Fern_Blossom's comments

We might be arguing for the same thing, but semantics... Anyways what I'm getting at is, the victim-fetish, because let's be honest it's turned into a fetish, is a way to absolve yourself of responsibility. Maybe guilt is just that extra step of superficial absolution from your own actions. Kind of like a classical Catholic confessional. Forgive me father for I have sinned, I'm such a baaaaaaad boy. Look at me, I'm admitting to "bad". I'm innocent now....

Hell, it does seem nice to just feel guilty of stuff you literally can't control instead of admitting to the stuff you could control. Which goes to the victimhood. If you're a victim over every little thing, then "it's not my fault!" I mean... this is just going to be a long rant that's going to require me to explain one thing after another because there's a lot of nuance... probably the moral of the story, to what end does "math is racist" even serve? If someone sucks at math when it's deemed racist, they'll still suck even when it's not. Math "being racist" isn't why someone is a lazy, useless parasite on society. That person is the problem, but they don't have to face that fact not only to themselves, but society even rewards them by turning a blind eye on the dumbass waste of human potential. Maybe because society has collectively become more and more useless. Hell, maybe there's an evolutionary trait that sparks when a colony of mammals becomes too vast and wasteful, so it starts to self-cull. I don't know. Math... right... if you're too fucking stupid (this doesn't mean who I'm directly replying to by the way) to do math when it's racist, I promise you'll be too fucking stupid to do it when it's anti-racist. Because math hates you, just like it hates all of us. Equally. Put on the ball gag and nipple clamps and maybe... just maybe... math will give you a little tickle if you take your paddling well. Damn... I'm tired today... go away now...

My honest theory, being the victim feels good. It's easier to wrap up yourself in the warm blanket of victimhood when you're a loser.

Now, I should probably define "loser" a bit. Not in regards to wealth or career status. Generally, I mean someone that has zero going for them. No drive. No aspiration. No ambition. No skills. No pursuits. No self improvement. No self education. No... well... have you noticed the people loudest online regarding the whole victim this, victim that... if you took that away... what do they have? Like, you can't even nerd out with them about anything. No interests. No hobbies. Nothing really. Their entire personality and life comprises of this stuff. And I mean doing things within their control too. Sure, some aspirations are going to be out of your reach for one reason or another. Shit, all F1 drivers were pretty much chosen when they were sperm at this point. That's not in the cards for a lot of people. But to focus on a handful of things that don't work out for you and miss out on literally everything else the world has to offer... fuck, that's some childish shit. Which again, it's all just a tantrum of losers.

The real problem, kids are being raised that this line of thought is okay. It's encouraged and glamorized. Most of you here are programmers to some degree. If you have a few years under you're belt, you had that hazing period to become a "real programmer". That first problem/bug that could not be looked up. There was no pre-packaged solution. And you bashed your fucking head against that problem/bug day in and day out. You dreamt of it. You thought about it when you ate and when you shit. You refused to give up even though you thought you were NEVER going to figure it out... until one night you smashed that wall and grabbed the solution by it's neck.

Now imagine you thought it was computer science's fault because it was racist. Would you have solved it or just cried/whined?

Looking for the light in the darkest struggle is what most encouraging tales and stories are about, for a good reason. Even Beethoven's Ode to Joy has the themes of dark brooding, then the bright, large success in overcoming and not giving up. A good reason it's lasted this long. Hiding in the shadows of this racism/victimhood bullshit has got to stop or humanity is going to reap a barren field.

Alright, so I know some of you Arduino/Rasp Pi experts are out there. I suck at hardware dev of any sort.

If making open source 3D printers is pretty common right now, why not this? Some of these Dymo printers are $200-$300 bucks. How ridiculous would it be to create an open standard and plans to let folks make 3d printed build kits and use the power of open markets to drive this bullshit into the ground? I think that discussion is far more productive than crying about this.

I still think Banksy is not a real "person". It's just a team of marketers who started a prank or dare and it turned into this internationally beloved money printing scam. Because, you know, a thumbs up and spray painting a wall equals feeding a poor kid a bowl of rice everyday. "We're so anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalism, now give us money for this art".

Quick search, macaques's lifespans are roughly 20-30 years. The old alpha was 31... so, in human terms (roughly), it's like a 20-ish year old woman beats a man in his 60s-70s... and she's "brave".

