I had a moment of drooling over the new phones and ran the numbers to see what it would cost me to finance one and then decided to just replace the battery in my iPhone SE. I really like the size and I don't care about the camera(s) that much so it was really just irrational chip lust that got me going.

I'd be really interested in hearing anybody's favourite pdf markup tool for tablet (iPad only, soz, I'm trapped in the applesphere). I have experimented with a few without finding quite the right thing, the right thing being one that allows me to easily highlight my reading in multiple colours, make notes, and then export both to plain text or markdown.

I also have an iphone SE! I also like the size, but I'm really sick of taking shitty photos, since I spend a fair amount of time curating then for my personal blog. Also I've been out of memory for the past 6 months and I've cut all the low-hanging fruit already, memory-wise.

I am another SE user, and I'm really annoyed that when it gives up the ghost eventually I won't be able to replace it with an Apple phone around the same size. I really don't want anything bigger -- being able to use the whole screen onehanded is a thing I want, and I have stupid little monkey paws.

I mentioned to my boyfriend that I was thinking of flipping to Android just so I could get a phone the size I wanted, and got a horrified "Like an animal?" in response.

I had the Huawei-made Nexus 6P pre-Pixel googlephone from 2016 through this summer, and it was a great value, especially the cachet of double-evil companies. I was going to finally replace it with an iPhone when I unexpectedly lost it in the Cal library stacks, and had to get an emergency shitphone because money was tight that month. So now I have last year's LG model with a stylus, but the stylus is pretty useless since the native note-taking app gives you one pen setting, illegible calligraphy (maybe it's better for Asian languages?). No one should buy this phone unless they, like me, want to be reminded on a minute-by-minute basis that smartphones are purest vanity.

I have a Pixel 2 XL. I wanted the smaller phone but I needed one that minute* and I took what was in the store. It's been o.k., but the screen is stupidly set without any edge protection so if you drop it even slightly, it breaks. I went years without a case on the old phone and this one didn't even make a month.

* My old phone died while I was arranging job interviews.

But somehow everything's always MY fault.

It's not a vanity thing for me. According to the battery usage, I use my phone almost entirely for Wizards Unite, Pokemon Go, and unfogged.

That green color is super-appealing.

I was thinking of flipping to Android just so I could get a phone the size I wanted

I didn't think you could even get a modern Android phone in that size.

There's talk of some sort of SE revival in the spring, but it would still probably be somewhat bigger (but smaller than the various X/11 models).

I have the Samsung Galaxy J3. It does everything except adjust screen brightness and take non-blurry pictures. After a year and a half it needed a new battery but that was easy to replace. And now it's slowing down.

4 before seeing 3.2. Congratulations from the animals!

(If this can be a general life-miscellany thread, I have animal-related miscellany.)

My wife gets whatever phone isn't too big to fit in a pocket. There's usually one in that size. Sometimes there aren't any at any of the physical stores.

Some day these customers may be noticed and catered to.

Google Pixel 1, which had the battery replaced about a year and a half ago. Looking forward to replacing it soon, as the battery is getting bad again and a few things have started to seem sluggish; getting three years out of a phone seems pretty good by modern standards. Probably will buy a Pixel 4.

(Living in a mixed-marriage where my wife is an iPhone user. We skip the green-bubble drama by using Signal for messaging.)

Animal miscellany!

Theremin orchestral miscellany:

http://www.openculture.com/2018/02/beethovens-ode-to-joy-played-with-167-theremins-placed-inside-matryoshka-dolls-in-japan-and-why-not.html

This site has the sizes of various phones, at actual size (and a neat feature where they verified my screen size with a dollar bill). I'm holding my SE phone up next to the 11 Pro, and it really doesn't look that much larger. That's what I'm telling myself, at least.

All the rumors are that in 2020 Apple is finally coming out with a small flagship! It won't be cheap like the SE, but it will be basically the same size, though with a much larger screen due to having no bezels. So if you're an SE diehard just wait one year. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/06/27/apple-new-iphone-upgrade-iphone-xs-max-xr/#b8df4c21dd8c

I've been holding onto my 6 for years because I wanted the SE2 whenever it came out, and then it keeps not coming out. I found the increase in size to the 6 sufficiently annoying that I wanted a smaller one, and the new ones don't even get as small as the 6. It's hard to convince myself to buy an 8 which is quite old now just to get something that's still too big for what I want but at least closer.

Switching to Android doesn't help because there are no small Androids. (Sony hasn't released a compact version of the Xperia XZ3, and the XZ2 Compact is already two years old and honestly not as small as I'd like.)

So if you're an SE diehard just wait one year.

I am also an SE owner/fan who would upgrade but all the newer giant tablet-phones drive me crazy.

Is the SE preferred disproportionately by the Unfoggedtariat? Does this community have uniquely good eyesight combined with uniquely small pockets?

Smolphones are desired intensely by a lot of people I know.

Are they kittens?

Google Pixel. It's great. It's also big, and it lives in an Otterbox, so clearly small form factor is not a priority for me.

If more people I knew were kittens, I'd be happier. I can think of some lawyers who I would be delighted to see replaced by kittens.

Now I want to find that video clip of some guys trying to let a bobkitten out of a cage without getting attacked. I think they called him Mr. Murderbritches.

This guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xcuJ3OPl8k

I can't find numbers on this, but I think SEs might be concentrated among Gen X and older Millennials. The youngs who grew up using phones and not laptops, and who mostly use phones for their media consumption, want giant phones. The olds don't have as strong of feelings about which phone they use, prefer Androids because they're cheaper, and are more susceptible to advertising about upgrading.

(Of course people still [checks notes] commenting on [checks notes] blogs are exactly the people you'd expect to say "you can take my mid-aughts technology from my cold dead hands.")

I switched to the iPhone from Android a couple of years ago, an iPhone 8, it's great and the perfect size for my hand.

