ℝeallyℝadley

Wow. I answered a question about green versus amber phosphors in character-cell VDTs (video display terminals) this morning, and it reminded me of something I've mused about before. The way some technologies seem eternal at the time you're used to them, only to disappear with startling speed. The era of character-cell VDTs ran from about 1973 to about 1992. That was the age of the terminal room - ranks of terminals connected to big time-sharing machines. I was there for basically all of it. For some years I was even the maintainer of the Unix master database of terminal capabilities. It seemed like a time that would never end - we thought it was the natural final form of computing. We could barely imagine pixel displays and powerful computers becoming so cheap that everybody could have one to themselves. I mean yes, we knew about wokstations, and about personal microcomputers starting in the late 70s. But if you were in the subculture of the terminal rooms you thought the workstations were impossibly expensive and the personal micros were underpowered toys. And until the 386 first shipped in the late 1980s you weren't wrong. But it happened. Moore's Law had its way. VDTs were replaced by inexpensive PCs driving bit-mapped displays. What's bemusing me now is realizing that it's been longer since the end of the VDT era than the pseudo-eternity of the VDT era itself lasted. Today I have three huge pixel displays on my personal machine that would have seemed like delirious magic in those days. Maybe we don't appreciate that enough.

Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities - so long as they do it under the guise of “partisanship” rather than explicit “racial bias.” And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach. The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers - not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

if you were put on a moral trial today, could you defend yourself?

yes, it's definitely the case that all my enemies are subhuman freaks and it's definitely not my own tribal wiring or the fact that every piece of information i receive from the internet is presented to me according to its engagement potential

I had no idea this was still the party line at the NYT, simply incredible

By a wide margin, the people who say "We need to address what happened during Covid" is on the right and, by a similar margin, the people who say "stop talking about that, no one cares, stop investigating things, nothing happened, I'm not listening, la la la" is on the left

new roommate unlocked

I'll take any excuse to talk about the Moche and adjacent cultures of Precolumbian South America It's amazing how bad society can get and how it can persist in horror