If you want to see exactly what files your Mac is monkeying with at any given moment for a given process, open a terminal and do this:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mdworker | egrep "open"

I used that to determine if Spotlight was actually indexing what I told it to, but it could be useful for a wide variety of troubleshooting.

That will not work on Linux. For Linux, something like this would do something similar, though there is no single utility available on Linux that is as versatile or useful as “fs_usage:”

sudo lsof -p 2075

Where “2075” is the PID number.

The utility “strace” might work, too.

Also, “fs_usage” can be run without specifying a process, but that is probably not a good idea as the output will be vast.

The reason I like using a Mac vs. Linux or Windows apart from how vastly better the Mac handles hi-dpi and mixed dpi is that in Linux and Windows, you can usually find something that works…sort of. On the Mac, you can usually find the one tool that works perfectly.

That has mattered more to me as I’ve gotten older.

This thread starts off with the wrong basis. All clothing choices are political. Just because she didn’t realize it didn’t make it less so. Ignorance is sometimes convenience, I guess.

I don’t really buy the Clash of Civilizations narrative, but at the same time I believe that — no matter what the participants therein say — that the burka/niqab/hijab is a form of forced servitude.

That said, I don’t know that banning the wear of such garb is the answer. I lean that way, with laws similar to those in France, but I’m not certain of it.

All these folks come out of the woodwork when there is some effort to preserve secular society, but there is nary a word when forced veiling or the politics of the veil is brought up, or Muslim oppression of women….

To me, preserving a secular society at pretty high cost is worth making some people’s lives worse or more inconvenient for a while.

God this is such a stupid discussion.

That you sexually harass people doesn’t mean you are terrible at everything else. It just means you are an asshole, and assholes have many other talents — just like anyone else.

In fact, I’d wager that sexual harassers because they are boundary breakers might produce slightly more and better science individually but harm science overall. Note: this is not condoning their behavior! I’d like to tase all of them right in the face. But people who push too hard in one area tend to do so in others, too. The “benefit” though is probably outweighed by the massive drawbacks such as good people (mostly women) being ejected out of science.

Most people are pretty horrible. I just can’t get behind the “I can’t watch, read, listen to, or trust the science of anyone who is not completely perfect.”

It’s just senseless, and if one were to practice that, you’d have to live in a cave eating bark.

Sarah Hörst’s Titan dress is titanically cool:

So excited about how the Titan dress turned out. Thanks so much @ShenovaFashion #dps17 pic.twitter.com/LRxKgmqtyC

— Sarah Hörst (@PlanetDr) October 18, 2017

I hear people say things all the time like, “If you get a 30-year mortgage, you pay more in interest than the house cost!”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Wrong.

If you get a 30-year mortgage, in a stable monetary environment, the value of a particular dollar deflates over time, so that each year you pay progressively less relative to your starting year.

I’m explaining this poorly. The 1st year of your mortgage, your 2018 dollar is worth about the same as your 2017 dollar. Just a little less. But your 2027 dollar is worth a lot less than your 2017 dollar. Yet, you still pay the same amount to the mortgage company. They don’t raise the payment (in a standard fixed-interest loan). And generally, salaries at least keep pace with inflation, as do house prices.

In other words, you are giving less valuable dollars of the same absolute amount (say, $800 a month) to the mortgage company while you make more and your house is worth more relative to those fixed payments.

If you actually do the math on a 30-year mortgage vs. inflation, and you include housing price rises and a few other minor factors, the cost of a mortgage (the interest) should roughly equal these numbers — in other words, you “really” pay roughly zero interest over time….

By the way, this is why it’s not always to your advantage to pre-pay a mortgage especially.

Don’t believe it when you hear someone say, “You paid more in interest than you paid for the house.”

It’s only true if you don’t understand a damn thing about anything.

I remember in high school my biology teacher got fed up with me because I insisted on calling Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, “Chuck D and the Beagle-y Boys.” God, I was annoying. But funny. But still annoying.

(It was strange that my high school even taught an evolution unit considering at least half the teachers and 80% of the student body didn’t believe in it. A state requirement, though, at the time.)

I couldn’t be happier with my new 5K iMac. It’s faster, quieter, more capable and just overall better than the late 2014 model.

But the new MacBooks sound like utter pieces of garbage.

First, no escape key and a useless touch bar. Then, like the iPhone, dongle hell. Now, a keyboard that a single piece of dust can destroy.

My next laptop will definitely not be made by Apple, unfortunately. I need more than one or two goddamn ports, and I definitely do not need a keyboard that a single piece of dust can destroy.

Have you noticed that we live on a pretty dusty planet?

I love it that every time someone has told me I shouldn’t invest in Amazon, I’ve made over 400% on that stock.

God I love other people’s advice. So good. If I do the exactly opposite.

To quote Dev09, “If I followed your advice, I’d be where you’re at.”

Do not impeach Trump. Just don’t do it. If you hate women, I guess, go ahead.

Do you not understand, impeachment virtue signalers, that if you impeach Trump, Pence is in like mortal sin? He’s a Christian nut bar and he despises women in ways Trump doesn’t even dream about.

Impeaching Trump is a terrible idea. Just don’t.

I can’t bring myself to give a single crap about Catalonia’s independence movement. Admittedly, I know very little about it and wish I knew less than I do.

To me, it seems a modern expression of neoliberal-infused identity politics and consumer “choice” as an expression of those politics.

I could be wrong, but I also don’t care.