The destruction of the US Post Office is working.

It’s not surprising – it was and is a very well-run, very visible government program that demonstrated the effectiveness of government, and thus it had to be annihilated so that the neo-con hijacking of the economy could continue.

Not that the Post Office would not have had to change with changing times. But the only reason the organization is going bankrupt is because Congress decreed that it would.

It also peripherally has to do with the fact that the Post Office was long (and still is, in some areas) the only employer who would hire black folks into good, relatively high-paying jobs.

If you think that has nothing to do with the historical and present-day animosity to the Post Office, you are almost certainly wrong.

Ha, never has one comic encapsulated something about me so well.

I don’t mind being in crowds sometimes, if it’s a festival or something (though this drains my energy very quickly, too). But general crowds? Oh hell no. About anywhere else I’d rather be.

Reading people write about Facebook, I realize that most people know vastly more people than I do.

I have really no family and few friends. I am happy as I am, but it’s weird hearing people write about, “I pared my Facebook list down to my 30 closest friends.”

I haven’t had 30 friends in my entire life.

I’d like more friends, but I don’t feel deprived. It’s just odd.

I guess I am a truly an extreme introvert, more than I realized.

Having 2-3 close friends is great. Having 30 friends to me sounds horrible and oppressive and I would probably run away to New Guinea and never come back.

It’s going to be interesting seeing all those who claimed (and there were and are many, many of them) that Steve Jobs had absolutely nothing to do with Apple’s rejuvenation and success flail, stumble and mumble idiocies when Apple starts to flag as it inevitably will sans Jobs.

I don’t mean it will go bankrupt, or even stop making large profits. I mean it will likely go from the most amazing company perhaps ever to exist, to a regular ol’ company that occasionally makes some cool things.

Only complete fools can believe that Jobs had nothing to do with Apple’s success. Not only did Jobs sit personally in nearly every important design meeting, mostly vetoing bad ideas left and right*, but his entire ethos pervaded the workings of Apple.

Jobs had a mind that was almost magical in its ability to meld the just-barely-realizable with something that is capable of being manufactured combined with giving people something they deeply desired but did not even know they wanted until they saw it.

That’s not one in a million. That’s maybe one in a billion.

*Perhaps the most important thing anyone can do in a large company.

It’s a sad fact that most trained economists (of the macro variety) don’t really understand even the basic workings of the economy very well at all.

It’s not that they are stupid; no, it’s just that the ideas that they have been inculcated with and trained on are largely invalid, designed to serve the will of capitalistic wishful thinkers, the rich and the aspirant rich.

Not a conspiracy – it’s just what happens when power is applied somewhere for a long time by the self-interested.

Listening to music on my Infinity Overture 3s, and then going back to my computer speakers – what a difference. I mean, my computer speakers are good but those Infinity speakers are a world apart.

I didn’t buy them new. When they were first sold, they were over $3,000. I paid $800.

The only way to buy speakers is used. They still sound the same, and someone else got the depreciation.

Amazing speakers. No reason for me to buy any better ones, as I can’t tell the difference anyway.

I remember arguing with some dude online in a about 1996 or so, when a file system capable of using files larger than 4GB was first introduced in Windows.

His argument was upgrading Windows to use such a file system was pointless, as no one would ever under any circumstances need a file larger than that.

Now I use files nearly every day at work and at home that are larger than that. Some people have so little foresight that it is almost painful to observe.

Things that the Firefox developers have done to attempt to ruin their browser. These are all items and needed features that the developers have taken away and/or added that make the browser much worse.

1) Removed the status bar. I use this EVERY FIVE SECONDS. Why the fucking hell would you ever fucking remove the status bar. FUCK. Can you tell how angry this makes me? I added it back with an extension.

2) The “AwesomeBar.” Not very awesome. I don’t disable it any longer as it’s not as incredibly slow as it was, but I don’t really use it. I have over 5,000 bookmarks. How does this help me?

3) Made the last tab closed close the whole window. Why would you ever, ever want this?

4) Hidden the entire URL, and the protocol. Again, information that I use about every five seconds.

5) Tabs on top. I no longer disable this, but I don’t really like it. They get in the way too often. Still, fighting against an idiotic trend can only go on so long, so I’ve stopped fighting it.

6) Monkeying with the SSL indications. The yellow bar and lock icon was a much clearer indication than whatever the hell is going on now. I change this right away.

