New Birthday Massacre just dropped

I hate them so much

We touched on this before, when you were championing the immolation engine that was Spinlaunch. I argue that this does not represent health in the market, it represents illness.

The whole schtick is "here's an idea people recognize as maybe profitable." It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to ever be. You don't get to know anything about it because you're trusting the VCs to do that for you. And of course, you don't get to give them your money until (A) you have a lot of it (B) you've been invited. Meanwhile they take your money, rub it against everyone else's, and sprinkle it however the fuck they feel like, much of it on their friends, ostensibly in pursuit of bringing brilliant ideas to market that will change the world and make everyone rich. But look at this shit.

The awarded nunc. coffee system offers a whole new experience, taste and ritual for premium coffee with a tech-enabled success guarantee.

It's a Juicero. For coffee. For a target price of $3500.

Mission: "The world deserves a better coffee experience at home. A new ritual. More fascinating, more exciting, more social, higher quality, more fair, more sustainable."

"more fascinating, more exciting, more social?" it's cheaper to go to fucking Starbuck's how the fuck is this more social? it's more than a bunch of PR hype it's a bunch of fucking lies.

And the lies are coming from inside the house! The fuckin' VC money was at play before anyone even thought of making a coffee Juicero! Because Venture Stars had money from rich people to distribute to bad ideas they could profit on before blowing out and talking about being in the arena trying things. Kleiner-Perkins has to have at least a couple people on staff who took high school physics yet they still gave Spinlaunch forty fucking million dollars. Why?

It wasn't their fucking money.

See, if the VCs were actually risking their own cash? I'd be with you. But they're not. They're taking a cut of other peoples' money through a shell game of access, nepotism and perverted incentives.

Because there are at least four other European startups called "nunc"

So I gave this far more thought than it deserves and it is absolutely a topographical coffee map of a coffee amoeba that aligns your chakras.

Clearly our two independent variables are boldness ("strong - mild") and acidity ("roasty - fruity"). These are going to end up being a Laplace transform of temperature and time, the only variables this thing can really control. And, by controlling what beans you put in it to only those that have been characterized and accompanied by an RFID tag announcing their variables, the gadget can give you the "flavor profile" of the bean (the brown area), the four points it is capable of adjusting (long-hot, long-cold, short-hot, short-cold), the preset you have selected and the white amoeba, the stochastic variability of a process that's a lot less repeatable than they would have you believe.

Any fucking coffee machine you buy can control time and temperature. I don't know how they do for presets but mine will do the shit out of them. What this thing does is it gives you a veneer of science over what ultimately comes down to cooking. Which is the whole schtick, really - "why does it make you tamp?" for the same reason Duncan Hines makes you add an egg to cake mix. Without the egg you're reconstituting powdered cake. With the egg you're a baker.

Some people will drink Nescafe. Some people will make pourovers. Some people will buy a coffee maker. Some people will find a favorite cafe. And a very, very select few will browse the coffee store, marvel at all the expensive espresso machines, think "there but for the confidence to pour my own coffee go I" and then glory in the revelation that is nunc, a device that will allow them to play-act the glamorous life of the barista without requiring the ten minutes of instruction necessary to familiarize them with the black art of water and beans.

blasphemer. How dare you denigrate the masterful brilliance that is this... whatever it is.

IloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveitIloveit

Although that's an extremely verbose way to say "no":

They've also done a very good job of hiding their coffee prices, although "starts at 25 euro per kilo" actually ain't bad. Considering their entire universe is about ecosystem lockin for purposes of RMR I can only imagine that they will either (A) blow clear through that price like Steve McQueen through a Nazi fence or (B) provide the shittiest beans slave labor can pick.

Amusingly enough, I now have a ridiculous Miele coffeemonster. I'm told if you're buying coffeemonsters you're either buying Miele or you're buying DeLonghi under several dozen brands and since I needed a dishwasher, and Miele was giving out entry-level coffeemonsters with every dishwasher, I guess I have a free $1200 coffeemonster? I would never pay $1200 for a coffeemonster, let alone 2500 euro. I believe my coffee maker was $35 and I will freely acknowledge that the coffeemonster makes better coffee. It also makes cappuccinos, which it turns out I enjoy. Who knew? Lattes still suck.

2500 euro buys a hell of a coffeemonster.

Compare and contrast

Not necessarily! they could also be a useless piece-of-shit head hunter!

