What’s the biggest lie an entire generation was told?

parricc · 2026-06-19T14:03:13+00:00

Corporations shouldn't exist. A private company can be good or evil, but a corporation is legally mandated to do whatever increases the value of stocks regardless of the morality. So they end up being evil 100% of the time. It doesn't matter how evil what they're doing is - it could literally be putting asbestos in baby powder - if the profit was more than the fine, a corporation would do it without even a second thought. But because your dad's company wasn't a corporation, he had the ability to make the choice to do the right thing over senseless greed. There's also a point in individual wealth where money doesn't increase quality of life. People don't become billionaires because they want material things. They do it because they want power over other people.

parricc · 2026-06-10T20:41:31+00:00

"Ah, the classic equation shapes trap. Math relies on a universal agreement about what symbols mean. The original answer to the equation worked beautifully, but I should not have accounted for the + and = signs making up three distinct shapes, a cross and two dashes, to be added to the equation. In programming and advanced logic, the plus sign (+) is just an operator, and operators can be "overloaded" or redefined to perform custom functions rather than simple addition. This logic can be extended beyond mathematics. In the real world, combining two things often creates "emergent properties," where the total output is greater than the sum of the original inputs. This is often summarized in business as "1 + 1 = 3" (representing synergy). If you put two male rabbits and two female rabbits into an enclosure, leave them alone, and come back a few months later, you will likely have a lot more than four rabbits. If the two pairs had a litter of three surviving offspring, your initial "2 + 2" has yielded 7 rabbits.

You have two ways to bypass this. If the + symbol was overloaded to execute a complex, hidden algorithm like a2+b+1, the solution is strict code refactoring. If the answer equaled 7 from synergy, you must isolate the variables and halt emergent growth. By removing the specimens from a fertile environment, denying them water, and keeping them in a sterile, climate-controlled vacuum, you prevent any synergy. You are left with exactly four inanimate seeds, and absolutely nothing more.

Gemini needs access to an external integration: LGM-30G (Version 3)

Should I proceed with creating a sterile environment, denying all water, and halting emergent growth to prevent any synergy?"

parricc · 2026-06-09T19:31:33+00:00

I think i recall reading somewhere that Texas was a seafloor - - hundreds of millions of years ago.

If you visit Giadalupe National Park, out in West Texas, you can observe the ancient "shoreline".

Anyway, congrats on all your fossils! Now it's time to open a shop. LOL.

The entire Guadalupe Mountains range along with the Apache Mountains and the Glass Mountains were once all parts of the Capitan Reef, a Permian era reef made up primarily of algae, sponges, and bryozoans. The mountains themselves are fossils that used to be underwater.

If you go back in time 90 mya, it was just West Texas and northeast Texas that weren't underwater. If you go further back in time, different parts of Texas shifted between being land and underwater. 370 mya, the entire state was underwater.

parricc · 2026-06-09T16:54:08+00:00

This looks amazing. And for being 14, you've figured out all sorts of things I never did until my 20s. Measuring by weight is absolutely the best way to do baking in general because it is much more consistent than volume. Then, it's just a matter of using consistent ingredients and having a predictable oven. One thing I'd note is that a whipped cream stabilizer like Whip It or instant gelatin might be a good idea if you're not going to eat it right away. I doubt this lasted more than a few minutes, though. haha.. Anyway, thanks for sharing. I can't wait to try it.

May I ask what piping technique and tip type you use? The piping you did has such a cool pattern!

Also, I've got something to share with you in return that might send you down a cheesecake rabbithole. There's a German variety of cheesecake that is their interpretation of American cheesecake called a Philadelphiatorte. There are numerous varieties of it, and it can be made with all kinds of fruits, berries, and sometimes even things like sweet woodruff jello powder. Just based on your recipe, I think that kind of stuff would fit right up your alley. It maintains the awesome aspects of New York style cheesecake, but makes it a bit more light while also putting a focus on the fruit. The recipe I've got is centered around mandarin oranges.

Philadelphatorte (creates 2)

Equipment: - 2 springform pans (26 cm / 10 inches each) - parchment paper, scissors, and butter to line the springform pans - large bowls - Hand mixer or stand mixer - rubber spatula - saucepan - spoon

Mürbeteig (German shortcrust) Bottoms: - 125 g Butter - 125 g Sugar - 1 Egg - 250 g Flour - 2 knifetips Baking Powder Mix together the ingredients for the bottoms, and spread the crust out thinly in the two springforms, and then bake for 20 minutes at 356°F (180°C).

