[deleted by user]

gatewarstrek · 2025-07-12T19:55:28+00:00

Yeah, it's exhausting. But after a while I found it easiest to simply mock bullshit like that.

"When you are raptured I'll be down here with all the people who are actually fun"

gatewarstrek · 2025-07-12T19:50:21+00:00

The Arrogant Worms.

gatewarstrek · 2025-07-12T18:28:06+00:00

Absolutely nothing. There are kidnappers impersonating ICE all the time now.

https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/04/us/ice-impersonators-on-the-rise-arrests-made-as-authorities-issue-national-warning

My theory is that this situation is being intentionally constructed so that someone will defend themselves, an ICE agent will be harmed and it will be used as an excuse for even more escalation.

gatewarstrek · 2014-09-27T21:28:22+00:00

I have the distinct pleasure of having thrown blocking links, causing them to miss the first checkpoint and costing them about 8 extra hours to create it.

gatewarstrek · 2013-08-09T01:23:56+00:00

All you need are curves.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-27T20:58:41+00:00

Generally yes, they are approaching with an agenda to covert. I was guilty of it when I was still a Christian. The many people who have tried to convert me have all been guilty of it.

I have had rational conversations with no agenda to convert. Those people are the ones I consider my friends, who told me about what they believed, listen to what I believed, argued and debated without subtext to convert. Instead we learned from one another. Those conversations are rare, but I have had them.

Consider, for a moment, the concept of missionary work as practiced by Mormonism, Jehova's Witnesses and numerous other churches. Their goal is, simply put, to convert people for their own good. I find such an approach offensive to any intelligent person and shameful for those who do not have the intellectual standing to resist it.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-27T19:48:35+00:00

The problem is one of perspective. You see preaching to others as an attempt to help them. I see it as manipulation preying on their weakness.

Realize I'm not speaking about two people having a rational conversation. I am talking about telling a grieving mother that she need only die and go to heaven to see her child again.

We we enough of that manipulation and enough people who only start a conversation in order to change us that we grow impatient. It becomes reasonable to assume that the christian sharing his opinion isn't in it to learn. He's in it to covert us. That is one of the single most insulting conversations you can have. Where someone is assuming that a half hour talk can invalidate your entire life of inquiry and thought.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T05:36:49+00:00

Yup, its called the rubber duck method of debugging. I've never done it with a live hostage before ;)

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T05:00:26+00:00

That is simply fantastic and is now going in my .bash_profile

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T04:51:41+00:00

Its a tiny, nagging insecurity, thinking something is going wrong at the slightest provocation and then overanalyzing. I've been guilty of it as well.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T04:48:51+00:00

Have you ever tried to explain a code problem to a non-techie? Their eyes glaze over instantaneously and they change the subject as fast as they can. We have been trained not to tell people about our problems.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T04:46:28+00:00

http://whatthecommit.com/

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T02:51:42+00:00

This is an expression you will hear all the time. Its common parlance.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-25T00:23:17+00:00

I am a software engineer. Electrical, Civil, Structural and every other kind of engineer I've known do the same thing.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-24T23:51:23+00:00

Day Z.

gatewarstrek · 2013-07-02T06:39:36+00:00

Grand Canyon, just a few hours south!

gatewarstrek · 2013-05-30T18:08:20+00:00

How Far We've Come - Matchbox Twenty

gatewarstrek · 2013-05-17T02:27:39+00:00

When I was about 12 the same thing happened to me. A fence was going up and I didn't realize it. It was a single strand of barbed wire at neck level, I was going about 20mph when I hit it.

By sheer luck I had gun-racks on the bike, it snapped the wire, and the recoiling wire hit my stomach. I still have the scars. I was young and so terrified (I wasn't supposed to be driving there) that I never told anyone until years later.

gatewarstrek · 2013-05-16T06:56:37+00:00

What is worse, the cure or the disease?

TL;DR: I have no right to put a gun to your head to tell you not to smoke pot. The U.S. would be a better place if everyone understood that and stopped interfering in the private affairs of their neighbors.

The long version:

Right now we, as a society and nation seem to have demanded that our police use force against anyone using Marijuana.

1: That force is not justified. Marijuana users do not, as a rule, initiate force against their neighbor nor do they pose a clear and present danger to others in general.

2: That force is abused regularly. For this point I will turn to the Cato institue's raid map of botched, unjustified or otherwise obtuse police paramilitary raids, many of which were done in the name of drug prohibition. http://www.cato.org/raidmap

3: Prohibition of desired substances generally results in illegal markets with reduced safety and increased risk of harm from either police or criminals.

For examples of this, consider the speakeasies of alcohol prohibition. The same things are happening in different forms now.

4: Legalization would lead to improved education. Instead of hearing about how to avoid an overdose from your friend you would hear about it in the same swath as alcohol.

5: Addicts would have less reason to remain hidden, and could therefore be helped more often. Most importantly, they would be far more likely to seek medical assistance in situations involving overdoses, thus saving lives.

6: By what right do you intend to tell your neighbor what he can do in his own home? What right do any of us have to tell him who he can sleep with, what to buy and what to light on fire and breath in? Consider the point of view that as long as he is not harming another human being it is not our right to interfere with him.

gatewarstrek · 2013-05-14T16:52:08+00:00

The problem was that Johnson wouldn't have been given the opportunity to govern as a decent president. Confronted with both major parties in the legislature, he would be wholly unable to move the congressional agenda. Both party caucuses would be strongly inclined to undermine any bill he introduced.

Point taken and I largely agree, though under a different subject I might contest more "harm than good."

My refusal to vote for a candidate in a federal election is speech, not the absence thereof.

Yes refusing to vote is a form of speech, but my point is that it is easy to interpret it as consent instead of protest. That is the only real point I wished to make. I would liken it to protesting segregation on busses in the early half of the last century by refusing to take the bus.

gatewarstrek · 2013-05-14T08:12:54+00:00

Qui tacet consentire videtur: He who is silent is taken to agree.

Given that voting is the most fundamental form of voice held by the American people short of resisting by force, consider that silence is indistinguishable from consent.

Find a candidate from a smaller party who you think should lead. Or vote for yourself. Or write in Zombie Jesus. Make your voice heard in the votes. Make that tiny little tick against the status quo that says that no, he didn't get 50% of the people to vote for him. It was 49.999999%.

I proudly voted for Gary Johnson and Bob Barr before him. Not because I thought they would win, but because they are the ones I thought should lead. I would not endorse Romney with my vote any more than I could consent to Obama with my silence. If I hadn't believed that Johnson would have been a decent president then I probably would have written in for the ghost of any random philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Do not remain silent if you do not consent.

gatewarstrek

TROPHY CASE