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.

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.

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.

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.

We’re watching this 90 Day Fiancee: Love in Paradise and it’s pretty wild, man. There’s this guy, Sherlon, who got laid for two days in Jamaica. Then the crazy entitled bitch got knocked up. But really you don’t know how goddamn entitled she is until she starts opening her mouth, and then for an hour each week we’re inundated by the outflow of bullshit from her mouth. It’s absolutely stunning. The sheer volume of bullshit spewing from her face is absolutely breathtaking.

It’s Friday. Can’t argue with that. Especially not the Friday before a three day weekend. Productivity isn’t going to be stellar today, that’s for damn sure. It’s already not stellar. Here I am, blogging random thoughts again. It’s okay. It’s my therapy. It keeps my head in a decent enough space to not spend most weeks crying in a corner while at work. This stuff gets so heavy sometimes that it feels like it follows me home, and I end up consuming far more weed than I really would’ve without carrying this shit with me all over the place.

This is the last great web browser. It’s not even perfect, in all fairness. However, you can grab the better version here. Just keep in mind you won’t be watching Netflix on LibreWolf any time soon, due to total lack of widevine implementation. Without widevine, your browser won’t be able to unpack the lame as shit digital rights management protections thrown all over the place these days. Youtube still works just fine, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO Everything you need to know is in the above link. If you labor under any delusion that the CIA has ceased influencing or attempting to influence public opinion, you’d have to be a pretty gullible individual. The challenge anymore is to suss out who is trying to influence what. Who has something to gain from a particular position or idea? What blows my mind is that there are people out there who consider LGBT activism a “corporate agenda”.

It’s not hard to find people defending Putin’s actions in Ukraine, especially people on the conservative end of the spectrum. It’s absolutely bizarre, too, because they’re usually the same people crying about Benghazi and other similar shit basically non-stop. It’s really just out of spite of the left, I think. It seems to be a more common motivation for the right these days, being contrarian just to contrarian. It’s really goddamn moronic, and yet another reason I can’t respect individuals leaning so far past right.

First and foremost, I’m going to get this out of the way: I have zero respect for how the Chinese government represents the Chinese people on the world stage. I’d go so far as to outright say that the Chinese government cannot represent the people of China in any way, shape, or form, because they’re not capable of choosing who represents them in government. Fuck China. That said, I’d like to chat about an article I just saw.

I thought I had an idea for a post, but it turned out to be a fluke. It’s nearly always a fluke. I start with an idea, but the ideas are always fleeting and I’m rarely ever capable of revisiting whatever spawned a post. In fact, I find myself rambling every single time, whether that was ever my intention or not. This in fact is a great example, it’s just a rant about how I rant.

Right after the wedding we jumped on a plane to the Dominican Republic and we’ve been basking in paradise since. We have to go back home tomorrow, and I’m sad. But I’m also excited, as there are new opportunities that await us. It’s funny, though, that we both agree that we’ve already been married for a while, but having said vows and made it official is simply icing on the cake.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Jack Dorsey went ahead and is shooting to start Twitter 2.0 which he has named “Blue Sky”. Apparently he’s outright ripping off the overall federation concept from email, XMPP, and obviously Mastodon. I think where Mastodon has succeeded has been in creating a fully federated echo chamber. Yes, you too can now participate in a heterogeneous echo chamber where you post something you believe in and it is showered in the likes and replies of hundreds of individuals who concur!

Holy shit, I’m getting married, y’all. Like, for real. It’s crazy to think about. It’s right around the corner. I’m insanely excited. I really never thought I’d get married again, and it’s happening in eight days. It’s wild. I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s going to be an amazing time. The honeymoon is going to be amazing. All-inclusive adults only resort with my new wife in the caribbean. I’m so excited.

Does it feel as though time is slipping by at an ever-increasing rate? I think I was cheated out of a weekend. It’s almost as though it didn’t even happen. Man, the more I think about that the less fair I think the universe is. Time only drags by when you need it to go fast. This is a rule without exception. And time, likewise, slips by when you want it to cling.