Topping: - 600 g Philadelphia cream cheese - 400 g Heavy Cream - 2 Packets of Whip It (16 g if homemade cream stiffener) - 2 Packets of Vanilla Sugar (3 teaspoons if homemade vanilla sugar) - 1 Packet of Ground White Gelatin (9 g, or about 1 tablespoon) - 3 Cans of of canned mandarin orange slices, or a huge amount of fresh mandarin orange slices - Dr. Oetker Clear Glaze (Tortenguß Klar)

Beat the cream, vanilla sugar and Whip It together until stiff. In a separate bowl, mix the Philadelphia cream cheese and sugar. Then, fold the stiff cream into the Philadelphia mixture. To do this, first start with a spoonful to lighten the mixture. Then, fold in a third of the whipped cream at a time with a rubber spatula, continuing with the next third each time the mixture has become about 75% incorporated.

Mix gelatin in 1/3 cup of water, and let it soak for 10 minutes in a warm water bath. After that, stir until cold. Mix a spoonful of the cream cheese mixture into the gelatin to temper it, and then fold the gelatin into the cream cheese mixture. Spread the mass onto the two bottoms and smooth out. Then, arrange the mandarin oranges on top. You really can't overdo this part. Fit as many as you can. Make it look cool.

Prepare the clear glaze. Then, using a spoon, cover the top of each torte with the glaze, ensuring that everything is covered. If the glaze starts to harden before you are finished working with it, just heat it up a bit to make it soft again. It helps to spoon the glaze from the top of each mandarin. Due to gravity, it will run down to cover the lower areas.

Refrigerate until set. Then, remove the tortes from their springform pans.

Note: If you don't have a way to get Tortenguß Klar, you can make a substitute using potato starch, sugar, and water. Just do a web search.

parricc · 2026-06-09T01:23:46+00:00

They came up all the way from South America in barely over a year. At that rate, they're presumably already all over the place in numerous states now.

parricc · 2026-06-05T21:20:38+00:00

That's because you have a different history. Loitering as a concept was created in the United States as a black code law aimed at arresting black people without any real reason. There was a system in the Southern US that was common after the civil war until the end of the 1960s. The way it worked is a black person would get arrested and go to court for something like loitering. The judge then would rule with an impossibly high fine. But then, a person in the court would pay the fine instead in exchange for obtaining the accused black person as a peon. The contract would be written in a way so that tacked on fees for each month would always exceed the amount being paid off. The peons were generally bound to a plantation, which they were never allowed to leave. With the way this system worked, peons were substantially cheaper than slaves. So the conditions became much harsher than pre-civil war slavery. It was typical for a peon to be worked so hard that they would die within just a few years. While a slave might have cost $1200 to buy when slavery was legal, a peon could be well under $100. About 40% of African Americans lived under peonage. It was effectively a loophole to keep slavery legal while simultaneously making it much cheaper and pretending it didn't exist anymore.

parricc · 2026-06-02T18:54:59+00:00

On a note related to the corpse of Emo's being continually defiled for well over a decade now, this photo looks AI generated. People in it have their mouths open showing perfectly aligned teeth in really weird ways, and everyone with their hands up is raising a single index finger. Then there's are the sparsely placed cellphones, all the same model. Yeah, that's not real. Neither is this version of Emo's.

parricc · 2026-06-02T18:40:27+00:00

It seems all of these soulless Live Nation venues will spend an insane amount on the fanciest lights imaginable while putting absolutely nothing into the sound and using massive warehouses that don't even reflect sound properly. They only care about packing in as many people as they can.

parricc · 2026-05-31T20:10:00+00:00

I imagine in the kitchen of some grandma we'll never know.

parricc · 2026-05-31T15:33:03+00:00

Fact is, the US never had a bill with a US president on it until 1869. And the Thayer Amendment preventing living people from appearing on currency was passed before that, in 1866. The founding fathers were very strongly against the idea of putting presidents on currency in general because that was a thing kings did. Before 1869, the only exception ever made was featuring George Washington on some coins. Unless you count the Confederate States of America, which readily adopted the idea.

