excited to see this changed to crouton dot net soon

So, before I wrote this post, I assumed partyhats were worth a few hundred USD max. (This was true ~2006.) I just learned they're valued thousands USD by raw GP value alone, and up to tens of thousands.

I would absolutely take an NFT (or other stupid asset) for free if I believed I could sell it for money.

Anyways, back to my comment...

Before speaking about NFTs:

I think of a partyhat like an old screenshot from a 2009 desktop, or an ancient phpBB or usenet archive. It's emblematic of a particular part of internet culture. Unfortunately, I was one of those horrible kids who spent a lot of their formative years on things like Runescape.

This is a bit pathetic, but I wanted a partyhat, and if I had one, I wouldn't let it go! [edit: see above, i'd totally let it go.] If I had one, and Runescape was going down, I'd do everything I could to prove to others that my Runescape bank has a partyhat. Screenshots, videos, etc.

Importantly, partyhats were never conceived as a rare collectible item. It was a stupid dinky one-off holiday item. I don't think any of the Gowers conceived their hats would be worth literal hundreds of dollars thousands of dollars. This adds legitimacy in my eyes.

Now, to speak on NFTs: If Runescape died and they were offering a "certificate of partyhat", I'd like that, in whatever form it takes. This is because of my personal flaws and nostalgia. [edit: also because i could sell it to a nerd for money.] This is one use case where an NFT wouldn't be a bad choice. The major benefit would be that you have a silly infrastructure for verifying ownership. (That said, I'd prefer a shiny partyhat plaque instead.)

(Also, Jagex truncates passwords to 20 characters and are not case sensitive. This weakens any ad-hoc cryptographic construction one might imagine using a users password hash as a public key.)

To be clear, I'm not defending NFTs! It's a nearly pointless use case. I'd also use a Juicero if I happened to have one and also somehow got 1000 fresh juicero bags. I'd also use a Juicero box as a footrest.

EDIT: You have found a secret Twovests Bonus Comment!

Clarifying my positions on Christmas, part two

CW: sexual abuse, drug abuse, childhood abuse, dark humor, weaponized therapy, osdd, christmas

when people talk about being "jokerified" they usually talk about becoming disillusioned with reality, NOT about being so traumatized that they lose grasp on what's acceptable to find funny.

my childhood was abusive in all the sorts of ways it can be. physically, emotionally, mentally, drugs kind of, sexually. sometimes the abuse would incidentally be funny, but you can't talk to anyone about that. you can't say "hey, this thing happened which was funny," when the context is too awful to write.

like, i got grounded for being molested! that is kind of funny. someone tell me that ISN'T funny.

but, also, the age i was is a vanishingly small fraction of the age i am now. if someone ELSE told me about a seven year old who got grounded for being molested, i think i would need to physically fight the urge to vomit.

but looking back? it was kind of funny.

so some would say "you should go to therapy about it," and i did.

but the funny thing is that going to therapy made my life worse and had repercussions which pretty negatively impacted a half-dozen people. therapists are police, and their weapons have a blast radius

i think it's pretty funny that i went to therapy for trauma, and that became one of the traumatic events of my life. that's a little funny dammit!

so, without therapy, i turned to drugs. my parents often plied us with huge doses of melatonin, but i would refuse anything else. tylenol, ibuprofen, etc.

in the year 2015 i had coffee for the first time, and it had an excellent antidepressive effect on me. in the year 2017, i tried alcohol, and it had an excellent depressive effect on me. in the year 2019 and 2020, i accidentally had huge doses of weed two times, and it had a silly effect on me.

in 2021, i tried antidepressants for the first time, and even half the minimum dose absolutely fucked me up. i gained 10lbs in like a week, and my synesthesia (more on that later) became a permanent and obtrusive aspect of my life. sounds will, for lack of better description, obscure my ability to see, and vice versa.

in 2022, i tried lsd for the first time, and it didn't really do anything except give me lockjaw and make visual snow more apparent. it temporarily turns the obtrusive elements of my synesthesia into something unescapable. so i do not do lsd anymore

it's at this point i should note i have a lot of brain things that sound cool on a tumblr blog, but are actually quite obtrusive. autism of course, "plurality" too, synesthesia (especially audiovisual), and of course, exploding head syndrome.

plurality is the worst part. i thought i was fine until i started journaling and learned i had memory lapses. oops!! it's really obstructed my ability to be there for the people in my life

but over these years, i found that there was only one constant in my life that was good. posting

the thing is is that, despite all this, i am doing better than anyone i know. i'm not abusing drugs, i'm physically fit, i'm eating well, i'm drinking water, i'm sleeping regularly. my executive function and focus is unparalleled among my peers. i am more level headed than anyone else i know. i am not reliant on any medications or therapists. and i am financially secure, something i never thought i'd be able to say.

i am thriving in a way that makes me feel almost guilty to say. like, i have friends who are 30 years old, believe in ghosts, don't floss, and can't make phone calls. i'm not gonna listen to them when they tell me to try therapy again.

