Category: Oh God, Politics

And The Horse You Rode In On

On October 31, 2020

In Oh God, Politics, The Dollar Dances On Our Asses

As much as understanding as I might pretend to have for whatever-driven advertising rates, I’ve been pretty sure that Facebook is the source of most horrible things in the world and would never remotely consider feeding any of my money into that ridiculous machine. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people consider that shit machine as the 2020 equivalent of thinking of the big blue ‘E’ of the Internet Explorer icon as the ‘internet.’ Given how much computing is done on mobile devices this almost makes sense but then you read something like this disassembly of advertising rates charged to both presidential campaigns and realize that the chaos boosting algorithms Facebooks prioritizes gives a ridiculous advantage to a candidate that doesn’t give a fuck about policy or the impact any of the trash his grotesque orange orifice spews.

I’m sick as fuck of even hearing about Facebook much less their half assed justifications for doing measurable harm to democratic process by measuring all things regardless of their impact with the same inane system of measuring ‘engagement.’ I still have an active Facebook account and the fact that it still exists, albeit largely as a way to log in to Spotify, is making me feel like I’m a larger part of the problem than I’m comfortable with.

Today I Turned Off My Sprinklers and Opened These Tabs

By goneaway

On October 20, 2020

In Cool As Fuck, Link Dump, Microsoft, Oh God, Politics

Here are the things that drifted dreamily across my sleeping browser while I was working on something longer and more substantial to post here. Pinboard keeps all of that stuff from disappearing and is worth every penny that I pay for that service.

1. Gizmodo threw down a sarcasm laced guide on how to avoid showing your coworkers your junk on Zoom that is hilarious but should not need to exist. The catalyst was a reporter for the New Yorker jerking off during a Zoom call which even if you think your camera is off is the very worst idea that you’ve ever had. Vice has the more explicit version of this story and I really hope that ‘Zoom dick’ doesn’t become a term that we remember fondly from those dark days in 2020.

2. Not even Microsoft wants you to use the new Edge browser apparently because if you try to download it with a sane browser then you end up being redirected to the local copy on your computer that you’ve thus far never opened on purpose. I don’t have a Windows machine handy to test this out right now but I will later tonight just to take my trip on the hilarity-go-round along with everyone who is actually trying to download this ill conceived aberration. No browser that is remarkable only for being less terrible than the old version of Edge should be this difficult to obtain.

3. I would agree that the press that Trump sees so blatantly biased against him is actually giving him the idiot questions because he’s a hostile idiot and seemingly can’t handle a question necessitating an answer longer than a single sentence. I’m assuming he’s also wired as fuck on Adderall and his stem cell and steroid cocktail. Stimulants, fragile arrogance, and generally having the least experience dealing with the details of daily life of any president in history lays some great groundwork for his eventual Darwin award. Well, probably not unless he’s confronted by a particular scary ramp but I’m hoping the rubber/glue ratio reverses itself and he can be the lucky recipient of some of that ‘locking up’ he enjoys yelling about.

4. Chaos Ink is good hypnotic fun in your browser. I tinkered around with it for 15+ minutes which is more than I can see for most web things that serve a definite purpose these days.

The Things That Made It Past The Collection Of Calamities I Call My Life

By goneaway

On October 14, 2020

In Apple, I Wish I Didn't Know About This, Life During The Plague Years, Link Dump, Oh God, Politics, Work Horrible Work

It’s been an inordinately busy week. I’ve been spending my days slogging through work, interviewing with another company (shhh), and visiting my wife in a cardio thoracic ICU nearly every night. My wife is recovering from two small strokes that she suffered either during or after surgery. The main effect is aphasia which means she struggles with verbally expressing thoughts. This is painful because my girl is a talker and is brilliant at relating something that happened in a story and I hate to watch her struggle. That said, the doctors have said that the recovery process from this can take a very long time and she’s improved dramatically from yesterday. It’s difficult but it doesn’t feel like the end of the world, just a change. I’m okay with things changing and generally uncomfortable with catastrophe. I know she is having a terrible time being stuck in her head and I need to be better about filling the silences. I have a feeling we’re both going to have to adapt on a level that neither of us is accustomed to. I’m just happy she’s awake right now.

These are some things I noticed today:

1. To begin with, most Apple hardware has an unpatchable vulnerability stemming from the T2 chip and the outlook is not looking great in terms of mitigating this issue. I’m sure there is some amount of karmic retribution here but I’ll settle for vague analogy about putting all of your eggs in a single basket. I’m typing this on a vulnerable machine in the spirit of living dangerously.

2. Tangentially related to Apple, this brilliant person adapted an iSight into an acceptably modern camera by packing the pretty shell with a Raspberry Pi and doing some 3D printing to piece it all together. The responsible mad scientist also created a GitHub repo for all of the necessary components in case you want to play along at home.

3. My son’s school was scheduled, rather optimistically, to resume in person learning next week. We just received notification from the district that they’re now pushing that date out until late November. I really and fervently hope that when our idiot in chief runs out of steroids and dies that we, as a country, start to take this a little more seriously and listening more carefully to scientists when they try to warn us about killing ourselves. I am completely in support of calling everything off until we have a safe and effective vaccine. I have enjoyed hearing about attempts Trump’s fundamentalist supporters have made to square up their fervent belief that their draft dodging, adulterous fuck boy is somehow the torch bearer of Christianity while having his morbidly obese life saved by a treatment utilizing stem cells. At some point does your brain just throttle itself and eventually turn off?

4. My ballot arrived in the mail today. I look at voting like an act of exorcism. I’ll fill it out tomorrow and drop that shit off. Make sure you do the same even if you disagree with my politics completely. You owe it to yourself and everyone else in the ragged remains of a country to participate in this so-called democracy.