Tag Archives: RMF

🥩 Red Meat Friday: Reclaiming The Em-Dash

Posted on 2026-01-02 by jcs

Irreal is, of course, an em-dash friendly site. We’ve extolled the mighty em-dash and our love for it many times. Recently, an odious meme has arisen claiming that “real” people don’t use the em-dash and that its use is a … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Navigating Websites

Posted on 2025-12-05 by jcs

The other day, I mentioned that I took a long, excruciating train trip. The outbound trip had been so bad that we were confident the trip home would be much better. It wasn’t, of course. Most of you, I’m sure, … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Cloudflare And AWS

Posted on 2025-11-21 by jcs

I’m sure that every Irreal reader is aware of the recent Internet outages caused by problems at AWS and Cloudflare. Most of those readers also know that things happen. Servers fail, cables break, backhoes wreak havoc, software runs up against … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Gategate

Posted on 2025-11-14 by jcs

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m fed up with the “-gate” meme. Lazy and generally ignorant journalists keep describing every would be scandal—no matter how trivial—as x-gate. The latest example that I’ve seen is the so … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Emacs Startup Time Again

Posted on 2025-10-10 by jcs

I’ve come realize that, sadly, I’m addicted to posts about Emacs startup time. Every healthy person knows that Emacs startup time doesn’t matter. That’s because, of course, experienced Emacs users seldom restart their editor. They just leave it running all … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Live Wallpapers

Posted on 2025-09-19 by jcs

As most of you know, I’m—if not exactly a mac-head—an Apple user for most of my computing needs. I like the way the way all my devices interoperate and can share data, and, of course, I like—require—that it provides me … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Can We Stop Acting Like 5 Year Olds

Posted on 2025-09-05 by jcs

I recently saw this Tweet by John Carmack about developing new operating systems. Carmack is of the opinion that it’s rarely justifiable and when it is, “[Y]ou practically need an isolated monastic order of computer engineers.” I don’t have an … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Hell On Earth

Posted on 2025-08-29 by jcs

Did you ever wonder what Hell on earth would look like? Here you go. Imagine having to rely on Windows XP, Windows 3.11, or even MS-DOS to get your daily work done. Imagine waiting 15 minutes for your computer to … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: We Should Stop Whining

Posted on 2025-07-18 by jcs

Want to feel ashamed? Of course you don’t but this post will make you feel that way anyway. Too many of us spend our time whining about the tech we use. One aspect of that is how hard it is … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Load Times Matter?

Posted on 2025-05-30 by jcs

It seems as if everybody having even a passing acquaintance with Emacs is opining about Emacs load times. That includes Irreal, of course. Most of us take the position that it doesn’t really matter how long it takes Emacs to … Continue reading →

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