I still use my 2010 27" iMac as my main computer at home. It works perfectly well for web browsing and it runs several old apps like Quicken 2007 that I use on a regular basis.

Written on Election Night 2016 by Paul Krugman:

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

During Donald Trump's first term, the S&P 500 rose approximately 83%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 73%, and the Nasdaq Composite surged 152%.

I've been programming computers in one capacity or another for decades. I've done everything from Apple Basic to Visual Basic, with C, C++, Objective C, Java, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Python, PHP & MySQL in between, plus several others that don't merit mention here.

I have to do some programming in my job, but it is only a small part. I administer several different cloud services, so I have to deal with a lot of APIs. Sometimes the particular action I'm looking to perform is not intuitive. It is much easier for me to pass the API Doc URL to ChatGPT, tell it what I want it to do, and have it write an initial Python script for me.

I still have to debug it and give that back to ChatGPT for revision. Eventually, I get to the solution, usually in less than half the time it would have taken me to bang out the code myself. It's nice to have it automatically insert comments and add debugging messages to the terminal and to a log.

The thing is, you still need to know what you're doing. Sometimes it writes rather inefficient algorithms, and I've caught it a few times in off by 1 errors. You can't just have a person without programming experience use it and expect it to be successful.

First they came for Boeing, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't all fucked up.

Got to be pretty unconventional to count as unconventional in QM.

Being a hippie never goes out of style.

Not everyone has enough money to do groundbreaking things like put a car in orbit.

I saw it when it came out, and thought it sucked donkey doodles.

Don't they know fake news is what everyone wants these days?

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. For example, if their boss is an MBA who gives out raises on the basis of how many pounds+gallons they produce or sell, they would be quite rational to request a report that shows how many pounds+gallons they have produced or sold.

For some suitable definition of "work".

In my experience, business "analysts" don't know what the hell they want, let alone how to specify it.

I've been asked to create reports that add pounds + gallons, and it's almost impossible to get them to understand why that's nonsense.

Why not? People who think their god will protect them don't need foxholes. People in foxholes are putting their trust in the boring but well-established ability of a thick pile of dirt to stop bullets.

I've been wondering what the authorities would do if I started selling updated accommodations for the afterlife. Want an extra garage or bath? Something closer to the golden throne, or further from all that off-key singing? Or most popular of all, something farther from those people.

Pay now and get it later, of course.

At least he wasn't puttering the choir boys.