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But there are exceptions. English language orthography is a weird science.

On Windows, you can run lots of Windows/Linux VMs and zero Mac VMs.

(Source: Wikipedia via Claude Opus)

I would greatly appreciate an optional light mode / non-dark mode. I know a lot of folks love dark mode, but I find it very hard to read.

Thanks so much for this!

It was available for online browsing or as a downloadable file, I think a zip compressed PDF. I’m sure copies are available, but it would be nice to have an authoritative source.

It begins:

“This is the first post in a series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) discussing the basic contours of life – birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death – of pre-modern peasants and their families. Prior to the industrial revolution, peasant farmers of varying types made up the overwhelming majority of people in settled societies (the sort with cities and writing). And when I say overwhelming, I mean overwhelming: we generally estimate these societies to have consisted of upwards of 80% peasant farmers, often as high as 90 or even 95%. Yet when we talk about these periods, we are often focused on aristocrats, priests, knights, warriors, kings and literate bureaucrats, the sort of folks who write to us or on smiths, masons and artists, the sort of folk whose work sometimes survives for us to see. But this series is going to be about what life was like for the great majority of people who lived in small farming households.”

‘You can learn a surprising amount by kicking things. It’s an epistemological method you often see deployed by small children, who target furniture, pets, and their peers in the hope of answering important questions about the world. Questions like “How solid is this thing?” and “Can I knock it over?” and “If I kick it, will it kick me back?”’

Ozymandias

By Percy Byesshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

It’s a reference, of course, to “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson, http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html.

I had nothing of value in the Buick.

Ironic, as Ms. Morissette would say.

My parents bought the Buick from my grandmother to drive home to Virginia after the van fire, and they gave it to me for my senior year of college. My fire was a couple of years after graduation.

Smoke started pouring out from under the hood, so I pulled over and popped the hood and saw a blazing fire. I ran in a panic to the trunk, got the extinguisher, and put out the fire.

It turned out that the air conditioner compressor had seized up and stopped turning, causing the belt to overheat and catch fire. The fix was simple: remove the remains of the belt and everything was fine. Roll down the windows when it’s hot.

If I had let the car burn out and be totaled I would have saved a lot of trouble, including endless transmission leaks and a busted U-joint which led to my coasting to the side of the road with the driveshaft (connected only at the front) dragging and bouncing and throwing up showers of sparks down the freeway.

And (spoiler) no sex or drugs, teases to the contrary notwithstanding (not that there’s anything wrong with sex or drugs, but that’s not what this show is about).

They did. Yes, they did.