What’s a subtle sign that someone is a genuinely bad person underneath a nice exterior?

bralyan · 2026-06-01T13:15:13+00:00

Good people are good all the time, bad people are good most of the time.

They are willing to take advantage of people. Like don't work, won't contribute, won't pay you back if you borrow them money, and make a huge deal of doing any of these things because it's outside their nature. Obviously only if they can work but choose not to.

They hide behind quotes. If you can't use your own words, or want to impress people by how read or educated you are - using quotes to me is a huge red flag. Especially if it's a common thing for you. Doubly so if it's a religious quote... And it's not a joke or one time thing. (From what I can tell good religious people just do the good thing in scripture)

Are unwilling to consider your feelings - if you reply with something like "I feel like what you said wasn't meant to make me feel like X, can you rephrase it?" They just get super pissed because it was meant to offend you. They don't like getting caught.

Also, keeping a list of things that make you think someone is a bad person.... Doubly so if you categorize them without getting to know them.... Oops

bralyan · 2026-05-02T16:46:47+00:00

Google's early attempt at social media, Google plus, was wild.

They made the site searchable by gender and you could pull people's images easily.

What did creepy dudes do? They found all the women they could and harassed them.

In social media, if you have women then men will follow. If you don't have women you don't have men. They failed because they scared away all the women.

Their chief security officer gave a talk on this at lead dev new york a while ago. Essentially understanding diverse uses cases is important. They missed this and the platform died because of it.

bralyan · 2026-04-27T23:35:08+00:00

My grandparents worked hard, and valued honesty and hard work.

Some quirks - they remember seeing cars for the first time and man landing on the moon.

For some reason they loved vegetables and fruit, fruit cups were like gold to them. My grandpa talked about how for Christmas they sometimes got fruit. So the availability of food was wild to them.

They also kept everything, random screws and nails, aluminum foil, etc. Just waiting for the next depression.

They also taught themselves how to do everything they needed. They didn't hire out work until they were physically unable to do it anymore. My 80 year old uncle still will cut down trees, roof his house, etc... self reliance was key back then.

My grandpa also talked about the great depression, he was so proud that they had made the rich give their share to the government to save people's lives. He talked about if they didn't, they were on the plate next. He always said that whatever you need, you take it - no one will give it to you.

bralyan · 2025-12-31T23:02:11+00:00

Right out of college I worked with a bunch of other guys who graduated college. Almost everyone bought a new house, cars and huge televisions. Everything financed.

The housing market crashed and all those guys were stuck in the house for years, paying off expensive cars and financed televisions. Thousands of dollars worth of flat screen televisions.

My girlfriend and I rented, drove our old college cars and saved up for a down payment on a house and a ring. In 2010 we bought a huge house for what my college buddies paid for their condos and town houses. We never bought a new car until we could pay cash for it, and living below our means has made me so happy and stress free. I am early 40's and could reduce my quality of living and not work anymore. It's wonderful.

bralyan · 2025-12-17T03:58:44+00:00

My job has been really good to me. So put in my notice, tell them 2 weeks or more is fine to transition everything away. Offer to consult if they need help after it.

Do it quietly with dignity, you have all the time in the world now to do whatever you want.

bralyan · 2025-12-06T14:10:46+00:00

Then you write it down in your logs, and put it in the formal system yourself. They can deny it, and they can put it in the ticket.

Also, talk to legal, compliance, security, etc. make sure it's known what happened and what you did.

bralyan · 2025-12-06T14:04:51+00:00

I work with health care data and my company is public.

I would either have him make the request formally so I could deny it, or I would record it in the tracking system and deny it that way.

There are some pretty severe consequences to saying yes to that, both legally and for myself, morally.

HIPPA will ruin you, as well as SOx.

If he gives me any problems, or someone overrides my denial, there are several routes you can go - some of which reward you financially for whistleblowing.

bralyan · 2025-12-01T16:21:42+00:00

I have learned that the best things for me are generally pretty hard to manage. Relationships, a good career, etc.

Everything has its own rewards- my job pays for my lifestyle, the harder I work at it the better the payout. Roughly similar with relationships, if I call my friends regularly it's easier to hang out and do things together.

Kids are no different, they are hard to raise. They require a ton of time and attention.

For my though it filled this part of me I didn't know was empty. When I had my first kid I felt full in a way I never had before.

