WhiningCoil
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User ID: 269

How much future proofing you trying to do?
Only thing I'd recommend is make sure you have extra memory slots to expand to 64gb in the future. I noticed recently that Doom: The Dark Ages has 32gb as it's recommended amount of ram. So you know, the 32gb you are getting is enough. Probably be enough for the next few years. But I built my PC at the tail end of 2019 and I put 32gb in it then. It's starting to feel like it's getting to be about the time to future proof with at least the option of 64gb in the future.
Also, if you ever plan on abandoning windows for linux, maybe go with the AMD card? Drivers are supposed to be better, and this latest generation seems to have finally got it's shit together in terms of ray tracing performance. Still lacks a lot of features like ray reconstruction or frame generation, and DLSS is the superior upscaling technology. But I'm currently taking a 20-30% haircut on my FPS for raytraced games in Linux that use DX12. I'm under the impression AMD does not have this problem.
I believe this is known as fed-posting.
Yeah, don't fed-post. It might feel good, but one day you may have to actually resort to violence. And you don't want to end up like the Charlottesville guy where a bunch of private, semi private, and anonymous online conversations were used against him while he was railroaded in court.
The rule compliant way to express things in both cases is "dont hate the player, hate the game".
"The progressive ideology has ruined libraries for me. It seems to ruin everything it touches. I wish the ideology was dead and buried with other past terrible ideas."
Do you promise? Cause I can just quote that word for word when I short circuit in rage and disgust.
Yeah, children's books are fucking terrifying these days. Our local library, that our daughter's school occasionally takes the older kids too, had a bit of a kerfuffle with them pushing inappropriate books on kids, Gender Queer chief among them. There were protest, the usual mealy mouthed euphemisms about "book burning" to dodge the issue of graphic novels with graphic depictions of gay sex being recommended to children. Instead of removing the books or putting them in an "adult only" section, they created some fake "New Adult" section, which really changes nothing? Because their terminal goal seems to be showing pornographic material to children.
Turns out the library was being run by an NGO despite being funded 75% by the county. The conservative county has now forced a conservative board onto it by threatening to withhold funds. So I guess sometimes you can vote your way out of problems. At least until the state or the feds decide to steal the institution away from you, or some interloper in a black robe decides "Actually, making pornography available to children is mandatory".
I could swear having LGBTQ themes is now mandatory in children's publishing. I made the mistake of wondering into a random bookstore with my daughter in my state capital, and virtually every book was queer. A curious girl falls in love and kisses a mermaid. A curious girl falls in love and kisses another girl. A curious girl pony falls in love with another girl pony and they kiss. Some lesbian unicorns, etc, etc. Basically there was a book for every type of little girl with the subtext of "Have you considered being gay?" With rainbows and sparkles, and god damnit the mermaid one really caught her attention because she loves mermaids. It was virtually every book prominently displayed cover out instead of spine out. That and some picture books proselytizing about Taylor Swift. Weirdest fucking shit I ever saw. Had to distract my daughter with something shiny behind her and then make an excuse about needing to be somewhere.
My wife, who does more of the shopping and the picking out of books notices this shit a lot more than I do, and virtually every day she comes home with tales of what she saw in a kid's section today.
Just, what the fuck? It's exhausting all the directions this shit keeps flying at us from. And then some parent you've been friendly with the last few years of your daughters school invites you to see a "family friendly drag show" and you wonder if all the people in your life have been replaced by pod people. There was a before time right? Like.... 5 years ago? 10 years ago? I'm not imagining it, am I?
Edit: Upon further research, the library in my anecdote chose to have their funding cut rather than accept a more conservative board of directors from the county, and ceasing showing pornography to children. I guess some thing you actually can't vote your way out of, and these.... people get to destroy one of the oldest libraries in my state. Alas.
I don't know who this mythical normie is that would be offput by doing a victory lap on Biden's demented half corpse. You are basically plugged into the MSM narrative and have forgotten all the gaslighting about Biden being "sharp as a tack" and the hilarious lies about him running circles around people at the White House, or you have a memory longer than a goldfish are are furious. There is not a lot of in between.
