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WhiningCoil

Ghost of Quokka's Future

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joined 2022 September 04 23:24:47 UTC
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WhiningCoil


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ghost of Quokka's Future

				
				
				

				

					6 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 04 23:24:47 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Its mildly amusing how the reddit left doesn't want to claim this particular guy, but they do want to praise the idea of killing Trump, so they can't reject him either.




I remember back during the war on terror, one right wing blog or another, maybe Little Green Footballs (whatever happened to that guy?) or Jihad Watch.  There was some interview with a veteran who had served in the middle east, talking about how these people simply cannot be allies.  Their brains are completely broken, and they simply lack the intelligence to realize how broken they are.  As an example, he cited a common conversation you may have with an Arab would contain both praise for the 9/11 attacks as a great victory for Islam over the evil United States, and also insistence that it was all a Jewish plot to provoke the United States into attacking the Middle East.


Turns out there is nothing uniquely Arab, or requiring exceptionally low intelligence, to support double think this overt and retarded.  Apparently millions of Democrats, highly educated and otherwise well adjusted, are perfectly capable of simultaneously believing that Donald Trump needs to be assassinated and that it's a shame all these courageous shooters keep missing, and also that they are all hoaxes and staged by the evil Orange Man to raise his political capital and make them look bad.


But, while I can no longer endorse the bent of that random blog I read in the 90's that this behavior is uniquely Arab, I can endorse his conclusion.  You cannot engage with those people.  They belong in asylums, not voting, running for office, or dictating policies.  Unfortunately the inmates run the asylums now.


Knowing where we are is the first step in formulating a plan to protect yourself and your families from them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You say that.  But without Trump to campaign for Vance, where are we?  I take nothing for granted after Kirk's assassination and how much it felt like some core to the MAGA movement that was load bearing in a way I hadn't appreciated was ripped away.  After he was buried, suddenly Republicans were looking at getting slaughtered in the midterms.  Turns out political murders work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But why?  Within 30 minutes of finding the code, I found my answer.  Within 10 minutes of dicking around in a sample project, I had my proof of concept.  How would an LLM have improved on that?  I don't need the LLMs validation or approval.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So, I had an interesting problem at work, that revealed something fascinating I think.


I have to beat around the bush some, so bear with me.  We're using a popular framework for our database layer.  We went to do things to this database that theoretically the database is capable of, but the framework doesn't support.  Sad face.  All the web searches, and associated AI formulated answers confirm, it's not possible do said thing in said framework.


Except it is.  The Framework is open source.  You can just read the source code.  Turns out you can ask for the handle to the underlying interop pointer, and it'll just give it to you.  You don't even have to do weird fucky things like dig around in private data space.  It's a public API call to just get the interop pointer.  The driver it's calling is open source too, and you can just call the function you want on the interop pointer it gives you, and it just works.  It's fine.  If it's confusing, the test cases for the driver in it's github even shows you exactly how to do it, multiple ways.  Reading unit tests are awesome for stuff like that.  This is the furthest thing from impossible.  It's practically spelled out for you with examples if you just read the fucking code.


So, why does AI all think it's impossible?  Because as of 3 years ago, this functionality wasn't exposed by the driver.  So all the stack exchange questions about this correctly stated that as of 3+ years ago, this was impossible.  LLMs got trained on stack exchange (supposedly), and now stack exchange is a dead site.  The LLMs (supposedly) killed off the source of knowledge they were being trained on, and now they can't learn that a few years later this task is not just possible, but trivially easy in like, 6 lines of code.  Totally within the remit of the typical "how do I do thing" programming question.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I hated having upstairs neighbors but that is not inherent to apartments,




Correct, it's inherent to neighbors.


Well.


Certain neighbors.  The ones I pay handsomely not to have anymore.


Hey, you know something else interesting about Tokyo?  It's virtually entirely ethnically homogeneous.  At least compared to your average European city where Europeans are the defacto minority.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had a similar experience back in November when the company I worked for went out of business.  Applied to everything that looked even remotely in my ballpark, and crickets.  Updated my profile, and got scouted by two different headhunters almost immediately, both with offers better than my old job.  My total compensation for one of them was nearly twice what I was making before.


It's kind of fucked though, when the job market is entirely "Don't call us, we'll call you.  No, don't even apply until we've told you to."  But the stories I've heard of people scamming the interview process are horrendous.  They aren't even all Indians!  Though most are...  Internationalization and AI have really fucked things.  The signal to noise ratio interfering between qualified candidates and open job positions is through the roof.


Turns out the bar is in hell, and the primary challenge is convincing a recruiter you are a real person and not an Indian or an LLM.  Or an LLM behind a brain rotted meat proxy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


’m far more interested in discussing the larger pattern that Clav is symptomatic of. Young men don’t see any viable paths to success, or have good role models for how they should live their lives. They look around and see the traditional paths (like college) are uncertain at best. They notice young women’s expectations have increased and they often don’t meet them. If they see a successful person (like a retired boomer) they don’t think that path is still available to them. If everything is uncertain the best thing to do is look around for successful people and imitate them. So, they find an influencer like Clav and realize they can play the social media influencer lottery by trying to become viral like him. If society tells them to figure out everything on their own and won’t provide a clear path that is likely to succeed then becoming viral on social media, giving up, or gambling suddenly seem like much more attractive options.




