Caturday Post: Scaramouche Is Strong Against Lemongrass

Enthusiastic Consent for Everyone, Real Life Edition

Recently someone asked me if they could give me a hug.  They ASKED me.  They asked ME.  And they waited to hear my answer before making a single move towards me.  It was amazing and wonderful.

More of that for everyone, please. 

A Moment of Fan-Personing*

I got to meet Richard Carrier!!!  He signed two of his books for me!!!!!

*In what I hope was/is a very polite and non-creepy way.

What Good Is Math?

From Kiery King, who was deprived of a basic education, the reason why they need math:

http://www.kieryking.com/2016/01/on-math-programming/

and how being denied an education based on sex is still very much alive and well in the United States of America:

http://www.kieryking.com/2014/02/in-which-my-genitals-mean-i-dont-learn-math-or-science/

If you know someone who wants to do (math, science, sewing, whatever) don't tell them they can't because they are (female, black, male, whatever).  Don't stand there and let that person's parents tell them they don't need to/are not allowed to learn.  Deliberately sabotaging someone else's choices because of arbitrary and nonsensical gender restrictions is a vile thing to do.

No Food Weekend

A good friend of mine is a teacher in a low income area.  Not only does she teach kids, a feat I find remarkable, this weekend she is going without food just so that she can understand her kids better. She will be discussing the experience here.

Caturday Post: Scaramouche In a Large Box With Paper

In Which Conan the Engineer Takes a Nap

The story thus far.

After cleaving in twain the coffee-belching toad, Conan sank to the ground, his mighty thews at the last weary from his travails.  Stretching out his taut and muscular frame, glistening with sweat, upon the sward next to the tarn of coffee spewed by the monstrous toad which he had just hewn in twain, Conan sank into slumber.

While he lay there, like a panther on a high branch, ready to become alert at the slightest disturbance, he dreamt.  In his mighty warrior's dream he found himself in an ancient and massy datacenter.  Even the smallest of universal serial bus cables had the girth of Conan's great arm, and the power cables were large enough to crush a man in their coils even as a great boa constrictor crushes a cayman. 

Greatly wondering, yet undaunted ,for nothing of heaven above nor hell beneath could daunt the mighty engineer, Conan approached the server nearest him, leaving light sandal prints in the untracked dust.  With the fearless resolve of a follower of the great god of the Cimmerians, Cron, he ascended 99 steps to a great platform upon which rested a keyboard and monitor, and entered a keystroke.  Immediately the monitor screen filled with these dread characters, repeated over and over:

"ERROR:  requested WAL segment 00000001000051E200000053 has already been removed"

Then Conan awoke, disquieted.