I spent a year making my company’s iOS apps accessible (meaning usable for the blind and people with vision disabilities). I had to do a lot of weird shit either because of bugs in Apple’s VoiceOver technology or because of the strange way in which our code base was broken up into modules (some of which I did not have access to) and I would always put in comments explaining why I was doing what I was doing. The guy doing code review and merges would always just remove my comments (without any other changes) because he felt that not only were comments unnecessary but also they were a “code smell” indicating professional incompetence. I feel sorry for whoever had to deal with that stuff at a later point.

I’ve never had a manager that was even aware of the comments vs. no comments issue. If I ever had, I would have just told them that a lack of comments makes the original coder harder to replace.

lazy programmers

I don’t think they’re lazy, I think they’re not good writers. Not being able to write well is very common among programmers (not having to communicate with written language is one reason a lot of people go into coding) and in my experience the Venn diagrams for “not a good writer” and “thinks comments are unnecessary” overlap perfectly.

Why the kitana was a super-sword.

Kinda random, but: the first device capable of measuring the size of an object to a one millionth of an inch resolution was built in the 1840s. So this would have been old technology when Abe got his fax.

I frequently drive between Philadelphia and the DC area on I-95, and it’s like Bizarro Earth as far as lanes go: the slowest cars are always in the left-most lanes with people passing on the right at 25 mph or more over the limit. My favorite is people who get on the express lanes (which you pay extra to use) and then go 10 mph under the limit.

Don’t worry, they will figure out that without humans releasing gasses they have no purpose, so they will cull most of the human population but keep just enough to justify their existence to manage it.

Unfortunately this statement also applies to the 1%. And the “just enough” will get smaller and smaller as AI and automation replace humans.

Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.

“He’ll be gone, in a day or … TWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

And viagra.

It was the Saudis. Apparently, the Jewish Saudis.

Throughout most of history, it’s had nothing to do with manipulating stupid people and everything to do with specialization in violence.

This is why people voting for the Green party candidate (I’m not even going to bother looking up his name) piss me off so much. The core of the republican strategy is disenfranchisement and voting Green is literally self-disenfranchisement. You’re doing the Republicans’ work for them.

Must be a general lack of education.

Republican politicians have long used language targeted at a 5th grade level of comprehension. Trump’s big innovation in politics was targeting a 4th grade level.

Soundtrack for this cartoon.

The Art of the Squeal

Ha ha “asks”.

take material action to rein in the increasingly lawless and openly right-wing Supreme Court

Nooooooo! Then the right-wing media would paint them as partisan! Instead of what they’re doing now, which is … painting them as partisan.

It’s also just plain unworkable for single-parent households or families that rely on two incomes … aka nearly fucking everybody.

My brother and sisiter-in-law briefly did “homeschooling” with their kids. I put the word in scare quotes because it wasn’t what people normally think of when they consider homeschooling. It was actually a private school which the kids went to four days a week and then one day a week the parents guided the kids at home through a lesson plan prepared by the school. The only point of this was that it allowed the school to hire non-accredited and non-union teachers since it was ostensibly homeschooling and not a normal school.

At least it saved the parents money, right? Ha ha nope! Still expensive as shit - like $30K per year per kid.