Saint Luigi deliver us from villains like Facebook

Spotify kind of sucks. I’ve been buying music from the musicians (mostly via Bandcamp) for years. Buying one album a month for like $8 means is cheaper than a subscription, and I now have a huge library of music.

I guess riots break out all around the world?

I feel like this idea that people are just going to riot and do mass violence is some right wing fear.

Most people, most of the time, are pretty social cooperative creatures.

I had an issue with installing mint. Never figured it out. Got the older LTS and it worked fine though. Maybe try a different version?

I don’t think I’ve ever bought a microtransaction or cosmetic. I’m doing my part!

*Ok, i think I paid like $5 into warframe after 200 hours, and I used some fake money from google surveys on pokemon go, so I’m not entirely without sin.

But it still spooked Wall Street, as parent company Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s shares plummeted as much as 10% following the news.

I think our economy might be predicated entirely on stupid.

Also, $80 is a lot when typical people’s buying power is decreasing. I think like half of americans can’t tank a $500 surprise bill, and they want people to blow nearly 20% of that on a video game? Fuck off, capitalists.

Funny, because when I go to the suburbs or other sparsely populated areas, walking around without anybody else feels dystopian. Feels like a post-apocalyptic setting, where everyone else got taken by aliens or plague or something.

I won’t use a urinal unless it’s an emergency and no other options are available. They’re uncomfortable.

I remember some bar I was at once only had urinals, and I was like “what do you do if you gotta shit??”. Apparently the bathroom on the bottom floor had full stalls, but still. Yuck.

Parents often take time off from work to grieve. Classes are often disrupted when a student dies abruptly. This isn’t Skyrim where someone dies and forty seconds later it’s “Must be hearing things”. Plus, as I said, letting the kid die means the resources spend raising and educating them are wasted.

My point is that “oh if he dies it only affects the family” is stupid.

If I’m on my land I’m gonna do whatever I want. I’ll get drunk and do donuts on my lawn. Maybe I’ll set off 10 pounds of tannerite in my backyard because that’s what people do in the middle of nowhere.

[mean words] Edit: I take that back. I’m hangry. I don’t like rugged individualism but that was uncalled for

Should my mom not have allowed me to practice my drums in the barn because the audio was escaping the property and the neighbors could hear faint drumming in the middle of the day sometimes?

Non sequitur.

If it’s on private property who gives a shit. If your idiot son wants to build a structurally questionable tree house and the parents don’t do anything about it and he dies that’s on them.

it’s on all of us, because all the money and effort that went into educating and raising that kid is wasted. Plus the rippling effects outward from everyone who knew the kid grieving.

Also the more exceptions you have to rules, the more confusing it is and the more likely people are going to fuck it up.

“Always wear a hardhat on site” - easy. simple. minimal room for interpretation.

“Always wear a hardhat on site when any of the following conditions are true: [a, b, c, d] unless [e, f]” is going to lead to errors, and then people will get hurt.

People aren’t that smart. Especially when they’re not motivated, or distracted.

People are emotional creatures. They feel a thing, and then pick evidence that supports it and discard evidence that doesn’t.

We all do this to some extent- like when people root for a local sports team that’s kind of bad, or when someone likes a movie that’s unpopular. They’ll ignore stuff like a 10 game losing streak or a large plot hole, and focus on the one time they hit a grand slam, or that one quotable scene.

It’s mostly harmless when we’re talking about small stuff, but when it’s about history or social policy it’s a problem.

It’s not always tourists but stopping in unexpected places is a common irritation in NYC. Like, they’re walking on the sidewalk and just stop, and mess up the flow of foot traffic. Maybe to look at their map or to gawk at something. It’s extra annoying and a little dangerous when it’s on the stairs

Renting games and music seems like a bad idea to me, but I am in the minority. Buy a new album once a month for $8, after a year I have 12 albums. Pay that to spotify and I have nothing.

Gamepass is priced more aggressively at $12/mo, but I assume it’s a loss so they can eventually raise prices. Even so, if I buy a new somewhat discounted game for $36 every three months, after a year I have four games. With gamepass, I’m pretty sure I end up with nothing.

