danceswithcrows
@crow202.com
Penguin-head, staff for a house panther, maintain a meme archive at https://crow202.com/2025/ , Farker, SCIENCE!..., whiskey, gyros, beer, and computers. Have snark, will travel.
On Usenet, there was a tradition of putting footnotes[0] like that in a post if you thought of something that was related but divergent[1] to the main topic. Is this vindication or not? (IDK LOL, probably?)
[0] Like this one.
[1] "Get thee gone, and a murrain seize thee!" is a great line though.
[0] Like this one.
[1] "Get thee gone, and a murrain seize thee!" is a great line though.
December 18, 2025 at 12:23 AM
On Usenet, there was a tradition of putting footnotes[0] like that in a post if you thought of something that was related but divergent[1] to the main topic. Is this vindication or not? (IDK LOL, probably?)
[0] Like this one.
[1] "Get thee gone, and a murrain seize thee!" is a great line though.
[0] Like this one.
[1] "Get thee gone, and a murrain seize thee!" is a great line though.
The elephant in the room is that readers are interested in what story an author tells. Neural networks and gigabytes of internet text are not going to deliver a coherent story that comes from a convincing voice any more than I could pick up and throw a cow.
December 18, 2025 at 12:01 AM
The elephant in the room is that readers are interested in what story an author tells. Neural networks and gigabytes of internet text are not going to deliver a coherent story that comes from a convincing voice any more than I could pick up and throw a cow.
paragraphs, there's just too much stuff. The weight of detail and language that good authors write in actual books counts for more than the marketers of educational material are aware of.
December 13, 2025 at 12:00 AM
paragraphs, there's just too much stuff. The weight of detail and language that good authors write in actual books counts for more than the marketers of educational material are aware of.
31 years ago, my college roommate said he didn't want to read and had only read a couple of books in high school. I have no idea how we got along as well as we did, since my inclination is to read everything. Excerpts seem like a terrible solution to me. You can't condense a whole novel to 3
December 13, 2025 at 12:00 AM
31 years ago, my college roommate said he didn't want to read and had only read a couple of books in high school. I have no idea how we got along as well as we did, since my inclination is to read everything. Excerpts seem like a terrible solution to me. You can't condense a whole novel to 3
The default file managers in both Windows and OS X are lacking some useful features. dolphin (KDE's default) allows users to customize the toolbars and can show just the files matching a string. Both things are extremely helpful and easy to learn.
November 23, 2025 at 5:42 PM
The default file managers in both Windows and OS X are lacking some useful features. dolphin (KDE's default) allows users to customize the toolbars and can show just the files matching a string. Both things are extremely helpful and easy to learn.
One wild thing is that one character's paranoid and thinks the government is spying on him. And today, if you use an Android or Apple phone, Google/Apple know more about you than the government could've ever found out with 1970s surveillance.
November 22, 2025 at 11:22 PM
One wild thing is that one character's paranoid and thinks the government is spying on him. And today, if you use an Android or Apple phone, Google/Apple know more about you than the government could've ever found out with 1970s surveillance.
Publish this means on one of your web pages, then put appropriate <meta> keywords on it? Follow up to this post with "search (phrase words) to find means to protect indigenous wisdom!" and Bob's your uncle.
November 19, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Publish this means on one of your web pages, then put appropriate <meta> keywords on it? Follow up to this post with "search (phrase words) to find means to protect indigenous wisdom!" and Bob's your uncle.
Sean (jacksepticeye) does the voice acting for Punch-Up, a supporting character who shows up very early on. So I hope it does well even though it's a Windows-only game.
November 17, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Sean (jacksepticeye) does the voice acting for Punch-Up, a supporting character who shows up very early on. So I hope it does well even though it's a Windows-only game.
little information about "Metalbeast 2" on the internet, which kind of surprises me. Or search engines have become terrible, which does not surprise me very much.
November 17, 2025 at 10:18 PM
little information about "Metalbeast 2" on the internet, which kind of surprises me. Or search engines have become terrible, which does not surprise me very much.
Where's item 19? I've done all of these things except item 20. Parents didn't have a set of encyclopedias; I had to use the ones at the library.
November 9, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Where's item 19? I've done all of these things except item 20. Parents didn't have a set of encyclopedias; I had to use the ones at the library.
