Open Thread

Open Thread #195

The Open Thread is a place for open discussion among my readers. Post anything you feel like sharing! From now on, the Open Thread will no longer be monthly. Instead, there will be a new Open Thread whenever it is adequate. The stage is yours. Go ahead!

The latest Open Thread is made ‘sticky’ to improve access.

Please consider throwing a few coins into the tip jar, and buy my books! They are great. Your support is greatly appreciated.

26 thoughts on “Open Thread #195

  1. I just finished watching Robert Eggers’ The Witch, a horror movie. While this is hardly my favorite genre, I found it nonetheless pretty good. For our cause, an interesting aspect is that the ending (spoiler!) of the movie can be interpreted as a big middle finger to mainstream culture.

    In short, the movie is about a family that gets banished from a 17th century settlement and tries to live off the land in a deserted area. Eventually, a witch that resides in the forest, directly or indirectly kills all members of the family, with the exception of the eldest daughter. Channeling modern sentiments, this teenage girl told her parents that, basically, she would like to enjoy life and bang dudes, and at the end of the movie, she enters a pact with the devil after he asks her if she would like to “live deliciously and see the world”, and becomes a witch herself. The censors must have not watched this movie to the very end.

    1. Glad to hear you liked it! It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen it. I remember, however, there being a scene where the witch used an infant to induce certain magical abilities such as flight, and perhaps a youthful appearance (the one used to seduce Caleb). That shit screams adrenochrome right there.

      I don’t recall there being any diversity nonsense in either of Eggers’ two films to date, so I have high hopes for The Northman. The actress that portrayed Thomasin in The Witch makes a return in The Northman, presumably to aid the protagonist in some way. In the trailer, she can be heard saying “their strength breaks men’s bones, but I have the cunning to break their minds.”

    2. I took that scene at face value, i.e. the witch kills the baby in order to produce “flying ointment“. We also know that in the world of the movie, the witch has shape-shifting abilities, meaning that she can appear as a young, attractive woman, but this status is not permanent. Already when she is seducing the young boy, we see one of her arm shriveling up, and later on, when she is feasting on a goat on the farm, she looks like a monster. In my view, contemporary child sacrifice and adrenochrome harvesting has probably its roots in “urbanite” ritual child sacrifice. It could be that there were connections between witches and those people, however.

    1. Bootselectric,

      A bunch of fear monger dudes like Peter Schiff and most zero hedge articles always cry that the sky is falling. Since the early 1920’s, the US has been in three 15-20 year bull markets and and three 10-15 sideways/bear markets. Currently we are in only year 9 of this bull market. Everything moves in cycles. If the sky were to fall as they say then who cares where you’re invested because it doesn’t matter at that point. Look at a 20 year chart of the S&P 500 for example: the pandemic was barely a blip on the screen.

      Yanni

  2. Looking to change careers to a front end web developer working for a cryptocurrency exchange.

    This is their stack:
    – React (function components, hooks)
    – Material UI (currently using v4)
    – Docker
    – React-hook-form
    – Redux
    – Graph QL
    – Framer (for animation, optional)
    – Jest
    – Git
    – Framer(for animations, optional)
    – Figma (for converting designs to React components)
    – TypeScript

    I’d like to become really good at both CSS and JS before moving onto React JS.
    I was thinking I’d take a CSS course or 2. Take a JS course. I’m going through Eloquent Javascript, but I must admit that the “A List” exercise in chapter 4 has already tripped me up. Leaning towards taking a video JS course (the Net Ninja one on Udemy looks good). Then take this course: https://www.udemy.com/course/js-algorithms-and-data-structures-masterclass/.

    Do you think that would be worth my time or would be learning algorithms and data structures be overkill for this kind of job?

