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PaperclipPerfector  15hr ago (text post)   487 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 23, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This video of RZA making a beat from scratch for a Guitar Center promo has me rolling.

The comments are brilliant:

my guy wanted to add a hi hat and decided Mr Krabs running would be a better fit

"To have that modern sound, I'm just gonna add a little hi hat. A normal... a normal, like, hi hat from uh...... modern music, shall we say?" is such a goddamn funny quote. You can almost see him trying not to laugh lmao

in his defence, we're not hearing it through those headphones

“Two guys connected……………………you can’t beat that.”

I'll be installing Linux on my laptop finally and my parents celebrate their 28th anniversary tomorrow. Do drop distro and or gift suggestions.

Linux always seemed appealing but I never got around to using it as I was always scared that I'd break things irreparably. Plenty of people toy around with their machine and make it pretty fast or aesthetic (unixporn is a cool sub). Does anyone do the same?

This year, get your parents the gift of Linux. Conventional wisdom says that for happiness, experiences are better than possessions. I hear Gentoo is an experience.

I have a big breakdown here for both disto recs and general tips and tricks, and I'll stand by it. I'm running an arch hypr variant, and it's a good learning experience and looks great, but it's not really ideal as a daily driver or for people that are not techies -- Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or even Elementary/Zorin will probably be better experiences your first time around.

It's very hard to break things irreparably with Linux, but it's unfortunately easier-than-Windows to get your machine into a state where a fresh install will be easier than cleaning things up. Manjaro is okay, but I will caution that if you aren't into tech (commandline) debugging it will quite happily let you get into goofy states. Even moreso than in Windows world, having a good backup setup is very important.

If you're planning to dual-boot, I strongly recommend increasing the size of your EFI partition to 200MB-500MB. It's not often an issue, but it's a lot less painful to handle before you've got your whole computer setup.

For gifts for parents, depends a lot on the people.

If you want to get weird, I really enjoy tiling windows managers: instead of floating windows, they are snapped to a configurable non-overlapping layout. I feel like most people's need for multiple monitors is just a desire for tiling that their system doesn't support. I personally use i3 but there are several pretty similar options. I could share a config with vim style bindings if that floats your goat.

Windows PowerToys (a non-official set of enhancements authored by actual Microsoft devs) has one plug in that's an excellent tiling manager. I should probably use it more, as a 4k 49" TV at 2 feet away has more visual real estate than I know what to do with. Otherwise I'd get a second monitor, but there's literally no room on my desk.

Oh neat. I'll have to check that out for my gaming rig. First glance it seems like it is pretty limited in comparison, but probably about 70% of the value.

I'm a CS prof and I use debian. If you're into programming at all, then I'd recommend ubuntu (which is based off debian but designed to be "less ideological" and more "beginner friendly"). Most tutorials for programmers (and thus most advice from LLMs) assumes debian/ubuntu.

I second this. Start with Ubuntu, go from there once you get comfortable. Fedora would also be a good choice if you want to get into sysadmin stuff, since RHEL is so popular in the infrastructure world.

I've been meaning to set up some sort of Linux distro on my retired PC. It's been collecting dust ever since I assembled a new one half a year ago. Ubuntu perhaps?

Not sure what I'd do with it though. Guess I'll just mess around and learn a few things about the non-Windows world of computing... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm getting manjaro, it's recommended to noobs and I've been trying to get serious with my programming journey. I couldn't get Hugo and go to run properly on my wsl and that ensured I start backing stuff up. Happened last night.

Windows and Mac are both bad operating systems.

Don't get Manjaro, it's Arch for noobs, not Linux for noobs. If you want to run Arch for bragging rights, run Arch. If you need Linux for your resume and general knowledge, run some form of Ubuntu. IBM really screwed the pooch when they gutted CentOS, so now there's less demand for RPM-based distros from the corpos.