i owe this all to posting. it is the one meditative practice that one must do. posting is just journaling, but you expose your ugly underside to trusted anonymites. like, i was lightly molested two weeks ago during an orgy, and i shrugged it off. i'm just that mentally healthy. (and i think that's kind of funny)

posting is the sacred and daily practie that brings one closer to the ideal state of humanity. posting is not just beautiful, posting is beauty

and the opposite of posting? why... that's christmas

ps:

there's no technical reason computercoins would die in 2029 i just think it'd be funny

god i did this with my tiny animal crossing fan community but to be fair they told me my brutus creepypasta didn't really happen

get in the fucking robot prod shinji emma

it really warms my heart that jstpst is doing better than imzy or ello or all of those other mid-2010s alt-social-medias

reading this on sunday hmmmm

:'(

it's ok i was joking about making one (i am also too tired and it would be quite glaring)

I feel like this too, a lot. I would have felt silly saying this otherwise, but being asked my sign really triggers my dysphoria lol. I feel like queer spaces have really happily embraced up the gendered marketing.

and now introducing

🍞

imagine it. a big glorious pixel banner at the bottom of every page. aimated gif

gif = graphics in future btw. because they can move

btw he explained "MILF" meant "manual inline lift fluctuator"

I really appreciate your response here, and your position actually resonates with me significantly. Tbh I was really worried about being alone on this, but I can relate with you here, down to individual details. (I used to carry a die too! I still make decisions on RNG.)

As another "token anti astrology" person, this is quite validating. I'm happy I'm not the only one who has seen a few instances where these things seemed to cause harm. (My college friend group had some bonkers drama around the tarot reader, and my dad made some bad medical decisions around biorhythms.)

I like the phrasing that it can act as a sounding board! I've had similar thoughts here too. I've always lumped astrology, tarot, prayer, etc. together as "meditative tools". I participate in this with wishes (shooting starts, blowing out candles, etc) anywhere it's socially prescribed. (I even think someone who believes in magic might be advantaged because they will unintentionally focus on their long-term goals, and will see the opportunities to follow them.)

Regarding the spiritual authority, I completely agree (and I'm stealing that term). Right now I think Co-Star is the scariest one of them so far. (Big VC baby, brags to VCs and advertisers about their access to 25% of young women in the US, raises funds from companies like Everlane, uses "AI" in dubious ways, etc.)

I know this reply was mostly "I agree, I agree, I agree," but I agree a lot and i appreciate u posting

also they're lesbians and in love

(i haven't seen ratatouille but i assume this is not what happens)

i'm really happy to hear that

This is true, but I think there's a huge amount of value-to-effort for astrological signs.

That said, I don't think that's the worst thing about astrology! Just the most tangibly scary thing

yeah! excited for the 2023 post

this was unrelated to the bill clinton kid? no idea what that was even about

Me, learning about this for the first time: "Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe they didn't know they hired a cop?"

Their Twitter:

We hired a policeman and it's going really great. Meet our Maker in Residence, @TobyRobertsPi.

Oh no! They don't seem to see the problem. Worse, per the comments, @Raspberry_Pi has been blocking detractors too.

But hey, all cops are bastards, but maybe this person is a reformed officer? Nope, turns out he had a proud 15 years of using Raspberry Pis as a surveillance officer:

“I was a Technical Surveillance Officer for 15 years, so I built stuff to hide video, audio, and other covert gear. You really don’t want your sensitive police equipment discovered, so I’d disguise it as something else, like a piece of street furniture or a household item. The variety of tools and equipment I used then really shaped what I do today.”

I have used Raspberry Pi a lot in various police tactics over the years. They were dependable, low-cost, portable, and supported by such an awesome community.

And then, whoever runs the official Raspberry Pi Mastodon seems to have the maturity of a literal child.

Even with the most generous interpretation to Raspberry Pi, with all the goodwill they built over the years, this definitely burns them for me. Hiring an ex cop who used RPis for covert surveillance

typing this out, i realize i am hitting the “pity threshhold” where the closest thing i can think of to compare angerey people on League of Legends to are particularly childish children from my childhood

maybe i should not play league

it’s like one time i got the last strawberry milk in elementary school (i don’t know why, i liked chocolate or normal milk) and then a minute later on in the line a kid started sobbing and asked “does anyone have a strawberry milk? please?”

it was kind of a scene and i just took my tray and walked to a table where my friends. thinking back on this, i wish i wasn’t too shy to trade milk with that kid

like, did that kid have so much going on that strawberry milk was the last straw? if so that’s sad

or maybe the most important thing to that kid was strawberry milk? like it’s enough to break the sob threshhold? that’s sad too

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

When learning new languages, I throw asserts all over the place. Learning to unit-test usually requires knowing more of the language than I already know, but asserts provide 90% of that value by forcing the code to crash if my mental-model of the code does not match reality.

I also share these feelings!

It has that same magical "power" that functional languages have. I can put expressions in places that shouldn't be possible.

Working on a toy language, I threw an expression in curly braces, i.e. for x in {...}, which returned a different iterator depending on a condition. It really helped me cut down on code re-use (which was really good for my dev experience). That "clicked" in an extremely satisfying way.