WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
17hr ago
Made an IF routine where I only eat anything between 10am and 8pm, outside of it I only drink water or tea
When my a1c crept into the prediabetic range, sticking to an eating window of 9 to 5, at least 6 out of 7 days a week fixed me right up. Dropped my a1c by 0.5 after a year. I cut back on a lot of things by virtue of not fucking snacking at night, but didn't cut out alcohol, carbs or sugars entirely.
Speaking of, I should probably get my yearly scheduled soon, make sure things haven't relapsed.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
18hr ago
Do you believe that all of politics can only be summed up as "left" and "right" and that it is impossible to be both against killing people like Kirk and against racism/neonazism/etc?
Yes.
Let me put it like this. When a high profile Jan 6 defendant gets tenure at a major university, and becomes the mentor to the next president, I might be willing to entertain the notion that I have enemies to the right. If the town my daughter is growing up in doesn't flip from 80% white to 30% white over her lifetime like mine did, I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right. If I can look up resumes in my field and not see that 50% of them have some variation of "we prioritize hiring diversity", I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right.
But my life has been made so infinitely worse by my enemies to the left, I don't understand why I could possibly care about these theoretical enemies to my right. They've literally never done anything to me.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
20hr ago
some small Democratic Virginian politician
Point of nitpicking. I would consider a small time politician to be, maybe, one member of the state legislator, or mayor of a small or medium sized town. Attorney General of the entire state is starting to get up into a large Democratic Virginian politician. State AGs often make nationwide news due to the policies they pursue unilaterally. I have to hear about Ken Paxton, AG of Texas, all the damned time.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
20hr ago
See, but you skipped the part where I pointed out, how?! They have no third spaces to do so. None. Zero. Zilch. There is zero third space for male bonding. So of course the moment they find themselves in a remotely male third space, they begin doing the repressed male bonding rituals that are their nature. It's unfortunate that the first third space they found that fits the bill is a Young Republicans Group. But society failed them first, by denying them any other third space before that one.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21hr ago
My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:
- They are female
- They are autistic
- They have no intrusive thoughts
- They are lying
Or they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!
Sometimes I am shocked at how poorly the female mind grapples with things like this. Like, I've heard my wife have abhorrent conversations with her best friend on the phone that she absolutely does not mean. And yet when confronted with someone else having had a similar conversation, she cannot relate. How horrible. Clutch the pearls!
I remember when Trump's Hollywood Access tape leaked, and she really was in the grips of the "My father would never say something like that" propaganda that was going around. I had to gently remind her that her father served in the military. No effect. I went further, that he's told the same joke a dozen times about telling a waitress she "gave good head" and offending her when she served him a beer with the perfect amount of head on it. That had some slight effect. Still, those pearls were clutched, if slightly less hard.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
21hr ago
All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.
Why? This was probably the first all male inclusive space (or so they thought) that they'd ever experienced. They'd been denied any third space to be boys their entire lives.
I mean, you aren't wrong, but also, what you expect is impossible in context.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
23hr ago
Don't care, and this is also a false equivalence. To the best of my knowledge, nobody was fired because of things they said about Charlie Kirk in leaked private messages. They were fired because they were in positions of trust (teacher, doctor, etc), and they posted horrific things endorsing his assassination publicly and proudly under their full name. These are not the same thing, don't pretend they are, I'm not playing along.
But that's how these arguments always go. Jay Jones wasn't directly telling his political opponents over SMS and then a phone call that they deserve to die, something which if I'd done would have been a terroristic threat, it was a "leaked private conversation" and a "joke". No, it fucking wasn't, and also, that's exactly what these Young Republicans are getting fired for.
I said before, when teachers were getting fired because nobody wants psychos like that teaching their children, that the left wasn't upset that the right were hypocrites, they were upset that the rules they thought were meant only for them were being used by others. Then Jimmy Kimmel was back on TV after blood libeling his political opponents, and people pretended cancel culture had been defeated.
I don't know how many times this needs to happen before people stop pretending the defectbots will never stop smashing defect.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
I am so profoundly glad I had my teens and 20-somethings before the age of, whatever this is. We had ICQ, AOL IM, irc, and to the best of my knowledge none of this was really permanent? Logs were all stored locally, if you missed something in irc, you just missed it. It was all far more ephemeral by nature.
I'm especially glad there are no recording of what went on at LAN parties even into our 20's. Or the insane conversations we had at college. Or the things we said drunk post college. Or the chauvinistic things we joked about when we started having some success with women.
