Driving to work today, I see a partially annihilated metal ladder by the side of the freeway and think "somebody messed up bad. Glad I wasn't the one to hit that". A few minutes later, a car to the left and in front of me hits some piece of debris and sends it flying under my car and immediate grinding and scraping ensues. I pull over and manage to dislodge the giant hunk of metal just from reversing. The plastic undercarriage shield is torn up, but I think I got away with no real damage. That was a morning wake-me-up.

I was tempted to quote the same block of text. Who could have been paying attention the past 4 or 5 years and thought "the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion"? This shit has been thoroughly warped into the "both sides" fallacy. It turns out people as whole are pretty terrible at assessing the merits of ideas. Or the values of facts. There's been freakin' studies on that.

This is actually great!

This would easily be in the top 90th percentile of tracks shared around in musician/producer communities. For real.

The knack for arrangement shines. Vocal placement is better than the singer in my band, smh

At the risk of scoring myself on that Rorschach test, eggs are just a great thing to hammer on for cooking education.

You find a lot of kitchen novices that would do something like throw a frozen chicken breast in a cold pan, crank the heat on high, and wonder why it comes out like rubber. You have to make an effort to get them to understand things like the starting temperature of the pan, the heat, and length of the cooking time aren't all interchangeable.

Eggs are great to illustrate that because they're quick, accessible, and change a lot depending on how you tackle it. If you can get a novice to the point where they're making good french-style scrambled eggs or omelets, then they've focused on the ingredient and process enough to get that egg-whisperer sense, and that bodes well for all their future cooking endeavors.

I used to race the nitro RC cars back in the day with my dad. There was a big dirt track not too far away. They can be a blast.

There's a weird thing with physical spaces and productivity that seems to be more pronounced in quarantine.

Also, a couple pubski's ago it seemed like everyone was starting to get hit with a delayed slump/stress/depression from the whole thing. I know I'm getting more of that now.

I'm worn out. Work has kinda settled into the normal flow of things, and the normal flow of things is a bit like a burst pipe. Every day is filled with tasks that are of the better get this done today or this whole project gets bumped back a week sort. I get all these professors and students that bring me big projects to do and are like "yeah, we're hoping to submit that data on a grant this month". Things would be a lot better if I had some help, but as it is I am running a core facility solo, which is basically unheard of for my area. I'm spending like 70% of my time on benchwork, 25% on instrument maintenance, troubleshooting and runs, and the last 5% is divided between whatever else I'm supposed to be doing. Ideally, 30% of my time should be consultation and data analysis.

For now, I'm gonna have to plan a way to get a volunteer in here. That's how I got started on this field myself, but I'll need to invest all of that remaining 5% time into finding and training someone. I seem to remember outlasting a dozen or so peers when I was a volunteer, so that will be a thing.

Two senior Gravity employees also resigned in protest. They weren't happy that the salaries of junior staff had jumped overnight, and argued that it would make them lazy, and the company uncompetitive.

This part blows my mind. People are so moralistically opposed to people earning good wages that they quit their job?

I like the idea! I have some leatherworking stuff I've let fall to the wayside. Perhaps I'll have to pick that back up. Periodically I get just enough materials to make a new wallet or two. I had various extras this last cycle, so I started making a larger kind of wallet that I have not finished. Time to hit it again!

It's been a great Wednesday so far, seeing as it is Wednesday already. How the time flies! I'm pretty much set to release the new album on the first, a week shy of 2 years after the last time I released something. It will be nice to have that wrapped up, then I can focus on the long, long game of ineffectual internet promotion.

I've been way less productive with my free time recently since I've been playing Noita for almost all of it since it came out. But I have been doing some pretty good cooking in between. Since my fiancee switched to a non-nightshift job, I've been having to make a lot more meals. She doesn't really cook, and on most nights when she was at work I wouldn't really either. Instead I'd mostly just like, eat a block of cheese or something.

THIS IS AWESOME

You know, I don’t know why there’s noticeably less traffic on Hubski at the moment. I know I’ve noticed the drop, but I can’t tell if it’s been a steady drop or if there was suddenly some event that made it obvious. Certainly my awareness of it was sudden, but what actually happened?

