Florida? NW here.

I’m on my 13th or so read of Blindsight. Think I’ve unpacked it all, finally. I feel like a fruitcake having read it and *Echopraxia" so many times, but damn they’re deep.

Not a fan of all of Watt’s novels, but those two feel like he packed something to think about into nearly every single sentence. Easy read if you want to go fast, or, take your time and dig in. Never read a novel(s) that could go both ways.

Fuck me. Just talking about it is getting me hype for another run.

Blindsight:

"I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.

To this day, I still don’t know what went wrong.”

Echopraxia:

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

Third run through Discworld in the past 2 years. My god, been trying to think how to explain to my best friend. I lack the words.

On my third pass right now. Skipped a couple of the first novels, but I love the original order. Got feels for all the series, but I like the perfect way he kept them mixed up.

“Oh shit! Another witches book!”

“Back to the Watch! NICE!”

“Rincewind? Hell with it, those are all funny as hell.”

The Bobiverse recommendations seem to go hand in hand with Murderbot. Read both series back to back, didn’t know what I was missing.

I want my pound of fucking flesh.

Gillian Anderson may get my view, but in any case I’m not going to the theater.

a reality check for entrepreneurs

Yes. You gotta grind like hell to start a seriously profitable company. Had drinks at our company’s open house with a client who owned 3 or 4 small construction related businesses.

“You have to bust your ass for about 2-2.5 years to get a business rolling, then it mostly takes care of itself.”

Hell are you on about? Interviews are for both parties to get to know one another. Just nailed one last week where both of us were more interested in company culture and personality fit than technical expertise. Offer comes Monday. $90K.

FFS, y’all need to grow the fuck up and realize the employers aren’t holding all the cards. Been at Lowe’s for 3-months. Worked hard, kicked ass, learned, already got a promotion. I’ve moved up, or at least laterally, to a better position in every job within 6-months, tops. And I’ve had loads of jobs.

Or, you can just turtle up, cry that’s it’s all hopeless and unfair. How’s that working out guys?

I have a few.

This is how my tech interview went this week. For every question the panel had I returned a battle story. They were laughing and serious at the same time. Bagged it!

But… HR stuck their nose in and wants their guy interviewed. So now I have to wait a week for them to (hopefully) say, “Thanks but we’re going with Shalafi71.”

Chemtrails are hardly a political thing, c’mon. Though being uneducated and thinking science is akin to religion is a conservative thing.

You have the correct term, but that’s not exactly how it works. At my last job the CEO told the board that he intended to lose money building our staff, skills and core software products. They applauded him. (Oops, we made a profit on those years anyway, but the point stands.)

Fiduciary responsibility mainly means they have to make a good faith effort to protect and grow company finances. They have no obligation to drive the line up quarterly.

I’m one! Honestly don’t get the hate. There was a comment the other day that made me think the haters are phone users. Shorts work fine on a 47" TV, for me. Hate that you can’t turn the giant captions off on many videos, but the people I follow usually don’t do that.

For me, shorts are a thing I can scroll past once and be done. Is it painful on a phone for some reason?

Meh, agreed and disagreed. A few 50lb. bags of corn and rice go a long way. A 5lb. bag of potatoes can go forever. Well, corn too I guess.

But the main catch is that you have to have land to grow it on. My wife and I are tiny and our yard is pretty big, but I doubt we could feed ourselves off it. We’re fortunate to have a couple of acres of part swamp, put “uplands” in Florida. It would be a daily chore to boil and process water though.

Here’s something survivalists haven’t clued in on. They figure .22 rifle and 20-gauge shotgun can get all the small game they like. Add in an AR-15, or better yet, a real hunting rifle, and game like deer seems abundant.

I spend more time in the wilds than any 20 random lemmings put together. There ain’t that much game to be had folks, and what little there is would be 100% wiped within a week of locals facing food shortages, let alone starvation. Yes, even the coyotes would be food, not a single water moccasin would survive. We’d be straining the swamp water for minnows.

Since I was born we’ve lost 74% of the animals on this planet. I’ve seen it, lived it. The best prepared are going vegan in a fucking hurry.

Ah! Old temporally vs. old culturally. Thoughtful take!

Let me add 12 Angry Men to that list.

Had no desire to watch it, but people on reddit were flipping over it. Put it on late, figured I’d get to bed for work the next day. Nope. Glued to the screen for every second of it. You can feel the heat and physical closeness of the single room it takes place in.

Didn’t think my Filipino wife would like it, maybe wouldn’t get the English. Nope. She was perfectly still absorbing it all.

Only thing that feels out of place is the old-timey, fast-talking 50s feel from some characters. OTOH, you could re-shoot the whole thing, almost word for word, and it would still be a masterpiece. LOL, and make an excuse for a borked AC unit.

One would hope that a restaurant inspector could discern between frost and mold.

Don’t sleep on “Tiffany”!

Used Keeper at my last gig. Was pretty happy with it all in all. Lacking some admin features, rock and roll support. Not too pricey, but it is per-user/per-month. Played nicely with our Google auth.