





6502 assembly language
Z80 would be good too. The kids should be able to implement the instruction set on a breadboard by intuition alone. There’s something wrong with the teachers and Big School if the kids don’t have it running CP/M by the end of the school year, preferably with a working port of Hack.


IIII for four o’clock but IX for nine o’clock
Very interesting - I have a newer Timex with RN on my (left) wrist right now and never thought about alternate notations for the numbers. Turns out it uses “IIII” for 4 but “IX” for 9 rather than spelling it all out in additive form. The designers made a curious choice for people wearing the watch on their left - the 9 o’clock “IX” is upside down so that it reads “XI” from the point of view of the wearer rather than, thus it looks like 9 is 11.
We had to learn RN when I was a kid, and I assume that’s only because there were a few RN clocks remaining out in the world. I’ve never felt like I need to process the numerals on a clock anyway - once you know what position corresponds to what hour you’re good to go. Many clocks and watches don’t have numerals at all and that doesn’t impair most people from using them.


Seeing clocks in public is also becoming rare
Is it? I hadn’t noticed but I’m probably not looking for clocks in the wild much either. I can think of one big quasi-public space (my YMCA gym) that has nothing but analog clocks up high on the walls. I could speculate that analog is easier than digital to read from a distance, or that large digital clocks designed to be read from a distance are more expensive than analog or hard to find, but I wouldn’t think either of these would be true.


Yeah, especially with schools being somewhat evenly distributed around cities - this could really help with coverage. I’ve only read about Meshtastic but I recall it’s extremely low bandwidth so that would be a problem for the little dissidents.


Good question, I was just alluding to the part in the article that read
European settlers so disliked these “ill-shap’d” birds
but I too wonder if the birds have some other habits that people think they should die for? And the part about hunting … I’ve never heard of people hunting loons for food (? or for the feathers maybe?) so I guess shooting them would be for the fun of it and/or to reduce their numbers.


Reread the thread. I’m replying to frunch not innermachine.


I’m getting charged over $1000 for taking an ambulance to the hospital
It’s $5000+ here.


“analog” <> “old-fashioned”. Analog clocks are very common out in the world. Analog watches even more so, they’re the norm not the exception among people with an interest in watches. My take-away from this story is that 1) these schools are not teaching kids to read analog clocks, and 2) these schools have installed digital clocks rather than analog.
Both of these things are easy to remedy.


It’s bizarre to me that loons were hated and killed for fun. Just for how they looked?
I’m from Vermont and yeah when I was a kid we used lead sinkers without a second thought. We breathed it out of car exhaust without a second thought too. Today I can’t think of any behavior easier to change than throwing a poisonous element into the environment for sport.


All these years I’d been waiting for the Andromeda Strain, when it turns out now that our solution was right here on Earth.


I can’t see the words “Ecce Homo” without hearing the choir from the Mr. Bean intro.