Annoying

Bounds

Chill Annoying

Nope. Bad stats.

With zero events in a sample size of only 34 for firing squad, the 95% exact upper bound for the true botch rate is like 10%. If even one firing squad execution had been botched, the rate would jump to 2.9%, for two it’d 5.9% and three duds would bump it all the way up to 8.8%. There just ain’t enough data there to conclude it’s a “best method.”

Fail, fail, fail.

Fraud and Lies

Chill Annoying, Rant

A group of scientists set out to study quick learners. Then they discovered they don’t exist.

Ah, bullshit.

This is another variation of the “everyone is exactly the same” go-to leftist argument. It’s fraudulent. It’s a convenient lie. My sister had zero head start on me in music (in fact, I started learning before she did). With less practice and time invested, she was better at everything to do with music than I was in three months; I’d been playing for two years at that point.

In my direct experience, I can generally learn a concept or idea in a few minutes that takes others days, weeks, years or never to learn. Even if I’ve had no exposure to it and know nothing about it in advance.

They may have already had exposure to fractions by making pancakes at home using measuring cups.

LOL. What a bunch of dipshittiness.

This is how the researchers massaged their data and the study design itself to get the result they wanted: One problem is that they define and model “learning rate” in a very specific, narrow way and apply it to a very specific kind of data, which they knew would show what they wanted it to demonstrate. And calling 2.6 vs 1.7 pp per attempt “the same” is absolute nonsense. On a log-odds scale the difference is about 2x, which is certainly non-trivial even if it’s small relative to intercept gaps.

That barely gets into all the problems with how that study was conducted. It reveals nearly nothing except exactly what they wanted us to believe (which is, of course, wrong).

Lord, what a load of fucking crap.

Get Behind

Chill Annoying, Tech

When you see any scam information on Reddit or even in the press, realize that anything said is usually 2-10 years behind where the technology actually is. So if you see someone claiming, “Real-time video deepfakes aren’t possible.”

That was true…in 2021. But it’s been possible since about then, and is getting easier all the time.

If you see someone assert that, “Voice cloning from a small sample can’t be done.” That was true…in 2018. About 2019, it became possible. In 2020 or so, it became trivial with some effort. Now you can do it by clicky-clicky on any of a dozen websites.

Tech is moving faster than people realize and can contextualize. Reddit seems particularly bad at being way, way behind the times. But I see it all over everywhere else too.

Dragged

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Evil

Great goddamn, I am so glad I am not dating now. Women have made it too dangerous to attempt to date them — in a different way than men have always posed some threat to women, but certainly not any better.

Many women seem to have the view that if someone their “inferior” asks them out, he must be destroyed. Evil stuff.

Prop Op

Chill Annoying

And there’s a couple dozen more Russian ones of these around the world, and probably hundreds of Chinese ops like this.

Limitations

Chill Annoying

Most of the time when someone is telling you that you can’t do something and shouldn’t even try, what they are really saying, “I couldn’t do that.” It’s not actually about you. It’s about them.

Don’t let other people’s limitations be yours. If I’d listened to all the people people who told me the things I could not or should not do, I’d be dead or in a jail cell in North Florida right now.

Never Hap

Chill Annoying

Never happen. Frankly, no one cares if men have a good time or not. Ever. Anything like this where men have a good time is seen as disgusting and unnatural, even if it’s something as simple as, “Men should not have to do all the work all the time.”

Missing the Point

Chill Annoying, Clowns

Whoa, this is moronic. Why people don’t use mass transit isn’t about crime, most of which isn’t reported anyway 1.

What causes people to avoid hopping on the bus or train is that they’ll nearly always have bug-eyed crazy demented people on there harassing and hassling anyone in sight. It’s worse for women, but nearly every time I’ve been on public transit in the US one of these sleazeballs is present too. It makes it extremely unpleasant. I don’t have any of that in my car, so my car it’ll be.

How you can just, like a fucking idiot clown, pretend this is not a factor, I have not a clue. But it tells me you’re being intellectually dishonest and disingenuous.

  1. Meaning the actual numbers are vastly higher than the stats portray; only about 20% of crimes are reported.

Draining

Chill Annoying

Maybe we should’ve immigrated, but where would we have gone?

Any country that would accept us also really sucks and is also in decline. Sad times.

The UK is cooked. Germany has shot themselves in the face. Spain has an economy like a flaming dumpster. Australia is killing itself with too much immigration and their housing market is stygian. The same goes for Canada. Maybe New Zealand?

I mean, it’s always the case that nowhere is free of problems. But most countries seem to be circling the drain by self-caused and completely-preventable induced crises.

Tuna

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Tech

That is in-fucking-sane.

The left really is fully in degrowth anti-tech mode. AI is a tool like any other. It has its uses. For instance, I put it to work it to create an infrastructure usage estimation and comparison spreadsheet with tunable parameters in about an hour. I could’ve done it all myself, but it would’ve taken me 5-6 hours (it’s a quite complex spreadsheet). But I could do this because:

1) I am extremely familiar with all the infrastructure involved so I’d notice any hallucinations.
2) I’ve done infrastructure capacity planning for twenty years.
3) And I’m already very competent with Excel.

It wouldn’t have saved me nearly as much time if those three items weren’t true and also probably would’ve produced something inaccurate without my manually fixing what it got wrong. But the key is: it did save me tons of time.

Inflations

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Political Economy

It’s not that there are no competent people overseas in the countries that typically receive offshored jobs. Of course there are. In fact, many of the best end up here as immigrants in the US.

But the competence level is certainly vastly different. In my experience the average Indian in India is about 1/4 to 1/8 as competent as the average American. At least in tech, though I’ve heard it’s similar in other fields. The average Filipino is maybe half as competent. And the average LATAM hire is maybe 60% as competent as an American.

That’s not great! Part of it is worse education, tons of credential inflation and concomitant lack of experience. Screening is also not nearly as competent or thorough when done overseas. That all leads to offshore teams fucking things up left and right while the few remaining onshore people spend long, long hours fixing it all. All to usually not even save money in the end.

But sure, tell me again how efficient business is.

Soul Removal

Chill Annoying, Rant

It’s creepy, all the women with “Instagram face.” They’ve all gotten the same work done on their faces by the same plastic surgeons using the same techniques. And as a result, they all look like Stepford Wives clones. I’m sure men will get the blame for this as women aren’t usually forced to take accountability but trust me, ladies, men do not want this, do not like it, and wish you would not inflict it on yourselves.

The reason I was thinking about this is I saw a photo of Phoebe Cates from the 1980s. This photo, specifically.

She’s very beautiful but even better what makes her face distinctive hasn’t been sanded off, polished, redacted for plasticine pseudo-perfection. In other words, she still looks ensouled. She looks like a real person. And that’s so much more appealing than the power-sanded version of Phoebe would be. Why is this not obvious?