Apr 12

Cui Bono?

Another example of user-hostile tendencies out in the wild.

WordPress has decided to discontinue the “classic editor” unless I pay them for it. I can’t do this “new” editor. It doesn’t work at all for me.

I am not sure for whom the new editor is intended or what purpose it’s supposed to serve, but it’s completely impossible to use for normal blogging. I literally cannot understand what the stated purpose of it is when I read the Automattic corporate guides covering it, and I have very high reading comprehension.

Tried to use the new “editor” once. Could not figure out in half an hour how to publish a single text post. Gave up and switched back to the old one. So I wonder again what purpose does it serve? My guess is it’s corporate-aimed, to drive consulting and consulting fees in the professional WordPress dev space.

Bet I am right.

Apr 12

Dooftastic

If Yglesias says it, you know it’s wrong. And this is! At least he’s half right. But where I come from, being half right is being all the way wrong.

What a doofus.

Apr 12

Uninform

The mega-project of the last decade has been to lock away all information again, to make it inaccessible, to leverage copyright to destroy fair use and free access, to make sure that the people do not and cannot know too much.

Makes ’em uppity, you know. Can’t have that.

Apr 12

Obv Stake

I see crazy shit like that all the time. I’m terribly bad at math but I’m frankly a genius when I compare my lack of ability to the crimes I see people committing against basic mathematical reasoning.

How do you get so dense, and then demonstrate it in public? Like that one mook who wrote about how up to 134% of people would have to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Just exactly how do you get so malfunctional and make such obvious mistakes?

Apr 11

Why I Hate Fat Acceptance

This is just not remotely true at all, in any way. This is why I fucking despise the Fat Acceptance movement by the way. They promote and promulgate this and it harms everyone — including them. And even worse, it permanently debilitates their own (and other) children.

Sure, those experiences don’t make it better for fat people, but obesity is an actual, real problem. It greatly increases mortality risk for Covid, too, of course. Straight from the CDC:

It’d be nice if obesity were just a valueless, neutral life choice. But unfortunately, that is not reality and not how the world works. Obesity comes with real hazards that have nothing at all to do with discrimination and bias, that cannot be ameliorated by anything other than losing weight.

Claiming anything else is being just as reality-denying as anti-vaxxers and those who disbelieve climate change is real.

Apr 11

The Dip

Our dipshit neighbor is leaf-blowing while it’s raining and it’s also a thunderstorm.

Fuckin’ Florida, man.

Apr 11

Not Just Pan

I’m not saying that some of their criticism are not valid, but goddamn it’s shocking how quickly how many liberals have gone from advocating open borders, freedom of travel, espousing the benefits of seeing and experiencing other cultures to wanting permanently closed borders, onerous restrictions on travel, and in general wishing the world to be a smaller, more bounded place.

The pandemic induced this initially, of course, but it’s taken on its own pernicious life now and will extend far beyond any risk from our current scourge.

Of course, as people will do, they are already and will in the future say, “It’s always been this way; never been any different.” But it was very different little more than a year ago, and now we look unlikely to ever return to that.

Apr 11

All Show

That is exactly why I call “WAP” a prudish song. It’s all show, no go, as we used to say. It’s like if a fundamentalist Christian marketer wrote a song about sex.

Apr 10

No Adornoment

“What does it mean for the subject that there are no more casement windows to open, but only sliding frames to shove, no gentle latches but turnable handles, no forecourt, no doorstep before the street, no wall around the garden? And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists? The movements machines demand of their users already have the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of Fascist maltreatment.”

–Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life