Key line: “Amanda Gorman, who is 22, had selected the 29-year-old [Marieke Lucas Rijneveld] herself, as a fellow young writer who had also come to fame early.” So now authors have to choose translators who have the same skin color as them? Really? https://t.co/MHXWc8ODDN

— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) March 2, 2021

In the future, you will have to get a genetic test and only someone within 99.99% of your genetic makeup can read, translate, or even open your work. The algorithm will make sure of it.

Those identity politics sure worked out great, didn’t they?

Your Exchange administrator can pull reports about all Outlook rules in the environment, to look for attacker funny business.

One of my first calls in Helpdesk was someone with an Outlook rule called “Stupid people” that deleted those emails. Of course I’m not a narc.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) February 28, 2021

A surprising number of email issues are people creating rules that delete emails, and then calling Helpdesk and saying, “I’m not getting my emails.” One of the first things I used to check for in an Exchange/Outlook environment.

It sometimes happens by accident, but a lot of times it occurs because they think, this person never sends me anything relevant, so I will just auto-delete these emails, and then that person becomes their boss, or a co-worker, etc., and the emails become relevant…but the person forgets about the rule.

Responding to the below:

https://t.co/2Hq1iPdU2V pic.twitter.com/JGbEkrPQL6

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) March 1, 2021

If it weren’t for Zeynep Tufekci, I’d have to do so much more of my own research. She saves me a vast amount of time because she’s nearly always correct and is a better systems thinker than I am (and I am very damn good).

Don’t get me wrong: I still do more research than nearly anyone, and probably any layperson you’ve ever met. But having her mind to rely on means I have to do so much less to avoid being a dumbass. Thankful every day I found her a year or two before the pandemic even began.

A PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGE:
Tomorrow I am getting together with a friend for drinks.
We both are fully vaccinated.
Vaccines work.
When you are vaccinated it is safer to do things that are fun.
That is a reason to get vaccinated.
So get vaccinated.

— Keith Humphreys (@KeithNHumphreys) February 23, 2021

No, Keith, you should be hiding under your bed wrapped in tarps, wearing at least 10 masks, with a grim and determined look on your face as you spray bleach directly into your nose at least once a minute.

You can hear the virus banging on the windows; you can feel it creeping under the door. You have no choice but to put on an eleventh mask as the insidious Covid uses tiny jackhammers to break through your eleven layers of masks and begins shredding your immunoglobulin like Hulk Hogan bodyslamming Andre the Giant.

Meanwhile, a liberal is outside, emerging from the bushes wearing Level 5 suits one over the another like Matryoshka dolls, caterwauling about how we’ll always have to hide under our beds, in fact we’ll have to carry our beds with us to hide under them, no matter the vaccinations, no matter the case prevalence, no matter what happens, until the sun goes red giant and finally, all the stars wink out. Because…reasons.

I was a part of this lost world of computer user groups.

Most user groups encouraged new people to participate. It was far from a tech intelligentsia; the officers in my first user group were a silversmith, a postal mail carrier, and a retired newspaperman. Women were welcome. Introverts reigned. Nobody cared what age you were; enthusiasm was the only thing that mattered.

That was before computing changed, and become about gaming and testerone overdose. It was also part of a larger shift in society that the internet and the ascendance of the algorithm worsened greatly. People claim that things haven’t changed, that it’s no different now. But I was there and it was different. Very much so.