millie

I like USB C as a connector cable, but using it as a charger cable for bigger devices just seems like a way to sell more incredibly flimsy disposable cables.

Like, I've had a few of the same power cables for PCs and monitors since the early 00s. I still have a few AC cables from the 90s lying around and the ones I've tested all still work. USB cables barely last a couple of years unless they're extra burly and mostly stationary. Like, I've got a couple of decent USB cables connected to my computer that I've had for a couple of years now, but that's because they don't move. When it comes to car charger cables for my phone, I've probably gone through a dozen in some years. They just don't last when you're moving them around all the time.

For something as portable as an e-bike, this seems like the past to a lot of e-waste. Which is kind of counter to the purpose of the device.

That's before even considering how flimsy the ports themselves are. I've got a nice expensive mechanical keyboard sitting around as a useless brick because I dropped it once and the usb port got busted. Imagine how often they'd need to be fixed on bikes. Getting knocked around is literally part of normal use.

Are you really fully unaware of incels, the manosphere, and the alt-right pipeline? This shit is all over social media.

There's a strong encouragement for men to fall into this "redpill" philosophy that casts everyone who doesn't look like them, especially anyone who ends up on the less-privileged end of any measure of intersectional privilege, as an aggressor attempting to steal their place in society and "replace" them.

Have you heard anyone complaining about how you can't make jokes anymore or can't compliment women anymore? They're echoing a hallucination of white male oppression by queer feminist socialists. In response they elected Trump and spend their days rumbling around in their massive coal-rolling pickup trucks that have never seen a speck of dirt or a heavier load than a few groceries or maybe a couch.

This seems to show that coconut milk is better and uses barely any water. Also, it's coconut milk, which is lovely.

I would imagine it's a combination of factors. Driver stupidity is probably one of them, but there's no reason for insurance companies not to take increased vandalism into account.

But also, can you imagine the sheer psychological discomfort that must come with driving a Tesla at this point? Seeing videos of Teslas on fire, hearing people shout "swastidumpster" and "fucking nazi" at you when you drive down the street. Look at how defensive some of these people are in videos and on social media where you literally see them openly threatening people. Their stress levels behind the wheel must be through the roof. That has got to affect their driving.

AI is great for learning a language, partly because it's the right combination of useful and stupid.

It's familiar with the language in a way that would take some serious time to attain, but it also hallucinates things that don't exist and its solution to debugging something often ends up being literally just changing variable names or doing the same wrong things in different ways. But seeing what works and what doesn't and catching it when it's spiraling is a pretty good learning experience. You can get a project rolling while you're learning how to implement what you want to do without spending weeks or months wondering how. It's great for filling gaps and giving enough context to start understanding how a language works by sheer immersion, especially if the application of that language comes robust debugging built in.

I've been using it to help me learn and implement GDscript while I'm working on my game and it's been incredibly helpful. Stuff that would have taken weeks of wading through YouTube tutorials and banging my head against complex concepts and math that I just don't have I can instead work my way through in days or even hours.

Gradually I'm getting more and more familiar with how the language works by doing the thing, and when it screws up and doesn't know what it's talking about I can see that in Godot's debugging and in the actual execution of the code in-game. For a solo indie dev who's doing all the art, writing, and music myself, having a tool to help me move my codebase forward while I learn has been pretty great. It also means that I can put systems in place that are relevant to the project so my modding partner who doesn't know GDScript yet has something relevant to look at and learn from by looking through the project's git.

But if I knew nothing about programming? If I wasn't learning enough to fix its mistakes and sometimes abandon it entirely to find solutions to things it can't figure out? I'd be making no progress or completely changing the scope of the game to make it a cookie cutter copy of the tutorials the AI is trained on.

Vibe coding is complete nonsense. You still need a competent designer who's at least in the process of learning the context of the language they're working with or your output is going to be complete garbage. And if you're working in a medium that doesn't have robust built-in debugging? Good luck even identifying what it's doing wrong if you're not familiar with the language yourself. Hell, good luck getting it to make anything complex if you have multiple systems to consider and can't bridge the gaps yourself.

Corpo idiots going all in on "vibe coding" are literally just going to do indies a favor by churning out unworkable garbage that anyone who puts the effort in will be able to easily shine in comparison to.

