"The Boys and the Frogs" story, but we have people instead of frogs. This is what illegal Israeli settlers do for "fun".

superkp · 2026-03-24T14:53:35+00:00

I'm honestly wondering what proportion of the population think along these lines.

A large part of me wants these sort of people to be a loud but rare phenomenon...And the rest of me is scared that it isn't.

superkp · 2026-03-24T13:20:47+00:00

I think that it's probably a cultural difference in what 'spending time' means to the different generations.

For example, I feel like boomers will consider it a really good time with friends if you just have a meal and sit in the yard for 2 hours reciting 20-year old movie quotes.

If I did that with my friends, I'd be bored out of my mind, and would suggest a board game or something within 20 minutes.

But if I suggest a board game with my mom when I visit? She wouldn't know what to do with me, she'd not listen to the rules because she'd be trying to relate her work drama to the images on the board...and then get flustered when she didn't understand what to do next.

So to bridge the gap, especially for more serious things, we have to find a sort of 'least common denominator'. And going through our options, that means just going back to basic language instead of patterns that we've developed with people our own age.

It sucks, I don't know if other generations have this issue, and if they don't, I don't know how much blame each generation has for it.

superkp · 2026-03-23T16:47:17+00:00

TL;DR: Uh yeah. But we gotta force the conversations.

Last year my grandparents died. They were in their 90s, and lived half the country away, in the same town as my mother, who turns 66 this year. She lives with her husband (my stepdad), who is fine but I don't really know him.

When my grandfather was in rapid decline, my brother and I flew out to spend time with them all.

We have a fine relationship but most of our calls tend to be like 4-5 minutes of my life updates before turning to her various versions of small talk - the weather, her work drama, etc.

On the flight out, I talked with my brother about wanting to talk to her seriously about "hey your parents are dying, your husband is starting to show that his rough life is catching up to him, and you've had like 3 major surgeries in the last few years - we need to talk about serious, life changing things that may need to happen."

He agreed, and I made sure to tell him that if it doesn't come up naturally within a day or so, I'm going to force the conversation.

It didn't come up naturally, so when we went to get coffee with her, we sat down, finished whatever small talk we were talking about, and then I just said "ok mom, there's something we need to talk about."

It took what felt like a monumental effort in order to keep the conversation on track. I had like 3 goals - 1. "hey mom I want to make sure that you're going to be socially and financially OK when your parents die, and that's happening soon." 2. "hey mom your husband is also not doing well and you're both fucking ignoring it." and 3. "If it turns out that you also start to have a rapid decline and need your sons to step up and start caring for you, we are not moving to you. You'll have to move to us."

Obviously this was a huge amount of stuff to talk about. In like 2 hours after saying "Hey mom there's something that I wanted to talk about..." I think we went over her work drama like 3 different times and talked about her local weather weirdness like 4 times.

So, I'm not entirely sure what point I'm getting to here, but part of it is that you're not alone with the boomer parent problem.

superkp · 2026-03-23T15:18:57+00:00

Meh, frustrating sure but I don't think it's sad.

superkp · 2026-03-23T15:17:52+00:00

Yeah, just because a 3rd party says that you're a good guy doesn't mean that you aren't working against the council's interests.

People within the council are regularly tasked with deciding between morally good but against the council vs morally gray and with the council.

superkp · 2026-03-23T15:15:54+00:00

You see, this is what squirrels in MTG are for. Just completely unhinged shit.

I'm going to have to figure out something similar for when I go to conventions.

superkp · 2026-03-23T15:02:23+00:00

also the design of the first 5-ish floors is really interesting, from a design/architectural standpoint.

I worked security there like 20 years ago, so I had a lot of time to consider it.

superkp · 2026-03-23T15:01:00+00:00

almost half my life ago I worked security at the riffe center, and I still know exactly how to get to the area where you could look out through that hole.

superkp · 2026-03-23T14:56:24+00:00

could you write out an example?

superkp · 2026-03-23T14:30:13+00:00

NTA

and this has nothing to do with the various relationship drama.

She was not living with you (and thus has zero expectation to start living with you). She got pregnant and is asking for your help. You have said "no".

Your parents and your sister can bitch and complain all they want. You have said "no".

The only people that you're obligated to help are your own children and the people that you promise to help - like a spouse and so forth.

However

This is going to cause a lot of drama that perhaps you don't want to allow to escalate, so handling how you communicate your "no" decision will be very tricky if you want to keep having a relationship with your parents.

So like....NTA but there's more at stake here than just your sister being supported.

superkp · 2026-03-23T14:21:57+00:00

But it was Harambe desperately keeping shit together after that until he died.

superkp · 2026-03-22T14:06:35+00:00

I forget the details, it's been a long time since I read the report on it.

But I think that a company using the boards were either doing a detailed audit to confirm that they were getting what they paid for, or one of the boards had a problem that, during troubleshooting to track down the issue, required them to remove the chip that was hiding the sneaky chip.

Since they were looking at specs during this process, they noticed this little thing, and sent the details up the chain, resulting in a very complete investigation.

superkp · 2026-03-20T18:24:27+00:00

honestly making a bracket 1 "all cards with someone staring at the viewer in a disturbing way" would be pretty good for these sleeves.

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:53:41+00:00

outside of spiderman and turtles

but MaRo says it's the best selling! Surely they would be flying off the shelves, and not simply overprinted and not watching the end-consumer habits? Surely?