- The first big-boy company I ever worked for (publicly traded) required any department to put together a set of recommendations and a job description. The HR department would then write the job description. Resumes were directed to the HR department, which would meet about who best fit the description. They would then interview suitable candidates. Once you passed HR you were in a pool that the engineering department was allowed to pick from. Note that they did not have ultimate hiring authority. Fortunately for me? I was just a co-op. HR resented me.

- The second big-boy company I ever worked for (startup) had one HR person who did all hiring and firing. I'm not entirely sure what their process was but I know I got in big fucking trouble for building a cubicle out of spare parts that was 6sqft bigger than a manager's cubicle (they measured). They then found the money to buy enough cubicle parts to separate my "cubicle" into three 2ft x 6ft carrels. I instead ran a 150' run of CAT5 back to the machine shop and never interacted with anyone ever again. Fortunately for me? They were all impossibly stupid and the only reason I worked there is people from the first company hired me sight unseen, much to the irritation of HR.

- I next bypassed HR to interview with a company that was a Boeing contractor. When I made it to the interview I was met by a very angry woman who was clearly testy that she had not had any input into my interviewing. It didn't really matter as when I asked what the attire was I was told "what you are wearing now will do" at which point, NOPE

- I then went through proper channels for a job building forklift parts or some shit and was invited to an interview. It was at a headhunter's. They told me nothing about the job, but I did have to take a filing and typing test (the job I was promised required a mechanical engineering degree and five years' experience with mechanical design). I did eventually get to go interview at the actual job - it was shit and they probably knew I thought so and the only reason I would have taken it was for the money, which I desperately needed as all Boeing engineers were on strike. The headhunter proceeded to email me job offers for receptionists for the next four years because - surprise! I type quickly.

- I then bypassed HR for a job as an acoustical and audiovisual consultant. The receptionist - who had been dragooned into being "HR" for purposes of this job, was extremely salty but I got the job. I ended up lending the receptionist an aquarium which she covered in tea lights and set fire to, burning her whole damn apartment complex down, while we were at her house party.

- I then bypassed HR for a job as an acoustical and audiovisual consultant. I got it through a rep, which means no hiring process was involved, which made HR salty. When I got laid off she immediately tried to friend me on Facebook and LinkedIn to make sure I wasn't talking smack about her company.

I haven't had to work for a real company except through proxy since 2007. I never will again. I'm sure things have changed. But the paradigm? the archetype? The model all The Olds are clinging to? Is "hiring manager" is this appendage of HR who probably has a social work degree, a long string of useless acronyms that mean nothing to anyone and a distinct lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of how the actual work is done. The last two jobs? I got to see the resumes they put together. And oh holy fuck.

So...

...I'm sure she's a lovely woman.

I'm sure she has the best of intentions.

I'm sure she has been instrumental in many a storied career.

BUT

Hiring managers only ever get in the way. Their whole vibe is 'I know better what this company needs than the people who will actually work with this new employee." They serve the letter of the law without having the vaguest clue about the spirit - I have never not seen the selections of a hiring manager as the least interesting or applicable candidates because they're focusing on "job" as "assemblage of forms and onboarding tasks" rather than "person who is going to be spending eight hours a day in a close-knit group of people I rarely interact with performing tasks I know very little about."

I'll go one better -

If you can avoid working somewhere with a "hiring manager" you will be happier. Frankly find somewhere so small they don't have an HR department at all. The bigger the company the more opportunity to be inhuman to each other in the advancement of pointless metrics.

I loved learning that sewage is measured in MGD almost as much as I loved learning that pig launching stations are for launching pigs.

The boss that plucked my wife's resume off the accountant pile holds as her mantra that all employees should leave her employ better people than they came in. More education, more skills, more attractive to other employers. It's a contract - they give you their time, you give them your money and that contract is open-ended. If your employee has grown beyond your needs its in both your interests for them to leave and find something more suitable, singing your praises to everyone they encounter. We're still friends. My wife married her boss to her current husband 20-odd years ago. We watched the Superbowl at their house. It's a winning strategy - recognize that everyone is people but work is just a bunch of tasks.

My IT experience is autodidactic AF. I took comp sci so long ago that they taught us Turbo Pascal and Fortran and I sucked bawlz at both. "Man who hack at root soon kill tree" is tattooed on the inside of my forehead. But I needed what turns out to be some seriously complex performance out of a phone system and back in 2016 you could still reasonably roll your own on 3CX.

We've just completed a 3-day semiannual audit for our professional certification and apparently we blew the auditor away with our phone system. "If you sold this, midwives would line up outside your door to buy it," she said. Yeah, but then I have to deal with 3CX on behalf of other people.

