American Christmas, part 2

More things we notice when we come back to Texas after living in the Netherlands for 5 years. Plus, the usual links and fun finds on the World Wide Web and meatspace.

American Christmas, part 2

• Stores that are open on Sunday, and don’t close until 9pm.

• People saying “sorry” for no reason.

• Bagels.

• Top sheets.

• Ceiling fans.

• HVAC.

• Warmth from the sun.

• Massive amounts of water in toilets.

• Bottle caps that come all the way off.

• Colby jack.

• Cheddar.

• Ritz crackers.

• Crushed ice from your home refrigerator.

• Oceans of lotions: ten versions of every product (sometime more than ten).

• 45mph.

• Self-service checkout machines that insist in weighing every grocery.

• Using physical credit cards.

• “Everyone is so fuckin' happy.”

• Giant, fluffy cupcakes for breakfast. (Called “muffins” by the locals.)

• Limestone facade.

• A box of 12 croissants, each as big as Drax the Destroyer’s two fists side-by-side.

• Free toilets at gas stations.

• Free toilets at grocery stores.

• Free toilets at…everywhere.

More things in part one.

Relevant to your interests

• Not even God can save DXC! - “Stabilizing delivery on infrastructure doesn’t mean people will buy transformation. Just look at the similar price-to-sales ratio to Kyndryl, another firm struggling to sell transformational services tied to its commodity infrastructure business.”

• Artmaker Blog - Bruce Sterling starting up his Wired-style blogging again? I hope so! For example: “He deliberately keeps it as a swamp so that he won’t become mentally trapped in the habits of the bourgeoisie.”

• What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it - ‘“First of all, our licenses aren’t working anymore,” he said. “We’ve had enough time that businesses have found all of the loopholes and thus we need to do something new. The GPL is not acting the way the GPL should have done when one-third of all paid-for Linux systems are sold with a GPL circumvention. That’s RHEL.” RHEL stands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which in June, under IBM’s ownership, stopped making its source code available as required under the GPL.’ And: ‘Another straw burdening the Open Source camel, Perens writes, “is that Open Source has completely failed to serve the common person. For the most part, if they use us at all they do so through a proprietary software company’s systems, like Apple iOS or Google Android, both of which use Open Source for infrastructure but the apps are mostly proprietary. The common person doesn’t know about Open Source, they don’t know about the freedoms we promote which are increasingly in their interest. Indeed, Open Source is used today to surveil and even oppress them.”’

• Software AG webMethods: The Farewell Sale - “Yesterday, I was surprised to learn that IBM is acquiring webMethods from Software AG.”

  

Wastebook

• “It’s good, but it’s fruit cake.”

• ‘I normally avoid camou clothing – (“It’s our version of plaid” – Wm Gibson)’ Here.

• Frank Sinatra singing “Jingle Bells” is almost better than the theme song for Halloween, but only on Christmas Day.

• On the Internet, you should always favor self-publishing and owning the published material. Each item may make zero money, but you’ll accrue the value and build the channel over years. Also, it’s often much faster, and publishers fall prey to perfect being the enemy of done.

• “Essentially, where you could see the welds and joins before, you could now see the chop marks and bolts.” Here.

• “This reminds me of my colonoscopy.”

• "Probably, maybe. But, not on purpose

  

Logoff

Still in Texas, now with the kids at “Nana Camp,” that is, staying with my mother.