Scorellis

@DisneyPlus 30% rate hike? I'm not mad about $20. I'm mad about 30%. We're keeping the subscription, but no more trips to Disney. You just traded $20 for $200k. Good job. #done #noMore #BoycottDisney

I really don’t mind all the commercials before every single video on @YouTube . But do you know what I do now? Whenever a commercial disruptively (never at a clean break point) interrupts a video, I just leave. Exit the app. Find something else to do.

@jperdomo900 iZombie?

Trust is a must but turns to dust when stomachs began to growl

@SQLHA do you still reply to #sqlhelp? I have a question about Failover Cluster DNN IP address and DNS requirements

I know I have been largely silent on most platforms. Life has been busy and I have just not had time. More blogging, posting here and elsewhere will happen soon ...

@chrisdaleoxford Great movie. Alec Guinness was freaking genious

It will get a bit 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' here if the Tories scrap Inheritance Tax and Labour promises to restore it. There will be only a narrow window for people to encourage elderly relatives to shuffle off before Labour gets in

@pmarca I want to fight you. Do you even remember Jim Snellen? I don’t know, maybe it wasnt you. Maybe I worked for someone else at NCSCA. It was 1992

FIGHTING At a private conference this week, I was asked what I think of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) training, Elon Musk’s challenge to a cage fight, and public reports that a Zuckerberg/Musk MMA fight may well happen later this year, perhaps in the actual Roman Colosseum. I said, “I think that’s all great.” And in this post I explain why. First, while the extraordinary Dana White and his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have elevated MMA into a highly popular public sport over the last 20 years, it’s important to understand how important – how primal – MMA is in the story of our civilization. MMA is the original combat sport – it was introduced to the actual Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC (!). The Greeks called it “pankration” (παγκράτιον), but it is the same thing – a combination of boxing and wrestling. To quote Wikipedia: “In Greek mythology, the heroes Heracles and Theseus invented pankration as a result of using both wrestling and boxing in their confrontations with opponents. Theseus was said to have used pankration to defeat Cercyon of Eleusis in a wrestling match, as well as the minotaur in the labyrinth. Heracles was depicted in ancient artworks subduing the Nemean lion using pankration.” “Pankration, as practiced in historical antiquity, was an athletic event that combined techniques of both boxing and wrestling, as well as additional elements, such as the use of strikes with the legs, to create a fighting sport similar to [MMA]. Although knockouts were common, most pankration competitions were decided on the basis of submission – yielding to a submission or joint lock. Pankratiasts were highly skilled grapplers and were extremely effective in applying a variety of takedowns, chokes and joint locks.” “However, pankration was more than just an event in the athletic competitions of the ancient Greek world; it was also part of the arsenal of Greek soldiers – including the famous Spartan hoplites and Alexander the Great's Macedonian phalanx.” If the hair on the back of your neck isn’t going up as you read this… MMA isn’t just a sport, it’s the sport. And today, like then, it has not only sporting elements but also real world utility. I’ll come back to that. I was also asked whether I consider Mark and Elon to be role models to children in their embrace of fighting, and I said, enthusiastically, yes. And I further recommended to the audience that they have their children trained in MMA, as my wife and I are. Kids as young as 8 and maybe even younger are totally capable of learning both the striking and grappling dimensions of the sport. MMA teaches not just combat skills – and it does teach those – but also discipline, emotional control, respect, and a deep sense of responsibility. The message to kids is not, this is how you beat people up. The message is, this is how you protect yourself – and as important, this is how you protect your family, your friends, your community. You use these combat skills in the service of others – you never start a fight, but when someone is threatening someone you love, or even an innocent bystander, this is how you end a fight. To a lot of people, this sounds like a message out of time. Surely in the modern world, one would never need to protect oneself or one’s family with actual interpersonal physical violence? I would love for that to be the case, but unfortunately, the world is evolving in such a way where that is becoming less true every day. Many of the biggest and most important cities in the United States have decided they don’t need law enforcement, and street level violence is on the rise, as anyone in those cities with functional eyes can see. People get attacked in the street, or in carjackings and home invasions, daily, in plain sight, and little to nothing happens. It’s terrible, but it’s true. And so, yes, if there aren’t going to be police to protect you and your loved ones from real world violent assault, there is a practical need to know applied self defense. And hand-to-hand fighting – MMA – is the core self defense skill. Another benefit of MMA training, for both children and adults, is physical fitness. We all know our culture is in the grip of an obesity crisis – according to the CDC, “Obesity in the United States now affects 100.1 million (41.9%) adults and 14.7 million (19.7%) children.” This is a terrible situation that curses people to shorter and unhappier lives. President John F Kennedy saw this coming in his time (!): “We are underexercised as a nation. The remedy, in my judgment, lies in one direction. That is in developing programs for broad participation in exercise by all of our young men and women, all of our boys and girls. The sad fact is that our national sport is not playing at all, but watching. We have become more and more, not a nation of athletes but a nation of spectators. There are more important goals than winning contests — and that is to improve on a broad level the health and vitality of all our people.” We did not listen to him in the decades that followed, but we can now. MMA training is likely the best path for widespread gains in physical fitness, particularly for children. MMA training itself is both effective exercise and motivates one to improve one’s strength and endurance. And not just in the abstract, as a pointless hamster wheel process, but for a purpose – to win fights. Finally, consider the combination of physical fitness and the ability to defend one’s loves. The result is self-respect – not the self-respect of armchair therapy and wishful thinking, but real self-respect, the earned realization that one is strong and useful and of merit, and of value. Skilled fighters carry themselves differently, and this is why. In our present time, where many young people are suffering from anxiety, depression, and what can only be described as anomie – again, from the Greek, ἀνομία, “lawlessness”, a collapse in the code of expected adult behavior – what could be better than a return to earned self-respect? One more thing: Lest this be taken for some kind of gendered argument, let me say clearly that I think MMA is just as useful and relevant for young girls as it is for young boys. So yes – I think it’s great that MMA is the rising American national sport, that Mark is training so hard in it (and getting jacked), that Elon, a past martial arts aficionado in his own right, is challenging Mark to a fight, and that both Mark and Elon are top-end role models for children in our society, including my own – whether they end up fighting in the Colosseum or not! If it was good enough for Heracles and Theseus, it’s good enough for us. Fight!

