There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov (1980)
Tyler K. Nothing

Tyler Knows Nothing

All the nothing Tyler knows in one place!

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Into the Unbeing Part One #1

Zac Thompson

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    Longform

    Ancient Roman sarcophagus discovered being used as a bar in Black Sea resort

    Apparently it’s illegal to own historical artifacts in Bulgaria. Not a bad idea, to be honest. Such artifacts are snapshots of the rich history of humanity on our lone planet thriving with life in the solar system. It sucks that certain peeps are allowed to develop their own private collections. While I believe that in this case it was likely inadvertent, there are many more who selfishly or for investment purposes collect these items. Additionally, there is now more talk about presevation of cultural heritage going on now in Bulgaria. #history [SOURCE]

    Longform

    America's legal system at work... for Billionaires

    You know what’s great about #sarcasm? It’s hilarious and it allows us to laugh at terrible things being done by terrible people for terribly stupid reasons. The Legal Eagle seems to agree… or concur or however lawyers prefer to say it. In that spirit, isn’t it also great that America lets geniuses like #ElonMusk take steps to force silly advertisers unwilling to be associated with Hitler and Nazis to pay #Xitter to advertise again? This is, after all, the AmeriKKKan way!

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    politics

    Longform

    Russia's insane revisionist pulp fiction industry

    If you question why the general population of #Russia supports the #war in #Ukraine there’s likely one fact you are unaware of. I certainly knew nothing about this, because it is one of the single most insane methods of #propaganda sponsored by any sovereign state I have ever seen. This is bat shit crazy on steroids, crossed with Cthulhu, and cloned into oblivion. If you know of something more ludicrous and insidious, do let me know. #youtube #video #culture #putin #insane youtu.be/iCI6es9G0…

    Microposts

    Mark my words, #TFG’s numbers will keep dropping and #HarrisWalz will keep going up. Not at the same rate, mind you. Slowly for The Dumpster Fire in Chief and the plateau as his base is just that weird, but steadily for the NKOTB. And The Bestest Florida Man is spiraling, badly. I can’t say there won’t be violence, but we need to be prepared for anything. #uspol #harriswalz2024 #voteblue boingboing.net/2024/08/0…

    Microposts

    The amount of free space in the Mini is a rather egregious waste of case materials and I can easily see #Apple being unwilling to continue to waste resources on manufacturing an unnecessarily large part. #tech #rumor www.macrumors.com/2024/08/0…

    Microposts

    This bizarre trend of taking successful #TV and #film properties and creating #stage and #musical versions is annoying. #Japan is on a huge binge of this very thing, putting all manner of #manga and #anime on stage. I guess I’d have to see it, or is this the death of creativity? #media www.engadget.com/entertain…

    Microposts

    I think it’s really, really important to understand one thing about #TFG; #Trump projects. He’s clearly unstable and he explains to everyone how unstable he is by projecting his faults and fears and issues onto others, in this instance, #Biden, #Harris, and #Walz. If he’s not projecting, he just makes up shit about them, like Harris being the “Border Czar”, a role she has never held. I’m sure he just like’s using a Russian term for her since he’s so deep into #Putin’s pocket he can’t see daylight.

    The only reason you would vote for this guy at this point is if you want to destroy American democracy and see a terrifying number of people harmed, jailed. and/or killed. #harriswalz2024 …

    Microposts

    Well, well, well. Here we are. Another platform, and not for lack of trying to stick one out for a long time. I started with PHPsomething-or-other, migrated to WordPress for years, latched onto PostHaven, then Medium, and now back to PostHaven. Now I’m here because PostHaven feels stagnant. Whee.