A start would be to bring back men's clubs and groups.  Make Boy Scouts for boys and their dads again.  Bring back men's only sports and dining clubs.  Give men some capacity to network among themselves, and even give candid advice about out of earshot of the breasted commissar's that dominate every other public space.


Men need their own culture again.  Not in the way gonzo youtuber stars are "culture", but in the way a small towns local chapter of a men and boys club is culture.  Sure, the advice and guidance young men might get from both of those might be directionally aligned.  But the gonzo youtube version takes it to a place that's unhealthy, but unfortunately, it's all that is allowed to exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Assimilation typically doesn't happen as much with the first generation immigrants, it's a second generation, and even more so a third generation thing.




What I love most about these baseless self serving assertions is that you won't be proven disastrously wrong for almost 100 years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, that was another thing that annoyed me about Halo, is the enemy AI went the wrong direction.


Since it keeps getting compared to Half-Life, I'll keep going.  Half-Life introduces fairly dumb enemies, and then introduces smarter ones.  You get to warm up on relatively dumb xeno-fauna, and then they throw marines at you, which talk, coordinate, dodge grenades, flush you out, flank you, etc.  Now I know people have dissected how that worked and a lot of it was scripted to create the illusion of intelligent enemies.  But it was still a really good illusion.


By contrast, Halo starts you off with really good enemy AI in the form of elites, and then halfway through the game swaps them out for retards that bum rush right at you.  A sin doubly compounded by the fact that the game checkpoint saves, and you are consistently stuck in really annoying locked arenas fighting off boring hoards of flood.  I positively loathed it.


For whatever reason, and I haven't played it recently enough to have a strong impression of why, Halo 2 and Halo 3 didn't seem as bad in this regard, even during the sections that were heavier on flood.  Maybe the encounters were designed smarter, or at least less annoyingly.  Maybe they changed the game mechanics to make it less annoying somehow.  I think I remember Halo's health mechanic got dropped between games replaced almost entirely by shields?  Whatever the reasons, after the flood appear in Halo 1, it's a far worse game for it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had to explain to a programmer coworker recently who John Carmack is.  Made me feel so fucking old.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


On its face value Halo is remarkably bleak and yet it also has something that I feel is sorely lacking in a lot of modern media. Sincerity.






As I've gotten older, and especially since having kids, I have found that I have less and less patience for deconstructionist takes, and subversion for subversion's sake. I don't want nihilism and moral ambiguity from my fiction. I get enough of that from studying history. What I want from my fiction is something to inspire and/or aspire to. Yes Halo is bleak, but it is also hopeful. And yes, I recognize that this sounds like a contradiction but it's not because what Halo's story is ultimately about is what do you do when faced with frightful odds or a seemingly hopeless situation? It's about what do you when your faith is shattered, and you find out that much of what you thought you knew about how the universe worked is revealed to have been a carefully crafted lie? It's about duty and loyalty. It's about the relationship between created and creator. It's that meme about "the masculine desire to perish in a heroic last stand" in video game form. It is all of these things, and I think that is why fans keep coming back to it.




At some point "sincerity" was rebranded "cringe" and caring about anything became a shameful public display.  Or at least, certain demographics are condemned for caring about anything.  Others get to have public meltdowns over trivial matters and are lauded.


But you and I, when we care about things it's "cringe".  Even existential things like "Will my children inherit my nation, or be dispossessed?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eh.  In many ways I think Halo is overrated, and The LIbrary might be one of the worst FPS levels I have ever played in my entire life.  That said, I think JeSuisCharlie accurately characterizes it's strengths.  I actually haven't played a Halo game since I couch cooped Halo 3 when it came out.  I meant to replay them recently, and then my XBox 360 died as soon as I took it out of storage.  Alas.


I could probably spring for the Master Chief Collection on Steam whenever it's on one of it's frequent sales.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for April 7th, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I haven't posted much on account of working 9-10 hour days and commuting 2-3 hours on top of it.


However I finally have an excuse to learn OpenGL for work.  Every other time I've tried to learn OpenGL the last 20 years, work has reared it's ugly head and taken up too much of my headspace to make much progress.  But not this time, oh no, this time work has me utterly immersed in it.


It's actually a funny story, but I probably shouldn't divulge it on a public forum.  Alas.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes, you do understand this goes both ways? You understand democrats come off as Halloween villains to much of the country?




I'd go with actual living demons over Halloween villains, but to each their own.


In light of the over the top evil of the opposition, I'm fine with my chosen champion acting like a Crusader King.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And here I am making real children the traditional way, like a chump.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The great project of the "online right" is to identify this evil, to name it, and to then fight it. Yet this evil remains amorphous and elusive.




I don't think this is remotely true.  I'd argue evil is so pervasive, it's a target rich environment.  Just because people identify different evils doesn't mean they are all wrong.  They can all be right!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Eh, it's less that, and more relief that the madness of amateur flash cartoons just migrated over to Gary's Mod apparently.  I'm happy someone has kept the flame alive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I commute roughly 2.5 hours a day, spend until bedtime with my daughter, another hour or two with my wife before she falls asleep, and then I have 15 precious minutes to myself before I need to go to bed so I don't die on the interstate in a sleep deprived stupor in the morning.


So thanks for that I guess.  It was at least interesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, like I said, I bought in 2021, just narrowing avoiding all of that.  I mean it was starting, but nowhere near the hysteria that followed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, but they rarely pick those people.  The whole point of DEI is to destroy the concept of merit.  You can't go picking meritorious minorities, you have to purposely pick the least qualified ones you can possibly get away with.  Because the entire thing is a social experiment at scale to prove merit isn't real.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe, but let me put it like this.  In 2021 when I bought my house, I sunk about 20% of my net worth into the down payment.  I'm talking everything btw, crypto, 401k, brokerage, cds, gold, savings, etc.  Now theoretically, and inadvisably, I could have cleaned out everything and just bought the house outright.  I mean, lets pretend for a moment that I wouldn't have paid massive penalties on my 401k.


Well, 5 years later my investments have more than doubled.  The value of my house has not.  Also I "benefit" from the value of my house regardless of whether I've paid off my mortgage or not.  I put benefit in quotes because mostly it means I just pay more taxes and insurance.  To access any of that "wealth" I'd have to either take out a home equity line of credit, or sell the house, putting me back at square one.  Also, now I could far more easily pay off my mortgage in full, and have 70% of my net worth left over, versus essentially resetting had I paid in full in 2021.


Also, as someone who was recently jobless, having 10 years of living expenses in assorted accounts was an enormous relief.  Now I'm assuming with a paid off house, and resetting from 0, I would have probably saved up a good amount having no mortgage.  But my napkin math says probably 20-30% what I actually have today.  And I'd have suffered an enormous opportunity cost with my investing to boot.


All that said, rates change everything.  With rates over 6% I often consider whether I would just pay in full for my next home.  I likely could.  But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Thing is, it mostly turns into a zero sum game. When rates were low, people could make crazy offers on houses because their monthly payments were so low. Now that rates are high, there's less competition and prices...well, they didn’t go down, but they also didn’t go up as much. And you can just refi in 5 years. I think you would've been fine buying a bit later.




Eh, "fine" is relative.  Sometimes it feels like I really got the last house I could have gotten.  We spent all spring 2021 looking, things were drying up by summer, and the noises the fed were making were increasingly concerning.  One year later rates had nearly doubled.  At the worst of it, when rates were topping 7% and prices were still going up, I would have been looking at a mortgage getting really close to twice the one I had.  Now it's a mere 50% higher.  Then again, I got a house which had plenty of room to grow, and I'm not at risk of needing to climb the "housing ladder" any time soon.


I'm building equity in the home incredibly quickly, because I pay down the principle so much quicker, making it easier to buy a new home when I have to.  And the money I pocket with a lower mortgage goes straight into the S&P500 too.


I mean, sure, if I absolutely had to, maybe I could have stretched and gotten way less house for way more money with a far worse mortgage a year or two later and been "fine".


Instead I'm great, and it's a hell of a snowball effect.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, it all depends on the rate.  Once you get up to 6%, it gets real narrow if you can beat it with investing.  Especially after paying taxes on whatever your profits are.  Maybe if you were chucking everything into an IRA in an S&P500 index fund.  But the difference between a post-tax, post-inflation, highly variable "10% average return" and a guaranteed 6% return from paying down debt is extremely marginal for most people.  I wouldn't fault anyone for paying down a 6% mortgage over investing.  I mean, I'd probably invest anyways, because I reason I'd rather have the extra money in case of emergencies than less debt.  But that's a separate reasoning than it being a better rate of return.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, my wife thought I was insane.  The federal reserve was spouting some bullshit about inflation being transitory, and I was ranting and raving "They're lying!  We need to buy a house NOW if we are ever going to."  Caused some friction the first year or two, but boy howdy have I been vindicated since.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's amazing how quickly an amortization schedule gets insanely front loaded as rates go up.  I have a sub 3% mortgage, in the first year my principle to interest ratio was about 2:3, maybe 4:5.  In one more year, the 6th year of my mortgage, it will cross 1:1.  At current market rates for the same amount, it starts off 1:4 or 1:5 and doesn't cross 1:1 until the 225th payment, 18 years in.


I don't make extra payments.  A high yield savings account offers better return than paying off my mortgage faster.  Now if it were a 6% mortgage, I'd probably be throwing as much as I could at it.