Jon Shell

There has been a lot of chirping from the peanut gallery recently about Algebra being of no use in everyday life. I'm here to show you otherwise. Take today's power outage for example.

To calculate the length of the power outage, we write a simple equation in x:

x = current_time - time_on_oven_clock
x = 2.44 - 11.55
x = -9.11 hours.

I hope you can all see how applicable this ancient and venerable science is, even today!

@HayiWena@mastodon.online great job on citizen engagement and civic responsibility.

Town meetings really bring out the ignorant ones with poorly informed axes to grind.

Getting forward movement in backward towns requires more effort than most people realize. It’s just so hard.

The deli counter model works great in a classic producer/consumer idiom -- take a number, wait for someone to call you over. If you get bored and go to get some ice cream while you were waiting and they call your number and you aren't there, well you go to the back of the queue.

Charger vendors to acknowledge these problems are happening now, and they need to solve them.

As Alan Tudyk said so eloquently in Resident Alien, this is some kind of bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6oUs5TQa-U

FIN

If you thought people watching video on their cell phones without earplugs was bad, wait until you have to negotiate a place in line at a busy fast charger.

Back in early 2025 I wrote up my experiences renting EVs from Hertz. At the time, one of my observations was that queuing at busy locations was largely cordial, but had the potential for trouble as demand [inevitably] grew beyond capacity.

(https://www.thejubjubbirds.com/hit-and-run-on-the-energy-transition-highway/renting-evs-so-you-dont-have-to)

At a popular grocery nearby, there are about ten Tesla chargers.

🧵 1/5

I have a new Windows 11 laptop. (Long story, no choice, long time Fedora user have dozens of Linux machines, decades of sysadmin experience)

I find myself needing to create a number of directories. I search various search engines for the shortcut key.

All results are garbage.

I ask ChatGPT. “Ctrl-Shift-N”

This is some kind of bullshit. We absolutely need workable search engines. A searchable internet is a vital public infrastructure need. We cannot abdicate this service to LLMs. .

Regretfully i have had to switch to requiring follow requests.

Some new followers have been using my open follow setting to flood my timeline.

If you’re a like-minded soul, you’ll have no problem with this I feel.

For those of you critiquing my basic mathematics skills by claiming that the outage time was in fact 14.44 - (12.00-11.55), which is 3.00 hours, I should point out I was using the Non-Euclidean Temporal Displacement formula, which better captures the subjective truth of how it feels to be without power in the modern world.

Power outage today. Came back from walking Chico the dog at noon. House was strangely quiet. Thinking nothing of it I go to get the dog’s lunch out of the fridge. Turn on the light … nothing. Check the microwave clock - blank. Open the fridge - dark. Slowly realize no power.

Power comes back and i hear devices waking up. , How much background noise we live with!

Sounds of things coming alive again. Roomba: “Charging”. Fridge: “gurgle gurgle”. Laser printer: “whirrbrrt”. Dog: “Harrrumph”

Just wanted to put in a good word for the folks at Oglaf, who write some of the smartest comic social commentary I've ever seen.

Grown-up stuff though, so if you're a prude maybe just keep strolling.

But so, so clever. Be sure to read the tooltips.

https://www.oglaf.com/

Struggling with an iOS update. Phone has ~15 of 64Gb free. Update needs 18Gb. No easy way to free another 3Gb, apart from removing music, for which I use Doppler, which is excellent. #doppler

If my photos are mirrored to the "cloud" then why can't I have my app data mirrored? (rhetorical).

If my app data were treated as offloadable, in the same way the app binaries are, iOS update could simply offload a bunch of apps+appdata, install the update then put them back, leaving me with 15Gb.

RE: @forteller@tutoteket.no

Great work over at crowdsupply.com on an open source/repairable printer. An obviously useful device, simple and maintainable.

When you look at the design, you can see how hard incumbent printer manufacturers have been working at lock-in. Consider the many (many!) fights we've had over the years to get inkjets to be less predatory.

#OpenPrinter #oshw #repairable #repairReuseRecycle

@failedLyndonLaRouchite@mas.to I feel your frustration. I have broken more Bodum carafes than I care to count. Wife got me a stainless double-wall carafe but with a different design deficiency- the handles of the carafe and the plunger are made of wood.

handles not removable so no dishwasher.

Never mind that the threads of the plunger attachment stripped after about six months. I just took one of my old plastic Bodum plungers and used that instead, and that *is* dishwasher-able.