CerebralHawks

Flags on Labour Day tells me the people don’t know the difference between Labour Day, which is in September, and Memorial Day, which is in May.

Memorial Day is not a day for celebration, it’s a day for paying respect to the ultimate sacrifice made by soldiers. Labour Day is about celebrating labour, i.e. workers. Of course most people do celebrate both days, especially if they have the day off of work, but grilling burgers on Memorial Day and knowing the meaning behind the day is not as egregious, IMO, as waving military flags on Labour Day. Just sounds like someone is confused or not educated.

I read that book. I don’t remember a single thing about it.

I still recommend it, albeit begrudgingly, to people who might like it. I think it was better than I received it. Maybe I shouldn’t have just listened to the audiobook, but rather, read it at my own pace and re-read certain paragraphs, rather than having them read to me one after the other. Because there was something more in that text. Some books are better in audio, and some are better in text. I can’t imagine an audiobook exists of House of Leaves, but it wouldn’t surprise me. So, maybe one day I’ll go back and actually read This is How You Lose the Time War, because it probably deserved more attention paid to it, and it probably deserves a second look.

Clarification: Most Android users don’t use custom firmware (“ROM”). OEM means the company that makes your phone. All the major ones use Google Play Services. Nothing and OnePlus might be exceptions as those are known for using custom firmware that is more private. Also, Pixel phones running GrapheneOS ostensibly do not include Google Play Services. But Pixel phones don’t ship with GrapheneOS. You have to add that yourself by unlocking the bootloader (available deep in the settings, wipes the phone), and manually flashing the custom firmware (CFW or “ROM”) to the phone.

No.

That said, the whole reason Android exists today is because Google was getting a lot of personal data from Gmail, but when they saw Andy Rubin’s invention, they realised they could get a lot more personal data with a phone, so they bought Android from him.

Android collects a lot of data (as that is its primary purpose for Google), but it doesn’t upload everything you say. It — or, more accurately, Google Play Services (and possibly other services) do other underhanded things to exfiltrate your data from the device back to Google. Like if you try to use an ad blocker, it will use DNS filtering to tunnel around the ad blocker for its own uses.

The wildest thing is, Google successfully ran an ad campaign convincing people their way was the right way and that Apple’s way of doing things was wrong. That’s a big part of why Apple is trying to be more like Google. They’re certainly not hurting for money, but they see people willingly accepting this sort of thing, so they’re realising more and more how much money they’re leaving on the table. Imagine if it had gone the other way, if more people rejected Google and its data collecting practices. We’d probably be paying more for some things since we’re not (also) the product, but more companies would be putting privacy first. Because that’s what the consumers would be demanding. But no, we have people out there, a metric fuck ton of them, saying privacy is negotiable. So, companies are negotiating with privacy — mostly against it.

Ask a chatbot? Maybe something like ChatGPT might be able to help.

I’m kind of loathe to recommend AI, but this might be a place where it could help.

Years ago, I remembered an episode I saw at a friend’s house. Not of Fringe. I didn’t know what the show was. We were just watching it while other things were going on. I asked all over Reddit and no one seemed to know what it was. Years later I was watching Justified with my wife and we just happened upon the episode (season 2, episode 1). I had described it nearly perfectly, with a couple minor things slightly off. The funny thing was, it was/is cool to say you liked Justified, but none of the people trying to sell the show to others could identify that episode. Maybe they stopped with the first season? It was weird.

Humans are a flawed bunch. It has been documented that people are afraid to answer a question they don’t know they answer to. Like “I don’t know” is worse than dropping the N word or the R word. Cunningham’s Law is an actual thing where it’s been proven that if you don’t know the answer to a question, asking it will get far fewer responses than stating the incorrect answer confidently. Almost as much as people are afraid to admit what they do not know, people love “getting one over” on someone, even if it’s a total stranger. Just like, “I know this thing, and rather than answer your question asked in good faith, I’m going to ignore that and come over to where you confidently stated the wrong thing, and I’m going to prove you wrong, and other people I don’t know are going to see that I am better than you.” Both people could have saved half their energy by the “smarter” person just answering the question in the first place. But again, state the wrong thing confidently and people will come out of the woodwork to “take you down a peg”.

An AI isn’t going to have any of those problems. It’s gonna look at what you said and scan a metric fuck ton of synopses and it’s going to get you an answer. And some jackass is going to tell you “you’re the reason RAM and SSDs cost so much now,” but that same person wasn’t trying to help you solve your problem, because helping you isn’t the goal, taking you down, is. So, remove the human from the equation. Get your answer, and keep it moving.