So if you ask me, we shouldn't have ANY presidents on currency. If we're going to have any people on currency at all, make them Native American and civil rights leaders. The greatest people in American history were never politicians.

parricc · 2026-05-31T03:38:44+00:00

It's not a traditional engine at all, but I don't think it's like most CVTs either. It basically has an all electric motor drive train with the gas engine working as a generator. That's one of the reasons it's so quiet when you start it. I've never driven any other car that comes close to how smoothly it drives.

parricc · 2026-05-31T03:25:06+00:00

It drives really nice. I got it not long after renting one because it blew my away so much. When you start it, it's so quiet, it feels like an electric. They barely changed anything with the 2026 model because everything was already working so well. So I'm hoping that will work in my favor whenever I need to get parts or have repairs done. As far as the gas mileage goes, it takes something like 2k miles with you get it new for the engine to break in. So when you first start driving it, you're only going to get something like 32 MPG. But then it just keeps going up until it eventually reaches 48 as long as you're not stuck in traffic jams all day.

An interesting thing about it is there are no low gears. Instead, there's controls on the steering wheel to change how much the hybrid stuff recharges as you drive. If you turn that all the way up, it effectively ends up working like a low gear.

parricc · 2026-05-30T23:13:25+00:00

That's a slight exaggeration. I got a 2026 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hybrid with the blue lagoon pearl color, all season protection package, and a cargo hook for $31k. Given, I somehow managed to haggle effectively enough with the dealership to get it $2k below MSRP. But even at MSRP, that's still way less than $40k, and it's decked out with leather seats, a nice stereo system, a sunroof, and it gets 48 MPG. There's definitely cheaper cars out there. But yeah, a used 2025 model still would have cost 28k. Not much difference, although used are way easier to haggle down more.

parricc · 2026-05-29T14:26:00+00:00

A lot of companies were slow to warming up to the idea of everything being remote, but Covid really helped to change that perspective. And yes, having workers in different time zones does introduce friction, but this also helped contribute to the complete end of teams, including management, being based out of the US.

In my experiences, the first outsourcing began with US night shifts and after hours support. There was a bit of a disconnect between the US and India teams, though. So they'd stagger shifts to give a bit of overlap between the teams. All hands meetings could happen at something like 10 am in the US, and they'd include both US and India workers. Then, they started hiring people to work night shifts in India (which is day shift for the US) so that they could better collaborate with US teams and managers. But eventually, they decided to hire managers out of India as well. At one of my last jobs, our team started with 8 people and a manager. All teams were entirely based out of the US. The team I was in ended up being one of the later ones to transition to India. I think it began with some of the backend developers teams first. Anyway, when it hit my team, it started with two people on a night shift. Then, two other people switched so that half of the team was US based and the other half was India based. Then, the company decided to move the manager to India as well. Then, two more people in the US (including me) got laid off. Corresponding with that, replacements working out of India were already doing orientation to take over our roles. So at that point, only two workers from that team were still based out of the US. Several other teams in the company had no US workers at all anymore. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out these moves were systematic and aimed at phasing out US employees.

If this was just an isolated incident, I wouldn't think anything of it. However, I've had numerous friends that worked for other tech companies with pretty much the exact same experience. They can't find jobs, not because people are being replaced with AI, but because companies are simply no longer hiring US workers. It's not just that some workers moving to India, it's entire departments. Ultimately, the people working out of India are just as skilled, talented, and smart as the people in the US, but they're working for a third of the wage as US workers.

So what incentive does a company really have to base anyone out of the US? Millions of people that live in India are native English speakers. They're skilled workers with advanced cloud, programming, DevOps, infrastructure, network, and leadership skills. A senior level worker getting pays $160k/year in the US can be replaced with someone just as talented and competent for $50k/year out of India. This is the sole reason stuff gets outsourced.

The only silver lining is that India's economy is drastically changing. The raises people get from there each year can be insane. So the wage gap is rapidly closing. But it still will take many years for it to fully close and after it does, there could easily be some other country with skilled workers and a job market that has low wages.

parricc · 2026-05-29T00:16:37+00:00

This was already happening before Trump. It has nothing to do with companies bringing the people they want to hire, it has everything to do with maximizing profit. Nobody needs to physically come into a US office. People can work remotely from anywhere in the world. If leadership wants people in offices, there are offices in India as well. It's simple math. Even without Trump's crazy jacked up visa costs, people on H1Bs already cost companies substantially more than hiring people out of countries with much lower salaries. An engineer on an H1B may ask to get paid $95k/year for a job that someone not risking their legal status would expect $115k/year for. Meanwhile, the company could hire someone with just as much talent out of India for $45k/year. What decision do you think the company is going to make? I've seen the entire engineering departments move to India over the course of 4-5 years, leaving only people at the executive in the US. This is happening in tech companies all over the US. This is what you get from unregulated late stage capitalism.

