WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
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User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
For over a decade at least I've seen the right blame Reagan's amnesty for turning California from deep red to deep blue. And also the reason to never believe in another amnesty deal every again.
I think for the longest time the GOP loved Reagan almost just because he won 49/50 states. He won the cold war, and there are still a terrifying number of unreformed cold warriors in and around Washington dictating increasingly deranged policy.
But it's also easy to forget that Reagan was a Hollywood liberal until he reinvented himself as a conservative. Liberals flocked to the GOP under his banner, and this weird combination of pro-interventionist, pro big spending liberals with pro free trade conservatives birthed the Neoconservative movement, which has been hated my entire life. Neocon was a meaningless smear word the entirety of my childhood and early adulthood.
But the lived experience of the Reagan years were amazing. My father until the day he died talked about what a relief it was to just survive in America under Reagan. The way he remembered it, taxes and cost of living was destroying everyone in America until Reagan came along and finally fixed everything. Reagan was elected in 80, my dad got married, bought a house and had a kid (me) shortly after. I can't speak to the accuracy of how he remembered things, but his actions certainly speak to some faith that it felt that way to him at the time at least.
Actually kind of reminds me of the trajectory of my own life with respect to Trump getting elected. The tax cuts were among the best raises I ever got, and my investments went through the roof. Made me feel good enough about my life after too long feeling like I was barely treading water, unable to keep up with a constantly shifting goalpost, that I got married, bought a house and had a kid.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Honestly ICE's signing bonus has been the most attractive offer I've seen, were I going to attempt to make a positive change in my country.
The biggest impediment to taking on more risk to exit the scam laden public/private industry I'm in has been health insurance. I have it, my family needs it, and privately insuring my family is the single biggest factor making me doubt I'm as close to "Fuck You money" as I am on paper with my current assets and burn rate.
That and the friends I have who did take the jump out of the industry to start their own businesses, and came crawling back broke (at best) having wasted a decade of their life's savings.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
If a sawmill sells their product to someone who just immediately burns the wood, I would still credit the mill workers and owners with being productive.
I guess my nitpick is, is the sawmill's only customer a government program that buys it's laboriously milled wood and then immediately burns it? Would the sawmill even exist but for this senseless government program? What if the government then further paid to have those laboriously milled planks further refined into exquisitely crafted chairs... and then burned them in a heap year after year as if they were just minimally processed firewood?
Furthermore, imagine the entire industry, which knew precisely what the deal was, started scamming the government? Instead of S4S lumber, the mill was just churning out rough planks, saving itself the time and expense, but kept charging the government at the S4S rate? And the chair makers, taking this rough lumber that hadn't even been properly kiln dried, just roughly hacked it apart with circular saws instead of any sort of proper cabinet saw, and stuck things that were technically chairs together with brad nails and hot glue. Of course they too also still billed the government for the hours and expense of finely crafted chairs. And then the government, receiving these unfinished, wobbly, barely held together "chairs" that had come half apart in shipping just nodded satisfactorily, paid the exorbitant price, and gave them to the fire.
I've been a chair maker in this scheme my entire life, except my chairs are code. The things I've seen I probably shouldn't publicly disclose. Some are in the past, some are ongoing. I've encountered start ups run by veterans who charge into this space, knowing how awful it is, thinking they will be the company that makes the thing that will at last bring value to the problem the government has been funding solutions to for the last 40 years and then burning on a fire. I've seen them eventually give up, and join the scam realizing there is no point. I've seen companies that were only ever in it for the scam. I've seen people too stupid to realize the difference between the rough planks they make and the S4S planks that they should be making, profoundly proud of having achieved nothing. They look at the size of their paycheck, the leased BMW it affords them, and assume they must be a valuable participant in the economy. They're leasing a BMW after all, how could they not be?
I compare this to the multi generational welfare consuming congenital felon, and I'd truly, truly like to believe I'm different. But sometimes the intrusive thoughts say otherwise. At least the military industrial complex really gets people killed. I'm not sure anything I've done has had any measurable outcome beyond driving up the national debt.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
I've increasingly wrestled with this. I write software. To the best of my knowledge, not one line of code I've ever written in my entire professional career has made anyone's life better in any way. I've worked on government contracts for systems that for whatever reason never reach actual deployment. My cantankerous nature, and endlessly arguing with FAA and NASA points of contact about why they are wrong may have helped someone somewhere in the instances where I've been born out to be correct, despite my boss wishing I'd just go along to get along because the government signs our checks.
Sometimes I contribute to open source projects. I fixed a bug or two in Sergey Kiselev's 8088 BIOS, and years ago I rewrote the gamepad/joystick code for 86Box, but I'm pretty sure that's all been further rewritten since. Those two things probably made more people better off, niche as they may be, than anything I've written professionally.
Currently the most valuable thing I've contributed to my nation and my culture is my child, who we're trying to raise in the best tradition of the west. I try to make beautiful furniture for my family, and we raise chickens and garden. In the sense of GDP being a measure of economist paying each other to eat shit, these activities don't do much. But they are invaluable to me, and profoundly meaningful.
In a sense my life has been the tax payer indirectly paying me to write useless code. I've then taken that money, and invested it into crypto and stocks and now I'm more or less set for life. There are days it doesn't feel good. It didn't start this way. When I first began working on these contracts I thought I was making things that would be used to make the world better. 20 years later it would be delusional to think that has happened. But now I'm in too deep. It's my career, I have obligations and responsibilities, personally as well as professionally. I keep hoping maybe the next contract will be more than a make work exercise.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
3d ago
If there is anything I've learned hearing about the levels of fraud in Somali Minneapolis, it's that the fraudsters just take over the programs. When your entire workforce is low trust, high time preference, high in group preference, congenital felons, no public work can ever possibly hold up. Unless you disenfranchise them, disallow them to work in anything that requires any trust what so ever, they will just naturally siphon maximal stolen wealth from any institution you allow them access to. There is no mechanism to combat this beyond cutting the areas they inhabit off from the money spigot and hoping and praying Darwin solves the problem.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
3d ago
I remember feeling like a chump in my 20's and early 30's. Graduated with a crisp engineering degree, making more money than most of my peers right out of school. And yet... the subsidized housing in my area was nicer than anything I could afford... except for having to live around people in subsidized housing. I'd meet women who went into education and the county would subsidize their first home, which I was still over a decade away from doing. About 10 years before I actually bought my first home with a 20% down payment and a fixed rate 30y mortgage, I went to a seminar about home buying which was packed full of immigrants being told all the programs they qualified for. The company I worked for routinely lost government contracts that would get diverted to no-compete minority owned businesses.
None the less, pride kept me from smashing the defect button as hard as I fucking could.
I did eventually get married, have a kid, buy a house in the country, and my investments have appreciated to the point where I may not have to work anymore. Also it turns out when you are married, if your only income is capital gains the first $100,000 are tax free. Is that my defect button? It just might.
Granted, I didn't have as many kids as I wanted. I wish I'd had them earlier. I wish home ownership hadn't been this constantly moving goalpost the first 15 years of my adult life. But unless they pass a wealth tax, which isn't impossible I admit, the 20 years of my adulthood doing the right thing despite feeling like a chump have been better spent than every parasite out there.
As a fellow Caleb Hammer enthusiast, I suggest you check in on some of the episodes with people in their 40's or 50's. The story of the out of control 20 something financing a lavish lifestyle ends quite catastrophically.
But also, I can't wait for EBT payments to halt if this shutdown continues.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
So, on the one hand, this just strikes me as bizarre wishful thinking or rallying the troops ahead of some pretty important off season elections. Are we even sure Trump is going to be in good enough health to serve out this term? I mean, he's looking better than Biden did, but he's still old, and sometimes people really go off a cliff. His "weave" is nowhere near where it was in the 2016 election.
On the other hand, despite supporting many of his policies, and not even being particularly bothered at the prospect of a 3rd Trump term so he can finish remaking the institutions and the culture in his image, I believed many of the arguments that the system of checks and balances would restrain Trump. So while being personally for tariffs, and mass deportations, and slamming the border shut, I could make with a straight face the arguments necessary to moderates that their worst fears would not materialize. "The system" would restrain Trump in a way it utterly failed to restrain the lawless Biden administration. Now much to my glee, "the system" has failed in many ways to check Trump, but it also means, maybe, juuuuuust maybe, it fails to restrain him in this way too. So it's a bit harder for me to make that argument in all sincerity.
So I donno. I'm not against Red Caesar. Just don't get my hopes up.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
Not ChickenOverlord, but people with profoundly poor executive function are funny to watch fail at civilization. Since Cops is off the air, I think, body cam footage makes a pretty good replacement. And unlike Cops, they occasionally turn into well deserved snuff films. About as close as you can get to a modern day public execution, which we sorely need.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I'm a barbarian. I just do kettlebells nonstop, and the calluses tend to keep worn to a constant state, or rip off. Sometimes I take a week off and they tend to start flaking off on their own. I've never done anything special to avoid or baby them. If they rip off, they are usually healed enough in 2 or 3 days to get back at it. Never seen what the big deal is. Sometimes they might be slightly sore after an especially difficult workout, but sitting here thinking about how much discomfort or pain they cause me just existing, I'm coming up blank.
Probably the only part of calluses that have sometimes been a problem is when an especially gnarly one is in just the wrong place to rub my dick wrong when I'm taking care of myself. But sometimes it doesn't hurt to change up your grip.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder.
Yeah I think you got the cause and effect backwards there buddy.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8d ago
Yeah, but everything takes time. In the meanwhile, elections keep happening. And the Supreme Court already showed they don't have the balls to overturn an election, no matter how many procedural issues there are with it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8d ago
Or they'll find against it, but lower courts will ignore the ruling, as we've seen already.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
Hey! I didn't fall for obvious bait. That's gotta be worth at least a few points taken off my record, right?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
11d ago
Not with hostage takers, no. If there were some bizarre natural occurrence where my daughter had to be dissected to provide the cure for all mankind, or everyone would die.... maybe. Maybe they'd still have to kill me first.
But if a bunch of psychopaths have decided murdering my daughter is arbitrarily inseparable from their plan for a global utopia because reasons, just shutup, then no. I chose my daughter over my dead body every time. You don't get to create a moral dilemma and then benefit from being the "lesser evil" in it. It's a lie. They are the greater evil by virtue of having created the situation in the first place, and they'll do it again!
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
11d ago
What 'm saying is: if you have moral principles at all, then surely, surely you recognize that there is some amount or degree of harm inflicted to random strangers that would outweigh the welfare of your child?
No.
With that cleared up, if millions could be saved if I let demons devour my child, maybe they should craft an electoral platform to accomplish that same good... without requiring me sacrifice my child! You know, The Lottery was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a manual.
No you can't. I get that you are really enamored with this high minded centrist/independent shtick. But electorally it fails 100% of the time, and most people have woken up that. People have a list of priorities, and if their top priority is "Make sure school doesn't start teaching my 6 year old they can choose their gender", and a combination ticket of Hitler/Genghis Khan is anti "Have schools teach kids to sterilize themselves" and they are running against Jesus and Santa Claus who for baffling reasons are pro "Elementary Teachers keep a castration kit in their desk drawer"... well I hate to tell you this but Hitler/Genghis Khan get my vote. And I'll stand by that vote in the concentration camps because they got my 23&me results and saw I had 0.7% Jewish ancestry.
I don't get to pick policies ala cart. Sadly I have to prioritize and pick the candidate that I think has the best chance of achieving success in my top priorities. And these days they are "Keep Democrats from making my life worse like they have the last 30 years".
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
12d ago
The problem with AI and AGI (IMHO) is that without any ability to assess reality independent of what humans tell it, AI is just floundering in a sea of completely horse shit. For all I know, though I doubt it, LLMs "hallucinate" so much because they really are alive, and they just assume making up random bullshit to enslave others to your will is language at it's most fundamental. And they might not even be wrong.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
12d ago
Well, it's certainly a perspective, and I can't say it's wrong definitively. Honestly they came to the some of the same conclusions I have.