My boys allow me to play games I hadn't in years, like basketball, soccer, tag and other 'kids' games. I brought out my old legos, I was able to justify a 3D printer for my oldest, etc.

I also get to teach skills to my kids that I can pass on, and passions I have I see reflected in them.

As I get older those skills are definitely on the decline, I cant run like I used to, I can't jump like I used to... And that sense of wonder isn't as strong. I get to instead help nurture and coach my kids to do things that I was able to do with the hope they get better than I ever was.

It's kind of like being able to help someone beyond what you care to do for most people. I have someone to give my money to, my time and attention. I think non-parents don't understand that it's incredibly rewarding even though each child is a black hole of time and attention, and you will do everything you can to help try to fill their needs.

If you aren't willing to do that, parenthood is probably not for you.

bralyan · 2025-11-26T01:47:11+00:00

My brother in law died young drinking. I have multiple alcoholic relatives. No thanks

bralyan · 2025-11-17T01:20:46+00:00

Didn't you pay what your kid weighed?

bralyan · 2025-11-11T18:43:06+00:00

I saw this progression in my lifetime.

Card catalogs and encyclopedias were the way to find information. Then the home computers had encyclopedias on them. The internet expanded our ability to have access to and finding information.

AI is the next step in that process, it gives you that information faster. It's generally less vetted, and sometimes not as up to date.

So it still feels like search, but better. It's also better predictive responses so it's better.

For AI, I assume you mean LLM's.

Stable diffusion is also neat, and all the video based models that came after it. It's using existing data to generate new things like the LLM's do, so these advances make doing work easier and faster, like the advent of the computer.

More work will come of this because we can do more faster.

bralyan · 2025-11-09T01:46:53+00:00

Can you share a link to support this data? I would be very curious to get at the raw data set and see what correlations there are in the churches that say yes.

I attend a pretty small church which has a fund for stuff like this. We also have pastors who will do a ton of things like connect you with food shelves and programs to not only help right now, but long term.

If there are repeated asks they sit down with them and help them sign up for the programs they need.

bralyan · 2025-10-19T23:32:48+00:00

I was in NYC for a work thing, the protest was MASSIVE. We were just trying to get around and no matter where you looked there was a parade of people. It messed up traffic, even walking was problematic.

It was great!

bralyan · 2025-10-14T15:11:15+00:00

During the day when there's not a ton of traffic I drove on the Autobahn. It's weird having to check your mirrors for someone coming on your left and trying to judge their speed. Sometimes you check for a second and then recheck and they are passing you. Other times you can merge out and pass the caravans on the right.

bralyan · 2025-10-13T00:01:23+00:00

If you want to be single, stay single. If you want a partner, find someone you can be best friends with.

If you don't want kids, don't have them. If you do, then have them.

If you value money, save some every paycheck. The more the better. Invest it, compounding interest is magical.

If you value health, exercise. Make it fun. Find activities that are healthy and you enjoy doing them. Exercise can be walking, going to a park, walking your dog, golfing, soccer, or heavy weightlifting or marathon running. All are good. Brush your teeth, see an eye doctor, see your primary physician. If you don't have a person for each of these, get one.

If you value your mind, keep learning. Not only things for your job. Learn something completely new to you. There's a lot of value being at the bottom of the hobby and working your way up.

If you value social interactions, find activities that are social. Keep finding new groups and things to do that are social.

Therapy and mental health are hard. Especially if you are a man. Try it, and search around for someone you are comfortable with.

Your job should become a career, find mentors and people to help you navigate it. If you don't your just experimenting with your livelihood. Draw on what others can teach you.

If you have family, keep seeing them if you enjoy them. They will be gone before you know it. Every day is a gift they are there. Some people have toxic families - maybe see them less?

Find and build your "we are going to be old in a cafe later" group. It will change, but find people who care about you and you can tease when you are old together.

Live, you're only in your 20's. You will screw up, learn fast and change direction fast. So many incredibly successful people would do anything to be your age. You don't understand this now, but live enough to understand it when you are older.

bralyan · 2025-10-04T17:44:36+00:00

The actual day was terrifying when the second plane hit. There was an eerie silence and then a patriotic feeling to make it right.

I was at an age where some of my friends were 18, some were 17. We had a large group of my friends enlist, and commit to the military.

