Dr David T Macknet
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davimack.bsky.social
Dr David T Macknet
@davimack.bsky.social
Computer Science, Analytic Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology, Automation Process Science, Biotech, Archives

BA, MS, MLitt, PhD

https://sciences.social/@davimack
https://github.com/davimack/
https://linkedin.com/in/davidmacknet/
Funny the contacts you keep. For 22 years I've kept in loose contact with a man who was somewhere in the technology department where my wife we doing her master's.
October 18, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Microwave oven engineers:
* Let's make it beep incessantly after it's done!
* Yeah! Otherwise they'll forget their coffee or whatever!
* And! And! Let's make it beep just once when a timer runs down!
* Coffee getting cold again is way more important than whatever that timer was for.
October 18, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Why yes, I *have* been packing for the last 4 hours and would like an easy meal. And no, I can't just throw some nachos together... because of *course* I packed the pantry.
May 4, 2025 at 11:29 PM
My wife told me of Mister Rogers singing "you can never go down the drain," and how she feared going down the drain... about twenty years before the song. misterrogers.org/videos/you-c...
"You Can Never go Down the Drain" (1996) - Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
misterrogers.org
May 4, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Meanwhile, 13 years down the road from finishing a PhD, the US department of education thinks I should take out a student loan.

Could I use another PhD? Hmmm.
April 17, 2025 at 3:59 PM
The problem with really hot pepper puree is measurement. It's so easy to overshoot or undershoot. By a lot.
April 12, 2025 at 5:21 PM
You know, stereotypes vs reality.

My boss is visiting a client in Florida. I asked about his trip and his eyes got wide and he says, "Florida Man. There's this really obese white man sitting on the hood of his car, in the parking lot, wearing nothing but underpants."
April 8, 2025 at 4:28 AM
In a meeting with a rep for a $30B revenue, 100K employee company, talking about my company writing them some software.

Rep, nervously: Um, you know, we believe in including all sorts of people.

Me: well of course, (etc)

Rep, relaxes.

The world we live in.

Never mentioned DEI, but we know.
March 29, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Returning from the beach, thought we'd stop at a tea shop.

Hostess: I'll ask my manager if we can seat you.

Manager: It'll be $65 each. Will that be all right?

Me: No.

Manager: That includes Beef Wellington...

Manager: Let me give you a card in case you'd like to reserve for another time.
March 29, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Apropos of the military and judicial purges in America, I said to one of my fellow choristers that this felt like the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler purged the Brown Shirts in favor of the Gestapo and SS.

A gent in his 80s burst out with a "Hah!"

"Sorry. I've been thinking the same thing."
March 15, 2025 at 5:14 PM
The oven timer went off at 3:30 this morning.

Haven't used the oven since Saturday.

Ugh.
March 6, 2025 at 2:07 PM
13 years ago I turned in corrections on my PhD thesis. 6 months later saw us back in California, after having been in Glasgow, Scotland for 5 years. A lifetime.
February 25, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Dr David T Macknet
So, yesterday's Poetry Friday dive on Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay reads more like an English paper than a blog post, but sometimes one must embrace the inner nerd ...http://tanitasdavis.com/wp/?p=13970
February 22, 2025 at 6:24 PM
The "absolutely get the hell out of bed" light timer is unfortunately exactly on time these days, so delay... sigh.
February 3, 2025 at 4:01 PM
When I wake up in the middle if the night and remember that I'm supposed to update my insurance, I kinda expect that I'll be able to contact the company. Instead, blocked by bots and told to phone them. GEICO and Blue Shield both. At least you can Google Blue Shield to find the secret form. Ugh.
January 20, 2025 at 3:35 PM
And then some mornings you ask yourself, Why is there a half stick of butter on top of the fridge? And when did it get there?
January 19, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Looking back at applications I've put in with PG&E is kinda funny. There was this one position where my PhD study was basically an exact match. Of course it stayed open for like four months and sent me the same message. They're amazing, really.

Started a new job this week, so no worries.
January 11, 2025 at 6:59 AM
We have completed our review and while your background has many strengths, we will not be moving forward with your application for this position. We encourage you to continue pursuing other opportunities here.

Thanks, PG&E! I applied for that position 5 months ago, so I kinda figured.
January 11, 2025 at 6:54 AM
New laptop => one monitor's too old.
Larger monitor => monitor arms too small in current configuration.
New configuration => moving the desk & 4 monitors, redoing power & cabling, resetting the KVM.
New KVM switch configuration => configuring monitors on 4 computers.
New laptop => 4 hours of effort.
January 8, 2025 at 8:59 PM
"The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched."

"...the department will hire a consultant to review and update its policies, procedures and training on non-discriminatory policing and use of force... the Justice Department said."

www.techdirt.com/2025/01/07/d...
DOJ Secures Agreement With Antioch, CA PD That’s Supposed To Make Its Racist Cops Less Racist
Well, there are two possibilities here. Either I’ve been doing this for too long or all cops are, indeed, bastards. Let me explain. When this rolled through my hundreds of feeds recently&#823…
www.techdirt.com
January 8, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Musk embraced hyperbole and ... relied on simplistic drivel, such has his insistence that the AfD’s top candidate Alice Weidel could in no way be reminiscent of Hitler because she is a lesbian with a partner from Sri Lanka.

www.spiegel.de/internationa...
Boost for the Right Wing: Why Did a German Newspaper Help Elon Musk Interfere in German Politics?
Ever since Elon Musk threw his support behind the right-wing AfD party in the pages of Die Welt, the paper and the Axel Springer publishing house has had a newsroom revolt on its hands. CEO Mathias Dö...
www.spiegel.de
January 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
I bothered to set a pot of coffee to brew at 6:00. We were both already up and smiled to each other. "You made coffee!"

I think I miscounted & shorted us by a couple tablespoons of grounds.

Sigh.
January 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Manual pasta maker.

The hardest part of setup: digging it from the bowels of weird cookware.

The hardest part of all is the horrible game of Tetris trying to get the pieces to fit back into the box with the irregularly folded cardboard it comes with.

Setup: < 1 min
Return: > 15 min and give up.
January 6, 2025 at 12:26 AM
Played with polymer clay today. Not sure what they'll become, probably a bracelet? Need to be baked, sanded, coated with UV resin, and drilled.
January 5, 2025 at 4:52 AM