Never did see this live performance. That’s a really hard song. Damn impressive.

I get recruiters contacting me constantly. I usually ignore and/or block them but one sends jobs that are actually applicable mostly, so I let his emails through and even look at them sometimes. But today, unlike most of the time, I did respond with this:

I am not in the area any longer, but thanks for the offer. I also don’t accept any roles that are not fully remote. My skillset is too valuable to compromise on that and companies that don’t offer remote work especially in the tech space are only going to get mediocre people in the future.

It probably won’t help push back against the RTO nonsense promulgated by MBAs, but it’s something. I have not yet gotten a reply from the recruiter.

What I said was not inaccurate about my skillset, but I wanted to put it deliberately arrogantly so that it’d sting a little and he’d think about it more and perhaps mention it to someone. I am good at that kinda shit; I’ve studied propaganda and related for a long time now.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I have so many tabs open in Safari it keeps whacking out and needs smacking about. Don’t even talk to me about Firefox. They don’t even make numbers that high.

Why do I live this way?

When Americans Lose Weight on Indulgent European Vacations, What Gives?

Two reasons, both obvious:

1) You tend to walk more in Europe. Anywhere in the West outside the US is much friendlier to pedestrians and walking is often the easier and more pleasant option.

2) Food in Europe is much higher quality and usually not as processed so you need far less of it to feel satiated.

The US has the worst food in the world outside of Mongolia and we seem to not even care. We resolutely follow the “cheap slop piled high” model even in the face of clearly-superior alternatives.

Experts say don’t rinse your dishes. We put that advice to the test.

Perhaps we’ve just had shitty dishwashers over the years, but if we don’t rinse the dishes beforehand most of them will be dirty after the dishwasher does its thing.

It probably matters that there are only two of us and we don’t run the dishwasher often — on average, once a week. That’s a lot of time for food to get really encrusted on things. If it’s a larger family situation where the dishwasher gets run once a day it’ll probably do an ok job. Also, we do rentals which (as nodded to above) tend to have substandard and/or abused dishwashers.

Given the average family size these days the “don’t pre-rinse” advice, though, is probably wrong for a lot of people.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I really wish feminism had ended up better than it has. Despite its achievements, in the past decade and more it has failed to focus on what it should such as preventing the loss of abortion and contraceptive access for all women. Meanwhile, the movement has become inundated with weird prudish neo-puritans who both infantilize women (tee-hee) and demonize men primarily via pointless social media posturing.

This focus on the exact wrong things destroyed any chance of keeping Roe as well as making many men (like me) who in the past have been extremely supportive of feminism pull back from it. No, I am not becoming an incel or a manosphere member, but I’m also not a sex-crazed demon and I don’t think any woman under 45 is or should be treated like a fragile baby.

Whatever that is, that ain’t for me and I won’t have anything to do with it.

You know all was lost when a “real woman” became defined as someone who could not successfully cross a parking lot without experiencing cardiac arrest, while the definition of a “real man” for that “real woman” was still a six-pack-bearing millionaire more than six feet tall.

That tells you who is controlling the cultural conversation right there.

It’s just bizarre to me when people claim they can’t do anything to change their fitness and health situation. Especially in the US, many if not most health problems are self-inflicted: a combination of no exercise and a poor diet.

I don’t even look like the same person I did five years ago. I’m nearly three times as strong as I was since then, too. I’m not some superhero. I have bad genes and I am lazy (though stubborn). If I can do what I did, so many more people could. Or if not exactly what I did, at least not be a diabetes-ridden lard pile claiming that they have no choice but to be that way.

Not everything is a matter of personal responsibility. But a lot is. Even if you are currently some pebble just bouncing down the river of your life, you don’t have to stay that way. Be less pebble and more dam.

The first ten on today’s playlist: