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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • Reminds me of a sci-fi story I read. A detective (wait was this in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, maybe? I don’t remember, anyway) is looking for a person and asking around. I stead of carrying around a picture of the person they are looking for, they compare the person’s features to a list of celebrities and just go around asking if anyone has seen someone that looks like that celebrity. Point being lots of people have surprisingly similar features and there really are “doppelgangers” out there.

    But just try explaining that to some stranger that just caught you staring off into space directly at their face because they look like a person you had a crush on in college, only you’re an old fart now and they don’t look like that old crush would look now, but like the memory you have of them. “You look like someone I know” always sounds like a pickup line.


  • It’s not a completely different thing. They were both trying to fully integrate the operating system and the web browser into one monolithic and inescapable thing: Windows XP + Internet Explorer to squash competition on the desktop; Linux + Chrome to squash competition on laptops; Android + Chrome OS to squash competition in the mobile space. The money to be made on operating systems is trivial in the consumer space compared to the power of control over platforms (like web browsers) that deliver advertisements and harvest data from comsumers. M$ saw the writing on the wall way back then in their fight with Netscape Navigator. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    I feel like I’m talking to an AI chatbot completely unable to reason abstractly or consider the full context of the conversation.







  • With no more due process, an ID and proof of citizenship do not matter at all. They’re not checking ID’s before hauling people away. And given ICE is going around masked and without uniforms there is no way to verify their authority either. I absolutely loath violence to a point, and that tipping point is the safety of the people in my family and community, regardless of their citizenship. If a group of unidentified masked gunman are attempting to kidnap someone, the only truly patriotic American response is to defend their liberty with all necessary force. Given the murder happy training of our law enforcement, that will obviously result in tragic deaths. But that, protecting the people (all the people, not just citizens) from a corrupt government, is the fundamental justification for the 2nd amendment, always has been.




  • Have you checked your blood pressure lately? Salt intake? Hydrating okay? Hormones? Allergies?

    Could be an early warning sign of something more serious.

    A little swelling and water retention especially on hot days is normal. But, if your shoes stop fitting due to a little water retention, they probably didn’t fit very well to begin with. It’s easier than you’d think to get used to shoes that are too small. Your feet adapt, but suffer.



  • Legitimate reason? Really?

    That was the one thing that removed my ability to even try to suspend any disbelief in the fantasy. Like I couldn’t even think of him as more than a one-dimensional caricature, let alone empathize with him. I was okay with Thanos just being some powerful guy seeking powerful objects to become more powerful. I might even sympathize, not empathize, with that. It was evil to be sure, but understandable. But, as soon as they revealed what he actually wanted to do with that power the whole thing just fell apart completely and became a total farce.

    It was just bad logic that doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Like why didn’t he just double the resources? Why did he think the universe wouldn’t just eventually return to pre-snap populations, because it’s not like he also slowed population growth?



  • The best part is the random bill.

    • Go to the doctor. Get blood drawn.
    • Doctor send the blood to a lab for the test. Doesn’t tell me who. I don’t care who. It’s their subcontractor, let them worry about it. *Go back to the doctor or get a call for results. Pay the doctor the standard co-pay. *Months later a random company sends me a bill. This is a company that I have never interacted with or entered into any contract with, for work that somebody else (presumably my doctor, but who the fuck knows for sure) asked them to do for them, sending the results to that other person and NOT to me.

    The system is broken. If any other company subcontracted a part of their work to a third party, you as the client would reasonably expect that work to be paid through the original contract, not get a bill directly from the subcontractor. I didn’t hire them, the doctor hired them. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the doctor’s subcontractor and their debt, not mine. I paid the doctor already.

    Or another variant.

    • Go to the emergency room.
    • Get separate bills FOR THE SAME SERVICE from the hospital, the doctor, and somehow the hospital again but this time it’s the emergency room (which is somehow separate with a different billing company).

    The system is not just broken. It is designed to fleece us and train us to always accept whatever debt the institutions decide to levy on us without question.



  • Mpd + a frontend of your choosing, I prefer ncmpcpp, will run on just about anything and is remotely controlled through apps or ssh. Mpd is great when the server is physically connected to the audio output device. I use it to remotely control a speaker connected server that can also run Plex (because I prefer plexamp for streaming and syncing to my phone, other android devices, and smart speakers). They both look at the same directory of a collection near 30 years in the making with hundreds of thousands of files and a wide array of formats.