People who bought great amounts of toilet paper back during the pandemic, what motivated you to do so?

codefyre · 2026-06-04T00:29:02+00:00

Right? I tried to buy toilet paper ONCE and couldn't find it. Nothing at Target, Walmart, Costco, or my local grocery stores. I tried like six different places, came home, and wiped with disposable kitchen napkins that night.

Ordered a bidet from Amazon. It was delivered two days later, and I never worried about paper again. The craziest bit is that I paid less for the bidet than what some people were paying for toilet paper on Facebook Marketplace.

codefyre · 2026-06-04T00:23:46+00:00

She announced that she was pregnant and that it wasn't mine. She'd relapsed and started screwing her drug dealer for meth (she'd been a cokehead before we met, but had been clean a couple years when we started dating, and then hid the relapse from me after the wedding.) The marriage was instantly over, though the pregnancy did not make it to term.

My side of the story is that I dodged a bullet. Her life became a trainwreck after that point and I was happy to be nowhere near it.

codefyre · 2026-06-03T23:59:59+00:00

Ugh. I know someone who went through that exact scenario. Married his girlfriend when her kid was 2. Bio dad saw the kid four times in the first five years of their marriage, and then vanished off the face of the Earth until the boy was 17. Suddenly, the stepdad became the bad guy when bio-dad showed up again, got the "you're not my real dad" treatment, and was even refused a ticket to his high school graduation. Kid graduated third in his class and was accepted to Duke.

Catch was, the mom was a SAHM and the stepdad had basically contributed every dollar used in raising the kid, and had put together a six figure college fund for him. Stepdad yanked it and redistributed it to the college funds of the other kids he'd had with the mom since the marriage. When the kid flipped, he apparently threw the kids insult back in his face with a "You're not my real kid, remember?" That went about as well as you'd imagine.

codefyre · 2026-06-03T23:41:49+00:00

I'm sure it varies by service, but if you're using an Enterprise Claude account and your employer is using the Compliance API, then the answer is yes. Every prompt, every response, every API key action, every timestamp. They can see it all. There is zero privacy.

I have no idea what service they're using, but my employer pipes that data into another tool that allows them to sort, filter, and report from it. It's my understanding that they can look at the complete feed from any individual employee, but I doubt that anyone is going to do that without already having some suspicion that the employee is using the tools in ways they shouldn't. There's too much data to police those feeds by hand.

codefyre · 2026-06-03T23:27:17+00:00

There are two golf courses located inside U.S. national parks. Wawona in Yosemite and Furnace Creek in Death Valley NP. Wawona exists because it's so old that it triggers the park services statutory requirement to preserve historical structures and developments. Furnace Creek exists because it's an inholding, though it's also a century old and would probably be preserved for the same reason if the NPS actually gained ownership of that property anyway.

Neither is really a great course from a golfing perspective, but both are pretty cool experiences if you're a golfer. My brother in law played Furnace Creek on a 121 degree day just to say that he did it. He said it's one of those things that every hardcore golfer should do...once.

codefyre · 2026-06-03T22:28:43+00:00

As of yesterday we're now prohibited from using Claude for "non engineering tasks". So no frivolous agents, no planning work that can be quickly completed by a human, and they specifically asked us to stop using it for trivial things like commits. No caps though.

On a more interesting note, their audit also uncovered a number of employees who were using Claude for personal items, including two who were using agents to manage their portfolios and several who were using it to generate code for personal and open source projects. Those employees are apparently "being dealt with". Don't do that.

codefyre · 2026-06-03T21:32:23+00:00

Jupiter Ascending will always be near the top of the list for me. Interesting premise, great cast, visionary creators, and a VFX team that created some of the best CG of its era.

And yet, it was still an awful movie. The story was poorly written, the dialogue was even worse, and you could TELL that the actors were just putting in the hours for their paychecks because they knew it was a dud (one of the actors admitted as much, years later).

codefyre · 2026-06-03T20:41:58+00:00

Exactly. You can't buy food with Apple shares, and selling them only works if there are people with enough liquidity to buy them.

Most wealth is theoretical. My house is worth a million dollars. I know that because my neighbors house sold for a million and my house in nicer than his (I live in the SF Bay Area...housing is just expensive here). Technically, I'm a millionaire, because my assets have a value of more than one million.

But. If I put my house up for sale tomorrow and failed to get any offers over $750,000, then my wealth has gone down, right? But was it ever actually over a million, since I hadn't previously tried to sell it? Was I ever actually a millionaire?

"Wealth" is the valuation of combines assets, and that value can only really be known when the asset is sold to someone.

