WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10hr ago
Truthfully I've written off public school. I moved to a deep red county, and even still the schools (teachers and students by proxy) are agitating to rename shit, raise awareness, and the other typical red flags that indicate they've forgotten "Your mission is teaching, stay in your lane." Local public libraries that schools take kids to in Trump +40 localities have chosen as their hill to die on keeping LGBTQ pornographic material available to children.
I know "brainwashes kids to be fake and gay" is technically a separate issue on paper from "teaches kids to read and do math wrong because fuck you". But IMHO, having taken my look around, teachers either adhere to all the old ways, or none of them. It's common core math, whole word learning and the gender unicorn on tablets, or it's phonics, times tables, repetition, God made man and woman, and no screens.
Had to do tours of a couple private schools, spoke to their teachers and administrators. Wife came out hard with her first question being "You don't do any woke LGBTQ shit do you?" Turned out the direct approach was in the fact the best approach, and so far so good.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
15hr ago
I think it is taking time for awareness of this fact to seep into public knowledge.
Well, that's largely because of this part
if the government is willing to devote the resources to catching you
It's just pure anarcho tyranny. We aren't as far gone as the UK where they are releasing foreign rape gangs to make room for people who got a little too mouthy criticizing foreign rape gangs. But it's inching there. Only enemies of the deep state get the full weight of the law and it's infinite spying capabilities thrown at them. Everyone else basically has to commit the crime in such a lazy manner in front of hundreds of witnesses who can identify them, and then a Soros DA might get pressured into lazily pressing charges and then cutting a probation only plea deal once it's out of the news.
Now, the obvious flaw in that narrative is this very arrest. Are the tools of the deep state finally getting yanked out of their hands by the current administration? Maybe. There is a story where deep state FBI agents were purposely fucking up the investigation, and Kash put a fresh team of loyalist on it who immediately solved the case with no new evidence. If that is happening, it's a process, not an event however. Anarcho Tyranny is not "solved" on the basis of a single prosecution, just like Cancel Culture wasn't cancelled on the basis of Jimmy Kimmel getting his show back. It's who/whom trench warfare and bureaucratic defense in depth until the point where the only solution is to drop the pretenses and start killing each other in the war we are obviously already in.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
16hr ago
How do you maintain your weight while doing this?
Easy! I probably still eat too much, and I'm in my 40's. I tend to have a giant breakfast, a light lunch (often leftovers) and then a giant dinner. If I've been working out that week, I have two scoops of protein powder also.
I don't think I've lost a pound doing this, which honestly is a little frustrating, but I haven't been counting calories, so I don't know what else I was expecting. Oh well.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
18hr ago
On the one hand, he's a serial fabulist and so this story is hard to believe.
On the other hand, I want to believe it so badly because it's hilarious.
This is the best timeline.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
19hr ago
No.
Then again, I learned the bulk of my math in the 90's. The focus was on endless repetition, to the point where it's practically muscle memory, and not a conscious process at all. This went for basic arithmetic, but also linear algebra, geometry, trigonometry (I'll never forget SOH-CAH-TOA). It applied far less to calculus because there was so much to cover, and far less repetition.
I remember in college I had a Chinese professor who'd had drilled into him how to mentally calculate square roots to 3 decimal places through relentless repetition. We were all amazed the first time we saw him do it, but he demurred heavily.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
19hr ago
This is fun, right?
https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1996664263327338525
Tim Walz says people are driving by his house calling him ‘retarded.’
Actual quote
People driving by my house and using the 'R-Word' in front of people
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
20hr ago
There is always the possibility dude is still a patsy. He could have been induced into building the bombs by an FBI informant, and then he handed them off to the previously identified law enforcement lady in the vicinity who lazily planted them around the block. I haven't exhaustively gone over the evidence to see if this story is still a fit, but on a cursory read it doesn't seem impossible.
