I like it being low-profile. That's why I didn't buy ErgoDox.
So all the best wishes to the author.
But there are some tradeoffs why I probably not buy it.
1) I'd suggest a column of home/page up/page down/end (top to bottom in this order) on the right side, like some laptop makers do. They're very convenient. That's absolutely necessary for text editing or navigating in various windows. (Sure one can use combos, but then you must stick to the keyboard all the time.) Del/backspace probably also should be different keys.
2) Missing menu key also requires you to take mouse sometimes. Laptops can get away with touchpad. But with the minimal keyboard, that requires user to hold it more and use combos, you must leave the keyboard and take a mouse to open a context menu.
A general philosophical question (not a negative comment to this particular keyboard): do we really still need key rows to be shifted 1/4 of width, because keys needed arms underneath in the late 19th century?
I use a custom built corne keyboard which staggers the columns based on finger length, but not the rows. I don’t think I will ever go back to a standard layout keyboard after having used this for a few months.
If you won't like to source all the components yourself there are vendors who happy to sell you kits, but you can make 3-5 keyboards for that amount of money.
I configured all my programmable keyboards to map Capslock to Fn and use Fn+WASD for cursors keys and Fn+Q for Home and Fn+E for End, so I think that dedicated keys are unnecessary.
I cannot imagine using anything else anymore because it is so insanely convenient to press and hold down Capslock with my pinky finger and browse around text extremely fast.
All my keyboards also map Fn+1 to copy and Fn+2 to insert text which saves additional effort to lift my finger from Fn/Capslock.
Combinations with 3 or more keys get a bit tricky but you get used to it quickly since the modifier keys are near each other and you usually have 3 fingers available for them.
The keyboard needs to be programmable either by it's built-in firmware or by flashing a custom firmware like ZMK in the OP.
Autohotkey can do something like this for every keyboard on Windows but it's not as seamless as a firmware solution. Plus the firmware solution works on every computer you plug your keyboard into be ause it's just a remapping of the keys, not a driver hack.
That sort of thing works much better with fully programmable keyboards/QMK. I always rebind my caps lock at the keyboard layer and all of the normal combos you would expect work perfectly.
It probably meant that the railway was for kids as passengers.
But also, in Russian language, "child" doesn't imply someone younger than teenager, it does include adolescents too. There is a distinct term for "adolescent", but no distinct term for English "kid" or "toddler" except for some regional variants.
Hence, "childrens' railway" is the most broad term for it. Also, naming it "adolescents' railway" sounded more complex in Russian, a bit awkward, and would make visitors wonder: "do they allow little kids to ride?"
Regarding running the railway, there are very strict limitations what adolescents can do and what they can't do. IIRC, they can't control the fuelling of the vehicle, and some other arbitrary operations. Probably, they can't drive the engine, but just sit next to an adult driver.
Respect for the link to John T. Gatto, he was a great thinker, I even translated one of his essays from a link posted here a decade ago.
It does. It's bought by the Russian Mail.ru group.
In 2016, I went to an interview in their office, and the interviewer made me an excursion around it. At one place I saw big ICQ logo with sign reading "ICQ Project Department".
- Wow, it still hasn't died?!
- Shhhhh! Don't say this so loud, the guys get very offended! - said the interviewer.
The office itself was spacious, with free snacks and drinks, including free fresh juice -- I remember a perfect set of 4 people sitting together, some holding those free juices -- a guy and a girl sitting on small either couchettes or stools, and two more sitting next to them a bit higher on the window, and together looking like sat down to make promotion pictures for some sort of bar. I joked that this was staged just for me.
Then, there was a nice sightseeing place: an imposing rotating armchair next to panoramic glass, to make photos with Moscow in the backdrop. When you enter or exit the office, you walk along a tennis-field-size playground, with people playing, surrounded by a net to catch stray balls. The interviewer joked that of course all this play was also staged just for the interview.
Regarding ICQ, I guess, the project is kept by the corporation for nostalgic reasons -- it was the default messenger in exUSSR in the 90s and 00s.
I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically:
"It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem of a barren desert inhabited by predatory worms the size of a multiple unit train that feed on walking excavators and then sweat psychedelics: fantasy is fantasy, what do you want from it?"
He also wrote a great book on the Earth evolution and life evolution, in which he also explains how science works and worked earlier, and what were older theories, and Popper criterium as well.
>Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book.
Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologically impossible" at that time was rather different than when Yeskov was writing a few decades later.
It was not until the 1950s that widespread sea floor mapping and research, made possible by the now-unnecessarily-large-and-mostly-idle US Navy, provided conclusive evidence that forced the geology establishment to accept plate tectonics.
