Viewing profile — DavidAdams

There are also a lot of nicknames for Margaret (Marge, Madge, Maggie, etc), I guess because there just aren't nearly as many biblical names for women/girls so people wanted to get …

A "bodkin," an archaic word for a small knife or sharp implement, is probably a diminutive of "bod" or dagger. A "jerkin" or a tight vest, might be a diminutive of the Dutch "jerk,…

For me, the interesting takeaway from this article is that CompuServe started as a way for a big insurance company to monetize its idle computing capacity in the off hours.

The word evade has a specific meaning in English, implying avoidance by trickery. And it has a specific legal meaning, which is knowingly bending or breaking the law. They are not …

I'm sure that has a lot to do with the close physical proximity of the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay.

Let's say you're a well-to-do citizen of Pakistan. There are only 11 countries you can travel to without going through visa bureaucracy (and they're not a whos-who of global commer…

Yes, famous haver of factual allegations, Elon Musk. LOL.

If you don't have the right to hold up a sign saying whatever you want on land that you own, it's a serious limitation on your free speech. So while I think it's reasonable to plac…

This story prompted me to look into my email archives and I found an email thread from 2002 about how I accentually sent one of my own DVDs back in the Netflix envelope, and we had…

I think it's worth mentioning that a nice Nikon or Leica in 1965 would have cost about $400. So they modified a "cheap" camera that cost about 1/10th the price of a "nice" camera.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a 2D map is going to have roads and valleys and big green spaces in the mountainsides and peaks. The neural net identifies that vil…

I think the point of the article is that monospaced fonts, or near-monospaced, are good for production (writing), though arguably proportional fonts are better for consumption (rea…

That stupid smooth sharks meme has been taking up space in my brain all these years that could be used for remembering my wedding anniversary, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You better think. Think about what you're trying to do to me.

Yeah, wait until you find out that some of your tax dollars go to pay for bridges you never use or to bomb people who never personally insulted you.

Porter Rockwell was dubbed the "Destroying Angel," but he was definitely a bona fide law man. But you're right that there is some evidence that he was also kind of the frontier ver…

Oman's pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020 is "a tribute to frankincense." I learned more about frankincense than I thought I'd ever know. https://www.expo2020dubai.com/en/understandin…

The contemporary Arabian garb isn't exactly "native" or historical. It's a successful attempt at developing a national identity for countries that hadn't really existed as nations …

It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure that "undeserving" people don't have access to government…

It makes me think of VMS/VAX because I ran a gopher server on a VAX

I'm sure that any of these services are going to depend on customers reporting when a car shows up in an unacceptable condition.

A top flight HVAC system will have a Heat Recovery Ventilator, which is a heat exchanger that warms up incoming fresh air using the heat from the exhaust air.

They don't feel like dealing with GDPR, probably.

One way to protect against inflation is to take out a huge mortgage on a house. Interest rates are low right now, and if inflation is high, the mortgage balance will be eroded away…

I watched that film on a flight a couple of years ago, and cried, alone with my headphones, on a crowded airplane.