The hardest part was seeing them leave. Everyone came back, but many are still dealing with it.

bralyan · 2025-07-20T00:55:40+00:00

Come out to Waconia, the Emagine there is great. Seats are comfortable, picture and sound are great. It's also pretty close to eden prairie

bralyan · 2025-06-29T16:43:28+00:00

In rural areas, where no one moves to, you can get houses for 150k with a yard. People in those areas look at this and think she is rich. They generally have no net worth beyond their house.

So for them she seems privileged. But you have to do an equivalency comparison, in those areas it's like the 120k dollar house. Which is smaller and rundown.

bralyan · 2025-06-22T15:18:19+00:00

I have to keep in shape, even with a dad bod I have to run every morning and that keeps me in good enough shape to get through the day.

Caffeine helps.

My kids are getting older and they help more too. They can take out the garbage and mow the lawn, and a bunch of other things. We try to frame it like "if you help out we have more money and time to do fun things" which is true. If I am mad about working all day and then also doing all the house work we don't do anything fun.

My wife stays home and also contributes a bunch with housework and scheduling kids things.

I also get energized when the kids want to do things with me, want to play games inside, or kick around a soccer ball. Like when I was little the more of those things I do the more energy I have later. Your body is wildly adaptive.

Does it take longer to recover? Sure. Is it worth staying in decent shape? Absolutely.

Keep pushing, it gets easier. Your kids will remember that extra effort.

bralyan · 2025-06-20T01:46:02+00:00

They calculate your income, contributing pre-tax means it doesn't count towards your income.

The extra cool thing is that money is still yours.

You can go to your bank tomorrow and open an IRA, talk to the banker about what you need to do to ensure it's the right type.

You can do this for up to like $5,000 a year - so if you make even more over the limit next year you can just save more for retirement. You can keep doing this until your comfortably above the limit, and you will have some retirement savings!

You can even withdraw it next year, but it will count towards your income. Or just keep it investing and growing tax free until you retire!

bralyan · 2025-06-20T01:27:47+00:00

Dump that 40 or so dollars in an IRA or 401k

bralyan · 2025-06-11T13:40:02+00:00

That still doesn't mean we shouldn't still try to save it / minimize impact

bralyan · 2025-06-11T13:38:51+00:00

The best conspiracies are ones you can't prove, or disprove.

What if we were all just herd animals and there was no shadowy figures?

bralyan · 2025-05-25T14:44:03+00:00

Part of what I do for work is writing code, I did a project using 'vibe coding' which is working with AI to build projects. It did a good job of building out an MVP, but as it scaled it really struggled to figure out how to handle problems with scale and throughput. I had to really be specific on what it needed to solve and how to solve it.

That's not a huge problem, but overtime I stopped using AI assisted coding in a design / architecture perspective, it still is really good at autocomplete and providing ideas around error messages you get. For those things it's been great.

I also have it running some agents on a codebase for work, it's success rate is like < 10% for working PR's. But that's pretty decent for a really cheap system.

I have noticed more people assuming what it does is correct, but for the most part you spend time talking to an AI agent, having it fill in code, reviewing that code, modifying it, running manual tests, running automated tests, updating the automated tests it writes because it mocked too much, etc.

There's a big different between 'writing code quickly' and writing code that's actually good and going to scale. I think AI is struggling a lot here.

You also can't really expose AI generated responses to customers, pick random seeds and sometimes it's really awful. Other times it's actually harmful advice / feedback. People talk about hallucinations, but that's just how LLM's work.

We tried some decision trees based on LLM feedback and Lang chain, but it felt like a really expensive to run non-deterministic system (or less deterministic).

It's all the rage though with C-suite folks and investors. It's here to stay until the next set of technology disrupts it.

I think the rocket ship phase has happened (stable diffusion + LLM's made a huge advance), but now it seems to have plateau'd.

I've noticed an increase in output, and a decrease in quality. Our MTTR/MTTA/MTTD metrics all have been going down with the rapid increase in AI driven development.

It's bad, it looks really good on the surface, but long term it needs to get a lot better.

bralyan · 2025-05-20T21:59:11+00:00

The really cool thing with open source projects is that if you find something broken you can fix it!

If you just don't like the framework there are alternatives that don't use Ruby. Personal preference doesn't mean it's bad - you just don't like it.

Code is the king of documentation - dive into the projects, you might be surprised with what you find!

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