bdr

Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.

I enjoyed it too, a long time ago, and some sentences have stuck with me. This is the first time I’ve seen someone mention it. Felt inspired by Pale Fire.

I think they mean that, with writing, it’s easier to parse complex syntax trees. Think fractal dimension and finite vs stack memory.

> Plus there's zero direct evidence for their colours

This is no longer true! Starting with Sinosauropteryx in 2010, paleontologists have identified what they believe to be fossilized melanin-containing organelles. These organelles, called melanosomes, have different shapes depending on which color they produce, and those shapes are preserved well enough to be visible under an electron microscope.

There are plenty of tools for organizing activities. Meetup’s real value, which no one has replaced yet for various reasons, is in getting new people to join.

One more to add from the early days: widespread use of  , the character entity for a non-breaking space.

They were used to move text to the right to the left within a container. Or (IIRC) in table cells to make them behave, similar to 1x1 spacer gifs. Some pages had hundreds of nsps. Just kind of a general way to add margin or padding.