Not that I'm particularly attached to that theory either. Just saying, it's possible, maybe?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
20hr ago
Microcenter likes to register you as a customer. If he put his phone number into the system when he made his cash purchase, then the purchase would still be recorded under his account.
Yes, point reward systems are also part of the panopticon.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
So I did a 24 hourish fast after Thanksgiving.
I've been doing interval eating, or intermittent fasting for about 2 years now. I try as best I can to get all my eating into a 6-8 hour window at least 5 days out of a week. Basically ever since my doctor looked at my a1c and saw I was just over the line of being prediabetic. Ever since I started the practice, my bloodwork has come back flawless, minus my stubborn LDL. Hopefully that's just from eating 4-6 eggs a day since my wife bought about 20 chickens in the spring. Cut my egg consumption in half. Fingers crossed.
Anyways, the 24 hour fast went pretty OK. I finished my last piece of pie around 6 PM on Thanksgiving day, and then managed to hold off until just after 5 PM the next day to gorge myself on Thanksgiving leftovers. It was a fascinating experience and barely difficult at all.
One thing I think I've realized with the IF is that my metabolism was fucked before. I'd just snack whenever I was a little bit hungry, cause why not I work out? And then I'd wake up in the morning absolutely ravenous and barely able to function until I'd slammed down 3 eggs, a bagel and some yogurt with a pot of black coffee for a chaser. And frankly my energy level throughout the day was bonkers, with that much talked about 2-3 PM slump. Since changing over to IF my energy level has been much more consistent, I don't really get hangry anymore, and my cravings have fallen off a cliff.
What got me thinking about all this is youtube suggested a random video about Ozempic, and it's basically describing many of the same positive side effects. So I'm sitting here thinking, is it really as simple as just not stuffing your fat face every waking moment? Are people so willpower depleted it requires a drug to stop eating?
I think I'm going to do more 24 hour fasts. Maybe once a month for now, and I'll probably go breakfast to breakfast instead of dinner to dinner. That way I can sleep through the worst of it. Or so I believe.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
Sometimes I sincerely wonder if our education system was deliberately sabotaged. If some ancient soviet program to promote teaching precisely the wrong way took on a life of it's own in academia. The failures of modern pedagogy are stark and baffling, and no matter how bad it gets, somehow the pedagogues find a way to make it even worse. There hasn't been a single policy promoted by pedagogues I can think of in the last 40 years that has actually improved education. The singular exception seems to be the "Mississippi Miracle", which the expert class seems absolutely committed to explaining away as a fluke or trickery. Also cell phone bans seem to have helped, but those mostly only seem to occur due to a groundswell of popular support.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
You know, I probably should have thought of Japan. Especially with how much right wing twitter is idolizing them these days.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
I continually wonder how anywhere developed a high trust society in the first place. All I see, everywhere around me, is low trust behavior destroying all the traditions and institutions that made high trust Europe great. I can scarcely imagine how the opposite process could have ever occurred. I'm not aware of anywhere else in the world it even exists. I'm not aware of any other historical cultures one would describe as "high trust". Which is not to say there aren't any, I am just literally professing my ignorance. The existence of high trust societies has become something of a mystery to me, in light of everything I see around me.
It's increasingly difficult for me to even lay out in objective terms what I would define as a "high trust" society. Maybe a measure of how much state capacity bleeds off to corruption? Maybe the likelihood that any good or service you try to procure isn't fraudulent? The chance that any given person you meet isn't lying about who they are and what their capabilities are? An understanding of natural rights that are pro-social? Like respect for private or public property, or other people's time and effort.
