I will destroy the Jaded Forum if it's the last thing I do
I've been riding a bike the last few months; coincidentally I've found a new lease on life. I've honed intermodal travel: biking as far as you can and taking the bike back. I've discovered doing errands can be fun and relatively inexpensive. I've also figured out what the hell bike lanes are for. I've come to the position that every e-bike deliverista, drunk Citibiker, Chinese restaurant delivery guy on a pristine 90s mountain bike, people riding Instagram ad singlespeeds - every bike has a right to the road.
I understand what vegans are on about. I get it. Everyone else is weak, they're taking the low road because they're lazy. Because they want to wear flip flops to the gas station.
Cars make you a bad person. Cars make you inconsiderate and bloodthirsty. Cars make you forgo the idea that public space is a public good for all. It is a private good for you and anyone who can keep up with you. The car is one step of many in alienating every single person on Earth. The combustion engine is an eldritch growth in the rotting organs of humanity; its everpresence in our lives is punishment. We spited God with enlightenment.
If you've ever complained about a speed camera I hope you crash into a brick wall. If you've ever complained about a speed camera in a school zone I think you should drive off a bridge. When drivers complain that cycling is "insane," they are looking for a moral excuse for killing people in their gay metal box. They want you to forgive them for speeding, for taking up parking spaces, for scaring children inside, for helping make their cities uninhabitable. They want you to forgive them for the blood they spill, say it's not their fault.
Dear redheaded dude from the Jaded Forum: You are a scared bitch and any empty gestures you make towards "a better world" are tainted by your Republican Amerifat values. The prospect of making any commitment to society that might require an ounce of effort scares you because you are a simply a Republican who knows enough Blender or open-mic level standup or whatever the fuck to think you could make any improvement on our lives. Any say on what comes next. I understand why Stalin killed all those people now. I understand why people vote and participate in democracy. I understand why people canvas. Why they protest. Why they run for office, why they bomb things and gather weapons. It's to spite people like you, to spite people who want to decide how other people participate in society because they've been inconvenienced.
I will not dignify them with a link. Or any explanation. I got very angry.
Also I'm just a crazy person.
It’s too easy to say what everybody else should be doing, and it’s important to remind yourself once in awhile that whatever it is you’re doing there’s probably someone out there who’d like to ban you from doing it. Rather than succumb to Car Brain or Advocacy Brain I increasingly try for Freedom Brain.
Very important to remember.
Don't worry: They don't reveal who got eaten on Yellowjackets yet
This month I got a Showtime subscription because I'm trying to unpack my lesbophobia by watching corny 2000s television. And HBO canceled Minx and that hurt my feelings. I immediately tried to watch Ray Donovan, because I thought it was about a Jewish fixer who beat guys up. But the Donovan family is Boston Irish, and molested, and one of them runs a boxing gym. I'll get back to it.
I started watching Yellowjackets. The show opens with a girl in a nightdress getting chased by a bunch of kids in bear pelts. They eat her. Then a high school girls' soccer team snap the new girl's leg out of her shin, and the makeup team gets to show it off, bone and all. Everyone feels fucked up that the lesbian striker would do that. That sets the tone for the whole show. It's like Lord of the Flies with DSA struggle sessions stuck in it. Their plane crashes and most of the team survive.
The best character is Misty. She is a tragically bullied nerd who is also evil. She saves the sole adult's mangled leg by severing it with an ax and then tries to make a Dahmer-style zombie out of him when he rejects her sexual advances. She probably kills him but we don't know yet. In the present she's into true-crime and no one will fuck her.
The lesbian striker and the lesbian goalie are in love and it's beautiful. In the present the lesbian striker is running for state senate in Jersey City and destroying her present marriage in the process. The lesbian goalie is in the cult in the present.
The present stuff is not as interesting and gets Lifetimey and also Juliette Lewis is not bringing her best. The girl who plays her young is better and she's like 23.
I just want to know who gets eaten. Season 2 next month. There's constant hints to a cult that the pretty schizophrenic girl starts with the girl who hit her head so hard she asks to pray before practice. And girl stuff.
According to this guy, tech layoffs are useless and stupid.
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/
What are some myths or misunderstandings about layoffs?
Layoffs often do not cut costs, as there are many instances of laid-off employees being hired back as contractors, with companies paying the contracting firm. Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share, or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.
Companies sometimes lay off people that they have just recruited – oftentimes with paid recruitment bonuses. When the economy turns back in the next 12, 14, or 18 months, they will go back to the market and compete with the same companies to hire talent. They are basically buying labor at a high price and selling low. Not the best decision.
People don’t pay attention to the evidence against layoffs. The evidence is pretty extensive, some of it is reviewed in the book I wrote on human resource management, The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. If companies paid attention to the evidence, they could get some competitive leverage because they would actually be basing their decisions on science.
