Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.

Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.

Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.

Really hoping he hasn’t brought the jinx with him.

Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: August 13th, 2024

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  • A few days ago, I saw a post about negative income tax which is something that had occurred to me independently. Wasn’t surprised to learn that someone with more brains had actually given it some serious thought and that it had an actual name.

    That would be the sort of thing I’d be interested in being implemented, so that those who are on little to no income - especially those who can’t simply “get a (better) job” for whatever reason - don’t fall below the poverty line.

    This is not to say that the UK benefits system (where I am) doesn’t work at all, but it’s often coupled with the expectation of getting the recipient back into work or to getting a better job where you don’t need them any more.

    It would be nice if that part went away.


  • The strange thing is, it’s vaguely possible that “learn” in the sense of “teach” might have been hanging around in dialects of English since the similarly sounding word “leren” was still in use. “Leren” sounds an awful lot like “learn” but is completely unrelated and actually does mean “(to) teach”.

    Modern Dutch still uses “leren” this way. It’s even spelled the same which is kind of rare.





  • Probably a prolonged awkward moment that I couldn’t escape. In chatting to an old friend I bumped into, I let slip that I’d heard something bad had happened to them and asked how they were doing. Rather than answering clearly, they were super interested in finding out who told me in the sort of way that I knew it would be a very bad idea™ for all concerned to reveal that information.

    I can’t remember how I got out of that. I sometimes think I’m still in that moment and all this is a fever dream as my brain tries desperately to escape.

    Honourable mentions: i) Zeroing the wrong partition on my own computer, all data unrecoverable. ii) Deleting all of a customer’s data rather than the one part they wanted removing. Luckily, in that case there were backups.

    Edit: Blind formatting fixes(?)



  • Here’s some reaching: There’s the theory hypothesis that our universe is the inside of some construct in a higher universe* that is similar to if not actually a black hole.

    In our universe, time and space inside a black hole are causally disconnected from the outside so there can be a defined beginning without there needing to be time continuity across the event horizon. It’s often said that time and space switch places inside a black hole, which could mean that our time is relative to space outside of the universe. This hurts my head to think about. Almost like our time dimension runs sideways relative to whatever was “before”.

    * As to whether this is turtles all the way down / universes all the way up, we’ll probably never know.




  • So, a couple of unlikely things will have to happen for this, but if 1) Britain ever returns to the EU and 2) as a joining condition is forced to adopt the Euro, I can all but guarantee that most people will put the Euro symbol in front where the pound sign used to be, even if expressly told not to. Even those in favour of being in the EU.

    Retailers would do whatever they felt like on labels and shelves unless it was enshrined law.

    And the penchant for using imperial weights and measures would continue unabated across the lands.