WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
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User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
14d ago
I mean, yes, but also, you can fight it. I switched to Linux at the beginning the year in anticipation of Windows 10 hitting end of support, and it's been fantastic. AI features aren't constantly being shoved down my throat, it's not constantly defaulting to cloud storage, ads are constantly appearing on every UI surface. Most applications have a perfectly fine Linux version or equivalent. Those that don't usually run in Proton or Bottles. And for the few that can't do that either, I can run Windows in a VM easily enough when I absolutely have to.
It's not all upside. There is currently a bug in the Nvidia drivers causing a pretty sizable DX12 performance penalty in many games. And a lot of their Nvidia App features don't have any Linux equivalent. And it's a pain in the ass to get gsync working. But these problems are on the margins compared to the annoyances of windows that were increasingly part of the core experience.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
14d ago
Naw, if we're just making up who's to blame, lets go with the Jews. They're used to it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
14d ago
Stallman is a controversial figure for a bunch of reasons
Only for being too correct. The baseless character assassination he suffered was purely to sideline him so that Google and Microsoft could get the foundation he formerly headed to be more "reasonable" and/or diminish their influence in total.
So I think I last posted about my chairs in depth 2 months ago?
The last 2 months were the most tedious, least exciting part of the project. Sanding. Also a heat wave to kept me out of my shop for a nearly a month. And then my wife wanted me to make some shelves since I was taking a break from my chairs anyways. I had 68 individual parts to sand though a progression of three different grits, many of which were small or narrow enough that I didn't trust my orbital sander to not just round the whole damn thing over and ruin the edge profiles. So lots and lots of hand sanding.
I'm actually still in the middle of shellacing, waxing and assembling them. But I rushed ahead on my wife's advice to get one chair done to keep me motivated. The dry fit went fantastic, so onto the clamps. So many clamps. I didn't exactly trust my joinery to be perfect without some assistance, so I put my 24 kg kettlebell on top to motivate the legs to make full contact with the floor while the glue was drying. It's been a trick that has worked well in the past with shop furniture for my heavier tools. A piece of plywood to protect the finished seat seemed prudent though.
24 hours later, out of the clamps, and I attach the seat more permanently with some hardware that slots into a seam I cut out of the front and back skirt pieces. This allows for some wood movement in the large seat panels. All in all, I couldn't be happier with the final result, although the clamps did slightly mar the finish.
I had adjusted the dimensions from the initial plans I found to more closely match other chairs I had in my house already. This chair making guide helped with the dimensions a lot too. The original plans had it several inches larger in almost every dimension. It was just excessive, and intuitively seemed uncomfortable as hell. This is a perfect fit, and in fact is far more comfortable at the table I built than the folding chairs I was using. My elbows feel like they are at a more natural height, and the back being straighter makes it easier to sit up straight and reach across the table, versus the slouch other chairs have given me at it. A very happy accident, as I was I afraid I hadn't given the chairs enough backward tilt to be comfortable.
I have 27 more pieces to go with finishing, and 3 more chairs to glue up. It's a risky trade off finishing the pieces before assembly. But I've found it to be worth it, since my glue ups are always a messy disaster, and trying to finish the work afterwards always shows huge blotches in the finish where the glue got away from me and refused to sand out or wipe off cleanly. In fact, on the chair I did glue up, I used way too much accidentally and it squelched out of all the mortises and dripped absolutely fucking everywhere. Thankfully because the work was already completely waxed, it wiped off easily, and what didn't wipe off flaked off when it dried. That said, I think on the next chairs I won't leave it in clamps as long, and hopefully that spares the finish some of the damage it took. This chair was actually made using all the jankiest most warped pieces, and it needed to stay in clamps for the full 24 hours so that it didn't pry itself apart. All the other chairs fit together much more naturally so I can probably take them out of clamps after only an hour.
Also, my daughter keeps talking about how I'm the best carpenter she's ever met. My pointing out that I'm the only carpenter she's ever met doesn't dent her enthusiasm one iota. It's very cute. She likes to show off to her friends everything around the house I've made.
So now that I'm a chairmaker, if anyone has any political enemies they need taking care of, I suppose I'm open for business. You supply the next of kin though.
Is it remotely possible they don't understand the character is being an asshole? And they are just depicting how mean they think people are to the lady for living her "authentic self"?
I first noticed this with that Cat Person short story. Taken on it's own, Cat Person seemed vaguely aware of the all the grey areas in trying to date when it was written? Then the lady goes and does this interview moralizing about how the woman in the story was clearly the victim and the man was clearly wrong. And I'm sitting here thinking "Oh.... this lady basically just accidentally admitted how awful she is". The kinda passive in a shitty way female character in Cat Person is her, and that's literally how some dude reacted to her being so passive aggressive, and she doesn't understand what she did wrong at all. She just wrote down what literally happened thinking nobody could possibly find fault with it. And then I think at some point this was more or less proven true when the guy from the story got doxed?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
19d ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q78-bm6eHLw
Launch Trailer for the new Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries DLC. Fucking Clan Invasion! I've been wanting this for almost 30 years since Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries covered the same ground in an increasingly jank and crash prone engine. Also that fucking bullshit mission where you had to escape clan imprisonment in a hovercraft.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
I'd almost guess some sort of early onset dementia?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
I mean, personally I've always enjoyed some online game nights with old friends in far flung parts. For a time we were pretty good about playing older games we all grew up with. Dooms, Quakes, StarCraft, etc. It can be very comforting to slip into adolescent activities with old friends.
If old friends are in short supply, I'm always down for some random internet fun.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
My condolences. I can scarcely imagine the waking horror you now inhabit. Do you have any outlets to keep your spirits high?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
The UK has the best hay people. Everybody knows it. They said many years ago "The UK will have the best hay people" and I said "No, I want America to have the best hey people". But it's better this way, I'll let the UK have the best hay people. Just this one time. Maybe I'll tariff their hay people, I don't know. What do you think?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
I don't understand why anyone records themselves committing crimes and then uploads them to the internet with some sob story about how they are actually the victim. And yet it just keeps happening. And there are always people willing to take their side, which I suppose shouldn't shock me anymore, but it still does.
I was watching some old Gad Saad interview maybe 10 years ago, and he was talking about the pathos of the 3rd world regarding honor and truth. Which basically amounts to, commit fully to the lie, and never stop doubling down and escalating, no matter how obvious the lie is. His example involved an uncle he was having a debate with over some fact, and who was right about this particular fact. The next day he mentioned to his uncle that he looked it up, and had in fact been correct, and his uncle just calmly claimed that the sides of the debate had actually be reversed. Broke Gad's mind for a minute. He had spend the afternoon arguing for *A when his uncle was vehemently claiming Not A, and then suddenly the next day his uncle is claiming it had been the opposite in the cold light of fact? All to maintain some facade of having been correct?
But that's just how some people work. Just tell a brazen impossible to believe lie, and there exist some subset of people who will throw out everything they know about how the world works (if they knew anything at all) and just default to "Well, it's one person's word against another, I just don't know"
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they were two chav-adjacent girls doing chav-adjacent things in the park with their friends, and an innocent immigrant found himself caught up in the mix.
Somebody is claiming this.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
Ah yes, of course. The guy filming forgot to upload all the exculpatory evidence that he filmed! Why didn't I think of that explanation.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
If you saw that video, and thought "Ah yes, this 13 year old girl holding a knife and hatchet wrong is clearly a hardened criminal who is harassing an innocent adult male who is following her for purely altruistic reasons, like returning a wallet she dropped", then I can't help you. Even being true that this Scottish city has a reputation for lower class whites being involved in violent crime, that it would factor into your thinking at all with respect to a 13 year old girl speaks more to your own prejudice (either against whites or for browns) than it does to the reality on the ground.
And I mean, like I said, maybe I'll end up with egg on my face. Maybe we won't find out the guy following her and filming has a history of being known to the police and was caught and released on a laundry list of sex and violent crimes of various severity. Maybe we won't go on to discover that the poor 12 and 13 year old girls hadn't already been sexually assaulted, or grew up watching their friends and family get sexually assaulted by Muslim rape gangs.
