Reading people on Hacker News talk about economics.

It’s like reading toddlers debate the validity of quantum mechanics. So much that’s not even wrong as it’s too stupid to be anything. Yeah, tell me how Le Chatelier’s principle fucking relates to land prices, O Omniscient Economic Genius.

Never mind that two percent of the people in the US own 75 percent of the land.

Fuck.

I don’t know that I hate all engineers, but I certainly do hate the engineering mindset.

Just to clarify, I think that limiting clip sizes is valuable because not everyone who goes on a rampage will be a quick reloader. Probably not even the majority, given their state of mind.

The shooter who attempted to assassinate Gabby Giffords, for instance, was stopped when he attempted to reload

However, smaller clip sizes is not some cure-all and a skilled gunman can load nearly supernaturally quickly. Yep, even a revolver.

Too often, people who are inexperienced latch onto some little change they think will solve everything.

But incremental steps matter. That’s the only way America’s gun problem will ever get solved, as there never will be in anyone’s lifetime reading this a blanket ban on guns.

Limiting clip sizes is a good step, and one I support.

One of the main reasons that I refused to vote for Obama is that I knew he’d bargain away Medicare, Social Security and other vital programs – and Congressional Democrats would go along, as he’s a Democrat.

Turns out, he’s doing just what I thought he would.

Surprise!

I realize I am an atypical user (but not that atypical), but Firefox suspending development of their 64-bit version is completely idiotic. I run up against the 2GB process limit of Firefox in 32-bit all the time:

Then my Firefox slows to a crawl.

Way to meet the future, Mozilla. They’ve made the interface shitty, dumped many necessary features and now are retreating from necessary development. What next, a “new, innovative” 16-bit version that runs on fucking phones?

It’s so true that you never get over being poor.

I remember looking in the refrigerator and seeing nothing but a few pieces of a loaf of white bread.

And I know that people from overall poorer countries have difficulty understanding this, but in rural America where I grew up you absolutely need a car to survive.

I remember my parents getting their car repossessed as they were unable to make payments. Imagine the effect that had on our lives — 10 miles from anywhere, and no car.

I remember looking through the couch cushions to find change to buy food.

My grandparents started helping out when I was 7-8, and life got better after that.

But I’ll always remember the desperation I saw in my parents and felt myself in the darkest times.

Now, I could quit working for years and be fine. If I were careful, I could probably quit working forever.

Now, I buy generally what I like and often don’t even look at the price if it’s something I really want.

But still, there’s always that nagging thought in the back of my head that asks, Do I have enough? What if the worst happens? What if someone takes it all?

Irrational thoughts, but having been poor, and having lived so close to the edge, those thought really never go away.

Golden Eagle Attempts to Snatch Kid.

It only failed because a human is heavier per apparent size than the prey it’s accustomed to.

I will completely understand if in 20 years that kid starts a War Against Eagles.

Update: Apparently, the video is fake, but golden eagles do go for prey larger than that all the time. They have been known to attack and kill full-grown deer.

I agree completely that smaller magazines and restrictions on the types of rifles and other weapons available to most people would be a good step to preventing massacres like Newtown.

But I’ve also seen a lot of myths out there, mostly among people who’ve never handled guns.

The most noticeable one lately is how long it takes to reload.

I’ve handled guns all my life, but I’m by no means the fastest I’ve seen even in person.

That said, I can drop the magazine on a pistol and have a new one locked and ready to fire in about half a second. (And by dropping the magazine, I mean literally dropping it and letting it fall on the floor; this saves time. If you’re right-handed, have the fresh one in your left hand and as the spent one falls clear, slap in the new one. Done.)

Nope, not exaggerating. I just did it, and I was that quick even after years of not practicing. With practice I could do it much, much faster, so fast you could barely see my hands move.

In the army, I could reload my M4 just as fast (similar to the rifle that Adam Lanza used).

Smaller capacity magazines would help, but they aren’t the panacea they are made out to be. I’m just saying that anyone skilled with guns can reload way, way faster than a liberal who has only ever seen a gun on TV can imagine.

This comment I wrote about a while ago now seems even more dumbass-filled in light of what happened in Connecticut.

