The first ten on today’s playlist:

The first ten on today’s playlist:

When I think about it, I can’t believe how long I’ve been using computers — and how they’ve gone from being something only completely shunned geeks used to ubiquity (when you include smartphones, tablets, etc).

For a while, they made the world better. Now we’re on the opposite side of it. But what a ride either way.

Favorite Horror Performances of 2023.

Kaitlyn Dever in No One Will Save You, definitely. She carried the film. What a great job, especially with nearly no dialogue.

Why are many men so upset with the fact that women have a height preference?

Few men are upset by it directly, but rather by the hypocrisy: all too often women who have absurd height standards are 400 pound wildebeests who go fucking nuts when you observe that it’s much harder to change one’s height than it is one’s weight.

But personally, I do not give a single fuck if a lot of already-undesirable women die alone. The cats need someone to take care of them — and I like nearly all cats more than nearly all people, women or men.

What are a few obscure rules you have for yourself WRITTEN IN FUCKING STONE?

Not sure these are obscure, but rules I live by:

1) Never, ever let anyone bully me or those I care about. If they try, make them pay. A lot.

2) Never be fat and weak again.

3) Always be polite; never be a pushover.

4) Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But once they prove they are clowns, eject.

5) Attempt to pet all cats I see.

Addendum: Continue to be a stubborn, grumpy motherfucker gettin’ shit done and complaining all day long.

Hard to go wrong with those.

Why are so many men written by women comical caricatures of masculinity?

Men get criticized for writing women poorly (and breastily) but women authors do the same thing when writing about men, in about equal amounts. In fact since these days there are more books written by women than men, I’d posit that men are more poorly-portrayed than women in absolute numbers terms.

Most people don’t make even the first effort to understand or empathize with someone not exactly like them. Contra feminists who prattle on about how men are uniquely terrible writers of women, this deficiency is a human thing, not a man or woman thing.

This sort of lying bothers me. Recall, the “transitory” camp claimed that inflation would return to normal in 3-6 months. I’ve even made a handy graph below.

Inflation is, as I noted, still well above the pre-pandemic trend of around 2%. This is from December 2008 to now:

So many lies. But Krugman et al. have power so a lot of people believe them without checking anything. I don’t believe anyone — I always look at the data myself. And so can you.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I got Thor arms, big brain, smart and hot girlfriend.

Life is good. Life is really good.

You know you’re doing it right when your friend says to you, “…you and your Thor arms.” It was when I was telling her about some furniture I put together. When we hung out in the UK, she spent 90% of the time we were walking around latched onto my arm.

No complaints here. She likes good arms and I can provide that. She provides the witty quips and great sense of style. It works.

The huge disadvantage to being the guy who knows how to fix everything is that everyone comes to you to fix everything.

This isn’t actually good as it creates dependence and it means when you’re out no one is doing all that much. I’m trying to break that dependence at work now by just refusing to get involved even if it takes my team 10x as long to do something. This is with my boss’s complete blessing, by the way, as he also sees it as a huge disadvantage that one dude knows everything and is needed the moment any minor or major problem crops up or there is the slightest speedbump.

It’s hard, though, watching people flail and just…letting them.

How awful would I be if I quit a job the same week I got my Christmas bonus?

Naw, man, not awful at all. Any company would fire you in a second if it benefited them. They deserve exactly the same treatment. A bonus in this and in most cases is something paid for work already done anyway.

I quit a job where I’d just vested and just received a large bonus (enough to buy a lower-end car) with no regrets. Was even invited to come back anytime to work there as they were professionals at least. Companies should be treated exactly as they would treat you — no better, no worse.

It’s the only sane way to conduct yourself.

Looking at the stats, most people who visit this site do it from a smartphone.

And that’s sad. In the past, I’ve thought of blocking all smartphone visits but if I did that now there’d be no traffic. Ah well. It is often true that the world regresses. We are in one of those periods now, mostly. A new Dark Age of sorts is upon us.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

One thing I love about the Sleigh Bells’ song there (besides that it’s just a great song) is that the phrase “Rill Rill” is never in the song. But thinking about it, that is true of all songs that are instrumentals (that one is not).