Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

Incidentally, yes, obviously it is also an ethical abomination. But you know that, I know that, and everyone reading this knows that, so there's no point in repeating it.

(If you don't know that, please stop reading immediately, unsubscribe, go home, and rethink your everything.)

You get to say slavery taught people valuable skills *if* you're, say, Roman, 'cause the Romans knew how to exploit people *efficiently* and it was part of how.

You definitely *don't* if you're a Confederacy apologist, because their form of slavery excelled at cruelty, malice, and general fuckheadry while simultaneously being pure goddamn shit at the actual exploitation part.

(Smells like Dark Kantianism, but is probably just our special kind of literally incredibly stupid.)

Hypothesis: the more you know about economics, the more likely you are to filter-drop all posts containing the word "capitalism" and never look back.

#WritingWonders 22/7: Does the MC cause drama or resolve it within the friend group?

The latter, mostly. Jynne's very calming. It's probably all that deescalation training coming out in day to day life.

That said, if there's something festering that needs to be brought into the light, she'll do it. They *also* trained her in when to stop and selectively *escalate*, too. Mostly you need a bandage, but sometimes you need a scalpel.

But I will then say "So pick a different substitute character that doesn't have any syntactic significance in filenames so it can be freely auto-replaced with merry abandon."

Tilde. Logical not. Butt-scratching emoji. Non-breaking Unicode general fuckery character. I don't care. Just not the period.

Now there are those who will say, "But Alistair, using spaces in a filename is inconvenient, because you have to quote the filename or escape the spaces when using it at the command line."

And I will grudgingly accept this argument, although your shell sucks.

In things that annoy me to an unreasonable degree:

Using periods to replace spaces in filenames.

It's 2023! There is not a single filesystem in use outside a goddamn museum that cannot accept the humble space as a valid character in a filename! STOP DOING PERIODS.

I was amused to discover that medical billing has given us an ICD-10 code for "patient sucked into jet engine... second or subsequent time", but I really, *really* want to know the story behind "legal intervention involving bayonet, suspect injured".

I mean, I knew transfers of inappropriate military equipment to the police were out of control, but *bayonets*?

Bayonets.

For those curious, I'm not just smeerping coffee, here. (See https://eldraeverse.com/2016/04/05/trope-a-day-drink-order/ .) It doesn't have an exact Earth analog, due to their greenlife and Earth-life having parted ways around 360,000 years ago or so ( https://eldraeverse.com/2022/11/02/origins/ ).

#WritingWonders July 21: What is your MC's drink of choice?

Morrí: "She drinks esklav. Constabulary esklav. Like a walking cliché."

Jynne: "It's just esklav."

Morrí: "Normal esklav isn't blacker than a singularity's ass, so stiff with sugar and stims that they precipitate out at the bottom, and most importantly, doesn't _stain_ like that. Or corrode spoons."

Jynne: "It does if you make it right!"

#eldraeverse

For lovers of #movies in #wichita, please consider this --

https://chng.it/8k4YRXgH47

So, rebuilding our media collection after losing those hard drives in the raid, the only thing so far I haven't been able to track down a copy of so far is _Blake's 7_ .

You know, the show whose protagonists are resisting an authoritarian government?

...dear Fortuna, you have no sense of _subtle_ irony at all.

Holy shit, the American banking system may be finally lurching out of the nineteenth century!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/banks-serving-as-guinea-pigs-for-federal-reserves-instant-payments-system/

(Also, that if what you really mean by it is "This is an area in which you should always take the normatively correct action," well, that's all areas, always, forever and a day... and it's *still* ethics.)

Against Political Syndrome - https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/p/against-political-syndrome?sd=pf

In which I argue that actually, most things aren't political. They're just important.

#WritingWonders July 20: Secondary character PoV: what's the biggest sacrifice you're ready to make for the MC?

Morrí shrugs.

"My life, obviously. Just as she'd do for me. We're sentinels. It says it right there in the service oath.

( https://eldraeverse.com/2022/05/29/service/ )

"Of course, people say that's an easy promise to make, given how hard permadeath is to inflict these days. But no-one passes out of the Academy without being tested on that point, and believing it real."

#eldraeverse

The worst part of having to rebuild anything technical from scratch is the middle period in which, when things don't work, you don't know if you're having old, lame-ass errors or new, exciting errors, am I right?

The Day We Were Raided By The Feds -

https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-happened?sd=pf

(I wrote this up to attach to the yard sign mentioned in previous toots with a QR code, and have something to pin to avoid telling the story over again.)