Not sure if #sqlhelp is still a thing, but if anyone has a really awesome rate metric up their sleeve, I’d love to hear about it. And please don’t say batches or transactions per second. They don’t work for us

@RandySevy Killing the planet, one plastic bag at a time. You probably drink your soda with two straws, too. I know, because #jesustoldmeso #humor #thisisjustajoke #DontForgive

So I am at Walmart scanning and bagging my almost $300 worth of groceries while the employee "monitors" and then this happened. Her - why are you double bagging all of your groceries? Me - excuse me? Her - you are wasting our bags! Me - if you don't like the way I'm bagging the groceries, feel free to come on over here and bag them yourself. Her - that's not my job! Me - okay, then I will bag my groceries how I please if that's all right with you. Her - why are you using two bags?! Me - because the bags are weak and I don't want the handles to break or the bottoms to rip out. Her - well that's because you are putting too much stuff in the bag. If you took half of that stuff out and put it in a different bag then you wouldn't need to double bag. *10 seconds of me just staring at her. Me - so you want me to split these items in half and put half of them in a different bag so that I don't have to double bag. Her - exactly. Me - so I would still be using two bags to hold the same number of items. Her - no because you wouldn't be double bagging. *me pressing two fingers to my left eye in an attempt to make it stop twitching. Me - okay so here I have a jug of milk and a bottle of juice double bagged. If I take the milk out and remove the double bagging and just put the milk in the single bag and the juice in that single bag I'm still using two bags for these two items. Her- no because you are not double bagging them so it's not the same number of bags. *me looking around at about 10 other customers who at this point are enjoying the show. Me- is this like that Common Core math stuff I keep hearing about? Her- never mind you just don't get it. And with that, she went back to her little Podium so she could continue texting or playing games on her phone or whatever it was she was doing before she decided to come over and critique my bagging skills

@ElonMuskAOC You literally spent 43.999999999 billion too much. You don’t get that, though.

I spent $44 billion for this app and now Lizard boy just decided to hit copy and paste. It’s personal now. See you in the cage, Zuck.

@HomeDepot 2/2 equip everyone with a POS. Lock up everything high value. Everyone is a cashier. Every employee.

@HomeDepot free idea for you: instead of having someone escort me to checkout because you are afraid I’ll steal the power washer after they unlock it, make me pay for it right there, before they unlock it. Face facts: if I’m a bad guy, you are endangering your employees.

@Nova2127u @PitandPendulum5 @GovGianforte Right? how the heck do they think they will enforce that? Oh wait - by spying on you and local police breaking down your doors and taking your computers when they catch you sharing a link to something. This is just another way to advance the police state that repuglicants want

@PitandPendulum5 @GovGianforte Yeah unfortunately when you have people in their 60s running the government, they're usually stuck in the past and can't understand technological advancements. And a law is only as good as it is enforced, and I have seriously high doubts they can enforce this even if it stays.

To protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok in Montana.

@geo_walters @JoJoFromJerz My grandfather worked in a factory. Thank Hod for open borders. I wrIte code and work from home #COYOTE

Tell me, I’m serious, explain it to me like I’m 5… why the hell would ANYONE vote for a Republican at this point? Why!?! I don’t understand.

On the bright side, @elonmusk , at least I can sell all my Tesla stock in this years round of tax-loss harvesting. The loss is big enough to cover most of my capital gains. #goodbye

Mastodon, here I come. If you are headed there, look me up, I am Scorellis

@elonmusk @eltonofficial Damn @eltonofficial : he kinda got ya there. You should at least answer the question. Otherwise…you look kinda sus

@eltonofficial I love your music. Hope you come back. Is there any misinformation in particular that you’re concerned about?

All my life I’ve tried to use music to bring people together. Yet it saddens me to see how misinformation is now being used to divide our world.   I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter, given their recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked.

@ScottWalker And yet, there they all are…

There is no room in the conservative movement for anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and racists. Period.

@christchurch_IL the bell chimes 12 times at 11 am this morning. Last week it rang 39 times but Kirchner it was at 10 am. Is there any reason to how many times you ring your bell? Like, how many days until Christmas or something. ~Your Neighbor to the Northwest #justcurious

@elonmusk So was my aunt after we took her off of life support. For like, a week. She just laid there, breathing whole family and friends gathered around to say their goodbyes. #goodbye

Twitter is ALIVE

@datachick Then how will we know what he is up to?