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    satire

    Longform

    A list of things that pair well with McDonald's Szechuan Sauce

    httpsiimgflipcom46x3awjpg

    Whilst having a conversation with a friend he wanted to give me a list of foods that would probably taste good with Szechuan sauce. Considering the list itself, I have a feeling that it's not as tasty as he might recall. These are compiled from our talk on the matter over one of the popular (but not too popular) messaging apps:

        •    Giraffe 
        •    Mitochondrial DNA
        •    Rejected chicken nuggets 
        •    Some species of bat
        •    Wallet chains 
        •    Cowboys, either the individuals or the football team 
        •    Melancholy
        •    Grubs 
        •    Piston linkages 
        •    Peat moss
        •    Waffles you found on the bus 
        •    Stephen Hawking
        •    Misplaced dentures
        •    Reading glasses that are too strong
        • …

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    editorial

    featured

    Longform

    I'm done with Microsoft Windows

    As of May 31st, 2024 when Microsoft announced Windows Recall, I have a single physical machine, and no virtual machines, with any version of Windows installed and that will not be changing as long as Microsoft remains on the path they're forged for themselves. The one machine which has Windows 10 is a Dell Venue 8 Pro which needs a dongle to install another operating system, and I need to find the dongle. Once I find the dongle, Windows is gone, gone, gone. Why would I go through so much trouble getting rid of Windows?

    In short, mostly Windows 11 and that I'll have to pay to get support for Windows 10 in October of 2025, but also everything Microsoft is doing now that is clearly anti-consumer. Let's dig into the demonstrable reasons: …

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    apple

    howto

    featured

    Longform

    Mastering the macOS Menu Bar

    I came across the following article on Apple Insider a few days ago and was initially enthused. I'd recently written a quick guide to a freeware tool for the Mac called Spaced and was hoping to find some more gems to get my menu bar under even more control. It turned out to be little more than an advertisement for Bartender, a paid app.

    So, I've decided to write my own guide instead and this post has no paid anything. It's all freeware.

    Using the basic menu bar

    The macOS menu bar already has some in-built functionality for management of the icons added by the system, and many apps add icons to the menu bar upon installation. Let's run through the basics first, then we'll get into adding freeware to help you add some additional functions. …

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    apple

    freeware

    featured

    Longform

    Spaced | macOS Freeware

    I was a Bartender user for a few years. It was quite nice to get a handle on my Mac’s menubar. But I was paying $10 a month for SetApp and access to their library of around 240 applications and utilities. I could have purchased Bartender for $16 instead, but I didn’t. I paid SetApp $240 for two years to end up using about six apps. 

    That's not a value in my book.

    So, I cancelled my subscription and started looking for an alternative, and I found it in the form of Spaced, an entirely free utility available on the App Store. Now, truth be told, Bartender is really nothing more than a menubar management tool that makes it easier to put your icons where you want them (mostly, as there are some restrictions imposed by macOS itself), …

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    capitalism

    dollarnomics

    featured

    Longform

    Save The Web: Advanced Dollarnomics

    In the first part of this series I started last year, I spoke about the idea of Dollarnomics, describing it in some detail. If you want to get the basics of the concept, then you should go read that first. It’s not a long piece and I’ve linked it below. I do outline a few ideas there, but there needs to be some additional context so that you might fully understand the power that I believe resides both in the $1 bill and in the people who are tired of always being on the bottom of the economy, even if you only have a few million dollars in the bank, an amount that is nowhere near as comforting as it was a decade or two ago.

    Saving the Internet for Humanity: Dollarnomics 101

    Here in this second part, I will be outlining how certain groups …

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    Longform

    A writer's prayer

    They always do the same thing, words. They hide away under the folds of my mind, deep in the shadows, keeping as silent as death. My ability to search for them is limited, so I try my best to shine light into those darkened box canyons of brain tissue, but words are not bound by the laws of physics and my feeble light is obscured by a thick fog. The multi-verse is popular these days, so I imagine that words exist in their own pocket universe and they can control when and where the two realities intersect, allowing me to access them again, but only for a short time.

