R&D Department of 1

Ian Ooi RocketPenguins, Graphics, Games, Code. A mostly professional blog documenting my work and other development efforts.

[depsidase]

[hateusandseeifwemind]

[pinene]

Can anyone explain wtf is going on here especially a Korean speaker

[tadeadshihamurder]

someone on reddit explained 😭

[no-one-offical]

‎

[desmolbean404]

That is one of the most astronomical fuck up translations I have ever seen.

[depsidase]

[jarl-deathwolf]

If anyone would like to read a thorough take down of Sparta as a state not worth emulating, then ive got just the series of articles for you!

[heroineimages]

Reblogging because pissing on Sparta is one of my hobbies. And yes, totally check out the link above. Brett has a lot of great discussion and scholarship on why Sparta was proto-fascist garbage, and he presents it with both snark and accessibility.

[fierceawakening]

Holy shit. That’s… that’s worse than I thought it would be. Yikes.

[doctorjanedee]

Reblogging because more people should read the ACOUP Sparta takedown and fewer people should get their concept of history from fucking 300.

[fierceawakening]

No one should get their concept of history from 300, and I say that as someone who enjoyed 300. 300 is a comicbookification of a legend, and legends are already exaggerations.

[disorganisedautodidact]

A Great Divorce has also done an audio version of the ACOUP Spart takedown if audio is easier for you!

[captain-price-returns]

[dragongirlbunny]

there is nothing a corporation hates more than having employees, but a close second is having to provide a good or service in order to make money. these two reasons concisely explain is why the ai bubble formed in the first place.

[amber-writhing]

Some thoughts.

Kofi Tip jar

[prokopetz]

You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.

[prokopetz]

Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?

[rlyehtaxidermist]

essentially every core premise of the whole language movement has been tested and rejected by both qualitative and quantitative research, but that won't stop them because they can't fucking read

[tpwrtrmnky]

Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

That is the problem.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Oh and the road infrastructure project is buying up resources other people could have used for literally anything else. With money they promise they'll be making from Wide Car sales any day now.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Okay so what I'm getting from the notes is that when you try to transplant some techbro nonsense into an offline equivalent, you have to be careful to avoid simply inventing something the Americans are already doing in real life

[captain-price-returns]

You’re years too late to be recognizing the threat of US government mass surveillance, bud.

[duchessvongooseberg]

[mandatoryrollercoaster]

Future Imperfect

[rocket-penguin]

A randomized trial by METR found that experienced developers completed real coding tasks 19% slower when allowed to use AI tools — yet after

The cleanest result in the METR trial is also the one most likely to be misread. In a randomized controlled trial posted in July 2025, METR

As the article states this is NOT proof that AI slows down work, but it IS proof that we cannot just accept the idea blindly that AI tools speed up work, ignoring effects on quality and ethical considerations and maintainability.

The burden of proof is on AI tools to show they are useful. There isn't really anything so far, just anecdotal evidence and the broad assumption that generating text and images and video makes things faster and cheaper. Sometimes they even claim better.

Every single person who talks about AI tells me "I've found some uses for it". They do NOT say that it's useful. They have found a use.

[gaslit-dipshits]

[appalachian-werewolf]

PoweredByWho — Who's Building Data Centers in Your Backyard?

Follow the money behind America's data center boom. Track 2,300+ projects, PAC spending, and the politicians who sign off on it.

[reasonsforhope]

Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.

You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out

[shotofchinaco]

Brian McFadden: Is Google Cooked? (via Daily Kos)

[not-your-average-url]

I miss when ads were a single click and then they’re gone. Now every ad has a minimum of three phases where you watch a video, exit the still frame of fake gameplay, and then exit the app download. That doesn’t even touch on the ones that forcibly take you to another app after opening a tab in safari without you ever touching the screen.

I hate advertising. I hate that you can’t do anything without companies jumping down your throat with mostly bullshit ads. I hate that billboards exist. I hate that every company unanimously decided to make their ads longer and longer. I hate that ad blockers try to charge you money and there are in app purchases to remove ads. I hate that my attention has become commodified. I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it.

[cutecipher]

There are some solutions like ublock origin for browser ads and dns adblocking like pi hole but when people talk about these they often miss that the ad industry has spent untold fortunes to create unblockable ads so its not even like there's a perfect technical solution.

[hikikomoricomplex]

Moreover, it’s not enough that I can block ads for myself: I want to live in a world where nobody sees ads!

I don’t want all the women in my life and in my community to constantly have their self-esteem crushed by advertising! I want to collaborate creatively with others who haven’t had their tastes dictated by the rich through advertising! I’m tired of explaining to my parents that the things they see on TV ads are lies and scams! I don’t want my kids to grow up around friends obsessed with consumerism and gambling because that’s what’s advertised to them!

I want the people in my community and in my country to know that consumerism isn’t normal, and none of this has to be this way! I wonder what the world would be like if we didn’t all just accept that rich people can take your time and attention without your consent!?

[wilwheaton]

In 2018, Pastor Dave Barnhart of the Saint Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama posted this message to Facebook:

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

[queer-as-city-folk]

We really are never going to stop stripping this land bare

[busket]

those mountains are older than Saturn's rings and they want to blow them up and hollow them out for cell phone batteries

[puri-kura]

i don't know if folks outside these mountains understand what a state these communities are left in after being ravaged by the coal and steel industries. they endured well over 100 years of paternalistic brutality to provide the resources that built america with nothing in return and that very much informs the culture and collective psyche. force fed opiates to undermine labor movements and hard-won unions after decades of horrific abuse at isolated company towns. living there you can feel how we're all just one giant open wound that can't heal.

if bringing in corporations to mine raw materials from the appalachian mountains was good for the community, appalachia would be known for how happy, healthy, and wealthy the people are.

[inkskinned]

my most ungrounded and unresearched fear is that so many companies are pushing AI in part because it builds them a pathway towards a subscription model for a huge number of things that should not be subscription, but theoretically could be:

do you want to talk to verizon's help desk because there's an error on your bill? to access a real agent, you have to pay for Verizon Access+, only 5.99 a month.

want to filter out all the fake job postings from the real ones? subscribe to Indeed: Advanced Tactics and only verified postings will appear on your dash.

sick of the infinite ai slop? buy Google Premium; it'll automatically detect ai within a site and gives it a credibility score. with premium plus, you can shuffle high-credibility results to the top.

do you want a "luxury" experience? well, you'd have to pay for that luxury, and since the company sure doesn't want to pay its employees; the cost would fall to the consumer.

when automation has made every experience unpleasant; the experience of genuine humanity will be commodified.

[marzipanandminutiae]

This is already happening – one of the softwares used by a museum I work at only lets you talk to a human help agent if you have their premium subscription. It's such bullshit

[inkskinned]

the fact you are not the only one in these notes saying "no this is already happening; i have to pay money to speak to a representative" is just... really awesome! you said a software used by museums is doing this shit? okay! great! wonderful!! anybody know where i can scream