RMS, Minsky, and the Search for Truth (2019/09/21)
Richard Stallman stepped down from the FSF recently. I don’t think it was necessarily 100% voluntary. This came about in part because of a highly critical article about his behavior, pointing out ways in which he has behaved poorly.
One of the complaints people have had persistently about his behavior is a tendency to offer what seem to be defenses of extremely bad behavior. In recognition of his influential leadership in the field of self-referential acronyms (e.g., “GNU’s Not Unix”), I’m going to write a perhaps self-referential piece in which I argue that the actual behavior he engaged in is not necessarily the same as the behavior he is accused of. But because I have studied and considered human emotions and behavior, I’m also going to try to do a better job of clarifying what I am defending, and also what I am not defending.
[read more...]Goodbye Pixel (2019/09/02)
About two years ago, I got a Google Pixel. It finally died, and I’m so much happier already.
[read more...]About Blogging (2019/02/18)
So, historically, I haven’t compartmentalized my life much. Maybe I should have; certainly, it’s a widely recommended tactic to separate your personal and professional life. It makes sense. People might find stuff distressing. But I am also coming to think that it is a dangerous model of the world.
You can’t divide people like that. Maybe you can, but it’s not healthy. It’s also sort of pointless. Consider the common argument: What happens if a prospective employer reads my blog and finds out I talk about abused kids a lot? [read more...]
Life Updates (2019/02/16)
It’s been a long time, partially because I ended up with my blogging software in a state where I didn’t feel like interacting with it, so I switched over to Hugo and such, and now I’m gonna try to get back in the habit of posting things here. Where was I? Well, mostly I was on tumblr, but then they performed the Cartesian product of all acrobatic maneuvers and all sharks, so now I’m not. [read more...]
The Zak Update (2019/02/14)
So, just a followup, since people probably wonder:
Yeah, I saw the Zak thing, in which Mandy Morbid, his erstwhile girlfriend, accuses him of long-term abuse. Yes, I believe it. Ironically, I was told repeatedly during the drama that Mandy was a bad person and I shouldn’t believe her accusations, but you know what? Fuck those people. The accusations are credible.
During the whole thing, and thereafter, I talked to Zak a fair bit in email. [read more...]
New blog (2019/02/13)
For reasons, I got frustrated with maintaining a blog software to interact with, so I stopped. I exported old posts, added aliases for them, but this is now a static page, for reasons. Using Hugo.
Whoops (2017/01/17)
So I spaced off actually checking out that this blog worked again after a rather rushed server move, but it’s up now, after a few small adventures.
[read more...]The end of my Mac era (2016/11/29)
I first used MacOS X in 1988. No, that’s not a typo. See, MacOS X is really, under the hood, an older operating system called NeXTStep, which I started using in 1988.
[read more...]Video games, art, and passion (2015/04/25)
So, I wrote about my distress over the very disappointing Angry Birds Epic game. And since then, I’ve seen a couple of things that I think make a good contrast with it.
[read more...]Angry Birds Epic: This could have been a great game (2014/12/05)
I keep thinking about this, and then not doing it, and then thinking about it more.
[read more...]