Wait... are you serious? Please tell me you're being funny... oh God... that's where we're at nowadays... I think this is a sincere statement...

Here are some real journalists:

Marie Colvin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Colvin

Brian Barger: https://jacklimpert.com/2021/03/brian-barger/

Bob Woodward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woodward

Those are just three that popped in my head. War journalist, Iran-Contra, Watergate. Their work didn't contain where someone put their prick or what someone put in their snatch or ass during a vacation getaway. Galivanting Gawker as journalistic because it may have broken clocked onto a handful of stories while 99% of it was just trash means you have a pretty warped mind on what constitutes as information. Desire for "dirt" on someone's life, no matter how poor or rich, is a sign of a trashy person who religiously watches the Jersey Shore.

University of Maine professor Michael J. Socolow: "Gawker began as a crusade to save journalism"

Dying on the hill to keep a sex tape of a washout wrestler was in the name of journalism? There are real journalists out there that lost their careers fighting to publish real stories about political and corporate corruption, war crimes, human suffering and more. Not sex tapes. Gawker didn't have any real journalists. This was a group of frat boys enjoying causing mayhem in random people's lives as long as they got to profit from it. So no, you have no principles.

And... what has happened in the past billion some odd years of life on this planet? If any organism does not adapt, especially due to fragility it... gets a participation trophy? There's no deserve. It's simply a fact of the circle of life. Why are you throwing morality at this? Is there morality in physics or math? No grandstanding will alter that reality. It's neither sad nor good. Just is.

Orchids are my guilty pleasure. I'll say this, they die way too easy in Idaho (personal experience). Florida, not so much. In my buddy's neighborhood here, someone put orchids on an outdoor palm tree. Like, they just plopped them into the crevasses of the trunk. They grow and thrive just fine. You don't "water" orchids, you "humidify" them. They're jungle, swamp plants. Along with being slightly parasitic. They do grow best on wood matter than anything else (my experience). Moss and other crap is just too much of a pain in the ass. So yea, in the wrong environment, orchids are a goddamn nightmare to keep alive and honestly, not worth it. But for the most part, most plants in the "wrong" environment are a pain in the ass.

You do realize plants are far more complex than that, right?

I mean, there's water, nutrients in the soil and the importance of mycelium in the dirt. Most plants you can throw in a dark closest for like a week or two easy, then take them out and they'll come back to life. Don't forget, ground level plants in a forest or jungle barely get shit for sun. I'm a cheap bastard that buys "dying" clearance plants from Lowes and Home Depot, then bring them back to life. My dumb redneck green thumb has a lot more respect for plants.

Shit, watch some wild bonsai collectors on youtube. They massacre small trees to bare wood, purposely put them in too small pots, under nourish them and the fuckers still grow.

Plants are no where near as fragile as a koala and panda. Hell, there was an oak tree on my parents property that was struck by lighting some ten some odd times in a five year period (Florida). We cut it down to a 2 or so foot stump since it seemed too dangerous to keep up with all the damage. Fucker started brand new shoots and refused to accept death. After 10 years from cutting, it grew three solid trunks about 10 feet high or so. A bit taller than a house, never measured it.

>Nature isn't kind to humans.

Nature isn't kind to anything. I completely agree with you, but that needs to be said better since the root concept here is how humans, but nothing else, has fallen out of line with nature. Bullshit. Yea, it's pretty to see a monarch butterfly and how peaceful it must be... except it's probably the lone survivor of its swarm after a flock of swallows decimated all the other butterflies it was with just 20 minutes ago. Animals and plants went extinct pre-humans. All. The. Time. They get slaughtered or diseased without us.

The only difference between humans and everything else, we as a species collectively said, "no" to nature ruling our lives. I mean, for fuck's sake, we're such assholes about it, we setup animal sanctuaries and clinics to rescue wild, injured animals. Any other form of nature would have called it "lunch".

I'm going onto a soapbox now. I blame modern animal/nature shows for this gradual misunderstanding of "nature". If you're old enough, you remember old school nature programs showed how metal, destructive and viscous wildlife actually IS. All the shows I see my nieces and nephews watch... they haven't watched footage of a bear tearing into a still kicking deer or wolves taking down a screaming baby bison or moose. They need to know if they see a bear, wolf, snake or cougar in real life, it's not going to be cuddly or do a song/dance number. It's going to fuck them up and they need to keep their distance. Going to stack one more soapbox for me to stand on... and this will get me flamed... koalas and pandas deserve to go extinct. Mono-food source creatures are asking for trouble and need to evolve to diversify their diet to properly outpace extinction.