It's easy to forget how recently we stopped being totally wrong about things like that.
If I recall correctly, the geography of Middle Earth was heavily changed during the wars between Morgoth and the Valas. I.e., it wasn't entirely shaped by natural processes but also by the willfull acts of semi-Gods
Meddlesome demons ruin everything. Too bad Feanor didn't think to create Stormbringer instead of the fucking Silmarils; he could have shoved it up Melkor's arse and then put the rest of the Valar and Maiar in their place.
Mordor is...it just doesn't work. It's a hard scrabble plain with a large inland sea bounded on 3 sides by jagged, abrupt mountains that are entirely isolated from any other ranges, and form right angles with each other...oh and the surround a cone volcano that just emerges from the ground.
Any one of these things (minus the, I repeat, NEAR PERFECT RIGHT ANGLES formed by the mountain range around Mordor) can be explained, but the conditions that lead to one preclude the other.
...are we just going to ignore the fact that Middle Earth also has wizards and mind-controlling rings?
I don't mean this dismissively, I just think more imagination is called for. If Mordor couldn't have arisen via normal plate tectonics, then geology must work differently on Middle Earth, or there must be other magical forces at play. (If I remembered anything significant about LoTR I would suggest a more specific theory.)
Oh sure, the in-universe explanation is that the fallen Valar Melkor, who became known as Morgoth the Black after his destruction of the Trees of the Valar, used his might to pervert and destroy the works of the other 11/12 Valar and "brought forth fire and leveled mountains and raised valleys" to create hellscapes out of their work, such that the Earth, instead of a garden, became discordant and all the plans of the Valar were marred. After the end of the First Age, when the host of the Valar came to the aid of Middle Earth and destroyed Melkor's fortress, and brought him to judgement to be cast into the Outer Dark, there was further geologic destruction as the powers of the hosts basically destroyed the continent/region of Middle Earth known as Beleriand.
After THAT there was a further catastrophe as the Numenoreans, corrupted into the Dark Arts by Sauron, who was their captive, decided to wage war on the Valar, who they believed were keeping the secret of immortality from them. The Valar were in a pickle, and abdicated their powers and called on Eru to judge, because this was outside their mandate. He Atlantis'd Numenor and destroyed the majority of their people (who had turned to worshiping Morgoth) - the Numenoreans who founded Gondor and Arnor and who created the political landscape of the Third and Fourth Ages were the remnant of that fallen civilization, who were warned of the destruction of the isle of Numenor and escaped on boats.
Also it can be supposed that Mordor was a partial creation of Sauron, who fled there after the fall of Numenor as a spirit (could be wrong about that)
This is where a lot of people get stuck. They see the enormous effort put into world-building Middle-earth and can't help but see a gaping geologic hole. Yes, geology must work differently, but how? It frustrates people to see entire languages and histories fleshed out in minute detail on one hand, but on the other "rocks just do different, bud" on the other.
Tolkien was a linguist, not a geologist or economist (his anti-industrial and pro-monarchical/religious perspective were a resistance to the changes occurring in his time), so it's no surprise that he spent so much time on the linguistics.
His formative encounters with industrialization were the horrors of mechanized warfare in WW1, after which he retreated to the cloistered worlds of academia, religion (he was a devout Catholic), and the rural countryside of England. The perspectives and protagonists of his stories reflect that personal arc as well.
He was overtly trying to give England back a pre-modern mythology that he felt it had lost, because he felt that it was a better vehicle for introducing Christianity to children than the comparatively stark biblical stories.
Yes, we are on the same page as to what influences affected Tolkien, his limitations, his authorial intentions and goals, and the historical context in which his work was created.
What the geophillic fans wish to hear however is more akin to, "Yes, Tolkien operated within these constraints. It would be great if someone could fanfic or headcannon their way into a reasonable conclusion with the benefit of hindsight and scientific and narrative advances we've made in the meantime." It's a small gesture that opens a door rather than shuts one and provides just a bit more cognitive closure for the people who want it.
> What the geophillic fans wish to hear however is more akin to, "Yes, Tolkien operated within these constraints. It would be great if someone could fanfic or headcannon their way into a reasonable conclusion with the benefit of hindsight and scientific and narrative advances we've made in the meantime."
Note how he discusses plate tectonics and Tolkein's ignorance, having forgotten (or never realized) that plate tectonics was not taken seriously in Tolkein's time.
He has written a big book on evolution of Earth and theories around it. [1]
It includes a whole chapter on plate tectonics, the preceding theories, and how plate tectonics itself was gradually accepted. In the book, there's also a large review on other scientific problems, like where the Sun gets energy from, why the Earth has magnetic field, where does internal the heat of the Earth come from, etc. Lots of "how do we know that..." questions. A great review, highly recommend.
