I fuck with this energy, let’s get it done!

I don’t know if I can; it’s not, well, in my lane as a bicycle/pedestrian committee member. I still show up and advocate for lane narrowing and traffic calming at the city council meetings.

Edit: disregard. I thought you meant lanes, you clearly mean sweepers

I’m trying to secure wholly separate bike lanes, or at least flexi-posts, anything but a sharrow or a line of paint. Tbh, I dunno how that’ll work with a street sweeper.

Day 30 of being fucking bewildered that I, a non-voting member of my city’s bicycle commission, have stricter ethical laws binding me than those for judges and politicians.

OTOH: Boeing. Had the 737 Max bug been a one-off incredibly bad fuck up, they would have been a good buy. Then it turned out that that bug was just the first sign of many deep seated issues with their production process. Boeing 100% deserves everything they’re getting. Management skipped right over lawful, chaotic, and neutral evil and went into stupid evil, and decided that sacrificing QC/QA on aerospace equipment would be a great way to get returns for shareholders.

[Look inside]

It’s a regex

There is no such thing as making “enough” money under the chicago-school dominated business thought. A business should always make as much money as it can for its investors, always. A friend who read Friedman’s works says that the Friedman doctrine makes room to say that a wise business will optimize investor outcomes by investing in its product, workforce, and other smart long-term choices, but in practice, nobody ever reads that deep into the Friedman doctrine. It’s just “philosophical” license to make (and demand, on the part of investors) the shallowest slash-and-burn business decisions possible to make line go up NOW. I will accept arguments about how it’s capitalism, but I’d like to point out that we experienced a very distinct culture shift in business leadership starting around the time that Chicago school thought became all the rage.

Tbf, the Europeans have some pretty fucked cryptid lore, it’s just that they’re more chaotic neutral and less chaotic vengeance than the American variety. My favorite american cryptid is an old one you don’t hear much of anymore, and was born from Pacific NorthWest loggers: the Hide Behind. Basically, this mf stalks your shit and will always duck behind a tree when you turn to look at it; it’s fast enough to never be seen clearly, but you can just catch glimpses of it if you’re fast/lucky. Eventually, it catches and eats unwitting loggers who let it sneak up on them.

Edit: I also like the deer stories. One of my all time favs was a free text about a deer stumbling up the street very clearly saying “BEEP BEEP BEEP” like a car being unlocked, followed by “Honey, I’m home!” over and over. That was the whole story, just a weird fucking deer stumbling up the street and talking to itself. 10/10 would gladly read again.

Those tech bros are up to something

I think it’s just that on the internet, unlike in real life among people in a social unit, there is no such thing as a maximally extreme position. You can always look for, and eventually find, a more extreme view.

Every time I think I’ve heard the universe’s worst take, the dead bird site proves that assumption wrong.

Agreed. We’ve built a society where you’re largely only allowed to exist in public as a consumer.

I was discussing this whole “safer with a bear” thing with my wife earlier, and she agreed that it was more about the bear will almost always just fuck off and leave you alone. Imo, the problem is the lack of social (third) spaces in the West, particularly anglo-North America. The only places left where you can encounter a potential romantic partner are in their home or in a place of business, and both are generally unacceptable for romantic solicitation. We’ve even managed to largely flush the Internet as a meaningful third space. So, folks are left with the choice of committing a social faux pas or being lonely, which is kind of a shit choice.

If we brought back third spaces whose sole purpose was socializing and community-building, we’d probably see stuff like the “safer with bear” sentiment disappate.

But what if I’m a big huge baby about it, what then?

Oh, I did. I ended up installing Linux mint and used it on my personal machine for about six months before re-installing windows. I would still be using Linux, I liked it a lot, but I found I had a lot of trouble getting multiplayer to work between my daughter and I. Gaming is 98% of the way there, but that 2% is really annoying and it’s most of what I use my personal machine for. I’m sure I could have figured it out if I’d had a solid 12-36 hours to fine tune configs and Google hyper specific issues, but I just don’t have that. I’m confident I will return to Linux in time, but Windows still has the edge in terms of out-of-the-box gaming, sadly.

And an incomplete product; windows 11 was less functional at launch than windows 10. I’ve been a windows user since 98 and that’s the first time I can remember having said that. Sure, there were off editions that were weird and unpleasant, but I wouldn’t say less functional. Windows 11 just flat out was an incomplete product at launch.

And the live service dependencies: windows 11 pooping its diaper and having a fit about every other thing because it doesn’t have an Internet connection even though an Internet connection isn’t strictly necessary is a terrible UX choice. Anyone with half a brain knows it’s because MS has decided that if you won’t let them slurp that tasty, tasty data, then you shouldn’t be able to use the product you paid for.

And the plans to stuff ads into your operating system

And them basically doing the same shit that landed them huge anti-trust lawsuits in the 90s, but we’re doing it again because they figure they can make more money than the lawsuit will cost them, so fuck it.

There’s a lot to not like here.

They do know, but they honestly, sincerely believe that a government of for and by the people isn’t possible for them.

Source: hosted a Russian exchange student. We had this talk, I suggested that Russia could have a state that works for its people and got laughed at and basically told “we don’t do that here.” And honestly, as an American in 2024 watching our democracy implode in real time so that billionaires can have lower taxes, I get it.

“That’ll be $200, please.”

This is the most injeanious comment I’ve read in a long time.