    I try to force myself to create new words when the ones I seek refuse my peace offerings and woeful cries for respite. This piece was born of that method. Here, now, I sit …

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    Longform

    Work arounds because Twitter sucks

    Since Felon Musk has destroyed Twitter, I'm just going to blog a bit like it's Twitter. I blog on PostHaven, which is a wonderful blogging service you should definitely check out if you hate the Technogarchy, would like to adhere to a reasonable budget, and appreciate actual ethics. Here's a short list of the tools I'm using to achieve something of a social media presence:

    • PostHaven - As I said above, it's a blogging service that costs $5 a month and allows for ten blogs, each of which can have it's own personal domain, but by default uses a subdomain of posthaven.com something like Tumblr or Medium. They've committed to building a service that will last at least 100 years and add a sweet twist; if you maintain your account for one year, …
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    apple

    editorial

    Longform

    Apple's Notes cannot be exported, and that's wrong...

    Ok, this is annoying. Apple Notes is a wonderfully capable notes app that allows you to bulk import all manner of rich text file formats, even entire Evernote exports, and organize them the way you like... with one exception. If you want to stop using Notes, you have to leave everything you created in Notes behind, or export them one by one.

    I have over 300 notes.

    This is not only annoying but terribly wrong of Apple. I shouldn't have to explain why. I didn't spend a few thousand dollars on Apple gear to lose control over the data I create. I have personal notes, drafts of articles, detailed project concepts, musings, recipes for loads of gluten-free foods, and a bunch more categories. And now that I'm not using Apple Notes anymore... …

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    television

    movies

    editorial

    featured

    Longform

    How J.J. Abrams broke Star Trek

    Star Trek: The Next Generation 30th Anniversary Print by Dusty Abell, Copyright © 2017, Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. Dusty Abell is a comic artist who has pencilled countless comic books, is an illustrator, and has been involved in the animation industry as a character designer since 2000. He has worked on productions such as Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader, Batman vs. Two-Face, Young Justice, Mike Tyson Mysteries, King of the Hill, The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe for Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, and many, many others.

    The first Star Trek television show, known colloquially as The Original Series, ran from 1966 to 1969. The series, produced by …

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    editorial

    Longform

    Medium's stats are broken, so I left...


    This is my stats page. This is not helpful.

    Much like today’s other causes of cultural constipation such as race relations, government, cold medications, etc., etc., ad nauseam, the page you see above appears functional, but is not.

    Sure, you can click on things and you can see numbers and charts, but none of it is functional to the point where you can derive real, usable data regarding any of the indicated data points.

    Take the chart above for example. The Views chart only shows you how many articles were “viewed”, but not which articles. It’s just a number. The Claps indicate how many times the Clap button was clicked, but not by how many users. You need to click the number of claps (as seen in the image below. Yes, it’s that tiny, …

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    apple

    editorial

    Longform

    Apple's Butterfly keyboard tragedy & potential e-waste disaster


    Without official unit sales numbers from Apple, we have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of these machines are in the wild.

    I am a life-long fan of Apple. Born in ‘68, I grew up in the thick of the consumer electronics and personal computer boom of the late 70's. Keeping to myself at times, loudly evangelistic at others, a shame-free Mac Ex-pat, reluctant Windows user for a decade, and always the staunch critic, my fandom runs deep. From my early experiences with Apple ][e machines, to all of the Macs I’ve had since, and arriving at now with the two Mac Minis on my desk, one an M1 and the other a last-gen Intel model, I have had my most satisfying and productive years on Macs.

    Fortunate for me that I missed Apple’s Butterfly …

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    capitalism

    Longform

    Advertising is dead. Please flush on your way out…


    Ads are almost literally everywhere.

    It is rare, but every once in a while I presume to speak for everyone. It’s not like this is breaking news or a controversial hot-take, either. No need to sit down or get a stiff drink:

    Nobody, but NOBODY likes advertisements… except ad people.

    When I was working IT at Saatchi & Saatchi LA back in the mid-2000’s, Toyota was paying them tens of millions a year to make a handful of splashy national ads. Sure, they were epic, for ads, but all that money floated a five story building bursting with 500 worker bees that would pump out a half dozen ads a year.