(Of course people still [checks notes] commenting on [checks notes] blogs are exactly the people you'd expect to say "you can take my mid-aughts technology from my cold dead hands.")

Ok, this cracked me up.

In the link in 16, they say the new SE is 5.4", and the 11pro that I just bought is 5.8", so I don't know how much difference that really makes. I mean, it makes 0.4" difference.

De-lurking on my SE to say they will pry this phone out of my cold, dead, only slightly below average-sized hands.

(But good lord I spent a lot of money, no joke.)

24: Anecdotally fits with my experience. Most of my college students use their phones as their primary computer gadget -- most also have a laptop for writing assignments but scanning course websites, doing quizzes, snapping pictures of the blackboard*, calendar, etc, all happens on their phone.

*This blew my mind the first time I saw it, even though like them I own a phone with a camera.

30: I dunno. One of my favorite ways to assign a complicated homework problem that fits perfectly with what we just did in class is just to write it on the board, with a diagram and arrows or whatever, snap a photo, and upload it to the google site I use as my class site, which itself is ONE MILLION times easier than any stupid courseware your university throws at you.

Also, our collective predilection for the 6SE reminds me a bit of when we discovered we all cross our 7s and our zs. Or the time a bunch of you turned out to have been on Jeopardy.

In the link in 16, they say the new SE is 5.4", and the 11pro that I just bought is 5.8", so I don't know how much difference that really makes. I mean, it makes 0.4" difference.

I have a Galaxy S6. When I was upgrading (from the galaxy S2) I was worried about going to a larger phone but it turned out fine because the weight was the same, and for me, I was okay with the size change as long as it didn't get heavier.

I mostly use my phone for camera, internet, and occasional calls or texts, so I really don't need a flagship phone, but I'm tempted to upgrade to the Pixel 4 if it gets good reviews. I am jealous of the camera on the Pixel 3.

Youngs ruin everything.*

I am pleased at this news about a likely smolphone flagship next year although hoo-boy was that Forbes article a smarmy read.

26: Seconded.

*Really just my mood but that's why it feels like everything.

Animal miscellany: we've adopted a rescue dog, who is mostly German shepherd plus something else the shelter thought might be Caucasian shepherd: super-furry head, droopy ears. So basically she's a Nazi guard dog crossed with a Soviet guard dog, some kind of East German special? She's extremely sweet and calm and deficient in fierceness, wagging her tail when the crew of contractors showed up this morning. (Only exception: she kills the "tough" plush squeaky toys daed in 3 minutes or so, with a great scattering of stuffing.) I have learned in passing that fun names to give your German shepherd breeding kennel include "Staatsm/acht"* and "Eiser/nen Kre/uz", that fun activities for your German shepherd include "attack the person," and that K9 search and rescue is a volunteer operation.

*One of their dogs was named, I swear, "Terr/or von der Sta/atsmacht." They're in Minnesota.

For me it's as much the weight as the size (though both are important). The SE is 3.99 ounces, the 8 is 5.22 ounces, and the 11 Pro is 6.63 ounces! I'm a little concerned that the smolphone will be closer to 5 ounces than 4, but it'll have to do because it's the only game in town. (Of course if it becomes a huge success then maybe other companies will start releasing competing smolphones.)

In all seriousness it has never occurred to me once before now to read Unfogged on my phone. These poor young people do not appreciate the pleasure that is goofing off on an actual desktop computer with a big ol monitor and a big ol mechanical keyboard.

The video linked in 23 is pretty funny and really reinforces the craziness of these people who come up randomly on the social sites now and then having brought a bobcat into their house thinking it's a feral housecat, etc. Jesus those things are mean.

The battery on my iPhone 6 died and Apple wouldn't replace it because the phone got wet once, but I got a mail-order replacement kit and replaced it myself and felt like a wizard with mastery of space and time.

She's extremely sweet and calm and deficient in fierceness, wagging her tail when the crew of contractors showed up this morning.

Back long long ago when I was reading about breeds before Tim and I got DogBreath, I remember reading that attack-dog breeds -- German shepherds, mastiffs, that kind of thing, tend to be sweet and calm and trainable. If you're going to train a dog to hurt people, you want to start with a dog who isn't particularly temperamentally that way inclined, because they get uncontrollable and bite you as well as the people you want them to bite. I don't know if this is actually true, but it did make sense to me.

My roommate pointed out to be that fanny packs were back, which I had noticed implicitly but only when I heard it said did I realize I needed to get on that train. Now I'm into minimizing, sometimes successfully down to zero, what I carry on my shoulders which I think has been really good for my back. It is the opposite of my old carry strategy although I still need my bulky, colorful wallet-key assembly or I will lose my keys sooner or later. I switched to smaller version of it which only barely holds my smolphone.

I don't want my phone taking up too much precious fanny pack real estate, and I really want an iPad mini. I have a last-model iPad pro that I carry around and it's often the one thing I allow on my shoulders, but it's still too much.

I have this fantasy that I could have a single device be

1) an alternate phone so I could leave smolphone at home
2) my e-reader
3) my classroom notetaking/homework device
4) my sketchbook
5) with a folding bluetooth keyboard and a Digital Ocean account a way that I could program on the go if I at least had internet access.

without having to carry a thing on my shoulder. But honestly my behavior with money has been so ridiculous for nearly a year now I really don't know if I can justify the mini. I got the refurbished pro just this year!

As long as I'm taking a break to comment about my fantasy purchases maybe I should, also on theme, tell you all about this DIY rat palace I got really into planning at about 11 pm last night.

I'd buy 39. All the same, I'm a little worried that without proper training and guidance she'll be drawn to the alt-right. I'm going to limit her YouTube access severely.

I guess I'm one of the Olds because I had to look it up to figure out that "SE" was a certain model of iPhone. Personally I use a Samsung Droid, but I've been meaning to upgrade soon, because the battery is getting weaker lately. Between me, my sister, Cassandane, my parents, and her parents, I'm the only person who doesn't have some kind of iPhone. Resistance is futile.

