Day: March 2, 2025, 5:18 PM

Vamping

Chill Regular-ass Post

All of you who have guilty pleasures are weak. Just like what you like, damn.

I’m watching The Vampire Diaries and I don’t give a fuckkkkkkk who knows. It’s pretty good, and gets better as it goes along. The first 4-5 episodes are somewhat anemic and then the show settles into itself and really gets rolling.

It’d not be for everyone but I’m enjoying it — the characters have a lot more depth than you’d expect. It’s like if Twilight were written by someone who knew how to make a story come together.

Owls

Chill Regular-ass Post

Why exactly did it come to be assumed that one can only be productive in the morning? My intelligence and motivation is vastly higher between midnight and 4AM. Otherwise in comparison, I’m fairly dull.

I mean, I’m still a fucking beast even at 2PM but in comparison to my far more beastly 2AM self, I lose a lot of shine.

If you want to make it quantitative, I’m quite certain I’d do 10-12 points better on an IQ test at 2AM as contrasted with taking one mid-afternoon.

Bikejacket

Chill Evil, Tech

It is a terrible loss. I’ve said and written this before and I will probably do so again, but Steve Jobs envisioned computers as “bicycles for the mind.” Instead, we’ve made them into manacles and straitjackets that serve the rich and the authoritarian.

I’m old enough to remember when I could easily make my computer do anything that I could think of or had time to figure out. Now, you’re lucky if you can get a machine to run something “unauthorized” at all. Mozilla and Google clowns et al. will tell you nothing else is possible because of “security.” Why, they are protecting you from yourself “for your own good!1 But remember: the only security they actually care about is keeping the computer secure from you, the user.

  1. Anytime someone trots this line out, check your wallet, your data, and the location of your kids.

Not So Sound

Chill Music Video, Video

I was looking for an early live performance of The Cranberries and did not find it. However, I did uncover the below. The sound mixing on it is such a crime. Whoever did that should be put in a jail where only badly-recorded AC/DC concerts are blasted at top volume 24/7.

Still a good performance, but that sound mixing seems like something done by a deaf middle-schooler.

Without Representation

Chill Annoying

When you include income tax, sales tax, property tax, vehicle tax and other various taxes, approximately 58% of my earned income goes to taxes1. I just did the calculation.

That sure seems like a lot, doesn’t it? And in the US we get hit with about the same taxes as European countries and get much, much less for it. And it’s almost always lower quality, too.

Also seems like a bad deal.

  1. This does not include capital gains.

Chill Links

Western housing shortages do not just prevent many from ever affording their own home. They also drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates. Old but worth reposting.

Tears and shock in Ukraine and Europe after heated Zelensky-Trump meeting.

Inside the FBI’s Lab Leak Investigation.

Two Bay Area tech giants announce huge layoffs at almost exact same moment.

At Least Now We Know the Truth. I been knowed.

The American Weather Forecast Is in Trouble. Layoffs at NOAA will only make weather reports less reliable. MAGA fucking idiots hate “weather” as an abstract idea because it is in their mind associated with climate, in which they do not believe. May they all burn in hell.

Bladed “Ginsu” Hellfire Missile Seen In Action For First Time.