Yeah, so

We have realized that employees come in "active" and "passive" types. I intend no shade to either type as people, and we have great employees, who are great people, who come in both varieties. But they are very different from a hiring perspective.

Passive employees will do the task in front of them, and if they don't know how to do the task, they will stop. they will tell you they cannot do it. And they will wait for instruction. They can be lovely people, they can have incredible empathy for those around them, they can be witty conversationalists with impeccable skill at whatever it is you hired them for, but they will error out the minute they are faced with something unexpected.

Active employees can be given a general lay of the land and left to run. They will encounter hardships and they will google their way around them. They will come to a place they're not comfortable making decisions and they will give you the relevant information so that you can. They will march their way through an issue until a solution is beyond their ability to puzzle their way out and in the meantime they will focus on some other problem from some other direction.

We welcome passive employees but they can be exasperating. They will do Their Job and any deviance from Their Job causes a run-time error. We've had passive employees sit stunned for half an hour over their inability to unclog a toilet. We've had passive employees panic that the computer went down the minute they unplugged the router to plug in their space heater. We've had passive employees lock up over not receiving instructions on the difference between Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

We welcome active employees but we also know we only have them until they find something better to do. But as long as we have them they open horizons. They broaden possibilities. They solve problems we didn't know we had because we aren't doing their jobs. And we definitely favor active employees over passive ones because fuckin' hell we didn't get into this to boss people around, we just needed the physical office in order to increase reimbursement.

In my opinion, anyway, demonstrating that you are active rather than passive is the first, biggest thing you can do to interest me in finding you a position. And that definitely starts with coming at me in a way other than clicking "quick apply" on Indeed.

Also, if you're IT: get certs even if you have a degree. It's harder to flunk a college class than it is to pass most exams.

Even if you're NOT. My wife ended up being a software architect in charge of benefits programs for 10,000-person companies because her accountant resume mentioned she'd taken a course in MS Access at Egghead Software one Sunday afternoon. It was a three hour overview but it was enough for the department head of a completely different department to bring her in for a job she didn't apply for. If I saw a 3CX certification on a receptionist applicant I would hire her sight unseen because then I wouldn't have to deal with fucking 3CX. And the only reason I deal with fucking 3CX is there's nobody else to do it.

"fill a meal plan properly" is a good way to look at it. Can you eat the national cuisine every day of the week. This is definitely a test where Americans fall down, not because there's no food but because so much American food is borrowed and then bastardized. I could have English muffins, yogurt parfaits, omelets and oatmeal for breakfast, sandwiches, burritos, quesadillas and sushi for lunch, then spaghetti, roast chicken, burgers and pizza for dinner and ostensibly only two of those meals are "American" but everything else is an American version so mutated from where it started that its owners wouldn't recognize it. You can't properly call it "American cuisine" because so much of it has been borrowed. And even then, you would definitely be better off eating in France or Italy.

So COVID really fucked up the job-seeking market. Because you can work anything remote (pretend with me here), and because you need to apply for three jobs to maintain your bennies, and because there's no way to really thin out a credible candidate from a noncredible candidate, any job posting is going to be a hive of bullshit. We had people applying for in-person work from a thousand miles away. We had people show up to interviews with their mom. We had people accept positions and not fucking show up on the first day. I've got not one, not two, but five employees who have said "I'm never leaving this place" in the past three months and we work really hard to do right by the people who trust us to keep them working and I gotta say - fucking applicants are bullshit now. I can honestly say that the human race would improve if I could euthanize every single person who applied to our lowly little receptionist position.

But our receptionist is awesome, and she's been with us like two and a half years now, and she's one of the "I'm never leaving this place" people (we've learned not to ask 'where do you see yourself five years from now' during reviews because it spooks them). And that's because WE hunted HER.

We evaluated back in 2022 that job postings are fucking bullshit now. You won't get a single qualified candidate. At this point a job posting is a drunk frat boy on the dance floor fifteen minutes before closing time, his fly open, swinging his dick around. If you're a girl you might think this is his extremely terrible way to demonstrate his manhood and virility. It's not. It's him swinging his dick around because he wants to swing his dick around. He's too drunk for sex and even if you make it all the way to the car with him he's going to vomit on your shoulder and pass out. He is not in the dating pool. Stop pretending he is.