Side note: Didn't we just get done watching liberals melt down over "comedy being illegal" because Jimmy Kimmel almost lost his job? Isn't Jay Jones still running in my state on a platform of making me suffer because I'm evil, I'm breeding little fascist, and I need to feel the boot until I change my politics? And not a single Democrat has called for him to drop out, or even withdrawn their endorsement?
JD has the right of this.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
Alternately, Russia so successfully sabotaged the US decades ago, they no longer need to today.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
All of the above, and the more contracts get diverted to small, minority owned businesses, the sloppier it gets. I saw my share of Certified Women/Minority Owned Businesses that just bid on contracts, any contract, and then aggressively staff up with questionable contractors to meet the letter of the contract. More or less the only permanent employees they have are project managers. Everyone else is from temp firms, H1B, and maybe a few private contractors with actual experience for the lead roles.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
"small industrial producer trying to make many metric shit-tons of TNT without grizzled old guys missing fingers to pass on the important lessons, goes about how you expect."
Well, it was a Certified Women-Owned Small Business gaming the system for government contracts. Personally saw that shit all the time on contracts we were bidding for.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
This is more or less my sticking point. It's almost unimaginable that Microsoft products could get so terrible, companies change their entire workflow to avoid them.
But only almost. Like, surely if it were regularly eating their data, or causing massive lawsuits against them, they'd change infrastructure, right?
Or does Microsoft start bringing other companies down with them? And only after that do new companies just avoid them from the start to fill the gaps? Does the next trillion dollar company that hasn't been founded yet avoid Microsoft and all their products entirely?
And I mean, if that's the case we're looking at what, a 40 year timeline? I might be dead by then?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
The hard part, though, is that if that is true, if you know for certain that they are eating their seed corn, then my friend you have tremendous alpha and should put all your money betting on Microsoft going belly up.
If there were an open ended mechanism to short a stock that didn't require exquisite timing, I'd think about it. But the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
I'm still wrestling with this one personally.
Sometimes you see CEOs that roll into a company, drive it completely into the dirt, but in a way where all the board members get filthy rich. Weird structured mergers that saddle the brand with insane amounts of debt, and then it declares bankruptcy and then the board makes a killing selling it piecemeal. There is a suspicion this is what Intel's board/CEO are planning on doing. Just rip the company to shreds and make themselves filthy rich selling the x86 license, the fabs, the business to business contracts to the highest bidder.
You see this constantly with Indian CEOs and their ruthless value extraction. Every year, Microsoft for example, gets exponentially worse. Every year they shitcan more Americans, hire more H1Bs, treat customers more adversarial while offering a worse product. But profits go up, share holders are happy, so every year it continues. At least on paper. It's almost impossible for me to reckon that this can continue forever. That they aren't eating their seed corn in some fundamental way. That at some point the tech debt they continually accumulate won't cause the Microsoft ecosystem to be such a risk to run, that there is an institutional push to abandon it.
But I suppose the phrase "There is a lot of ruin in a nation" goes for trillion dollar companies too. There is a lot of value left to extract, and a lot of enshittification yet to pursue with a trillion dollar market cap. But I'm sure they'll find some way to convert all $1,000,000,000,000 into H1B Visas.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
That reminds me of the time I sliced my toe open. I go to the hospital to get it stitched up, and the lady tells me I should lie back. Being in my early 20's and cocky as fuck, I go "It can't hurt worse than when I sliced it open, right?"
She just looks at me, gives up arguing, goes "Whatever" and gets to work.
She got about 1/3rd of the way through just numbing it before I tapped out and had to lay down, sweating bullets and nauseous as fuck.
Though I did remove them myself a few weeks later with some nail clippers and pliers.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
Yeah, I do that too for run of the mill blood draws. Yearly physicals, stuff like that.
But man, when things go off the rails and some inexperienced nurse really has to start poking around, no amount of not looking seems to help.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
Man, I remember when I was trying to give blood one time, but I was dehydrated so my veins kept collapsing. I think they might have tried 3 times before they said I simply cannot give blood that day. You'd think it wouldn't be that bad, but for whatever reason the relatively minor pain inflicted on my arm left me woozy, nauseous and I'd broke into a cold sweat. They wouldn't let me leave until I'd recovered. There is some kind of extra shit going on when it comes to your veins.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Eeeeeeh, that's really not how the metaphor is used. At no point in any essay about "banning witches" has the premise been "but witches aren't real".