Also a DF fan, and I agree.

Even his example of a "popular" retro-styled game looks better than his personal examples. The fact that he doesn't note that is telling

It's not just the style, there's an element of taste that is totally absent in the samples from his games. Everything is cluttered and hard to look at. Everything has a busy texture going on.

2. Queen's Wish uses art made by a lot of different artists. That means that the style is not quite consistent. We've done our best to make it blend well, but it's a little off.

3. All the characters only look in diagonal directions. I made this choice because I once thought all the art would be hand-drawn, and I desperately needed to reduce the number of icons I needed. This was a mistake, and I'll probably try to fix it in Queen's Wish 2.

And half the reasons he cites for the reason his games look that way ARE just sloppiness/laziness.

I love me some generative text. Subreddit Simulator is the best thing on Reddit now.

"Hubski" seems to confound this thing though:

Hubski email notifications face uncertain future

June 6, 2019 - Will Kelly

This fall, thousands of Clark Hubikes will receive what appear to be automated email messages from the company that brought them to North America. If the emails are sent to Hubikk, may it be time to ask the company to stop marketing with your inbox, and/or rethink its new business approach. As Save the Hubiki Coalition wrote in an email alert to its members on Tuesday:

As organizations move away from email marketing and put more trust in digital communications, Hubikk has made their primary business of reaching out to customers when they have not left their local neighbourhood. Consumers and small businesses have been ignored by this company, who in a few short years, reached out to many thousands of North Americans with its incursion into the lives of the people in our communities. …

In the rest of the world, Hubikk market their email marketing service to all customers, including those in the UK, Spain, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Luxembourg, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.S., and Mexico.

They come in a tone that can be easily characterized as “The Waltons.” And when you are talking about a service that costs $50 a month for “detailed targeted e-newsletters,” it’s not like you’re selling a favorite chair by the bedside.

The campaign was clearly a scam, in which the company sold the use of its service to unsuspecting Americans in their email inboxes, unaware they were being duped. Clark Hubikes, 63, of Concord, Ohio, had heard of the newsletter but was not interested. Clark wasn’t convinced, either, that the headline was written by a human, let alone a hired human. Still, Clark was able to get his email notice through the Office of the Attorney General of Ohio. Clark got his dollar back, plus $125 of processing charges.

For those who weren’t fooled, though, it turned out that the company hadn’t even bothered to run the business by the Ohio office, whose staff has issued at least four takedown orders against Hubikk (based on customer complaints). A new spokeswoman for the office told me Hubikk had been given 90 days to stop its “personal solicitation.”

The company hasn’t stopped immediately, though: The email alerts Clark received Tuesday were from the company that “curated” them, according to Clark. For now, the emails are still heading in the right direction: They weren’t for strangers.

“The goal of the internet is to connect you,” the company explained to Clark, in its recent email. “With this awareness, you have a responsibility to care for those who share your space by signing on to these services and familiarizing yourself with their Terms of Service.”

The Harris Poll says an astonishing two-thirds of Americans don’t think about their privacy online. When they do, though, three-quarters say they think their privacy online is “fair or poor.”

But as many Hoikeks have discovered, that may not always be the case.

I don’t know that anything about my routine constitutes weird, really. I’m curious to know what everyone’s morning meditative ceremony is. Reading the newspaper, or showering for an ungodly amount of time, etc.

For me it’s the coffee. I make a chemex pour over most mornings. It’s a bit more labor-demanding than other ways to get the coffee fix but that’s part of the point.

Name

Zebra2

Location

Not quite LA

Age

about 30

Current Preoccupation

Settling in

Change

I think I'd like to see more traffic here, really. I know it's a double-edged sword to have a user influx or a growing site, but it feels like this community is fated to decline if we can't get some new blood to fill the seats of the gradually dropping regulars. If I get into the swing of Sci-Fi club again I think I'd drop some offsite ads for it. I've mused about that before.