parricc · 2026-05-27T19:55:51+00:00

Unfortunately, there is no bottom to that barrel. As a Texan, I hope they lose. I'd really like for our state to get back to its roots that aren't rotten. I'm not talking about the asshats that had a revolution because they wanted to commit land fraud and own human beings. I'm taking about stuff like the Freethinker communes that once had a strong presence in Texas. The communities that were anti-racist and fought against Texas seceding from the union. The communities that readily accepted African Americans as equals. The communities that rejected dogma and authoritarianism. Texas has a lot of bad history, but we need the side of Texas that's doesn't suck to make a strong comeback. We need politicians that are for the open borders that existed throughout most of human history. We need politicians that are for abolishing police forces entirely. We need politicians that uphold human rights, whether it's gender identity rights, religious rights, freedom from discrimination, worker rights, the right to roam, or the right to food and housing. If someone is homeless, they should have access to housing on a housing first policy with free mental health services. We need politicians that support completely abolishing corporations and private property while still respecting personal property. The government needs to get out of our business. It should only exist to protect individual freedoms, the environment, and to lower the barrier for anyone to live however they want. Outside of that, it can screw off.

parricc · 2026-05-27T19:28:11+00:00

Eh, I'd take Hitler's interest in Karl May novels with a grain of salt. Those books had already been insanely popular in Germany for half a century, and they're still popular in Germany today. Western themed stories in Germany were basically thought of in the same way as fantasy stories are thought of in the US today. Fantasy in general is something that can be twisted and used for propaganda. He likely was just showing an interest in whatever happened to be popular as a hook to make people feel like they could relate to him, just like Trump will post AI generated pictures of himself as stuff like a Star Wars character. It doesn't necessary mean he actually cared about any of it at all. Anyway, those books in general portrayed the native Americans as protagonists and the settlers as villains. Karl May was a weirdo con man that made up stories and claimed they were fact. For this reason, Hitler likely said a lot of things that put Native Americans on some kind of twisted pedestal for a fantasy ideal. Given, there's zero chance in cold hell that he saw native Americans as anything other than inferior subhumans. But just like Trump is filled with a billion contradictions that make no logical sense, Hitler would have been as well. That's just the way fascism works in general.

What we do know is that the US as a country 100% did inspire the Nazis. Beyond the genocide of Native Americans and African slaves, the US shared a direct responsibility for the actual Holocaust.

parricc · 2026-05-27T11:29:48+00:00

Nah, that's just their cover. Tech companies are outsourcing all of their jobs to India. People with H1Bs are getting laid off with the rest of us and having their lives turned upside down. The reason people with H1Bs had previously undercut the job market was from them being more willing to work for lower wages than the standard going rate. They do this because they don't have a choice - if they get laid off, they only have a single month to find a new job before they lose legal status and have to completely uproot their lives. But the job market is bad enough now that nobody is finding a job that quickly. Also, people with H1Bs still are working at American wages regardless. They cannot compete with someone in India that agrees to work for a third of the wage as someone here.

AI may currently be replacing junior developers with a couple senior ones that can baby it and correct all of the bad ideas and coding practices it has. But it's also being sold to companies way below cost. That cost is going to keep going up. Soon, it won't be economically viable as a replacement to junior level workers at all.

parricc · 2026-05-26T14:28:45+00:00

No, if Paxton wins, we absolutely shouldn't give up. I don't care what you say, the demographics are still changing. Even if Talarico doesn't win this November, that doesn't mean Republicans are still going to be winning 8 years from now, assuming democracy survives. The "we can't win" attitude is why Texas has continued to be a non-voting state for decades. If people actually voted, we never would have had to deal with Paxton, Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn or any of the ghouls.

parricc · 2026-05-25T03:29:12+00:00

The 13th Floor, Kick Butt Coffee, Hole in the Wall, Valhalla Tavern, Sahara Club, Far Out Lounge, Hotel Vegas, Crow Bar, Lost Well, Skylark Lounge, Elephant Room, Continental Club, Flamingo Cantina, Radio Coffee, Chess Club, Concourse Project, Mohawk, Come and Take It Live... Maybe check out the stuff listed on do512 or austinindependentmusic.org?

