fptp

First Past The Post, as opposed to e.g. proportional representation or whatever. It’s how US elections work. Other countries have other systems.

I’m pessimistic, so I constantly get pleasant surprises when things turn out better than I expect. It’s nice.

There’s a story about Isaac Asimov’s mother Anna Asimov. It’s in one of Isaac’s many autobiographies. Anna and her husband Judah Asimov immigrated to the US from Russia around 1920 and worked very hard operating a candy store in New York while raising Isaac and his siblings. Isaac eventually became a famous author. After Isaac’s parents were finally able to retire, Anna (still with her Russian accent and not-so-great English after all those years) decided to take a creative writing class at the local college. The stories she handed in had grammar and spelling errors like you’d expect, but they had inventive plots, interesting characters, and so on.

At the end of the semester, the instructor complimented her on her work, and asked her if she was related to Isaac Asimov, who by then was quite well known. “Yes, he is my dear son”, she replied. “Oh! No wonder you’re such a good writer”, the instructor said. “Ha!”, responded Anna. “You mean, no wonder he is such a good writer.”

Anyway, it’s never too late. I’ll see myself out.

Don’t bother with any of those in-your-head translations. Just erase the English from your brain and speak Polish directly. If you forget a word, look it up if you have to, then use it. After you’ve used it a few times, it will stick. Polish is pretty hard though, from what I can tell. Even Hungarian is easier.

Unpopular opinion: it’s hard to beat youtube.

If none of the online and similar stuff works, it might be time for the family to file a missing person report. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agre about a guy who disappeared like that. He was eventually confirmed to be ok, but had apparently decided to go off the map for personal reasons.

There was also a medical researcher whose name I’ve forgotten, who also went dark iike that. Her family eventually found her and she said oh, she hadn’t been up to much, and just didn’t realize that anyone was looking for her. She did some well known work connecting allergies with cancer but I haven’t been able to identify her through a few web searches. Anyone remember?

Added: aha, found. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margie_Profet

See also: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201205/the-mysterious-case-the-vanishing-genius

Added 2: Oh my, I didn’t know the whole story. Profet apparently had physical and mental health issues, possibly schizophrenia, and she gradually pulled away from people who knew her, rather than suddenly vanishing. After she had been missing for years, the article above found its way to her and she contacted her family. IDK what if anything she has been doing since then, but she appears to still be around. She reminds me a bit of John Forbes Nash, mathematician who was the subject of the book and movie “A Beautiful Mind”. https://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces-reunites-with-family.html

I’ve bought most of mine on craiglist but either way you sort of have to know what you’re doing. I’d say just sort by price and scroll through the results in the range you want to pay. You might also filter on “within 25 miles” or whatever, and get a unit that you can pick up in person. Or at least, try to talk to the person on the phone to get a sense that they know what it is that they are selling.

Thinkpads forum is still around and has a forsale section. It has slowed down but is still active:

https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewforum.php?f=11

I’ve bought stuff from there in the distant past.

My sister has a 13 inch ipad and it’s a nice size, 14" should be fine. I have some doubts about the big Lenovo though. My main interest is reading full page PDFs so anything less than 14" will be annoying. Ok I’ll give it more thought. Laptop prices are going to go up because of the dram shortage too. Sigh.

Thanks, it is kind of intriguing though I keep telling myself to just use normal Linux stuff instead of Android. I’d want the 14 inch one which is around $300. Is there any trouble installing F-droid and apps from there?

Alternatives I’m thinking of include Lenovo Yoga laptop (16 inch) and a Raspberry Pi thing with an HDMI monitor (that would be plug-in only but I mostly read at home).

Just run your own blog. There are various ways to incorporate federated comments.

For literary fiction, machine translation is near worthless. For tech stuff and maybe some nonfiction, it can be usable with some human cleanup. But ideally you can do the machine translation on your own computer if that’s what you want.

$25 is too much for a used 1gb pi 3. A new pi 5 with 1gb is $45 and way better. But, most ppl start with a vps.

I see, yeah there is something about it in the blurb. How do you like the tablet? Is it responsive? Is it full of Android bloatware? Do you know if it is rootable?

I see there is a 14 inch version that’s about $300 and that starts to get interesting. It’s not “2nd gen” though. And, I had thought of TCL as a lower tier manufacturer with quality issues, but I hadn’t looked into it much.

I like that the tablet has an SD (probably microSD) slot. Don’t like that there’s no headphone jack. There’s plenty of space in those things compared to a phone.

If anyone was wondering: https://www.tcl.com/us/en/products/mobile/tcl-tab/nxtpaper-11-gen2

11 inch display with 60 hz refresh, but it sounds like regular lcd rather than e-ink? It has an 8000mah battery that it says can run the tablet through a full day, so that’s nothing like an epaper tablet. It sounds more like a drawing tablet, as it has a pressure sensitive pen.

Anyway, I’ve been using Librera FD for reading epubs on Android. Its blurb mentions annotations but I’ve never tried that feature.

I have an Inkplate 10 e-paper tablet but haven’t been using it.

I didn’t realize Hetzner had referral codes. I see https://www.hetzner.com/legal/referrals and think I qualify but am not sure. I’ll see what I can do.

Yes Hetzner has virtual networks. I don’t know how similar they are to AWS or GCP. You should probably check the docs before signing up

Also for cheap processing power, you’re better off with an auction dedi than with their cloud stuff. See hetzner.com/sb . But, I think the referral codes don’t work for that. Also, all the dedi hardware is in EU. US stuff is cloud only.

Added: ok, I have a referral link and will PM it to you.

At minimum there should be a good description of what the video is about, with no clickbait.

Violent aggression per se (carrying around a big club and using it to bonk anyone who put up resistance) hasn’t worked in quite a while. These days it’s more propaganda.

apt install gitit

Aren’t there already tons of these already? Piwik has been around for a quite a while, plus there are others mentioned in the comments.

Web search shows max CPU power for that unit is 65W. I was thinking of something more power hungry.