    1. You can’t learn JS from a single course, you have to combine several. I combined like a dozen or so.

      The best one, if you’re going to go for a single one is from Jonas Schmedtmann

    2. I think the best approach is to learn enough to get your first job. From then onwards, you are simply getting paid to keep your skills up-to-date. Also, once you know the basics, I would recommend trying to build something, and using this to guide your learning, i.e. you notice that you do not know how to do x, so you look up how to do it, as opposed to going through a lot of examples and tutorials on topics you may not need in the future.

    3. You can’t learn JS from a single course, you have to combine several. I combined like a dozen or so.

      Basically they all omit something. Like no course touches on more than 80% of what you need in the real world, most are at like 50%, so you have to combine several to get all the puzzle pieces.

    4. For most real-world jobs in this field you will not need much knowledge of algorithms. The basics of data structures are important, however. Yet, when I see what some of my colleagues produce, I can often only shake my head. Probably the worst (functioning) piece of code I have ever seen was written by a woman, by the way. She set up a two-dimensional array that stored key/value pairs, traversed one row to check if a certain key was in it, and then did another traversal to retrieve the corresponding value. The programmers among you probably see right away that the correct way would be to put the data into a hashmap, and do one lookup that either succeeds or fails. I recently also reviewed algorithm a female “senior engineer” wrote and the bizarre thing was that the specification was incorrect (i.e. it did not actually solve the problem) and the implementation did not follow the spec (i.e. the code did something else). The cringe-worthiest part, though, was that a bunch of cucks had commented on how great her code was, apparently without reading on it.

      Currently, the job market for developers is very good. I would suggest that you see if you can already get a junior position. If so, then you simply keep learning on the job, and spend some time in the evening or on weekends to brush up on algorithms. Even if you may not need that kind of knowledge in most jobs, a lack of knowledge in that regard can limit your ability to move up the ladder. By the way, I think that remaining in engineering for decades is suboptimal. You will probably be able to move up a lot faster if you switch to Product Management after a few years, or even into Engineering Management. For both you need to be able to communicate well, and judging from your ability to express yourself well in writing, you are probably far above the average engineer who often have noticeable deficits in this area. If communication is indeed one of your strengths, then focus on that.

    5. For both you need to be able to communicate well, and judging from your ability to express yourself well in writing, you are probably far above the average engineer who often have noticeable deficits in this area.

      I’m an example of this. I was asked to manage a SaaS before I knew a single thing about code, and to manage the developers, feature development etc.

      It’s surprising how horrible most developers are at communication, like autism doesn’t even come near to describing their communication skills.

      In fact one of the reason I decided to learn to code was so that I can better communicate with developers, thinking that the issue was I don’t speak the same language. But no. I can read their code and could have written it myself, yet communicating with them is still almost impossible.

      When I was first offered to manage software development despite knowing zero code, I was surprised and it didn’t make sense to me. Now in retrospect it totally makes sense. Ability to communicate what the end-user needs from the software and organizing those ideas logically is the most important part. And somehow finding a way to communicate it to the developers, which is the hardest part.

    6. For a good example of the kind of autism you can expect from developers, look up the prolonged argument we had with Uber a few weeks ago. You can experience similar discussions in engineering that can be downright infuriating. I would recommend giving those developers the benefit of the doubt and not assume that they are being malicious. Some of them just lack all ability to deal with the ambiguities of language and seem oblivious to any kind of big-picture thinking.

    7. Some of them just lack all ability to deal with the ambiguities of language and seem oblivious to any kind of big-picture thinking.

      Yes, that has been my major frustration. I was asked to communicate the software vision to them since I’m good at the big picture stuff, how the different pieces could fit together, from a marketing standpoint, sales standpoint (and now I even get the development part).

      But it’s downright impossible to talk to them beyond the one specific puzzle piece. Like you can’t even expand the conversation beyond the one puzzle piece. No ability to expand to broader context.

    8. Ok. So I have this bare bones English teaching app I built awhile ago. I was thinking I’d basically take a course, then add it to the app. Take the next course, add it to the app, and so on.

