, so I suppose there's room for some naïve folks to think that.

The mission -- "destroy one of the most successful governments in the history of the world as much as possible as quickly as possible while creating maximum chaos and taking a profit" -- was a stunning success.

Hill headline says: Fetterman on supporting Mullin for DHS secretary: ‘Why can’t you just give someone a chance?’

Answer: cuz we gave *you* one, ya fuckwit.

Oh! I still have a little bit of time in #Internationalwomensday, don't I? Some of the *great* sf/f writers are/were women.

I just spoke in another thread of CJ Cherryh's extraordinary skill at exposition in fiction.

But there are plenty more.

Andre Norton lit my youth, and is probably the oldest exemplar I know of.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder was there, too, with delightful tween-level fantasy, especially _Black and Blue Magic_.

Every time I say "by and large", I remember that the expression, which is generally understood to mean "generally" -- see what I did there -- is of nautical origin. The UK's Royal Navy created many figures of speech we use today in entirely different contexts.

"By" means "sailing close to against the wind", and "large" means "sailing with the wind behind us".

A ship that sailed well "by and large", was a ship that could do okay regardless of which way the wind was blowing.

i.e.: "Generally".

And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?

In a mood, I'm in a mood, you done caught me in a mood, we have a mood. There is mood.

Deep Purple, "Child In Time", live, 1970.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OorZcOzNcgE

Fuck all y'all.

I, personally, don't stream music. No Pandora, no Spotify. I buy, or steal, my music, and it sits on my drive or my phone.

I own more Dylan covers than I own books, and I own a whole lot of books.

But this is my favorite Dylan cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOHkyZ62jjQ

Slack's UI has "improved" to the point where it's barely usable.

The once-excellent text snippet capability now reformats everything you type, and if you have larger sized fonts turned on, it has no way to dismiss it w/o guessing which button is selected via tab.

And I'm sure as fuck not gonna use discord, cuz "age verification" is just surveillance.

And Matrix/Element is simply shite.

Am I really gonna have to go back to IRC?

So, wait, what. You're saying putting vegetables up your rectum isn't a correct thing for the Pentagon to do?

The Leading Technical Change Seminar:

6 Attendees
4 2-hour Sessions
1 topic

Real Change In The Real World

April 6,7, 9 & 10, 1-3pm EST

LTC is a true seminar, led by me. Each attendee brings their own change challenges, and we tackle them all, as a group.

An alumnus writes: "A lot of goodness in Leading Technical Change! Tried methods, good vibes, great discussions with wonderful people. Got me excited about the possibilities."

Grab your seat today!

https://www.geepawhill.org/courses/leading-technical-change/

In analyzing the impact of LLMs, old-timers like me get pretty pissy about how bad the resulting work is.

But here's the thing: the bulk of the geek trade already does such shitty work such that LLM-generated code can actually compete.

"My Life In the Bush of Geekery", Part 0 in a potentially reasonably long memoir:

The time I was paid $13,000 for a two-line change.

Maybe a geek post.

American states have representatives in the US Congress and they have state legislatures, and both of these are based on "districts", where each district contains approximately the same number of people, based on the census.

Seems legit, I spoze. But here's the thing: who actually gets elected depends on how those districts are drawn on the map.

Manipulating those maps in order to favor a particular party is called "gerrymandering".

Wait. It's geekery, I promise.