Those who do not manage the borders of their countries effectively and well soon will not have a country.

It’ll be something, but it won’t be a country.

This is just as true if 100 million Americans decided to move to Germany, or North Africa, or Russia, as the opposite flow.

Neoliberals want to make it about racism so they can promote unrestrained torrents of liquid capital and immiseration for the many concomitant with the enrichment of the few.

But culture, while not immutable, is extremely strong, and if observing that cultural shifts related to mass immigration are always painful it not downright destructive, then yes, I am indeed a racist by their definition.

Since it’s clear we’ll do nothing at all about mass shootings and enormous gun violence, it’s probably better to just treat it like the weather: an unremarkable, predictable event that just happens. We should also just report it as such.

We already effectively do this. Seen much about the Vegas shooting lately? I bet a lot of people have already completely forgotten it.

The weather today: 82 degrees and mild. Slaughter level: 12 people dead in mass shootings. The forecast is 37 by the end of the day, with a possibility of the high 40s. Back to you, Dana.

These costume names and their attempts at avoiding trademark infringement are just hilarious:

“Casual Jeb Bush.” Just…yes.

The last 10 Bash commands I’ve run on my iMac:

No idea why I am posting this. Just felt like it.

Here’s how much of a different time it was when I grew up:

One of my teachers in high school had a shirtless picture of Jon Bon Jovi up in her classroom. It was not even seen as really that odd, other than the fact that she was one of the more stodgy, prim and proper teachers in the school.

It was definitely hers; no student had put it up. She professed her adoration for Jon more than once in class.

People say things haven’t really changed. But have they ever.

The one thing Apple is missing from the Finder toolbar is a damn up button. Makes it difficult to use. People have said you cannot add one.

People are wrong.

But it’s not that easy. We are 1337 h4x0rz and can do it, though.

As with all such 1337 whatever, we are going to use a GUI application. So, first, open Automator. We want to create a new application. Scroll down to where it says, “Run Applescript” and drag that over to the right.

Then delete whatever code is in there and paste in this code:

tell application "Finder"
tell front window to set theFolder to target
tell front window to set target to parent of target
tell front window to select theFolder
end tell

Save it as an application in your “Applications” folder. Don’t forget to choose an icon. What fun is it without that?

Now we have to actually add it to Finder (make sure you give it permissions to run).

To add it to the Finder toolbar, we’ll drag it to that location while holding the “Option” and “Command” keys. On a Windows-focused keyboard — which is what I use — these are the “Alt” and “Windows” keys

Woo. Now you have an up button on your Finder toolbar. Makes it 80% more usable. Not too bad, right? And they said it couldn’t be done. 😉

This is a real product.

As in, if you order it, it will indeed show up at your doorstep.

IPv6 is terrible.

I was disappointed to find that Robert Scoble — whose opinion I’ve relied on for years — is a harassing, assaulting scumbag.

But what the shit is this?

The conventional wisdom really is becoming that anyone you meet anywhere in real life should be unapproachable. I’m not just making this up. In what kind of world is having an affair sexual harassment? Who is harassing whom? Are they both harassing each other? What if neither one of them is male? And how did the logic develop?

By this measure, my partner and I, who are both in the same industry, are harassing one another every day.

Humans suck.

Buy and hold is for chumps.

Yet, it is better than what most people do which is the exact opposite of the wise thing to do.

But I’m not a chump, so it’s not for me. Buy and hold is what you do when anything else you could do would be dumber than that.

Fortunately, I have other options.

I’m not feeling particularly humble today. But I’ve been busy planning my moves for the crisis that is inevitably approaching.

Anyone that is 100% invested in the market now is totally crazypants. Well, the average person shouldn’t change anything because they invariably make terrible decisions. Buy, hold, and pray is about all you have.

But I’m going to tell ya’ll what I am going to do, and then I’m going to do it.

When the market craters — which it will inevitably — I’m gonna make a load of money.