My 2 cents on the same topic, except to literature and a potential "cure" to the issue. I'm trying to break into being a fiction writer. Once you learn the tools of the trade of storytelling, it doesn't really matter the medium, you know where the story is going. There's an editor that mentioned this in passing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_SmnCQA_Y It's in the first 5 minutes of the video. But he explains about some little challenge of being able to predict the end of a novel based on a page or two. The editor slam dunked the literary scholars. When you see a story as a bunch of gears, chains and a motor or two (writers and editors) instead of some ethereal wisp of magic beyond mortal understanding (literary twats and "scholars"), there isn't much that surprises you. Sorry, storytelling isn't magic. It's more formula and structure, no matter how much chest beating "analysts" drum up. Like, when everyone was "surprised" by Knives Out's ending, I was more confused since I figured it out after about 15 minutes into the movie. I enjoyed the little thriller part that was thrown in. That was unexpected. Beyond that, it was a paint by numbers story. With a SJW writer/director and the basic setup of the family, you immediately know what's going to happen and how. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Christie, another one of those where every writer figures out who killed the guy once the body was found because it's stupid easy when you know the mechanics. Analysts, "What a surprising twist!" Also, like no "movie reviewing/analysis expert" has picked up that The Tomorrow War is an allegory to climate change (more important the sacrifice theme of a generation for a future generation) in the disguise of an alien/monster flick. Either none of them actually watched the movie, just watched the trailer or I'm some sort of genius. I'm the first to say I'm an idiot by the way.

Anyways! I had a slog of a time with this when I started to realize this with every movie, show and book. "Alright, they got their milestone and in 3, 2, 1, kick in the balls to the protagonist (things get worser-er). And then in 3, 2, 1, Chekhov's [object/wisdom] helps them out of the problem..." Then I went to a friend's grill party during this woe-is-me phase. Basic American outdoor party. Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, soda, beer, etc. Nothing surprising, yet, still enjoyable. Maybe this is more of a philosophical, Buddhist, enlightenment change in perception or just me over analyzing, but... who the fuck cares? No, seriously, who the fuck cares about things being completely different every single damn time? Sure, I like variety in food. Fish, salads, chilis, soups, pierogi, curries, sushi etc. But when you really think about it, there's a level of expectations even when you eat "variety". A level of, "not surprises" I and like 90+% of people out there demand in food. 10-20% surprise is okay, but I have to be in the mood for something completely different. Yes, that looks different to everyone. Everyone has different expectations. But you still expect certain things because you like it. This weird demand that everything is different, every time, is really weird.

Beating to the punch: No, you are not Andrew Zimmern. There's a 99.9% chance you're in denial that you like eating a small subset of food on a regular basis. Nothing wrong with trying and appreciating new, I do it too. But new happens extremely rarely with 99.9% of the population. You don't eat new anywhere as often as you may imagine. My point is, don't pretend you don't enjoy eating the same foods you've enjoyed hundreds of times before.

The same thing goes in stories. There are elements and methods those elements are brought together that I enjoy, just like food. Once I learned to enjoy the things that I actually enjoy in stories, I think my love of books and movies skyrocketed. Doesn't mean I think other genres/subgenres are bad. I just learned, "That's good, but it's not for me and that's okay". I like scifi settings more than fantasy. I used to think I had to like fantasy. Thus, I always chased the "new" to fantasy or I thought it was "derivative". Honestly, if someone ever says a story is derivative, it's code for, "I don't like this genre, setting or general intent of this story. Thus, I'm going to get on my high horse and speak down to this." There's a reason some people can watch all 20+ seasons of Law and Order, but others can't watch more than 1 episode. Or read all cozy mysteries and love them all while others read one and go, "Yea, you read one, you read them all". Which is true. You read 1, maybe 2 different cozy mysteries... they're all the same. But you can also say the same about scifi, fantasy, political thrillers, horror, etc. If you didn't like what it's generally about to begin with, you're probably not going to like it anyways. Other than breakout pieces, this is the truth to story telling. You gravitate to aspects of a story. Settings, character types, plot types, certain themes, etc. Learn what those are and enjoy those. Nothing wrong with hating "popular" or "classics" because they don't speak to you. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Oh well. Find your own pond and build your own cabin. Then enjoy it.

Yea... you're talking about tax code. It literally is the trees and leaves of the issue. What do you want, a Bolshevik revolution? That'll fix things.

What lots of people still aren't realizing, all tax codes apply to everyone. There are no class distinctions. New tax codes apply to the 99% as well. When the whole GameStop/AMC stock ride happened, a lot of people realized "I now have an opinion about capital gains taxes... I don't like them". You have access to all the same loopholes the 1% have access to.

>And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean??

No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.

"Is that the best you can come up with Jerry? What will people think of it in 4,000 years? You sure you want to write it down? What about the thing you did about Babum's small hands? That was funny. People will understand that one in the future."

>I do remember reading a fairly compelling case that the art of fiction-writing has got noticeably better over the last 500 years or so.

I've thought about this a bit since I've been trying to break into fiction writing. The thing I noticed, imagine how incredibly painful it was to edit your first draft back in the day. In comparison, these days we have month long contests (for fun) to write 50,000 word novels. Even though these are typically terrible, there are some that do get published and people enjoy. These stories are edited heavily. Not just grammar or spelling. Scenes are re-written. Added. Removed. Paragraphs moved. Erased. Added. Find/Replace to change a name. Etc. It's barely an inconvenience to do this on the computer. That's not easily the case with handwritten or typewritten pages. You end up re-typing it all out to see the next draft, just to notice how you need to butcher more of it and do it all over again. Page reformatting by itself is a God send.

I think modern writers are able to revise their work more often and easily in far, far less time. Just one example, I type about 3-5 times faster than handwriting. That iteration process builds up more skill, thus, better writers. Old school writers, especially pre-typewriter, probably went, "First draft is the only draft" more often than we think (minus minor corrections of course). I think the typewriter allowed the feasibility of multiple drafts without losing your damn mind, but the word processor makes it almost normal practice for many pro-writers to have 10+ drafts. Some even do full rewrites for their second or even third draft NORMALLY.

At that, the amount of professional stories someone would hear or read was minimal too. Most things were new to people even if you weren't original. These days, everyone has a huge backlog of stories they've read/heard over the years. Probably one year of someone's entertainment consumption was a lifetime over 100 years ago. I read somewhere that the average well-educated person (not scholar) in the 1700-1800s read in a month what average folks today (not even well educated) read/hear in about a day. Another example, if you want to make a comedy show, you have to see if Simpsons, Futurama, South Park or Family Guy already did the same gag because people will go, "You're unoriginal". Even South Park had an episode that Simpsons "already did it", and that was a decade ago. The bar is just super high now because of both storytelling skillsets and expectations from audiences.

Just an observation from an idiot.

Sadly, that joke will not last for 4,000 years :)

Pretty sure they are trying to finger out if there's a chance of mistranslation or an extra layer of pun to it.

>From this perspective, your moral judgments about the insurrection, or about some racist or sexist policy, are viewed as objects of study rather than as candidates for truth or falsity. The scientist is not here engaging with philosophical issues about the potential accuracy of moral claims. The scientist instead approaches your judgments simply as psychological facts about you, causally traceable to various influences—just as with the thoughts and feelings that led to the social injustices you’re responding to.

Am I the only one terrified of this? This type of "study" has been abused very well in the past, phrenology being just one decent parallel. People have believed bad science in the past as "good" science. There's zero reason to imagine we're immune to it in this day. Some asshat out there is going to "prove" something about a demographic and use this as a means to enforce action. Just going to throw it out there, if they already dislike a demographic, they're going to prove how they should get arbitrary punishments or re-education because, "the science says so". It takes one shitty paper to fuck things up for a long time, cough cough anti-vaxxers cough cough. An average population is dumb as hell. It's even worse if they're convinced if something was scientifically proven, even though it wasn't. Take all the bad media reports on random papers released. That chocolate diet one fucking flooded the media even though it was total trash (yes, I know it was a hoax paper to prove the media is a dumpster fire). Just imagine the political party that doesn't like you get's ahold of this narrative. Fuck it, while we're at it, is it then better for your preferred party to wield the weapon first? Does that make it morally right for anyone to wield it or just who you approve of because you're perfect at deciding someone's character?