I’m sure it’s from a combination of many factors, but I don’t seem to be a part of any culture that exists on this planet. Sure, I dwell in some of them – restively – but part of them? No, not by any means.

I play with computers, but I’m not a true geek really – I don’t fit the misogynist, dismissive-of-women mold that is almost demanded in that culture. And I actually like physical activity and don’t obsess over computer games to the exclusion of all else.

I love the outdoors, but don’t really fit into any of the hiking/trail-obsessive communities out there.

Photography is something I greatly enjoy and that I am even good at, but I’m not really into pixel-peeping and obsessing over hardware. And I don’t really see that as a group activity, anyway.

I’d consider myself smart and extremely-well read, but don’t really fit into that class as once most people figure out I have no college degree (nor any desire for one), I am excluded from that group even if I wanted to be part of it – despite having read and understood several undergrad college degrees worth of textbooks (yes, I did and do read the actual textbooks – reading two currently).

I could go on. For a long, long time.

This post came out of a discussion that Rose and I had about how difficult we find it to make friends, as we’re very evidence based and have low tolerance for people full of bad information that is divorced from science (which is most people).

And that we don’t really fit into any recognizable group as easily as other people do.

Not that I think we are paragons of reason, unassailable nonpareils of logic and intellectual ascendance.

No.

But I do know we’re square pegs where there are only round holes.

I’m not criticizing anyone for making a “wrong” decision (as there is no wrong decision in this case), rather merely stating what I think and what I would do. I was mulling over this tweet as I was writing this.

Were I a young, bright, potentially college-bound kid today, I would not under any circumstances go to college if I had to take on any more than about $10,000 in debt. The job prospects are just too uncertain and at least in the US that debt will follow you around (and grow) forever if you don’t manage to land a decent job. That debt is also not able to be discharged in bankruptcy.

Now, going to college at all unless you can pay for it in full or receive a full-ride scholarship is an enormous risk, just as risky as buying a house was at the height of the housing bubble.

Some people will come out ok – but many will lose everything. That’s the nature of risk, and you never really know which side you are going to be on until it all goes up in flames.

So what would I do were I 16 again and didn’t join the army (as I did in real life)? I’d quit high school, immediately get a GED, and get all the technical and related certifications I could find, preferably on the more exotic and/or up-and-coming IT and similar systems out there.

Then I’d have a guaranteed job for at least 10 years, making more than most college grads.

If you really do want to go to college, work for 6-7 years, and save like mad. If you get a decent, hard cert and start a “real” IT job at 21, you should be able to save something like $70,000 by the time you are 26. Then go to college all you like.

John Scalzi thinks the same as I do about Windows 8. It’s for Fisher Price playtime, and not for working. The same of course is true for Unity, Gnome Shell, etc., though I think Windows 8 is by far the worst offender.

I did this because simply put I’ve come to believe the Win 8 start screen, and the whole environment it propagates is just terrible UI for those of us who actually use their computers for work, rather than using them just to play games and get on Facebook. When I’m working I often have several programs open in several windows, and have those windows up where I can see them all, because each window has information relevant to what I’m doing. If I need to access additional programs, I don’t want to have to leave that environment; it messes with work flow.

Reading tech sites and all those who proclaim to love Windows 8, I quickly realized how few so-called geeks actually do any more with their computers than play with them – as no one who actually does any work with a machine could ever really use Windows 8.

Unity I can kind of make useful for work though it slows me down a great deal, but Windows 8 is hopeless. It’s like being back in Windows 1.0 again.

I don’t see how some company can’t not come up with an OS oriented to professionals. These clownish OSes designed for clicking on Facebook and typing “ROTFL” are not acceptable for someone who needs to get actual work done.

I’d read this before years ago, but I just re-realized that in England at least the car RIAA killed automobiles there for a long, long time.

The development of the steam car began in the late 1700s with the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-1800s people had invented practical steam-powered vehicles, but the automobile industry in England was abruptly hamstrung by the “red flag law”. Stage coach owners saw the writing on the wall with the invention of the automobile and took their case to Parliament. In 1831 Parliament passed a law that any automobile had to have a man walking in front of it waving a red flag. At night he had to carry a lantern. This ruined the English market for cars for the next 65 years because they were now too expensive to bother with.

The RIAA/MPAA have wished to do – and have effectively done this – with their copyright schemes and their suppression of free speech on the internet. Since the internet is completely new, it’s hard to accurately assay what we’ve lost, or rather not gained.

For somewhat-understandable reasons, people are spectacularly bad at gauging opportunity cost.

Forget the Placebo Effect: It’s the ‘Care Effect’ That Matters.

This was an idea I had and expressed independently to my partner several months ago. I thought it explained the efficacy of massage, acupuncture, “talk therapy” and other beneficial treatments that had no obvious physiological reason for any efficacy at all.

If you read parts of the King James Bible as poetry, parts of it are quite beautiful.

Unlike most religious people, I have read all of the Christian bible.

I’m really not a fitness snob as I am no longer very fit myself, but when I hear people crowing about running an 11-minute mile or something like that, my brain goes, “What? Surely that’s wrong.”

Back in my day (kids), I routinely ran 6 minute miles and I was considered one of the slower runners in my army unit. I used to run/fast walk a 9-minute mile in 65 pounds of gear. Routinely.

I am glad even very slow runners are doing something to get fit, but my views are certainly skewed by having been in an army unit that is considered elite. (I say “considered elite” as this “elite” thing means you get to do way more crazy, unnecessary bullshit.) An 11-minute mile? What? Did you crawl most of the way? An 11-minute mile was what they expected of us if a leg had just been amputated, pukes!

