Software developers are uniquely arrogant in their belief that they have a right to choose when the workers of entire industries or sometimes everyone in the world needs to re-train on the tools they use to do their jobs.

I’m a woodworker. Imagine if I walked into the shop one day to find my table saw replaced with one of those mutant sliding table European things because the manufacturer pushed an update. “We’ve replaced your tool with one that conforms to recently adopted industry norms, buzzwords and trendy design patterns we in the table saw industry have been peer pressuring each other into adopting. You may proceed to suckle upon our genitals in gratitude and worship.”

Meanwhile I’m losing money because the tool I rely on to run my business no longer functions how I was trained to use it. I have to tell my customers that their orders aren’t getting filled because I was visited by the saw fairy and instead of building their furniture for them I have to read manuals, learn how to safely use this thing, find where all the controls went, and then remake all the jigs and tooling I relied on for production and hopefully I can get back to doing actual work before they change it again according to their needs and not mine, on their schedule and not mine.

That’s what it’s like using software in the age of nightly updates or worse cloud-based solutions. You never know when your tools will change out from under you mid-project.

I’ve seen Gnome spiffed up to a level of polish I’d expect from an Apple commercial. I hate using it, but some folks get it looking nice.

I wouldn’t have guessed a beaver would sit on his tail like that. Like how did he move to get it under himself like that?

I haven’t been able to go back to Factorio after playing Satisfactory.

I am currently in my like 90th run of Subnautica. I’m doing an “All Cuddlefish, no native food, save the Sunbeam” run.

Incorrect. The vast majority of the airspace over the contiguous United States is controlled, though there is a lot of it where participation in ATC is not necessary for VFR flight. From 1,200 feet AGL up to 18,000 feet MSL you’re in Class E, and from 18,000 to 60,000 you’re in Class A. Above that you’re in Class E again. In some places, usually over some un-towered airports, Class E will extend down to 700’ AGL or down to the surface as marked on sectional charts. Class D airspace, as well as the center columns of C and B airspace, extend to the surface.

Class G airspace pretty much only exists below 1,200’ AGL in most places, I think there are remote areas in the middle of the flyover states and Alaska where the Class E floor is higher because there’s nothing there, but that may be changing with ADS-B and shit.

It is not mandatory to participate in air traffic control to fly in Class E airspace. Laymen tend to use “controlled airspace” to mean “off limits without permission” but that’s not how that works; Restricted areas for example require clearance to enter but exist as a separate concept to the alphabet airspace system.

“Controlled airspace” means some part of the air traffic control system has coverage in that area and can provide traffic separation and sequencing for IFR flights. For VFR it’s a little more complicated; in Class A airspace (high altitude en-route airspace) VFR flight is not allowed. Terminal airspace (Class B, C and D, found around airports) participation in ATC is required for all flights. ATC services in Class E airspace is optional for VFR and is on a “workload permitting” basis.

Small point of grammar: Floating “over” controlled airspace means you are still outside of it. Airspace is 3 dimensional so in addition to having horizontal boundaries, it also has vertical boundaries. Class C airspace for example, which you find around semi-busy airports like Raleigh-Durham International, looks kind of like a quarter stacked on top of a penny, except the stack is 4000 feet tall and 10 miles in diameter. You remain outside of the Class C airspace if you fly directly below the outer “ring.” Or if you fly directly above it. I’ve done both, though I usually make a habit of calling up the approach controller and requesting flight following so that they can talk to me if they need to (“me” being a licensed pilot flying Skyhawks or smaller).

If you are going to fly an ultralight aircraft, you should seek out and receive training about the national airspace system, learn how to read a sectional chart, read things like Part 91, etc. I would advise carrying an aviation COM radio and monitoring local CTAF frequencies.

If flying something like a free balloon, you should know the prevailing conditions before takeoff. If the wind is blowing in the direction of a no no place, just don’t launch. Stay on the ground until conditions for safe and legal flight exist.

“Do you like whiskey?”

“I don’t think so; the mocha lavender thai peanut aqua velva bourbon I tried wasn’t great.”

If it’s a brewpub or similar, I tend to go for darker beers. And since the “All Craft Beers Are IPAs Now Act Of 2018” was signed into law I have just stopped going to brewpubs entirely.

If you’re going to open a bottle or can for me it’s probably going to be cider, though I notice the ciders that bars tend to stock are trending in an acidic and heartburn inducing direction so I don’t walk in there as often anymore.

I’ll order a neat bourbon unless it’s hot/I’ve been working hard then I’ll order a whiskey and coke.

If you want to get into cocktails, I can think of a couple ways in.