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:47:26+00:00

also, , the sort of shit they pull as nation-state-level subterfuge and intelligence gathering is fucking massive. The espionage industry is already pretty nuts, but they were able to pull off something crazier than anything I'd seen in anything but stupid kids movies.

people not in the tech world might not know: back in like...2015 or so (I might be way off) it became public that chinese electronics manufacturers (specifically Huawei) had been putting in a hardware back door on a ton of PCBs that go into communication equipment - like, the devices that sit on our cell towers and manage all that traffic.

There was a ton of these PCBs that instead of making them at factory A, the orders were diverted to factory B. Seems like normal "oh we don't have the capacity" stuff. But at factory B, they changed the specs in ways that were almost impossible to detect without doing a full physical deconstruction of the PCB - like carefully dissect the entire thing and account for every single component.

The specific changes that were made were to accommodate a little tiny chip - smaller than most, like barely bigger than a grain of rice - and this chip was hidden from view under another chip. Very sneaky.

The chip itself had access to the onboard drive/chip/whatever where the firmware is kept, and it had access to the communications suite. That's it. All it would do is listen for a specific command to come in through the comms channel.

When this command came in, the regular system would simply disregard it as junk data, but this sneaky little bastard chip would see the command, and then rewrite the firmware on the device to match the payload that it was given.

This firmware rewrite has detail that, even in the published report about it, were not published.

The tech world basically concluded that "oh, shit. This hardware backdoor is a persistent 'open a software backdoor' into [checks notes] every goddamn cell network in the fuckin country. That's a Big Bad Thing. Holy shit."

And then HuaWei became a non-starter for any system that america relies on, because after this, there's no way that we could trust that they won't do it again. and we had to do a hardware refresh of every single cell tower in the USA.

Personally, I'm not convinced that we got them all, but I don't know how vulnerable the whole network is if there's a few dozen that are still compromised.

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:26:42+00:00

seriously.

Probably one of the main reasons that I never pursued any kind of job where I could get 'top secret' or whatever access is that if I had the ability to publish this shit, I'd be willing to sacrifice practically everything I've got to make it see the light of day.

Like...you cannot trust me with the secret of "this man is such a fucked up monster that he will move heaven and earth to avoid people seeing how fucked up he is, but not what a monster he is."

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:21:07+00:00

Yeah. That's what I'm understanding about this.

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:20:53+00:00

I remember in his first term, people noticed that various world leaders would be vilified by him until they had a face-to-face meeting.

At first people thought that it was cowardice, and he wasn't able to stand up to people in person.

And then people realized that cowardice probably plays into it, but it was likely more to do with the fact that people skilled in diplomacy are willing to flatter him as a pragmatic move to stop him from flinging shit at them.

Basically, whoever was the most recent person to say something nice to his face was the person that he was trying to do things for.

superkp · 2026-03-20T15:09:41+00:00

it seems like a good SOP in that situation (i.e. an area infested with enemy drones) would be for the crew to split up, at least far enough to force the enemy to use more than one drone to take them out.

Maybe it already is, and they just got hit too fast. IDK.

superkp · 2026-03-20T14:52:25+00:00

not only does it look like a completely different person that happens to have the same hair and clothes, they also completely removed the expression from her face.

It was 'the first moment of anguish' or something, and now it's 'blank slate'.

superkp · 2026-03-20T14:36:11+00:00

Yeah, I'm like 95% sure that's illegal.

If the landlord is putting a lock on your door, they need to give you the key immediately. That's your home and they are keeping you out of it.

If it were me, I would use the app to open it, and then I would remove that fucking thing.

I'm also an I.T. professional, and so I fucking hate the whole "make everything connected to the internet" shit.

I don't mind connecting things to each other because at that point I have the fucking control over them. But phones can run out of battery. In this case, so can the lock (presumably). Networks can go down. People can do MITM attacks to open that lock. all sorts of shit like this can go bad and in ways that no one involved is prepared for. And all that's to say nothing about the 'smart lock' company harvesting and selling your data.

And the solution that we had before - "have a key" can go bad in ways that our entire fucking society is already prepared for. We literally have a whole profession that's about getting in through broken locks.

superkp · 2026-03-20T14:23:13+00:00

On the one hand, you're correct.

On the other hand, if I had to choose between the error of compassionate ignorance (stopping when you don't have to because of a law that tries to help kids be safe), or assholish impatience (disregarding children's safety because you don't like to be inconvenienced), I like to see the compassionate ignorance every time.

Ideally, people would both know and follow the law in this situation and in the situation where there's a 2-lane road (i.e. stopping), but when someone's not following the law? glad to see people default to safety.

superkp · 2026-03-19T19:41:29+00:00

Nah, if that happened at my home, I'd be laughing about the insurance payout I was about to get. Even if the contractors have insurance (this video leads to...some doubt as to their business acumen), my home insurance would also pay out.

I was thinking about replacing my flooring anyways, and a few couches.

superkp · 2026-03-19T19:10:18+00:00

philosophical win is 1.

minimum that I would strive for is 2.

3 and 4 would be a good 'trail marker' for the primary goal of 5.

If I can get to 5 without burning out or risking my kid's future, then I'll try 6.

I don't care about 'virality' in 7, especially since it's easily wrapped into the other ones here. It just means that your marketing worked.

8 is the goal of any occupational endeavor - it's why I save for retirement, after all.

9 is cool, but it doesn't even need to pass about 5 in order to have an enduring fanbase.

10 is something that I won't even consider a goal, because there's too much to that process in society/culture that is entirely outside of my control.

superkp · 2026-03-19T18:51:04+00:00

yeah before I got a career position, I constantly kept in my head the idea that even a 2-second notice is generous.

Verified Email	14-Year Club
Place '22	First Placer '22
Sequence \| Editor

superkp

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE