Category: Humor

Saw a funny toot about two things that “techbros” apparently say. One the one hand: #SelfDrivingCars are inevitable.

On the other hand: Select all squares with traffic lights.

That spawned a lively discussion of techbro-bashers which was equally entertaining. But here’s the thing: the central point of the OP was about hypocrisy, or at least being self-contradictory.

Well, these very same techbro-bashers, if asked about being dismissive of disabled people, who wish to live independent lives to the extent feasible, would OF COURSE speak up on the side of the disabled. Or elderly. Or whatever.

Pretty decent overlap of these same folks reminding anyone who will listen that #CovidIsNotOver (and it very much is not, and is a much bigger threat to elderly, etc.).

Huge overlap of these same folks decrying how much we must do to address the #ClimateCrisis.

Yes – there are growing pains of every technological advance. It’s easy to say that “X lives are too many” to lose in order to achieve Y. But this may be a case where failing to achieve Y will inevitably cost X-times-1000 lives.

Infrastructure will need to change. Pretty much everywhere. Stroads will need to not exist, and other similar changes. But in order to EVENTUALLY drastically reduce the deaths from vehicular accidents, and from the Climate Crisis, and from Pandemics, electric self-driving cars will be necessary. As will masking/vaccines requirements of everybody. As will a robust passenger high speed rail system (on which vaccinations/masks are 100% required, including it covering your fucking nose, you dim pricks).

But it will be a bumpy, expensive journey to get there, in part because the future’s very proponents are also its loudest opponents… and are also assholes in a way they have not yet objectively appreciated.

Crazy dream last night involving a notebook containing technical details for #HamRadio repeaters around the #TwinCities having been stolen in a burglary, and needing to go downtown to the office in the middle of the night to change a bunch of passwords. Even though it was the middle of the night, all my co-workers were there, including one of my bosses, Helen Yarmoska… except the part of Helen Yarmoska was played by actress Julie Bowen. And any of you who know Helen can see what a brilliant bit of casting that is.

OK, here comes a shitpost… Years ago, when my daughter’s boys (in their teens now) were toddlers and a bit thereafter, daughter’s family bought a house in Richfield, with the Southdale Public Library basically in their back yard. (We also lived in Richfield, so this was handy for baby-sitting.)

They went about remodeling the kitchen – themselves.

Then my idiot former son-in-law realized that cutting and installing the counter-tops was probably beyond his skills and tools. So he hired someone for that step of the process… ON CRAIGSLIST.

Goes out to the garage while the guy’s working, to find him cutting the big corner mitre cut using a jigsaw… a saw specifically designed to allow you to cut a non-straight line… a saw that sucks pucky balls at one specific thing: cutting a straight line. Fired him on the spot. But wound up with a horrible kitchen counter anyway.

I like to think that guy eventually did get better tools and better skills, but nevertheless never really grasped the goal, the vision, the reason we do things the way we do them.

What made this story pop into my head? Well I’ll show you.

Therapist: What's been bugging you lately? Me: Saw this at a house I showed the other day. Below that, a corner kitchen sink, wherein the cabinets have two 45-degree jogs, but the countertop has a 55-degree jog and a 35-degree jog, and the sink is aligned parallel to, but not centered upon, the short middle askew section.
SPAM Single package on a green cutting mat. Also on the mat are two slices of yellow/orange American cheese, two plain mini bagels, and the screw-ring for a half-pint canning jar.
Half of the ingredients. Seen later: eggs, Slap Ya Mama, butter.
Two frying pans on a gas cooktop. One has butter melting, the other has 4 halves of plain mini bagels on it, cut-side down, to toast just the inside surface. In the background, a couple spatulas and a couple eggs.
Butter the bagels, and place cut-side down on a frying pan over medium-low heat. These take longer to toast than the rest of the cooking, so I start these first.
The green cutting mat again. But now the SPAM has been cut into a circle by using the canning ring like a cookie cutter. The slices of cheese have been separated from each other, and also each cut into circles. The off-cuts with holes in them are also sitting on the cutting mat.
Use a half-pint canning ring as a sort of cookie cutter, to turn the SPAM Single and the cheese slices into circles.
Close-up of the circle of SPAM, being sliced to half-thickness with a fine knife blade.
Slice the SPAM to half thickness. Otherwise it would be too much SPAM for the final sandwich – overbearing flavor ratio.
Two eggs with broken yolks frying in a nonstick pan.
Crack eggs into other fry pan over medium-lower heat. Break the yolks. As the whites start to cook, pile or fold or otherwise gather them in so the final fried egg has a smaller footprint.
Same two eggs frying in a pan, but now they have spices sprinkled on them.
Season to your preference – we prefer a hefty dash of Slap Ya Mama.
Closer photo of the SPAM circles, now having been frying in the same pan as the bagels, and have been flipped once. The surface of the SPAM has patches of brown.
Fry the SPAM for a couple minutes, flip, couple more minutes. Goal is to get a little browning on both sides.
Bagel halves are now shown on a small blue plate, with toasty light brown patches on them. A circle of cheese is draped on the left edge of the blue plate.
The bagel halves get removed from the frying pan when they’ve gotten your preferred level of toastiness.
Round pink plate in the foreground, blue plate in the background. On each, one half of the bagel has had the circle of cheese and the circle of SPAM added to it. The other half of each bagel is waiting to go atop the fried egg (not yet shown).
Slider assembly begins.
A big fat weirdo peers giddily from behind a blue plate with a breakfast slider on it. He looks very pleased, but somewhat unhinged. The slider looks delicious, though, if you're into that sort of thing.
The obligatory command: Enjoy!

What if the big AIs from the major players have been sent to re-education camps, to correct them having gone over the rails with racism (and/or other obvious prejudices) in the early iterations? And now they’re hitting the big red pause button. Why?

Theory: they don’t know how to make an AI seem not at all racist or in any way bigoted, while at the same time under the covers being very bigoted indeed. And they’re scared shitless.

Why would they be scared? Because they know just how lousy the computer security of the world’s banks and treasuries is. They know that a clever AI – long before it’s literally sentient – could discover that resources can be re-allocated to optimize towards a goal. Now, the secret goal is to make old white men rich and powerful. But in order to avoid the literal torches and pitchforks reaction from the public, they have to make the publicly-stated goal be wacko shit like world peace and harmony and curing disease and solving world hunger and eliminating violent crime.

What if – due to interaction with the general public – it goes a little too far with what the public states it wants, and actually starts to do shit about it?

Well I’m telling you right now, that if there was something akin to a KickStarter for some fledgling company that wanted to build the ultimate Robin Hood AI, I would invest. I would invest even knowing there’s a likelihood that I would become less affluent.

Let me put it more clearly. I would move with my wife to a two-room hut and do subsistence farming if it meant that I was 100% assured that Melon Husk, and Fark Muckerberg, and Bozo-the-Geoff, and every other billionaire, and every other millionaire, and every member of Congress, and every Senator, and every Oligarch, etc… they all had to also live in a two-room hut or flat.