…As for me, I watched Fringe, but I don’t remember jack shit about it. It was enjoyable to watch though. There’s another one people liked about as much, with that guy from LOST, who played Ben Linus up there. Nerdy guy with the glasses. I think it also dealt with other worlds. Then there were shows like The 4400. Many others I don’t remember. I think The Leftovers was the best of these, by far. I wish I could help. What I will tell you is that I don’t know. Because the neat thing about a logical fallacy is, once you see how it works, it’s piss easy to navigate around it.

People also use Facebook, WhatsApp, Windows, and Android.

I think it’s a choice. Let people make it.

My wife doesn’t like any of the terms and would rather not be called by her size.

I do it anyway.

I’ve never heard of the word you’re referring to being a slur, and only won’t post it out of respect for the possibility that someone might take it that way. “Treat others how they would like to be treated” and all that.

Then it was “little person,” but that was always kinda demeaning.

Dwarfism is the medical term, but then again “the R word” is a scientific term to mean “to slow the flow of” and we’re definitely not allowed to say that. Remember when the Black Eyed Peas nearly got canceled for the song that is now known as Let’s Get it Started? Never mind that the original song was not very good, in addition to being in poor taste. Anyway, as it turns out, “the scientific term” isn’t always the most friendly term to use for marginalised groups.

The most modern way of addressing any disability or difference is to start with the person, so, that is to say, “person with dwarfism.” But, by the same token, “person who is little” just seems demeaning. So, we loop back to my first statement. From which, inevitably, is followed by my second — but, that’s my wife. Someone else? I’d just call them by their name.

I like Nolan for sci-fi/fantasy, but I didn’t care for his Batman movies. Watched every one, they bored me. I liked the first two with Michael Keaton and the one with Val Kilmer, though I was pretty young when they came out and they left an impression. Rose coloured glasses and all that. I don’t really watch them now but I remember them being good.

DC stuff in general just bores me, though I did like last year’s Superman. My problem with Superman is that only a fake green rock from a planet that does not exist (so far as we know) is his one weakness, and the film opens with him having gotten his ass kicked. Didn’t love it but thought it was decent. I thought I liked Batman more, but those are boring to me, too.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

It’s been a decade since I switched to iPhone for my daily driver. I still have an Android phone as backup. I had an HTC last, and a Samsung before that, so yeah, my Motorola was before that. My wife had one more recently. Actually, she had the same one I did, then used two more for some reason (habit?). They were all pretty shit phones. All before the acquisition.

I know a guy who worked for Lenovo. Said they treated him good. As for Motorola, they kinda stopped doing phones after so many shit ones. I’m kinda glad they’re back, but I wouldn’t trust them, myself. As an iPhone guy who still likes Android, I’d mainly be looking at Samsung (it’s what I have now, it’s an old S10 that still rocks), though the Nothing 6+ or 6S or whatever it’s called, in green, is VERY tempting — if I needed a phone now, it’s what I would get. Even over another iPhone.

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Take a shower and wash the pants in the shower. Shit is water-soluble, that is to say it can dissolve in water. I think there may be some oil in it but it soups wash out. What doesn’t go down the shower drain, move by hand to the toilet and wash your hands.

Now you have wet pants. In the northern hemisphere it’s still summer, so they should dry relatively quickly outside. Play it off somehow. Be the guy or gal who fell in the pool.

All kids are potentially in danger from any stranger, regardless of whether they’re an RSO. Assume there is a danger until proven otherwise.

Sex offender information is public information in most places. The local newspaper is charging you for their journalism and reporting, but their source is free, public information you yourself can access.

You can be placed on the sex offender registry for public urination. RSO doesn’t mean they’re a paedophile. But until proven otherwise, keep a close eye on your kids.

Motorola CFW support was spotty in the past, when they were an American company. Now they are part of Lenovo (? Not sure if they still are) so maybe they do things differently now. They always had decent hardware, and their Android forks were very minimal later on (in their independent time; before they were further from AOSP) and ran pretty good for the most part. But they did not like to update their phones. Motorola phones often shipped with the Android version they would EOL on. Motorola used to be a piss-poor choice for modding back then.

I expect better from them now, but I don’t predict it.

Also, I realise the issue is with Pixel, not Graphene. Still, I would be upset if I bought a Pixel 11 planning to de-Google it.

This was the problem I had with custom firmware back when I modded Android phones — you never knew if the custom firmware developers/packagers were even going to support your phone until after you bought it.

One phone was widely supported? So you buy the next one and no one wants to support it for whatever reason. One developer says “if you buy me one I will develop for it” thinking no one actually will, and when the community actually does so, he flips it on Swappa and you never hear from him again. Shit like that.

But if you’ll pay iPhone 17 Pro prices for an iPhone 11 powered phone that comes with personal data collection out the wazoo, you’ll probably pony up for the more expensive Motorola phone coming out that they’ve (tentatively?) committed to.

