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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • My code projects lately?

    “This project uses an API written in PHP, with HTML in Lua (OpenResty) and JavaScript. We’re starting with the PHP component, please write me a burger with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup and mustard.”

    “Absolutely! I’d be happy to help with that! I understand that we’re creating a burger in PHP. Here is a burger, with cheese, bacon, lettuce tomato and mustard. Explanation of the burger: The bacon is on top of the cheese, so it doesn’t fall off. The lettuce is included, to create an underlying HTML structure.”

    "Um, that’s not at all what I asked for. First of all, you completely forgot the ketchup, which I explicitly told you was a requirement. Secondly, you said there was mustard, but I don’t see any. Third, the cheese is cottage cheese? No one puts that on burgers! Why would you put cottage cheese? Third, the bacon is turkey bacon. That’s not what I wanted at all. On top of that, the lettuce is UNDER the burger, not ON it. We’re not writing HTML, this is meant to be a rest API. All the output should be JSON.

    Please try again. Write me a burger in PHP with pig bacon, mustard and ketchup, which you forgot to include last time, cheddar cheese (NOT cottage cheese) and tomato, pickles and lettuce INSIDE the bun. This is an API, so don’t write any HTML!"

    “I appologize for the misunderstanding. Here is your burger with bacon (made from pigs, not turkey), mustard, ketchup, cheddar cheese, tomato, pickles and lettuce inside the bun. I understand this is an API, so I’ve taken out the HTML. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”

    “It looks like you’ve called a function to put the lettuce inside the bun, but you never created that function?”

    “You are correct. Your PHP code would need to have the function defined to put the lettuce inside the bun. Here is your updated PHP code with the putLettuceInsideBun function included.”

    “Thank you, there’s a tomato and the lettuce is inside the bun now. I’m not sure why you called the putLettuceInsideBun() function twice, but at least it’s in there now. I note there’s still no bacon, cheese, ketchup or mustard. You know what? I’m just going to write those parts myself!”

    “Writing PHP code can be a fun and educational challenge! Please let me know if I can assist you any further with your PHP hot dog grilling project.”











  • I see Trump as an ultimate threat to all sorts of things, and I DON’T insist on Biden at all. I’ll vote for a chimpanzee if it’s not Trump.

    I honestly feel like not casting a real vote against Trump is voting for our future to be Handmaids Tale and patting yourself on the back for not supporting evil, when for all practical purposes you just did. It’s an abdication of civic responsibility in the name of nebulous principals that will have no effect on the future of the world and no chance of playing a real role in meaningful policy, but you do you.

    The fact that the DNC and Democrats in general are a bunch of privileged, out of touch, self righteous assholes is NOT my fault. I hate it and I hate them. But there’s a lot at stake and many MORE people in this world will suffer, struggle and die under Trump than under Biden. It’s just math and all your ideology is VERY empty in the face of it.




  • Here’s some ideas:

    • Put limits on the amount of residential property that can be owned by investors in a given market. Something like “In order for an investor to purchase a residential property within this particular municipality, no more than 40% of existing residential housing can be owned by investors, excepting where A) The investor in question is an individual or family who intend to reside in the property and share it with one or more roommates or B) the investor in question is an individual or family who are moving out of a unit they already own intending to purchase another one and convert the original home into a rental property.” Alternatively "No more than 20% of the housing market in the municipality may be owned by entities who’s majority ownership A) resides outside of the municipality or B) who’s ownership possesses a combined net worth in excess of $10,000,000 (automatically adjusting for inflation over time), excepting newly constructed properties intended for sale.

    • Reform property taxes to avoid squeezing out homeowners. I.E. Property taxes shall, in perpetuity, be assessed at the purchase price of the home when the current residents moved in. Meaning… If you’re a landlord, you don’t WANT your tenants to move out because then your property taxes will go up. Also “No insurance company may charge more for home owners or renters insurance than X percent of the current property tax rate.” And “No landlord shall charge more than X times the current property tax rate, where X is an adjustable number slightly higher than the current competitive market rate.”

    • Pin a carbon tax on retail or office businesses in a given area to scale with whatever commute they require for workers who live far away. Make it high enough to strong arm business owners into paying (and charging enough) that they save money on higher pay rates for employees so they can afford to live locally in affluent areas and areas undergoing gentrification. I’m totally OK with employers being like “We prefer to hire local (or localish) because of this tax” to a perspective employee. I’m OK with it being high enough for business owners to feel it, and with business owners screaming about it as much as they want. Affluent residents want to fucking shop locally and they WILL, even if that means local retail has to raise their prices. If it puts you out of business, good. Someone else will show up to take your place and will treat their employees better.

    Not that you would EVER see ANY of these ideas proposed in WSJ.


  • I grew up around the rich. They are short sighted idiots just like the rest of us, but with a whole lot more entitlement, self confidence and belief that things will work out fine (this matches their lived experience). They are just as prone to magical thinking and superstitious beliefs as anyone else, but NO ONE CAN TELL THEM THEY’RE WRONG. They lose touch with reality, because the human brain needs honest feedback from it’s community in order to calibrate it’s sense of reality and hardly anyone is honest with the rich to their faces.

    The point is, there is no endgame. It would be better if there was. A BUNCH of the rich believe the End Times are nigh, a bunch more believe that capitalism and innovation will solve whatever environmental disasters industrial society is creating. I know of one multi billionaire (the mom of someone I went to high school with) who pays a Buddhist “holy man” a very generous salary to follow her around and be her full time spiritual advisor. IIRC, she thinks the enlightened will ascend to some higher plane of existence before the environmental apocalypse consumes the rest of us (she still funds various environmentalist causes). Meanwhile, Zuck and the other tech bros seriously think they’re playing Fallout IRL and Musk thinks we’re doomed unless we build a Mars colony.

    It would better if there WERE a plan, or an end game or big conspiracy. We could maybe hold some actual people accountable for deliberately driving the planet into the ditch. But there’s not. Just a bunch of self serving, delusional idiots with wealth and power.