This post resonates with me.

Some of it, though, was different for me. I’ve always had absurd amounts of confidence, nearly unflappable no matter what depredations others subjected me to do. This is both bad and good. But when I was young it helped me to survive. No one ever could and never did convince that I wasn’t just as good as they were, try as they might. (And so, so many people did try where I grew up.)

But still, once you’ve been the unlovable nerd whipping boy for a protracted and miserable time, that never really completely goes away no matter your extreme stubbornness or self-confidence.

When we were leaving for a restaurant over the weekend, my partner said to me, “You look really nice.”

Then when we got there, there was a cute librarian-ish woman sitting at a table catercorner to us. I noticed that when I wasn’t looking in her general direction, she kept glancing and then staring at me. (I have just ridiculous peripheral and unusual vision in other ways, so it was easy for me to see her even when she thought I couldn’t. She was being furtive and not at all rude, but just not furtive enough for me.)

The old much-hated (by others) nerd inside of me wondered at first if i looked particularly funny that day, or I had a booger hanging out of my nose or something. Then I realized that she wasn’t looking at me that way. She was looking at me the way people look at you when they like what they see.

Still — still — even after all these years, I was half-convinced at first that she was making fun of me or otherwise trying to taunt me. The old nerd talking. I shut that fucker up right quick.

Before I left, I looked over at her when she was in “stare mode” and gave her a smile and cocked an eyebrow, and she turned a shade of red usually reserved for barns and firetrucks.

Yeah.

Go away, old nerd. Go back to middle school where you belong.

How much of a pay cut would you take to have a private office rather than having to work in an open floor plan?

Hmm, I actually do like my teammates so it’s not as important as it would be at other places I’ve been — but I’d still get vastly more done with my own office and thus be able to work less, effectively.

I’d say I’d take a 20K per annum pay cut to have my own office.

You?

People are really surprised about this?

Of course many white Sanders fans are going to vote for Trump if Sanders isn’t nominated and Trump is.

I’m bad at political analysis, but anyone who didn’t realize this is missing so much that should be utterly obvious. Trump and Sanders have positioned themselves and many see them as voices for the voiceless; they are both candidates that have cross-aisle appeal for this very reason.

And this reason is why Hillary Clinton stands zero chance in the general ceteris paribus if Trump is the nominee since many Bernie supporters — say 15 to 20% — will then swing to Trump.

I think Clinton’s chances of being nominated are nearly 100%, but her chance of defeating Trump if the Repubs don’t find some way to knock him off his perch are 10%. (She’d beat Rubio or Cruz easily, though — and the Repubs would rather lose the election than to allow Trump to gain that power.)

You might have been wondering why you’ve seen so many articles lately about how the $100 bill should be eliminated because it aids terrorists, and also propaganda concerning the magisterial wonders of a cashless society.

There are two reasons for this. One is that cash transactions are one of the last bastions of anonymity and privacy. That alone is enough for corporations and the government to want to trash cash.

But that’s not the main reason. The main reason is of course an even more corporate-focused one and that is compulsion of spending through negative interest rates. If there is still cash then negative interest rates don’t work — anyone with half a brain will just pull all their money out of the bank and avoid that.

But if there is no cash that becomes impossible.

So for the financial industry and corporations in general banning cash will have two benefits: forced negative interest rates on bank balances compelling spending because on balance it is better to buy something now than have less money later.

Second and just as importantly, investments such as stocks, 401ks, IRAs and similar will be immune to these negative interest rates so investment funds and other legal scam purveyors will enjoy trillions of dollars of ill-gotten largesse from negative interest rates combined with possession of cash being made illegal.

So you can see why this is being pushed so hard, and will eventually occur. It’s going to make people like Jamie Dimon billions.

And it is inevitable, even in the US.

A recommendation I made at work — and which others fought vehemently against for ideological reasons — increased performance on an extremely important, critical system by 600% in one part and 900% in another. And also took it I might add from non-functional to working perfectly.

There were no additional costs and resources are better used.

900% and 600% better. Ta-dow, how do you like me now?

Many of the problems that modern humans experience — especially in the richer Western world — are because we are supremely maladapted to our own civilization.