Why are Substack comments universally so stupid and so worshipful? Where do these ball-washers hide out all the time? It might be the worst comment section on the internet, I just don't know where these people come from. I mostly read substacks that are from weird, pseudo-hyper-masc, heterodox writers; and then the comments are all "WOW DUDE WHAT AN AMAZING ARTICLE IT'S ALMOST AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST ARTICLE!"

Maybe I'm just used to here where the comment that starts out "great post" normally moves on to "In paragraph three I think that you misphrased the way Churchill thought..."

But like, is everyone paying for fake AI comments? Is there just a vast reserve of ball-washers on the internet? Are these guys just Soundcloud-tier substack writers hoping that if they're positive about a popular writer someone will notice them?

Back when I got the paper every day, I'd always read the op-eds, and there were some writers I agreed with regularly, some I disagreed with regularly, and some where there was no clear tendency. The thing was, though, that I wasn't getting the paper for the op-eds, let alone one person's thrice-weekly column. Substacks are necessarily limited to the kind of people who are not only willing to seek out one columnist but pay money for a subscription to a service that provides nothing but material from that columnist, so the comments sections are going to be hopeless fanboys rather than a broad segment of the public.

Seriously, though, who pays for these things anyway? I mean, I like Matt Taibbi, but if I spent $7/month on every writer I liked as much as Taibbi I'd be shelling out hundreds just for Substack subscriptions.

To be "hundreds" there would have to be at least ~25 writers you like as much as Taibbi. Which is definitely plausible, especially if they're less prolific, but I bet that means you have good recommendations. Would you be up for sharing a list of 10 or so writers you like as much as Taibbi, with like a sentence about why you like them?

I've got nothing but good impression's of Scott's comment section. I'd comment more, but I'm intimidated by the sheer speed with which people come up with high quality comments and insightful thoughts mere minutes after a post. I confess I never really check out other Substack comments, but I have a neutral opinion from what I've seen.

When you pay $5 a month not just for a newspaper but for a specific person’s article you are very likely to develop a milder version of the sort of parasocial relationship people have with their favorite YouTuber or streamer.

I really want a pretty print magazine.

I know someone who works in niche print magazine publishing who says they do pretty well. It’s all niche fashion, literature, photography, food, travel magazines where each copy is like $20 sold through specialist stores (mostly retail), so the number of copies you need to sell is actually quite modest. Depending on where you live I’m sure there’s some hip print stores that stock them.

"Substack is just OnlyFans for intellectuals"?

Is there just a vast reserve of ball-washers on the internet?

Yes, and as more people get online the worse it gets. This is further magnified by negative comments increasingly getting filtered (often automatically) and positive ones getting boosted.

Its in general not in a content creator's interest to have their comment section not being positive, regardless of actual audience reaction.

It might be the worst comment section on the internet

How can you say that when YouTube exists?

Pick a song that came out earlier than this year. The top comment on that song will be "Anyone in 2025?" It's the most retarded thing ever.

like, is everyone paying for fake AI comments?

I fear there’s every chance of this.

I haven’t noticed many good comment sections.

Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten) has a mature type of commenter, which is probably to be expected.

George Saunders (Story Club) has a very committed and engaged community, definitely more rounded than your tongue-in-cheek example.

Paul Kingsnorth (Abbey of Misrule) has a very good community who engages reliably.

Even these top 1% are often characterised by positivity towards the poster. It’s very much a leader-follower dynamic.

I haven't read a ton of ACT and even less of the comments (due to tech issues with substack comments) but are they better than the SSC blog comments? Things were getting pretty dire towards the end there.

I'd say not as good as 2014 era commentariat but better than 2019 era commentariat.

It’s been a while since I checked but in general comments there are (a) plentiful and (b) quite long. Those two put it in the top 0.001% of Substack blogs. That’s a different measure than: “are they objectively good comments?” I’m not sure there’s much on the internet that’s objectively good anymore. Enshittification effect, borne out of generalised ADHD-like behaviour created by algorithms.

I meant more in the sense of the percentage of people glazing Scott.

I understand. And you’re probably right.

