Ages ago, without consciously deciding to, I slowly withdrew from Tumblr. Now I understand why. This will be my final post here, except for the one to follow it.
benzado reblogged
I read this as “President of the United States” at first.
I would be willing to give this form of governance a try.
Trying to relate to people
“I know it’s useless now, but I look through my high school physics notebook and think about all the time I put into—” “YEP YOU GOT TO THROW IT ALL AWAY.”
benzado reblogged
ayjay-deactivated20161206
In Martinique, I had visited rustic and neglected rum-distilleries where the equipment and the methods used had not changed since the eighteenth century. In Puerto Rico, on the other hand, in the factories of the company which enjoys a virtual monopoly over the whole of the sugar production, I was faced by a display of white enamel tanks and chromium piping. Yet the various kinds of Martinique rum, as I tasted them in front of ancient wooden vats thickly encrusted with waste matter, were mellow and scented, whereas those of Puerto Rico are coarse and harsh. We may suppose, then, that the subtlety of the Martinique rums is dependent on impurities the continuance of which is encouraged by the archaic method of production. To me, this contrast illustrates the paradox of civilization: its charms are due essentially to the various residues it carries along with it, although this does not absolve us of the obligation to purify the stream. By being doubly in the right, we are admitting our mistake. We are right to be rational and to try to increase our production and so keep manufacturing costs down. But we are also right to cherish those very imperfections we are endeavouring to eliminate. Social life consists in destroying that which gives it its savour.
Claude Lev-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques. The underlying philosophy of liberalism, and the consumer culture it generates, condensed into nine sentences. (via ayjay)
benzado reblogged
benzado reblogged
'We decided on a port'
benzado reblogged
benzado reblogged
Your whole thing, it attracts people, but it won’t keep them around. Authenticity is what keeps people around.
benzado reblogged
Apple IIe (by Shelly Jackman)
Source: instagram.com
Even though Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana noted "NO MOON!" on a preliminary sketch of the planet when the drawing was submitted to them for approval, this was also ignored.
Available now on the App Store
Source: itunes.apple.com
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
(via fishmech)
“I'm not allowed to stand up for myself, because doing so is automatically an act of oppression. If a woman treats me like shit, and she's being “more feminist” than me, I conclude that I deserve to be treated like shit. That is the model I've learned of a good ally.”
benzado reblogged
I had high hopes but this is from 16 seconds in and now I’m concerned.
I had to look up why you would be concerned—if I understand it correctly, this doesn’t describe HCF at all?
It could be charitably described as a melodramatic definition. Both actual instances of a HCF instruction mentioned on Wikipedia involve the CPU repeatedly fetching memory in an infinite loop. (The “catch fire” came from the idea that all these fetches would burn out the wires connecting CPU to memory.) So, one instruction executing repeatedly, not “all instructions competing”, which makes no sense. That’s like all words competing to be spoken by your mouth.
Worse, the term “race condition” has a specific meaning: it describes a potential problem where if a sequence of events happen in a particular order, things go wrong. I'm virtually certain those words were chosen deliberately, but here it seems to mean “lots of things moving fast!”
Writers and programmers are both domain tourists: to apply their skills in any meaningful way usually requires learning something about a domain outside their area of expertise. It's upsetting to see someone from either profession treat another as trivial decoration.
I had high hopes but this is from 16 seconds in and now I'm concerned.
benzado reblogged
why does dennys have a tumblr
why do you