I switched to a left-handed mouse for the first time, at the ripe age of 38. It's unviable, so I've stopped. Finding a mouse was easy - my mouse is already symmetrical. Reversing the keys was just one command. But you can't use a computer with that mouse. All the GUI shortcuts - Ctrl + c, Ctrl + f - all focus on the …

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I used to think of programming as something natively binary. 0's and 1's, [ True, False ], just like the Propositional Logic in first year Philosophy. And filesystems do work that way on the disk - every picture is made of 0's and 1's. However, Philosophy, or Logic in general, has other systems. Some of them use 'True' …

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I asked an older family member about old Scottish legends. She told me about what she heard when she was younger, from someone older still, and I suppose that puts the legend at least a hundred years back. There are ghostly bagpipes that foretell death...there are banks of primroses, where, if you pick the wrong …

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Among certain circles, there is a general agreement that university Computer Science courses don't teach practical basics, or equip students to work with actual computers. This begs the question, what would a reasonable course look like? When I worked at an IT outsourcing company, I would test people's computer skills. …

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Some centuries ago, nobles learned about the riches in their estate through their seneschal, who would walk about counting things. 10 lambs, 8 sheep, 1 exceptional sheep, 2 sickly sheep, 50 pounds of turnip, 400 pounds of cabbage,... So on and on the counting would continue, so that the lord knew how much wealth he …

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'Traditional' food has fat, and has sugar if the region could import lots of it in the 1800's. Traditional Serbian food includes fat-fried meat with meat on it. Traditional Scottish food includes an egg, wrapped in meat, fried in bread-crumbs. I'm guessing most European countries follow suit. These diets were developed …

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In recent years I've slowly changed my thinking on the concept of 'faith'. Or perhaps I've been thinking about attitudes, and just made very narrow use of a very broad word. Here's the thought: Someone with a cool mind, an impartial attitude, and some very basic arithmetic can optimize. It's fashionable to make fun of …

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Every computer I go to seems to have the same sad story. A mess of files sit on the desktop. In 'Pictures', random pictures sit (the user downloaded them before making a half-hearted attempt to organize) with a few folders, some marked 'holiday' (which one?), and others given names by the computer. Renaming the lot …

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Some American made a video on Balkan history which flipped between saying that the Balkans has many cultures, then mentioned some war or similar catastrophe, then went on repeat. The video asserted bluntly (if not explicitly) that multiple cultures coexisting created all the strife in the Balkans. I commented: It looks …

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Neomutt exemplifies everything wrong with documentation. Neomutt advertises itself as an email client for the terminal. I like email, and I like terminal stuff, because it's easy to automate, and works with all my automation stuff. That was me, and probably a great many other unsuspecting victims of neomutt. However, …

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