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you ever read an interesting blogpost and only after you reach the end realize it was designed to be distributed via email rather than atom|rss

« Disclaimer: There are no references to 'The Matrix' in this fic. »

« How was Link supposed to respond to his sister having a very public existential crisis over not being able to use celestial bodies as a fashion statement? »

« Link, having little regard for the fragility of his mortal form, tried to smash it in with his clasped hands. »

example: i learned XML in high school because i wanted to create a custom conlang dictionary for the macOS (then OS X) Dictionary.app, which was XML-based. this is not the most pressing issue which needs solving in the world, but it was a real problem i cared about, and working on it exposed me to all kinds of problem spaces in document processing, information representation, data entry ergonomics, as well as internationalization concerns, IETF standards (BCP 49!), and automation workflows for handling large amounts of structured metadata. that's the sort of thing which happens when you work on a real problem. you get exposed to existing solutions; in trying to comprehend those solutions, you gain an understanding of the broader concerns they are trying to address; you develop and mature and grow as a person. i don't care about conlangs anymore but i do still care deeply about internationalization.

in contrast, i can't think of a single thing i learned in a math class which meaningfully developed me as a person or a professional. i went into college wanting to be a math major,

entire field of cool solutions with no problems attached

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and i think about the function of coolness in this sense, for white kids, as a way of encouraging this sort of wasted energy to redirect them away from work which would actually force them to confront their privilege

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all of the useful skills i have learned have been through the process of needing to do a thing and having to learn how to do it, and very very little of that was ever supported nay discussed in school

i wasted huge amounts of time early in college taking classes aligned with my “interests” that i had no actual interest in applying, instead of learning about systemic injustice and the problems in the world which i actually cared about getting solved

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i was just thinking about a history report i wrote in seventh grade about assassins because i thought assassins were rad and what if i had been instead encouraged to study a history topic which was at all practically relevant or meaningful in my life

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can’t help but feel like there would be a lot fewer nft bros

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imagining a world where white kids were encouraged to study things which they think are necessary instead of things which they think are cool

this is a very good and helpful take; thank you to all of the people posting it today

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countries couldn't go to war if we lived in a fully automated luxury space anarchy communism because there wouldn't be any countries 🤓

python web server can’t colons in filenames

^/(?<path>(?:[^/]+/)*[^:/]+)(?:/[^/]*:[^/]*)?/$

« EARN-IT is an attack on section 230, which is the law that makes online platforms able to host user-posted material, and it does so in a way that allows U.S. states – many of which can be influenced by powerful anti-LGBTQ+ lobbying groups – to define what constitutes a visual depiction of CSAM » feel like OTW could have gone a liiiiitttle harder on why exactly this is a problem today

someone send me that “assumptions programmers make about names” post

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