    9. This is actually great. With this app on your CV you will probably already get interviews, and quite possibly even a job. I have interviewed candidates myself. Any sign of someone coding in their spare time is a big plus and, in particular in an online context, anybody monetizing an app would go on top of the CV stack, at least for me. Note that only a very small minority of applicants for junior roles have done any coding outside some lame tutorials.

  3. If you follow alternative media, you have probably heard of the trucker protest in Canada. There was some drama as it looked as if GoFundMe had shut down the associated fund-raising campaign, but this issue has been resolved:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trudeau-slams-unacceptable-views-anti-vaxxer-truckers-gofundme-blocks-access-freedom
    Truckers telling Faggot-in-Chief Justin Trudeau what they think of him is a good illustration of the inability of politics to negate reality for prolonged periods of time. Sure, you can push all your nonsense policies but at some point, the people affected will stand up. Probably most if not all of them are white men, and you can bet that Trudeau has his stooges work on legislation for getting African truck drivers into Canada.

    Also, I find political pandering towards unproductive members of society quite startling. I mean, if you ran a country and you had to decide on pissing off pink-haired lesbian baristas or truck drivers, what would you do?

    1. This is absolutely the case. City-dwellers often do not seem to realize that the shelves in supermarkets do not magically replenish themselves, even though “Brandonflation” may have changed this recently as there are not just rising prices but shortages. This happens not just in the US. Here in Europe we also have empty shelves. I do not go shopping for groceries, but my wife frequently tells me about items that are not in stock. This has started to even impact staples. The other day, the supermarket closest to us had run out of carrots, for instance. I cannot remember ever experiencing this, albeit I started reading about this getting more common in the UK last autumn.

    2. I just had to laugh out lud at one of the zerohedge comments:

      “18 wheels to flatten the turd”

    3. In Germany there are now increasingly protests outside the homes of politicians, which the presstitutes are having a hard time with. Oh, and in front of the state TV studios people are chanting “Lügenpresse”. I wonder, in a totally non-fed-posting way, when the pitchforks will come out. Allegedly, there were between 500,000 and one million protesters out in the streets last Monday, and I also recall reports saying that the dimension of these protests exceeds the “Monday protests” that accompanied the collapse of the GDR.

  4. Today I watched Eggers’ The Lighthouse. It is a pretty disturbing movie, depicting two lighthouse keepers who are stuck in a lighthouse. It is essentially a depiction of two men losing their mind, due to isolation, alcoholism, and the absence of women to bang, which makes them fantasize about mermaids. I cannot generally recommend it, but it is pretty well made overall. My major negative is that the mood is simply oppressive, and it gets worse and worse every minute. It does not help that it was shot in black-and-white. I liked the movie, but I do not think that I would watch it again.

    1. That’s a fair assessment. I think it’s definitely worth checking out, yet the genre may be quite depressing considering everything that’s been happening over the last couple years or so. How do you feel about the upcoming The Northman flick after viewing Eggers’ previous work? I’m personally pretty excited for it and I rarely even care about movies in general. I can’t even remember the last time I was stoked for a film. I’m sure the same attention to detail that went into the costumes and set etc. on The VVitch will be going into this new movie.

    2. I am definitely looking forward to The Northman. In short, I expect a solidly made movie with impeccable cinematography, and little to no pandering to the woke crowd. Judging by The Witch and The Lighthouse, everyone, or everyone important, is probably going to die, though. I am joking, but I would be surprised if the movie was not at the very least somber in tone.

  5. Johns Hopkins University, which was instrumental in wargaming the scamdemic, has released a free online course for children on how to lie to their parents about how “safe and effective” the vaxx is:
    https://www.coursera.org/learn/covid-vaccine-ambassador
    This is brainwashing on an industrial level. It is little surprise that home schooling is getting more and more popular.

    In case you are wondering, you can also edumacate yourself about “race” on Coursera but for those courses you have to pay:
    https://www.coursera.org/collections/race-inequality-social-justice

Leave a Reply to Aaron "Sleazy" Elias Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.