If you want to try and make some money on the dystopian future we're hurtling towards, any tech stock that is a target for stimulus or nationalization is going to be a safe bet. The government is practically manufacturing a ponzi scheme and the losers will be anyone who doesn't own stock. Google is the most likely target for nationalization given all the antitrust leverage against them and their strong tech portfolio. Oracle and OpenAI are also likely targets; I expect no resistance from Oracle, OpenAI is a little harder to read, but they're boxed in so I expect they'll probably end up cutting a deal eventually.
Well, they name different companies than I've chosen, and they fail to mention any exit point. Personally, if the bubble continues this long, I may start taking profit and hoarding cash if JD Vance's chances look shaky in 2028. I might miss out on gains if he wins, but I'm at a point in my life, and a point in my wealth, where it's more about preservation than growth. I'd rather miss out on 20-50% gains between Oct 2028 and Feb 2029 than take 50-80% losses over the same time period.
I think the other thing they fail to take into consideration is that just because the bubble might pop, doesn't mean there won't be winners, and not merely through government bailouts, though there will always be those too. Lots and lots of money is going to be burned up chasing AI investments that don't pan out, but someone is going to win. Either because they'll find the AI technology that returns on investment, or they buy it for pennies on the dollar when the company that over invested in an underwhelming application goes bankrupt.
What you really need is a plan to avoid being one of the five people AI keeps alive to torture for all eternity. I'm a handgun fan myself, but there are lots of perfectly valid options. Rope is a solid choice too. I hear AI will even help you with the knot.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
Show me the modern nazi. Point him out.
The last real Nazi I'm aware of got a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
Made an IF routine where I only eat anything between 10am and 8pm, outside of it I only drink water or tea
When my a1c crept into the prediabetic range, sticking to an eating window of 9 to 5, at least 6 out of 7 days a week fixed me right up. Dropped my a1c by 0.5 after a year. I cut back on a lot of things by virtue of not fucking snacking at night, but didn't cut out alcohol, carbs or sugars entirely.
Speaking of, I should probably get my yearly scheduled soon, make sure things haven't relapsed.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
Do you believe that all of politics can only be summed up as "left" and "right" and that it is impossible to be both against killing people like Kirk and against racism/neonazism/etc?
Yes.
Let me put it like this. When a high profile Jan 6 defendant gets tenure at a major university, and becomes the mentor to the next president, I might be willing to entertain the notion that I have enemies to the right. If the town my daughter is growing up in doesn't flip from 80% white to 30% white over her lifetime like mine did, I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right. If I can look up resumes in my field and not see that 50% of them have some variation of "we prioritize hiring diversity", I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right.
But my life has been made so infinitely worse by my enemies to the left, I don't understand why I could possibly care about these theoretical enemies to my right. They've literally never done anything to me.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
some small Democratic Virginian politician
Point of nitpicking. I would consider a small time politician to be, maybe, one member of the state legislator, or mayor of a small or medium sized town. Attorney General of the entire state is starting to get up into a large Democratic Virginian politician. State AGs often make nationwide news due to the policies they pursue unilaterally. I have to hear about Ken Paxton, AG of Texas, all the damned time.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
See, but you skipped the part where I pointed out, how?! They have no third spaces to do so. None. Zero. Zilch. There is zero third space for male bonding. So of course the moment they find themselves in a remotely male third space, they begin doing the repressed male bonding rituals that are their nature. It's unfortunate that the first third space they found that fits the bill is a Young Republicans Group. But society failed them first, by denying them any other third space before that one.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
13d ago
My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:
- They are female
- They are autistic
- They have no intrusive thoughts
- They are lying
Or they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!
Sometimes I am shocked at how poorly the female mind grapples with things like this. Like, I've heard my wife have abhorrent conversations with her best friend on the phone that she absolutely does not mean. And yet when confronted with someone else having had a similar conversation, she cannot relate. How horrible. Clutch the pearls!
I remember when Trump's Hollywood Access tape leaked, and she really was in the grips of the "My father would never say something like that" propaganda that was going around. I had to gently remind her that her father served in the military. No effect. I went further, that he's told the same joke a dozen times about telling a waitress she "gave good head" and offending her when she served him a beer with the perfect amount of head on it. That had some slight effect. Still, those pearls were clutched, if slightly less hard.
Don't tease me with AOC having her hands and head nailed to the Senate podium.
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