I’m a capitalist in this respect because I have to be to avoid having a bad life.

If you want to see exactly what files your Mac is monkeying with at any given moment for a given process, open a terminal and do this:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mdworker | egrep "open"

I used that to determine if Spotlight was actually indexing what I told it to, but it could be useful for a wide variety of troubleshooting.

That will not work on Linux. For Linux, something like this would do something similar, though there is no single utility available on Linux that is as versatile or useful as “fs_usage:”

sudo lsof -p 2075

Where “2075” is the PID number.

The utility “strace” might work, too.

Also, “fs_usage” can be run without specifying a process, but that is probably not a good idea as the output will be vast.

The reason I like using a Mac vs. Linux or Windows apart from how vastly better the Mac handles hi-dpi and mixed dpi is that in Linux and Windows, you can usually find something that works…sort of. On the Mac, you can usually find the one tool that works perfectly.

That has mattered more to me as I’ve gotten older.

This thread starts off with the wrong basis. All clothing choices are political. Just because she didn’t realize it didn’t make it less so. Ignorance is sometimes convenience, I guess.

I don’t really buy the Clash of Civilizations narrative, but at the same time I believe that — no matter what the participants therein say — that the burka/niqab/hijab is a form of forced servitude.

That said, I don’t know that banning the wear of such garb is the answer. I lean that way, with laws similar to those in France, but I’m not certain of it.

All these folks come out of the woodwork when there is some effort to preserve secular society, but there is nary a word when forced veiling or the politics of the veil is brought up, or Muslim oppression of women….

To me, preserving a secular society at pretty high cost is worth making some people’s lives worse or more inconvenient for a while.

God this is such a stupid discussion.

That you sexually harass people doesn’t mean you are terrible at everything else. It just means you are an asshole, and assholes have many other talents — just like anyone else.

In fact, I’d wager that sexual harassers because they are boundary breakers might produce slightly more and better science individually but harm science overall. Note: this is not condoning their behavior! I’d like to tase all of them right in the face. But people who push too hard in one area tend to do so in others, too. The “benefit” though is probably outweighed by the massive drawbacks such as good people (mostly women) being ejected out of science.

Most people are pretty horrible. I just can’t get behind the “I can’t watch, read, listen to, or trust the science of anyone who is not completely perfect.”

It’s just senseless, and if one were to practice that, you’d have to live in a cave eating bark.

Sarah Hörst’s Titan dress is titanically cool:

So excited about how the Titan dress turned out. Thanks so much @ShenovaFashion #dps17 pic.twitter.com/LRxKgmqtyC

— Sarah Hörst (@PlanetDr) October 18, 2017

I hear people say things all the time like, “If you get a 30-year mortgage, you pay more in interest than the house cost!”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Wrong.

If you get a 30-year mortgage, in a stable monetary environment, the value of a particular dollar deflates over time, so that each year you pay progressively less relative to your starting year.

I’m explaining this poorly. The 1st year of your mortgage, your 2018 dollar is worth about the same as your 2017 dollar. Just a little less. But your 2027 dollar is worth a lot less than your 2017 dollar. Yet, you still pay the same amount to the mortgage company. They don’t raise the payment (in a standard fixed-interest loan). And generally, salaries at least keep pace with inflation, as do house prices.

In other words, you are giving less valuable dollars of the same absolute amount (say, $800 a month) to the mortgage company while you make more and your house is worth more relative to those fixed payments.

If you actually do the math on a 30-year mortgage vs. inflation, and you include housing price rises and a few other minor factors, the cost of a mortgage (the interest) should roughly equal these numbers — in other words, you “really” pay roughly zero interest over time….

By the way, this is why it’s not always to your advantage to pre-pay a mortgage especially.

Don’t believe it when you hear someone say, “You paid more in interest than you paid for the house.”

It’s only true if you don’t understand a damn thing about anything.