So he's 100% aware what status plate tectonics had in Tolkien's time. I think he also mentions that as a linguist he wasn't a geologist, and could draw the land whichever way he imagined.
It’s a no brainer that a person cannot be equally oriented both in linguistics and in geology. ... So it would be quite possible to declare an amnesty to the Professor at this place: they say, an offense undoubtedly took place, but it does not pose a particular public danger.
Brian Eno had these "Oblique Strategy" cards with pithy sayings printed on them. He would famously refer to the card deck when in need of inspiration. My favourite card says "Honor thy Error as a hidden intention."
Paleoanthologist is one of the best Freudian slips I've seen in a while. GO WITH IT!
True for complex systems, but West Roman empire didn't "collapse" instantaneously, nor within a year/decade.
If I remember correctly what I read on it, the actual date is arbitrarily taken for didactic clarity, and it's the date the capital moved to another city. But the kingdom still called itself Roman, so contemporaries didn't quite notice the difference. BTW, this is how modern Romania got its name -- smaller kingdoms in the former empire called themselves the glorious Rome.
The curious detail is that Barbarian leaders actually wanted to become king of Rome and to be acknowledged as equally civilized, rather than merely sack and loot it. Some of them were actually legioneers, if I remember it correctly. So it's not clear if a legioneer sacked Rome and set himself as king, was the new state still Roman or already not.
I wonder how come gas stove, an artifact of the 20th century, became a "traditional" thing?
The way people cook on gas stove is just one of many ways it can be, and I'm sure in year 1900, cooking on coal was rather different, and gas must have been an improvement, but also met with skepticism, and probably laments about the lack of charcoal smell or taste.
Gas isn't a tradition written in stone. It has serious issues like hot surfaces and higher chances of burning your skin, scurf on the pans, benzopyrene in the air, and risk of suffocation, heating of the indoor air, etc. Personally, I switched to induction for all these reasons.
It looks like the only downside to induction is that some users need walls hot (I don't) and need cooking to continue if they raise the pan up. I think this is doable with different forms of the oven, and with thicker iron pans: iron absorbs EM waves, it conducts heat well, and it will add thermal inertia. These pans will be heavier, but IMO that's a small price for all the benefits of induction.
Back in 2007-2008 I, an economics graduate, was snubbed by developers, even though I showed a working prototype and examples of works since 1998!
DB developers also snubbed, even though I asked to show a working database app made at analyst position.
I showed a hand-made website with Javascript and PHP backend, and they snubbed that I didn't use frameworks.
Finally, in 2009 I got a web dev position with humiliating remarks. Only at the next company, a small web studio, the chief dev said "great, because if you did it by hand, it means you know the internal gears better than the framework guys", hired me and taught me some frameworks, which I learned quickly.
I understand that people are afraid they'd have to babysit the new developer, but I showed them lots of things, and it still didn't matter. Maybe they were afraid I'd leave their shitty job, IDK.
So, some standard framework used in the industry is a must. Plus, if a company is bigger than 20 people, snobs start running the hiring process.
Nowadays, well, if you want to slightly change the field of work, you're given a huge task to build a whole app, and then are nitpicked at insufficient comments, not clear code, not making useless classes, not using useless async, and so on. Nobody looks at your github project where you have those features. I guess, a single child-less guy could do this in 3 nights on RedBull, but I don't think I could. I'm quite discouraged.
Note that in the USSR, political questions and false accusations were often used to torpedo career competitors or to have vengeance at those who were more successful. Almost nobody in this story or in other cases were political dissidents. They didn't go out to protest or speak up on the political freedoms or other matters.
Probably should focus on implementing strong labor protections and encouraging union participation (which would blunt the effect this sort of weapon has), instead of eliminating them.
They weren't necessary sent to work camps. Some were just fired and couldn't get hired. Later, in 1950's & 60's, you would be effectively banned from career. Sometimes librarians would paint black their name if they were in references section. Since 1960's victims of these political battles could go to other institutions, probably at less important position.
This practice continued all the way till the collapse of the USSR, I heard of such stories in Moscow universities, and in the Academy of Science.
I would not compare anything that happened in the West to what happened in the USSR. I don't recall anyone in the West being sent to a work camp or shot because someone accused them of something they were not.
