After some sad news, Jacques Brel has everyone in the assistance sit around ( Read more... )

In my morning dream, I was inside a computer role-playing / adventure game, but following the instructions in the manual didn't have the expected effect. Interestingly, said manual had funny text alignment and spacing-It turns out, to leave space for extra text that only appeared when heat was applied, and deeply changed the meaning of the text. ( Read more... )

In France, there are always enough polling stations. Schools and town halls are polling stations. More people whose ballots to count? That's automatically more people to run polling stations and count the votes. The very notion that some areas may be disenfranchised by lack of polling stations is inconceivable.

In France, people must show ID to ( Read more... )

Regarding Slave reparations: About everyone in Europe was a slave (in Latin, "servus" - serf) since Diocletian's socialist "reforms". Emancipation came very slowly through the emergence of free cities, literally the first meaning of "bourgeoisie" - people living free in cities rather than slaves on the land. Only "blue blood" descendants of the ( Read more... )

People who call for "unity" as the only imaginable solution to violence thereby admit that they are incapable of imagining non-violence towards members of an outgroup. Theirs is the very emotiology of hate they falsely claim to "fight"-because their only vocabulary is violence.

Emotiology-it doesn't even pass the bar of an ideology. There is no ( Read more... )

Mes amis étatistes sans cesse me demandent comment telle bonne chose pourrait possiblement exister sans les tas (de parasites légaux): l'informatique, les routes, les pompiers, l'école, les chemins de fers, la musique, la charité, etc. Et pourquoi pas l'amour pendant qu'on y est?

Car chacun sait que toutes les bonnes choses sont inventions des tas ( Read more... )

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This short essay describes some challenges I leave to the next maintainers of ASDF, the Common Lisp build system, related to the "magic" involved in bootstrapping ASDF. If you dare to read further, grab a chair and your favorite headache-fighting brewage.

ASDF is a build system for Common Lisp ( Read more... )

"What is the Matrix? Control."

This essay was originally written by Daniel A. Nagy and published on his Facebook page on April 2nd, 2017. It is the third part in a series. The first two parts are available here: Part 1, Part 2. All three parts were originally published on facebook: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

This is the third part in a ( Read more... )

Dear crypto-currency hacker friends,

I had the following epiphany about decentralizing crypto-currency transactions ( Read more... )