I haven't really noticed that. Most of the time I just see a complete lack of comments. I think the writers are pained by that. I see some of them on discord and x, subtly or not subtly longing for more engagement. It could be that some of them go the route of paying for engagement in the same way that e.g. a restaurant can pay for fake reviews. I assume they probably figure that 'it'll get the show started, and then the real organic engagement starts and snowballs!'

Honestly, I've never posted a reply on substack as far as I can remember, but I was considering doing it one of these days, and I was gonna just straight up praise and gush... I'd be one of the ball-washers you describe. Because the blog in question is a very very good one. When I see strongly coherent and inspiring writing that speaks to me from start to finish, I'm genuinely impressed. Because it's pretty rare and not that easy to accomplish. It takes time and practice and skill to consistently write well. And to do it for several pages on end? Takes energy and commitment too.

I've never been good at writing long texts myself. I didn't really learn how to do it in school, and didn't have a supportive home environment to cultivate skills. Despite being a pretty good wordcel by nature (at least the receptive/decoding part), I wrote as little as I could get away with in school for various reasons: bad teachers, depression and anxiety, difficulty with identifying and putting feelings and thoughts into words because of alexithymia and low confidence, and so on. When I had to do it in university it was a pain and a stressful chore on which to procrastinate and agonize. It still doesn't come naturally. There's probably some critical/sensitive zones involved in the developmental psychology of a good writer. Then there's the part of self-construal: do you believe others have any interest and approval of what you might write? Would it be 'legit' in front of a public audience, etc.

Perhaps I'm not the only one who's secretly a bit worshipful of the people who quickly produce great texts without straining the shit out of their brain muscles, somewhat like how a tech-illiterate might ooh and aah at the wizardry when you press ctrl+alt+del and shut down a frozen task, heh.

Complete lack of comments is probably 99% of substacks. Including mine, disappointingly. (I’m as prone to dopamine attraction as the next man…)

Somewhat esoteric court opinion:

  • In conducting Internet searches, you probably have encountered a situation where (for example) you search for "Amazon", but Ebay appears at the top of the results page (prominently marked as "sponsored"), above Amazon itself. This technique is known as "competitive keyword advertising".

  • If lawyer John Doe sets up competitive keyword advertising against fellow lawyer Jane Smith—so that, when someone searches for "jane smith lawyer", John Doe's website appears at the top of the results page (prominently marked as "sponsored"), above the website of Jane Smith herself—has John Doe violated the lawyers' code of ethics by "making false or misleading communications" or "engaging in dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation"? In June 2019, the state ethics committee (not the state disciplinary board, but a committee set up by the state supreme court) says the answer is "no".

  • In May 2020, the state supreme court agrees to consider the state bar association's appeal of the ethics committee's determination. In November 2020, the state supreme court remands the matter for thorough investigation under a special <del>master</del><ins>adjudicator</ins>. In June 2024, the special master finally submits a report agreeing with the ethics board that competitive keyword advertising is not a violation of the lawyers' code of ethics.

  • In May 2025, the state supreme court issues an opinion mostly agreeing with the special master's conclusion (by a vote of four to one), but adding one extra requirement: in order to prevent confusion, whenever a user clicks on an ad that uses competitive keyword advertising, the ad's landing page must explicitly state that the user has entered the website of John Doe.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the dissent's reasoning would bar commonplace advertising practices. For example, under its view, an attorney who purchases a keyword like "Newark divorce lawyer" despite maintaining an office in a nearby suburb would be engaging in deception simply because the ad appears in response to a search regarding Newark. That approach would improperly conflate strategic visibility with dishonesty, effectively discouraging attorneys from using lawful digital tools to expand access to their consumers. This form of advertising is not misleading. It is standard competitive marketing aimed at reaching a broader audience. We therefore do not reach the dissent's First Amendment analysis.

(Bonus: Using marijuana is legal under state law but illegal under federal law. The lawyers' code of ethics forbids lawyers from "criminal acts that reflect adversely on the lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer in other respects". Is using marijuana a violation of the code of ethics? The state ethics committee's answer is "no".)

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