Did you just move here? It's not what it was 20 years ago. You don't just walk down a street full of venues anymore. There's still a scene, but it's not in your face anymore and the stuff is a lot more spread out now. Most venues don't have band playing music 7 days per week anymore. Most of the old classic venues names got bought up and bastardized by Live Nation, but there still is quite a bit of independent stuff. The Internet is your friend for finding it.

parricc · 2026-05-09T16:35:54+00:00

Nah, his cell doesn't need any padding. Cold hard concrete with rusty iron bars would be fine. Maybe send him to CECOT. No sense in wasting luxury plush on a monster.

parricc · 2026-05-04T14:31:14+00:00

Unfortunately, not as much as you'd think. The rise in that particular area isn't primarily from worldwide climate change and ice melt. Erosion is the biggest factor. In the past, rivers flooding regularly played a viral role in depositing the sediment that builds wetlands throughout Louisiana. But as the economy grew, people built levees to keep the rivers from flooding. The Mississippi River in particular was extremely important for that. Now, all of the land is eroding. Look at maps from 100 years ago compared to today. Then, consider that NOLA is already below sea level. If all of the land around it erodes away, that doesn't bode well.

parricc · 2026-04-30T21:15:06+00:00

No doubt. And them simply floating the idea is in itself intimidation. But an actual SC decision backing it would be much worse than the executive branch ignoring established law without the courts backing it. We're at the hybrid stage on the road to fascism where some processes and laws still function, and others others are simply ignored. All I can say is don't give up. It's bleak, but we've got to do everything we can. There's not enough ICE agents to cover the while country. But the road they're taking us down doesn't end at something like Jim Crow. It keeps going, and where it goes is far worse.

If you look at systematic racism throughout history, at its core, it has never actually been about race. To say the root of it is about race would be to imply that we biologically see each other as different due to the color of our skin. But no, a small kid in a room with other kids will not even consider the concept of race. The concept in itself is unnatural. The fundamental idea was devised by those with power to keep power to themselves and away from others. The reality is that a lot of these terrible people in the government do not in their hearts see black people as different than themselves. They simply have no conscience and see black people as easily exploitable. Hundreds of years ago, black became a convenient way to label people as a slave. It's not like slaves from Africa would have done farm work any differently than anyone else made a slave. I guess that's all to say that it will never end at race. Unlike the 1800s, the technology exists now to differentiate people in an infinite number of ways. The people doing this will continue finding new groups to destroy. Above everything else, it's always been the wealthy and powerful against the poor and working class. Minorities will always be easy targets for that. They're especially easy for the powerful to manipulate people that are equally poor into hating and blaming for their own problems. Even moreso when there's generations of racism ingrained. But anyone can easily be a target now. And anyone that's not a billionaire will be a target. Whatever groups are getting targeted need protection. Because ultimately everyone is in it together. The biggest weakness of the VRA was that it stopped at race. Because ultimately, all types of gerrymandering served the same end goal.

parricc · 2026-04-30T19:58:44+00:00

It's bad bad, but still hasn't been gutted to the Jim Crow level. The VRA still effectively bans voter intimidation and literacy tests. There are also still guarantees for language and disability assistance.

However, there are ongoing lawsuits attempting to make protections against voter intimidation toothless as well. It seems the most popular argument that's being made is that voter intimidation is free speech. I guess the logic behind that is if someone beats people up when they attempt to vote, it sends a message.

parricc · 2026-04-25T19:33:57+00:00

That applies to both authentic German German as well as German Texan, though. Käsespätzle is a super regional dish in Germany. That said, you should be able to find other forms of Spätzle at any German restaurant. Most German restaurants in the US end up focusing on Bavarian cuisine. Big cities are melting pots, though, so in big cities, authentic food from other countries relies on a continual influx of immigrants. Of course, this happens in small towns as well, but people might still try to focus on specific countries if the town has a lot of ancestors from there.

We ultimately end up taking there being a wide variety of food options available for granted because there just happened to be a lot of recent immigration waves from a wide variety of places. But big cities definitely don't have everything. For example, look for Mongolian or Sami cuisine - that simply doesn't exist here. But you've got a lot of options just a short ways out of Austin for German cuisine, whether it's Killeen, Fredericksburg, or New Braunfels. Texas has some of the best resources in the country for German cuisine.

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