I don’t care who you are, Black Mirror has an episode that’ll pique your interest. It’s an awesome series, though maybe a little depressing for some. I love the twists and turns, and I really love how technology is the “monkey’s paw” in nearly every story. It’s an awesome series, for sure. The latest season has definitely taken a hard left from the tried and true formula, though. It’s not that I’m disappointed, but I can definitely say that Black Mirror Season Six doesn’t feel like Black Mirror. It feels more like Twilight Zone than Black Mirror, and a part of that is because the latest season seems to have dodged the whole notion of a “Monkey’s Paw”. There are none this go round. In fact, it’s just straight up horror, and there isn’t a technological bent. I can’t exactly go into it without spoilers, but we’re talking classical monsters at this point, rather than the manmade ones.

I’ve read and watched a ton of content on movements like “Quiverfull” and “IBLP” and the rest of the lunatic factories that exist that tend to lean into raising incredibly sheltered children that aren’t at all aware of the enormous world around them. It’s absolutely disgusting and ridiculous to harm children so much by brainwashing them into buying this garbage “Jesus” shit and just ignore the real world around them that doesn’t fit into this narrow and moronic worldview.

I am grateful that I am allowed to be distracted by extraneous stimuli. I don’t sit inside myself and wallow in an endless cascade of self-pity.

I might overcompensate with that. I might do myself an injustice by removing my own needs or desires from an equation in order to “balance” things. On one hand, I want to go to sleep. On the other, sleeping all the time isn’t conducive to experiencing life. So I’ll sign up for something without regard to how much I’ll enjoy it solely to avoid inserting myself as a factor and just sleeping, or doomscrolling, or wasting time on vidya. It’s almost as though my self care is ignoring myself to an extent, and it has been a more than decent coping strategy that has actually made positive impact in my life. I have yet to balance it out in a healthy and meaningful way, but so far the negative has been minimal by comparison.

The first step in problem solving is understanding the problem you’re trying to solve. If you don’t understand the problem, you’re going to have an even more difficult time understanding the solution. It took me a long time to realize that depression is the reverse of what most people would consider normal emotion. If something undesirable happens to a person, especially something very undesirable, it can make that person sad. A loss, a death, all manner of tragedy can cause a person to feel sad. Depression is not a reaction to a situation. Depression is the lens through which you see life. Situations can cause sadness, and sadness can lead to depression, but for those who are chronically depressed it’s how you get to see the world. Things appear less than they are because of depression. It’s reactivity in reverse, and that can be a lot for a person to wrap their head around, especially if you’re not accustomed to it.

Some weeks are chock full of the same day. Like Groundhog’s Day, except time is actually passing. Going through the motions at work, all day, every day. Going through the motions with parenting. Going through the motions with my personal life. Neurotic friend is still neurotic. Nerdy friend is still nerdy. Party friend still wants to party. Novelty is not something the universe is willing to afford me on many levels, it seems.

I figured I’d drop this tip for anyone experiencing choppy playback with Plex and MP4 container files. I’ve experienced it, and I also came across a fix for it. It’s not the greatest fix, but it’s workable, and the result is good.

Apparently the problem is how Plex handles MP4 containers. The best solution is to simply move the video and audio data out of the MP4 container format and into Matroska. You don’t have to transcode anything, just switch container formats and it’ll play just fine. I prefer using mkvmerge for this. It’s a command line utility that runs on damn near anything. It’s a part of the mkvtoolnix library. You can download it here. The command is as simple as mkvmerge -o Output.mkv Input.mp4. The tool itself comes with a ton of features, but absolutely zero of them are necessary if you’re running Plex.

I’ve given up the notion of running a proper blog and have supplanted that idea with a blog, one mainly existing to satisfy my need to put thought to paper. I know, it’s weird. A virtual journal is more appealing to me due to me being a geek. Also, it being public-facing doesn’t really bother me. I don’t feel as though I have to censor myself or steer my verbiage. I feel pretty free to express whatever thought comes to mind.

I watch the clock every day. I count down the hours, the minutes, the seconds, to my freedom. I can’t help it. I didn’t choose to have to donate a vast majority of my labor in exchange for the ability to eke out a meager existence. I suppose my existence isn’t as meager as some, or even many, but nonetheless I’m not a millionaire.

Xi Jinping is a huge piece of shit. I looked up his net worth, and apparently he’s worth around $1.2 billion. How exactly does a political leader accrue $1.2 billion in worth without being incredibly corrupt? Well, that’s the answer, isn’t it? They don’t. He’s just incredibly corrupt. Just like Vladimir Putin. There are clandestine estimates of Putin’s worth that suggest he could be worth as much as $200 billion. That’s orders of magnitude more than you’d expect a government official to ever be capable of, at least without being one of the most corrupt men alive. You can see where I’m going with this, hopefully.