    This is the kind of crap SSLA would spend their massive budget on. All this for a 30-second TV spot. This ad was made just before the Great Recession …

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    editorial

    Longform

    I don't like my mechanical keyboard


    The Keychron K5 SE Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard is anything but low profile. It’s also a clicky, sloppy, error-prone mess for a writer who taught himself to touch type using his own system.

    CLACK CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIKTIKTIK… CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIK… AUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!

    Tap tap, goes my Keychron K5 SE. It takes nigh on nothing to press a key, an advantage I’m sure is prized by gamers more rabid and entrenched than myself, but when I’m writing I’m forced to BACKSPACE to repair something that was rendered illegible every third or fourth word. So, I’m typing this review on my Dell tablet PC with a typecover-style input device, and my typing accuracy rockets back up to normal levels.

    I’m a touch typist in the loosest of terms. I taught …

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    apple

    open source

    featured

    Longform

    It’s time to open source MacOS 9: An Open Letter to Tim Cook

    The now legendary Mac OS 9 desktop, a refinement of what came before and the influence for today’s macOS releases. Even to this day, untold thousands, likely tens of thousands, classic Mac OS machines are being used & loved, traded & developed for. [SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons]

    Dear Tim,

    How’ve you been? Good, I hope. I’ve been watching Apple’s events and your production quality is just top notch. Serious kudos to your production team. Gotta love those drone shots and slick transitions :) I’ve also been tracking the transition to Apple Silicon and I’ve been impressed. I got myself an M1 Mini that I’ve very pleased with, so much so I bought one for my wife.

    Having been born in ’68, I was exposed to Apple ][, ][e, and //c machines at school …

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    Longform

    Accelerationism is stupid


    If you think Musk is going to get you to Mars, just check out how he’s been managing Twitter… er, X. This guy’s no genius. Don’t be fooled. Yes, this was made with some dumb AI thing I found.

    A conversation I had with a friend of mine. In addition, the term "Longtermism" has been replaced with Accelerationism. I've updated this piece with some more context at the end.

    > Bryan:
    Late night realizations and insights. I’m afraid that, on my deathbed, I’m going to realize that nobody ever helped me live, they just helped me die.
    No, I’m not suicidal or wanting to die or anything. But I can only imagine that if I ever end up in a hospice and I know I’m going to die, and a kind nurse dispenses me with a lethal dose of morphine — or more likely — …

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    capitalism

    dollarnomics

    featured

    Longform

    Saving the Internet for Humanity: Dollarnomics 101


    Or not…

    The Internet of 2023 sucks.

    Every site, every service, every entree and every destination on the modern Web of today is controlled by corporations. Blood and treasure is expended, our personal data and real money is hoovered up to feed bottomless C-suite salaries…

    While the World Wide Web may be comprised of an endless cavalcade of corporate entities vying for ultimate control, there remains a much, much larger contingent that has yet to stand up and take it’s own power: we average peeps.

    Yup. The rest of us. The rank and file, as it were. The NOT 1% of Americans who just want to get on with life minus all the drama and violence.

    So, within this unpleasant and difficult context, I’d like to offer my thoughts on fixing our ailing …

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    Longform

    A short horse tale | Short Fiction


    MERRY FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS, that’s craaaaaaaazy lookin’! Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

    One day long ago, a horse I was fond of came to me and bit my arm, breaking the skin.

    As blood seeped from the wound I asked, “Why did you bite me.”

    The stallion shook its proud head, stamped its powerful hooves, and whinnied, “Because I can, small human.”

    “That is sad,” I replied.

    The horse said incredulously, “For you maybe, but not for me. Now you ride when I choose. If I choose.”

    “It is sad because I liked you,” I replied, then sprung onto its neck and ripped out its throat with my own teeth, its raging eyes wide with shock and terror. Before the beast could topple over dead, I dropped from the animals neck and stood in the shower of its hot, …