7) Not allowing access to sites at all if the SSL cert mismatches. I can fucking well decide which sites I want to go to on my own, thank you very much.

8) Considered removing tab support altogether. I have never dreamed of becoming a terrorist, but if there is one thing that could lead me to it, it would be this.

9) Made all the icons grey and bland so you cannot tell them apart. Why is this a trend? This makes everything worse. Flat design is terrible.

10) Automatically unloaded images, and/or dynamically load them. Wow, make everything seem slow, all the time. Great damn idea, just great.

11) Merged the buttons. I change it right away, so I hardly remember what is merged, but I think the stop and reload button are merged, and maybe the back/forward buttons. Those are separate buttons for a reason.

12) Don’t load tabs until they are clicked on a restart. Another way to make everything seem slow unnecessarily. Why, just why? Disabled immediately.

13) Using the D2D acceleration in Windows that makes the fonts blurry. For some reason, Microsoft chose to start partially emulating the blurry font rendering on the Mac. I also disable this immediately as with the setting on, I can only read for 5-10 minutes before I start getting a headache.

All of this I guess is an attempt to make the browser more idiot-proof, but this never works as the idiots go drink some more idiot potion and the status quo is maintained.

What it really does is make Firefox harder to use for people who actually know what they are doing and who use their browser for more than just playing.

Recruiter called me today, trying to poach

I said, no, no you can’t encroach

But what kind of salary offer you gonna broach?

He said, What you makin’ now?

I said, That ain’t the game we play

Tell me how much

And I’ll tell you go or stay

He said it was beyond 90K — just a touch

But then he said it was just contractin’

So I told him we wouldn’t be transactin’

And so he went on his way

Obama Administration Considers Joining Publishers In Fight To Stamp Out Fair Use At Universities.

Ya’ll want to know why I am so anti-Obama? This kind of thing is exactly why. There is nothing more important (except the basic needs of life) in our society these days than access to information.

And who is on the side of evil in that regard? Yep, the Obama administration.

A News Literacy Guide from NewsTrust.net – Crap Detection 101.

I do all this naturally, and always have. If only more people would. Amazing how little bullshit detection most people do. Just inexplicable.

The Yorkshire accent has never been a particular favorite of mine, but Kate Rusby has about the most fun voice to listen to in the whole world.

I could listen to her read lists of IP addresses and military field manuals and be perfectly content all day long.

Another myth about women in combat is just that..a myth.

I’m not a woman, but I do have a small frame. I weighed about 155 pounds at the time in the army, and I once lifted and carried a guy who weighed 280 pounds and ran with him at a near dead run for 100 meters.

Trust me, if I can do that, nearly any well-trained woman can lift nearly any man.

It’s also harder to lift someone if they are incapacitated and not helping, but not that hard. Anyone can learn to do it in about five minutes.

The only place where upper body strength matters a great deal in combat is in a scenario that almost never happens any more (and even then, it matters less than you’d think*) – hand-to-hand combat.

Hand-to-hand combat in modern warfare is extremely, extremely rare. Probably one out of every 100,000 engagements have any hand-to-hand, and even then it is very brief.

As a drill sergeant once told me in the Army: “We will teach you to fight hand to hand. But if you do happen to find yourself fighting the enemy hand to hand, you have already fucking lost and probably better kiss your ass goodbye.”

*Unit organization and training matter far more

Why is Anne Hathaway hated?

Easy. She’s an extremely smart, very pretty, articulate woman who invariably speaks her mind and who doesn’t mince words, apologize for her success, or pretend that she’s not awesome.

In other words, misogyny. It’s no wonder she’s widely hated. Someone like that people from the Left and the Right will despise in about equal measure. And if you think there is substantially less misogyny on the left end of the political spectrum, hoo boy do I have news for you.

If she were a man, doing and saying exactly the same things, she’d be adored for it.

And while it’s always better on balance to be beautiful than not, being a beautiful woman who is not compliant and shrinking really leads to everyone bringing out the knives.

I’ve always really liked Anne Hathaway. She’s a great actress, has a low bullshit tolerance, and is always good in the parts she plays. That’s enough for me.

I got this from a vendor yesterday, in an email sent out to all their many thousands of customers:

Really, that’s how you want to represent yourself to all your customers?