My English teacher in high school hated me. And mostly for good reason, I think, though both of us could have handled it better.

It was AP English.

The wellspring of the problem was that I was more well-read and knowledgeable about most things than she was, and she liked to think of herself as an intellectual. So it really bothered her. Whereas, I didn’t give a shit either way, but I liked pushing her buttons.

She really hated it when I’d fuck around in class all day, and then turn in a better essay than all the other kids that I’d spent only 30 minutes writing. Partially because I’d already read the assigned book when I was, like, 10, but in some areas I can just play.

I actually didn’t and don’t think I was any better than her.

I was just trying to out-arrogant her.

I won.

Sonic.net CEO: “When it comes to broadband performance and speed, the limits are artificial. They sound fair, but they’re entirely contrived. There isn’t a cost around speed.”

This is something I’ve been saying for years because anyone who has ever done any real infrastructure design or similar know this very well.

Slate has done one better than forums where commenters become trolls; now most of their actual writers are trolls.

That is one of the most profoundly stupid, delusional, childish and logically-inconsistent pieces I’ve ever read.

But even the myriad defenders of YA fiction admit that the enjoyment of reading this stuff has to do with escapism, instant gratification, and nostalgia.

I’ve read 200+ YA books now in the past 10 years, and this isn’t why I read the genre – no, I read because the characters are more realistic, usually more interesting, and the plotting is far far better than the plodding pedantic nonsense most literary authors tend to foist off as worthwhile writing.

And this article as all such pieces written by whiny mossbacks denigrates anything that features any fantasy or supernatural themes, despite those being a way to explore more deeply or more fully the human condition.

I stopped reading Slate for several years for idiocy such as this. Looks like it’s time to do so again.

So since Maya Angelou died I’ve been taking a look at her works. I’d never really read much of them before.

Verdict so far is that her poetry is just not very good. It’s mawkish, maudlin and sounds like something I would’ve written in junior high. It’s surprisingly bad given then esteem in which it is held.

However, her prose is great. It’s everything her poetry is not.

I’ve noticed this in a lot of writers: if they write great poetry, their prose is awful, and vice versa. Why this is, I am not really sure.

Both Misty Day (Lily Rabe) and Zoe Benson (Taissa Farmiga) had spectacular outfits in AHS: Coven. Most of the best ones are on that site, though not all of them.

In fact, all the outfits for all the characters were great but those two castmembers particularly stood out. You can really have a lot of fun with witches and the costume designers this season outdid themselves. This outfit of Farmiga’s was one of my favorites. If I had that, and looked good in it as she does, I’d wear it even in summer.

Costume design is really an undervalued language of its own, and tells its own stories; the costume designers in this show were so good that if I’d just seen any one of the character outfits laid out on the floor I could’ve told easily which character they belonged to, even if they’d never worn them before.

Farmiga’s character as she embraces her witchhood gradually changes her dress from mainstream fashion to the above sort of raiments. Literally her story is told in her clothes, piece by piece. That’s skill, right there.

If someone did this to me, I’d respond with a eight quadrillion character email that consisted only of LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Economists like to pretend that such things as politics and values do not exist, when in reality without examining politics and values, economics as a meaningful enterprise cannot exist.

Another reason for the aliens to kill us all.

I estimate that I was left alone in cars for 100-200 hours before the age of 10. Maybe more. It’s not like I counted.

No car seats then, so my parents would say, “If you get hot, get out of the car and walk around.”

And I’d say, “OK.”

And that was that. When you treat everyone like a dumbass, here’s what you end up with: dumbasses.

Funny to see reminiscing about Livejournal now that all has moved to tumblr.

I remember when fanfic was written on BBSes and newsgroups.

Damn.

When I was very young and heard the song “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” I thought it was saying “Sittin’ on the Grits.”

Because at the time I had no idea what “ritz” was or why you’d put it on, but I did know what “grits” were and obviously sitting on them wouldn’t be that good of an idea.

Among the clinically insane, the “open carry” people are some of the worst.

The normal, responsible gun owner who enjoys sport shooting but keeps their gun locked away responsibly and knows you don’t need a mini-arsenal to enjoy guns is a dying breed. However, the development of the paranoid, highly insecure right winger who feels this pressing needs to “prove” the manliness he is secretly worried he doesn’t have is? Now that’s a gold mine.

Fun fact: I’d be more effective with a single shot bolt action rifle from 300 meters than most of them would be with a spray-on-command semi-auto from 100 feet.

Because they don’t actually care about shooting or marksmanship. They care about demonstrating – ineffectively – their masculinity.

It’s hard to think of anything I care about less or find more boring than soccer (football).

Maybe bingo. But they seem awfully similar to me. Both are a bunch of people in a confined space doing nothing for a long time.

You know your profession is a complete shitshow when you use math to attempt to disprove something that is obviously occurring.

Unfortunately, all of the focus on Piketty is a net negative because if conservatives and neoliberals manage to convince everyone that Piketty is wrong (which is likely; they own nearly all the media), then that will be in most people’s minds a de facto refutation of the actuality of the startling increase in inequality.

So when “economists” disprove using poor math something that is completely obvious, I wonder how anyone in that field is allowed even to speak. Because inequality is obviously rising – every statistic shows this – the question is only the mechanism.

One of the reasons I have problems with much of mathematical modeling is that in most fields it’s just as social as anything else: in other words, it is almost always used to justify existing prejudices and the status quo, not to discover anything.

How long till eggnog appears on the store shelves?

It has been too long. Too long.

Yeah, I know, it’s pretty easy to make. But that’s not the point. I like it when other people do it.

Another thing done so unrealistically often in movies is people getting their throats cut.

No, a weak slash across the front of the throat isn’t enough to kill you. And that’s most of the time how it’s portrayed in films. It might leave you unable to speak (forever), but you probably won’t die.

You have cut pretty deep to kill – deep enough to sever the jugular or carotid.

In hand-to-hand combat training in the army that we received in the 82nd (not krav maga, they do not teach killing techniques there), we were taught to stab to one side of the throat or the other, and twist after the knife is buried.

This guarantees death unless you have Misty Day there to resurrect you.

In fact in all knife work against a human, stabbing and twisting is the preferred technique for maximum destruction as long as your blade is strong enough to support this. It turns a recoverable wound into a deadly one.

Ah, the fun things you learn in the military.