Yep.

The simple fact is that an Australian entry-level fast food worker makes more than the average American worker. An absolute majority of Americans would increase their income if they moved to Australia and got fast food jobs.

And yet America is supposed to be this paradisiac land of pure awesomeness. As the article also points out, everyone in Australia is covered by health insurance as well.

I grew up in North Florida, near the Georgia border.

When I was a kid – 25 years ago – winters weren’t brutally cold or anything like that, but it always got cold enough to cause all of the plants to go brown and dormant (except evergreens, of course). In other words, I never saw a flower between and including November and February.

I live in Florida once again as an adult, and we sometimes return to the north of the state to visit the beautiful natural sights in the area.

Now, it’s different. I am able to easily find blooming flowers, sometimes in great quantity, throughout the winter. In addition and because of the availability of flowers, we also see butterflies all year long now in North Florida.

When I was a kid the last butterflies were usually gone by October, and didn’t return in number until April. I never, ever saw a butterfly in December there; now I see them commonly.

I realize it’s anecdotal, but I was a keen observer of nature when I was a kid. I spent most of nearly every day  outside, and was never that big into computer games or the like. (I played them when it was too hot or rainy or cold to be outside, but otherwise I was usually outdoors.)

Riding on the school bus, I’d literally count every flower or animal I saw on the way to school – so yep, pretty fucking sure I know what I am talking about here, climate change deniers.

So I don’t think it’s just my misperception.

North Florida is an ecotone, anyway – it’s the last stand of the northern forests as they shade into the more subtropical climate region that is most of Florida. It’s not surprising that such an area has been more noticeably altered by climate change.

But when I can notice such a large change in my lifetime, that’s a sign. A sign that it’s probably going to be worse than even our models predict.

I mostly agree with this list of movies that were damned by unfair ideas about them.

I particularly concur with the thoughts about Jennifer’s Body. That was a clever movie, a fun movie, and one that upended without being too obvious about it various idiotic ideas about gender.

Plus, it’s a rare movie where the women get to do all the fun stuff. Highly recommended.

Hadn’t done an update on this in a while. After three years of changing my diet (I won’t say I’m on a diet, because I’m not and have never been), I am still within five pounds of my goal weight – below, actually. I continue to maintain approximately 27% below my peak body weight.

At one point I had lost too much weight and was too gaunt, but now I am stable and feel incredibly healthy. My knees no longer give me any real issues and my diabetes risk is much lowered.

I realize most people cannot lose and keep off weight, but I can and I have.

The strangest part is that if I increase my physical activity even a little, I start losing weight again really quickly – for instance, when I went to the UK and to a lesser extent Vancouver, I found I had to eat an additional 400-800 calories each day to avoid losing weight and feeling tired.

But it’s gone incredibly well and is probably the best health-related thing I’ve ever done.

Dammit, I am so tired of hearing about Lance Armstrong.

I guarantee you 99% of anyone who won a major cycling race in the past two decades has been doping. More likely 100%.

Armstrong was just targeted as he was so dominant.

I just realized that by the standards that have been promulgated lately by most US feminists, almost every relationship I’ve ever been in has been age-inappropriate – that is, there has been a 5+ year age gap between me and the woman in question.

When I was 19, however, I was brutally and horribly “taken advantage of” by a 25-year-old woman. Huh, funny, how it doesn’t seem to apply when the man is younger. Odd. I really hate hypocrisy, did you notice?

And a 36-year-old teacher told me when I was 18 and still in high school that if she weren’t my teacher, we’d be happenin’, probably all over her desk.

Note: I have never dated a minor as an adult. Note 2: I consider myself a feminist.

Mainly, I hate dogma of all stripes.

There are people my age who I’d never get in a relationship with under any circumstances. And just as likely I am sure there are more than few 18-year-old women out there that I’d be compatible with.

It’s not that age doesn’t matter – it does, to some extent. It’s just that humans are more variable and more interesting than that.

Remember that case that the conservidiots always prattle on about to justify tort reform (that is, eliminating the right of people to sue large corporations), where a woman was burned by coffee served too hot at McDonald’s?

Well, this is what her burns looked like.

I don’t know if she chose to release the photo or not. In this case, I think the public right to know the truth trumps the right to privacy – especially since this case has been used as an attempt to eliminate any right to redress against the abuses of large corporations.

I now even more severely despise everyone who made fun of Stella Liebeck for her burns.

I truly hate conservatives. I do not want to understand their point of view. I do not care about their concerns. I do not want to work with them. I do not care why they see the world the way they do.

If there is a revolution, I will be in the militant wing of it until I am killed or injured enough that I can’t continue to fight. That’s all I am good at it, so that’s what I will do.

Back years ago, when cable modems were new and computers still very insecure, I’d use port scanning tools to find other cable modem users with computers on the same LAN segment as my cable modem.

It was easy, and I didn’t mean any harm. I would just print funny things to people’s printers like, “Your computer is alive and is watching you. Put on some pants, dammit,” and other prankish shenanigans.

I just mention this to point out that what I did then was about a million times more illegal than what Aaron Swartz did. The difference being that I didn’t piss off or embarrass anyone with real power. I just did whatever I thought was funny at the time.

I wouldn’t do this now, but then I thought it to be pretty hilarious.

I could’ve done much worse – it turns out that many people store (or used to) all their credit card numbers on their computers, in plain text. Along with baking information, etc. If I had been truly malicious, I could have also installed keyloggers and all other manner of dirty tricks as well.

But even now as I no longer perpetuate such foolishness, I still use techniques like these (and will use more in the future), to preserve some privacy and security.