Along with what would happen to your family. In the USSR it was often not just yourself, they'd also target your family and its well-being just the same in the name of collective guilt.
most people reading this have never missed a meal in their lives; a good number of people reading this have never been in a grown-up out-of-money situation where you face deadlines and have no source of money; probably a few people reading this have had to work doing low-skill work, but personal computers have changed access stories. The new version of "labor camp" is a phone that costs you little to nothing but is restricted, tracked and required, and work that is low-skill or away from a center of decision making somehow. Parts of this are happening in the USA out of sight, and elsewhere, and it may be increasing under new economics regarding income and housing. Smug dismissal among those that have never really had parts of it yet, can be expected IMHO
No prob, I'll be clearer. Phenomena may be indicated which, in form of episodes, very defined events, may be part of a "past", but the direction, inclination, patterns behind those events may still be lurking much later. (For instance, an expression of fascism ended in the forties, yet fascism may linger, emerge etc.) So, thin latency and occasionalities aside - minor traits and occurrences that just confirm exceptionality -, for the phenomenon to be over it must be uprooted. Unexpressed but latent is "not over": it remains of concern, it may express differently, it may re-explode.
That’s 100% what happened to political offenders in the USSR even after GULAG officially closed. Theses scientists may have gotten article 58, but I didn’t dig that deeply. There is no US parallel.
Work camps are just the extreme of the policies that we have yet to implement. We seem to be lubing the slippery slope towards it though, with political correctness and cancel culture.
This is low effort and specious. One person losing a job or appointment isn't the same as people being forced out of careers entirely or (literally) sentenced to years in a gulag because someone didn't like them.
There is surely space for reasoned discussion about "cancel culture" and its effects on public discourse that doesn't involve likening a bunch of hippies on Twitter to the Soviet repression machine. Can we please start being better about this?
You come with unduly assumptions with the contexts you throw in. «Political questions and false accusations» are still «used to torpedo careers» - just that.
In one place and time some excuses are more effective than others - if the counterpart is intentionally malicious they may just exploit that, irregardless the content.
>One person losing a job or appointment isn't the same as people being forced out of careers entirely
Try speculating publicly about
1. Heritability of intelligence/behavior
2. Genetic differences among ethnicities
Of course neither points go against scientific "consensus" individually, it's only discussing them simultaneously that risks your scientific career.
Now try publishing something critical of covid vaccines. Or the modern approach to diagnosis/treatment of gender dysphoria. There are relatively few examples of such cancellations because the threat is implicit but well known, and that's sufficient to suppress dissent and give the illusion of consensus, but I digress.
This argument is circular. You're saying the purported suppression can't be detected because its effect is already so widespread. And it's widespread because of the threat of cancellation. Which didn't happen. See the problem? The only way to get to your conclusion is to assume as a prior that this research doesn't exist because it's being suppressed, and not merely because it's wrong.
On an anonymous account. Meanwhile our org's job postings are "gendered" because they contain words like "strong", "independent", "analysis", and if I dare to pushback on the insanity I'm liable to lose my job. If I wrote publicly about it and gained any notoriety I'd risk being publicly shamed by the woke mob and effectively blacklisted a la James Damore.
>You're saying the purported suppression can't be detected because its effect is already so widespread. And it's widespread because of the threat of cancellation. Which didn't happen. See the problem
Your argument is dishonest. It does happen and these is evidence, I'm saying it's harder to detect. Look at the unwarranted treatment of James Watson for daring to suggest the relationship between genes, race, and intelligence.
>that this research doesn't exist because it's being suppressed, and not merely because it's wrong
See above. It doesn't take more than a few public examples to deter people from asking certain questions or even participating in a system when asking the wrong questions regarding certain topics becomes career and social suicide.
Ironically, this reform was started under the previous 30-year president, "father of nation" Nazarbayev in 2018 or '19, and was halted under Tokayev. Some signs in the streets were converted before the reform was finalized, but not all. And now if you deal with e-government website, everything is in Cyrillic. Kazakh UI of the website is still in Cyrillic too. I haven't seen a single Kazakh price tag in Latin yet.
So all the best wishes to the author.
But there are some tradeoffs why I probably not buy it.
1) I'd suggest a column of home/page up/page down/end (top to bottom in this order) on the right side, like some laptop makers do. They're very convenient. That's absolutely necessary for text editing or navigating in various windows. (Sure one can use combos, but then you must stick to the keyboard all the time.) Del/backspace probably also should be different keys.
2) Missing menu key also requires you to take mouse sometimes. Laptops can get away with touchpad. But with the minimal keyboard, that requires user to hold it more and use combos, you must leave the keyboard and take a mouse to open a context menu.
A general philosophical question (not a negative comment to this particular keyboard): do we really still need key rows to be shifted 1/4 of width, because keys needed arms underneath in the late 19th century?