Good afternoon, y’all. I am taking a long weekend with the family to go up to the parts of Florida that would make a great Rednecks in the Mist horror film. We rented a — whatever you call a mansion of cabin, cansion? — for Friday and Saturday night. Its right on a set of springs, and there are several other publicly accessible springs in the area. Oh, and apparently it is alligator mating season, for that extra Florida spice. I’m definitely faster than 3 of my 4 boys. The wife and I have already decided each day, we’re going to pick the sacrificial one based on behavior. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that, but you should always have a plan.
Also, don’t forget that Sunday is Mothers’ Day, for those of you who still have one around, or if you don’t want to hear a bunch of moaning from your female partner about your spawn are inconsiderate and don’t love their mother.
This is a long read, but worth it, recommended by Tonio.
Yo Louie, I wanna dip my balls in it!
Break out the Rubio memes with a Pope hat.
Any bets on the sex of the partner being domestically abused by this female cop?
I think they just call that “Florida.”
I see you understand that anything West Palm county and south isn’t Florida.
Mine having departed this mortal coil, I’m saving a fortune on flowers. (And my mom would have laughed at that).
But on the plus side… yeah, I got nothing.
Claire, you wanna see a picture of a guy with elephantitis of the nuts? It’s pretty tasty. Would you ever consider dating a guy who looked like this? I mean even if he had a nice personality and a cool car… although you’d probably have to ride in the backseat because his nuts would ride shotgun
You’ve always got something to talk about in the sauna?
I’m glad on hovered on the link cuz there is no way I am clicking on that.
It makes me strangely happy that there are still fetishes out there that I simply don’t understand.
So many fetishes I don’t understand.
Some people haven’t watched enough South Park.
(I couldn’t find a good clip of the bouncing balls alone).
That one is classic.
It’s like a Hoppity Hop!
I’m still unsure why any member of the US government, in their official capacity, would need to meet with a religious leader half way across the world who has no political power.
Enh. He has power. That’s why totalitarian governments like the CCP hate him so much.
I mean, he’s got vestigial authority over Vatican city, but I don’t the Swiss guard becoming problematic to US interests any time soon. If you’re a Catholic and want to kiss the ring on your own time and dime, vaia con dios, but let’s be honest, having official diplomatic relations is like sending an ambassador to Sealand. He’s a problem for the commies owing to their atheistic Year Zero bullshit, but that’s none of our concern.
It took me a second to realize they were indicating the information in the headline came from the Bradenton Police Department, and not that the officer had Borderline Personality Disorder.
Well… are we taking bets on that as well?
Its [sic] right on a set of springs
If this cabin’s rocking, don’t come knocking!
Today is (would have been) my mom’s birthday.
Condolences.
Sorry for the early OT, but I have to head out to get my hair cut. I’m getting my slanty shanty releveled, and evaluating 3 quotes. Soliciting input from randos on the internet helps my thought process, so that’s where you come in.
Tl;dr, I’m on a pier and beam foundation with a poured concrete perimeter wall. West side of the house is essentially fine, east side is about an inch low. Most likely reason being that the current beam running down the center of the house is about a foot off-center from the interior load bearing wall dividing the house.
Contractor A wants to place 14 new concrete piers with steel shims to elevate the poured concrete porch, east perimeter wall and laundry/mudroom add-on to match the west side, then place 3 new beams on new pads and concrete piers – with one of the beams being placed directly beneath the load bearing wall for structural support. Total price: $10.4k. 10 year transferable warranty on piers, 4 year on beams. Contractor B wants to place 8 new concrete piers with steel shims to elevate just the east perimeter wall and mud room, and add 2 new beams on new pads and concrete piers, leaving the current central beam in place. 5 year warranty. Total price: $5.9k. Contractor C wants to just place 2 new concrete piers with steel shims to level the add-on, but doesn’t think a 1 inch drop is worth elevating the perimeter wall, and would slide the existing central beam over to the load bearing wall on new pads and concrete piers, while adding 2 new beams on each side. 4 year warranty. Total price: $4k.