AI-fear mongering ignores the true danger: loss of how-to’s
https://futurism.com/experts-warn-nightmare-internet-ai-generated-propaganda
Who cares about Russian collusion. Because of SEO trickery every guide you get on the first five pages is AI-gobbledegook stolen from other websites. It'll be a guide to unblocking a toilet that doesn't make sense on the blog section of a plumber 2000 miles away. And it's everything: Bike repair, old Mario Karts, taxes, job search tips - anything. There's outrage about CNET's (?) AI posts, often incorrect and setting a bad precedent for paying writers and editors, but what about the bloggers? They cut us out years ago and everyone's suffering for it.
Ruminating on Ye
I think Kanye is the way he is - the great success, the insane hubris, the supporting Nazis, the divorced dad stuff - as a means to continue consuming pornography. I looked at the Yeezy files where he's showing clips to interns and immediately it hit. And that Viceland Die Antwoord thing. And everything about getting with Kim. He clearly underestimated her as Azealia pointed out 4 years ago because he's an idiot. Innovating beat making, getting into raps, through the Wire, getting into fashion - everything for porn. He wanted the Yeezy slides to look like he could fuck them. The Nazi stuff is a fixation he's had for a while and I think he's just stupid and frustrated at being canceled for so long. Finding God was about porn, definitely about porn. Changing everything about himself to finally defeat this menace that is consuming pornography.
That's why Gen Z likes his stuff so much.
Christian’s Mash Cinelli Parallax
https://www.slowspinsociety.com/home/bike-check-christan-parallax
This guy's bike has haunted my explore page for months.
The collabs between MASH and Cinelli might be the most influential aluminium track bikes every made - only time will tell. This guy’s Parallax is a fucking dream. It gets me going. I love torn bar tape and dirt and scuff and stickers. I love a beat-to-shit bike! I love a Mash Cinelli but every one I see out and between messenger's legs is kept pristine like a Porsche. Don't cost much to wipe your frame down and grease it up again. But let's keep it nasty.
If you’ve got even a remote interest in track bikes: fixies, criteriums, builds, NJS shit, Slow Spin Society’s got you covered with a podcast and a newsletter.
Eli's Top Ten Worst Albums of 2022
Anybody willing to speak truth to power on Bad Charli albums is a saint. When I say anything remotely critical about her to my gays they just gimme that Charli stare back. This guy's funny, he's got good taste, and he's ready to hate. Tiny Mixtapes alum and all that. We need more of this in 2023.
Listen Up Nerds: We Need Electricians
Seeing a picture of Lebron breaking the scoring record last night reminded me of this piece. iPhones floor-to-ceiling in the stands, filming. When everyone’s the scene documentarian, is anyone? Jay is almost old-world for substack; blogging about scene stuff and critiquing it. That's what I come on here for, be it about tech or tattoos or riding a fancy bike.
Watching this weird little Ron Livingston show Loudermilk on Prime. I figure it must have been on Go90 or something. It was an AT&T/Sony show. Maybe Crackle. It's about a miserable man in Seattle who lost his wife and career to drugs and booze. He runs an AA meeting and gets people sober.1 There's a lot of Loudermilk being rude to random women, but it's only because he's a dry asshole. Will Sasso is very good on it the first season.
Dyltwosix - B.b Simon vs Tim Biebs
Emotional-ass song downstream-of-Drain Gang song about how a man's belt can never replace a woman. "If I get too geeked up/ Will you hold me?" implores Dyltwosix. The album is chockful of heart like this in between brags about waxed skinnies and bags of cocaine. Clearly he uses the internet a lot. And he must be Canadian, 'cuz I heard him in an Alltimers video.
Butane Baby, Brandon Mack - ANN PHOONG
I got this song in an IG ad. Ann Phoong is a personal-injury lawyer who advertises on billboards in San Francisco. They are street-level, so they're frequently defaced. Anyway, solid "hyperpop" - you know, as hyperpop daily defines it as opposed to PC Music adjacents.
POLO PERKS - snowpatrol
"I can't work a 9 to 5/that shit like robbery." This record upped my standard for NY drill sample flips. You gotta come with heat like this or none at all. Surf Gang has heaters on heaters.
Bladee - Reality Surf
Song by Crump's friend that doesn't have a kick drum and sounds like you're in the waiting room at the gates of Heaven. That's what the video is about as well - somehow this cute little thing reignited my fear of death. Some asshole in the comments described it as wholesome. Sure, in the most canonical sense a little guy getting swept up by a angel with a scary face is wholesome but any sane, unenlightened individual would get skeeved out by the whole thing. Watch that video with headphones on and don't get skeeved you're either a hardass atheist or have utter faith in everything that comes after. Kinda frustrating how Bladee like, got smart around Icedancer and all his music has ideas in it now.
Sorry, a meeting for people in recovery. God, I should brush up on that anonymity pamphlet because I’m guessing you can’t just put AA in your show like that. It’s clearly AA though. But there’s crosstalk which I don’t think is as common. Maybe Seattle’s different like that.
thanks for the love my guy