It’s sad to me when people side with companies who claim they are taking away features and reducing functionality for “security” and “for your own good.” People really buy into that, because they have been propagandized so very much to believe it. I saw it with Firefox, with many Linux distros and of course with Windows. And it continues.

This comment said it best though:

As with Firefox removing all customization, this has absolutely nothing to do with security. That’s just a lie to bamboozle witless rubes who in fact readily fall for it. What this is about in all cases is control. If they can serve you up and force you to use a minimally-featured, maximally-surveilled canned crapplication that you cannot alter or inspect, then they can hoover up all your data and other info with no recourse.

That’s what’s happening. Ain’t a fucking bit of it for “security” or “for your own good.” Believe that and beclown yourself. Which I know most of you will, given the evidence.

What is the quickest way you’ve seen a friend fuck up his life?

Meth meth methity meth.

Was not a close friend, but he went from owning a house, a decent car, having a girlfriend to no car, no house, no girlfriend and mostly roaming the streets and getting arrested a lot. Then he was killed in a burglary gone bad. He thought it was an empty house. It was not. And this is North Florida where everyone — even the kids — have guns.

Happened over the course of 6-8 months. Don’t do meth, people. It is not worth it at all.

Such weird long dreams last night. I didn’t sleep well but my dreams seemed realtime. I was killin’ bullies, readin’ books, doing all sorts of drawn-out stuff.

Need more sleep, though.

This is a large part of what Obama & company was up to and made sure occurred during and immediately following the Great Recession.

Wall Street firms entered the single-family rental market after the 2008 housing crisis by purchasing foreclosed homes. Since then, their influence has continued to increase and the number of corporate landlords today is significant across the entire U.S. housing system: single-family and multifamily housing, manufactured housing such as mobile homes, subsidized affordable housing and student housing.

Many entities, such as hedge funds, were able to leverage their financial resources to purchase foreclosed homes wholesale.

This was intentional. It was Obama’s giveaway after these companies (and the banks backing them) had been financially decimated through their own idiocy. It was the quid pro quo that allowed Obama to become stupendously rich after leaving office. What a weasel.

And to people who say, “Oh, they only own 3% of the housing market. It’s not a big deal.” They (as most people do not) don’t understand how pricing in the housing market works. Even many people who should comprehend this and who work in the field have no real clue. Particularly and very strongly in the housing market, pricing works on the margins. What a house sold for 10 years ago is irrelevant. What a house sold for even one year ago is irrelevant. What a house like your house sold down the street from that aforementioned house in the recent past is all that fucking matters.

Why people cannot understand this I don’t have the faintest damn idea. Anyway, that means when a hedge fund or vulture capital group buys 4-5 houses (3% or less of the stock) in every neighborhood, it raises the comps. When the comps go up, all the housing in that neighborhood instantly become more valuable. This means the hedge fund vampires and vultures can then raise rent prices. Which they do. It doesn’t take much of this to raise prices in many areas 20-30% more than what they would be without hedge fund parasitism.

And if you think they don’t algorithmically game this out to make the best possible and most fortuitous buys (for them) to cause the prices to rise the most — well, you’re a full-on goddamn idiot. Because they do. Because that’s what I’d do if I were fully evil. And it’s not even hard if you have the green to do it.

A lot of this stuff is truly at about eighth-grade level of understanding the world so I am surprised that more people don’t see it. You can lead a clown to the facts, but you can’t make them think.

How I migrated my music from Spotify.

Spotify is evil and so is the whole copyright cartel; I recommend everyone do this, or something like it. Anything that takes so much control from you is not a thing you should want or have in your life.

After you read your first 10,000 books or so, you really get a lot better at handling things conceptually and not getting bogged down on the irrelevant.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I have no visualization capability at all, but I am good at networking.

Not sure if this helps anyone but when I think about networking, I think about how packets have “tickets” and the network operates like a railway — if a packet or network flow doesn’t have the right ticket, it can’t go somewhere. And, inversely of course, if it does have the correct ticket it can get somewhere. Points where routing occurs are like railway stations or (appropriately enough) switchyards. What ticket you have determines where you go.

This method might not work for everyone, but it does for me. I am very non-visual so I simply cannot think about it any of this in visual terms as many people do. It’s not just hard; it is impossible for me.

Chinese exchange student found ‘very cold and scared’ in a tent in Utah mountains in ‘cyber kidnapping’, police say.

Self-kidnapping? That’s a new one.

What a damn world.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I did 35 dips for 3 sets (for a total of 105) today on the dip bars — a new record.

Still getting stronger.

Sorry for the gif, but yep, yep:

The defining feature of being a man is the world being incredibly, often hatefully, indifferent to you. 99.9% of women have no idea what that is like so their complaints of too much attention (though valid!) ring pretty hollow in most men’s ears.

I wish there were a better balance, but there ain’t. Probably never will be. But there sure is not now.