This actually reminds me of that minor thing where a gang of black teenagers was trying to steal an e-bike from a pregnant nurse. In a town where it's a well known "victimless crime" for black teens to snatch e-bikes from the people who rented them and ride off. And people tried to take some "well it's her word versus his" position when it was patently obvious the black teens were lying as their story involved this pregnant woman forcibly removing them from the bike and then getting on it to leave before the camera began rolling. Which would require an ignorance of physiology and gender differences that might be par for the course for "rationalist".
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they were two chav-adjacent girls doing chav-adjacent things in the park with their friends, and an innocent immigrant found himself caught up in the mix. I also wouldn't be surprised if they were indeed two Scottish girls innocently defending themselves against a molesty migrant with a knife and hatchet, in which case they can call me in a few years to fix them, but they don't need fixing. Yes, yes, I know, how brave of me to fence sit.
IMHO these speaks to the innumeracy and propaganda of the age. It's like when people were polled about how many black men were being shot by the cops, and they thought it was thousands, nay, tens of thousands, when it was in fact dozens.
And this is triply so when it comes to mountain of evidence that the grooming gangs, and the failures of the state that are on a scale that beggars belief. It's almost the inverse of the BLM disconnect from reality, where you might assume dozens of girls have been raped by Muslim Immigrants, when in fact it's tens of thousands. Nay, hundreds of thousands!
That you are pulling some sort of "equally believable" fallacy here is a mockery of reason. I mean sure, all things are possible. But gun to my head, 10-1 some groomer was trying to pick the 12 and 13 year old girls up.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
22d ago
Analysis paralysis is definitely a part of it. I feel like there are twin traps, one of analysis, the other the fact that continued inaction seems to have a momentum all it's own. Analysis paralysis might get you into the trap of inaction, but inaction's own gravity keeps you there.
But there is also this aspect where our modern society seems to be producing and entire oversocialized professional and expert class. They're risk averse and initiative averse to a degree which stifles all human actions, and they are supposed to be our betters to whom we listen.
I would trust the blue collar BJJ coach who barely graduated highschool far more than the PhD trying to give me advice. And on a lot more than BJJ at that.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
22d ago
I am 1000% over this chair project. I think I started it in the spring?
Anyways, I'm on the home stretch. Everything is sanded, although I think I need to go back over a few of the back legs and even some things out. I've begun shellacing and waxing all the pieces, and hopefully on Thursday I can glue up the first completed chair. My wife suggested I get a chair finished and assembled at a time to stay motivated, and I think that was a good idea. It was feeling daunting having to finish nearly 80 pieces before I could assemble any. So hopefully next week I have some pictures of the first finished product.
Because fuck you, that's why.
I'm serious. Too much "advice" is given as a command. The link between "advice" and "order" is increasingly blurred. Especially in our current media environment of public/private partnerships to craft information narratives that change behavior society wide. Psyops about having less kids because of the climate crisis, eating less meat because of the climate crisis, not lifting weights because toxic masculinity, I could keep going. And probably the most toxic form of "advice" every young man receives is the state approved messaging about how to date women. They'll probably fail with that for about 10 years at the most before they wake up to the fact that these mother fuckers are lying to them, possibly on purpose.
It hasn't been uncommon in my life for people to give me "advice" and then get really annoyed to angry with me when I proceed to not do it. Usually doesn't help when I tell them "The best part of free advice is I'm free to ignore it". Half the time these people are giving advice that is counter to my goals, but they don't even realize it.
I can't help but be suspect of "advice" anymore. All I see is a demon wearing layers of masks going "...would you kindly..."
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
25d ago
Never saw that one. I think I made it to season 5 before it was too Netflixified for me.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
25d ago
So, you take a work of fiction with a male main character. It falls into the "Men want to be him, women want to be with him" tropes and everyone is happy. You try to do the same thing with women? You create a woman that women want to be, and men don't want her or you create a woman men want, but women don't want to be her.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
26d ago
Actual dream I had, virtually exactly as I had it. The only thing I left out was I vaguely remember an abstract third person who also went in with me, who was a nondescript "friend" who got lost even faster than my wife? But my dream seemed to forget he even existed, so I left him out of my telling.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
26d ago
Ruminate? Hmmm, from time to time. Though as far as yesterday goes, not at all.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
26d ago
It definitely had aesthetic aspects of Black Mirror episodes, especially Fifteen Million Merits. But the central conceit of people allowing AI to use part or all of their brains as cloud compute I don't think I was ever exposed to, or consciously thought of until the dream.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
26d ago
Is this fun? We'll see.
