Got a message saying I was banned from a sub I wasn’t even subscribed to and hadn’t posted to. I replied to the message telling them to get stuffed. They reported me and got me banned from Reddit for 3 days.

So instead, I banned Reddit and haven’t looked back. F-'em.

Some people eventually realize that their parents are also people, not gods.

Wait… theaters still exist? They were expensive before food prices doubled. How much are they charging for a bag of popcorn now? Do they accept bills less than $100?
Is it all self-service now? Are we now expected to push <play> on the movie computer AND clean the theater before we’re allowed to leave? Are you forced to watch ads while you clean up?

Ever since Jiffy Pop hit $50 at the self-service Dollar General, I barely leave home anymore.

I’m going to take a somewhat different tack to describing this.

There are many ways to motivate large groups of people. You’ve likely seen this a lot and not really noticed or paid attention to it. Some examples are tribalism (“Hey! They’re not one of us!”), nationalism (“Those dirty foreign people!”), religion (“Do what I say and go to heaven!”), money (“Do this and I’ll give you something valuable”), etc.

One of the best motivators is fear. (“Do this or I/they will do something you really don’t like”).

Political groups need something to motivate large groups of people. When done well, they appeal to the better sides of humanity. When done by the lazy, the dumb and the craven, they go with the simple one: fear.

That’s what Conservatism has been hammering for a while now. They don’t really have a way to appeal to people’s better sides, primarily because their platform isn’t to make humanity better off. They platform is to make a few people better off to the detriment of everyone else. So they try tribalism (“Those brown people are trying to take your money!”), nationalism (“Those foreigners are taking your jobs!”), religion (“Those non-Christians are trying to install sharia law!”), etc. The most effective one is still fear. So getting their followers scared and angry is the best way to motivate them, get them to stop thinking rationally and build moats that will isolate them from people that might talk them down.

This is used to motivate people to vote in certain ways, as well as motivate them to watch advertisements. In other words: power and money.

Heh. Years ago during an interview I was explaining how important it is to verify a system before putting it into orbit. If one found problems in orbit, you usually can’t fix it. My interviewer said, “Why not just send up the space shuttle to fix it?”

Well…

What’s amazing is that 99% of people are reading this article on a supercomputer. Likely one that fits in their pocket. If the technology trend continues like it has for the past 70 years or so, we’ll probably have Cheyenne-equivalent computers on our desktops, if not our pockets, in 10-20 years.

If you can afford to be patient, you can get Cheyenne a lot cheaper and a lot smaller.

Just an observation: The “square/right-angle” parking spaces are harder to park in, but do make it easier to pull-out/exit in either direction. The angled spots are easier to enter/exit, but it’s harder to exit in one direction than the other.

This might be desirable in order to influence cars to enter/exit in one direction.

In the common US box store layout, the end of the parking lot nearest the store is often highest in pedestrians. I find it easier/faster/safer to avoid that end of the parking lot. So I try to enter/exit using the side of the parking lot opposite the store. Angled parking slots make this strategy harder.

Undoubtably there are more factors than this involved in parking-lot design.

Source: Not a pro. Just a parking-space user.

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

This is a direct result of our Wall Street economy. Wall Street demands that each corporation’s stock price shall increase every quarter. No matter what. If that means the customer is unhappy or that a corporation must consume itself from within. Doesn’t matter.

Wow. Another example of Google on the cutting edge. 🙄