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Things I'm glad I did not do: join the military.

I had considered it after HS for the GI bill. Plus after 2008 it was like... "well what the fuck am I gonna do there are NO fucking jobs." Plus mentally I was like, "better to choose than to be chosen, conscripts don't get the GI bill." (Not *quite* true... but... that's what I had heard... esp from ex-Vietnam vets).

I got talked out of it by my ex-wife ("you're seriously gonna go die in Iraq?"), and by my mother ("I don't want my kid to come back in a coffin," funny because she usually barely cared that I existed unless I upset her somehow).

I had also considered enlisting in NOAACC (yes, we have uniformed meteorologists) for a while, or PHC (health corps, doctors in uniform too).

Fun fact: did you know the US did not stop the draft after WWII?

The US had national conscription from 1940 until the end of 1972.

They just... kept drafting people. That's how we got the manpower for the Korean War.

And people... largely tolerated it, because until Vietnam, service terms were short, and everyone knew someone who'd served. Plus, it was shit easy to get a deferral. Had a kid? Deferral. In college? Deferral. Work certain jobs? Deferral. Had a medical whatever? Deferral.

I wonder if Trump would try to do something unhinged like "let's bring back the draft." Kinda hope he does, that's the one thing that'll turn MAGA against him. That or they'll call it "character building" (until it's their kids being drafted, then it's "unfair." Just like Vietnam.)

I also don't think it'd ever pass Congress because people want to be reelected.

Oh yeah I also learned Somewhere Over The Rainbow on the ukulele. Blame Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. His cover was divine, but no one can compare to that tbh.

Musical education in the US works like this:

In 5th grade, so when you’re like 11-12, you’re given a shitty plastic recorder in music class.

You spend 3/4 of the school year learning how to play Hot Cross Buns and Mary Had A Little Lamb. At the end, you’ll learn a contemporary song, but just the opening chorus (for us it was My Heart Will Go On). You get to keep this abomination. You will lose it. Your parents probably threw it out.

The remaining 1/4: finally the glow up: you learn the ukulele. It is badly tuned. You do not get to take one home. You learn the chorus entry to “Country Roads” and maybe a few other songs. That’s it.

If you’re lucky: maybe you play piano for a few seconds with no real training, a vibe and a prayer. That’s it.

That’s your musical education here.

Spicy take: git didn’t win because it’s good. It’s not.

Git won because Linux used it, and you can rebase and force push.

Also. Everything else was fragile, a performance nightmare, or both.

It won for being “good enough.”

My great-grandfather invented the feathering propeller. Another was a habitual drunk and drug addict (yes even back then) and spoke 9 languages. My grandfather was a tinkerer who restored antiques and was a huge DIYer and electronics guy. My mother is obsessed with movies and shows, and that's pretty much her special interest. My brother loves anime and video games. My other younger brother is obsessed with Fortnite.

SO MUCH IS EXPLAINED.

wait wtf TIL autism is hereditary... I was always taught, even in college, that it is not heritable. WELP.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but I wish someone had drilled it into me sooner:

Empathy isn’t obligation.

If someone is looking for a saviour, you’re not obligated to save them. Don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.

If someone is unwilling to do the bare minimum to help themselves, that’s a good baseline for how you’re going to be treated. Even if they’re unable… yes, it sucks, but if they have no energy for themselves, you will wind up having your energy drained. Even if you hate yourself, you do not want your energy drained.

Never enter a situation where you become someone’s unpaid caretaker, physical or emotional. You will regret it. You will lose agency. You will hear every variant of “how dare you be tired or have a need, *I* need something.” People get paid to do this for a living, and for a reason: the job sucks.

@ma3ke this is art

I’m learning calibration isn’t a step, it’s a lifestyle.

Drug that turns you into a bimbo

Help me brainstorm Fedi, or just be my rubber duck.

Trying to think of a good way to make a weatherproof light sensor with COTS parts that also doesn't cost a ton of dollars.

Requirements:

1) The penetration through the housing be minimised

2) The penetration can be easily sealed

3) It won't be a bitch and a half to assemble

4) It''ll stay put and won't be a major headache of "oh god it fell off AGAIN"

🧵

SLOP EAX, EBX
CALL DEADBEEFh

Although this is a shitpost, I will say I have a point:

Humanity by and large... generates a lot of crap. A LOT of crap. Like most people don't do their best work at their jobs, and it has the output of that. Lots of terrible artists, lots of terrible coders, terrible management decisions, etc., all in the AI's model.

So of COURSE it'd output slop. And that's not really fixable without revising all the data... which defeats the purpose of AI automating everything.

*Werner Herzog voice*

In the zeitgeist, the output of the machine has been referred to as "AI slop."

But the machine is merely outputting what we have created, remixed and transformed by a complicated algorithm beyond our understanding.

The machine knows not what it creates, slop or no slop. It blindly obeys the instructions of an algorithm of unfathomable complexity, but ultimately programmed by the works of us.

Therefore, perhaps the machine is reflecting at us, the imperfection of ourselves... the sheer amount of "slop" we generate... and we are horrified at the reflection we see in the mirror.

Scott Adams is dead.

I’m not going to cheer for his death, but I will say this: he is one of many contributors to the corrosiveness of US politics.

The racism, sexism, etc. that have eaten away at the foundations of America, perhaps even the West as a whole, and made it socially acceptable to be openly hateful again, and face minimal social consequences.

Sure they took down his comic for it. It doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I guarantee in this administration, he would not have had his comic pulled.

May he join Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in Hell.

I think the Mad Catz N64 or Game Boy “controllers” gave me carpal tunnel. Can’t prove that’s the cause but I have mild suspicion. It couldn’t have helped.

If you never held a Mad Catz controller you should consider yourself lucky

I lied I don't have Netflix

sit on the couch with me loser we're watching torrented shows