The last four students we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. The last three naturopaths we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. You want to figure out where you want to work, you want to figure out who you'd be working for there, and you want to ask them for a job. You want to bypass this entire miasma of makework we've created that basically serves the purpose of frustrating unemployment benefits departments and absolutely nothing else. You want to get to know every shop that might be an interesting place to work, you want to make yourself known to them and you want to completely bypass any hiring process. Trust me - if they've got work and they like you, it's your job to lose. Hiring fucking sucks.

And if they don't have work and they like you, they'll tell you about their friends, or they'll tell their friends about you. Resumes have been completely fucking pointless since 2020 or before.

You are standing in front of a Leviton 42-inch Structured Data Center. It is full of seventeen points of CAT5e and CAT6, fiber-fed, UPS-powered, with an amp in it. You have laboriously connected this thing but it is now time to terminate everything so that it can be clean. All of your connections have passed QC with the exception of the one that read "SHORT" yesterday.

CHECK AGAIN

It still says "short", dumbass. What were you expecting?

CUT CAT5 JACK

The recently-crimped end of a CAT5 Jack falls to the ground with a satisfying "snip."

RE-TERMINATE CAT5 JACK

You arrange your orange-stripedorange-green-stripedblue-blue-stripedgreen-brown-stripedbrown extravaganza as you have a hundred times before. You hear a knock at the door.

ANSWER DOOR

It's the electrician. She wants to talk about moving a bunch of wire, per your request.

TALK TO ELECTRICIAN

Looks like this is all happening Tuesday. Oddly enough the breaker that popped is 100A, which is troubling. The electrician assures you that adventures will commence shortly.

GET BACK TO WHAT I WAS DOING

You terminate the CAT5 Jack.

TEST CAT5 JACK

It still says "short."

EXAMINE KEYSTONE CONNECTOR

Definitely not shorted there.

STARE DISCONSOLATELY AT THIS MISADVENTURE TO CONTEMPLATE PULLING MORE FUCKING CAT5E

The wire stares back mockingly.

TUG ON WIRES

The connector that is shorted is clearly not one of the ones that goes in the direction it should.

TUG ON WIRES FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR ANYWAY

You have failed to transmutate the wire you need into the wire you want. Do you want to continue?

TUG ON WIRE FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION

Congratulations you have created 18 inches of slack. The wire you are attempting to re-run is not the one you are testing.

WTF HOW

I don't know how to do that.

HOW CAN I CONNECT TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CAT5 CABLES AND READ "SHORT"

You... ARE running a PoE to 5V Adapter one one of these bad boys, jackass.

OH FUCK THAT'S WHY IT THINKS THERE'S A SHORT BETWEEN PINS 2 AND 7

Is that a question?

YOU'RE NOT ZORK

And you're not really playing. Shall we call it even?

I think that's unkind. "Decent" isn't a difficult bar to clear and I think many countries succeed; fundamentally, "decent cuisine" needn't be much more than "something most cultures would cheerfully eat if they were hungry." As "comfort food" the world over has similar characteristics (heavy on the fat and carbs, light on the vitamins) I think the more cosmopolitan the culture the more likely their food is going to be unhealthy.

The stuff that isn't intended for ex-pats and tourists is where things get gnarly; the stuff intended as a hazing ritual for ex-pats and tourists is where things get really gnarly. I would hypothesize that the French and Italians don't have much in the way of "really gnarly cuisine" because you aren't ever going to be accepted as a native no matter how much rotten shark you eat. I would further hypothesize that the British and Americans have more fat and carbs in their food because they spend more time in the land of lowest common denominators. The stereotype of 'Mexican food' is heavy carbs, heavy cheese, heavy meat, heavy grease but that's really "Mexican-american food." It, too, is a lowest common denominator of a number of cultures artificially melded into one for purposes of foreign consumption. The British ideation of Indian food is similar.

Meanwhile the French and Italians have a lot of really good, really stable cuisine that you can eat all the time (assuming you can put forth the effort to cook it) without clogging your arteries while the British and Americans... don't. Not really. I think the Americans don't because everyone in America either came from somewhere else or had their culture ruthlessly stamped out by invaders. I think the British don't because their culture has been import-based for 400 years and every bit of spice or flavor that got imported needed to be balanced out with a Spotted Dick or a Yorkshire Pudding or a Brown Windsor.

And I think the British spend a lot of time convincing themselves of the superiority of their dreck because absolutely no one agrees.

The "Paint in Malicious Colors" fallacy

Dude there is nothing so delightfully self-pwning as a British gourmand.

Every few years I get to break the heart of some British elitist friend making fun of us for "Hawaiian pizza" by pointing out it was invented by a Greek in Canada.