Correct.

Before my dog's knee injury, attack the person was our favorite game. No protected sleeve, so it was him leaping at me trying to get his mouth on my arms while I tried to evade. I never got so much as a scratch on me; he's very careful with his jaws. It was good exercise and footwork training, and the frequent breaks for face-licking and petting keep one motivated.

You people are fucking insane.

Come within striking distance and say that again. The wagging tail will hit you before you inhale.

Because of the return of fanny packs?

(what sort of dog, Eggplant?)

Another reason I can't move back to the USA: fanny packs. The UK has ruined my ability to hear these words casually used in conversation.

I'm also curious about the DIY rat palace, although maybe not to the extent of funding a kickstarter or anything.

I don't see what the problem is. "Fanny Pack" is the best language to describe a bag that goes in front of the vagina.

For me it's as much the weight as the size (though both are important). The SE is 3.99 ounces, the 8 is 5.22 ounces, and the 11 Pro is 6.63 ounces!

It hadn't crossed my mind to think about weight, to be honest. We shall see.

41 made me laugh.

A 75 lb American pitbull terrier. He also once tracked down a lost house cat, so I think he could be an excellent schutzhound, except he scared of gunshots and never was very good at staying.

"scanning course websites, doing quizzes, snapping pictures of the blackboard"

Please please tell me you literally still have blackboards. And inkwells!

"Using your latest-model smartphone to take a photo of the blackboard" is just perfect for private affluence/public squalour.

50: If I really build this rat palace I am going to pay for it. Or maybe my roommate will contribute too as a birthday present. But in any case, I'm so glad you asked. Here is my plan!

I am going to get a curio cabinet. I'm leaning toward this one. I am going to replace all the glass with chicken wire. This stuff seems good to line the shelves so if they pee it doesn't just soak into wood (but I'm also hoping to litter train them, which is something I never attempted when I had rats as a child, but which the internet says is not that hard). I will also use the jigsaw to make transits out of the cabinet (actually not even necessary in the case of the cabinet I linked to since the sides aren't solid; I'd just have to clip the chicken wire), and make a wall mounted habitrail I think with this stuff. My one question is whether they can chew through it, and I *think* the answer is no, not from the inside, unless I am a very bad rat mom and give them nothing satisfying to chew on. I don't think they could get purchase on something so concave toward them unless their teeth had gotten painfully overgrown. Then I want make pit stops in the habitrail out of storage cubes that I put on wall mounted shelves. Maybe these (would also require chickenwire and jigsawed passages) or these.

You all have smartboards? Or are you asserting that dry-erase boards are meaningfully more advanced than chalkboards?

to 56.

We have mostly white boards, not smartboards. I take pictures of them often.

Totally insane.

What do sane people do when they want to have a record of something written down?

I'm still not clear on how things are operating without chalkboards or white boards.

I would shudder if my university replaced all our boards with smartboards, because I'm 100% certain they'd choose a company with a terrible interface, dumb constraints on what you could and couldn't do, and it'd go out of business in three years, or jack up the cost, and we'd end our contract with them, and the boards would be turned off, and would turn into regular dry-erase boards that either required pricey unusual markers, or didn't erase very well, or some other way were markedly worse than our regular old mid-century technology.

Also our courseware is miserable and I'm so glad I'm not required to use it.

For the first time, someone at work suggested we need to use Slack. I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds like one more thing that goes 'bing' and I need to answer.

Someone else suggested WhatsApp. I'm going to keep an eye on them because I've not heard of WhatsApp being used except in a genocide.

I use whatsapp constantly.

Two main things:
1. I can switch seamlessly from texting on my computer to texting on my phone or ipad or whatever.

2. It's hard to explain why this matters, but having names for threads is really great for topics and groups. It's much more group-chatty than regular text messaging.

We have whiteboards, which are superior because: a) less dust b) clearer c) you can write on them with permanent pens (and clean with acetone) if you want to have, for example, a status board that will be regularly updated you can draw the table in permanent and do the updates in wipe-clean. I don't think I've even seen a blackboard since about 1993.

People have equally strong opinions against white boards, namely that the marker dust bothers them (differently than chalk boards) and the markers don't last very long.

IME there are high quality and low quality versions of both, and the high quality versions are a joy and the low quality versions are both miserable.

(Heebie U has both of both.)

Oh man this is so the thread for me, except I'm too tired to post all my thoughts. Well, here goes:

- I, too, am one of the iPhone SE owners, gritting my teeth with every successive year Apple refuses to give us another smolphone. These rumors about 2020 better be true, or I will be very sad.

- My main computing device since early 2018 has been an 10.5" iPad pro, because I figured most of what I do as a teaching-degree student & future teacher is just working with documents, reading, and making slides, and it should be fine for that. It generally is, but the ergonomics are not ideal. Even though I can't possibly justify upgrading, I'm definitely lusting after the 2018 Pro models, because they've almost achieved the ideal of a computer that's nothing more than the display.

- I actually also have an iPad Mini 4, with one of those stick-on pop-out phone holder doohickeys on the back, so I can hold it with one hand to read in bed with. eInk is much easier on the eyes, but not in the dark (and I don't have one of those new eInk readers with redder backlights).

- Re: Swope FM's comment 1: Oh boy do I have thoughts about PDF note-taking! I use PDF Expert, because its automatic margin-cropping is by far the best I've found, its night mode is good (handles pictures reasonably), it has all the annotation features you'd want, and it also lets you export just the annotations as HTML. (PSPDFKit's free PDF Viewer app offers plain-text annotation export, if you really object to the HTML markup.)

- If you really care about annotating and actively working with the text, rather than mostly just reading it, both MarginNote and Liquid Text have radically different takes on PDF viewing/annotating, and are worth checking out.

- I'm 100% Team Whiteboard, but I've realized in the last few years of hanging out with scientists that quite a lot of them really like plain old chalkboards. I can't fathom it, largely because I hate hate hate the feeling of chalk on my fingers, but to each their own.

