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Joined 9 days ago
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Cake day: October 24th, 2026

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  • Then you get the folks coming out of the woodwork going “herp derp it’s really simple, you just have to buy a domain, then set up all these records, then you line up all eleven chaos crystals on the altar of despair and chant the forbidden words, then you…”

    I think saying “It’s really simple” is actually terrible from a pedagogical point of view. It just makes the learner go “Well I guess I’m dumb because I don’t get such a simple concept.” I get people saying this are trying to be reassuring, but it should be remembered that pretty much anything is simple if you do it a million times. I’m sure brain surgery is simple for a brain surgeon, but I’m not a brain surgeon. I think it’s better to say "This is a long process with a lot of moving parts, but let’s take a breath and tackle it one step at a time and we’ll get through it. Sorry not ranting at OP, I just see this attitude all the time in IT and it bugs me.

    I career changed into IT years after college, so I was already an adult when I entered my first trembling keystrokes into a blank terminal window. I vividly remember how intimidating it all felt.


















  • Art (in the broad sense) is communication. I don’t mean that in the sense of delivering a moral, though of course it can do that too. It hit me recently that that’s why I hate AI generated content, even if it’s indistinguishable from the real thing. There’s no other person at the other end of that communication, no intention to provoke a particular feeling, impart a lesson, or engage with a good story.

    People call it parroting but I think that’s an insult to parrots. Sure a parrot isn’t inquiring about your day when he says “How ya doing?” But he is trying to socialize with you by calling out to you like he would another flock member.





  • Months ago I ran across an interesting trick for quantifying the purchasing power of a wealthy person vs an average person, by scaling down their net worth (or salary IDK I’m not a money-ologist) then compare the thought process you’d undertake when purchasing an item of equivalent value.

    So to get in the mind of a billionaire, lets say you have a net worth of $60K, so divide 60,000/1,000,000,000 to get 0.00006. Now how much does a jet cost, let’s say 1.5 million, just pulling a number out of thin air. Scale that down using the 0.00006 multiplier we get just $90. So a billionaire puts about as much thought into buying a jet as you might purchasing an OK pair of shoes or a water flosser. Not quite trivial but also not something you’re likely to mull over for weeks.

    But let’s reverse that. What’s something you wouldn’t think twice about bying? Maybe a $2 candy bar from a vending machine? Divide that $2 dollars by .00006 to get over $33 thousand dollars. That’s a pretty common yearly gross salary for a lot of skilled workers, and a billionaire treats it with the same care you’d treat with a $2 vending machine purchase.

    I’m into ham radio, which can be a deceptively expensive hobby. Some of the other guys in my local club have a significant amount of money, or at least a lot more money than I do, and that really does effect how they think and act. They’re all perfectly nice and helpful people, but sometimes they give advice that simply isn’t useful for a guy in my tax bracket. “Just get a resonant antenna” or “just put up a tower” they say, as though I have the land for a massive HF antenna with ground radials or a 40 ft tall mast. Bruh I live in a single-family home in an HOA.