Our autonomic nervous system interprets many issues as life or death that are merely inconveniences. This acute stress response to small slights was once very adaptive indeed as exile from the group meant a near-certain death, but now means not much at all.

This is one of the many reasons I support genetic modification of humans, despite all the risks.

It’s strange that people can complain about the supposed excessive violence in Game of Thrones while in the actual world that we live in, Aleppo exists (sort of, these days).

I don’t understand. But I guess when your life is excessively privileged, there are no consequences for believing all sorts of exceedingly ridiculous bullshit.

The violence in GoT is quite tame compared to many actual wars and events happening right this very second, and not on a TV screen….

One thing that bothers me about the social justice warriors is that almost none of them can recognize when a work is a critique or an endorsement.

Happens over and over again. I think this is deliberate. It’s sort of the Orwellian belief that completely eliminating a syntactic and thematic structure of something can eliminate thoughts about it altogether — and perhaps the reality itself.

But of course the universe doesn’t work this way. It’s a very childish sort of worldview. Part of it is that a lot of the self-styled SJWs are indeed very young, but much of it is just extreme aversion to confronting human nature and tendencies as they truly are, rather than as these people wish them to be.

As successful ideologies go, that won’t even roll down the runway much less ever soar into the air.

Dogs are parasites.

Cats are, too. But at least they are angry about it.

Lots of people talk big on the internet. I’m not one of those people. But everyone likes proof, right? Here’s my latest trade. I haven’t lost any money — even one cent — on any trade in over five years.

Name of the stock is unobfuscated because I have no plans to trade that stock again. I don’t care what it does in the future. But ya’ll don’t need to know how much is in my billfold (honestly, I don’t trade any money I can’t afford to lose) but rather that I am actually doing what I claim to be doing.

Held that stock for about two hours.

And no, I don’t offer advice because that doesn’t help me do what I do. Anyone selling or giving away stock tips probably is not the real deal, remember.

So here’s my tip: don’t try to do what I do, because you probably can’t.

If you’ve never seen the forgotten 90s movie Playing by Heart, you should really give it a watch.

It’s not perfect by any means, but Angelina Jolie as Joan is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Seriously. Just a funny and rooted portrayal of a great character. It’s a rare thing when an actress can take a character who is actively annoying and frustrating in a whole variety of ways and not only make you like her but love her in so little screen time. That is true skill.

And before all the usual bullshit complaints come up (well, they probably won’t about a forgotten movie on a mostly-unread blog, but still) about her being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl whatever, the entire tale is told from her viewpoint and examined from her perspective about what she wants.

Just because a character is a weirdo and female doesn’t make her a MPDG. There are a lot of weirdos in the real, actual world. And many of them are in fact female.

Or haven’t you noticed?

This is the cheapest price on this desk I’ve ever seen. It’s the one I have. I paid a good bit more for it.

It’s a bit of a hassle to assemble, but it’s very solid, has a decent amount of storage and is large without being overbearing.

Just happened to be clearing out some old bookmarks and noticed the price was very low now.

Recommended if you need an L desk.

Assuming the economy stays about like it is now, if Trump is the nominee and Clinton is it for the Dems, Trump wins.

If Sanders is the nominee and Trump for the Repubs, Sanders wins.

Reason is that the populist messages of both Trump and Sanders appeal across the aisle (and most people aren’t invested in identity politics and/or are quite racist themselves), but Clinton is highly detested by many voters due to both sexism and because she’s a neoliberal war-monger.

However, if it’s Clinton vs. Rubio or Cruz, Clinton wins.

But I stuck at politics, so take with a grain of salt….

Strange world that I can make money by hitting the right buttons while sitting at my desk.

For the amount of research I put in, made north of $3,000 an hour recently. Just like that. I hit two buttons. But I knew which buttons to hit and when.

Stock market games. I wish a world didn’t exist where I could even be good at something like that.

Not going to tell you what I was trading because I plan to do it again. That’s how you make money: find your own tricks and don’t tell anyone till you’re done playing them.

But damn. This world doesn’t even make sense no matter how at home I feel on the playground.