The endgame is that it reverts to being a private reverie that confers no rights on anyone and imposes no duties on anyone. You're allowed to pretend to be something you are not, others are allowed to help you pretend if they choose, and others are also allowed to choose not to participate in your pretense if they choose. A private reverie is no basis for recognition as something other than what one is before the law and the state will not be involved in forcing anyone to grant recognition to people seeking to be regarded and treated as what they are not. This is the only sensible resolution to this issue that preserves everyone's rights to free speech and free conscience.

Nice day and a lovely couple coming to stay for the weekend. Life is good.

One of those "happy place" pieces for me. Liszt at his best imo. (Six Consolations, S. 172) They work so well as a set. One to play through from start to finish on a late summer evening...

You could not invent a better illustration of this phenomenon than the lady in my replies. I believe much of the decline of Britain into a middle-income country with severely-curtailed civil liberties can be explained by the pervasiveness of this attitude.

"Not one gram of bloat" "Incredible how light the package is" "'Just' ~6GB" All software will continue to be dogshit, forever, until users hold others to better standards and stop using this crap.

This is why I call Britain a dystopia in which everything is either mandatory or forbidden. Someone has a nice idea to put a brick with a hole in it in their house walls to help a bird species. Immediately they try to make it mandatory by law and cannot comprehend any objection.

I feel like the term "82" is forbidden knowledge I came accidentally to eat the fruit of, and now it's too late and innocence cannot be regained

Work's been heavy lately. Don't have much headspace for anything else. Should hopefully clear up in December

All software is shit, open-source edition:

Gave a talk to a high school career class this morning. One of the things I emphasized was the value of illegible skills, skills that do not map to on to academic categories, skills that may not have names.

The beauty of harpsichords vs. the stunning ugliness of pianos is the best illustration I know of the aesthetic consequences of the industrial revolution. There is no good reason why pianos can't look like this

I've had like 4 men ask if they can come into the women's changing rooms and it's like what part of women's changing rooms isn't registering here

You wonder "Why is all software so shit nowadays" and then you point out shit software and people crawl out the woodwork to say "Oh that's good actually I like that" and then you realise why all software is shit. VS Code is a great example of this

After a scientist tries to explain that high-dimensional matrix multiplication is beautiful in some ways, New Yorker writer doubles down -- that's interesting, but recall that matrices have TWO dimensions. Can't make it up. Open the schools!!!!

The only way to learn math is to do problems. All else is entertainment.

>be TOML >Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language >not obvious >not minimal

Daily reminder that the British pension system is set up to guarantee the state eventually goes bankrupt. The "triple lock" requires that pensions go up by whichever is highest: inflation, earnings, or 2.5%. This is one of the most insane policies that actually exists.

I still can't believe this photo is real