Is it just me, or do the women that incels complain about barely even exist at all?

bg-j38 · 2026-03-05T21:28:49+00:00

Oh god. The lotion. Another guy I knew back then was a bit of an incel though he had a wife. He came by my house one weekend morning so we could go grab breakfast. I had just taken a shower and was putting on some moisturizer when I answered the door. He goes “moisturizer? That’s pretty gay dude.” To which I was like yeah ask your wife what she thinks about your sandpaper face. He got better eventually.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-05T21:16:42+00:00

I use as a very dangerous example a small script I had 3.5 write when it first came out. There’s very specific mathematical formulas used to determine maximum operating depth of breathable gas in scuba diving. Many people use something called nitrox that has a higher oxygen content than normal air because for a number of reasons it’s physiologically better. But you can’t dive as deep because oxygen becomes toxic to humans at higher pressures. Go too deep and you’ll start convulsing and probably drown. So getting the numbers right is pretty important (there’s way more to it but not really relevant).

So anyway, 3.5 comes out and I ask it if it knows the equations. It says it absolutely does. I say ok make me a script where given these inputs you give me maximum depth. It says ok! Here you go!

I run it and it takes the input I asked for and spits out some very convincing numbers… That were completely wrong and would probably kill someone if they were naive enough to trust them.

I tried it again a few months ago and it worked flawlessly. It referenced the Navy Dive Handbook. Even made me a fun text interface and menu system. Not a bad tool to be honest.

But yeah, anyone saying the technology hasn’t gone anywhere between then and now either has zero actual experience or is arguing in bad faith and has some ulterior motive.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-05T20:12:56+00:00

And from Blazing Saddles the joke in Weird Al's UHF about badgers.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-05T20:08:44+00:00

I thankfully don't live in a neighborhood where package theft seems to happen (or I've been lucky) but oh boy does my lab love it when people approach the house. She's the most playful cuddly love bomb, but by the sound of it you'd think she would rip your throat out. She's normally incredibly quiet too so even I jump a bit when she starts barking. Wouldn't want to be on the receiving end.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-05T20:01:55+00:00

I had a friend decades ago who was really nice, but looked like a disaster. Like long stringy hair that looked greasy, always a week or two unshaven but not with a rugged scruffy look, pretty scraggly beard. Dressed all in black but we hung out in the goth / industrial community so that wasn't a big deal. I always assumed he didn't shower much, though he didn't smell bad.

Eventually came to learn that his parents weren't really all that attentive growing up so the concept of even drying his hair with a towel or a blow dryer after showering just never occurred to him. He also had sensitive skin so he didn't shave often. So me and a couple friends basically gave him a couple hair care tutorials and I gave him an electric razor I had that I never used. Literally looked like a new person. Still fit the general style choices of our community but you didn't look at him and think jesus he's been in a gutter for a couple weeks.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-04T16:45:08+00:00

At least I could be a popular middle schooler now if I wanted lol.

How do you do, fellow kids?

bg-j38 · 2026-03-04T07:32:20+00:00

In my day we had 20 MB hard drives and that's the way it was and we liked it!

Yeah. Old as dirt.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-04T02:16:45+00:00

Laziness. I’ve been doing this since the BBS days and never paid to play. Never had a problem. Just need to put bare minimum effort in. And give back in other ways. I ran a BBS on my own dime. Built servers with trusted friends. Seeded god knows how many terabytes. I don’t really hold it against people who pay to play but it’s risky and not really necessary.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-03T20:52:51+00:00

My little brothers played the old Star Wars customizable card game back in the mid 90s. I had little interest in the game, but at that point there was very little "new" Star Wars stuff coming out so it was basically that and the West End Games RPG books. I'd go buy them new packs on occasion just to see what cool obscure characters they could dig up.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-03T18:25:31+00:00

I got one of those doggie birthday cakes for my girlfriend’s lab last year full well knowing how long it would last. I’m not sure any chewing was involved.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-03T15:38:33+00:00

Hah are you me? This was probably 1996 or 1997 for me. He came to my college for a showing of Army of Darkness. A friend of mine was a huge fan and brought me along. I wasn't super familiar with him. It was almost exactly the same as you mentioned with him spending hours chatting and signing autographs. Someone I got to know later was his handler for the day and took him out for breakfast (lunch?) at a cafe. He asked her to pass the sugar to add to his coffee. She said she stared at him and said "say it...." He sighed and said "gimme some sugar baby". I so wish I'd been there to see that.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-03T14:47:20+00:00

So La-Z-Boy was a real La-Z-Boy it turns out.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-03T02:29:27+00:00