It's a good teacher, though, and a decent assistant.

Fossil is bad. Fossil is bad! I said it first. Way back when nobody knew. I knew. I knew all along. But you gotta play it smart. Can't show your cards. Not a lot of people know about fossil, but I always knew. Ask the ones who know and they'll tell you. A lot of people will say I didn't know. A lot of people will say I said to drill. Never said it. I always knew. I always know.

Last week there was a day when the AQI went over 50. I have asthma and noticed I was having trouble breathing. It was burning my eyes and giving me a headache and a stomach ache. I ended up spending most of the day inside, and if it had even been a little bit worse I would have just called out. A mask didn't really help. You could see a smoky haze in the clouds, obscuring the mountains a bit, and even hanging in some of the bigger fields.

That's at 50. The highest I've seen it is somewhere around like 120 to 140, which makes my breathing bad enough that I just seal up my room, crank my carbon filter and air purifier, and stay inside until it passes.

Then I look at the AQI maps and scroll over to India and China. Yikes.

I can't imagine what 400 must be like. I don't think I'd survive. I would never be able to go outside.

Is that even a meaningful amount of money to Chevron? These lawsuits need to start being measured in percentages of the company's value rather than fixed dollar amounts. Ruin a coastline? We're taking at least 20% of your company.

Oh no! Not our capitalism! Where will we get all our poverty?!?!

They're not pointing out existing resources, though. They're just vaguely pointing at the concept of resources. This is literally less helpful than telling someone to get good.

What would actually be helpful is pointing out resources that do exist, but also acknowledging that not all of these resources are going to be accessible. Food stamps are great. There's even half-decent rental assistance in some places, but the wait lists for it tend to be extremely long and often depend on you already having lost your current place to live.

What to me is frustrating and absurd is that this is some feel-good bullshit that doesn't help anyone. It vaguely promotes the idea of going out and helping people, but the people who post this stuff aren't willing to help the people who show up in the threads when they post it. These threads are also ineffective at connecting people who want to help with people they can actually help, case in point.

They are literally anti-praxis. It's a way to do nothing and feel like you've done something, which dissipates your feeling of having a need to do something. The person who posted this clearly feels like it's helping, or they wouldn't have posted it. It's a substitute for actually pointing people at resources or encouraging anyone to help specific people.

But if you're going to sit here and tell me that if I need help, just go accept the help? And not provide anything beyond the concept that help exists somewhere? That is utterly useless. If you want to say there's help, either link to that help or be that help.

Sure, there are people who don't take the help that exists, but there are far more people for whom the help that exists is utterly insufficient to help them meet their needs. It won't keep a roof over their heads, it won't keep them in stable employment, and it won't protect them from the hateful people who are actively organizing to make things worse. We live in a world where people on visas are being pulled off the streets by plain-clothes ICE agents who don't show badges, ushered into unmarked SUVs, and quickly whisked away to distant locations. We live in a world where people are being fired from their jobs because someone thought they were trans and harassed them in a bathroom, and where people are being arrested and thrown into prisons that don't match their gender because of which bathroom they used.

People who hate us and want us to suffer are actively organizing to do it. They're not talking about it, they're not pretending that it's possible, they're doing it. And if the people with the capability of helping don't help? The people who have stable jobs and disposable income and literally zero threat to their personal well-being? If the best they can muster is fucking hopes and prayers? That's not going to be enough to turn the tide against the people who want to hurt us.

Verbal support isn't enough when the forces of oppression and bigotry are taking actual action. It requires material support. This is not that.

Nice flowchart. I will ask, as I asked last time I saw something like this posted: where is this elusive "help" I'm supposed to let someone give me?

This shit is so patronizing. Oh, are you in trouble? Just let someone help! Of course, when the person who posts things like this is asked where this help is supposed to come from, they have no answer. Because this is just you feeling good about doing literally nothing.

This is not praxis.

You want to help? Leave the fucking flow chart on your hard drive and offer a trans woman a job. Offer someone who's afraid of being targeted by ICE a safe place to stay. Do something. Because this? Putting it on people who need help to just "let" people who aren't lining up to help help them? It's bullshit. You know it's bullshit.

So unless you've got some remote work for me or want to pay my rent, save it.