Well, I guess there are the liars who covered up his dementia for 3.5 years and are now writing books about the coverup, like they weren't a part of it.
Trump announced in a post last night that he was considering voiding the last minute preemptive Biden pardons of Fauci, members of January 6 House committee, and others, because an "autopen" was used to sign the pardons. Presidential authority to grant pardons is very broad, and apparently autopen has been used by prior presidents; looks like a losing case if it goes before the Supreme Court.
It's not because of the autopen, it's because of the accusation that Biden was too incapacitated to even know it was happening. That the broad authority to grant pardons was not, in fact, being exercised by the president at all. And I for one would love to see Biden deposed about, well, anything having to do with these pardons and see what he remembers.
I think the Maxwell connection makes Israeli Intelligence unavoidable. The only open question is whether it was a collaboration among several agencies, or they kept him all to himself. Wouldn't be unprecedented. I recall a cyber attack (Stuxnet?) on Iran's nuclear weapons program that had the fingerprints of US, Israeli and German intelligence agencies.
Yeah this is plausible I suppose... but dude if the intelligence agencies are covering up for huge pedophilia rings like... what the hell?!
I keep meaning to read Chaos about how the CIA "created" the Manson Cult. Supposedly it's very well researched, and if it's somehow all smoke and no fire, I'd be amazed.
It's a funny theory, but I see memes where apparently every liberal politician's wife (except Hillary Clinton) is a tranny. Macron, Obama, Chuck Schumer (who's wife is very unfortunate looking), other random liberals I've never heard of. I even saw one random "uno reverse" meme trying to say Melania Trump was transgender.
Frankly the plurality of these memes kind of disproves all of them. One high profile liberal married to a transgender woman I could believe. Virtually all of them? Are there even that many middle aged transwomen that would have transitioned 20-30 years ago?
I'm pretty sure he's a post turn of the millennium kid, so to an extent, when he talks about "90s" games, he's being exposed to cherry picked games from that era. Namely the absolute classics, the ones that stood the test of time, and thus were what were recommended to him when he was older.
Honestly I don't buy this. I think some genres have, by all objective measures, gotten increasingly worse with time.
Take 4X for example. Once upon a time, you bought a 4X game for retail price, and that was that. You got a complete game. Now the average 4X game has dozens of expansions where they piecemeal out mechanics or factions that would have been included in the base game. Sometimes we even know this for a fact because the previous iteration of the game did in fact have those exact mechanics or those factions in the base game!
I forget the exact comparison, but some meme went around with Avowed getting compared with Oblivion or Morrowind and not looking the better for it. Some 10+ year old game had more interactivity that some cutting edge AAA game that aspired to it's style of play. There are good odds Avowed could be the highest profile RPG released this year. Top 5 at least. And by most of the talk I've heard, it significantly misses the mark made by games that are old enough to drive.
I think possibly the only genre of game which might be "better" is the highly competitive sweaty kind of game. If your jam is the sort of global competitive network where you can definitively prove you are the top 1% or even 0.1% of players, we had nothing like it in the 90's or 00's. Factorio style games too. There were some economic games, but nothing like the sort of logistics/programming involved in Factorio.
I have mixed feelings about Boomer Shooters. I haven't exhaustively played a ton of them. Dabbled here and there. I think a lot make noble efforts, but many are still afflicted by the desire to include some sort of meta progression systems trying to hook into the compulsive part of your brain, because that's just how you get people "engaged" with your game. Lets call this one a draw.
Yes, games were better back then. Post mobile game design is all based on farming engagement. There is zero reason Doom Eternal needs weekly quests, or a bajillion cosmetic unlockables, or a weird meta progression mechanics. It's just more shit trying to hijack the compulsive part of your brain. Because game devs now are either evil, or stupid. They know the difference between compulsive and fun, and try to get you addicted out of selfish desire, or they don't and they just follow along because it's what is done.
Also, games were more responsive back then. On a console hooked up to a CRT TV, or a computer with interrupt based input (PS/2) and a CRT monitor, input to action was virtually instantaneous in a properly programmed game. These days there is a distinct fuzziness to game input, and many games actually allow you to input commands late and have them still count to compensate for this. I recall watching a video about some rogue like that let you jump a few frames after you had already walked off a ledge because of input lag.