But I don’t think humans are known for long term thinking.

Magical Diary is a fun little game about being a teenage girl that goes to wizard school. There’s 2 but I only played one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/211340/Magical_Diary_Horse_Hall/

My time at Portia and my time at Sand Rock are pretty chill. They’re kind of like Stardew but 3d, and I liked them more. It has some fighting but it’s very PG cartoon-ish. It has a major mechanic where you just hang out with the NPCs, or go on dates with them. The second game, sand rock, is better but they’re both good: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084600/My_Time_at_Sandrock/

On the other hand, we wouldn’t have climate collapse and microplastics.

I ran linux mint for a couple months. It was nice. Very few problems.

Unfortunately, when I tried to install it on this newer desktop it was a shit-show. No wifi or ethernet, no hdmi, it crashed when I tried to play elden ring. I should try another distribution, but I was so distressed after two days I just rolled back. The people in the mint discord were helpful, though, and got some of the problems fixed.

Windows sucks though.

There are many things wrong with the laws in the US. I’m not even sure where I’d start

But the other bigger problem is enforcement. Some people do a murder and get a nationwide search. Others the victims family get a “lol can’t help you”.

Recommend reading “the new Jim Crow” for one look at one part of this.

Looks pretty typical to me (longtime nyc resident). It’s rare to see trash, and graffiti is pretty uncommon. People sometimes think the subway is still like The Warriors where it’s just a wall of spraypaint, but not so much.

Software engineer.

Morning meeting that’s supposed to just be “what you did yesterday, what you’ll do today, and if you need help”. People fuck that up and go off on tangents. What should be a ten minute meeting takes 30.

Product owners at some point told you what the features to work on this month will be. For example, we need to add the ability for some reasons to bulk delete appointments.

Chat with product and other engineers about what that entails. Product probably won’t give complete, clear, requirements so you need to pull it out of them. (Hard delete or soft delete? Do you need an audit log? Are you sure with no take-backs you don’t need an undo? Do you want to notify anyone when it’s deleted? One email per request or per event? Do you have designs for that email? No? Of course not. And what do you want the UI to look like? If I “just put a button somewhere” we both know you won’t like it. Give me details or that blank check in writing.)

At some point sit down and make code changes to do the thing. Change the backend server code to accept your new request. Write automated tests. Change the frontend to make the request. Write more tests. Manually bang on it. Probably realize some requirements were missed (you guys know there’s a permissions system, right? I hooked this up to the existing can-delete permission. What do you mean CS doesn’t use permissions? You made them all superusers??)

Manually bang on it a little. Deploy it to dev or some non-production environment. Have product and other stakeholders look at it and sign off. Probably get feedback and either implement it, or convince them to do it “later” (or: never, because they’ll forget and it’s not actually important).

Get code approval from other engineers. Make changes as needed.

Merge and deploy. Verify in production.

Meanwhile, do code reviews for other people’s work. Context switch. Feels bad. Other guy is working on a progress report tool that’s in a whole other part of the code, so every time you look at it it’s a shifting of brain gears.

Also look at dependabot for libraries that need updating. Read release notes. Make changes if needed. Test. Pray.

Also periodic meetings to go over work in the backlog. A meeting to discuss how the team is doing that usually doesn’t produce results, but can be a vent session.

I imagine from the product owner it’s something like:

Get a mess of contradictory ideas from leadership. Try to figure out what they actually want and in what order. Manage their emotions because they have all the power and don’t like being told no or otherwise feeling bad.

Talk to customers and other users. Try to figure out what they want. They say things like “make it go faster” or “can you make the map bigger?”. There’s no map on the website.

Talk to engineering. They ask so many questions. Why can’t they just do the thing? They’re always going on about stuff that doesn’t seem important (like security and permissions and maintainability). This needs to go out Friday because the CEO wants it out.

Write tickets (a short document describing work to be done). People don’t read them. Or maybe don’t finish writing them, and leave a vague “as a user I want to be notified about changes to my project”, without specifying any details. (Notified how, Ryan??)

I don’t know what else they do.

Startups are a mess. Anyone who says they want to run the government like a startup should be banished from the land.