On This Day

Should you dig back through my archives, please keep in mind that the further in the past a post was published, the more likely it is that the information has become outdated or my beliefs have changed. I sincerely believe that learning, growing, examining, and often changing beliefs is an integral part of being a responsible human being. My personal journey socially and politically has been ever leftwards, and there are many posts in the archives that I would not write the same way today, if at all. Thanks for understanding!

There are 31 posts previously published on February 7th

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • I AM THE DESIGNER OF THIS RESTAURANT’S OUTDOOR SEATING SPACE, AND THIS IS MY ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “… the elaborate act of justifying why all of this is okay takes about as much energy as the rest of it.” ➡
  • 2020
    • 📚 nine of 2020: The Outside, by Ada Hoffman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #PKDickAward nominee Humankind is out in space, limited to mid-20th century tech while super advanced AI gods control advanced tech, FTL flight and comms…oh, and Lovecraftian energies are destroying people. Fun! ➡
    • The Erasure of Elizabeth Warren Continues: I’ve been noticing this in a number of the articles I’ve seen — not just post-Iowa, either, though it’s become more obvious and egregious — and it’s been ticking me off. ➡
    • Just a quick note of kudos to Malia M. at Dreamhost customer support, who was able to recover a directory I accidentally (and quite foolishly) deleted this morning, and did so with a backup from yesterday. Great customer service! ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.02.06 Week three of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. ➡
    • On This Day: Feb 7 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from February 7 ➡
    • Magic Debug Values: “…are specific values written to memory…so that it will later be possible to tell whether or not they have become corrupted…. Memory is usually viewed in hexadecimal, so memorable repeating or hexspeak values are common.” Though not a programmer, I’d seen some of these in various other contexts. Particularly fond of 8BADF00D, ... Read more ➡
  • 2018
    • Book eight of 2018 (and second #pkdickaward nominee): All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • Gotta keep practicing! (38/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • A book and a fancy hot chocolate. Not at all a bad way to spend a Friday evening. ➡
    • The first decent snow of the winter, and rain is predicted by the middle of next week! ➡
  • 2009
  • 2007
  • 2005
  • 2004
    • Don’t drop out, Dean I'd love to see Dean stay in the race even if he doesn't pick up Wisconsin. I think it would be great if he could do essentially what Sharpton has been doing the entire time — just doggedly hang in there, show up for the debates, and make sure that his voice gets heard and that the questions that need to be asked are asked and don't get brushed under the carpet. ➡
    • Caucus Time My particular precinct had twenty-four people show up, split roughly 2/3 for Kerry and 1/3 for Dean, which ended up being the final delegate split (two delegates for Kerry and one for Dean). I'm expecting that that was probably the rough result for the rest of the precincts in the room. ➡
  • 2003
    • Just in case things weren't tense enough North Korea is entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US rather than wait until the American military have finished with Iraq, the North's foreign ministry told the Guardian yesterday. ➡
    • Blacker than black Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth, by bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds. It reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections in instruments. ➡
    • Rebutting Powell If one believes everything Colin Powell said to the Security Council on February 5th, one's first response ought to be that there's no reason to fight a war, since US surveillance capabilities are so awesome that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) can easily be found. And one's first question should be why has the United States for over two months withheld this apparently so damaging evidence from those weapons inspectors, who could have verified conjectures and destroyed WMD stocks and production facilities. ➡
    • better a terrorist than a republican better a terrorist than a republican…at least the terrorists are fighting for a real cause ➡
    • Saying what you feel Y'know, sometimes, whether or not it's polite, whether or not it's 'politically correct,' you just need to say what you feel, in all its uncensored glory. ➡
    • Following in Lott's footsteps Rep. Coble needs to apologize. And the rest of America's electorate really need to realize that these short-sighted, racist, and inflammatory remarks are neither likely to 'slip under the radar' as they did in pre-internet days, nor are the people they affect going to just shrug them off. It's time to grow up. ➡
  • 2002
    • Do you have slack? The only difference I've been able to see between Discordians and SubGeniuses, is that SubGeniuses get laid. ➡
    • Who wrote the bible? Here's some fascinating stuff courtesy of The Straight Dope -- a five-part series covering the primary theories on who wrote and edited the Bible. ➡
    • Word of the day: amanuensis I generally think of myself as having a fairly good vocabulary, but yesterday at a department meeting Carrie tossed out a term that I hadn't ever come across before -- _amanuensis_, which she said was a synonym for secretary. ➡
  • 2001
    • Shadow of the Vampire Not bad at all, though not quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. The previews had made it out to be a little more creepy than it ended up being -- while it wasn't strictly played for laughs, it wasn't as much of a 'horror' film as I thought it might be. ➡