But maybe that's a result of having grown up in a post-Demoralized society. You read about the billions of dollars of welfare fraud the Somali community has been doing in plain sight, and Tim Walz's administrations utter spinelessness and/or complicitness in it, and it's hard to see anything other than a civilization that has decided stopping crime is too mean. That taking any measures, no matter how one inarguably just, to secure it's continued existence, is just too cruel.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7d ago
So I finished A Fighting Man of Mars. While I found The Master Mind of Mars rote, boring and tedius in the extreme, A Fighting Man of Mars could easily be my favorite Barsoom novel, and actually a pretty damn good pulp scifi novel period. This one really goes places: Courtship and intrigue in the palaces of Helium, survival against the green hoards of the ancient seabeds, imprisonment in a far off city suspicious of outsiders, escaping ferocious ancient beast, encountering a psychopath, encountering a mad scientist, capturing a borderline magical flier, rescuing and losing the love interest several times a chapter, falling out of love with the bitch, the main character falling in love (predictably) with someone far more worthy. I know that's a run on sentence, but you have to understand I could have summarized the last novel in like 10 words. Really enjoyed that one. I would actually recommend it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7d ago
This place frequently operates on the same principles as most, I don't even know what to call them, "authority worshiping" spaces? Which is to say, it's against the rules to be correct about things before the authorities have updated the correct opinions first.
There was an instance on my local subreddit where after our sloppy pullout from Afghanistan, Biden was recklessly spraying Afghan "refugees" all over local schools. People had concerns over this, and they were widely dismissed as racist. You weren't supposed to recollect how for decades stories had trickled out, even in the papers of record which you are allowed to remember (NYTimes, WaPo, etc), about how our armed forces were revolted at orders from above to turn a blind eye towards their boy love, or "bacha bazi" custom. It was widely reported that our ostensible allies were deeply committed pedarast. I brought this up, another person brought up that boys in another school in Maryland adjacent to the "refugees" had already been raped. Then the whole thread was locked and deleted.
We are still descended from Reddit. You can be correct here at your own peril.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
9d ago
Depends if the government is conspiring to murder you or not.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
9d ago
So I figured out how to finally avoid paying taxes on my insane NVDA gains. Lose my job! Long term capital gains are taxed at 0% up to almost $100,000 of income when you are married filing jointly.
I don't know exactly what happened, but my boss told me the government shut down pushed the small company I work for over the edge. The last 2 months are typically the time of the year we are negotiating another contract with whomever in the DoD to fund next years activities, and I guess that just didn't happen.
It sucks. I worked there 20 years. I've had a reliable income my entire adult life. I haven't kept my resume up to date at all, and I probably interview for shit, not really having kept up with the jargon. But I wasn't particularly attached to my work there, and I don't feel any particular moral outrage about it happening. I get paid out my 188 hours of accrued vacation time and 40 extra hours of severance.
My wife is pregnant. All that church we've been going to finally unblocked whatever apprehension she had about bringing another life into this world. So that adds some stress. Need to get more health insurance ASAP.
I have friends and previous coworkers willing to forward my resume along, and my wife is a former recruiter who's going to help me whip it into shape. I'm on the cusp of having escape velocity "Fuck You" money, but it's a bit premature to YOLO on working just yet. Maybe if it'd been another year and the markets had done great. Maybe 3 or 4 if they'd been just average. But right now feels like the wrong time.
Wish me luck.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
Everyone I ever met who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton acted like "wake up and maximize value" true believers. Curiously enough, I recall they also had some sort of gamified employee leveling system not unlike the Federal Goverment's GS. People would gape and gossip about meeting or having lunch with a Level 5 or whatever it was BAH had going on. It drove me nuts.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
20 years later, that wasn't really true. People seem to buy into the BS, or at least keep plausible deniability about it, such that you never really know. You can't openly call this out to your acquaintances, because you need rely on them for job referrals.
It wasn't true then either. The entire premise of the movie was that the main character had to be hypnotized into not giving a fuck. Everyone else was trapped in the rat race, disingenuously sucking up to the powers that be for fear of their jobs. It's a large part of why the movie was so cathartic for so many people.
But you also aren't wrong, things have gotten worse by a significant degree. There is less and less space to compartmentalize who you are at work from the rest of you, and so it just becomes you entirely.
