The first ten on today’s playlist:

It’s not the best how on Twitter and other places any disagreement with a woman is framed as misogyny and sexism.

Just learned that #Wayland also prevents GUI applications from running as root. At this point, it doesn't even surprise me anymore. It feels like Wayland is made by people who want to make everything as cumbersome and complicated as possible. https://t.co/Kaxr12AyQU

— probono (@probonopd) March 6, 2021

Most of computing has moved this way in the last decade. It’s all fake security to take away user capabilites. That’s all it is — doesn’t actually increase security to any great degree, but grants control of your computer to some other entity (which is the whole point).

Don’t buy the Firefox (et al.) BS that it’s about making the user’s experience more secure and better. Trust me, I’ve been computerin’ a long time and it has absolutely nothing to do with that at all. If it did, there are far better ways to achieve that goal.

It’s odd that people believe they are “naturally” fat. I just saw this on someone’s Twitter feed, but I’m feeling more empathy than usual today so I won’t pillory them directly.

Sure, you are “naturally” obsese, in an obesogenic environment with billions upon billions of dollars of food company propaganda and widely-availble ultra-processed food, all where self-control and dignity are completely devalued. That’s as close as it gets to “natural,” but alright then.

But if people were forced to admit the truth then they might have to change something. Easier just to believe the pat and packaged explanation backed by mounds of disinformation than to believe that you are but an oily stain on the road, another corporate propaganda roadkill who has absolutely no self-mastery.

Made me laugh:

On women, two overlooked things that contribute to 'hot face' is short midface, and wide mouth.
If the distance from the top of your lip to the bottom of your eyes is really short, and if your smile 'wraps around' your face, then congrats u r probably cute

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) March 5, 2021

Emphasizing neotenous traits is most of beauty.

I’m so sorry. The whole argument is idiotic. If we can own homes, land and stock shares for life AND we can leave them to our heirs, I cannot understand, for the life of me, why anyone thinks we should rob creators (and their heirs). Why this difference between physical and IP?

— beatrice (@BeaLawson27) March 5, 2021

It is shocking that people who can read and write can still be this stupid. Really, it is.

“What is the difference between physical and IP?” Is that some sort of joke? Ok, I know it is not, but lord I sure wish it was. There are literally whole bodies of scholarship delineating the differences between real property and intellectual property. Like, that is a whole enormous area of inquiry. Here is a good, fairly short start, but of course no one like the doofus above will read something that difficult.

That aside, here is Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constituition:

“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries….”

Notice some keywords there: “limited” and “authors.” Not “heirs.” Not “in perpetuity.” Nothing about “forever” or leaving those rights to anyone. Not a word about any of that. In fact, the Copyright Act of 1790 established copyright for all works with a term of 14 years with 14-year renewal. A little too long but arguably good enough.

So many people are just terrifyingly clueless, and with shocking certitude in their utter gormless ninnery.

Nope. Still mad. The idea that these tech bros think creators should give up the copyright to work after 30 years, and Bezos and Zuckerberg et get to collect billions forever…it really says a thing.

— sarah maclean (@sarahmaclean) March 5, 2021

Nice false choice, you fucking dipshit. Like that is the only two possibilities.

It really is true that most people literally cannot even imagine the world being different than it is currently configured. They cannot even think about it, even a little bit.

We are a nation of fucking simpletons blathering and blithering on about bullshit.

Going off current evidence, it looks likely to me that the vaccines reduce transmission by 80-90%, and if I had to bet on a point estimate I’d bet on the high end of that. People deserve to know this when trying to make risk decisions.

— Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc) February 23, 2021

Yeah, I’d say ~90% transmission reduction. And! Due to the way the virus tends to spread by a few superspreaders and superspreading events, if you vaccinate those (of course you don’t know who they are in advance), you start having an outsize effect.

That’s one of the main reasons why I say case rates will fall through the floor in summer. Assuming we get to roughly 50% vaccinated, even with variants, we’ll be ok.