I had a terrifyingly linear and coherent nightmare last night. My wife and I woke up in some dystopian mega complex with no explanation. It was bright, white and clean, and absolutely jam packed with people hurrying about like drones. We were quickly swept up in the flow and struggled not to get separated in the press of bodies. The corridors appeared to be one way and incredibly maze like. Eventually we got swept to a cafeteria and tried to get a handle on the situation.
I grabbed a plate of food that didn't seem terrible, although it was indistinct slop of various colors and consistencies. It still hit all the taste centers, and had that distinctive salty and savory punch that junkfood often has. The only utensil looked like a broken fork, with one middle prong completely snapped off and one middle prong only half snapped. I struggled to use it.
While I'm eating this kid is yelling at me that I'm eating wrong, I'm not eating the food in the correct order. I ignore him, but I notice people asking some AI questions out loud, although I don't hear any of the answers back. I ask the kid about it, cause kids are easy to pump for information, and he once again yells at me that it's not "AI" it's "At". I guess they named their LLM "At". At this point my wife and I try to dispose of our plates and utensils, but it's close to the one way exit and my wife gets swept up in the press of bodies and whisked down a corridor. I try to catch up, but I simply can't. At this point my top priority is trying to find my wife.
I try asking At where my wife is, but it doesn't work. I'm getting intensely scared and frustrated, afraid my wife will be lost for ever in this complex and I'll never see her again. I somehow figure out that At needs to be installed directly into your brain. I get to a kiosk to do it, and I'm just mashing the touch screen as fast as I can. I don't realize there are levels that At can be installed at, and each press of the button increases the level.
The first level just tries to use parts of your brain that you aren't using. The last level fully uploads "you" to the cloud and At uses your whole brain as part of it's cloud compute. But of course, the more of your brain you give to At the more convenience it confers. Level 1 lets you ask it questions and receive answer, Level 2 gives you a HUD in your vision and highlights things in your environment to assist with the task you are trying to perform. The highest level can hijack your entire body, turn you off, and walk you to where you are trying to get to.
I accidentally get the highest level installed. I feel different. Everything I feel towards my wife feels somehow muted, or turned down. In the nightmare this terrifies me even more. I ask At to take me to my wife, and it finds her, I black out, and then I'm there. Something is different between us now, and my wife seems unsettled by me. I ask At to guide us out and it takes us to the exit. As we go to leave, a warning pops up in my vision that since I'm running 100% in the cloud and my brain has been formatted to run At completely, I'll die if I leave. My wife takes the exit, and I wake up from the nightmare.
I mean, I know this just falls under "Everything that might be considered an overreach is justified by his supporters because at one point, a Democrat did something similar." but... uncritically yes? Like why does this just fall under immediate dismissal? Some sort of throw away line said with a sneer to dismiss the argument just 'cause?
Why shouldn't Red Tribers finally rejoice that one of their guys is finally just doing things like mass deportations, fighting crime and pulling school funding, in the way Democrat's "just did" lockdowns, and vaccine mandates, and eviction moratoriums, and trans kids in schools? Why should they care about the naked corruption when for my entire adult life the corruption was already pretty out there and naked? Did Trump rip off the last fig leaf? Maybe, but it was a pretty damned wilted and decayed fig leaf already. Also I'll gladly take a hospitality industrial complex over a military industrial complex any day.
And I mean... the cherry on top is Trump is a New York City Democrat. He literally learned all this from playing with the other team for 60 years. He just lost the protection of the respectability cartel which covers for that side relentlessly. Your sneering "a Democrat did something similar" is our lived "Democrats have done this to us for our entire lives, my business was bankrupted, I've been ethnically cleansed from my home town, and now my kid wants to get sterilized because of what they were taught in school."
You have it lodged in your brain that there were rules, but when "Democrats did something similar" it didn't count. It all counts, and now there are no rules.
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