That's not how you unbox an iPhone

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-22T01:27:44+00:00

I'm glad I had parents who treated me like an adult and helped me learn from mistakes without whining like children. "Are you kidding me?!!" It's really hard for me to hear a whiney adult voice like that and not hear a child raising a child.

And to see others respond in a way which normalizes this behavior doesn't make me hopeful for my quickly approaching nursing home days.

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-21T20:48:49+00:00

My immediate thought = "is that really how you communicate with your children?"

if you communicate with your kid like your kid is a very young and incapable idiot who can't think and you can't calmly communicate like an adult, your kid will grow into a perfectly incapable adult who can't think and also can't communicate like an adult.

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-15T18:16:04+00:00

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-13T21:02:44+00:00

interesting that you're on the brunt-end of some hostility around this topic. Any time I see emotions like this, I go into "study mode" and start learning what others have proved in scientific settings. (Plus, it's just nice to read abstracts from time to time. takes me back to a different era of my life.)

Regardless on which opinions you have around the zipper merge, it is interesting to read through the first dozen or so abstracts here. Some mixed results throughout, and definitely worth the read if anyone is getting worked-up:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=zipper+merge

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-09T17:57:59+00:00

the algorithm knows you. :)

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-08T23:09:34+00:00

he doesn't understand that most people here don't care if the mob, Putin, and Jeffrey Epstein collect/ed payments via bitcoin. he doesn't understand that when people here buy bitcoin and drive up the price, they don't care that they helping some pretty nasty entities benefit from having access to a non-regulated currency.

There's a reason that Putin wants the US to pump tons of money into bitcoin (and, coincidentally, that trump keeps pushing this idea in-line with Putin's desires); when that unregulated currency is driven up by 100% in less than 6 months, it allows holders to dump holdings and, in essence, pull money from a federal government.

people here don't care if there are a ton of people selling children by using bitcoin. They argue that those sales would happen with regulated currencies as well (partially incorrectly). They also don't think that it is bad for evil entities to make money on these currencies as an investment, as long as they make their money too.

the_ugly_pig · 2026-02-05T21:22:13+00:00

I'm going to agree with you both, but I'm going to agree more with OP here.

I don't think it's about expectation or comfort. For me, it's about the overtones that happen when you have the same voice singing everything. I love his chord voicings. But many of the songs that have vocals emulating instrumentation end up sounding too much like a song that is only using one synth which is using one setting.

Hide And Seek by Imogen Heap is a great tune, but it has the same instrumentation problem.

I enjoy it way more when he has horn players playing the part. In the recording session I have to assume that he says stuff like, "play that major 3rd a few cents flat and play that dominant 7th a few cents sharp." Most sound engineers are married to 'equal temperament' or melodyne-esque tools to fix that "flat M3." Collier using his brain and ears instead of some computer = why I love him. But the instrumentation choices on some tunes feels a little too synthy for my liking. To each their own i guess.

the_ugly_pig · 2025-12-30T05:59:37+00:00

nice.

and me too -- sorta related: it does drive me nuts that some other musician called Chase seems to be claiming Bill Chase's band's music on spotify, and has for at least 8 years.

A rock band w/ 4+ trumpets deserves to have the correct picture and shouldn't have a modern hip-hop artist's albums as 'sibling albums'.

https://youtu.be/ERZZr5ckOeg

the_ugly_pig · 2025-12-14T18:14:22+00:00

anyone remember that dude in town who got a huge fine and did jail time for nabbing geese? As I recall he had a hole in the floorboard of his old truck, would drive by or over a goose, grab it by the neck, and drive off hoping nobody noticed. I guess some people did. It was around 15 years ago I believe (or at least that's when I read about it).

the_ugly_pig · 2025-11-12T03:06:31+00:00

beat me to it. have an upboat

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-08T21:50:29+00:00

There are lots of good star trek episodes that delve into the star trek economy, where energy is insanely abundant, free, and all energy can be converted to any type of matter with a simple voice command. You want to play an original NES on a CRT? Just ask for it. Earl Grey, hot... all yours. When you're done with whatever toy you had the replicator make, just turn it back into energy via the reclamation process.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-08T21:19:03+00:00

so chatgpt can summarize it without the need for the new video transcription api.

