Notices by calcifer@hackers.town

My children: *send me pictures of new Pokémon plushies eating ramen and ice cream in the park*

Also my children: “papa, we want to start a death metal band called Sisters of Satan. Do you want to help?”

I want to see an established scifi property do a series that functions like an anthology of "miniseries" type stories.

Give me, for example, "Star Trek Galaxy"; each "season" is 5-ish episodes that each track a story arc for one ship/mission somewhere. Each arc has the freedom to stand alone. Avoid cameos. Avoid recurring characters between seasons. Just tell me a tight story that enriches the universe.

@samgai the thing is none of the things people ask that about are actually at all hard to explain to kids. Half of them are things my own kids asked about at very young ages, and it was never hard

Why are those men holding hands? I'd guess it's because they love each other

Is that a boy or a girl (person with beard wearing a sundress)? I don't know, maybe neither, and it's really not anyone's business anyhow.

Wait "maybe neither?" Yep, not everyone is a boy or a girl; it's true most people are, but there are lots of other options, so we can't really know unless someone decides to tell us

And so on. Really easy conversations. They just don't WANT to explain to their kids that the boxes they grew up with might have not been the whole story and/or have changed

@mayor @Aleums I tend to like "why are you wearing jeans/shorts/whatever?"

Usually it's "I like it!" And I only need to say "well, there you go"

Sometimes it's "it's NORMAL", and I like to pull a sad face and say "oh, how boring for you"

@markusl *checks Urban Dictionary* yeah… none of those are the definition here. Think Dolores Umbridge from the HP series.

@ConsoleWitch I suspect this particular Delores took Unbridge at what she perceived to be a man wearing women's clothing (she's half right: I'm a man. But skirts being "women's" is a really modern idea, and even now a kilt is generally masc-associated)

Folks like this often want their morality to be a set of clear rules about who fits in what bucket, and can't grasp that the rest of us are comfortable with difference and ambiguity: they see that comfort as an attack

And yeah, it definitely seems like they had rehearsed that to some degree, so they must have seen similar shit enough to have had a Conversation about it. Doesn't make it less awesome IMO

Had to take the bus into town today, and wore a kilt. Some Delores decided to take issue; which sadly I'm used to. "Why are you wearing a skirt?!" and so on. As I said, used to it (and big scary white dude, so I have some privilege to wield), so I'm calmly addressing it with her

But then she said "well how am I supposed to explain that to my kid?!", and friends, I didn't have to say a thing, because the most awesome Black lady jumped in. She turned to her kid (I'd guess roughly 13 years old) and said "hey, why is he allowed to wear a skirt?"

Kid: "he's grown enough to wear whatever the fuck he wants"

Mom: "see?! Ain't hard ma'am"

Delores huffed but that was pretty much the end 🤣

:drake_dislike: Anthropomorphism:drake_like: Arthropomorphism

@socketwench this this this. Same thing (but at least more subtly—though to be fair that's a very low bar) for Fern Gully; fairies and the like as stand-ins for indigenous cultures is also a very old trope

If there is no path for someone to obtain forgiveness and/or redemption, why would they try to change?

IMO, one of the most toxic things in US culture is this idea that if someone holds a shitty belief or does a harmful thing, they are irredeemably bad people. If you don't believe people can genuinely change—or if you aren't willing to acknowledge the small changes that lead to fundamental change—then whether you intend it or not you're not only blocking progress, you could very well be contributing to toxic radicalization

Cults and groups that operate on similar principles have a much easier job recruiting from among people who feel like they couldn't ever gain acceptance from their peers

New question: how did you share music? Was it like a folder of MP3s? I mean, eventually yeah. But people brought blank CDs and copied them or made mixes from .wav files (but most people only had enough drive space for a few CDs worth at a time)

@mforester I miss the camraderie of being in the same place to hack and game and share stuff—it was easier to get people to do that when it was the only practical option

But I do not miss hauling my rig into a strip mall or friend's basement or whatever. Nor do I miss being unable to play with friends who were too far away to come to LAN parties

Spent some time today explaining to my kids how "online gaming" worked before broadband. Questions:

How did you share memes? Mostly message boards, but at a LAN party someone might have a folder. We didn't call theme memes though

So you brought a laptop to like a Pizza Hut? LOL, no one could afford a laptop and they were all slow. No we carted our tower and CRT and a power strips ans created a fire hazard and a huge energy bill for the pizza place, as God intended

@thegibson learned a while ago that if you delay taking a break for too long, your body and brain will eventually force you. And you ain’t gonna like it.

Worse times are coming, and this system that isn’t letting people heal is gonna break

@sng @carcinopithecus good tip. Be aware their data is by title, and sometimes your title doesn't match what you DO. Search job boards to find jobs that have similar duties/skills and ask about those titles too!

If you get blown off, wait a bit. Sometimes that's just a boss trying to avoid making a promise while they address it.

If you get told no, be pragmatic. Thank your boss for hearing you out, then quietly start looking for a new job. You don't want to get pushed out before you have something new lined up, so you've got to act like you're planning to stay

do not get mad or snippy. You'll destroy any chance of help and put your job at risk. That takes control away from you. Calm and professional is powerful and maximizes the control you have over what happens next

Has it been more than 24 months since you got a raise? Go ask.

Take a second to do some research about what your role is paid in other orgs in your area. If you're paid noticably less, mention that.

Also organize your thoughts around the good things you've done since last raise. Did you take on new responsibility? Achieve something hard? Exceed goals? Any of that is stuff you can bring up.

Read about negotiating salary during interviews and apply those tactics.

Don't be adversarial. Your tone here is "I've considered my pay in comparison to the market and in light of performance, and I'd like your help getting my pay to reflect that"; yes, your boss is probably not on your side, but it's in your interest to act like this is a thing you'll work on together. Your boss will know you might leave, it's implied: it doesn't serve you at all to point it out

@schratze @volpeon :thinking_very_hard: use multiple OSes, hate computers entirely

Older friend of my kids trying to blow their minds and vastly underestimating how nerdy they are

Friend: How does a thermos know to keep hot things hot and cold things cold?

Kid: it doesn't know anything, it just keeps heat from moving and doesn't care which direction

Friend (looking at me): wait… is that actually true?!