I'd be really interested in hearing anybody's favourite pdf markup tool for tablet (iPad only, soz, I'm trapped in the applesphere)

Oh, I'd be curious if there are good ones for Android tablets?

40
Now I'm into minimizing, sometimes successfully down to zero, what I carry on my shoulders which I think has been really good for my back.

Ugh. This is often on my mind. I blame the kid. Any one or two items may seem like a no-brainer but they add up. We're past the point where we need to carry around a spare outfit for potty training reasons, but we still do on most outings juuuuust in case. Need coloring books and a toy or two to keep her busy in restaurants or any similar wait, and snacks and water. In the winter we'll drop the suntan lotion, bug spray, and sunglasses, but coats are even heavier.

This wouldn't be a problem if we had a car. Either this stuff would stay in the car permanently, or we'd pack day bags like this but not care about them if they weren't over our shoulders at all times.

My dog is very good at staying if a cat is sitting on his paws so maybe he'd be a good katzenschutzhund.

I have an iPhone X. I got it about a year ago after my old iPhone 5S finally got so obsolete that it was seriously affecting its usability. I'm not thrilled about how huge it is, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.

72: Are there a lot of stairs in your life? If not I'd suggest a rolling backpack. I tried one for a while, and it helped, somewhat, but because I so frequently had to carry it up and down stairs it still put a lot of stress on me. I was teaching at the time and it was definitely preferable to trying to carry everything I needed in a backpack on my back.

OT bleg: I got confused and thought, since it was being so heavily promoted, that The Music Man was opening this fall. I was trying to get tickets for me and one of my friends who is coming to visit me for my birthday was going to get me tickets. (Did I mention it's soon to be my birthday?) I was very sad when I realized the mistake but she's STILL going to get me tickets and plan a trip out for my 41st birthday too.

Here is the bleg: Is it better to be in 5th row side orchestra (3 seats from the edge of the theater), second row right mezz, two seats from the center aisle, or third row right mezz, on the aisle (all the same (exorbitant) price). I'm leaning mezz, I think. Maybe second row is better because there's diminished chance of being behind someone tall.

76: The site aviewfrommyseat dot com might help, if you know which theatre you're going to.

I'm looking and it is actually very helpful, thanks. It's giving me the a bit of what the emotional feel is for being in each seat and I feel like I'm changing my mind and would prefer to be in the orchestra.

55: Depends on the classroom. I loathe whiteboards, but in our remodeled building I was one of two who preferred chalkboards, so my students get to be entertained by the fact that none of the dry-erase markers ever work.

Smartboards are fun because when students use them for presentations, they invariably forget that tapping the board makes their slides advance, much to the amusement of everyone.

I have a pixel 2, bought deliberately just after the 3 came out, when they were going cheap to get rid of the stock and force people to buy the more expensive new model.
It is a smolphone by most standards, and I really wanted the camera, which, with google software, is really exceptional especially in poor light*. It was also half the price of an Iphone. I've always had androids, mainly for price reasons. Once Google started making them, I bought theirs, mostly because it was the only way to be sure I got timely software updates. I can see that Apple avoids that problem.

I also have a macbook, and while I envy Ume's flash new one a bit, I think I'd go back to a thinkpad if I had to replace this tomorrow, mostly because of the keyboard. It has had to be replaced once, and is still a little funny. It is also hugely inconvenient switching between mac and windows keyboard layouts because they are so nearly identical.

* There is a picture of an autofellating gargoyle from a country church we visited at the weekend that I should really put in the flickr pool to prove this point.

64. Slack is a web app you use for managing your project and keeping your team communicating. It's sort of Skype on steroids plus GitHub or GitLab's project tracking features (issues, milestones, etc., I think). Microsoft has a newish competitor called One Team, that is free. That being said, Slack is pretty good.

3 et al. I recently turned in my Samsung Galaxy S5 for a 10e. The other "10" models are all rather larger than my S5, but the 10e is exactly the same size. I have no idea how big it is compared to the various iPhones. It comes with 128G of memory. I like it. My only complaint about smart phones these days is that there is no dead space on the screen. You go to grab and drag and if you are one pixel off you hit the wrong thing. Maybe this is unique to Androids. Darwin gave us ten fingers and smart phones only use two of them. I don't like using a stylus. So I am indeed a dinosaur. I do most of my work on a laptop or desktop, more in Linux (Ubuntu) than in Windows.

Chalkboards are so much better than whiteboards, which is almost the defining opinion of being a mathematician.

The main reasons are:
1) Chalk always just works, while with whiteboard markers 80% of them don't work and it's impossible to work out which ones without individually writing with each of them.
2) Whiteboards are always inexplicably smaller than chalkboards. I'm guessing this has to do with cost, but I've never been in a whiteboard room that has adequate board space. Similarly you never see sliding whiteboard setups of the same caliber as you do for chalk.
3) You can erase chalk with your hand in a pinch.
4) Chalkboards keep working for a very long time, while whiteboards after a year or two pick up the color of the markers and are ugly and distracting.
5) Schools never provide an adequate supply of whiteboard markers and so you end up having to buy your own and lug them around.
6) Whiteboard marker smell is more bothersome than chalk dust.

Finally, as with most modern cheap plastic chemical knockoffs, there's no whiteboard setups that achieve the level of craftsmanship and perfection of using Hagoromo on a slate board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNUjg9X4g8

You can erase chalk with your hand in a pinch.

You can, but it works much better if you spread your hand out flat.

I also have tiny hands, and a few weeks ago I upgraded from an iPhone 6s (I think?) to an iPhone XS. It feels fine in my hands, though I certainly wouldn't want anything bigger.

My students kept taking pictures of my PowerPoint slides until I reminded them (multiple times) that I post the $&@" slides online after each class.

Just this week, a coworker took a picture of her screen and texted it to me. This did not strike me as strange or sub-optimal in any way.

