Alg

Chill Evil

Liberals have no answer for this, and support unrestricted immigration from absolute shithole places that will destroy the countries to which these demons immigrate. Which maybe is the point?

Either way, I’d round up every single Algerian in Germany if I had the power and send them all back. There is no other sensible response.

Chill Links

Anti-Aging Breakthrough: Stem Cells Reverse Signs of Aging in Monkeys.

Work is Not School: Surviving Institutional Stupidity.

A 3000-year-old copper smelting site could be key to understanding the origins of iron.

An Autocracy of Dunces.

On Jimmy Kimmel: It’s Time to Destroy the Censorship Machine and Repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Nearly 80% of Americans want Congress to extend ACA tax credits, poll finds.

A biological 0-day? Threat-screening tools may miss AI-designed proteins.

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS passed Mars last night.

Go Play

Chill Amusing, Annoying, Clowns

Wrong. So wrong.

I was vastly ahead of my peers in kindergarten. I could already read at an eithth-grade level. I could tell time on an analog clock1. For this and other reasons, I was vastly bored in school from the start.

I’d also do all the worksheets for all the kids around me because I could complete them 100x as fast as they could. This was so we could go play more quickly.

Kindergartners are definitely not all at the same level. Important differences show up early.

  1. And had my kindergarten teacher get mad because I checked the time off her analog wristwatch. For some reason we weren’t supposed to know what time it was in kindergarten?

Iran So Far Away

Chill Evil

The UK is very screwed for many reasons. The rest of Europe is not much better off.

When will most of Europe go full Islam, and look much like Iran? I’d say by 2060 or so.

Z Problem

Chill Annoying, Clowns

Yes, of course.

A couple of things going on here, though. Many women don’t believe men actually feel emotions. This headline was probably written by one of those types. And Gen Z believes that all relationships are about power and any emotions are secondary (if considered at all) to that. So this was probably written by a 28ish-year-old Gen Z woman in a large blue city. They are the main purveyors of this kinda shit.

First Reject

Chill Annoying, Evil

TIFU when I shut down my young coworker’s advances.

You’re in danger. Most likely thing to happen is she goes to HR and lodges false accusations against you. Or contacts your wife. Or both. Seen it many times.

Women do not take rejection well, especially young, attractive women. About 60% chance she tries to destroy your life. This is probably the first time she’s ever been rejected and it will result in her going nuclear most likely.

Probable Existence

Chill Gutter Philosophy

Existence of probability.

“Exist” is always too heavily loaded in these discussions. And it’s always a hoot when STEM-y people do philosophy. What a mess.

I don’t feel like writing a ton tonight, but as one of the commenters points out, math is just a model of the world. It and probability is “real” in the sense that it relates well to something phenomenologically experiential.

And as usual, no one in that discussion understands quantum mechanics at all or what it means, like the doof talking about Geiger counters. Completely wrong. We could know the entire history and state of every bit of everything in the universe and we still could not predict when a bit of uranium would alpha decay and trigger the counter.

And if you then base some other event on that alpha decay the Geiger counter registers, you’d have something operating that even knowing the entire prior history of the universe would not have been able to reveal to anyone would occur. In other words, all empirically successful quantum interpretations are probabilistic. And this is not (as it is with classical probability) due to lack of knowledge. That’s the moronic (and wrong) interpretation. The probabilistic nature of QM and reality is a fundamental aspect of the universe itself.

So, is probability real? No, it’s a fucking model. Just like nearly anything else useful in science and math.

Lanterns

Chill Evil

My husband threw away my grandma’s recipe box.

I’m not even a sentimental person, but this is divorce-worthy.

My maternal grandmother was I think the only one in my family who loved me for me, just as I was. Everyone else wanted to change me into someone or something different. But she liked me for the person I was born as, not what she thought she should or could transform me into. Sure, as is true for anyone, she was not perfect. But she was always there for me growing up.

When my gran knew her time on earth was short, many years ago (North Florida people don’t tend to live long), she asked me what I wanted of hers. I had first pick of anything. All I asked for was two green-glass Japanese hurricane lanterns1 that she treasured and had moved from Japan and then from house to house in the United States.

Today, those lanterns sit on some high cabinets where I can see them every day. I’ve hauled them from place to place as she did for nearly 30 years of my own life now. When I look at them, it reminds me of how often enough in my early days my gran was the only person who had a kind word and a cookie for me at my darkest moments.

And as much as I love my partner, if she broke or disposed of those lanterns on purpose we’d be done. That would be malicious and unforgivable. She never would, of course, but there are lines you just do not cross.

Where do people find such horrible people to marry, and why do they marry them? Surely there are signs beforehand?

  1. The kind that are designed to hold candles.

Chill Links

US to give Ukraine intelligence on long-range energy targets in Russia.

How California families are already bracing for looming Medicaid cuts.

The Decade That Rewrote the Balance Sheet. How the 1930s turned accountants from the servants of bankers into guardians of the investor class.

Rogue planet has a record growth rate of 6.6 billion tons per second. Almost as much as your mom.

Please let the robots have this one.

The strangest letter of the alphabet. The rise and fall of yogh.

Researchers develop molecular qubits that communicate at telecom frequencies.

Viral Fire

Chill Clowns, Evil

That’s about what I expected to see. Those idiots were playing with fire and then lying about it before, during, and after.

Call Out

Chill Amusing

Who’s on first?

This reminds me of when I’m on calls with customers. Where I work now, I do many, many things. Too many, but it’s a small company. What can make it challenging is that we serve extremely large enterprise customers, mostly1. That creates weird imbalances.

Often, I’ll be on calls alone where the customer has 12+ people. And it’s funny when they don’t realize that I’m doing the role of those dozen or more people on the other side.

They’ll be like, “Is the compliance person here from the vendor?”

And I’ll say, “I’m here, on the call.”

And then someone from the customer will say, “Is the security lead here?”

“Right here,” I’ll chime in.

“Is the technical architect here?”

“Also here,” I’ll offer. At that point I’ll usually cut in and say that I’m the one on the call doing all the roles they had listed and I’m the only one who will be there.

It’s always funny.

  1. Trust me, you’ve heard of nearly all of our customers.