Posts by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
(DIR) Post #AyZkR4g82mkukyRJdQ by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-25T17:23:03Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@alina Listen, people can criticize, but I will note that Scratch is a language that makes it syntactically impossible to construct an invalid program (incomplete yes, invalid no) at every step of the development cycle and that is a feature I have never seen in other languages.
(DIR) Post #Ayblkn51flSCEoyDDc by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-26T19:16:37Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@cy @benroyce @huntingdon @jmcclure I live in a town that is up to its eyeballs in libraries and museums named after the like four rich families who were here in the 1800s and 1900s. Libraries and museums that survived the subsequent economic collapse of the region because their endowments put them outside the regular need to turn a profit that imploded most of the small and medium sized businesses in the area between the '60s and the '90s.If you're looking for someone who wasn't born a mark, you'll have to look elsewhere. 😉 (Lotta people justifiably against robber barons.Not a lot of those people endowing libraries with all that idealism though.)
(DIR) Post #AybseOzj0aBDToOKkC by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-26T19:52:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@cy @benroyce @huntingdon @jmcclure Actually no, I haven't. I wouldn't be deeply surprised, but that one's new to me.The Homestead Strike is a story I'm familiar with, but I don't remember a "burning them alive" part of that story.
(DIR) Post #AybtUbDQodv0RPgyNU by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-26T20:01:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@benroyce @cy @huntingdon @jmcclure This may be the cynic in me talking, but I've had enough trouble getting a group of six people to decide where to eat that I'm highly skeptical of the masses endowing libraries.I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I am saying there is a certain simplicity to the process of a captain of industry just deciding to devote a huge chunk of their fortune to philanthropy that you don't get out of a committee (for good or ill).(And for the record, I'm still very much on team if-you-make-a-billion-dollars-your-marginal-tax-rate-should-go-to-100%, while at the same time not having deep faith that the money the government would get their hands on would go to a library and not, say, police drones).
(DIR) Post #AybtUdEZJO14hWEuQa by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-26T21:07:19Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@benroyce @cy @huntingdon @jmcclure We do build highways. :)You chose an interesting example for personal reasons because I grew up west of Richmond Virginia. So let me tell you about the beltway. Tuck in; you've activated my trap card and I'd rather spin yarns than finish this performance review. 😉 Richmond had a beltway on the books for decades that would circle around the city to the east and to the west. They built out the east one with relatively low political turmoil, if I recall correctly; east of Richmond is mostly swamp and an airport.To the west is Midlothian and Chesterfield, the places that white flight went to back in the Sixties and Seventies. A group of, let's say, entrepreneurs took a gamble: they bought a bunch of land in the 'redzone' where the highway was slated to be built for cheap (because it was slated to have a highway built through it), built upscale suburban housing developments (I will stop just short of calling them "mini-mansions," but they were delightfully-apportioned three-story works abutting a golf course), and sold them to the folk fleeing school integration.By the time the state got the money and political will together to execute on the highway, the builders had cashed out, taken the money, and run (fine people; some of them were the parents of my classmates in school!), and the neighborhood was sitting there, smack dab in the middle of a "PLANNED FOR EMINENT DOMAIN" sector.... but here's the thing about planning to eminent domain a whole-ass neighborhood of some of the wealthiest taxpayers and campaign contributors in one of the wealthier central-VA counties. 😉 The whole thing threatened to turn into a decades-long legal quagmire. These folk were willing to support any politician who would scuttle the highway project, and if none were, they were willing to pay for lawyers to fight the issue forever.You want to know what ended the fight?J.B. Watkins was the owner of the Watkins Tree Farm just east of those housing developments. Watkins is an Old Virginia Family Name. For those fair readers who don't know why I capitalize those words: Virginia has a tradition of noblesse oblige dating back to its founding by second-born mid-tier nobility who were never going to get land or title in their homeland, so their options were join the clergy, die nobly in war, or go to the New World. Yes, it's a paper thing and yes, it didn't stop or even mostly fight slavery... But it still matters. The Watkins Family Is Compelled To Serve. Like the Lees. Or the Fairfaxes. Or the Hopkinses.Watkins went to the General Assembly and put his entire tree farm on the chopping block if they could re-route the highway through it. And he could do that because he was one guy who owned a lot of land.Sometimes we build highways through single philanthropy too. 😉 (... I'm not actually disagreeing with your example, I just think it's funny that of all the examples we could have discussed, you stumbled on the one where the story I most know about it is "that time we built a highway because one dude let it happen" 😄 )
(DIR) Post #AyicrppCKLOzISZQ80 by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-09-29T14:42:51Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
gets turned into a dodecahedron and crushed by a demigod
(DIR) Post #AysS0aqcE12DXMo3vs by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-10-04T20:56:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@futurebird It took me awhile to understand that, and I kind of love it.It's a town where a guy who is 6'3 and almost as big horizontal as well, covered with tattoos, who looks like he is at the tail end of his promising career in college football And looking forward to his next gig in either construction or violent enforcement, will happily give you directions to the next subway station and it's pretty great.