Contractor A’s solution may be a bit overengineered, but it’s probably what I’d do if I had no limitations on resources, because I feel like you should splurge on structure. At the same time, I’d like to hope I won’t still be living in this place 10 years from now, and maybe it’s not worth spending the $6k that would buy me a mini split, new kitchen, and new bathroom that would make the place more saleable when the time comes.
“[…]I have to head out to get my hair cut. I’m getting my slanty shanty releveled[…]”
For a second there I thought slanty shanty was some type of new haircut.
I thought it was way more racist, with some new (to me) kink attached to it.
“Give me the Vanilla Ice”
“I gotchu fam”
“Slanty Shanty” is the new single from K-Pop/reggae fusion star Yella Fella
It’s OK, I’m down with The Slants.
https://frinkiac.com/caption/S04E07/227477
Having went thru this almost exact scenario some 15 years ago, I opted for Option C.
I bought 5 preformed deck footers and five floor jacks and crawled my ass under the house. Saved about $9800 off the contractor’s $10K bid.
I crawled the entire space just to verify what the contractors had to say, and especially for a place this size, it wouldn’t be too difficult to DIY the new beams like that. I like the idea of addressing the 1″ drop with some new sub-grade piers for the perimeter wall to prevent any further deterioration, but I’m still not sure if I like it that $10k worth. If this was my dream home I’d do it in a heartbeat, but there’s going to be a hard limit on ROI for this place due to the square footage.
Any idea if it’s still moving?
If I understand the situation correctly, while not good, the center beam being off probably isn’t the cause of the settlement.
I was going to open a Vietnamese seafood restaurant up near Destin, but kept searching for a name. Now I have one.
The Losertarian article was an interesting read. I think I generally agreed with most of it. But, I’m don’t completely buy into the “fuck principles; be a predator” concept.
It’s more identifying the blob as the enemy instead of the state. At least that was my take from it, with a dash of ‘don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’.
identifying the blob as the enemy instead of the state.
I caught that. He notes that the blob has the ability to enforce it’s goals outside the state. And I partially agree. But the blob cannot do most of the damage it does today without depending on the violence the state controls. So, I still think the primary focus on the excessive power held by the state today.
I do agree that nothing can be accomplished without winning elections. Many elections. Winning POTUS alone is not enough to solve the major problems.
kinnath:
I think the real tell is what’s going to happen with the higher education and LLM bubbles. There’s also the issue that the younger generations are now much more in favor of moving to violence faster (based on polls at least, it may match the 60s/70s).
But the blob cannot do most of the damage it does today without depending on the violence the state controls.
Maybe true, but this is exactly his point. The reality on the ground today is that they control much more than just the state, and a myopic focus on reducing government is foolish when they have 100 other kinds of institution to flex their might with.
Trump being a predator and doing what it takes to win ignores that he often times abandons the principles he ran on because he is chasing the new shiny thing.
ignores that he often times abandons the principles he ran on because he is chasing the new shiny thing
Yes, this. No point in having a guard dog if he forgets what he’s guarding. Doesn’t really matter how much fear his bark instills when he’s barking at the people he’s supposed to be protecting.
“Your libertarian principles have become cope… they are your excuse for losing. You’re not fooling anyone other than other libertarians.”
Correct. I’m fairly thoroughly black pilled. A cultural change will require some sort of Big Event, 9/11-big at the least. An EMP blast, a Depression-era collapse, something. I’m not pleased by this, but I accept my complete inability to alter this trajectory. I honestly hope it simply happens after I’m gone, and preferably after my nephews. It’s gonna happen, somehow.
Were it to happen tomorrow, the US’d win. Two decades from now? Hrm. Still likely the US’d still be the Alpha, but closer to a 50/50. Fifty years? *shrug*
Haven’t finished it yet, but I think that ‘brokenness’ is perhaps discounted.
Soliciting input from randos on the internet helps my thought process, so that’s where you come in.