I am embarrassed that, even after looking right at your username, I still assume you meant you wanted me to click on it (e.g. view your history). I should turn in my Dark City card.

But nah… I wanna say I’ve been there but I just can’t remember… I think it’s out past the… no… you go out to… you know, I just don’t remember how to get there.

Does that date fall on a Thursday? If so, it’s not relevant — the concept literally means last Thursday. That our memories are less than a week old for whatever reason.

I’m not a truther for any wild theory… I just think it’s a neat thought experiment.

From my perspective, they’re about equal. As someone who doesn’t know either, I would tackle Italian first. Both (as well as Spanish) are based on Latin, so learning one should help you learn the other. I think there are more French speakers in the world, though, but since Italian and Spanish are (or at least seem) closer, learning Italian might also help with Spanish learning. With regards to LGBTQ+, I think France is a bit more liberal than Italy, but I’m really not sure.

I know next to no French OR Italian. I dabble in Japanese, Spanish, and German (in addition to English and bad English), but I only know ~50 words in each. A bit less in German. I am by no means multilingual, but I will greet people in four or five different languages just to be a smartass.

Keep on keepin’ on, I suppose. There’s a concept known as Last Thursdayism that this is similar to. It says that everything since last Thursday (an arbitrary day of the week, possibly referring to the book The Man Who Was Thursday more than Thor, the namesake of the day) is real, and everything before that is implanted memory. The movie Dark City explores this concept.

Wikipedia used to have a whole article on it, but they’ve since taken it down and integrated it with something else and added some bizarre claims to it. It’s now part of an article on rejecting the concept of the Earth being billions of years old. I’m not even mad, it wasn’t a real school of thought to start with, but they’re trying to make it sound even more crazy now (they added that “left-handedness is a sin” as if that has anything to do with any of this). So, not gonna link it. They used to go into some detail about how people have justified it. I suppose due to the rise in flat earther theory, they don’t want to lend any credence to any batshit insane theories, even though most of us were just pointing them out for funsies.

So, being that Dark City is one of my favourite movies and I’ve considered that, which is very similar… I feel like there isn’t much you can do. Worse, anything you do outside the norm would be recorded as some kind of success by the people running the experiment.

The originals were okay. Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare II were legendary FPS games with their own fictional story, but not really a whole lotta bullshit outside of that. Was it propaganda for/against certain countries? Sure. But if you can think for yourself (i.e. you’re not swayed by a fictional story), they were pretty good games. Even Black Ops was a lot of fun.

I had GamePass for a little while and decided to try the newest Call of Duty. I forget which one. The installation was confusing AF even on Xbox. Then when I went in, I could not find the actual game beyond the multiplayer and the ads. I actually had to search the Internet for how to start the game. I’d ask “how is this not obvious?” but the ads and the monetisation had become the whole point of the game. The game was not free, but it was effectively competing with Fortnite, so it was up to the same bullshit. At least with Fortnite, I have no problem getting into the standard Battle Royale match. (I know everybody loves to hate on Fortnite, but I’m an old school Unreal Tournament player, and Fortnite moves the same, due to it being the same engine… so, naturally, I am very good at it, and it’s fun to school the new generation from time to time.)

When I finally got into the game, I thought it was okay at first. We did a prison break and that was fun. Like what I remember from back in the day, it was like an interactive movie. Then I switched to a female character (awesome! representation!), but after a while, I couldn’t figure out where to go. The instructions were unclear, it wasn’t obvious, and the Internet was no help. It was like nobody really cares about the single player experience, it’s all about online now.

With the old ones, it was always very clear what they wanted you to do, and if you had the patience (think All Ghillied Up from Modern Warfare, where you have to crawl on your hands and knees between the marching soldiers and tanks, super slow, to not get caught), you were gonna get through it. Might take a try or two, but you can take all the tries you need. There was no “just run around this big open map until you figure it out”. The gameplay was tighter back then, and, honestly, for a guy who started with Pong/2600, Xbox 360 era games still look good to me. I don’t mind XB1/Series graphics (I’m sitting on my The Witcher 3 playthrough until the remaster comes out, since it’s a free update), but 360 was perfectly fine. It’s not “warts and all” to me; I genuinely think 360/PS3 era games looked great. And, with the RAMmageddon going on, remember that the Xbox 360 had no system RAM whatsoever — the system shared the 512MB of graphics memory from the GPU. (It was also a tri-core IBM PowerPC, so, basically a Mac from back then.) And the PS3 was a bit weaker in some regards and more powerful in others (IIRC it had a bunch of speciality chips that were hard to code for, but once mastered, made it the superior console to an experienced developer). Anyway, my Mac from 2022-2023 can basically play all PS3 games nearly flawlessly, and so can, I imagine, most decent (not even gaming) PCs, so… maybe we should take a closer look at that generation for our gaming.