My mom made $2.13 an hour base in 1990 working at Cracker Barrel.

Servers still make that now.

Just unacceptable.

Why in so many personal ads and similar do people insist that they are “down to earth?”

This isn’t appealing to me at all. I am not interested in people who are down to earth. This translates to “boring” to me, almost invariably.

Since I am barely convinced I was born on earth, this is a sure sign we’d have nothing in common.

“Down to earth” means in reality “I hold all the conventional opinions of my milieu and social class, and will not challenge you or your ideas in any way.”

Damn, hell no.

It’s always amusing when people pretend that the only racist place in the US is the South.

History and current events say otherwise.

Of course, the South is used as a scapegoat and a culpability transference mechanism for others in the rest of the country to show how racist they (allegedly) are not.

I do actually agree that there is probably more racism in the South. I think probably 60% of whites are actively racist there, and in the rest of the country it’s probably 40-45%.

However, personally, the most racist statement I’ve ever heard anyone make was – check this out – in Seattle.

And I grew up in the South where I heard some truly heinous racial utterances and imprecations.

Anyway, for most white people their idea of racism seems to involve something like attempting to run over a black person with your car, while their thoughts about how black people “really are” are just the obvious truth.

That form of racism knows no boundaries, and is nearly as prevalent in the North and West as anywhere else is what I’ve found.

I didn’t realize there was some dumbass SEO argument for not putting dates on posts.

There are sites I don’t visit any longer because of undated posts.

Probably relates to my field and me being picky, but if I’m reading about something in IT, it really, really matters if it was written two years ago or today. If I can’t figure that out, I won’t be visiting your IT-related site again.

I think that proclivity has spilled over into my browsing of non-IT sites.

Something I figured out early in life is that a lot of people — like most of my family — will tell you that you are doing something wrong merely because you aren’t doing it the way that they would.

But that’s not all of them. Some — like some other parts of my family — actively want to harm you.

Both sorts of people are toxic, but the latter are far worse. Finding out that they way — which is typically unusual — that I prefer to do things is actually faster and better in real world performance most often was a real revelation, as most of my teachers and my family castigated me extensively for my methods.

I’m over it, but it’s worth remembering that not everyone works the same. What to you appears scatterbrained and disorganized is how I best remember things, and how I’m best able to learn them.

I was going to comment on this article from Wired, but it’s so confused and confusing I don’t even know what to say.

As usual when they discuss anything to do with the internet or net neutrality, it gets many things wrong, but what does the headline mean in the context of the article?

“Sprint’s Net Neutrality Reversal Shows How Bad Things Are for ISPs”

What does that have to do with the article? Bad for what ISPs?

It seems that Wired — which pretends to be a technology magazine — would get some writers with experience in the technology industry. Instead, they just write up whatever comes in the press releases their corporate sponsors send them and call it good.

Hey, Wired, I was a photojournalist for five years and have worked in the technology industry for 15 more after that.

I’m available, though I doubt you could afford me.

Those who think human extinction is impossible are incredibly, fantastically naive.

Just as those who think AI and nanotechnology aren’t real threats are also complete naifs.

Their argument to shift scales a bit amounts to declaring, “Well, I haven’t died yet, therefore I will live forever!”

Anyone can see how ridiculous an argument this is. Yet when you aver that human activities are quite likely to lead to human extinction (especially while we are limited to one interconnected planet) on a medium to long time frame, well, then you are just nuts.

I was going to write something about French culture in relation to Charlie Hebdo and in fact had started it, but this is better.

Basically, don’t listen to anyone writing about the whole affair who doesn’t know anything about French culture.

They will (and have been) getting it wrong. Very, very wrong.

I can’t fucking believe we have to defend secularism and free speech against “liberals,” but there you go.

You know I used to believe that the Right was utterly fucking crazy when they talked about how the liberals tend to embrace objective evil if it’s cloaked in the veil of oppression. But now that I’ve seen the liberal reactions to Muslim oppression of women and now Charlie Hebdo and secularism, you know what?

The Right was fucking, well, right  — a little, at least.

Claiming that the attacks in Paris had nothing to do with Islam or religion is as deluded as claiming that the Christians here murdering abortion doctors has nothing to do with Christianity.

Just utterly fucking wrong.

Of course, both actions have a lot to do with a lot of others things, too — but ignoring the role and culpability of religion as fuel on the fire (and sometimes the main fuel) is like pretending a detonator has absolutely nothing to do with setting off a bomb.

People want to ignore, to minimize, what scares them. What they fear might be true, or might not. And that’s fine for them.

Not for me.

Ah, the sounds of someone who has never done any work with regular, technically illiterate users and has probably never dealt with a high-volume, multiply-forwarded email environment.

Two main reasons to include your email address in your email signature: many users have no clue how to find your email address in the email client. I’d say 30-40% don’t, from having supported users in the past.

And depending on how the sender’s email server and client is set up, and how your email server and client is set up, forwarded email is sometimes stripped of the email address so you can only see the person’s name. If the original sender or senders’ info is not in your address book or GAL (etc.), then you have no idea of anyone’s address beyond the closest-proximity email.

So yes, in a business environment it is always smart to include your email address in your signature. It helps technically-illiterate users and it is a dependable way to ensure that even email forwarded to others always contains your email address.