a big ask

Don’t forget: once you’re off the car lot, you don’t say ‘the ask’ any more. “A big request” happens to be English and also valid for the context.

My sister started a pet store. Took her 1 year to plan it all out and get it lined up. And she opened.

Theft was a constant problem from day one. Kids would steal aquarium filters and similarly pointless stuff. She installed cameras. She reported them to the cops. Nothing fucking changed.

She bailed out after a few years when the lease came up, losing her shirt but not her house, and now manages a vet hospital owned by some vets. They have no end of customers but definitely a list.

Steal from a retailer like that makes it okay? Just fuck you.

if

whether

Apparently I still don’t have one. Haven’t had a phone number for about a decade. No SMS spam, no “survey” calls; nothing.

Signal needs a phone number.

I don’t want to give them one. Also I don’t have one.

Oh my, that seems to eliminate Signal as an option.

Next?

Nothing.

If the Internet went away, we’d have a little time before batteries were not viable even if replaceable, as distributing those batteries would get problematic.

We would have had no time to withdraw cash as cash, an important thing since banks will fall over at least enough to trigger an economic collapse.

No, we’re all gonna need to learn how to fight, and live without hospitals and drugs and probably electricity.

We have bigger problems than ensuring we can look up the capital of Rwanda on this cached Wikipedia while we listen to The Cure.

Wait till

New kind of plough?

[Microsoft product] [surveils]

I wouldn’t be surprised if zoom does something similar.

Have you considered that Microsoft is just being a dick? After decades of doing so, it’d be okay to assume this time too.

Zoom could also be a dick, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

I dunno how long that’s been for you, but I got too injured while on the ROTP programme (that’s how poor kids go to school). And I was out with some non-transferrable skills (5.56 percussion, anyone? One-armed sign language?), surfing a couch and a little broken. This was early '90s.

You know what? You’re gonna second guess things for a long while, deciding things were or were not your fault. You’re gonna feel a little ‘flat’ about things for some time as well. That’s common and I remember it well. Like, the house could fall down around me and I was so dampered for adrenaline that I’d reeeeally not care but probably slowly cope with that too.

Save the manga. You’re maybe gonna like it again, along with other things too. Maybe, maybe not, but keep the options open.

Boot tears you down to pieces so they can build a soldier out of you, and getting dropped from a programme abruptly is super-jarring, but you have an opportunity to rebuild yourself as a pretty awesome human again. Decide who you are After Basic, take the good lessons and try to shed the OCD of boot and, um, Other Bad Shit, and see if you can build a You that is driven and goal-focused, but also invested in fluffy civvy stuff.

Then - in your own time - decide whats next with the help of your friends.

Ha! I use it to write Ansible.

In my case, YAML is a tool of Satan and Ansible is its 2001-era minion of stupid, so when I need to write Ansible I let the robots do that for me a d save my sanity.

I understand that will make me less likely to ever learn Ansible, if I use a bot to write the ‘code’ for me; and I consider that to be another benefit as I don’t need to develop a pot habit later, in the hopes of killing the brain cells that record my memory of learning Ansible.

I hope it pluralizes ‘email’ like it does ‘traffic’ and not like ‘failure’.

Ciphers get broken. What you save out there now can be pulled down and then saved until it can be cracked 10 years from now.

everything controlled by our government is

The questions been beggared.

You’re debating whether not-3 is the same as “less than three”.

It’s => but not <= so it’s not ==.

Who’s

\facepalm

We moved to a new apartment - and a big rent increase from 5 years of inflation-pinned rent to now c$4/sqft/mo - just for A/C . Would do it again.

Been at Facebook 4 years? Not management? Get ready for the PIP.

It’s cute how you’re putting an s on ‘slang’, like you do with ‘traffic’.

Overly formal language could appear stilted, and I’d be happy with

• spelling
• that/which success
• adverbs other than ‘literally’
• no clique jargon like ‘mid’ and ‘cap’ and ‘fetch’

We can argue style all day, but I’d love a baseline and the organization like the French have for their language. This ‘usage dictates form’ idea, where vapid influencers can dictate the evolution of the language through weaponized followers, is ridiculous.

The distinction is, ESL people are taught English and then graded on it. If they don’t know their “who” from “whom” and “that”, then they fail. Unlike native speakers a s writers, they’ve proved they can write in English and be proud of it.

When I was fluent in French, I was pleased at my work and it made me proud. I’m 20 years lapsed and I absolutely struggle at the French in Shoresy when I should know it.