Sometimes, people think I have social anxiety. The reality is that I just do not like dealing with people. Two very different things. I have no idea what anxiety feels like and don’t think I can even feel it.

But dealing with people most of the time is terrible and disappointing. So there’s that.

I hope I don’t have to explain to anyone how ethically bankrupt it is to want Russia to overrun Ukraine and commit genocide on the Ukrainian people just because this outcome marginally harms the US. This is fiendish and morally repellent. If the Ian Welsh types really believe this, they truly should go sign up to fight for the Motherland.

People like Ian Welsh (and Ian Welsh in specific) are just the worst. They’d be lined up to volunteer others for the death camps. Just abhorrent humans. I can’t believe I was fooled by that clown for so long. No more, at least.

What’s the jankiest hack you’ve had to pull to save the day?

I don’t recall all the details any longer partially because what I did was fantastically difficult and it occurred more than a decade ago, but on a stack of Cisco switches in a remote data center, I had to figure out which port did a certain very specific thing with very little information on it. And I had to figure this out by process of elimination of all the other ports on the switch as this port was not connected correctly. All of that so that a “smart hands” person could move a cable around for us so that the phone system for a high-volume call center would work. I also had to configure the port and routing correctly with no ability to test it in advance.

The data center was in New Jersey. I was in Florida. If this had failed, the entire phone system for a call center would’ve been down and I would’ve been on the next flight to NJ.

My colleagues as I was doing this told me it was impossible and would never work. But when the “smart hands” data center person put the cables where I told him, the phone system worked perfectly and all was fixed.

Was treated like some dark wizard for the next year after I did that.

The war for Sydney Sweeney’s breasts.

This is a good essay. I’m not going to quote the entire passage, but it is correct in that what appeals to many about Sydney is that she seems like a normal girl from 30 years ago, before Fat Acceptance and before every woman looked like a perfect airbrushed AI-optimized robot (which is hugely unappealing to many).

The mall was full of girls like Sydney in 1994. Now they all weigh 400 pounds and insist that they are healthy while wheezing like a broken bellows if they have to walk more than 50 feet.

Our culture is busted.

What the fuck is the deal with all these low paying jobs again?

Many jobs I see pay the same in 2024 as they did when I got out of the army in 1999. And by “the same,” I mean they paid $12 an hour then and pay $12 an hour now. It’s insane. That’s how you know many of the government figures and claims about all of this are complete lies.

No matter what you’ve read, the #MeToo movement failed and in its failure ended up harming both women and men as a result of its colossal implosion. When it became all about women getting revenge for petty grievances and for not being the mostest specialest in some guy’s eyes — well, it was totally done at that point.

Unsurprisingly, as #MeToo became this ill-formed cudgel to wield against men who had disappointed women in the dating market, and as yet another tool to beat down undesirable men, this caused an understandable political backlash in any men paying attention. Men’s and women’s politics diverged. Men were (in my view, correctly) resentful that not only were they automatically viewed as oppressors and seen as responsible for all women’s problems, but they were also said to be irredeemable by nature of their genitalia alone. Possessed of original sin and with no valid path, many men chose to reject all of feminism. As I noted in the first paragraph, this was a net loss for women.

There is no better way to poison a group against you than to insist they are innately terrible but should still cater to your every whim in the workplace, in romance, and in the family environment. It used to be, men were the greater hypocrites societally speaking. Now thanks to the abomination that modern feminism has become that role is very much occupied by women.

#MeToo could’ve done something good and useful. Instead, it ended up sowing hatred, mistrust and misunderstanding. We really were doing this shit a whole lot better during the 90s.