Sony Xperia Z3 from October 2015.

I broke the back, which is sort of exploded out, but the thing basically works ok. It's about 5.75 in long, which still fits most of my clothes.

and I really wanted the camera, which, with google software, is really exceptional especially in poor light

It also takes flattering portraits. My current profile picture at the other place was taken with a Pixel and my coworker took some steps to find some even lighting and set up a background, but even so, for a no makeup non-professional snapshot my skin looks super smooth, my eyes and lips are vivid, etc. If it could only straighten my teeth.

that achieve the level of craftsmanship and perfection of using Hagoromo on a slate board

My colleague just acquired a super fancy chalkboard and some Hagoromo chalk and I tried it for the first time. It was, admittedly, lovely.

Just this week, a coworker took a picture of her screen and texted it to me. This did not strike me as strange or sub-optimal in any way.

Now, my kid's ex-principal used to do this all the time to parents as a means of sharing a link. It was the best.

Well, that's a little off.

It must seemed to me that the alternative was taking a screen capture and then cropping it so that I could read the right part and then emailing it.

No, in general I'm all for taking a quick photo of whatever as the fastest available technology, rather than using the copy/paste/forward to share something. I just thought it was hilarious when we'd get a text message that consisted of a bit.ly link to a photo of a computer screen (with glare!) of an email containing a link that our principal wanted to share. It's pixels all the way down.

It reminds me of "A Canticle for Lebowitz" where the monk-guy copies the blue prints by painting the whole paper blue to get the white text instead of realizing he was copying a negative. Somebody I should finish that book.

My childhood summer camp best friend that I re-met through Armsmasher is now an impressive artist, and her projects often involve these insanely precise pencil drawings of things that have been xeroxed into oblivion, or children's notes that have been erased and rewritten over and over again, or other kinds of recreations-of-recreations-of-recreations all the way down.

Was she making course packets at Ohio State in the mid-90s?

I'll write a note asking her and then xerox it and then photograph it and then upload it and create a bitly link and then email her a photograph of the link.

I can remember being assigned a chapter of Adam Smith copied from so an old copy that they had the medial-s thing going (e.g. "...led by an invifible hand...).

Af if.

Ad Smif.

Still using my oneplus 3, which is >3 years old now. Working well, and I'm really hearing this"no headphone jack" thing on all the new phones

Chalk on slate makes one of the worst sounds it is possible to make. Markers make a fun squeeky sound.

I've never read Chalk, but he can't be worse than Kaus.

101 is truth. Also you can totally erase a whiteboard with your hand.

Which leaves you with ink on your hand. But this happens only if one so erases, whereas using chalk necessarily leaves tiny pieces of rock in, at bare minimum, your fingertips.

63: As someone whose day job involves a lot of propping up university courseware, out of professional curiosity I had to go check what's in use at Heebie U and ha, yes, that thing was designed by incompetent sociopaths and there's a whole backstory that would bore everyone here. At least you guys are transitioning away from it, if the webpage I found is to be believed.

I'm way too excited about the new iPadOS upgrade, which should be a huge improvement in file management and using web apps (Google Docs! Hopefully Repl.it!).

Oh, and: I'm getting an Apple Watch for my birthday. My excuse was that it's actually practical, not just gadget lust, because I so often have my hands occupied with the Infanta. Anyone with suggestions on particularly useful-for-baby Apple Watch apps? We just switched from Feed Baby to Baby Tracker Pro, partly because it has Watch support.

and ha, yes, that thing was designed by incompetent sociopaths and there's a whole backstory that would bore everyone here.

I'm curious now!

Incompetent sociopaths are definitely in season.

So, briefly, this was a collaborative attempt among several universities, including ours, to build open-source courseware. Early on a couple of guys at a different university got themselves positioned as de facto dictators of the project because they were really good at being grandiose in public - one guy in particular thought he was Steve Jobs of Education and would talk about how this was innovation on par with the alphabet and the Gutenberg Bible. Meanwhile, whenever he actually deigned to modify the codebase they tended to be changes such that the thing would no longer compile and run. (He was allowed to review other people's code but not vice versa.) After a few years of agony and waste our university left the project in an ugly spat, other universities followed suit, eventually the dictators themselves moved on to torment someone else and for a while now the product of all this has just been limping along, in use by a small number of universities that gets smaller every year.

So, basically the Soviet Union.

Without captured Germans to fix things.

OT: It might be just me, but "Nuts on Clark" sounds like something an assistant baseball coach got fired for forwarding a photo of.

Lincoln has a 55+ apartment complex called "Autumn Wood."

Slack is a web app you use for managing your project and keeping your team communicating. It's sort of Skype on steroids plus GitHub or GitLab's project tracking features (issues, milestones, etc., I think). Microsoft has a newish competitor called One Team, that is free.

This the uncanny valley description of Slack and Teams. Slack is a chat app. It's available via the web, or a desktop application, or a mobile app. It has a billion potential integrations, but they're all optional and at its heart, it's about team chat. Everyone in the org is in Slack, you make public or private channels, and away you go. You can also send private messages to one or many people, which create ad-hoc channels, effectively. Slack's UI/UX is very very good, and it makes sharing pictures, files, links, code, what have you, very easy. It's also spam-free, because you have to be a member of the organization to message anyone. I've occasionally toyed with the idea of having Unfogged on Slack, but ultimately I think this blog/comment model is better for this kind of communication. And like you say, Moby, you have to have good discipline and use the do-not-disturb feature because there's always something new on Slack. That's the big drawback.

Microsoft Teams (not One Team) is Microsoft's clone of Slack, and they give it away with Office 365 subscriptions, and it's a complete pile of shit.

114. Thanks for the more accurate description of Slack. I've only used it a little so far. You can integrate it with GitHub, and Jenkins and Jira and all sorts of other things. We are slowly starting to use it for more than straight up bulletin-board type chat. I'm not super-impressed yet, but maybe that will happen over time.

My reference to Teams was not intended to be a recommendation, Microsoft being Microsoft and all. What they have done and failed to do to the Office Suite should cause anyone to think carefully about using other kludges they committed.

I think it's pretty obvious I have no discipline for turning off internet communications things.

My office's Slack is unutterably boring, even the #random channel. It is used only for stress-inducing urgent communications and technical stuff that's mostly irrelevant to me. If you work at a "fun" "company" ymmv, but I have no trouble whatsoever ignoring it.

I amused approximately five people, judging by feedback, by posting the tale of the man who got NULL as a vanity plate. It's rare for me to feel schadenfreude, but wow is that an exception.

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"The irresponsible dumping of dead pigs simply adds scare to the public, and this should not be tolerated,"
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I was amused by 118. So I guess you're up to 6.

The best part is the "yeah, no shit" reaction from the guy whose name is Null.

Null Pointer would be a good name for a cyberpunk protagonist.

My hands are not small* and my eyesight is terrible (nearsighted)** and yet I too have an SE.

I learned moving from a Nexus 4 to a Nexus 5 that an increase in screen size within the phone category didn't make much difference in my ability to read comfortably. I really need to get to actual tablet range for that, though maybe the bezel-less phones would change my mind.

So when my Nexus 5 broke, and the only Google phones were in the $700 range, I got an SE. I really wanted a phone that would get timely security updates. This was after the X came out and the SE was the least expensive unlocked flagship phone on the market that was sure to get updates. I'm pretty sure it was $350. I also figured a smaller and lighter phone would suit me better, having ruled out seeing much benefit in a larger screen. It's been fine.

*I believe it is no longer conventional to write ladeez after a declaration such as that.

**Without glasses or contacts I can barely see anything clearly unless it's right close in front of my eyes.

123.* is correct. Laydeez was always the standard here. (Except now I've googled and you seem to have been consistent in your own spelling. Very mysterious!)

(ahem) M'learned friend is of course correct but I would beg leave to draw the commentariat's attention to the possibility that a commenter or commenters may wish to aim a humorous and salacious remark at male rather than female peers and I would further submit that "laddeez" might in such a case serve as an acceptable epithet of address. May it please the commentariat.

Ooooh, you are a one!

Spent today at the Supreme Court.

So, did Boris commit lese-majeste?

The French term for domestic violence seems too nice.

121. Up to 7. One can only imagine the horrors contained in the code that matched his plate to an actual NULL.

128: decision isn't till tomorrow. But the Supreme Court can't decide on facts, only on law, so the Scottish decision that he lied to the Queen will stand.

130: they sort of buried the lede about the privatised enforcement company falsifying their own records to try to make him pay fine that had been imposed in error, and getting away with this attempted criminal extortion scot free.

Kind of on topic because of electronic key cards: I got back to my hotel room at the end of the day and they key didn't work. Asking for some ID before giving me a new key probably would have left me more reassured.

132: Sim.

133: That always bothers me too. When I've had a card not work, it's usually been immediately after check-in and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt if they don't ask for ID that they recognize me from a few minutes earlier. But I've also had that happen at the end of the day and I've wondered if those places even have a policy of asking for IDs. I stayed at one place a few years ago where they preferred you leave the key at the desk when out for the day, and it was hit or miss on whether they asked for ID when I got back each day for the week I stayed there.

Somewhere I stayed this year told me that their cards seemed to be sensitive to being near a smartphone, so I've been more diligent about not using that pocket for the key (I always have the phone in the same pocket). I have no idea if that actually makes sense given the underlying technologies.

The license plate story...hoo boy! The guy named Null...yikes!

73: uh, apropos of nothing at all, Eggplant, tell me how your dog and cat became friends.

Since we are going OT it has just struck me that the list of Reasons Why Military Aviators Should Never Be Allowed Near Politics:

Hermann Goering
Italo Balbo
Randy Cunningham
John McCain
John Glenn
Bob Dornan
Hafez al-Assad
Jerry Rawlings
Hosni Mubarak
George Bush
Charles Lindbergh
Joe McCarthy
George Bush
etc

should of course also include:

Prince Andrew

I don't think George I Bush belongs in such poor company.

Iran Contra? Panama? He's the best Republican president of my lifetime, but still trash.

Iran-Contra was Reagan. Panama IDK, but note it didn't produce a failed state, unlike, for instance, Libya. And Gulf War I was a neat exercise in alliance-building, international law, and limited warfare, resulting in a strengthening of the norm against forceful annexations. Which it turns out is actually a really important principle, as demonstrated in, for instance, Crimea and the South China Sea.

Bush the Elder was up to his eyeballs in Iran-Contra. There's a wonderful chapter of What It Takes (a book that does the impossible and makes the 1988 presidential campaign something between interesting and riveting) in the section about Bush; it's called "To Know" and it's all about how Bush put his manhood in a blind trust avoiding having it unavoidably and publicly known that he knew.

On review, I'll concede Iran-Contra. Not the rest though.

And, you know, managing the end of the Cold War without anything blowing up. No small thing.

Mossy touches on one of my fringe opinions. Bush I was actually a good President, for the reasons that Mossy gives.

135.1: This guy never saw me before.

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I need advice because I am not thinking about this clearly. I had to cancel class Friday to go to a conference, and my students have a test this Friday, so I'm loathe to cancel class today.

This morning I pulled a muscle in my back. In certain movements it's excruciating, at other positions merely noticeable but not more than that.

Does resting a day actually accelerate healing, or does your body heal on a fixed schedule whether or not you barrel through? Right now I'm catastrophizing about the problems with canceling class, both today and throughout the week.

|>

I have no idea. I do know that my phone now thinks I'm more likely to want to type "shiticon" than "antibiotics." Which is true, but awkward when texting family about mom's medical stuff.

I think the general advice about back pain is don't rest more than you have to. On the other hand, if it's excruciating this might be bad enough that you do have to.