1. White Russians. Pleasant sipping cocktail if a little heavy because of the cream.

2. Crown and coke. Crown Royal is technically a whiskey. Many of its fans don’t identify it as such, and neither do many whiskey fans. A shot of crown stirred into a glass of cola will present as a glass of cola with a little bit of an interesting flavor added. From there you can graduate to bourbon and coke, Jim Beam or Jack Daniels are common enough and pair well with cola. If you survive this long, maybe try this experiment: order a whiskey and cola, and then a rum and cola, find the differences in those flavors.

If you’re up to those shenanigans, maybe try going to a bar on a Tuesday afternoon when it’s a little slower, talk to the bartender tell them you’re wanting to explore cocktails and see if they’ll mix you smaller portions of a couple drinks like that, so you can test A and B. You would be amazed what that can do to open up your palette. If I handed you one glass of neat scotch, it might as well be a goblet of gasoline. If I hand you two glasses of different whiskies you’ll find some flavor in there.

Each time I tell this story, I try to make it shorter and more terse.

Circa 2012 or 2013 I bought a Raspberry Pi as part of my ham radio hobby. With that I learned a little bit of Python and Bash, learned to type sudo etc, and kinda liked what I saw. Meanwhile, my Win 7 laptop died right as I was going back to school, so I bought a new laptop. This new laptop had two problems: 1. it came with Windows 8.1 and 2. it was a lemon. For most of the first semester going back to school I had no reliable laptop. The only modern supported computer I had was that Raspberry Pi. And for most of a semester that’s what I did school assignments and email on until I finally bullied Dell into replacing that lemon Inspiron they sold me outright.

So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.1 did. So I fully switched.

That was 10 years ago now, and for the last decade I’ve heard Windows users do nothing but piss and moan about the new holes Microsoft has found to fuck them in.

Are geriatric names coming back? Are we going to have a generation of Gladyses and Eustices?

It’s fun fucking with boomers by calling 24 years ago “the turn of the century.”

Being able to engineer is by itself something that can even exist in genetic memory, instinctual.

I don’t think this is the case. There are creatures that instinctively construct, like ants and beavers, but their constructions are more an emergent behavior from simpler rules or systems. Their behaviors have evolved, the ants that dig slightly more efficient nests were more successful and went on to reproduce more offspring colonies.

At the root of engineering is the sentence “If I do this, then I bet I can get this to happen.” That behavior is unique to humans. It takes a lot of forebrain to do, and to develop that forebrain took a very successful omnivorous, multi-strategy primate.

Speed runs of the video game Super Mario World for the SNES are divided into a lot of categories, some allow glitches, some don’t. Glitchless runs are just about playing the game as intended as efficiently as you can. The absolute fastest run though, Any%, involves a trick where you perform a glitch that allows you to write arbitrary values into RAM, effectively reprogramming the game on the fly to trigger the end cut scene. This is called Arbitrary Code Injection. Now you’re playing a different game by a different, more abstract set of rules called 6502 assembly.

Upright bipedal gait with knees that lock, dexterous hands with opposable thumbs on highly articulated arms not significantly used for locomotion, binocular, tri-color vision granting great depth perception, the ability to sweat to stay cool for long periods of time under moderate exertion? All of that is just gettin’ gud, playing the game of evolution exceedingly well. Sometime between tying a knapped flint to a stick to make an axe and digging the first irrigation trench we arrived at that level of Arbitrary Code Injection. We’re not playing the same game as the other animals anymore.

Engineering predates what we now call science by millennia.

guillotines are renaissance era.

I use multiple workspaces for different workflows. CAD software, reference material, etc. on one workspace, email, Slack, Trello etc. open on another.

Including end zones, an American football field is precisely 360 feet long and 160 feet wide, or approximately 110m x 50m. The area is 1.32 acres.

It’s precisely defined so I’m okay with it being used as an area of length or area, especially since virtually all Americans have personal experience with football fields, having at the very least been required to run four laps of the quarter-mile track you usually find wrapped around one.

I think the invention of engineering is what finally broke evolution, but there are a lot of factors we have that bootstrapped us to that point. Walking upright on two legs is more efficient at the price of raw power. Many creatures can outrun a human but no land animal can come close to our jogging range. A Cheetah can go 60 miles an hour for a minute or so but a human can go 10 miles per hour for 6 hours straight. It also frees our forelimbs, already made flexible, versatile and dexterous by our distant tree swinging ancestors, for tool use. Funnily enough, another ability that is unparalleled in nature is our ability to throw things with accuracy and power. You also need pretty good hands to master fire, and thus cooking, and thus unlocking extra nutrients from the food you catch, which provides for that very hungry brain of ours. A few millennia later and we’ve pretty much got control of the biosphere itself.

It already has.