I mean, yes, in the real world there are no witches and witch hunters do more damage. But in the context of all the essays about "What happens when you ban witches, and by witches we mean right wing racist", witches are real and witch hunters are necessary.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Well, I still haven't hit my 200 rep 54# Kettlebell Snatch goal, but I have settled into two sets of 100 reps fairly reliably, assuming my form doesn't degrade to such a degree I rip my hands up.
Instead, I managed to military press my 88# Kettlebell! I haven't done that in probably 10 years, and even then I could only do it on one side, and not remotely reliably either. So yay! I'm not too old for improvement.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I am increasingly happy to have turned down invitations from two pairs of hot bubbly blonde Mormon missionary girls in a row, I had an intrusive thought pop into my head, perhaps I should attend their sermon that Sunday, I wasn't doing anything important and it would be funny. I'm glad I didn't, because I look at this and think "there but for the grace of God myself go I".
Oh no, you could have had lots of babies with a beautiful blonde wife. The horror, the horror. So glad you escaped that tragic fate.
If you had been capable of living a lie, of snatching all the benefits of their community without compromising yourself (leaving aside the virtue of not being a liar), then I'd be marginally less concerned. Good luck, I can't really find it in me to condemn you, but I wish you hadn't gone down this rabbit hole even if it has hot blondes and fun, family-friendly activities along the way.
I forget when I heard this, could have been 12 years ago, maybe 15. But it was an episode of Radio Lab about telling yourself a lie to beat addiction. I remember two segments from it, one where two women quit smoking together, and decided that if either one of them starts smoking again, they'd give the other $10,000 or something like that.
The other was about this Russian treatment for alcoholism. They take the alcoholic, and they put a medical implant in his arm, and tell him the first time he drinks after this, he'll get horrifically sick. The second time he'll die. The doctor is laying it on incredibly thick. Then in the back half of the episode, after all this build up, he breaks kayfabe and is incredibly jovial. Admits the whole procedure is a hoax, and the pill they implant in the arm dissolves after a week or two. But it will make them incredibly sick if they drink with it in (which they always do), but it could never kill them. Still, believing it will grants the procedure a pretty good success rate.
If it were easy to Just Be A Good Persontm then we wouldn't have nearly the problems we have, nor would the self help section at book stores be so over flowing. If there were one lie you could believe, and it would make you nicer, give you hope, give you purpose, and generally make every conceivable facet of your life infinitely better and more rewarding, and it might not even be a lie, why not?
Well... I guess for that last part I'm more speaking about my own personal dalliances with Catholicism. The Book of Mormon is still bad bible fan fiction, but I can't judge too harshly these days.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Imagine you are a dyed in the wool red triber. You agree with 99% of everything Trump is doing. Then one day, Trump decides we should all cut off our dicks. And suddenly you start seeing all your friends at church cutting their dicks off. They're cutting the dicks off their kids too! You might make it your singular purpose to try to lead your tribe, with whom you agree on 99% of all other issues, back to the land of sanity.
I don't envy Jesse Singal. He seems to honestly believe this is a mistake and not a conflict. He honestly thinks he can convince Democratic politicians and policy makers to reverse course, even 20%. If only those damned Republicans weren't also on his side of this issue, making his side all crazy, and doubling down on all the dick chopping.
Wait, I think I mixed up my metaphors there at the end...
Oh wait no, I'm good.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Hard disagree. All that does is launder into the premises that there is a good version of being a lunatic fringe that is frothing at the mouth for violence. It once again centers this notion that even the crazy lefties have their heart in the right place.
I reject this fully.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Hilariously seems like Bluesky has the inverse of the Witches Problem.
Like "reverse racism" is just racism, "inverse Witch Problem" just means the left did, in fact, have a Witch Problem. It's not a different thing.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I think what's most fascinating about Blusky, is it's the only case I know of where the lefties were exiled (well, self exiled) from a supposedly "neutral" platform. Every other time it ever happened, it was because the TOS or the Trust & Safety teams came down like a brick of shit on their right wing political opposition. This caused two things. When the people who got banned went to voat.co or gab or where ever, it concentrated things and made them look even crazier than they seemed before, making the right as a whole look kind of unhinged. The second thing it did was further entrench leftism as the "default". It's just being a good persontm.
Twitter going the opposite direction has been seismic in pushing back against both. The overton window has expanded to include more rightwing thoughts, and now the left is over on Blusky acting completely unhinged.
The last real Nazi I'm aware of got a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.
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