Not all memory foams are equal. I’ve found that quality makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, the good stuff can get pretty pricey. It sounds like you’re talking about memory foam insoles, and I know that a lot of those tend to be the rubbish kind

That’s so funny. I feel ridiculous enough owning one (the reason I own it was because I went to a weird university where fancy white-tie events were common and most students probably went to at least one of those in their time there. )

If I punched you, that would be assault.

If I hit you with a hammer, that would be assault with a weapon.

If I stood beside you with a hammer and did not harm you at all, then I have not committed any crime.

No-one is going to be charged with crimes they didn’t commit because of this. Classifying them as a weapon is only relevant for cases in which they were actively used to commit sexual assault, much the same way that a hammer only counts as a weapon if I assault you with it.

Though I understand why you came away with the impression you did — I am often exasperated at weird drug laws that are overly prohibitive and often unscientific in how they criminalise relatively low risk drugs, which meant that I also initially had the same reading of this news as you did. Fortunately, it seems that this is not an example of one of those silly drug laws, but an actually sensible measure.

Man, this is fucked up.

Good luck with your company. That sounds like a lot of pressure. I’m glad that you have a few more years of buffer room, and I hope that you’re able to look after yourself in the meantime; I know how easy it is to burn out when you’re trying to run your own business.

Wise person. I got good at sharpening, and I ended up monetising it as a hobby, which I inevitably regretted

I got good at sharpening because I had a bunch of weirdly shaped knives, like this saddler’s round knife

Man, I feel so much nostalgia over Halo, especially Reach. It was the first campaign I completed on Legendary. My brother and I used to play the Swat game mode a lot, and we made one hell of a team. It was a nice contrast to arguing all the time. I enjoyed when I was in the zone and reacting so quickly that salty people would accuse me of using aimbot. That’s the highest compliment one can receive in an online shooter.

Oh wow, that is pretty fucked up. That sounds similar to what I’ve heard described as “weaponized therapy speak” — where terms from mental health therapy creep into daily vernacular and, divorced from their original context, are misused in a way that causes harm.

The archetypical example of this might be if a person doesn’t remember a past event that their partner is referencing in an argument, they may be accused of “gaslighting”. It’s not always an intentional misuse, but sometimes it is deliberate and maliciously used to manipulate someone. A big example of that is someone making unreasonable and controlling demands of a person, and then getting annoyed if that person doesn’t comply, because they’re “not respecting boundaries”.

I don’t know whether what you describe would count as misusing therapy speak, but I do know that I feel icky about “consent” being used in this way — in addition to being a hurtful way to put you down, this feels like it obfuscates the actual meaning of consent.

Regardless, I’m sorry that happened to you; that really sucks. It must’ve been hard to feel like you weren’t allowed to express your beliefs — politics are pretty pervasive, so even if you’re avoiding actively political discussions, political subtext can seep into regular conversations pretty easily. Having different political beliefs to you was no excuse to shut you down in such a hurtful manner. I hope you have better friends now.

A friend once said that she finds the invasiveness of this legitimately a little triggering, because it so vividly reminds her of the time she spent with an extremely abusive partner, who would similarly restrict her ability to meaningfully say no to something.

Ever since she made this point to me, I realised that I had been thinking of online consent dialogs as being distinct from the general concept of consent that we use in other life contexts (such as sexual consent, medical consent etc.). Since then, I have started to fold the online stuff into the more general notion of consent, which adds a whole bunch of connotations that makes me feel far more icky whenever I see a dialog that doesn’t let you say no.

Good blog post, thanks for sharing. I like the point about companies double dipping by trying to extract both our data and our money; I feel like I’m probably going to use that at some point when I’m on my soapbox and complaining about big tech.

I liked that although Knights of Guinevere was clearly ragging on Disney, it felt like it wasn’t just a cathartic trauma dump from Dana Terrace and crew — it was actually being used to say something meaningful. It’s a good sign when the pilot episode of a show has such a strong sense of themes.

I’d heard a lot of hype when the pilot was released, but didn’t get around to watching it until I randomly thought “I wonder what Dana Terrace is up to nowadays? Hopefully she’s working somewhere better than Disney, because surely there must be someone with power out there who recognised how Disney was squandering her potential”. When I saw that it was her and some of the Owl House team who made Knights of Guinevere, that caused me to immediately go watch it. The only disappointment was that we don’t know when new episodes will be available, but hopefully things will be regular once we do start getting episodes.

