It needs 3D borders.

c-suite

CEO, CTO, CFO etc. In a '90s Internet startup like the company I worked for, the “C” really stood for “clueless”.

giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases

Over-normalization is a database thing - a simple example of normalization would be a “People” table where instead of having the “Salutation” field just contain text like Mr, Mrs. etc., you have a separate “Salutations” table with all the possibilities listed and keyed with an ID (usually just a sequential number), and then the “People” table stores a Salutation ID for each entry instead of the actual text. It’s a valid and standard thing to do with database design, but it can be taken to extremes where absolutely every possible trivial thing that can be normalized is, producing an overcomplicated mess that is extremely difficult to work with programmatically.

Printing out this over-normalized mess of a database on multiple sheets of paper which are then taped to the wall is utterly useless.

How is a database a trick?

The printout is the trick - it fools the bosses into thinking you’re doing something amazing and productive when you’re really just fucking around. It only works on the technically incompetent, of which there was no shortage in '90s Internet startups (or today).

Yeah, BeOS was awesome. I remember a coworker showing it to me in 1996 - he also taught me how to wow the c-suite with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases, a parlor trick that has served me well over the years.

As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn’t have been littered with classes with the “NS” prefix.

Is BeOS still floating around?

They have the close, minimize and full screen buttons in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.

/s just in case.

They get taken over by sales & marketing types

Like Steve Jobs lol.

Fluoridex. Prescription-only and pricey (~$17 per tube) but worth it. My dentist prescribes it and also sells it from his office for a bit less than what drug stores charge. Health or dental insurance may cover it but probably not.

It’s actually not bad at all, especially if you’re into military history like I am. It’s basically just standard soap opera stuff interspersed with treatises on what war is really like. The worst part is that interminably long section about the fucking freemasons, thrown in for no apparent reason.

For me, nothing tops the guy whose neighbors want to rape the angel that came to visit him, so he offers the crowd his daughters to rape instead.

Peter Gabriel has a new album out with a bunch of videos produced with AI. I don’t think he meant them to be disturbing but I find them to be very so, in the way that AI when it gets things somewhat wrong is disturbing. I also think possibly his new songs were produced via AI as well - they sound a bit like music by an AI trained up on Peter Gabriel music.

Sledgehammer was fucking awesome, though - and it was done by the guy who went on to do the Wallace and Gromit series.

My mom knits and she spends way more time unraveling thrift store finds to salvage the yarn than she does actually knitting stuff.

I have a $2200 road bike, a $600 mountain bike, and a 20+ year old hybrid that I bought on Craigslist for $100. Guess which one I enjoy riding the most?

That being said, the latest bikes with their electric wireless shifters, disc brakes, built-in phone holders and no cables anywhere are making me a bit jealous. But I’ve been able to resist the urge so far.

For me it was D&D: all those fucking books, dice and lead figurines.

People are not moving here from Reddit if they haven’t already.

I think you’re underestimating Reddit’s ability to continue degrading the Reddit experience with their ham-fisted attempts to maximize revenue.

I’ll go even further: it’s kind of fun when they burn.

I don’t think I’ve ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life

Same here and I’ve certainly never purchased anything through an ad. You’d think there’d be some advantage for advertising networks to identify people (there are dozens of us!) who never click on ads and refrain from serving any to them - and use this as a selling point for ad buyers so that their expenditures are not wasted.

ESPN’s Stuart Scott used this as his catchphrase starting in the mid-'90s, so not quite 35 years (but damn close). Like all ESPN catchphrases, it was clever and funny the first time, not so much the next 5000 times.

I knew a guy in my town who worked a shitty job at the Oasis factory making the green foam that florists stick flowers into, just so he could keep a tiny book store he owned open. As an adult, I now wonder if he also sold weed on the side.

When I lived in Daytona a shop opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whippers - $1 plastic whisks. They had two display trees in the front windows, one with black whisks and one with white whisks. They were never open and there was a hand-written sign on the door that said “Closed. If you want a Super-Whipper, they have some at the nail salon next door.” The store was in a strip mall less than 200 ft. from three dollar stores and a Publix, all of which sold plastic whisks.

Pretty sure it was a front lol.