Notices by Determination G. Schadenfreude (gregly@retro.pizza)

Re the whole “First Lady” “joke” about Elon:

Aside from it being bigoted, I’d argue it’s better to call him “the actual President” because Trump is an insecure paranoid narcissist who will *absolutely* drop him like a hot iron if he thinks Musk has more power and attention than he does.

Keep insinuating that Musk is the true power behind the figurehead that Trump is. Keep tweaking him until he stabs Musk in the back. Sow chaos between the enormous egos of this regime.

@cstross @iinavpov Realistically he’ll ban EVs for all companies except Tesla, granting him an explicit monopoly.

If you watch syndicated reruns of old shows on television, or on a streaming service like PlutoTV, you’re probably missing a ton of the original show’s content.

Take MASH, for example. I never knew just how cut-to-ribbons the show was on TV until I watched the DVDs. Entire plot lines were ripped out to jam more commercials into a half-hour.

Reject so-called “free” services like PlutoTV. They want to bring back advertising hell, except worse because now they can spy on your viewing habits.

@br00t4c @ReticentTurnip oh my god, they monetized the Dead Internet Theory

(ha ha only serious)

For a long time, I’ve attacked myself for not trying to get a Big Tech job — Apple, Google, or Microsoft, mostly. I told myself I was scared to do so, that I’d never be hired, that we couldn’t afford to move. And I’d look with envy on friends who did get those sorts of jobs. Why wasn’t I even trying to do that? What was wrong with me?

1/x

After many years, I think I know the answer: I’ve never wanted that. Yeah, I might have wanted the financial and job security, but the truth is I *hate* Big Tech. I hate what they’ve done to the field I loved for so long. I hate how solid planning, engineering, and pride in one’s work has been supplanted by Agile™️ methodology and quick wins. I hate the constant short-term profit chasing. Plus, the aforementioned financial and job security isn’t even there anymore!

2/x

Our grandparents got jobs that were, in many cases, practically guaranteed for life, and when you retired, you got a pension. Our parents saw that largely evaporate throughout their adulthood. My generation now reaps the whirlwind of a perpetual “gig economy”, where even full-time positions are shockingly unstable, and 50% of the company might be laid off on the whims of some ketamine-addicted rich freak psychopath. This has happened everywhere, but Big Tech drove much of it.

3/x

I AM FUCKING SICK OF LIVING IN “INTERESTING TIMES”

Today I visited American Science and Surplus, which can best be described as “neurodivergence as a shop”. They sell stuff ranging from chemistry glassware to electronics odds and ends, camping gear to novelty toys. You need ball bearings? Vintage analogue meters? Gaffer’s tape? They got it.

The thing is, it IS possible to find that middle ground and manage things… to an extent. You’ll probably never be as “put together”as a neurotypical person, and it will be much harder for you than for them, and they very well might not understand why. But you can get by, and some people manage to thrive despite the difficulty.

I know it feels so hard. I know you just want to sleep, or hide. But don’t give up. You’re worth it. #adhd #neurodivergent #neurodiversity

It is astonishing how quickly stuff can pile up: junk, dishes, laundry, trash… debt… as people with ADHD we are told not to sweat the small stuff, but if we do that we forget about the small stuff, and then it becomes big stuff. And if we *do* focus on the small stuff, it’s easy for it to feel overwhelming and never-ending and anxiety-inducing, making us paranoid and miserable.

Finding a middle ground is so, so hard to do.

#adhd #neurodivergent #neurodiversity

@Urban_Hermit @pseudonym And yet, somehow, if I send a letter to a creditor saying “by reading this letter, you hereby renounce all debts, past, present, and future, owed by the sender to you, irrevocably, in perpetuity,” somehow that doesn’t count!

It’s almost like there’s one set of rules for giant corporations, and another for the rest of us. How odd. 🤔

@ryanhoulihan I’m afraid the best I can do is boost this — we had major layoffs at the start of this year, and are operating on a razor-thin budget until things improve. I really hope things look up for you soon!

@lauren @dangillmor OTA plus TiVos was honestly so wonderful compared to what the streaming landscape has become.

Apple’s “support” of right-to-repair is the textbook definition of “malicious compliance”

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-service-iphone-repair-kit-hands-on

@misty I’ve had the opposite problem recently; I’ve been porting our entire codebase over from Ruby 2.7 to Ruby 3.1, running into tests that are failing, figuring out why it’s failing, and then being baffled as to how the test has *ever* passed because it doesn’t look like it should have.

It just occurred to me that the #InternetArchive is basically the only thing holding back the persistent bit rot that’s destroying the history of the net… so naturally enormous corporations are attempting to destroy them.

Also, one goal of the push towards ubiquitous cloud computing and the War Against General Computing is to watch every single thing we do, and destroy our ability to copy and spread whatever we feel like, instead of what the corporations decide we are “permitted” to partake in.