Spell check is substituted for copy editing, to save money. So you see things like "They were trying to crack down on heroine dealers" (2011, supposedly professionally published/edited book.) GANs are going to make this worse in the short term.
November 6, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Spell check is substituted for copy editing, to save money. So you see things like "They were trying to crack down on heroine dealers" (2011, supposedly professionally published/edited book.) GANs are going to make this worse in the short term.
A huge factor that keeps people using Windows is that so, so many games are only built for Windows. I use Linux; I can download like roughly 10% of games available on the Steam storefront. Furrfu.
November 2, 2025 at 6:26 AM
A huge factor that keeps people using Windows is that so, so many games are only built for Windows. I use Linux; I can download like roughly 10% of games available on the Steam storefront. Furrfu.
Someone here (probably not even an author, let alone published) said months ago, "Stop drawing maps in your books. That is the behavior of a dog." How do dogs draw maps? And if the book's setting is not Earth, having an idea of the geography is very useful. So draw maps in your books.
October 29, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Someone here (probably not even an author, let alone published) said months ago, "Stop drawing maps in your books. That is the behavior of a dog." How do dogs draw maps? And if the book's setting is not Earth, having an idea of the geography is very useful. So draw maps in your books.
BTDT 21ish years ago, but with an undocumented file format based on TIFF. (TRF, used by the old TypeReader OCR engine.) I almost had it working, but then they canceled the project for political/money reasons.
October 27, 2025 at 7:48 PM
BTDT 21ish years ago, but with an undocumented file format based on TIFF. (TRF, used by the old TypeReader OCR engine.) I almost had it working, but then they canceled the project for political/money reasons.
which was that in basically everything written between 1930 and 1980, most of the characters were constantly smoking cigarettes. I used to smoke—quit in 2006—but every time a character in the book lit up, I tasted tobacco on my breath. Yech. Anyway, back online and 2 weeks behind.
October 27, 2025 at 5:51 PM
which was that in basically everything written between 1930 and 1980, most of the characters were constantly smoking cigarettes. I used to smoke—quit in 2006—but every time a character in the book lit up, I tasted tobacco on my breath. Yech. Anyway, back online and 2 weeks behind.
In many ways, Kull the Conqueror was Robert E. Howard's prototype or first draft for Conan. So it makes sense that they'd share similar themes and/or villains. Still a bit lazy of 1980s movie people though.
October 13, 2025 at 5:35 AM
In many ways, Kull the Conqueror was Robert E. Howard's prototype or first draft for Conan. So it makes sense that they'd share similar themes and/or villains. Still a bit lazy of 1980s movie people though.
You need to have cattle, wheat, and tomatoes involved for most variants of burgers and pizza I know about. TomatoWheatCow™ is still a fictional product in 2025, though Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth invented cultured meat for 1953's The Space Merchants.
October 11, 2025 at 11:56 PM
You need to have cattle, wheat, and tomatoes involved for most variants of burgers and pizza I know about. TomatoWheatCow™ is still a fictional product in 2025, though Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth invented cultured meat for 1953's The Space Merchants.
The Great Slow Kings, a short story Roger Zelazny wrote in 1963, takes place over decades. Some teachers could improve the profession by leaving it.
October 11, 2025 at 4:42 PM
The Great Slow Kings, a short story Roger Zelazny wrote in 1963, takes place over decades. Some teachers could improve the profession by leaving it.
It'd probably run under Wine, given how old the game is. archive.org/details/3-d-... , extracting it followed by "wine Pinball.exe" worked though sound did not—I have a video paused in 1 tab though, should close that and see if it helps.
October 10, 2025 at 4:07 PM
It'd probably run under Wine, given how old the game is. archive.org/details/3-d-... , extracting it followed by "wine Pinball.exe" worked though sound did not—I have a video paused in 1 tab though, should close that and see if it helps.
I read Star Surgeon 40 years ago, it's neat it's public domain in the USA. tl;dr: Humans in the setting developed better medical systems than most aliens and medicine is humanity's hat. Book follows an alien who's trying to become a surgeon, his struggles with prejudice, and his medical career.
October 8, 2025 at 5:39 PM
I read Star Surgeon 40 years ago, it's neat it's public domain in the USA. tl;dr: Humans in the setting developed better medical systems than most aliens and medicine is humanity's hat. Book follows an alien who's trying to become a surgeon, his struggles with prejudice, and his medical career.