As much as I was happy to get away from being tied to posting every single day, I think it's becoming apparent that if I don't set myself some sort of rules, this place is just going to go to pot. At this point, I'm thinking once per week. Or more accurately, once per weekend. Starting now.
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Hmmm, well, I spent most of my week editing old Perl scripts and spreadsheet macros, which is a pretty shit job, and doesn't really leave you with much to talk about. Oh, hang on; I did see one thing that was kind of interesting. As somebody who frequents tech-help forums, I'm used to seeing ads that are targeted at lonely men, but there was this one ad for Russian mail-order brides, I noticed, which featured a bunch of models with freakishly tiny waists. So, is that a thing now, like how giant lips were a thing fifteen years ago, or was it just one ad? Are tiny feet going to make a comeback too?
Anyway, at least I didn't have to put up with rellies staying at my place this week, which was a nice change. Unfortunately, I got a call from my folks this afternoon, telling me they're coming to stay for a few days next week. Bloody hell. I seriously need to think about getting a bigger place. They also made sure I knew about the rock-melon related listeria outbreak, and informed me that the neighbour of my aunt/uncle/cousins who run cattle out near the QLD/NT border, just committed suicide. They've been out there for four generations, and apparently the water levels are the lowest they've ever seen them. As much as I miss living in the country, I'm really fuckin' happy that I never married a farmer. I doubt I have the strength to run a business that's completely and utterly at the mercy of the weather like that. It also makes me think that there's certain industries that you don't want to simply leave in the hands of the free market. Listeria aside, the last think I wanna be doing is relying on fuckin' food imports.
Aside from that, I haven't been paying attention to the news too much; but I did hear something about Michaelia Cash accusing Bill Shorten of conducting multiple affairs with staff members. How far do you reckon this is going to escalate?
Also, here's something depressing; I was thinking about the term "post-truth world" the other day, and it finally clicked as to what that actually means. At some point, there's going to be so much rubbish on the internet, that no matter what opinion you hold on whatever topic, there's going to be a mountain of "evidence", "expert testimony", and "peer-reviewed science" available at your finger-tips to back up your position. Think vaccines are safe? Here's a mountain of evidence that supports that position. Think vaccines cause autism? There's a mountain of evidence that supports that position too. Think vaccines are a plot by the government to weaken the population so that the socialists can take over? You're covered there as well. Facts will be in such plentiful supply that everybody will get to be right about everything all the time. You've got ten experts you can point to that say I'm wrong? Well, I've got twenty experts I can point to that say I'm right. What a brave new world we're all going to be living in, eh?
7 comments :
I think freakishly tiny waists have been a thing for a long while (think corsets!) But maybe the people who make the flyers have just cottoned on to using Photoshop or something?
IT question: those old box type PCs - would they still work with today's internet and software?
Re: post-truth, it's scary how similar all the info is too. Most times it's a copy of a copy of a copy - simulacra or what
I.T.
More info required, I'm afraid. What kind of "box type" PCs are you talking about? How old are they? Where'd they come from? What's in them?
Are you just talking about an old PC in a tower case that you used to run XP on? If so, you might struggle to get Windows 10 running on it. There are, however, Linux distributions that are specifically geared towards running on old computers. You'd have to come to terms with running Linux though. Not that that's such a terrible thing. I do it every day.
WAISTS
That's what I'm getting at. The super-freaky tiny waist look you get from wearing corsets went out of vogue, like, a hundred years ago, didn't it? Is it coming back? Even if it was Photoshop, why would they do it if they didn't think it would appeal to people? Maybe they just overdid it. But if that's the case, you'd think the boobs would've been freakishly big too.
TRUTH
I was listening to a thing the other day about "circular reporting". It's where you write a bunch of news articles and submit them to a bunch of obscure/foreign/crappy news publications; then you promote those news articles on social media; then, when big legitimate news publications pick up your stories, you can leverage the legitimacy of those news publications to give legitimacy to your version of events. Basically, it's a means of manufacturing your own sources.
Did you know there's even alternate versions of Wikipedia out there that have been modified to make them "more factual", mostly in relation to political and scientific articles. I think the biggest one's called "Intergalactic", or something like that. Imagine what it's going to be like when machine-learning gets good enough that computers can rewrite news articles, scientific papers, etc, and alter them ~just~ enough to change the information people get from them. It'll be the industrialised, factory-level production of facts. The Truth Machine!
I mean like a box computer with a screen on it
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT
I don't think tiny waists have ever gone out of vogue. Just ask the control knicker industry!
No, I didn't know - yikes, all very Orwellian
Yikes, the computer in that Wikipedia article you linked to was manufactured between 1983-1987. That predates graphical environments. I can't see you having much luck with something that old, I'm afraid.
Running something like that, even for historical purposes, is getting into dedicated hobbyist territory. Like those people who do up cars from the 1920s.
OK - thanks. Just for my ms - two characters who haven't moved with the times. They need computers but I wanted them to be outdated. Maybe not that outdated then!
I dunno how realistic you want to get or how much you want to stretch things for comedic effect (and also how much time you wanna spend on research), but I'd look at the Intel Pentium range as like a basic timeline.
Believable realistic, I'd say and Intel Pentium 4 running Window XP. Stretching things for comedy, I'd say a Pentium 2 running Windows 95 or 98.
Hope that helps.
Yes, it does - thanks!
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