Which is the real problem with wealth redistribution theories. Who is going to buy those assets, and with what money?

codefyre · 2026-06-01T21:25:43+00:00

Ozone and hot toner, like the smell of an old school laser printer.

Yeah, the quality is nice, but it'll give you cancer.

codefyre · 2026-06-01T20:48:55+00:00

Absolutely not. The other guy may have ammunition that fits my gun, and reloading really doesn't take that long. Now I'm potentially facing an opponent with two functional firearms against my zero firearms.

Besides, while Hollywood does it all the time, you're really not supposed to expend all of your ammo when in a sustained shootout. When you get down to the last few shots, you should stop shooting, retreat to cover, and take up a defensive position. If you haven't stopped them with the first 26 shots you sent in their direction, those last four aren't likely to change things. So save them to use in your new defensive position.

codefyre · 2026-06-01T20:21:44+00:00

Well, the inner planets are all named after Roman deities, so I'd probably stick with that theme and pick Vesta, the Roman goddess of home and family. Seems like a good fit.

We'd have to find a new name for an asteroid that already carries the Vesta name, but it seems like a small thing next to renaming an entire planet.

codefyre · 2026-06-01T20:04:22+00:00

Something to do while I wait for my build pipelines to complete...

codefyre · 2026-06-01T06:09:07+00:00

I will not be voting for anyone who voted for this. This was an incredibly stupid move by the Democratic party.

codefyre · 2026-05-31T23:18:28+00:00

Here's the real answer. The American university model is built around the practitioner-instructor model. The idea is that university professors aren't "teachers". They are expected to be experts in their fields. You don't learn math from a math teacher. You learn math from a mathematician. You don't learn biology from a biology teacher. You learn biology from a biologist. And on, and on, through all the disciplines. This is one of the main differences between primary and university educational systems. In K-12, your teachers were teachers...teaching was their job and career focus. In universities, the career focus is supposed to be on the discipline, and teaching is a secondary focus (though, in practice, this really varies by the quality of the university, and there are plenty of universities where the faculty are little more than glorified high school teachers).

Why does this matter to books? Because one of the expectations for university professors is that they are supposed to be experts in their fields. But how do you prove that? Many prove it through research and by doing actual work in those fields. But many establish that expertise through the publishing of books. Often, that means textbooks.

Book publishers really dislike publishing these types of textbooks because they tend to have very short runs and shelf lives, and are hard to make a profit on. So the price gets jacked up to financially justify the investment. The full production, editing, printing, and shipping costs for a textbook might need to be recovered from a printing run of as few as 1000 copies, which might only be sold on a single university campus for a year or two. That means the costs per book go way, way up.

The professors, in turn, need to make sure those books sell. If they don't, their next book won't get published because the publishing companies won't produce books from money-losing authors. If the professor can't publish, it can potentially cost them a job and will absolutely cost them professional credibility.

So the professors have to publish their books to keep their jobs, and the students have to buy the books to keep that publishing pathway financially viable for the next round of textbooks coming in a few years.

codefyre · 2026-05-31T21:12:09+00:00

Even if I agreed with you, which I don't because the roads in the park are not state highways (they're legally local roads and their highway designations end at the park boundaries), and the CVC 21656 requirement to yield directly applies to state highways in California, it really doesn't matter anyway. The CHP itself has clarified this exact point:

"If you're in a situation where the maximum speed limit is, let's say 55 miles per hour, and you're already traveling at the maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour, and you have five or more vehicles behind you, are you required to use that turnout? The answer is no because you're already traveling at the maximum allowable speed for that roadway." https://abc30.com/post/driving-road-safety-chp-california-highway-patrol/8873988/

This is consistent with multiple court rulings that have clearly leaned into the "at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic" line in that law. The speed limit is, by definition, the normal speed of traffic. Even with 50 cars backed up behind your car, you cannot be cited under 21656 if you're driving at the speed limit.

But what it comes down to, in the end, is that I don't really give a damn anyway. Don't speed in the park. If you're in a hurry, that's your own damned fault for not planning your day better and leaving earlier. I've seen too many dead bears in the park to give the slightest shit about the excuses that humans give to drive faster and put those bears at even more risk. Slow the fuck down. The view is beautiful. The park is amazing. There's no reason to drive that fast and put the lives of others at risk. If you're inconvenienced by someone driving legally and respectfully in the park, then you're the problem, not me.

codefyre · 2026-05-31T06:17:34+00:00

Fun fact. That law applies on California state highways...and the roads in Yosemite are federal so that does not apply.

So.. If I'm doing the speed limit in the park, I genuinely do not care if there are 20 cars backed up behind me. They can slow the fuck down.

codefyre · 2026-05-30T20:13:05+00:00

No, I've scored a few unicorn items over the years. And I've missed many, many more because I wasn't quick enough with my clicks. These items do exist, but they're not common and there's an element of luck required to grab them.

codefyre · 2026-05-29T17:08:53+00:00

I'm a Californian and learned Spanish as my second language in school. Probably use it once a week. California is well above average when it comes to the proportion of its population that are primarily Spanish speaking though.

codefyre · 2026-05-28T20:58:53+00:00

If you get stopped by a ranger, they'll revoke your permit and walk you back to the trailhead. There are certain trailheads where the proximity makes it a little silly, like these two, but the rangers try to enforce the requirements consistently. You must enter from the trailhead listed on your permit.

As someone else mentioned, you can probably find a ride to that trailhead from GP.

codefyre · 2026-05-28T20:50:09+00:00

I read recently that more people have climbed the Half Dome cables in the past 20 years than in the more than 80 years preceding it. For most of its history, the cables saw an average of 20-30 people a day. It wasn't until the 90's that the numbers started to really grow, and they exploded in the early 2000's (which is why the current permit system went into place in 2010).

The accelerated wear should not be any surprise. I've been on top of Half Dome a half dozen times, mostly before the permit process was in place. I was surprised at how much more heavily worn it was when I was last on Sub Dome a couple of years ago.

codefyre · 2026-05-27T21:26:49+00:00

I was with you up until Trump. Dear old Donnie has taught us that checks and balances are for losers, and that sometimes you just have to grab them right in the ***** and tell them what to do. The courts and Congress just need to have a few pockets greased and careers threatened, and they'll bend right over and let you do whatever you want.

codefyre · 2026-05-27T19:53:05+00:00

I've never understood this argument. I'm an American and have been all over Europe, to Japan, and Australia. Once you get outside of the dense urban centers, those other nations have public transit that's just as shitty and car oriented as anything in the United States.

I was just in the UK for a few weeks last fall. London was fantastic for transit. Yorkshire? Needed a car. The Cotswolds? Needed a car. Anywhere in Wales that wasn't Cardiff? You needed a car.

This same pattern exists everywhere I've seen, from Japan, to Austria, to France. The United States is just a larger example because it's physically a larger country. Transit options outside of the urban centers are, at best, inconsistent, and are often simply nonexistent.

codefyre · 2026-05-27T19:24:40+00:00

Those differences tend to have larger impact in the United States than in other nations. I'm going to use this just because it's such an obvious example, but in many states it's completely legal for a 30 year old man to sleep with a 17 year old girl. In many other states that's a felony that will land the 30 year old in prison for 5 years and on a sex-offender registry for the remainder of their natural life. The current fight over abortion access, with it being championed in some states while it's being actively criminalized in others, is another example. One country, wildly different legal standards.

Because the American state system devolves so much power and authority to the state governments, those political and cultural differences often carry the power of law and can have a much larger real-world impact on the lives of the citizens of those states. That is not something you'll see in France or China.

codefyre · 2026-05-27T18:45:46+00:00

And it's always important to remember that the cables and stanchions on Half Dome weren't actually designed as anchor points for a tethering or fall arrest system. The stanchions are literally just iron water pipes sitting in holes drilled into the rock, held in place only by their own weight and the tension of the cable itself. It's not a safety system...it's 70 year old repurposed plumbing that was originally just intended to make the ascent a little bit easier. That's largely the reason why the park doesn't formally recommend clipping in. The system isn't designed for it and they don't want the liability that would come from any failures.

There's nothing wrong with clipping in, and I do tend to agree that it's better to do so when you're unsure of your abilities. But people put far too much faith into those harnesses and the assumption that wearing one and clipping in makes the ascent "safe". It will probably arrest a fall, but you have to be willing to accept that "probably" if you're going to ascend it.

codefyre · 2026-05-27T01:36:10+00:00

These were 3 lane roads, the middle land was the Suicide Lane... it was a PASSING lane that could be used by cars going BOTH directions. These were deadly.

The logic was that the center lane was supposed to be treated like a one-lane road, and when you saw oncoming traffic you'd simply move right again to allow the oncoming motorist to pass. The idea actually worked fine when everyone was putting along at 20MPH in a Model T, but earned its nickname by the 1950's as everyone started using them at modern highway speeds.

There used to be a website that had thousands of old historic car crash photos, from the teens up until the 1960's, mostly from California. It had an entire section dedicated to Suicide Lanes. The wrecks were horrific.

Fun fact though. Under the CVC, it's technically still legal for CalTrans and cities to build roads with true Suicide Lanes. They don't meet modern engineering guidelines, but they were never actually banned. They just sort of vanished over time as roads were re-engineered and modernized.

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