This is the deep secret of Bernie Sanders' long-time success with Vermont voters. He sounds like a fiery radical, but he actually spends his time doing boring but important committee work well.

Apparently, language learning is very popular with bots in Brazil this week!

I am working on it this weekend and hopefully next. There will be some scheduled downtime which I'll announce in this thread. More details as I figure them out.

Once again, my apologies for the problems—this site has some creaky parts and far too much traffic. 🏗️

We appear to have two major underlying issues here:

1. We are handling a surprinsing amount of traffic—enough to stress older forum software with poor caching. This costs real $$$.

2. Some parts of the infrastructure can be upgraded easily. Others need multiple days of hard work.

The NYT has been trash for a very long time. Check out this puff piece they wrote about Hitler, about 10 days before the start of World War II: www.nytimes.com/1939/08/20/a...

Artistically? Writing programs sometimes feels like cabinet-making. A "craft", perhaps?

But people rightfully take pride in their work! I want to build people up. Thoughtful feedback is important, yes. But not like that!

(Sorry, this is a pet subject of mine, lol.)

One big challenge with coding is the "leaky pipeline": www.yalescientific.org/2020/11/by-t... Women were 35% of CS grads in the 80. It's now below 20%.

That kind of off-hand trashing of people's work likely discourages students who already feel like the odd ones out.

That sort of behavior isn't any nicer or more effective for teaching people to code, tbh.

I've heard of a few Christians who take it terrifyingly seriously. Marist nuns who hike alone into the poorest and remotest places, with no resources or backing, just to help people.

Or just people who move through the word with deep kindness, something they strive daily to achieve. I respect it.

Mathew 25 goes hard.

Or as I read it, "Walk outside and night and look at the glory of the stars, and imagine their Creator."

"Now think about some prisoner in the nearest jail. A guilty one. However you treat him is how you treat the Creator."

It's an unpopular text in too many churches.

Aside from the third-story upstairs neighbors who played techno through their subwoofer from 1am to 3am, yeah, those dodgy 90s apartments were fun.

And we knew it, even then.

Our landlord once replaced our 30yo broken fridge in under 24 hours. With a 30yo working fridge. Gotta respect it.

But for anyone who watched Rocky Horror too many times, Joan Jett also did at least one cover of "Science Fiction, Double Feature." This one's rock, it's a lot faster than the original, and I am totally here for it.

Seriously, she did some great covers. 3/3

m.youtube.com/watch?v=r7tn...

Joan Jett also had an appropriately sinister cover of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Cheap."

Totally different vocal inflections this time. She's an extremely versatile performer. 2/3

m.youtube.com/watch?v=2sky...

Reading Discworld is rarely the wrong choice.

(The first few books are quite skippable, though.)