Skip to main content

Geeking out

 
Here you can see my full setup now. A bit cramped, but frankly I think I'm pretty spoiled. All I'd need to be really fixed up would be another table for my stove. Well, that and a wardrobe. I cropped out the massive pile of clothes on the floor (but it's not really my fault, since I have literally no where else to put them).

I'm still stunned by the whole technology business on a semi-regular business. Due to cantankerousness I missed five or six generations of cell phone technology, and I'm still amazed that I can look up HTML-rich Wikipedia at a moment's notice on a two-ounce device in my pocket. In the midst of rural South Africa, where the water is on about half the time. Hell, this is a lot faster than the dial-up I remember for years back in the States.

Next to the computer is a hard drive with 1 TB capacity. I think in the US you can get those for about $100 nowadays. On it I can fit something like 1300 movies, depending on the compression. Sometimes I feel like Louis CK: "Everyone should just be shouting 'WOW!!' all the time."

We live in a crazy and depraved world, but I'm proud to be part of it.
Posted by Picasa

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...

The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...