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Cake day: March 20th, 2025

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  • Alex Jones was a CIA plant to discredit conspiracy theories that were a liiiiittle too close to reality.

    Basically, the government saw some conspiracy theories that were edging too close to what was actually happening. But they couldn’t just outright deny those theories. Because the government spontaneously going “no, we didn’t get microwaves from aliens, and those aliens definitely don’t live among us now as billionaire lizard people” would look suspicious as hell. Any outright denial would only lend credibility to those theories. Like the Streisand Effect, denying them would catapult them to fame. So instead, they created a patsy.

    Enter Alex Jones. He’s an idiot, very opinionated, and very vocal about it. But most importantly, he has that spark that makes mediocre white dudes feel smart when they listen to him talk. All the government had to do was give him a platform, and occasionally feed him some juicy conspiracies for his next script. Alex doesn’t even realize he’s being helped along. The government used Alex to give conspiracy theorists a recognizable face and a household name. When Alex Jones hit the air, conspiracy theories were suddenly up front and center in the zeitgeist. Largely due to the government’s help, though he didn’t even know he was the controlled opposition.

    And they intentionally got him to parrot those too-close-to-reality conspiracy theories, right alongside the super crazy ones. By making Alex Jones a household name, they were able to collectively discredit all conspiracy theorists. And all they had to do was set him up to skyrocket to fame, and then fail very publicly.

    Sandy Hook happened, and that was what the CIA had been waiting for. I don’t think they caused the shooting, but they certainly capitalized on it by getting Jones to fall down the conspiracy rabbit hole with it. Once he had time to work through all of the theories they wanted to discredit, they realized he was getting out of control, and they needed to burn him. And so they did, by leaving him completely disgraced. And the best part (from the government’s perspective) is that burning him only helped further discredit those real conspiracy theories.



  • This isn’t a conspiracy at all. Plastic recycling was originally driven by plastic producers, to shift the blame for pollution away from themselves. Basically, it was a way for the producers to go “it’s not our fault the world is full of plastic. It’s the consumer’s fault for failing to recycle all of it!” They saw the inevitable plastic mountain on the horizon, and took steps to ensure they weren’t going to be blamed for it.


  • Do not use a company machine for personal projects. Anything that touches a company machine will inevitably belong to the company.

    Just get a beat up old Thinkpad for like $20 (or for free, if you’re friends with the company IT folks and they’re discarding old stock) and install something like Linux Mint to get it up and running.

    Don’t even use company-owned software licenses. For instance, if you want to make a game, don’t use your company’s Unreal Engine license to do it. Use a personal license (or something free, like Godot) instead.


  • Disney is pretty widely known to have contracts like this. They basically boil down to “anything creative you do while employed by Disney belongs to Disney, even if you did it outside of working hours.” Because Disney doesn’t want artists, animators, writers, etc to take characters or writing with them when they quit, by claiming that it was created when they were off the clock. That would potentially run the company afoul of IP laws (the same IP laws they lobby congress to make, and wield like a cudgel against smaller creators) if an employee took a character with them when they left.

    Basically, if you want to do any personal projects while employed by Disney, you either already started them before you were hired, or you’re going to have to wait until your contract is up.



  • For some slightly more in-depth context: Emiru is a popular streamer on Twitch. She has a personal bodyguard who normally accompanies her to events like TwitchCon. Twitch banned her security guard this time, because of a prior incident where he grabbed a dude and detained him until police arrived. Twitch said they would provide their own security team to protect her instead.

    During the event, a creep strolled up on stage (walking directly past multiple levels of Twitch’s security) and forcibly kissed her. The creep was interviewed by security (who discovered he had a knife) and then allowed to leave instead of being arrested. Several of the security guards were even overheard by other streamers backstage, laughing about it. In response, Twitch banned the creep for 30 days. Notably, Twitch has a long and sordid history of blatant misogyny, so this is just another notch in their belt. The image is from Emiru’s response video, right after she found out how he got away with only a temporary ban.


  • The NFT doesn’t hold the rights to the image. That’s one of the biggest parts of NFTs. Transferring the NFT doesn’t transfer the image rights, because the NFT doesn’t inherently hold any image rights. The NFT is simply a string of characters that say you own the specific image. But it doesn’t confer any actual rights, aside from being able to say that you own it.

    I could mint an NFT for the US constitution. That doesn’t mean I can sue others for reprinting it. Because owning that NFT doesn’t mean I own the copyright for the constitution. I also couldn’t stop someone (like congress) from changing the constitution later. Because again, I don’t actually own the rights to the constitution. All I own is an NFT, which says I own the constitution.

    NFT theft would require stealing that token. But again, stealing the token wouldn’t steal the rights to the constitution, because the token didn’t actually confer any ownership rights to the constitution.


  • My worst back injury was from picking up a loaf of bread after a long day of very heavy work. I had been slinging 300 pound pieces of gear all day long. Lots of heavy lifting, bending, pushing, pulling, etc… I handled all of it just fine. Got in the car, baby-wiped my face and arms to clean up a little bit, and headed to the grocery store on my way home.

    20 minutes later, I was at the store. I just needed two things: Milk and bread. I headed to the back to grab the milk, then went past the bread aisle on the way to the registers. I stooped down to grab the bread, and felt a little twinge in my lower back. I barely even thought about it. Then the closer I got to the registers, the worse it got. By the time I was to the registers, I was hobbling around like an old man who needed a walker. Hell, I felt like I needed a walker; I was cursing myself for not grabbing a shopping cart, because I had nothing to hold onto.

    That was on a Friday at like midnight. I suffered through two days of agony until my doctor opened on Monday. Doc was just like “oh yeah, that just happens sometimes.” Doc, can we make it fucking not happen? He said it was probably because I worked hard and then cooled down.

    Apparently it’s an extremely common phenomenon, where industrial athletes will get injured after work. Because they’ll be good about staying safe during work… Then they get injured by something stupid and small after cooling down. Because when you’re warmed up and being mindful about how you lift, your risk of injury is low. But then you head home, cool down during the commute, and some muscle or tendon decides “nah, I’m done stretching for the day. Time to rip instead.”











  • Yeah, there’s a lot of snake oil in the audio world.

    You’re spending five thousand dollars on solid gold cables that were soldered by blind monks then braided by trained gerbils, in an attempt to get the highest fidelity possible. Meanwhile, the album was recorded using the cheapest 10¢ per ft star-quad cable the studio could find, and $4.50 Neutrik connectors that were soldered by the studio’s unpaid intern.

    There have been multiple instances where I have seen someone asking for advice on trying to track down an intermittent buzz in their system. They had people saying they needed to totally rethink their entire system, they had to buy thousands of dollars of new gear, completely change how they had everything routed… When all they needed was a 5¢ ferrite bead.


  • Having it exposed is certainly noteworthy, if only because it removes the plausible deniability. Fascists thrive on doublespeak and dog whistles. The former allows them to attract new followers who may not be radicalized yet, but agree with parts of the language being used. And the latter allows them to publicly signal support to other fascists, without being openly accused of being fascist. Both are important tools in a fascist’s toolbox. Having the mask pulled off removes any doubt about what they’ve been hinting at, and removes the plausible deniability that they always hide behind.