Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Month: November 2016

  • Restoring Sound After Eject

    Mental note for the next time I take my laptop to a meeting. Undocking the laptop will gray out the headphone. This makes sense because the headphones are plugged into the dock jack. Putting it back in the dock will not restore it. You will need to go into Sounds > Playback. Enable the Headphone option.…

  • Revoked Citizenship?

    I wonder what happens to someone whose United States citizenship is revoked. My president-elect suggested this as a potential consequence to burning the American flag. [1] Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! — Donald J.…

  • In the time of Hamilton

    So, the social media sphere is abuzz over our President-elect tweeting about a member of the cast of the Hamilton play reading a statement to the VP-elect. The P-elect seemed upset about it all. The VP-elect seemed amused people are buzzing about a non-issue and people should expect the P-elect to be the kind of person they…

  • Illusory Truth Effect

    Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements, a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect… Repetition makes statements easier to process (i.e., fluent) relative to new statements, leading people to the (sometimes) false conclusion that they are more truthful… Indeed, illusory truth effects arise even without prior exposure—people rate statements presented in high-contrast (i.e., easy-to-read) fonts…

  • Friends of Friends

    Occasionally friends will see something they like and tag another friend in a comment. In general, I have a privacy level of Friends on my posts. Non-mutual friends are not able to see these tags. I knew about and disliked these options: Leave it alone. The friend’s friend has no idea the post exists unless someone…

  • Keyboard Layouts

    Currently annoyed that every keyboard I am using has the Insert key in a different place. See, as a shell jockey, my work mostly consists of connecting to a server via command line and inputting commands. Shift+Insert is the paste command within these shells. I am very much used to the standard keyboard layout where there…

  • Is it yours?

    I did have this experience once: One assumption that always gets me, and I am sure makes most of my African American male friends perhaps slightly uncomfortable when we are in public together, is when someone says to one of them, “Oh, your daughter is beautiful” ― except as Jerry Springer would announce, “He is…

  • Social Currency

    This is from Douglas Rushkoff who is known for his infecting marketing with the idea of viral marketing. Observe yourself the next time you’re listening to a joke. You may start by listening to the joke for the humor – because you really want the belly laugh at the end. But chances are, a few…

  • Defensive pessimism

    … a strategy used by anxious people to help them manage their anxiety so they can work productively. Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst. Then, they mentally play through all the bad things that might happen. Though it sounds as if it might be depressing, defensive pessimism actually helps anxious…