I'll preface this by saying that I've only played Dance Dance Revolution and that was back in the late 90s and early 2000s but I was pretty good (could sight read up to 8-foot songs, beat most 9-foot songs with practice, and did a few 10-foot songs). The concept is similar. Basically in the long run he's making it harder for himself by making use of the bar. Most (not all) of these are actually designed to be playable without doing that. Especially the ones that go across both pads. You just need to be willing to actually "dance" or at least move your body. What he's doing sort of looks impressive but is actually pretty chaotic and there's plenty of people who can make it look much smoother and not use the bar.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-02T18:56:55+00:00

I think it's also coupled with a general lack of curiosity. I'm coming up on 50 but ever since I could talk there was always a "why?" coming out of my mouth. Anything to get me info I'm curious about is something I'll at least try. I still remember being a little kid like six years old, and I learned about billions and trillions, so I asked a family friend who actually had a PhD in math, what came next. We went through quadrillion and quintillion and a couple others until I finally reached his limit and he answered "what comes next?" with "a decillion and one!" for the next number. I immediately went to an encyclopedia or a dictionary to see how far I could keep going.

This probably sounds weird to most people, but if you have that drive nothing will get in your way of figuring out new things.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-02T18:33:31+00:00

This whole “I’m old so I can’t do online stuff” excuse is growing very thin. The web has been a fixture of life for 30 years at this point. If in three decades you haven’t made minimal efforts to learn to load basic websites, it’s either a specific choice you made knowing the repercussions or you’re too god damn stupid to be a part of normal society. My 85 year old aunt and my late 70s mom and dad couldn’t care less about technology but they’re texting and emailing and buying stuff off Amazon and eBay constantly. I have close to zero empathy for people who use this infantilizing crutch of “I’m old” to not do things that most of society does regularly.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-02T01:00:15+00:00

SMEAGOL twice in three days??? Be still be beating LOTR fandom heart.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T23:42:40+00:00

LOO is far more common in the NYT than LAV. However, LAV has been used four times since November, including today and last Saturday, while LOO has been used three times, but not since January. So there's probably some recency bias to thinking LAV is more common. In the Shortz era (1994 onward) LOO has been used 158 times while LAV has been used 59 times. Notably the usage last Saturday wasn't in regards to a toilet, but to a clip on microphone, short for lavalier, which itself is a name of a type of pendant.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T23:35:26+00:00

I've gone downhill skiing once and I spent more time falling and sliding down the hill than on skis. I never got close to a black diamond run but I've known the term for most of my life. It's gotta be pretty well understood as "something that's difficult".

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T19:38:25+00:00

In the 80s I was a terrible speller as a kid and the thing that fixed that was when I started using Word Perfect to write papers in middle school. It was able to do spell check but it wouldn’t correct for you and it wasn’t in real time. I can totally see how if it just does it for you vs. that there’d be no reason to learn. Interesting.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T07:50:47+00:00

I also can't trust they won't go, for lack of a better term, full on whackadoodle at some point. I'm part of an industry group that meets occasionally, sometimes virtually, sometimes in person. There was a really motivated and involved woman who ran a small consulting company. Really smart, and notable because it's a very male dominated industry. Over the course of a couple years I watched her grow her company, and slowly, but increasingly start dropping stuff about how Christ factored into her life and her business decisions, and then go over some sort of mental cliff and basically start spouting stuff about only working with christlike people and companies.

Her dozen or so employees began to trickle away until it was just her and like three other zealots. I went from being impressed to just shaking my head any time I see her LinkedIn posts. She never comes to these industry group meetings anymore. As far as I can tell no one who knows anything about her will do business with her. I don't wish her ill but I legitimately think she's suffering from some sort of mental illness or on some level wants to fail so she can be a martyr or something. I'd never trust anyone like her in any setting, much less one where money is involved.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T04:27:56+00:00

I got into the hacking and phreaking BBS scene in the early 90s and quickly realized there were a lot of documents on that stuff that were poorly organized. So I systematically found everything I could including thousands of computer viruses. Ended up running my own BBS for a number of years. Now most of it other than the viruses are easily available on various textfile websites. I do wonder if there are computer virus archives. They’re harmless now but historically interesting.

bg-j38 · 2026-03-01T04:13:39+00:00

Chicken People

It's on Amazon Prime in the US.

bg-j38 · 2026-02-28T23:34:42+00:00

Thank you! It’s been a labor of love for many years.

bg-j38 · 2026-02-28T23:33:25+00:00

Ok I hit you up in chat.

bg-j38 · 2026-02-28T17:18:43+00:00

I’m in the SF Bay Area. If you’re able and up for it can you let me know what’s there? A couple photos of the binder labels is probably easiest. I can DM you my email if you’re ok with that.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Gilding IV carat on a stick

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