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A little meta-moderating would be nice, regarding submissions. Just thought of it, a minute ago. There is a submission regarding the Zumwalt destroyers. I have things to say on that subject, so if I were able to meta-moderate the submission, I would definitely give it an up-vote.

One person's moderation in that respect might not mean much - but if a number of people took the time to moderate, it could be useful.

Some people may not even look at that queue, but I've gotten used to it now. If something looks very interesting, there is time to do some modest research before the discussion starts. Or, if it only looks moderately interesting, you can at least click the links in the submission. Voting a submission up or down though. Sounds good anyway.

So - you open a web page, and it takes a while to load. Sometimes, a long while. You get curious about just WHAT takes so long, and start looking at the page code, fire up wireshark, and watch things. Everyone with a little savvy blocks ads, blocks trackers, streamlines the browser, tweaks under the hood settings.

One thing that I've personally not keyed on until recently, are online fonts, or web fonts. WTF? I've installed a boatload of fonts on my system. I only use a few fonts, but I've installed all kinds of fonts, to ensure that I could read stuff that just might require some outlandish font.

But, everytime I load a page, I'm DOWNLOADING a new font? WTF? Time to investigate . . .

So the author demands that if I read his content, it must use some special font, that is hosted online? Really? Oh - it's a PROPRIETARY font. Ahhh, I see. Someone is making MONEY off of this waste of bandwidth. Makes sense now! "Download ze fonts, Old Man, or we'll break the REST OF YOUR FINGERS!"

Fuck them all.

Some of us hate downloadable web fonts so here's how you can stop websites (including techpowerup) from forcing their glorious fonts down your throat.

1) Mozilla Firefox

Open about:config
Set "gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled" to false.

2) Google Chrome
Right Click Chrome's launcher icon, click "Properties".

At the end of the launcher string add the following:

" --disable-remote-fonts" (without quotes).

You're done.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/disabling-web-fonts-in-mozilla-firefox-and-google-chrome.184198/

HR. Supposed to mean "human relations" or some such a thing. Bullshit.

I just came from a "meeting". I've never liked that broad, but I'm beginning to really DISLIKE her. The presumptuous creature has the nerve to talk down to me. She presumes to tell me how to type out a memo or letter. "Some people are offended by what you write." I called her on that - "Show me what is offensive!" She points to a couple words that I typed in caps for emphasis. WTF? Someone is OFFENDED by a word highlighted in caps? WTF? Sure, I can choose to use italics to draw attention to a word. I can choose to use bold print. Fuck that - I've been typing for about 40 - uhhh 44 years now. I didn't grow up with italics or bold on my typewriter. You could choose to use red ribbon to highlight something, but that was REALLY frowned upon. Red means a hell of a lot more that bold, or italics, or CAPITAL LETTERS. Red was reserved for very special purposes.

This is age discrimination. As well as discrimination against military veterans. USING ALL CAPS WAS ROUTINE, AND REQUIRED WHEN I TYPED OUT VARIOUS REPORTS IN THE NAVY. Not all of the report of course, but there were fields which were expected to be all caps.

This ditzy broad uses the word "inappropriate" - one of those damned SJW code words. "I don't like what you're doing, so it's tantamount to criminal conduct!"

I'm offended. I'm offended that busy body women who have no real work to do can call working men and working women into their offices, to whine and snivel about some imagined slight. And, I'm offended that these women have the AUDACITY to pretend that their way is the only way.

The broad doesn't like old bastards? Tough shit. I've been on the verge of quitting for some time now. Supid assed "human relations" may be the straw that broke the camels back. Hell, I'd rather talk to the camel . . .

So, it's been about nine months of Experiment and here's a metric I randomly checked today for you:

First Time Mod Bans Given Out: 13
Second Time Mod Bans Given Out: 0

That's less than two a month with a registered user base of 5875 (~90% of you are apparently committed to remain AC last I checked). This means, by in large, nobody is abusing the Spam moderation or mod-bombing. Cheers for that, folks. None of us on staff like to hand them out, even when they're unquestionably warranted.

So, I was drinking coffee this morning and watching my twitter stream and somehow the thread count of sheets came up. Being as I didn't feel like fitting my feelings on the matter into 140 characters, it goes here.

High thread count sheets can suck it. I'd happily pay inverted prices to have to never sleep on them again. It is my firm belief that sheets should not feel like you're lying between two ultra-thin layers of cloud. They damned sure shouldn't end up wadding themselves into a ball just from one night's worth of sleeping between them.

Sheets should feel like you're sandwiched between two new dollar bills. Slightly rough and starched as stiff as you can manage. You should damned near be able to make a drum head out of them. As soon as they start feeling soft and showing signs of wadding up, they should be laundered and starched to within an inch of their lives again.

Cixin Liu explains it in his 'Dark Forest'. This has turned into the best book I've read in years - and I still have the third book in the trilogy to read.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Forest-Cixin-Liu-ebook/dp/B00R13OYU6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1440699211&sr=1-1&keywords=cixin+liu+dark+forest

One year in as of today and still averaging over ~10K hits of the hashtag on slow days. Dead? The gaming press and SJWs should be so lucky. Gamers, we just don't quit until we win.

sic semper umbilicus

I've become accustomed to that "only x submissions in the queue" thingy. This morning, I stumbled across a story that seems worthy of discussion here, so I looked to see how many stories are in the queue. Ooops - it's gone!

Apparently, that bit of information disappears when the queue is deemed to be "full".

https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/03/31/0829226

So, it's Women's Equality Day. Lot of you probably think about this time I'd be busting out with a sexist rant. Hate to disappoint but I'm all about equality. Actual equality though not this bullshit third-gen feminist version of equality where they think equality means special treatment for their tragic victimhood.

No, equality always has and always will mean equal treatment. Every single time. No exceptions for past mistreatment. No white-knighting up if someone with tits comes crying on your shoulder that people are mean to her just because she calls them misogynists, shitlords, tools of the patriarchy, etc...

In fact, no calling yourself a feminist period. If you do it as a woman it's saying you feel your entire gender has been victimized and should be given special treatment because it is incapable of taking care of itself. If you do it as a man you're saying an entire gender is in need of your protection.

You either treat a woman as if she's an adult and as capable of taking care of her own shit as you are, or you don't. There is no "yes, but" to it. Equal treatment or sexism, there are no other choices.

I got the big karma ding on this comment today. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things on the site, but has anyone else seen the spam mod option abused?