Damn inflation is everywhere now, even the transcendentals :'(

Why would anyone hate that? To me it sounds like a utopia. I just had to buy new tires for my car @#$%*!

Two I can think of, luckily neither was that bad.

Firstly I got impatient and bought a new DSLR camera kit off eBay, thinking I would save money and get a good deal. It came with two decent lenses, supposedly, and a bunch of other accessories. Very highly rated seller.

After I made the purchase, I get a message to expect a phone call from such-and-such number. Strange, I thought. They call and immediately I can tell it’s a bait-and-switch. They tell me what they’re going to send, but it’s not what was in the listing. Only one lens, instead of two, and some other shenanigans like substituting inferior brands and cheap shit. I called them out and said either you deliver what was promised in the listing, or I’m opening a dispute, and it won’t be a good look that you tried to change the deal over the phone.

Anyway I got what was listed, but overall it was a disappointment. Grey market items from overseas, not official US licensed gear, so I had no warranty. But I ended up paying as much or more than if I had walked into a local shop. It wasn’t counterfeit, but just left a bad taste in my mouth. The seller disappeared from eBay not long after that…

Second time: I received one of those emails with a password in the subject. It looked familiar, and was in fact an (old) password I had used. Someone took a hacked DB and just fired off countless emails with the passwords to the matching email addresses. But the tone of the email was what spooked me. It said, I have had full access to all your emails, I have figured out how to reset accounts and hacked into your webcam and have some very interesting photos. Either you pay this amount to this bitcoin address or I send the photos to all your contacts and your life will be ruined.

In the moment, I panicked like oh shit this is legit. Even though I couldn’t imagine what photos they referred to, it was still scary being blackmailed. I thought about it, discussed with some people, and they helped calm me down. After a few days, I realized it must be a scam. It was so generic. Surely if it was real, they would mentioned specifics… my name, or what I looked like, or some other unmistakable details.

Over the years, I received a number of other variations with the same jist, and different passwords (my email address was in several major leaks in mid-2000s). I’m glad I didn’t fall for that shit, regardless of how serious it seemed in the moment.

Also remember the nearest comparison to building a website, was a book, magazine, or newspaper. So just plop those text and images down as if it was a book, only ever intended to be viewed at one fixed resolution (say, 800x600). No smartphones yet. No apps to inspire us. No web 2.0. No emphasis on minimalism or dynamic content.

Unexpected and unpleasant things should happen with different browsers, window sizes, etc.

That site would have been considered remarkably beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. As such it’s not quite realistic.

Much too legible. I recommend less contrast for the text.

I don’t see you playing with alignment? I would like more centered text personally. And long lines of text without breaks.

Why not throw in some “lorem ipsum” placeholders.

Are you using a WYSIWYG editor?

Where are your dancing hampsters?

Also is this before or after it became trendy to copy/paste all sorts of scripts into the html? Remember scrolling text on the status bar, how about those ascii things that follow your mouse around?

I’d keep an eye on your page’s size, remember we would be loading this on 56k dialup modems… if we were lucky!

Depressing.

It occurred to me last week, humanity has always feared nuclear weapons. People warned of the extinction of humanity should they see widespread use. But all this time we’ve been happily consuming and discarding something more subtle, but poisonous to life. And it’s literally everywhere.

30 is about right. Same for me. Beware

Any gender you like as long as it’s gay <3

Oh no!

If only there was a non-Windows alternative.

OMG! Elon you should totally direct your minions of big brain programmers to create a new OS… XOS? About 6 months oughta be enough time to crank that out.

Definitely more than 3. Nice try tho.

…what exactly is the world record?

Dunno. But I’ve come pretty close to the lord on several occasions involving fingering and praying.

Wholesome

Selene from Underworld.

While my Trekkie side offers Michael Burnham (Discovery), Kira and Dax (DS9), Seven of Nine (Voyager), Una and La’an and Nurse Chapel (Strange New Worlds). I’m surely forgetting a bunch.

How about Arya Stark and Brienne of Tarth (Game of Thrones)?

Ugh flashbacks of trying to install Slackware on my Pentium-based Compaq Presario (originally Win95)…

I do not look back fondly on those times.

It’s OK to personally “not understand” a popular meme (400 updoots at last count). Create and vote for content you really understand.

As a trans woman who exclusively uses Linux and 90% FOSS, avid wearer of thigh highs and skirts, it makes perfect sense.

Something for all of us.

You are waaaay overthinking this.

It’s a crossover meme from trans/gender-nonconforming spaces. We have ways of finding humor in what is often an frightening and deadly serious situation (being trans in this world).

One of the in-jokes we have that I saw quite a bit on reddit, is that especially trans women and femboys “are all programmers or IT people” and being technical minded, use Linux. (I’m a trans woman who uses Fedora… Hi)

I think there is also the political and economic association that comes with FOSS – it’s a sort of disruption of the norm in capitalism, which is to have proprietary secrets as a store of value. FOSS challenges the notion that the fruits of labor should be privitized. In that sense it’s a radical movement, always has been, even if it has been adopted by the world at large.

Trans folk are as a rule, politically left-leaning, it seems these days we must be to exist, and so FOSS like Linux naturally appeals to the community.

Obviously there are going to be many non-technical trans people, and tech trans people alike who use proprietary OSes; and conversely most Linux users aren’t trans or GNC. The meme isn’t meant to be taken literally or to change anyone’s beliefs or actions.

I feel like all of the arts are that way. You can either put yourself in the mindset to be receptive of them… or you can’t.

But I’ve had many enriching experiences by taking a chance on art forms and genres I never supposed I would like, including those I had some bias against.

Highly recommend Anathem and Diamond Age. Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle are more tours-de-force but if you are nerdy enough (I mean c’mon this applies to all his work) and very into history, I can recommend those too.

Internet in 2024 (for me):

1. Service unavailable in your country (VPN)
2. Confirm you’re a human (VPN)
3. Blank page (noscript)
4. Obscure error (fingerprint / cookie blocking)
5. Page not found (https required)

The percentage of websites that “just work” with privacy measures in place is depressingly small.