Mark Meyer

I shipped 20 volumes of OED to DC this last trip. According to the residency laws in my head, that means I live here now.

18.09.2025 23:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

An unintended consequence of moving to @kagi.com for search is that it's slowly exfiltrating me from Apple's walled garden. First, Safari -> Orion browser and then Passwords/Keychain -> 3rd party manager. Side effect is that going back and forth between Mac and Linux box is a lot less disruptive.

24.08.2025 18:47 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I wonder what percentage of these folks concerned about their culture have ever read a Mark Twain novel or could tell you who wrote Rhapsody in Blue.

23.08.2025 16:21 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

OpenAI's new frontier model explain why it is so good at a task it just failed miserably at.

Its self awareness is impressive too!

08.08.2025 03:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This of course it wrong. The Spartans were not carrying their underwear. They were carrying the leather strap (τροπωτῆρα) used to connect the oar to the thole pin on their boat, which they would need for the boats on the other side. Why is Google doing this to us?!?

24.05.2025 18:51 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

"The term "rowlock thong" combines two unrelated concepts: a rowlock (a brace that holds an oar in place on a boat) and a thong (a type of underwear or swimwear). Therefore, "rowlock thong" likely refers to a specific type of thong that is designed for water activities…. "

24.05.2025 18:51 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Book 2 of Thucydides's History describes the Peloponnesian sailors leaving their ships and heading across land with only their oars, cushions and (in Richard Crawley's translation) "rowlock thong". Curious for an image, I pop "rowlock thong" into Google and get this AI suggestion:

24.05.2025 18:51 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

I also remember when we had big professional labs where they knew your name, could make a gorgeous b&w print, and you would rub shoulders at a light table with the best shooters in town while waiting for an e6 job to finish. Those really were the days.

20.03.2025 09:47 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This is tragic. Anyone who was familiar with 18F knows those were some of the real heroes of government, who helped make government tech/digital services better for the public.

They were doing real work that DOGE pretends to do, but is too ignorant to know how to do.

01.03.2025 08:07 — 👍 3815    🔁 1038    💬 52    📌 16