I made a test run to the drug store to pick up a topical ointment to supplement the Aleve, and it was decisively painful enough to convince me to stay home.

Why is it so hard to evaluate in the moment if you "deserve" to stay home? Why am I such a goddamn [why can't I recall the group that is puritanical about working and denying pleasure]?

Puritans?

I think the word is "academic."

But I know what you mean. When I have the kind of minor ailment that for me turns into needing to sleep all day, I am always checking myself to see if I'm malingering. And then I remember that when I'm not sick, I don't actually want to stay in bed all afternoon.

Staying in bed is for mornings. Afternoons, I want to be on the couch. Evenings, on the recliner. Sometimes, for a change, there's the other couch.

Hope your back heals fast heebs. Don't read this, it is funny.

Physicist's Hegelian husband insists that she read his demonstrably bullshit dissertation:

https://rareddit.com/r/relationships/comments/d7bqcs/my_33f_husbands_35m_career_in_academic_philosophy/

I have been making a study of back pain in recent years, but while I have some varied experience on this issue, I don't think it applies here. This sounds like an injury that just has to heal, and probably ought not be treated any differently than, say, a sprained ankle, where rest is appropriate.

But otherwise, for the chronic stuff: Skeleto-musular issues have responded well to muscle relaxers, and even better to physical therapy. Arthritis has responded brilliantly to exercises aimed at strengthening the relevant muscles.

My 33 female husbands' 35 minute career in academic philosophy?

155 is the greatest thing. The comments (click through "original") include the OP writing a comment that's just "I feel like philosophy is to blame here"

155: That is funny, but I feel bad for the woman.

The advice column aspect is pretty straightforward: Your husband is an asshole; accept that and figure out what you want to do. But her query raises issues about physics and philosophy that seem a.) really interesting and b.) potentially right in Unfogged's wheelhouse.

How does physics (and more broadly, science) interact with philosophy? Do Hegelian opinions about particles (or whatever) need to match up with modern scientists' views?

Youngs ruin everything.

I quite like a pint of Special.

My phone won't open that link. It's says you're trying to steal my identity.

I guess I just needed to go to cellular. Some people don't trust nursing home wifi.

"more broadly" is carrying a lot of weight there. Linguistics and biology differ significantly from physics for example.

I was trained as a physicst. Lots of philosophy in my opinion basically essentializes science, abstracts away much of what scientific proctice is. On the other hand, many practicing scientists, including excellent and insightful ones in their fields, do not think about fundamentals much until they improvise embarrasingly about them publicly.

Personally I like Feyerabend and a few older essays of Quine's. Matt McG knows a fair amount.

Sabine Hossenfelder is an interesting contemporary writer about exact science. Supervenience is topic helpful for thinking about some of this stuff where (I think) contemporary philosophers are writing productivel;y.

Anyway, she married a philosopher. What did she expect?

Sabine Hossenfelder is an interesting contemporary writer about exact science.

Interesting in that she's the latest in a line of writers who are more interested in publicly trashing other people's work than in either making original contributions or even understanding the work she's attacking, and journalists and the public keep buying this kind of thing.

If it makes you feel better, I have no idea who she is.

Surely the story related in 155 is an amusement and not a real thing.

My guess is that it isn't true. But my other guess is that if it were true, there's enough information to figure out exactly who it is. 33-year-old German-born woman academic physicist working in an English language environment, married to a 35-year-old academic philosopher. If there's one couple that matches that description in the world, I'd bet a whole lot that there aren't three.

This sounds like an injury that just has to heal, and probably ought not be treated any differently than, say, a sprained ankle, where rest is appropriate.

I think this is right - it's up in my shoulder blade on one side. The thing that's driving me a little crazy is trying to figure out what sets it off. It's not certain positions of my head/neck/arm so much as combinations of motions, but I just can't figure out dependably or predict it.

On the other hand, many practicing scientists, including excellent and insightful ones in their fields, do not think about fundamentals much until they improvise embarrasingly about them publicly.

Probably the only scientists who think about "fundamentals" are ones in their 60s or older, who either A) have achieved exalted status and now want to pontificate about how science works to the masses, or B) are sick of doing their specific projects and want to learn about how the field works in general.

Everyone else is occupied by their small corner of the rat race.

Surely the story related in 155 is an amusement and not a real thing.

I see a ton of things reposted from r/relationships. Almost all of them look fictional. But that may be because I don't want to live in an world where people's relationship problems are either "I'm a woman and my husband is doing insane, despicable things. Is it my fault?" or "I'm a man and my wife has a minor fault that I find annoying. Am I right to do insane, despicable things to try to change her?"

The letter is obviously fake. He keeps a picture of Hegel by the bed? He's an academic, and thinks everything written since Hegel is worthless? Her getting to bring up chirality also seems a bit on the nose.

Feyerabend is garbage. I thought his book was cute back when civilization wasn't succumbing to barbarism, but now is not the time for nihilism.

Heebie at 147, 150: Does resting a day actually accelerate healing, or does your body heal on a fixed schedule whether or not you barrel through?

As someone who's also going through a pretty bad bout of back pain at the moment (and concomitant sciatic pain down my leg), it depends on the nature/source of the problem. If it's "just" a pulled muscle in your back, well, I dunno. But if it's a spinal thing, a disrupted or herniated disc, your body does not just heal from that on a fixed schedule regardless of whether you soldier through. In this latter case (spine, disc(s), pinched nerve(s)), you do have to give the body time for the rupture and inflammation to heal itself. Soldiering through can threaten permanent damage. So I understand.

PF at 156: Skeleto-musular issues have responded well to muscle relaxers

Do you know off the top of your head which muscle relaxants are recommended? I can tell in my own situation that relaxing muscles (just lying down and sort of meditating for 20 minutes) helps a lot; but I'm wary of actually taking something. The last time I saw a specialist for this problem, she prescribed something that my mother, a nurse, said would affect every organ in my body, so I never took it. Don't remember what it was now.

