I saw a movie last weekend and there was an ad before the film for tiktok. The ad was super “wholesome” and about this dude who I’m sure is legitimately a great guy. He uploads “Dad” lessons on things like tying a tie and whatnot.

I couldn’t help but think that both US political parties were in lock-step just a few years ago that tiktok was a national security threat because it was a vector for foreign propaganda. Now that the American side of tiktok is owned by Larry Ellison, it’s not only no longer a “national security threat,” it’s a wholesome place where you can find trusted information from real people who are doing it just because they care.

It made me wanna puke.

Wherever this thing ends up, it will be begging for the most obvious bit of vandalism ever. One little hole turns it from a “touching tribute” into a real-life kirkpost.

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach”

- Upton Sinclair

“Fuck it, aim for the stomach!”

- canvas contributors

Funny enough, this is the exact reaction of the person from the poop knife story.

Kinda sounds like the imperialism has turned inward now. We should have a term for that…

Haha, it’s why I added the “we’re white” detail near the beginning. I knew that the waitress confirming 3 separate times would probably sound weird to anyone who’s not white.

I imagine that, at least for Americans, the reason spice is such a macho thing is because our food isn’t very spicy, so it’s more of a novelty for “sometimes” meals instead of just a standard part of our cooking. Our palettes aren’t used to it, and Americans especially will compete over anything. I definitely don’t want to compete with anyone when it comes to spice because I still want to enjoy my food. My ideal spice level is for the dish to be just a bit of a struggle at the end. If I shed a few tears with the last few bites, that was the right amount of spice for me.

As for the poop memes, depending on the meal, my b-hole can detect spice just as accurately as my mouth, and that is… not fun. If your digestive system doesn’t work that way then I envy you. One sufficiently traumatic “ring of fire” experience is enough to get some people to decide that spicy food is not for them. Personally, I’ll risk it if the food is amazing. That’s a problem for future me.

All the “best” conservative arguments are just repurposed left-wing arguments that someone ran ctrl+f and replaced each identifying term with it’s counterpart.

The infuriating part is that the reason it works is because left-wing arguments are fundamentally structured better and are more compelling. At some point in the past, a lefty made that argument to the right-winger and they could feel that they were losing the argument, so they quietly adopted the aesthetic of the same argument and later deployed it like they came up with it themselves.

It’s why every right-wing argument has to construct a fiction where their enemy already holds all the power and has been in control for decades. Everyone can intuitively feel that they’re being scammed by an unfair system that’s rigged for the benefit of the wealthy. All right-wingers have to do is convince people that the structure of society can’t be blamed on the people with the power to shape it. They just need people to blame someone they’ve already been convinced to hate. Immigrants, minorities, queers, and anyone else who would tell them who their actual enemies are.

One time I was eating at an Indian restaurant that had a 5-star heat scale, and then “Indian hot” which was just another level beyond the scale. I ordered 3 star heat and my buddy ordered “Indian hot.” The waitress confirmed 3 times that was what he wanted (we’re white).

I was impressed that my friend was managing his meal pretty well so I asked if I could try it to compare. It wasn’t any hotter than mine. I’m sure the chef took one look at him and was like “I’m not remaking this dish when that white boy can’t eat what he ordered.” Not like my friend would’ve been a dick about it or demanded another dish, but yeah I doubt he could’ve handled the heat level he asked for. In the end, the food was great and my buddy didn’t feel cheated and didn’t destroy his guts.

I read this with the cadence of the “Curved. Swords.” dialog from a Skyrim guard.

I’m getting some subtle optical illusion effect from the thumbnail. It’s a bit like this.

I have a bad feeling that apple is going to release a pair of smart glasses and all of the social momentum of discouraging wearing these things will be lost overnight.

Any content that was produced with the primary intent of making people angry.

Problem is that’s really hard to identify unless you know the original author’s intent. Just because it makes someone angry doesn’t necessarily mean it’s rage bait, but if it was explicitly made with that goal in mind, that’s what I would describe as rage bait.

With all these “IT can see when you connect a USB device” comments, I must ask has anyone ever actually worked for an IT department that made you micromanage/snitch on people like that? It all sounds like a bunch of hypothetical scare mongering to me. Granted, I’ve never been company IT for a fortune 500, but I’ve been outsourced IT for dozens and dozens of other companies all across the spectrum, and the notion that we were monitoring USB devices connected to each workstation is laughable. We monitor for the presence of malicious files, files with names like passwords.txt, and suspicious logins to your account. That’s pretty much it. People change mice all the time. I’ve used an arduino-based jiggler on my own work PC.

Furthermore, and this is the more important detail for myself, I’ve known many many different IT people working at every level and I don’t think I’ve ever met a single one who gives half a shit if employees aren’t being productive. Just don’t break your computer please, and if you do, for the love of God don’t try to fix it yourself. Personally, I’ve never seen any instance of any worker ever trying to circumvent arbitrary productivity metrics with easy workarounds because I’m not a fucking snitch. In IT, we also have bullshit “productivity” targets that are completely decoupled from actual productivity. We get that it’s bullshit. If there’s an IT department out there that’s full of snitches trying to catch workers slacking, that sounds like a genuinely awful place to work.