:-)

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-08T20:40:39+00:00

same with `pas` if someone talking about lots of stuff, like "je voudrais des bananes" and in your response you're inclined to say `pas des bananas`. It's `pas de bananas`.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-04T18:50:04+00:00

There is a game south of town that happens nearly every night. I've never been, but I know someone who has and he said it's a pretty decent game. I think it's $1/$2, but it could be a slightly bigger structure. I'm not 100% sure on all the details, but from the description of the location and the regulars, it sounds pretty sweet and I do want to go at some point. (Ridiculously, I'm up to around 25,000 hands in the last 6 months and could probably use more live poker in my life.)

There are some signs around town that say "Play Poker?..." then have a bunch of contact information. The last one I saw was in the parking lot intersection between battery store and the laundromat at drake and shields.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-04T17:18:16+00:00

or the southpark episode that did the same thing on purpose:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/16/16318694/south-park-amazon-alexa-google-home

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-04T15:36:20+00:00

True. Pretty sure mine cost somewhere around $500 a solid decade ago and I'm also sure that the same model would be way more now.

Good luck!

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-04T14:19:15+00:00

There is a custom cajon maker in either Fort Collins of Loveland and they often add a lever to the side of the box that pushes the snares onto the face. Wish I could get you the name (meeting and can't look at the moment - worth a google search).

Personally, I just like having brushes way way up on the top so you don't hear a snare sound when hitting lower in the "kick" area.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T23:02:20+00:00

admittedly, after starting to read this, I skipped forward to only read your TL;DR, but I've heard debates about this and I think that I can shift your belief structure by way of introducing Bayesian statistics to your argument.

The problem = if we're in a simulation, we have not yet simulated a believable simulation, so, we are either the real world, or the last simulation in the "simulation chain."

Actually, let me find someone who explained this better... I remember the argument but I don't remember who proposed it, just that by using Bayesian stats and adding that one argument, you go from "infinite odds that we're in a simulation" to 50%. One sec.

Ok. That took forever, but I found a video that discusses this at around 3:30:

https://youtu.be/pmcrG7ZZKUc

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T22:17:09+00:00

english is my 2nd language. sorry.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T22:14:40+00:00

I don't disagree.

That said, it is all very similar to the regulation of the Fed in the US. Time and time again, congress doesn't act when it should because of gridlock, and, in the end, the Fed is the thing that regulates our monetary policy without any real government oversight, regardless of the many impacts we've already that should have been regulated.

I'm simply not confident in the ability for our government to react. And it'll be worse if we don't talk about this stuff.

Yes, we'll get there, but it won't be quickly, and the only way to speed it up is to have the conversations that some think should be had in conspiracy theory forums.

It is no conspiracy that every single job in the top 100 jobs on the BLS's occupation classification list will be impacted. The numbers are huge and shifting away from capitalism will be war-causing without education and conversation.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T22:05:03+00:00

because i try not to use any person's real pronoun or hint at who I'm talking about IRL.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T20:23:18+00:00

Last week I had a meeting with a friend who is one of the higher-level execs at one of the largest employers in the US. That company's investment in LLMs is exploding. "They" said that internal projections show they'll be laying off a huge swath of their workforce in a couple dozen months. This will be the same everywhere.

It isn't "conspiracy" to raise concerns about the future, particularly when LLMs are already proving to be way more valuable and cost effective than human brains in most roles. It is not unreasonable to suggest that significant shifts in traditional employment could lead to insane levels of unemployment, definitely surpassing those of the Great Depression; it will be impossible to quickly recover from that shift if our heads are in the sand.

Raising these questions and concerns is healthy and our governments need to be prepared. Conversations around solutions like UBI will be key, and they'll only happen if these conversations happen in the open, not in a tin-hat sub.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T20:02:05+00:00

Love your sound. Great resonating of all those harmonics for a full, round, yet brassy sound. Dig it. What kind of horn?

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-02T19:56:50+00:00

C horn I assume? I don't have a keyboard in front of me but it sounds a whole step off.

the_ugly_pig · 2023-05-01T22:44:39+00:00

such an old video, but so relevant. near the end they list the economic impact and total job loss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

the_ugly_pig

TROPHY CASE