It's the season of Purim Torah on Mi Yodeya. Here are some of my favorites:

From this year:

• 
  My answer to a question asking what Birkat Amazon is and what giving thanks after a meal has to do with amazon.com
  
• 
  What are we supposed to do about losing an hour of Purim this year? (I answered that one too)
  
• 
  Why do we shake four heretics on Sukkot? (on ( Read more... )

Today I got the following notification on my Android phone, allegedly from Google:


( Read more... )

( Read more... )

The g'mara on today's daf discusses two cases of disputed ownership. In ( Read more... )

Can you believe that I've been online since the ARPAnet and yet, in 2017, do not know the nuts and bolts of domain-name management? Perhaps you, dear reader, will point me toward the clues, and I promise not to be offended that you're quietly snickering there.

The recent LJ upheaval is far from the first signal that really, if you care about ( Read more... )

Me: What do we need, that is available from Amazon, that costs $4.02?
Dani: Is this what's known as a first-world problem?
Me: Not the most egregious I've seen, but yeah.

Free shipping: modifying buyer behavior since...whenever they started that. But it works because of their enormous catalogue; you can find something to fill out an order. ( ( Read more... )

We have already discussed restrictions near a property line, if what you ( Read more... )

A few days ago I wrote about the first session of a class applying talmudic reasoning to modern legal cases. The first class covered cases of unintended benefit: somebody, in the process of committing a crime, accidentally causes benefit to the victim -- does he deserve leniency? I noted that the class gives CLE credits and wondered in passing ( Read more... )

I've taken a few classes put on by the Jewish Learning Institute (they teach concurrently in many locations worldwide) and am currently taking this one. The title is "The Dilemma", and they describe it as: modern dilemmas, talmudic debates, your solutions. Each class looks at a group of real incidents around some theme, after which we discuss ( Read more... )

The talmud now turns to things that, while done on your property, can ( Read more... )