I’m no help. That sort of work/expense would be completely unjustified on my current abode. I not-so-secretly wish a tornado would carry it off and drop it on some deserving witch.
Thanks, Brett, for linking to “The Losertarian Problem” (first link).
The author dishes dirt on the Libertarian party and makes some good observations. I like how he separates Government and the power structure (predators) which uses government to enforce and maintain power. The concept of “extraction” in Chapter (Act) 6 is something I’ve been trying to articulate, but he did it perfectly.
Nice kid. Give him a read and some love. And by “love,” mean subscribe to his newsletter.
As a small L losertarian I was fascinated by his insight. I went down the list of Trump’s accomplishments..
1. Pardon for the Silk Roads guy but no pardon for the guy that spilled the beans and is in Russia these days.
2. Dept of Ed?
3. Doge? A few retirements, etc
4. Tariffs? WTF is up with that?
We see rioting, out of control cities. Trump can’t spend money fast enough, the debt will grow until it won’t. I’m not optimistic and we haven’t hit the steep part of the hill yet.
The libertarians were correct about almost everything… and we kept losing.
Ah, well, there’s his original mistake. Politics is never about being correct. And calling Ron Paul a predator is an abuse of language that would make a progressive blush.
He seems to be directionally correct, but his ideas are a bit too muddled. Hes conflating integrity with loudmouthedness and saying they’re both predator behavior.
I guess they’re both brave, but for very different reasons.
He’s still searching for a theory because reality is just too messy to deal with. Like most people he assumes other people are like him. We [Glibs] are not like the average American. We are deluding ourselves when we think we are.
Politically, to everyone else, we resemble EvilSheldon‘s perspective about fetishes he doesn’t understand.
“The people who pick fights with libertarians are not students seeking truth. They are predators using your time and your emotional energy to extract from you. They want to keep you busy with arguments that go nowhere so you don’t have time for anything that matters. You think you’re educating them. You’re not. You’re being extracted from. The power flow goes one direction, and it’s not toward you.”
Eh. Absolutely true. I’ve got a puppet that I spar with on a FB group for expats in Korea. I’ve openly called him a troll, and in DMs, and he all confirmed my suspicion that this is what he does. Just waste people’s time.
All in all, not wasting time with ’em is a good policy. But I look at it as practice. The ‘argument’ he and I are ‘having’ isn’t for us; I post for the person who may be watching, hearing something different.
“Or you don’t defeat it… you submit to it. Admit you are prey and move on with your life… There’s no shame in it. For many, it’s the right choice.”
So he does talk about the brokenness I mentioned. Good. That’s a big, big big chunk of people. I doubt it’s just me here, yeah?
Good news! The casual folk who’d love to disarm ‘us’ are vastly, vastly outgunned by The People. That is kinda nice.
All political arguments, not just the online variety, are a waste of time. Unless of course you enjoy arguing, in which case you’re getting exactly what you want.
If you think you are ever going to argue a person into agreement with you, you’re fucking insane.
“ If you think you are ever going to argue a person into agreement with you, you’re fucking insane.”
Hear hear!
Gas over $5.
Thanks Trump. #attach I did that sticker to pump.
$5 bucks? What a bargain. Even when gas was cheaper recently it didn’t get below $5 for me. – Californian.
$3.89 here. Thankfully I hardly drive. When the bombing campaign first started I avoid filling up because I figured “My current tank will last me a month. Surely this won’t still be going on by then…”
How many divisions does the Pope have?
Three. Eastern Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Protestant.
I drove the truck around town today. There was a lot of upshifting, downshifting, and turning. I’m getting pretty good at about the halfway point of the course. A job I can keep is worth more to me than a job I enjoy, but I think I will like being a trucker.