Shit, we just had the fucking Hunger Games™, Junior Edition all up in here.

Tell me now how much you can’t accept that premise, fuckwit.

Of the two times in life where I’ve had a gun pointed at me in anger, both times if I’d had a gun too I would’ve shot the person who was threatening me.

I probably would’ve killed them. They might’ve killed me too.

Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t have a gun. It only would’ve escalated the situation. I would either be dead or in jail now.

In situations like what occurred in Connecticut, having a gun doesn’t really help you that much, either. The school at Columbine had an armed security guard. It didn’t help. Arming teachers with guns is a fantastically bad idea as well – it only takes one gun accidentally put down on a desk for some seven-year-old to find the “toy” and kill himself and a few classmates.

Guns are not a panacea. Trust me, I know – I’ve been handling guns and carrying them professionally for many years (US Army, ‘94-‘99).

These are just random thoughts. There is no point, just the horror of what the US has become, how little we value community and how collectively evil and sick our entire society is at the moment.

You know, in Newtown, you had teachers diving in front of a gunman, taking bullets to protect the children in their charge – and Republican thugs claim they are paid too much.

Think about that for a minute.

Where did all these idiots come from who claim that so few people need more than 4Gb of RAM? I was doing light (non-professional) photo editing of some photos my partner and I took last night, and I was using almost 16GB of RAM.

That was with no VMs running. Sometimes I have 3-4 running, and then I usually push 20GB of RAM. And I am not nearly the heaviest user I know.

But I guarantee any real graphic designer needs at the very least 8GB of RAM.

It seems since the tablet craze started that all kinds of idiots who only use their computers as toys are coming out of the woodwork telling us how we should really be using our machines.

Most people just shouldn’t have guns. It’s that simple.

All of these fantasies most people have about defending themselves using a gun are just that – fantasies.

In a crisis, most people – including many well-trained people – are terrible shots who are just as likely to shoot someone innocent than who they are aiming at.

That’s even more true if the person they are intending to shoot has a gun aimed at them as well.

It’s an unusual breed of person – maybe one in a thousand – who can act rationally and shoot straight in a crisis. Some yuppie cowboy who has watched a few episodes of Justified is not going to be that person. They are as likely to accidentally (or even worse, intentionally) plug their wife or their kid. 

That said, there is no easy solution to the gun problems of America. There are too many people with guns, and attempting to take them all away would literally start another civil war.

But convincing people that owning a gun doesn’t make them into Clint Eastwood would be a good start.

Feels good getting rid of physical books.

So heavy, such a waste of fucking space. Using books as decoration to demonstrate your erudition is both far too heavy when you move a lot and actually not aesthetically very pleasing.

Though living in modern America with everyone shooting up everyone else, stacked right they are bulletproof. There’s that, I guess.

I’m constantly surprised by the shitty experiences people will subject themselves to interface-wise for the sake of just a little more convenience or supposed (usually false) simplicity.

Convenience isn’t worth that much to me, and simplicity – even when it’s actual simplicity, not just making things ten times harder with a bubble gum interface – will never trump power for me.

Mainly now I am thinking about Windows 8, and all those who now use only their phones to browse the internet.

I cannot even imagine subjecting myself to such torture.

Well, as I’ve observed before, the advantage to me is that I will be vastly, vastly more productive than these people as I use real tools that are both configurable and powerful, and in a corporate environment these people who’ve never seen (as they get older) a real computer and have never typed with more than two fingers will be totally lost. And slow.

No competition? Works for me. Keep using shitty phones and  Windows 8. I’ll be using real tools to. Get. Shit. Done.

And another one!

Safety Not Guaranteed was also far better than I dared hope, and is I think likely to join the ranks of my favorite movies.

Aubrey Plaza was perfect as a cynical but fundamentally deeply kind-hearted woman who desperately wants to believe what she’s being told, but is also touchingly afraid of being duped, of having the magic just be prestidigitation and lies.

The film is sometimes corny but always shimmeringly alive with deep heart and affection for its characters – it never lets us believe that they are anything but just as lost as we are. There’s no fate – just feeling your way out and doing the best possible with bad information and hampered dreams.

Whatever you were expecting from this movie, you won’t get it. Whatever you were hoping for, you just might.