We’ve been pseudo-watching a ridiculous series on Netflix called “Florida Man”. It’s pretty fucking silly, if I’m being honest. The main characters are mostly normal human-like people, but it’s like everything that happens is happening in Florida, so some scenes just have a random meth-head hijacking an Ambulance. Shit like that. It’s interesting, I guess. I need a new nerd series to watch, though. “The Boys” was great, but my appetite for that sort of stuff is just insatiable.

With recent revelations of Clarence Thomas accepting bribes from Republican billionaire mega-donors, I think it’s high time the Supreme Court of the United States be externally audited for ethics compliance and held accountable for any issues or failures found, possibly up to and including impeachment. The public at large will not stand for this insane degree of corruption. We will not have these clearly paid individuals destroying our liberties to satisfy billionaire mega-donor’s whims and fancies.

Since DA Alvin Bragg has brought out 34 charges that should’ve been addressed years ago, the GOP has gone hard with its campaign to gaslight the country into thinking that white collar crime is somehow less egregious because it’s non-violent. Theft of parked cars is also non-violent, do we let those slide as well? I honestly can’t fucking believe these morons. Seriously. Is anyone buying this shit? Donald Trump has been indicted.

Is it easier for me to be dismissive if I never expected this to be my career? I honestly thought I’d be stuck in abject poverty. It started that way, anyways. I guess I should re-frame my question. Many people, especially fairly neurotypical ones, make a plan for the future and make reasonable attempts at sticking with it. Some people go to law school, others become dental hygienists, and a good number of people go into nursing.

Before you dig into this stupid rant, make sure you read this report. If you haven’t read it, you won’t understand what the fuck I’m talking about. The latest slam page written by Hindenburg Research is about Jack Dorsey’s predatory credit and payment companies. It’s a well-written and concise report with testimony from former employees of Block. This report goes above and beyond statements of facts about why a company may go solvent.

I read the Hindenburg Research report on Block. A few of the mentioned points regarding Block are blatantly obvious to anyone that has used their services. They’re out to make a buck, and they’re not above doing really shady shit to get all the bucks. Is this unusual? Of course not, it’s standard business practice, and I think that’s really the angle Cathie Wood is coming from to defend Block. She’s a fucking moron and a scumbag.

It looks like there’s a weird job offer on the table. Not sure how to regard it, but I’ll certainly hear them out to see what compensation would look like. At this point I’ve only been here for seven years because I haven’t had any compelling competing offers thrown at me. I’m not the moron to say something like “I would never betray my employer”. That’s purely idiotic. I’m always open to better offers.

I’m pretty sure I’ve peaked. Everything I was going to accomplish in my life as far as technology and science, I’ve already achieved. When it comes to learning, programming, and electronics- It’s all downhill from here. That’s it, show’s over. I think a huge portion of the reason for this lies in my job. Every job I’ve had prior to this one has demanded nothing of me intellectually. In order to cope with a need for stimulation, I sat down and learned everything I could about computers, electronics, networking.

In a wild turn of events, assholes Jim Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil, are now threatening to defund the Manhattan District Attorney over his handling of the Stormy Daniels bribery case. All because Trump banged Stormy Daniels, paid her to shut the hell up about it, got caught, and became president afterward. How the fuck are Republicans a thing anymore? They have absolutely no credibility. Honestly, they have a negative credibility balance, it’s time to take out a credibility loan.

It’s wild that we’re on the verge of nuclear war. I won’t claim that I care a ton. I suppose an all-out nuclear war would drastically alter (or end) my life, but until the flashes in the sky it’s just a “maybe” at best. We’ve been “on the verge” since laying waste to Hiroshima. As if that’s not stressful enough, you have a racist old man in Florida trying to split the country apart, and succeeding.

I wish I had more capability to write anything outside of “stream of consciousness”. It’s an irritating limitation. I can’t do “deep dives” into anything, really. I can’t be bothered to focus my attention for longer than three minutes on any given subject or task. It’s incredibly deleterious to accomplishing anything, really. Attentiveness feels like torture to my attention-depleted brain. Well, I guess that’s all the time I have to dedicate to that subject.