Exactly this. I don’t own any Steam hardware, nor do I expect to any time soon. However, I don’t know if I’d be running Linux as my main daily driver if not for how straightforward it is to game on Linux nowadays, thanks largely to Valve’s efforts in this area.

I did dual boot with Windows for a while, but I found that the inertia of rebooting made me more likely to just use Windows. When I discovered that basically all of my games were runnable through Proton, I got rid of Windows entirely.

I feel a lot of gratitude for the Steam Deck existing, because it makes things way easier. It’s not down to Valve’s efforts alone, but providing the solid starting point has lead to the coagulation of a lot of community efforts and resources. For instance, there have been a couple of times where I’ve had issues running games, but found the solution in adjusting the launch options, according to what helpful people on protondb suggest. I also remember struggling for a while to figure out how to mod Baldur’s Gate 3, until I found a super useful guide that was written by and for Steam Deck users. The informational infrastructure around gaming on Linux is so much better than it used to be.

Glad to see People Make Games cover this. They have a lot of reach

190MB, according to the article. And when it was idling, it would be only tens of MB

I learned some Japanese from doing origami, because at the time, the best books I had access to were in Japanese. That may seem disconnected from your question, but I consider it relevant, because I feel that my love for origami and my love of programming stems from the same place in me

My impression (as someone who is not an economist) is that a lot of it is linked to not-too-distant history: the typical “go-to” strategies for deflation under the prevalent monetarist ideas (i.e. economic school of thought about influencing the economy by controlling the amount of money in circulation) weren’t effective in combatting deflation in a few cases in Japan and the US in the early 1990s and early 2000s.

So perhaps it causes such panic because it exposes the weaknesses in the economic models that we see dominating modern politics. Inflation may be perceived as more manageable because it acts according to what the models say will happen, more or less, which makes it more controllable. It seems that may be less true for deflation.

Your comment fills me with a deep dread that causes me to feel like saying something to discourage you from this path. Alas, it’s not your preparation that is causing that feeling, but the grim circumstances that necessitate this kind of planning.

It’s difficult being on the other side of the world and completely unable to do anything than just watch as America descends deeper into fascism. However, I’m glad that I am not in the impossible position of making the decisions you’re making. I’m sorry that you are.

Good luck, I hope you don’t die. And I hope that people like you are able to claw back democracy from the fascists

What does OC mean in this context?

This reminds me of an excellent episode of Dark Net Diaries, “Jeremy from Marketing”. https://pca.st/episode/52252c9e-e4a8-42f6-85f5-f162ec3f6b40

Not inherently, but I went to a school where the enforcement of the uniform code was overly Draconian. For example, there was a rule that boots were not allowed, so at the beginning of term, they had students line up and pull their trousers legs up so that an assistant headteacher could measure how high the shoes went (because that was one of the ways they defined shoes Vs boots). My step-brother’s new school shoes were 1cm too tall, and they sent him home with a note saying that boots weren’t permitted.

My step-mum called up the school and went ballistic at them for it, refusing to buy another pair of shoes. This was a socioeconomically poor area in which many families would struggle to afford one pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, so this assholish enforcement of the rules was absurd. If you can only tell that the shoes aren’t permitted when a student pulls up their trouser legs, what is the problem?

I think that some of the logic behind the strict uniform code was that there was a perception that higher performing schools in better areas would have nicer school uniforms, and I wonder whether they were trying to work backwards from that, as if maintaining the uniform code could defy all the socioeconomic adversity that families in this area faced.

Aside from the excessive enforcement, I like the uniform code. It can mask income disparities within the student body if everyone is wearing the same thing. I felt insecure about how poor my family was, and it would’ve been worse without the uniform, I think. I also liked not having to think about what to wear, and it seemed to make it easier for my mum to strategise laundry to ensure we always had clean uniform to wear.

I also liked wearing a blazer because it meant I always had reliable pockets. Important things like my phone and my bus pass went in my inside pocket, which had a zip. Then there were two large exterior pocket which were good for pens and the like. It made it easier to avoid losing or forgetting things.

I think a happy medium would be possible. School uniforms could act as a blank canvas on which students could experiment with other forms of self expression.