You are now playing the worst version of Zork

You enter the garage. It is oddly silent. You realize the pool pump is not working.

CHECK DISPLAY

The display is dark. While it is not likely to get below freezing again, if it does you run a substantial risk of burst plumbing under concrete, and it will be expensive.

CHECK BREAKER

The breaker has not cycled.

CYCLE BREAKER

The pump does not start.

CHECK OUTLET

The outlet, which you put in, is a hard-wired armored whiptail.

LOOSEN OUTLET

The screws are very long. You turn and turn and turn, cursing whoever standardized on slotted head screws-

CANCEL

LOOSEN PUMP COVER PANEL

The panel is off.

CHECK VOLTAGE

You measure zero voltage between either leg.

STARE, WOUNDED, AT BREAKER PANEL

The panel stares back. It is a Leviton Smart Panel, so it stares back with intelligent malevolence.

CALL ELECTRICIAN

She does not answer.

CALL LEVITON

Leviton puts you in a call queue.

REMEMBER THAT MY 2.4GHz SMART HOUSE NETWORK IS NOW LIVE

It is! You could actually put these breakers on the network! Maybe that would allow you to diagnose the problem!

ROOT AROUND FOR SMART BREAKER INSTRUCTIONS

You find them. In Spanish.

SEARCH INTERNET

You discover that you have to press a button. The button is under the cover.

PULL COVER

It nearly falls on you.

PULL ALL THE COVERS

None of this is fun but you get through it. Leviton is calling.

ANSWER PHONE

They tell you that if the breaker is dead you should replace it. Also it doesn't matter what order you enroll these devices in. They do not make fun of you for having six of them. They mention that pulling the offending breaker and putting it back after a minute may help.

PULL AND REPLACE BREAKER

Nothing happens.

CHECK VOLTAGE AT BREAKER

you measure nothing.

CHECK VOLTAGE AT SUBPANEL

you measure nothing.

CHECK FOR POPPED BREAKER AT MAIN PANEL

You see no popped breakers

FLAIL AROUND LIKE AN IDIOT FOR HALF AN HOUR

Who are you shouting at, exactly?

CHECK FOR POPPED BREAKER AGAIN

There are no obviously popped breakers. However, you have two labeled "cooktop". Both are 60A. One is off. Perhaps this is because there's raw wire in the kitchen whose purpose was never clear.

FLIP COOKTOP BREAKER

You hear the sound of a pump! Hooray! You are reminded that none of the breakers were labeled logically, and when the electricians replaced the panels they transliterated a number of things!

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT LET'S LABEL THEM

I don't know how to do that

DOWNLOAD LEVITON APP

sign up for an account!

SIGN UP

have you pressed the button? Do you see a blinking green light?

YES

How big is your breaker?

42 SLOTS

Would you like me to search for breakers?

YES

Congrats! I just found every breaker in the house! Shall I add them all to this one panel?

FUCK

I don't know how to do that

LET ME SHOW YOU MUTHERFUCKER

Personally I’m still amazed that these supposedly luminary AI doomers can all believe we need to prevent AI from going rogue in a way that will end humanity, without actually proving that’s even possible in the first place.

Here's the fundamental dodge at the heart of "rationalism", "effective altruism" and the whole TESCREAL constellation of sociopathic bullshit:

IF: I can envision a future in which my current actions, no matter how abhorrent, will be viewed as necessary or noble

THEN: I'm not required to give the first fuck about anything happening right in front of me.

I can burn this young lady alive because obviously she's a witch. I can ignore poverty in the world and focus on my own enrichment because I am spreading the gospel of the one true God who will save their souls. I can plot the murder of anyone opposed to my thinking because in the distant future everyone will acknowledge how crucial I was towards advancing the goals of humanity as it is then understood.

Pretty sure that's the reason for all the big words and grandiose concepts - it allows you to disconnect your actions and beliefs from the conventional societal markers.

Liches have trouble thinking clearly about paths through probability space that conflict with their phylactery, and the more conjunctive a mission it is to make true their phylactery, the more bits of epistemics will be corrupted by their refusal to look into that abyss.

God's anointed are troubled by moral concerns in the mortal world, but the more they ignore these concerns instead of rejecting them out of hand the more they lose God's voice.

It's all vengeful zealot bullshit, the TESCREAL dipshits have just wrapped themselves in a cloak of pseudomath.

mmmmmmmmmmm hagelslag

"You might be an American if... you think Pop Tarts are perfectly acceptable breakfast food but you mock Europeans for putting chocolate on toast"