(DIR) Post #Az8rYoGET4xSMmYlN2 by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-10-12T18:58:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@futurebird Still not accustom to the idea that people can just bring their dogs on mass transit.I mean, of course? How else would you get your dog places? But still, wild.
(DIR) Post #AzHMCn7kfJtYJVFl0i by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-10-16T21:19:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Nonilex Not that I would ever accuse our current President of hypocrisy (/s), but...... indicting Bolton on failing to secure classified documents when Trump had a mountain of classified documents in a bathroom is the height of hypocrisy and I would hope any jury would see it as such.
(DIR) Post #AzPck1Ke0xROSxpVlA by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-10-20T21:02:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@futurebird Oh wow. Enjoy this journey. :)I got started with Going Postal and, honestly, I think Going Postal is forever my favorite (though Making Money is a close second).Meanwhile, the live-action Hogfather is an annual watch in my house.
(DIR) Post #AzdXsWSAVUsusPB1hQ by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-10-27T14:14:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@futurebird I think you're right and I'm not sure what to do with that idea.At a fundamental level, people (at least in the US) have basically been free to read whatever news source they want. I can't stop someone from believing Inquirer is telling real news. And it's not the first time that kind of thing has been used to bend public perception (The Spanish-American war comes to mind, as does the post-WWII collusive propaganda lock that was a key component of fomenting deep-seated anti-Communism to the point where we can't even have a rational conversation about socializing the healthcare system).I don't know how to provide better sources of information when people seem so unwilling to even try to evaluate the sources they're using.
(DIR) Post #B06Dx4VnoVjxuuBRwW by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-11-07T20:04:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ricci Quick! Check it to see if the C compiler source includes an injection attack against a specific binary and all other future instances of the C compiler!
(DIR) Post #B06RtAv1RyeBzG14Bk by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-11-07T21:41:46Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ricci I have used systems that reject characters in passwords that look suspiciously like perl operators (or, more often, SQL control symbols) and it does not fill me with confidence in the system managing my password.
(DIR) Post #B0LBVEGcRzifDENJWi by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-11-17T03:12:33Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
TIL: matplotlib supports specifying colors using standard X11/CSS4 names, but also supports the names from the xkcd color survey if you prefix the string with "xkcd:".(While looking this up, I also learned about the full-on xkcd mode, but different topic!)#python #matplotlib
(DIR) Post #B0U0fFNgSGC1iWkjKa by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-11-21T21:39:57Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@argv_minus_one @rejectedplates Right?! It's just the civilian car of a school bus driver. Gotta be. ;)
(DIR) Post #B11Snq8s9x5x4RGYlc by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-12-05T18:57:56Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
In the Starfleet Technical Manual, there is a throwaway detail of the LCARS user interface that when it is upgraded, users can still utilize the previous several versions. This is because their work is mission-critical and it is unacceptable to compromise the mission by forcing unfamiliar changes; eventual retraining is part of their job, but the flexibility allows them to take the retraining at their own pace.I think about this from time-to-time and how this is still a sci-fi idea that is seen all too rarely in how we do actual computer UIs.#StarTrek #LCARS #UI
(DIR) Post #B1LxAGztsN5oWAsgE4 by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2025-12-17T21:43:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ionchy The key is to try these in the right order.Much, much harder if you get them out of order. Though you should probably always start with Chill Penguin because everything's just tougher without dash legs.
(DIR) Post #B1uxiMT96fByKoAQaG by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2026-01-03T19:37:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Nonilex "Mexico's gonna pay for it" all over again.
(DIR) Post #B1z63nfckDRz2pZqN6 by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2026-01-05T04:30:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tom7 Absolutely loved this one. :) Listened to it on the trip to Ohio to see the family.Kinda love the idea of someone trying to use a Bitcoin rig to game being the first giver. 😛
(DIR) Post #B20ijXRfRxmgInL31E by mark@mastodon.fixermark.com
2026-01-05T16:44:28Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@SeanCasten This is pretty much American foreign policy 101: great at problems that can be solved by focused violence with clear goals; awful at post-violence support, sustaining, and establishment of a stable new status quo.Post-WWII Japan seems a weird outlier and I am not enough a student of history to have any idea why.