I was playing around with making a random number generator. The calculator on a smartphone can evaluate common functions to 10 decimal places. My idea was taking a 2-digit seed value for say sin(x), then iterating using the last 2 digits of the decimal. It turns out that can get you stuck in a loop, like sin(42), sin(64), and sin(63). I then tried doing the same thing, but alternating ln(x) and sin(x) and starting with a 3-digit seed. When iterating with 2-digits, this prevents a loop back to the seed value. Every iteration produces a random 10-digit number, which can be divided into five 2-digit random numbers with the last being the new seed. It’s perfect for one-time pad encryption.
https://platedlizard.blogspot.com/2026/05/one-time-pad-encryption-example-using.html
“I think I will like being a trucker.” It seems like a remarkably good fit. I likely would have gone for that over phlebotomy if my med sitch didn’t preclude me. Well done, soldier.
“I was playing around with making a random number generator.” Halfway through the circuit? Damn. They must like you.
Anyone who uses deterministic means to obtain random numbers is, of course, living in a state of sin.
— John von Neumann
Yeah, any given input produces the same output. There’s no way around that. The first good random-ish number generator was based on iterating the logistics function.
Cryptographically secure random number generators exist. I know this for a fact because NSA uses them and so do other countries. Are they random in the strict mathematical sense? That depends on what you mean by “random”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseudorandom_number_generator
How many codes did von Neumann make or break? Oh, that’s right, none.
I see him as being somewhat sarcastic in that comment, since if he knew a non-deterministic way to generate random numbers, he certainly would have told someone about it.
Functions are deterministic. Algorithms are not, in part because there is no mathematically precise definition of an algorithm.
Randomness is easy enough to find in math. The Collatz conjecture is proof of that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOKmc099Wcs
A cultural change will require some sort of Big Event, 9/11-big at the least. An EMP blast, a Depression-era collapse, something.
The plague showed us the people will run screaming to Big Nanny for protection.
We have met the enemy, and they ain’t exactly us, but they’re too close for comfort.
Precisely. COVID wasn’t a Big Event, but it fucking revealed out little it takes to scare the shit out of an ‘entire’ populace, to the point of closing schools, businesses, everything, with the extra incentive of hotlines so folk could rat out ‘misbehaviors.’ It takes a light sprinkle of bullshit to emotionally flip The People. (see also: All human history.) Sad and scary to see folk so *proud* to do it, too.
Big psychological one for me: MLB games w/o fans. Just playing in empty stadiums. Such a goofy fucking thing for society to just ‘accept.’ While the lawmakers eat maskless at the French Laundry.
It doesn’t speak well of our species.
The government reaction to COVID was the biggest event of my lifetime.
Mine, too. It and 9/11. COVID wasn’t a big deal. The *reaction* of the government, and the global cooperation of different governments and int’l orgs, was the big deal, absolutely a Big Event.
Un-fun memories of those MLB games: Watched as many as I could in the hospital, whatever the teams, scores, or MLB, KBO, etc. Constantly watching the absurdist facade that everyone had to put on, and everyone acting like it was normal or okay or anything, and ALSO the folk that *ignored* that it was all as nutfucky as it was!
And again, people were so damn *proud* to go along, lest they ‘harm thy neighbor.’ B̵l̵e̵s̵s̵ Fuck their hearts.
We may be already there.
Government grocery stores, subsidized airlines next? Schools? Homeless? Automatic draft registration?
I was playing around with making a random number generator.
I assume you are doing this to do it. For the exercise.
I had an accounting professor who said if you need a quick and dirty random number (for whatever reason) look at the serial number on a dollar bill.
regarding the first link
Many libertarians, including me, went MAGA because Trump, while not a libertarian, could at least be trusted to do a few libertarian things.
The main principle of judo is to use your opponent’s weight and strength against him rather than oppose it directly. Trump is a weapon libertarians can use against our opponents, like a flaming bag of dog shit left on the porch of the neighborhood Karen.
Have a little fire, scarecrow.
a visual aid for the article’s thesis:
https://platedlizard.blogspot.com/2025/09/rhetoric.html
a better visual aid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ7lGA27wAw
Homer Simpson at the trash commissioner debate
Ow! My balls!