And this, kids, is why we pirate everything:

Shower thought: the reason management and executives dislike remote work.

This is indeed an extremely large component of the RTO push: it’s both those who relish brandishing visible power and extroverts attempting to poorly fulfill their social needs with fake work friends who’d throw them under the bus in a fucking instant.

And I want no part of any of that.

When I lived in North Florida, I felt like an uninvited and unwelcome guest in my own life. But now with my partner I feel like we’re superstars in each other’s favorite movies.

What a difference. What a freakin’ difference.

Laid off after 10 years and just feeling sad.

This is a company getting rid of its highest-paid staff. This will probably happen to me one day I’m guessing, since I still am in very technical roles while also managing people — so I am sometimes paid more than my own managers (which makes some of them angry, but none of them can do the things I do).

This is merely typical MBA thinking in action.

It’s a real tragedy that the vast majority of men are taught early on that expressing any interest of any kind in a woman is harassment and is hurtful to the woman in question. This creates really fucked-up dynamics later on. I know feminists claim this does not occur, but it very much does; even apart from my pariah status as a kid I was taught that any expressed interest in a woman was harming her. So were all my friends. And I’ve talked to many, many other men who got the very same message.

I’m not here to blame feminism or anything in particular. There are multiple causes. But it is what happens. And it shouldn’t.

However, mobile apps designed for leisurely entertainment translate badly into complex desktop applications built for power user productivity.

All of this is true:

Using software professionally isn’t about having a chic, boutique experience – it’s about getting the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sometimes, that means working with irreducible complexity.

…

I could swiftly accomplish basic tasks in programs on the various platforms, including management of the programs themselves, such as determining which window was focused, what was a button and not, how to find advanced features, how to learn keyboard shortcuts, etc. Fundamental functions had fixed homes (Save and Open under File, for example) and the way to access them was sufficiently similar. This was efficient (learn one concept, apply it everywhere), easy to use (observe one system/program, operate all of them) and thus satisfying: my skills are transferable!

The core problem is that computers used to be aimed at those experienced with them, and those unafraid of having to learn something and capable of doing so — and usually those with quite high IQs.

Now, computers are aimed at mouth-breathers with the IQ of a turnip who cannot find dog food in a Purina plant. Also, computers and applications have been contaminated by mobile conventions and the useless and harmful paradigms that the mobile restrictions promote, leading to the insanity of (for instance) having no focus indications on windows any longer because mobile does not have that. There are no words for how absurdly stupid that is, and how harmful to usability.

Every current UI designer and their associated MBA overlords should be flung into the sun. The mouth-breathers too, but I think they’d make the sun too dumb to shine. Just Toro chipper-shredder for them, I guess.

I want real usable computers and programs back again. I think what I (and the author of the linked post) object to the most is something that many are too reticent or too afraid of consequences to say, but I’m not. And it’s this: I am not a dumbass, and should not be forced to do the things that dumbasses have to do.

I’m really fucking angry that nearly everything is moving away from having a 3.5mm headphone jack now. It’s vastly superior to Bluetooth or anything with USB. Bluetooth for audio bites ass so hard and sounds like a Croatian outhouse. USB is also not made for audio and works like total garbage.

You can’t even get a modern fucking docking station with a headphone jack now. Fuck anyone who had anything to do with that. Makes my life minorly but very noticeably worse.

Making everyone at the symphony enraged by calling the flute player the “fluter tooter.”

Are we Screwed? Scam Horror Story.

I feel bad for these people…but how in the fuck do people fall for this? I guess I am just hypervigilant but if wire instructions change (hint: they never never ever should), I ain’t doing shit.

Because I have no problem telling people no, it’s hard to get me to do anything stupid like this.

Same make, model, and color, 30 years apart below. You can see the rise of the American psychosis in a single image.

Mental illness is never pretty. What’s weird about those ginormous death trucks is they aren’t even useful; their too-small beds are too high to load, their bumpers too tall for a trailer hitch. Of course it’s not about that — their intent is to dominate and to intimidate other people. That is their entire raison d’être. Anyone who buys one of those should be committed for mental illness for at least a few years and never be allowed to drive a motor vehicle again.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

We have the technology of gods. We can see things vastly smaller than a speck of dust. We can gaze deep into the past. In an instant, we can talk with a friend across the world or control a drone over Syria from Arizona. And kill people with it. We can change our DNA and launch a rocket to Mars. We know why stars shine and how the universe began.

But we still have monkey brains and act more like a chattering mob of mandrills rather than the gods we pretend to be.

Now we must become the gods we pretend to be.