Tag: Imported Post

Originally posted somewhere else (ex. a blog I don’t use anymore, or a social networking site) and moved here sometime later. Usually keeping the original posting date.

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The other day I saw an argument that things like environmental regulations should be done locally, because if we don’t rely on the federal government, a change in administration can’t just roll back protections.

Ignoring the fact that pollution doesn’t stop at the city, state or national border, I can’t help thinking of crap like this:

California Escalates Battle With Trump EPA Over ‘Clean Car’ Rules

or this:

California agrees not to enforce its net neutrality law as Justice Dept. puts lawsuit on hold

where we are doing things at the state level, but the feds are still shutting it down.

Sessions, of course, used to be really big on “states rights” when he was representing a state, but now that he’s representing the federal government…

Not a surprise, given that people who talk about “states rights” rarely (if ever) seem to care about the principle so much as whether they can use it as a tool to interfere with civil rights.

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KQED reports: Pieces Finally Falling Into Place for Earthquake Warnings in California

We still can’t predict them, but data is faster than seismic waves, so we can give people away from the epicenter a few seconds of warning.

That’s enough to pull your car over, put down a scalpel, climb down from a ladder, get away from a rickety building or under a sturdy desk, etc. The tech is credited with saving lives in last fall’s Mexico City earthquake.

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Interesting vocab mixup with the 7YO last night: He agreed to stop a game at “the first save point” and get ready for bed. When he didn’t, he said he hadn’t gotten to a “safe point” yet.

It turned out he didn’t understand what a save point was, because all the games he’s played up until now either don’t save progress at all, or save continuously.

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You know what I miss about CDs and other physical music media?

Liner notes.

Art, lyrics, sometimes stories…

…and credits. Who is that familiar-sounding background singer? Who wrote the song? Is it a cover? This one really reminds me of a certain composer, lyricist, or arranger’s style – can I confirm that?

The performer and title are easy to get, even if it’s not in your own library.

But the rest? If the song is notable enough for Wikipedia, great. Otherwise, who knows?

(This post brought to you by trying to figure out just how many songs on a Bonnie Tyler compilation were written by Jim Steinman.)

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Kiddo’s been wanting to learn programming, with the ultimate goal of modding Minecraft. We’ve done some Ruby, but he’s impatient, so last night I we started Java with a simple program that repeats a println X times.

He wanted to pass it the integer limit.

After a few minutes, I suggested we watch a movie and check back later.

After dinner, he decided to stop it and we timed some shorter runs.

I think he has a better understanding of scale now!

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