This was infuriating to me when I started college as a CS major. I dropped out after Intro because they weren’t giving us anything worth remembering.

I had no connection to him, nor do I truly care, but … really? Ferrari in the hed? Holy framing, Batman. A simple “car accident” would have acquitted itself just fine.

This is like the hyperdetailed “get the name of the dog” that a certain generation expected. Fluffy doesn’t matter, and neither does a Ferrari.

I’m going to disagree here. It must have two wheels. I get the reference, but you didn’t nail the landing.

Nah, the crosswalk ones are still worse.

The push to re-physicalize interfaces has even led to an unexpected side gig for Dr. Plotnick, the academic authority on buttons. Companies are tapping her to consult on how to improve their physical controls.

Well played.

It’s safe to say I need income before any wheels can start turning. On the plus side, my non-U.S. passport is a Schengen one, which I believe still gets me into the UK just fine. But CH has gone fully biometric (It’s a good Pass to have), and that requires a trip to Atlanta or renewing my U.S. one and taking care of my Swiss one in Zuerich ahead of moving on to my final destination.

Another great way is to move out of fixed housing. Alright, you assholes, try to find me now!

That’s a terrific metaphor. I’m imagining starting GoT in season 7 and wondering why the fuck it was a cultural touchstone.

It was my first reporting job. Yeah, at 44. And short of a few interviews, I was just rewriting shit.

I’ve been an editor for decades and have had to deal with plagiarism (thankfully, nothing too significant), so as a guardrail, it made sense. Editors approach writing with a far more critical eye than a recent J-school grad.

I’m just so tired of everybody else’s shit.

Hence hanging out on Beehaw!

That’s a large part of the reason I went up there. I’m sick of telling my story to someone new; I just want to skip that step and go back to something I know.

I, uh, can’t imagine another like her. Now, there is, as Yoda likes to say “another.” But she’s in fucking Scotland. She’s likely better for me, but both of my passports are expired.

We were actually engaged for a couple of years, so I’m not saying “random Scottish chick showed up.” We talk most nights if I stay up late enough for it to be morning for her.

Her accent is absolutely delightful. She has demonstrated her ability to go full Glaswegian, but I much prefer it when she’s understandable.

My god; they’re robbing us!

Sorry to hear. Hope you feel better soon.

Honestly, I found value in asking an LLM to paraphrase press releases I was rewriting. It just saved me from accidentally plagiarizing. It was pretty grueling, as I quickly learned that feeding in a full story yields wildly inappropriate results, so I reverted to a graf at a time. Within that scope, one can check against errors; asking it to paraphrase entire DOE releases was worse than an abject failure.

It’s a tool. You aren’t using a hammer for a situation that calls for a screwdriver. People are being stupid about this basic understanding.

Popular? I mean, really? Quark wasn’t even popular, but at least you could get shit done with it. Then, of course, InDesign swooped in (Adobe gave us free copies at the 2003 SND conference … they weren’t fucking around with trying to change the software we used). But no one liked Quark to start, and it was expensive as fuck, so everyone was like “let’s switch to a different monopoly, as it will be better.”

What puzzles me is why MS made Publisher in the first place. It was less capable than fucking Aldus PageMaker, arrived at the wrong time and was never widely adopted. This is more like putting your dog down after it started running into walls.

Don’t geographyshame!

Inflation is a bitch. That’s tame compared to, say, beef.

I fully agree. Industry is simply not set up for a sustainable model in which price-conscious consumers can stay in the game.

To a certain extent, this is the equivalent of being shocked that Intel discontinued 386 production. Or that Google is no longer manufacturing Pixel 3s. It’s the nature of the industry.

That’s a wildly incomplete list. I guess if you’re out east, that might feel like a full list, but if you’ve ever lived somewhere with arroyos, you’ve never experienced brooks or runs. I mean, short of Mel Brooks and having diarrhea.

There’s an old joke about growing up in Phoenix: That one does not associate rivers or bridges with water.