Never successfully. But they were invited into the Empire with the full expectation they would be Romanized like the Gauls, Hispanics, North African peoples, Celts, etc. The Emperor would declare them friends of Rome, and expect them to cultivate the lands and pay the taxes, often of areas thoroughly depopulated by civil wars, disease and famine. They expected to be able to levy troops from these peoples. This was largely a fiction since the Empire lacked the manpower or resolve to really keep them out, so they would just decree that these tribes were being made Roman subjects. Some, like the Goths, took this pledge maybe halfway seriously?
It's just that by that point, either the Goths, Vandals, Saxons, Franks etc were a unique challenge, or the empire had lost whatever mojo it had that got the people it ruled to Romanize.
I mean, on the one hand, I'm with you 100% about the school system treating young boys like defective girls. But if the problem is a fundamentally matriarchal school system that doesn't understand boys needs for physical activity, hands on learning, and stern discipline, I'm not sure more matriarchal bureaucracy is the answer.
I mean, if you're going to bring up the Romans, you can't get away from the collapse of the Roman empire, and it's eventual failure to keep "Romanizing" the people it ruled, eventually collapsing into a bunch of basically ethnic nations. Debates about how much the Huns, Franks, assorted Goths, Vandals, Saxons etc were distinct ethnicities, or banner bearers for tribal confederations aside.
I've just let it ride. Im still up over 20x. I may rebalance at some point this year and divert some into my S&P fund, but paying the 15% cap gains tax doesn't seem worth it at the moment. I may harvest some losses off Intel with it though.
Don't worry about it. I first started my 401k in 2006. A year later I saw a shit ton of it poof and vanish in the 2007 financial crisis. It might have been $6000-10,000. That shit hurt. I panic sold the bottom, left it in some inflation protection fund for too many years, and missed out completely on the recovery. Learning this lesson is best when you are young, so by the time you are middle aged and have real assets, you have developed diamond hands.
Now I have a seven figure portfolio. I'm down almost six figures. I honestly don't give a fuck.
Let the S&P 500 and the tech ETF ride. In 20 years you'll be alright. Don't sweat the $1000 you put into relatively riskier plays, so long as the 10x leveraged option can't wipe out the rest. Leverage can be scary like that.
You're a student, and provided your degree is of any actual use, you'll have your entire adult life with an income to keep contributing to a portfolio. There will be more bull markets, there will be more dips. Investing is a marathon, not a sprint.
shop classes
Random thought, is shop class even a thing anymore? I mean I remember a shop class in middle school every year, and I think my freshman year of highschool too? But that was 20-30 years ago now. Even then it was pretty meager because of the safety aspects of working with power tools. I think there was a drill press we were allowed to use in middle school, and maybe a band saw in highschool? I remember the class being 95% "nothing" or stuff I don't remember, and 5% getting a supervised turn on the drill press. That and sanding. Every time you asked the teacher a question about your project, the answer was always "You should probably sand it more" and being pointed to this giant box of worn out scraps of sandpaper with random grits. I have no memory of a table saw, but it might have been there but verboten on account of how dangerous they are even for experienced woodworkers to use.
I'd love for there to be more shop in school, but I'm not sure the risk profile of working with power tools sits well with most moms.
I had a friend who used to be a teacher. He was all in on virtually every neoliberal shibboleth of teaching. Against school choice because it took resources away from public schools. Always making snide comments about what will happen to special needs kids if schools got fully privatized.
Naturally, his sons all have some non-specific emotional/behavioral problems that lets him game the system for them to have personalized education plans and extra resources. He's always been good at gaming the system like that.
We're currently struggling with some shitty behavior our daughter is tracking home from school. My wife is adamant that it's something the school should be "fixing", and I keep asserting it's not their job. It's our job. So our daughter is currently grounded.
