Clowns

Walk

Chill Clowns, War

I’ve watched dozens of videos of Russian BMPs in active combat and most of them never even fire their main gun. Know why? Because they have no ammo. Sure, Russia might “win” on sheer numbers, but only after losing a million or more people.

So much for that three-day limited Special Military Operation that Ian Welsh and Putin (blood brothers) insisted would be a cakewalk. That anyone listens to that clown anymore is sad and inexplicable.

Which exact clown am I talking about in that last sentence? Does it matter?

RTO Scam

Chill Clowns

Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week.

This is just a stealth layoff. They do not give a fuck about actual RTO. This is targeted to make expensive people (top performers, most able to find another job) and women, the disabled, etc. quit. At least that is who will be most impacted by it.

It also hollows out the best people from the org, as mentioned, which will have consequences later. Has zero — absolutely zero — to do with productivity or any other excuse. This is just a method of conducting a layoff without the bad headlines (so they can blame the workers) and so they do not have to pay severance by forcing resignations.

OER

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Rant

Owner’s Equivalent Rent for measuring housing inflation is the clowniest, most useless way of computing that in the universe. Owners mostly have no goddamn idea how much it’d cost to rent their own place. I bet if you asked (and the gummint does) the owner and compared that to the actual rent they could get those owners would be off by 40%+.

Maybe the various levels and layers of wrongness balance out. But I doubt it. And even if so, why should we depend on that? Just a terrible, terrible metric.

Mars Bars

Chill Clowns

Why Not Mars.

This is still one of the most dumbass posts in the history of dumbassery. I just want to highlight it here as all that is wrong with current thinking about the why and how of doing difficult things. And that it’s absolute knobs like this clown who were saying 10 or 15 years ago that solar power was “impossible” and would never pencil out, etc.

If you listen to doofusy disphits like this dingbat you would never do anything.

Consp

Chill Clowns, Tech

Facebook partner admits to eavesdropping on conversations via phone mics for ad targeting.

Remember when we were absolutely assured this was not happening, and were told we were conspiracy theorists if we claimed it was occurring? Well, about that….

Of fucking course this eavesdropping was happening. I saw direct evidence of it myself several times as a friend would talk about something and then her phone showed ads for it not long after.

The Network

Chill Clowns, Tech

Preach it, brother! Seriously, a lot of my IT knowledge does come from spending vast, vast amounts of time proving it’s not the network causing issues, but rather someone’s poorly-written code, poorly-designed application, or other completely non-network issue.

I’d estimate I’ve spent a solid six months of my entire life doing just that alone.

Once

Chill Clowns

Yeah, seeing that lately has made me laugh. But I think a lot of FA types do believe you diet for a few months and then are done. Not the way it actually works, though. Which is of course why they fail at it. I’ve been working out for six years straight now. If I stopped, I’d lose 80% of my strength gains within six months.

Such is life.

Aversive

Chill Clowns, Rant

What School Didn’t Teach Us: You Need to Lose Control.

While I don’t agree with Kat that this needs to be done with the aid of alcohol, sure, it can be. And her thesis is absolutely correct.

This is a generation that is both highly conflict-averse and virtually allergic to risk, particularly when it comes to markers of autonomous adulthood like driving, working, or sex. The bosses of Gen Z employees report that they can’t make eye contact, take criticism, or even ask questions when they don’t know how to do something. The post-work drink is dead, apparently, thanks to young workers who prefer boundaries to bonding.

I remember when dipshit Alice Goldfuss wrote some clown-ass crap about why did people go to bars when they could just drink the same thing at home for much cheaper. Because, you fucking doofus, people go to bars to be social, to hang out in a neutral place with their friends, to see what the night brings. I’m not really all that social and even I can understand that1.

One time, I went to a bar with some friends (and I barely drink) and I wound up sitting at the bar chatting with a minor TV actress and Charles Fuckin’ Barkley. Now do you think that would’ve happened if I’d stayed at home? Hell to the no, y’all. Serendipity can be pretty fun sometimes.

Too many people are much too concerned with building boundaries and walls before they even know what they want, what would be good for them, or how to handle life. They read Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” completely the opposite of what he intended.

Gen Z can’t handle shit because they never do anything, never take any risks. Miserable prudes.

  1. In some ways, it’s not fair to pick on her as Covid caused her to go nuts. But I can’t help it. Don’t go harassing her, people. She’s just small-minded, afraid, pitiable and pitiful.

Green to Red

Chill Clowns, Tech

What is something good you made/did that got you in trouble?

When I was working at a fairly large hosting provider, I was on a team that discovered that our reporting tool was showing that backups were occurring that actually hadn’t been done recently, or in some cases had never been taken. Meaning that some customer systems had no backups at all, and for some the last successful one had been completed months or years ago (supposed to be done nightly).

I fixed the inaccurate reporting and this turned our main monitoring dashboard from all green to have a whole lot of red as it then correctly reflected that backups were in a terrible state.

Got blamed for “making us look bad” and “putting a lot of work on a lot of people” because the reporting had been made to reflect reality.

The clown manager who spouted off about a lot of work on a lot of people wasn’t even correct as I personally fixed most of the issues. Because I scripted it, but also because I had more experience with more OSes than anyone else.

So that was fun.

Stable Bull

Chill Clowns, Rant

Sorry to bring this back up again, but this idiot’s take on the whole affair is clownishly fucking moronic:

The problem is that she’s saying SHE SETTLED FOR HIM. That he’s not hot enough to be a hookup, but he’ll do for stability’s sake. No one, man or woman, wants to hear that. If my partner didn’t think I was super hot (and vice versa), I’d want to break up because I’d be doing her and myself a huge, huge disservice. What she said was clearly not awkward wording and if it was, it was the most backhanded “compliment” in recorded history. Seriously, with a backhand that good she should play pro tennis.

Ok, since a lot of you are dense, think about it this way. One time I lost my partner in the grocery store. Went to seek her out. Got distracted looking at other crap there, my mind wandered, and as I was gazing down an aisle completely zoned out I saw a woman and thought, Wow, whoever is with her is lucky. She’s just gorgeous. And then my brain engaged again and I realized IT WAS MY PARTNER. Yay, the lucky guy was ME! WOOHOO!

If you don’t feel that way about whoever you’re currently with, you’re with the wrong fucking person. Simple as that. And it’s clear that she in fact does not feel that way about him. Why is that so hard for people (mostly women, but not all) to understand?