And having less to do with the OP, I think COVID killed the cultural relevancy of Office Space. Zoom meetings, email jobs and remote work fundamentally changed office dynamics in a way that finally made the workplace of Office Space feel alien after 20 years in stasis. In some ways I think nature is healing. Remote work is getting less common, more people are being called back into the office. We'll see if the transformative effects of COVID ever wash away. But I'm doubtful.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
"I hate my enemies and want them dead" is not an argument.
If you think that's what I'm saying, you are wrong, and if you think that wasn't an argument in revolutionary times, you are wrong twice.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
If you want to be more indirect about it ("I really think some of our state leadership should water the tree of liberty"), we are not stupid and we're still going to tell you to knock off the fedposting.
Oh how far we've fallen. From rhetoric you'd see heroic sung in a Disney movie that was required viewing in Elementary School to intolerable hate speech that will get you and everyone around you visited by the feds in a single generation.
But sure, I'm the problem here.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
Why does there need to be "prevailing wisdom" here on this topic at all?
I'm not saying what the prevailing wisdom should be, I'm saying what it should not be.
You treat it as a given that we can't just ignore the topic, as something that can't be discussed while maintaining the spirit and purpose of the forum, and perhaps even mean to suggest that enforcing non-discussion is tantamount to complicity with your enemies. The exact same approach has been tried on the other side, with popular glosses like "the personal is political", "silence is violence" and what-not; and look where the discussion norms built around those memes got them.
This is wrong and bad faith and borders on intellectual malpractice. "Silence is violence" as deployed by the left is about compelled speech. I'm asking for free speech, non censorship. Nobody has to have an opinion about their own genocide. But I'm asking for the freedom to discuss it, as well as extra-Democratic ways to survive.
And this is exactly what people mean when they say this place, and it's rules, are too "feminized". The only possibility that can be imagined is consensus. If you disagree, you are trying to change the consensus to a different consensus. Because a consensus must exist. There must be a norm that everyone conforms to. There cannot simply be endless discussion.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
There is no winning for anyone if it comes to that. Just violence until both sides are exhausted, or one is annihilated. I can't even speak with confidence which side it would be. But funnily enough, I always remember a line out of a trashy fantasy novel I read once.
"We don't fight to win. We fight so that we don't lose."
The prevailing wisdom here cannot be "Listen, it's just 'rude' not to walk into the ovens. It would get us into trouble with the feds if we talked too openly about non-compliance with their pogroms". Are we really so committed to ensuring everyone cannot even imagine a world where they aren't forfeiting their lives for nothing?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
I have to ask, will it ever be considered "rational" to talk about living up to the ideals of the American Founding and watering the tree of liberty? I currently live in a state with my Attorney General elect thinks I and my children should die because we're breeding "little fascist". His top priority is emptying the prisons into my community to see this done. At what point does it become permissible to openly discuss your natural rights to self defense against the state?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
11d ago
I'm curious if this trend will continue moving forward, and we can perhaps have a more honest conversation about immigration and assimilation? We'll see...
No.
I mean, once again, look at the rape gangs in the UK. Despite there being "more open conversation", all that's really happened is the UK is arresting people for having that "more open conversation". Turns out after decades of the UK pleading that they simply lack the state capacity to stop immigration, or the rape of their children on an industrial scale, they somehow found the state capacity to start locking people up for twitter posts. And they'll even let the rapist out of prison to make room for it!
I expect much the same will happen in the US. Congress will do nothing, Judges will stop all executive enforcement, the state and local government is already captured racially/ideologically. In 10 years people will behave like this was always the case. Like if you live in Minnesota, you just should have known better. You know, back when your parents birthed and raised you back in the 1990's and the notion that Minnesota would get conquered by Somalia was nothing but a Buchananite fever dream.
The rest of the sentence
If Tim Walz told me water was wet, I'd stick my hand in to check. He needs more than "is believable" to sell me on anything he says.
More options
Context Copy link