172: Metaxalone is the one that I got best results with. I had/have this thing in my shoulder blade that used to flare up every two years or so. (This happened maybe four times.) It was crippling and hurt like hell. I couldn't, for example, stand up from a sitting position without excruciating pain.

The last time I got a prescription, the doctor said he wasn't going to prescribe it again until I got physical therapy. This turns out to have been exactly right. I have been lazy about the PT -- only doing it when I start to feel a flareup coming on -- but it has worked like a charm and I haven't needed the medication again.

They say don't drink and be careful about driving on metaxalone, but I never had any issues with it.

It's difficult to say "This is too ridiculous to be real life", as so much ridiculous is also true. But it's often possible to say "This reads as something written to maximize outrage/drama/lols."

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION, BUT IT IS BECAUSE FICTION IS OBLIGED TO STICK TO POSSIBILITIES; TRUTH ISN'T.

173: Thanks, pf. The 'don't drink and be careful about driving' concerns me, but we'll see. At the moment, of course, one hopes it'll take care of itself ('cept it's been going on for a month so far).

Good luck, Heebie!

155 reminds me of "The Good Place." Chidi's 3,000 page thesis, for example.

I agree with the fakiness of the letter. I still enjoyed it.

||

Well, JMM has about-faced on the impeachment question.

|>

He was anti and now he's pro, or the other way around?

The first.

Well, hooray. If JMM and Kevin Drum are both calling for impeachment, it must be about to happen.

Right?

Anyone?

The other thing I learned today is that they make Grey's Anatomy branded scrubs.

I've been a little surprised that smart people who I know aren't merely saying that the Ukraine thing ought to bring Trump down, but they are raising the possibility that it will bring Trump down, at least in the sense of making his re-election impossible. This seems absurd to me.

who is JMM ?

He runs TPM.

Okay, okay. Josh Marshall. Talking Points Memo.

I've been doing some research. It turns out Hegel is real.

Metaxalone definitely sounds like something from a UN Tribunal report.

168: certainly my corner of philosophy Facebook was curious....

He was half for and half against and now it's the other way around.

Can we have an impeachment thread?

I'm coming around to thinking the whistleblower must have been Bolton. He's a warmongering lunatic but he's also a true believer.

192 was me

It would be irresponsible not to speculate, but I think it was probably somebody less focused on starting a war.

Bolton is also a hardline anti-Russia hawk do that fits. I have a feeling we'll know soon enough.

If it was Bolton I don't see why he would go via the ICIG and risk interference by the DNI.

I have no actual knowledge, but I think it is likely to be a career government employee who will be denounced as Deep State or Establishment Liberal, depending on where they spent the career.

Or both. The standards are really low.

Also, the Missouri River is over the top of at least one interstate highway. It seems strange that the first I knew of that was looking down from a plane. This round of flooding didn't make the national news.

Huh. Johnson really got his ass handed to him there.

Right, Brexit is another big story to think about when we aren't concerned about the Iowa flooding.

Iowans all have insurance.

Back pain: Sympathy for the pain and irritation of going through it. 35 years of varied experience with back pain (including 'stabbing unpredictable pain near shoulder blade') have me firmly in the camp of "normal activities as pain allows is superior to both excessive rest and also superior to muscle relaxants or PT especially if the PT is traditional mindless stretch-and-strengthen." I have seen a study that supports exactly that position, and of course once I saw that study I never looked for another one. But that works for me. Up to a month to recover seems normal; two to three weeks might be the median for me. My earliest insight though, when I had bad back problems in my 20s, was "everybody has an uncle." Everybody has had or knows someone who has had back pain and they all know exactly how to cure yours and you have to get good at politely ignoring them all. It also turned out for me that telling others around me I was in pain was a mistake, and it was better to just let them think I was an irritable asshole.

The story in 155 is a philosophical in-joke. Kant notoriously argued that non-orientation-preserving mappings could not be accounted for by Leibnizian views of space; the impossibility of maneuvering opposing hands to coincide in space is the concrete phenomenon he organizes his discussion around. All this would be familiar to someone working on Hegel's epistemology, the jibe then being that Hegelians, who have a tendency to style their thought as representing an advance on Kant, are incapable of getting their minds around a topic Kant considered elementary enough to include in popular presentations of his doctrines.

It was also a joke on South Park.

Can you spit at people having phone meetings in an airport departure area?

No. Only from the boarding tunnel onwards.

He used the phrase "hyper-local" without irony.

He can be stoned at any time.

"normal activities as pain allows is superior to both excessive rest and also superior to muscle relaxants or PT especially if the PT is traditional mindless stretch-and-strengthen."

I'm up and about today, and so far I'm cautiously optimistic. I intend to teach my first class, which is sort of an marathon class that lasts almost two hours, and then evaluate if it's time to go rest at home, or teach my later class.

"the impossibility of maneuvering opposing hands to coincide in space is the concrete phenomenon he organizes his discussion around"

I am interpreting this as "no one ever clapped st the end of Kant's lectures so he consoled himself by arguing that it was impossible for anyone ever to clap anything".

More on mathematicians and our love of chalk: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/science/mathematicians-blackboard-photographs-jessica-wynne.html

Monsters.

Today I walked into my classroom to teach, picked up a piece of chalk, and it was not Hagoromo! But then I found another piece that was. I might have had to cancel class otherwise.

203: It also turned out for me that telling others around me I was in pain was a mistake, and it was better to just let them think I was an irritable asshole.

This made me laugh. Though I've actually come around to a lot of (mental) pain management, so that I'm not so much an irritable asshole as just flatly, calmly saying from time to time, "My back and my leg hurt quite a bit right now, so I have to limit activities, so I'll have to put off [whatever thing had been on the agenda]."

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NMM2 Robert Hunter. One more day I find myself alive
Tomorrow maybe go beneath the ground.

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We're not rich enough for everyday Hagoromo, but we do have a stash for colloquium speakers because that's midwestern hospitality.