jhbadger

41 ms·

811.
by jhbadger 2y ago
pip install pyspread works just fine on macOS (assuming you have pip and python installed, which anyone who would be interested in having a python-enabled spreadsheet would have).
812.
by jhbadger 2y ago
It's a bit like how Francis Crick, after he left DNA research and went into neuroscience, wrote a book called "The Astonishing Hypothesis" with the premise that the mind is nothing magical but simply the product of all those
813.
by jhbadger 2y ago
Also average houses from that time period were tiny , with about ~1000 sq ft of livable space. That people were expected to raise families in. My apartment (which is just for me and my cat) is bigger than that! https://www.newse
814.
by jhbadger 2y ago
And remember that just a few years before in 1936, there was the Rural Electrification Act to provide rural people in the US (who had basically been living 19th-century style) with electricity, which was standard for town and city dwellers
815.
by jhbadger 2y ago
>Why humans play? Why animals play? Why someone plays with their fidgeting toy while doing nothing? Why we doom-scroll without any apparent aim? Why cats run without any purpose? Why woodpeckers peck satellite dishes for no apparent reas
816.
by jhbadger 2y ago
Yes. I rather liked "The War Nerd Iliad" by John Dolan ("War Nerd" is a moniker that Dolan used in a column he used to write). It's basically a version of the Iliad that eschews the poetry and tells the story in a s
817.
by jhbadger 2y ago
The paper doesn't investigate why the bees are "playing" with the balls, but just documents that they do. They just assert that it has no function.
818.
by jhbadger 2y ago
Actually, the cause of the potato blight, P. infestans , wasn't a fungus at all, but actually a stramenopile, a group of microorganisms less related to us than fungi are. It was thought to be a fungus at the time because it forms stra
819.
by jhbadger 2y ago
Or we haven't bothered to investigate why they are doing it? Poets used to think birds sang because they were happy (we now know they are mostly saying "Back off; this territory is mine" and "I'm looking for a mate;
820.
by jhbadger 2y ago
And play isn't "useless". It's not surprising that a lot of play (cats and dogs pouncing on toys, puppies and kittens wrestling with each other) is obvious practice for things they do when they aren't playing.
821.
by jhbadger 2y ago
Same with HyperStudio, which is a shame.
822.
by jhbadger 2y ago
In the beginning of the Web the connections between Hypercard and the Web were known and intentional -- many early web browsers also included HTML editors because it was thought the Web would be a two-way street with users both reading page
823.
by jhbadger 2y ago
The argument was that capitalistic success was thought to be linked to having an open democratic society, perhaps because of the great economic success West Germany and Japan had in the postwar decades after becoming democracies. But China
824.
by jhbadger 2y ago
This reminds me of a fascinating book titled "The Red Atlas" by John Davies and Alexander Kent which is about the very detailed maps of Western cities the Soviet Union created during the Cold War.
825.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Which were created decades after the original versions and are only identifiable as "BASIC" in that they share a few keywords like PRINT and FOR...NEXT. The later "structured BASIC" dialects resemble more COMAL than trad
826.
by jhbadger 3y ago
It's actually one of the FWP American Guides -- this was a New Deal US government program to employ unemployed writers and journalists to create a series of travel guides in the late 1930s. I have collected several from used book store
827.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Also, the most famous example of streetcars that were "killed" by GM was the Pacific Electric cars in the LA metro area. These weren't really public transit but were owned by a company that also owned land for development. Th
828.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Weird. My Seiko 5 automatic (about $150, probably one of the cheapest self-winding mechanical watches) has the days of the week in English, Spanish, and French. Weirdly, (but I suppose it makes sense if you think about how the gears work),
829.
by jhbadger 3y ago
>Who cares? What's your point? The point is some cultures are clearly not part of Western culture, and some (such as the pre-Columbian American ones) had absolutely no contact direct or indirect with the West until the colonial peri
830.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Actually, the proles in 1984 used normal English (as we read in the scene where Winston goes drinking in the proletarian sector and chats with the old man about life before Ingsoc). Newspeak was for the Party members.
831.
by jhbadger 3y ago
It's a bit like how people analyze "disgruntled" and use humorously the non-word "gruntled" to mean "to be content".
832.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Considering that stores existed long before the Internet, perhaps all this is just a convenience that has become a liability.
833.
by jhbadger 3y ago
I wouldn't go that far. There were certainly interactions going on between cultures in Europe and the Middle East in ancient times, and Greek culture was certainly influenced by Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Persian cultures (which are of
834.
by jhbadger 3y ago
Also, Lydians and Phyrgians spoke IE languages and Aeolians were a Greek-speaking people themselves despite living in what is now Turkey, so none of them seem particularly "non-Western". I totally agree that there is no hard and
835.
by jhbadger 3y ago
I always find stories of how some science was still going on in China during the Cultural Revolution (and Mao's reign in general) fascinating. And the ways that that the scientists (who were often ideologically suspect in the eyes of t
836.
by jhbadger 3y ago
>I have no reason to doubt my common sense experience. That's why people thought the Sun moved around the Earth. I mean, it's just "common sense" -- you see the Sun in the East in the morning, and then it's in th
837.
by jhbadger 3y ago
They both are university towns (UC Merced and Cal State Bakersfield); given that academics are generally positively inclined towards public transit a line could encourage collaborations, I suppose.
838.
by jhbadger 3y ago
There were on-device development systems for Palm as well. I remember playing with Chipmunk Basic that even had access to some UI elements so you could have working buttons and dialogue boxes in your programs.
839.
by jhbadger 3y ago
There was even an external GPS module that you could get for the Palm (using offline maps that you could sync). I felt so cyberpunkish carrying the combo around and navigating cities on foot with directions -- basically what anyone can do t
840.
by jhbadger 3y ago
There actually is a real meaning to the term, but it isn't fears of coffee being bad but that in the future coffee won't be economically feasible thanks to climate change and most current coffee drinkers will not longer be able

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