I made a unix time converter in QBasic pastebin.com/HNDdhEpk

Does a mathematical model constitute an understanding of a phenomenon, or is it just a description of it? When we find an object with the same structure that we observe, we're essentially making an analogy. The two things look alike. It is the observation restated. #philosophy

<< Left Shift >> Right Shift <_< Left Shifty >_> Right Shifty

Things will always be bit shorter or a bit longer than the measuring stick. The measuring stick is the only thing that's just right.

There is this tendancy to idealise the "average" and reject the "fringes" of a population. When we formulate such ideals, we must be careful not to end up with a harmful "one size fits all" model, that fails to recognise when a population consists of two or more natural subsets.

What if ethics and the long term survival of a species are mutually exclusive? Ethics imposes a restriction on what can/can't be done, which would affect how a species develops over a long period of time. Perhaps steering the ship of evolution along a dead-end path.

while staring at this X, thinking about the symbolism, and elon's goals for his everything app, i'm reminded of Tolkien's warning about the "homogeneity of evil". i don't think i want to be part of a digital isengard. because that's what i foresee.

Advertising makes people believe they need something, which they don't really need. But not all advertising is commercial. Some is social, where people feel a need to imitate what they see around them, and become part of a growing trend. Minds are impressionable.

All reasonable ideas can be questioned. Any idea that is forbidden from being questioned has become a religion.

our lives are little more than a coastline being eroded by the ocean waves

I read that off-the-shelf software is only ever an 80% fit to a problem. It requires a good bit of hammering into shape. Pareto principle says how the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the work. Therefore, getting an 80% fit is easy to achieve from scratch, relatively speaking.

I woke up this morning wondering if fonts/typefaces will become an outdated design concept in the near future. There's no place for ostentatious design as we strive for greater uniformity. And what would be the benefit of using anything other than the one most legible typeface?

How to fix Amiga stereo separation While listening to some Amiga musics today, I've ended up working out some maths/electronics for adjusting hard stereo separation -- pastebin.com/XxyNPuUZ

Power exists like a bubble: A region of capability, surrounded by an expanse of unyielding. Constrained by a boundary between what it can/can't do. Except this boundary region is fuzzy, like a labyrinth or fractal edge, that Power can push into via good strategy, or good luck.