So I've been at the university for 3 days now. It's cool so far. There's a lot to do. I'm inheriting a nice instrument and about 4 lab spaces filled with mostly obsolete useless junk, scattered hard drives (my predecessor practiced the unlabeled-pile-of-loose-hard-drives school of data infrastructure), and an office that needed some deep cleaning.

I had facilities come out and DEEP-CLEAN the carpet to help it air out a little. I was clearing out old bank statements, meds, personal legal documents, grungy keyboards... I found a whole shedded lizard skin and parts of some other animal. I brought in an air purifier to try and help it out a bit, but I think I may have to resort to a scent diffuser.

Is this guy seriously arguing that Big Data is a non-issue that no one should care about when it was just involved in very prominent election manipulation?

Like, his whole argument appears to be that we’ve been worse off in the past so we’d better apply absolutely no oversight or scrutiny into these tech companies—or golly we might imperil our chance at getting more cat pictures from aunt Maggie on Facebook. Could you imagine if these Golden Cornerstones of modern civilization became slightly restricted or -gasp- not free anymore? I mean, they’re free so they obviously just want what’s best for you. You’re such a populist to sneer at such a fine capitalist Gift. I mean, you did even know about all that data being collected about you a few years back so obviously it can’t be important.

For nostalgia's sake:

http://zombo.com/

Two pubski sin three days? Nice.

I’m on a short-range vacation in SLO. We hit the wine tasting in Paso Robles, hit the beach at Pismo (although it’s kinda grey), hiked in Morro Bay, and we’re staying on a farm via Airbnb.

I’m also likely to end my unemployed status in the next week or two. Got an offer from a place that’s pretty meh BUT it’s a job. Meanwhile I have some other prospects that look good but may take some time to materialize.

I'm quite anxious today. I am negotiating a job offer that could take me on a wildly different (possibly very good) path. Wish me luck.

I've been removing most meat from my diet lately after seeing some of the recent reports on the necessity for this to counteract climate change. I've known it for a while, but I've never really done it. I'm not vegetarian per se, but I might go a week in between meat now. This feels like a sustainable lifestyle change for me, unlike most diets. I'm not really tackling dairy though.

I finished grad school. Got a job, hated it, quit promptly. Now I'm back in sorta-academia doing research. It's ok I guess, but honestly I think I'd look at starting all over in a new career if that were remotely viable. There's still hope I'll land in an adequately-compensated position with a good long-term outlook which I don't hate within the next year. Outside of that, I've been doing a lot of music stuff, and released a solo album. I'm working on a second one and have started recording for my band too.

It's really outdated advice that is bad advice in the modern world, but it still lingers. You hear the "your degree is proof of capability and adaptability and employers will willing to take you on for that alone" line a lot, especially with advanced degrees. The market is saturated though. Who is ever going to take a chance with someone with no direct experience but nice credentials when there are 10 people with direct experience and the credentials also applying? My lab was hiring recently and the make-or-break point was applicants coming prepackaged with the skill set we wanted to train them with even for entry level spots. We entertained the idea of hiring an appealing, energetic untrained applicant, but whaddyaknow a skilled one at the same level came along right after.

As of posting this I think this is the highest number of hubspokes with the least amount of discussion in a pubski I have ever seen. 8 spokes and not a peep?

I’ve been making a modest effort to get hired to score an indie game for a little bit now. Finally this week I have people showing interest getting me to do it. Fingers crossed.

I’m also feeling better about work in general this week. My finances are not encouraging still, but I’m acclimating to it now. Work is at least not droll, possibly even moving forward.

Saab recommends the use of environmentally-friendly decrescendos.

-Saab 9-3 owner's manual

So I paid for a DX11. I should have it in the near future. It's just like the TX81z I already have, except it is formatted like a musical instrument as opposed to a VCR. I'm looking forward to finally having a synth with a fullish-sized keyboard.

Rain I guess.

I've been slacking on #scificlub lately. I'm still unsure what we should do with the format going forward. Suggestions? Also, has anyone seen Ghost in the Shell yet?

I like it. I also love that you tried to pitch it with a Stalin quote.