Funny how now that 4K monitors are on the cusp of becoming mainstream, ahistorical geeks are coming out of the woodwork telling us how “no one needs that” and it’s “useless because no one can tell the difference.” Of course, they mean they can’t tell the difference.

I and many, many others very much can tell the difference of course.

What makes it funny about it is that I’ve been using computers and reading about them for a really long time now — long before the internet was a consumer item — and I remember when “high-resolution” monitors came out the first time around. That is, around 25 years ago.

There were innumerable articles about how “no one needs 800×600 and certainly not 1024×768″ and more about how that resolutions so high are just useless, make your computer slow, etc.

It’s exactly the same now. Exactly. You could dig up those old articles out of Byte magazine and all the other long-defunct computer magazines of that era and change only a few words and no one could tell which one was written nearly three decades ago and which was written now.

Isn’t it interesting how some who consider themselves technologically competent fight the hardest against the advancement of technology?

And this is how liberals so very often makes themselves look like fools, even if the critique would have some (small) validity if it hadn’t been written by someone who is apparently a complete American idiot with absolutely no knowledge of anything outside the US. Amazing we can send people to matriculate for so long as Verónica Bayetti Flores undoubtedly has and that they don’t actually learn a single goddamn thing*.

Tess’s response in the comments of the original column itself is also great (scroll up to read the actual Feminsting piece).

Nearly unprecedented that some analyst on CNN is correct, but he’s right — Lorde’s critique has nothing to do with racism, but rather she’s reacting to the excesses of the music she herself listens to and is pushed out into the world by American corporations. Because of course what Lorde sings and writes is a fusion of electro, hip hop and soul. There has never been anything quite like what she’s done, and that’s why it makes such an impression. It’s probably been 20 years since I’ve liked a No. 1 song or a top-selling artist, but good is good. I’m not obligated as hipsters are to hate anything popular.

Makes me really want to jettison forever the liberal label more than I already have. I think it’s just a terrible idea that anything that has anyone who is not white in it cannot ever be critiqued. I want equality, not whatever bullshit that is. By the way, Lorde’s given name is “Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor.” Yeah, if you are smart you probably kenned right away that as recently as 50 or 60 years ago Lorde herself would not have been considered “truly” white in many places, including the US.

This response to the completely daft Feministing column was also great.

Flores should stop being such a numpty and actually learn a little about the rest of the world (everything ain’t about America, strange to hear I know) but meanwhile let’s watch her hairness Lorde killin’ it.

*Makes me want to quote once again the Good Will Hunting line about library books and $1.50 in late fees, but I’ll sort-of refrain.

This movie could be interesting, though it’s not a new idea. The novel Galatea 2.2 which I read many years ago — well, someone obviously had read it also and was inspired by it. As in the novel, the male character in the film is a writer. Pretty clear sign there.

This idea — this conceit — is not new at all however. Orson Scott Card had Jane*. Robert Heinlein had Minerva. Star Trek: TNG had Minuet.

And of course the real love story of Iron Man is Tony Stark and Jarvis.

*And one of the worst betrayals in history was Ender Wiggin turning Jane’s external interface to the world off briefly for idiotic reasons, which at her rate of thought was the equivalent of locking you in a dark room for a billion years. (Why yes, I have read a lot — why do you ask?)

Kappa Danielson covering James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.”

Great version. She really does a nice job with it.

In The Hunger Games books I really enjoy how much of a role Suzanne Collins places on fashion, and how geeks (mostly male ones) with no historical knowledge at all condemn taking fashion and its semiotics seriously.

Of course if any of them had the slightest knowledge of history, they’d know how much fashion has been used as a signifier and itself a form of rebellion in revolutionary times.

There is not as much documentation out there as should exist because study of the topic itself is denigrated and seen as not worthy.

I like when people complain about it though because it immediately marks their ignorance.

Since everything is becoming idiot-friendly and I am not an idiot, most tech is becoming very hard for me to use as I have to constantly fight with it to get it to do what I want.

For instance, the Google “results for similar searches” that obscures search results. Yeah, it is a minor thing but it means nearly every search I attempt takes longer.

Also, making a quoted search not be a verbatim search is just inexcusable and every single developer and manager who had anything to do with that should be fired with no severance.

Eventually, I will not be able to use anything as the effort it takes to make it work for me is too much and just not worth it.

We don’t need to make everything idiot-friendly. We just need to make fewer idiots.

“I think that one of the things that separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool-builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing of about a third of the way down the list – it was not too proud of a showing for the crown of creation. So that didn’t look so good. But then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a human on a bicycle blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. It’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s a bicycle for our minds.”

-Steve Jobs

Too bad GP computers will be defunct soon.

This is probably the most insightful thing I have ever read about Black Friday.

I really like it when smart people make me think of something I never would’ve thought of on my own, that also explains human behavior I previously could not have made sense of.

Of course the feeling of defeating capitalism at its own game is an illusion, but illusions are reality to the people experiencing them.

I’m really tired of the phrase “first world problems.” Originally, it highlighted something that was relevant and worth paying attention to.

Now it’s just used to dismiss people. For instance if my (nice, fast) car breaks down, yes that might indeed be a first world problem but it’s a real damn problem and I have to deal with with it.

“First world problems” has metamorphosed into a phrase mostly used to avoid paying attention to anyone who cares about anything besides your particular problem, and to guilt-trip people into silence.

This never works and is completely counterproductive, though it is a common liberal failure mode.

The Jezabels – Trycolour

Good song. Good hair.