In some ways — in many important ways — Americans are more repressed sexually and socially than those in traditional Islamic societies.

There, at least there are socially accepted ways to proceed. There is a script that works — yes, for women, it works very poorly indeed but there is a path.

In America, however, there is nothing — it’s just a confusion. If you’re a man and you talk to a woman at work in any way other than robotically, you’re an evil harassing creep, while actual harassing creeps pretty much get away with nearly anything. Meanwhile, women are forced out of companies for reporting the actual harassers, while the men who just wanted a friendship often face the consequences the worst of their brethren in their sociopathic nature completely avoid.

There are many other examples, but that was one I was thinking about.

When the conventional wisdom is that expressing anything other than robotic indifference to a woman is harassment (as it is becoming), then we are all doomed. The harassers will still proceed with abandon and many more people will be more lonely than necessary.

All too often, our “fixes” just make things worse.

I’m not into sentimental photos in general, but if someone did this to me I’d never speak to them again. Even if I were married to them. They’d find the divorce papers in the mail.

This might be the most monstrous thing I've read on r/relationships and that is saying A LOT pic.twitter.com/V7gUZU0d2I

— bras in the dryer (@ajlobster) October 27, 2017

That’s just absolutely horrible and unconscionable, and a sign of mental problems. I have difficulty understanding jealousy at all, but that’s so far beyond jealousy it truly is some form of mental illness.

Something that non-cinephiles don’t know about movies and TV: In most films and shows, especially if they have any actors with recognizable names in them, if the actor’s face is not actually in the shot there is a very good chance the actor “in” the scene was not on set when it was filmed.

The reason is that “named” actors are very expensive, and the more you can avoid having them work the less costly the production — and often, the less hassle.

So if you see the “actor’s” hand? Likely not them. The back of their head? Likely not them. Hear them talking but don’t actually see them? Probably dubbed in later.

If you don’t actually see an up-close shot of the actor’s face in a scene, there is a really good chance they were not present at all when the scene was filmed.

Something else that Windows 10 has disabled is pasting passwords into modal password dialog boxes.

This makes security worse. I just changed three of my passwords to be less secure since I can no longer paste them. I was forced to reduce their complexity greatly because previously they were all 16 characters or greater and used a full character set. Thus, they were nearly impossible to type.

Since Microsoft has implemented this “security feature” in Windows 10, I changed them to seven characters with nothing except alphanumeric components so I can type them in less than 10 minutes.

Much more secure, obviously.

Fucking idiots.

Unpopular Opinion – The Witch is the Best Horror Film of the Past 10 Years.

Not unpopular with me, because The Witch is incredible and marvelous and lovely in its own way.

Non-horror fans should definitely watch this movie, even if you think you won’t like it. It’s not all that scary, but it’s extremely unnerving.

Why, though, should non-horror fans watch it? Because it is utterly committed to existing in its chosen time period of the 17th century Puritan colonial North America. After you watch this film, you’ll realize how terrible most “historical” dramas are, and how lacking in nuance or commitment to their era or the way people approached problems cognitively in a completely different cultural context.

I re-watch very, very few films, but I will definitely view The Witch again one day soon.

Watch this movie. It’s just fantastic. After I did, all movies I attempted after seemed limp and pallid. God, what a great film.

Because of “smart” phones, it is shocking and disheartening how far computing has regressed in only ten years.

Functionally, we’re back around 1988 now. Design-wise, we’re closer to 1983 or 1984.

So sad and horrible to observe and experience.

Also, I despise Windows 10 and Office 2016 on Windows. I am cursed now at work with using those vile pieces of piscine ass emissions.

It’s an OS and Office suite that fails at every task: makes things harder rather than easier, makes items less visible instead of more so, increases clicks and decreases readability of information — with terrible fonts, opaque affordances, and most of it appears to have been designed for a phone with a tiny-ass screen.

Whoever did this should be hung outside Microsoft headquarters and pelted with smelt.

The new Firefox is so fucking terrible.

When I think I’ve found all the ways it can be terrible, I find yet another one.

What a huge fail.

Brit Marling’s statement about Harvey Weinstein, sexual assault, and all the issues discussed around that recently is the best one I’ve seen. This part is particulary apt (not doing this as a blockquote so I can preserve her emphases):

“The real danger inside the present moment, then, would be for us all to separate the alleged deeds of Cosby, Ailes, O’Reilly, or Weinstein from a culture that continues to allow for dramatic imbalances of power. It’s not these bad men. Or that dirty industry. It’s this inhumane economic system of which we are all a part.”

Recognizing that this sort of abuse depends on and hinges upon our economic system is a great insight. Not that it necessarily does, of course. In our system, however, it very much does.

Brit Marling is the best. I am glad she’s still creating things.

all 30 people worldwide who still use firefox outside of a public library do because of vimperator or some other addon that's about to die

— hotboxing the T-34 (@morganastra) October 25, 2017

Yep! I’m already transitioning off Firefox. It’s killed itself and has absolutely no future. Without the add-ons, it’s worthless to anyone, and it’ll just be crushed into dust by Chrome.