I had a dream that someone shaved off my beard and mustache against my will and then I called him a “smooth-philtrum pistachio brain.”
That’s a new one.
Month: November 2022
Monomania
When a polyamorous relationship blows up, we tend to say it was the fault of polyamory; when a monogamous relationship blows up, we tend to say it was the fault of anything else *but* the monogamy – even though in many cases it was *directly caused by the structure of monogamy*!
— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 21, 2022
I’ve noticed that too. It’s extremely strange. This is something Aella is totally right about.
Part Tech
A lot of culture war stuff over fake meat, transgenderism, and future tech presents as a clash between traditional forms of living vs. technological transhumanism. But I think the real debate is over the steepness of our societal adoption curve given only partially working tech.
— shako (@cauchyfriend) November 25, 2022
That’s a thought I’ve been having too. A lot of all that is just forms of cosplay and pretending. The truth is that biology is real and that we just do not have the tech yet to make fake meat, to truly transform a woman into a man or vice versa, nor to understand how to use CRISPR.
Our ambitions are far ahead of our capabilities. If that becomes untrue, a whole lot (but not all) of the so-called culture war will simply fade away.
Dune Tune
I think something I really like in movies is when they take on the mantle of storyteller explicitly and deliberately.
"A beginning is a very delicate time." pic.twitter.com/gEk4D3FIMx
— Misha – Visiting the bay area Nov 19 – Jan 3 (@drethelin) November 25, 2022
Me too. I love the Dune (1984) opening.
Soc Anx
Heh. There also needs to be one for the “We just like taking away nice things” folks, because that’s also a large part of wanting “Covid” restrictions to last forever.
Live More Than a Little
I’ve been accused in the past of never having fun, of never being able to loosen up. And there is something to that. I’m always watchful. Always have my eyes a dozen places. Grow up like I did and you would be the same too.
However, the “completely safe” crowd seems far worse to me. Because of course there is nothing that is ever completely safe. It just does not — cannot — exist. I have a little sympathy for how this developed and worsened during the pandemic but those who are devotees of the weird safety cult really need to let it go.
Though I might be alert for zombie attacks and vigilant about space lasers frying our faces off, I still have a lot of fun in life and do what I want to do. Always have, always will. “Completely safe” means you just never do anything.
Slip In
Dubuque? We Don’t Fly There Anymore. Airlines Say Goodbye to Regional Airports.
We need regulation and to stop this.
The country can’t just be six large cities no one can afford and vast wastelands between those six.
Nature
The first ten on today’s playlist:
Do Hast Mich
Windows search is fundamentally and apparently irrevocably broken. It used to be dysfunctional due to pure incompetence but now that’s combined with the imperative to foist advertising on everyone all the time — which just destroys everything.
It’s not just about profit, though. It’s about power. And it’s about control. The enormous, overarching, and unstoppable project being undertaken now by the powerful is to get the information genie back in the lamp. Breaking search and making your own data difficult to find is one way this is being done. There are many others but this is an important front in that war.
There’s also this:
Yeah, both old people and young people have no goddamn idea how to use a computer. There was an intern at a prior job who did not know how to turn on a laptop, use a mouse, or type on a keyboard. All she’d ever used were smartphones and tablets. This hobbling of capabilities and shifting around of interfaces constantly is not at all accidental. The powerful hate general purpose computers and it’s been a project since the late 1980s (which the internet put a crimp in) to make them less capable and useful. We’re seeing the end results of that now.
Woper
when people say stuff like this I get really confused
Is there anyone actually in the position of making a "decision" on a life partner from the field of options?
It's not like choosing which college to go to or which major, it's almost always just happenstance https://t.co/cWf7wOCb8Q
— Misha – Visiting the bay area Nov 19 – Jan 3 (@drethelin) November 23, 2022
This is the PMC ideal that nearly dominates all thought now about relationships. They believe that any human connection is always and only about power.
Was There
Great to see stories on air conditioning that highlight that 1. It’s a lifesaving necessity, not a luxury and 2. We need to distribute using it vastly more fairly than we do.
— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) November 23, 2022
Yeah, it’s nice that Northern libs have finally shut the fuck up about “No one NEEDS air conditioning. It’s just a luxury.” That was a long time coming but hardly hear that anymore. As recently as 3-4 years ago, that bogus contention was everywhere.
Trash Tech
Why did everyone hate bluetooth headphones in the late 2000s but now earpods are all the rage?
Don’t know. Bluetooth headphones still sound like fucking garbage and their latency is absurdly bad. Just trash technology.
Hey Jude – Cover by Emily Linge
Not an easy song to sing. Most people don’t even try the high parts.