tkinias

tkinias, 1 day ago to random

Princeton UP has a very weird thing on their Web store where it times out and empties your shopping cart if you let it go too long. This has happened to me twice today.

I’ve never seen an on-line commerce site make it so hard to spend money.

tkinias, 4 days ago to random

A rough thing about being stuck at an airport for going on nine hours is the constant noise.

I just want to be somewhere quiet.

Quiet and cool.

tkinias, 8 days ago to history

An addendum to my #BookHistory post about the 15C breviary using <ç> for <z>: It also shows up in 16C Italian inscriptions which affect a medieval style, like this one from Santa Maria Novella. But, notably, it never seems to be used in inscriptions which use roman letterforms.

tkinias, 19 days ago to random

reads another story about Google

God, we need a phone OS that isn’t from Google or Apple.

(No, not you, Microsoft.)

tkinias, 20 days ago to random

That fun thing where you’re grading and you realize that you’re hearing the student’s voice in your head when you read their work.

tkinias, 24 days ago to random

AP story on the reactionary momentum in U.S. Catholic dioceses <https://apnews.com/article/catholic-church-shift-orthodoxy-tradition-7638fa2013a593f8cb07483ffc8ed487>.

The thing that’s got me thinking is how this movement ties, on the one hand, things like Latin and incense, and on the other, hard-line doctrinal rigidity and broadly right-wing politics.

I’m actually curious, though, if there is a place for Christians who want a liturgically rich service (yes to Latin and incense) but more progressive politics (yes to Liberation Theology, say?).

tkinias, 25 days ago to random

Keeping your “ooh, I need to get this book” list in the form of open browser tabs is great and all—right up to the point where you inadvertently close the wrong browser tab.

tkinias, 28 days ago to random

Every so often I’ll think about the U.S. defense budget (around $880bn this year), and wonder where we’d be with power technology if even one percent of that money every year had been invested in fusion research. That would fund an ITER-scale project every two to three years.

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

Why it’s Expensive to Be Poor, Exhibit № 39863274: <https://apnews.com/article/earned-wage-access-costs-payday-loans-9679d1bd09546d12074e0f27e23f0632>.

Perfectly legal in the U.S.: Apps that give you a loan against your paycheck for an average annual interest rate of 367%.

And the industry is fighting to get legislation that exempts them from the Truth in Lending Act.

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

A pretty day in Colorado, BTW—even if we are still stuck in that in-between time between winter and spring...

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

That moment when joy at having no new e-mail in the inbox turns to the realization that Outlook might just not be updating.

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

I just read that a single Bitcoin transaction requires upwards of 1,000 kW-hr of electricity.

That’s like running a small air conditioner 24/7 for a month and a half.

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

Musing about academic life: How do you protect your time when you teach evening courses?

Maybe it’s a ‘getting old’ thing, but man, I get really wiped out when I teach evening classes—because it’s so hard to be like “sorry I’m not available before noon” so it too often winds up being 10 or 12 hour days...

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

I have some personal news:

My spouse has accepted a position at the Harry Ransom Center at UT, so I will be moving to Austin and will be teaching for the UT History Dept next year.

I never in a million years imagined I’d be living in Texas, but this was too big a professional opportunity for my spouse. So as of August, I’ll apparently be a Longhorn 😮

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

It’s amazing—and terrifying—how fast the bridge went down <https://www.npr.org/live-updates/baltimore-bridge-collapse#catastrophic-bridge-collapse-was-caught-on-video>. It looks like something under ten seconds from the moment of impact till the deck hits the water.

Horrible to contemplate how bad this would have been if the collision had happened six hours later...

tkinias, 1 month ago to random

It’s hard to get good numbers on the mass of a loaded merchant ship, because that’s not a figure that’s published. But if we take MV Dalí’s deadweight tonnage as a very rough ballpark, we’re talking about something on the order of 120 million kg. It hit the bridge at 8 kts, or around 4 m/s. That’s roughly the kinetic energy of a 2-tonne automobile at 1000 m/s or 3600 kph (2200 mph)—or a 40-tonne semi truck at around 800 kph (500 mph).

A mind-boggling amount of kinetic energy.

tkinias, 2 months ago to random

them: “Government should operate like a business”

government gives billions of dollars in subsidies to a for-profit corporation

me: “So the government’s getting an equity stake in the business they just capitalized, right?”

them: “OMG no, that would be communism”

tkinias, 2 months ago to history

OK #BritishEmpire #histodons: I’m teaching a “English Civilization 1603–present” survey course next year, and I want to do it through the lens of Greater Britain. I’m not crazy about the start date, though; it wasn’t my choice. (I’d start in the 18C if it were up to me.)

Any suggestions for textbooks?

This will be a lower-division course with lots of first-year university students, mostly not history majors.

tkinias, 2 months ago to history

Hey #histodons: A few years back I seem to recall hearing about a book that collected soldiers’ letters from the First World War from all the major combatants (including Italy, Austria–Hungary, Ottoman Empire, etc.), translated into English. I am totally unable to find it now; everything I can find for soldiers’ letters is strictly Anglo-American.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Halp?

tkinias, 2 months ago to random

Nothing more frustrating than IT staff who take as a starting point the assumption that all end users are idiots.

And I say this as someone who spent years doing helpdesk work.

tkinias, 2 months ago to random

Apropos of nothing in particular, it’s a good thing that a Canon imageRunner is too big to pick up and hurl out the window.

tkinias, 3 months ago to random

I really do think that “text extruding machines” (h/t @emilymbender) is a great way to describe so-called “AI” LLMs.

tkinias, 3 months ago to random

I’m coming down with a cold, and I texted my spouse “I think I’m getting sick.”

Autocorrect ‘fixed’ that to “I think I’m getting divorced.”

WTAF?

tkinias, 3 months ago to random

So TIL that French for ‘mansplain’ is ‘mecspliquer’. This made me smile.

tkinias, 3 months ago to random

Well, “CDCSays” has proved that the Fediverse is also capable of beating a joke template into the ground to the point that I never want to see it again.