why do people get worked up over infinite jest? I honestly don't understand. it has a rep as a giant exploding pulsing head brain book but it's… actually very straightforward and easy to read and quite simple and earnest in sentiment?

— alice maz (@alicemazzy) August 25, 2020

I don’t know. I didn’t care for that book. It was mediocre. DFW was a good essayist but a bad novelist. I think it’s because Infinite Jest is one of those books that makes dumb people feel smart. Or at least the intellectually incurious.

Read Neal Stephenon’s Anathem instead. Starts slow, but is a better book that is trying to do many of the same things, though it is vastly different in most ways.

I have spent two months trying to diagnose a networking issue affecting one of my machines. During that period, I haven't looked closely to DNS… It was DNS.

— Jaana Dogan (@rakyll) August 25, 2020

90% of the time, it’s DNS. The other 10% of the time, it’s also DNS.

In the sepulchers of virtual machines rarely run live the ghosts of better Firefoxes, shy of the fiber’s light.

A book release during a pandemic is bittersweet. What's there: the book. What's not: the book tour, conferences and festivals, a chance to go out, meet readers, talk to people. Virtual events are not the same.

— Shannon Hale (@haleshannon) August 25, 2020

What, you mean the clownworld shit the libs have been spewing about Zoom being just as good and that no one should ever travel again is just BS? WHO COULD HAVE EVER GUESSED?

I know some of that was and is a coping mechanism, and that veneer is failing now. But some (many?) libs seriously believe that. And to hell with all that.