ttj - Tom Jones

One way to guess what we will look like from the future, is from how we view cultures of the past.  It would probably amuse someone from the "Bell Beaker Culture", or "Corded Ware Culture", that their culture is named after features of their cups.  They probably thought they were up to all sorts of other things as well. How might our culture be known, in 4500 years time, if we are named after features of our cups?  My first guess was "Fally-Over Plastic Cups Culture". Hotel bathrooms now come with extremely lightweight plastic cups, wrapped in plastic.  These do not have the mass to support a toothbrush.  You put a toothbrush in, the cup falls over.  The example depicted is from the Duke of Normandy.  There is no other solution provided, for holding a toothbrush.  That's what the glass glass used to do. On second thoughts, the fally-over cups are so insubstantial, they are unlikely to stand the test of time, to be available to future archaeologist...

  During the week, I heard a recording of one of those grandstandings in Washington, with a politician asking its question, then saying "yes or no", trying by sheer force of will, to constrain answers to those alternatives.  It wasn't "have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no", but neither was it a yes or no question. The opposite of that, then, must be the question "label remanence: bad, or very bad?", because both answers are correct. Illustrated above are three examples.  The mug has gluey residue that feels grim.  The oven dish is new, and supposed to go in... the oven.  It doesn't just peel off.  Bits of it come off, with work, and glue is left.  Does this object meet the basic merchantable quality criterion for something supposed to go in the oven?

As the world enters silly times, it is worth thinking ahead to the kind of world we want to build next, once people finally realise they have to be sensible again. As Herodotus (tho he makes some of them up), or even Harari (and he takes it too far, of course), point out, there is a wide range of cultural setups that humans can create for themselves.  So let's allow ourselves to imagine a radically and fundamentally different human world. In this spirit, then, I propose the following idea: a world with less label remanence. Consider the following illustration:     Your first impression might be: depicted are several items, and in that sense the picture is in the same category as a still life by Michelangelo, say.  But look more closely.  Does the Michelangelo have bits of glue and damage, where a label has been removed from each piece of fruit? The reflective surface is a Simplehuman bin.  I have 4.  They all have severe label remanence. The box is by ...

cost around 2500 GBP(2023). bought 4 initially boots into windows. horrid, it starts talking to you in robot voice ships in card box. lenovo could learn something about experience from apple covered in stickers. sticker of fingerprint over the fingerprint sensor three camera eyes? two seem to be coverable by the slidy thing, tho cover could be transparent, the other not? In any case, red dot is probably annoying to have directly above display ugly intel vpro sticker. why do this? both usb-c ports are on left. one on right would be nice BIOS warns you if using generic usb-c power supply, even tho works fine, have to press ESC. annoyances to boot debian installer cd from usb optical drive:  annoying: power button hold for power off has been 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds for several generations now. too easy to suspend by mistake hold power button for 10 seconds press power button press enter to interrupt normal startup loud 1980s beep, then you're up against the clock to choose som...