jkcki

deep tech in the shallow web

[jkcki]

[jkcki]

GenZ posting on LinkedIn:

"I guess I did a thing?"

(Link is to a paper solving cold fusion.)

[jkcki]

Your long-running ttrpg campaign has finally come to an end. The villain shrieks as he dies: "You fools!! I've already won!!" Paranoid, you search his lair to discover countless photos of your adventuring party, each story beat, each harrowing showdown, and a little sign reading "spending time with my best friends 🥺🥰." A ragged and ancient Will bequeaths everything to you.

[jkcki]

I truly believe we should move forward as though Trump is dead, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

If he's seen in public? It's a body double.

If someone says they saw him personally? They're a crisis actor.

If he speaks directly to you? Do not speak back; to speak to the dead is to forfeit your soul.

Trump is dead and anyone who believes he's alive is a conspiracy theorist and a truther.

[jkcki]

If Trump and Elon divorce, who gets custody of the country? Is it like a weekend/weekday kind of thing, holidays?

[jkcki]

When's the space travel version of the billionaire submarine disaster going to happen.

Can't wait until the iced corpse of Peter Thiel achieves stable orbit around our planet.

[jkcki]

What do you want to do when you grow up Sally?

"I want to be a Mid Level Individual Contributor Progression Role!"

[jkcki]

What do you want to do when you grow up Sally?

"I want to be a Mid Level Individual Contributor Progression Role!"

[jkcki]

wealthy conservatives shakily pulling Nazi salutes as a "notice me senpai" targeted to a lunatic wielding a Chainsaw of +2 Compensation, all while his child's mother desperately tweets that their child is about to die, let the hunger games begin

[jkcki]

president musk and his assistant, human shield, address the nation (also seen: old man whimpers, irrelevant)

[jkcki]

Christmas is always a sore spot for me. Does anyone else feel the same?

(TW: Just a straight bummer.)

I was four when my mother handed me to strangers - she told me we would dip Easter eggs. A lady cycled up on a bike - I wouldn't see my mother again for two years.

When I did see her again, it was Christmas. Her boyfriend brought me a toy microscope. The man I was with pulled ribbons of flesh from his skin and insisted: they're moving! You see? The worms?

My mother did take me home that night - at her boyfriend's insistence. But after that the holidays were still haphazard. One night she made us drive three hours so she could give me an extra gift basket someone was giving away for free. Another night, we were evicted.

I never really know how to deal with the holidays. I've memories of my father, back from prisons, trying to catch up on gifts with secondhand salt shakers, books and pins from interests ten years prior.

Even small things, like a stay-at-home boyfriend telling me, "I couldn't afford your gift, so I returned it," still recur and still burn.

As our society grows increasingly distant and lonely, Christmas feels difficult to parse into our modern lives. I don't think I'm alone in this. The combination of consumerism and connection can as easily highlight what we lack as what we have - just look at all our Christmas media. It's filled with people feeling lonely, desperate, or British-ly evil.

[jkcki]

Wow this CEO killing case is sure moving fast. Good to know that the NYC justice system is so efficient!

Unrelated, did you know that Kalief Browder, a 16 year old accused of stealing a backpack, was held on Riker's Island for three years without a trial because his parents couldn't afford bail?

[jkcki]

It's weird that a society that agrees on almost nothing has universally decided that we're all wearing ankle socks and no shows for the rest of our lives

[jkcki]

It's weird that a society that agrees on almost nothing has universally decided that we're all wearing ankle socks and no shows for the rest of our lives

[jkcki]

OpenAI's 12 Days of Christmas: an advent calendar where each door that opens lays off one of your colleagues.

[jkcki]

So, when I had a privacy fence put into my old house, I got quotes from like five companies. Most wanted to talk to my non-existent husband, and one even physically threatened me - he looked around my house and was like, "I could rape you right now, if I wanted."

I ended up going with a small Samoan company that did the job at like 1/2 the price of the other quotes - and kindly.

Since then, I've had numerous similar experiences with "conventional" companies.

When I needed concrete installed, every company told me that the others were lying and I needed something different: one said I needed a run-off report, another said I needed a drainage system first, and they all conflicted. A random guy from Craigslist did it for me, it passed code inspection, and never caused a problem.

When I bought propane, they created a leak - twice - so they could refill my tank. When I got plumbing work done, they did the work to the wrong code and tried to charge me to fix it.

Dealing with random immigrant companies has *never* yielded me problems like this. They don't ask where my husband is. They don't overcharge me.

But the problem of labor in America has nothing to do with American employees being lazy or immigrants being cheap - it's the entitlement and utter disconnect of the owners. These are issues of policy: owners who want to squeeze more from the customer, owners who have disdain for both their employees and their clientele.

I don't think I'm the only person who has noticed how many companies today are really just scams. How many small local businesses are actually still a nexus of corruption or bigotry, even if they are "small and local."

There is a trust broken in American society that has zero to do with immigration.

[jkcki]

Being an American means different things to different people. For me, it means discovering new school shootings via The Onion reposts.