I donno man. I guess there is some theoretical intellectually in tact individual that needs extra resources either because of a physical disability or idiosyncratic mental problem (like dyslexia) that if gotten over the hump of not being able to help themselves, can go on to utilize their education for the betterment of society. Personally, I've never seen one. I mostly only see parents pushing their parenting duties onto teachers through fake special needs, or fake special needs students becoming fake special needs employees, expecting all the same accommodations around their emotional needs and learned helplessness.
I do expect lots of malicious compliance around this though. Totally normal shit like just wanting to have a conversation with a teacher about how to help your child in an area they are struggling with becomes "Sorry, Trump said I'm not allowed to."
I was correcting the record. I thought the cheap shot of "This woman doesn't want Sam Ceder, a jew, in her country" was a gross mischaracterization.
I mean, going from steel manning the woman in the video, to my own personal beliefs, I find myself nodding along with things I've heard Saagar Enjeti say. And his stance on immigration, at least at the time I heard him say this, was that America is in too much cultural turmoil for any immigration right now. He cites as the historical example that from the 20's through the 60's America had an incredibly restrictive immigration system, largely in backlash to how mass migration from other European nations was altering the make up and social contract of America. It took a solid generation or more for America to figure out who it was again, without further waves of mass migration causing even more chaos and social incohesion. It just took that long for the melting pot to melt, before American Chauvinism was destroyed by demoralization propaganda.
Like I said, I find myself nodding along to that. I think America needs 40 years to answer, for itself, what it's culture is going to be, without either side trying to import allies to tip the scales. And it needs more American Chauvinism to actually assimilate the people we already have, if that's even possible any longer. I can only imagine how much more fucked up prohibition would have been if the prohibition side began mass importing Muslims who don't drink, and the anti-prohibition side scoured the globe for alcoholics. And it's hard to imagine either approach making America better off long term, even if the short term culture war issue gets "settled".
You know, it's funny you went straight to the bronze age, cause I just wrapped up The Iliad and The Odyssey, and it was a trip. The morality on display was virtually amorality. Common stories included murdering someone in a town, and having to flee before their brothers kill you back. This was bad. If you fled to another town and found allies, who would then help you finish off the entire family of the person you killed, this was good! If you manage to steal the flocks from a town, that's awesome. If the town you stole them from hunts you down, steals them back, and burns your town down for the effort, that was bad. And all along the way, it's all as Zeus wills it. Zeus doles out success and failure, and the most common reason anyone's attempts at murder, thievery or revenge fails is insufficient piety. Even the most talented individuals must be beloved by the gods for their murder and mayhem to succeed.
The only exceptions are of course, the lands, flocks and people's that belong to the gods, those are verboten to fuck with.
Increasingly I lean into religion/morality as a social technology with consequences. Does it promote prosocial values that help your civilization flourish, or does it burn out or wither and die? Morality is not a single axis, it's a 4X custom civilization screen with lots of pluses and minuses, and it has to compete with a lot of different people's that made different choices, possibly adapted to their environment.
Whatever else you can say about Sam Seder's morality, it's clearly dying. Either because the legacy American's it seeks to rule over no longer feel like being oppressed, or because the foreign legions it imported to keep the natives oppressed don't actually have any buy in to it. But one way or another, whether Sam Seder knows it or not, his morality is an evolutionary dead end.
If you think "We should have a dominant culture", "We should have assimilation" means "Deport Sam Seder", yeah, it's intractable. But if you hear what she's actually saying, brashly, it's that there should be no hyphenated Americans. You need to abandon your native land, your culture and your history at the door. Sam Seder needs to leave only in so far as he's incapable of dropping his distinctly Jewish identity.
And if this sounds like a horrific ask, well, that's what the White Europeans of this country have been forcefully subjected to the last 20 years with demoralization propaganda and the rewriting of our history, and the defamation of our culture.
It's not unreasonable to want born again Americans, not entriest who try to mutate the "idea" of America, or even hate the pre 1960's history and people of it.
I guess that woman debating Sam Seder is getting more attention, but it pairs well with this other guy who "shredded" Sam Seder.
https://x.com/IamSean90/status/1898979265615409509
In this clip, Sam basically fails to articulate a single moral principle beyond "Well, that's just what our society had decided is right and wrong" and when dude says society can change it's mind over time, Sam's only meek response is "Please don't".
Pair this with lady who points out this whole "melting pot" narrative undermining the Christian European roots of America, and Sam comes off as a guy who's left hand is constantly working to change society (through mass migration and media control) to match his preferences, and who's right hand just shrugs and goes "I donno man, things just happen to be the way I like them because of society or whatever man."
There was a story sold to us growing up that we can accept immigrants who want to work hard, and by working hard make America a better place, but that they will assimilate and the America we experience will not meaningfully change. People will experience diversity of shopping and dining experiences with zero externalities. This story, broadly, got widespread support. This story has also been exposed as a complete falsehood. There is little assimilation, and towns are becoming foreign countries out from under their native residents not in generations, but in election cycles. And the response from our ruling class is basically "Fuck you, you suck, your standard of living is too high and you vote wrong, so we're replacing you on purpose and there is nothing you can do about it." We get a bunch of unprincipled and self serving "America is only an idea man, and ideas can change" rhetoric. But change can cut both ways, and people are waking up to the fact that they are faced with America being changed into a completely foreign country out from under them, or being changed back into a more explicitly Christian European country.
But one way or another, the change is coming. Clinging to the status quo is no longer an option.
I'm not shocked more people are nakedly ethnonationalist. It's the gold standard for all of human history, lots of the world currently still is, and it's the only meaningful alternative being provided to "Just let infinity third worlders have your legacy because you suck". I personally don't think legacy Americans have the vitality or institutional capacity to stop it, though I sincerely hope I'm wrong. The project is going to take a lot longer than another 4 year Trump term.
I think the idea is that people don't want to waste taking time out of their day to vote for a loser. That the pain of having had skin in the game and being disappointed is enough to discourage people from putting that skin in the game in the first place if you demoralize them enough beforehand.
Surely he’s burning credibility, too.
You know, I want to take a longer stab at this part. This is less "What I believe" or even "How I think things should be" and more "Is this just the human condition?"
What even is credibility? Is it being absolutely truthful and aligned with reality in every word you say? Or is it delivering the goods, what you said along the way be damned? Musk has a long record of optimistic timelines for various technological achievements. I recall full Falcon 9 reusability was regularly years behind where Musk would confidently say it would be. All's said and done though, none of those "lies" mattered. SpaceX developed a fully reusable rocket and nobody else is even close a decade later, much less beat SpaceX to market in the few years Musk was off in his estimates.
I also recall the story about how Tetris was licensed to Nintendo. Some businessman shamelessly lied that he had the rights to it, signed the paperwork with Nintendo, and then flew off to Russia to do whatever it took to actually secure the rights. He lied... but he did deliver the goods. What does that say about his credibility? He certainly wasn't blacklisted or anything, and in fact goes around bragging to an adoring press, telling the story over and over again.
I was reading The Odyssey lately, and towards the end there was this peculiar part that really struck me where it's mentioned that Odysseus' maternal grandfather was a "world renowned perjurer and thief". Just the way it was phrased, as an admirable thing to be known as struck me as a hilarious bit of bronze age morality. But this more or less meshed with the rest of the bronze age morality on display in The Iliad and The Odyssey, where lying, cheating and stealing is just smart and brings honor if you succeed. Only failure is dishonorable. The line about his grandfather just served to further snap it into focus. One might think we've left that behind, but we're the same human animal now as we were then.
We still say "Fake it till you make it" after all.
So, with respect to Musk, Trump, or anyone's credibility, I think they can lie as much as they want so long as they deliver the good more often than not. Zelensky has a 4% approval rating? Fuck it, why not. Does a ceasefire get declared soon, or some sort of lasting peace agreement? That's credibility. Nobody will remember Musk's tweet when peace and prosperity returns.
World War 3 breaks out and Kiev eats a few megatons? Well, that tweet might end up in the history books, and not in a good way.
I don't especially enjoy this view of the world. And when the shoe is on the other foot, I will likely be losing my ever loving fucking mind that the other side is lying up a storm and "getting away with it".
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Kids these days. There is always the S&P500 :P
Seriously though, enjoy your prestige build.
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