The root problem, maybe, is that I started doing semi-serious programming when I was very young. I trained myself to always catch the problems. Plan to mitigate around every error, seen and unseen. At some point as I became a self-aware and independent person, these attitudes informed my impression of my own thought processes. I work really hard to purposefully construct my outward facing persona (my GUI) to be pleasant, friendly, and easy to work with. However a complex weave of error correction processes are running under this facade. Many mornings before I am fully awake, I'll find myself muttering to myself in the shower the most self-depreciating expletive filled verbal diarrhoea at myself before my executive mechanisms realize that if anyone overheard this, they would send me to the crazy house. Mostly, I'd be ruminating upon some less than perfectly worded conversation I had the day prior, or about some project that isn't going well. In hindsight, it is always something that really isn't too important, but wow, do I make sure I beat myself up to a pulp because of it, because it was an error, or something that should be improved. In many ways, I am glad I think like this. As a result, I don't make many errors. I've been getting nearly straight A's in university, I'm well respected by my friends, and I am getting a lot of offers to work on various freelance gigs that I mostly have to turn down. I just got hired to work almost full time at my universities reinforcement learning and intelligent machines lab with one of the professors. The fact that I feel completely inadequate paradoxically drives me to learn as much as I can across every field. All I see in my mind's eye are the problems. The various and uncountable routes to failure. This has been my secret to success. Navigating the road between the cliff on both sides. I can't sleep, there is always something else I should be doing. I have appetite only when my blood sugar feels low. I never comment on IRC, because who wants to have a civil discussion there when obviously it is a platform to goof around on and relax. I'm not very good at that. When I've had 4+ drinks, the self-critical hate-machine switches off like flipping a light switch. I stop hating myself. All you people on the IRC are cool cats, and if I say something stupid, who cares? "As they say, 'lol'". I do have a problem though, when the night grows long, and in the heat of it all, time and time again those 3-4 beers used to loosen up have somehow turned into 6, 7, 10, w/e. That's not cool. But, even though I should, I don't really regret it, because it still is the only thing usually I can point to that was fun about my day. Fun rules. Of course, sometimes I've really gone of the deep-end, and that then is added to my morning routine of self loathing, but more often than not, it objectively isn't the worse thing I did the day prior. Something like introducing a bug into my server by not installing a driver correctly would kill me overdrive style. What a stupid fuck I am. So, yeah, if you see me online during the day. I probably won't say hello first. You want a good time, and I want to start solving all the world's problems, or talk about them, or at the very least, something really philosophically masturbatory. Also, I'm uncomfortable with the commitment required from me to dive in to it, and more so, I'm honestly kind of intimidated by you all. I enjoy social communique, and video sharing, and talking about current events, but I've bequeathed myself to being a bit of a outsider clown in your presence. You've come to expect a certain style, one that I've gotten positive reinforcement from acting out. I only have the courage to jump into a conversation with you after I've numbed out the part of my circuits that tell me that I am not a real member of your community, just someone that knows how to type a domain name I found somewhere into an IRC client. - Sorry. - Now, later on I've been drinking. Not a lot. about a bottle of wine. I want to say that the above is pretty much true, but pretty much bullshit. What kind of jerk would be so self important to post such a wall of text. Haha, k, honestly, Me 6 hours ago that wrote that was too damn scared to post something like that. Which I guess is why I didn't, because past self knew that present self would be on later. Future self will probably try to edit or delete all this, but it's an expression of the true self. If for some reason this is locked into history, then to any future employers that are reading this. Then, well, yeah. Life is complicated and I hope you recognize me as a complicated and whole person that has great bits that work towards undying perfection, and other bits that are really complicated. Anyway, I need to be getting to bed soon to start another day, and I wrote all this and it would be a huge waste of time to chicken out and not publish it. So, I know that only people that give a shit will actually read the good parts, and the rest will see a huge wall of text and not even begin to bother. People never bother to read huge walls of text. Really though, what I said above about how it feels like the go kill yourself for every minor fault gets turned off is true. I just lost a few rounds on an online game, and I still felt great about doing as well as I did. It is the best feeling. I don't get to experience it in the normal day to day. As past self said, I really like how hard I am on myself; it keeps me pushed to the max. I really should learn something better yet though. A transcendental breakthrough that synthesis the best parts of both here, and not entirely here. It's something even now I see as being a long term need. For the time being though, I'm listening to crazy podcasts from some artists I enjoy, and don't have a care in the world. I still give my fucks, but don't have to make a reach beyond what I am into something I want to be. I am just am and it feels Nice. I gotta get up early to work tomorrow, so I recognize responsibility and all that, and got to go to bed. However, both me past and me now wants you to know how it is. So, here it is. I love life, and right now, I really love all that you represent, in the concrete sense of being a network of people that are at least a bit counter to the culture of the norm. This is why I keep coming back. You are smart people, very smart people. Intelligent. When things get deep you can dig just as far down as my best. I don't see that a lot in my day to day. It's something I respect. I don't expect any change of respect of me because of this. It is a long and only semi-coherent ramble of thoughts. Crazy by intent in this case. My aim was/is to make it sound a little bit crazy. This is not an exercise at explaining my fragility, but rather a request to be more true with the things you say to me. I am living a self-experiment of ill-advised mental conditioning and so far it has worked out. It isn't something I would recommend to others, since flogging myself sucks. Fortunately, I feel free right now! yeah yeah yeah! Live is beautiful and golden and green. I worry a lot about how things might go bad, but worrying a lot about how things might go bad keeps things from going bad when sufficient effort is applied. Almost everyone I know is not putting in the sufficient effort, and then they complain about how they don't have money, or have to work a crappy job. I am doing satisfactory at those things and worry a shittonne about the really big issues, like how eventually we will all be dumb because of too much CO2 in the air, or worse, a lack of O2. I feel so powerless in my ability to help remedy these kinds of problems. I am a misshapen snowflake in the middle of a blizzard trying to yell out to the storm that there is a better organization. Let's all fall together to make igloos. Or something. Poor analogy. As I mentioned before, we need to take a serious look at radical changes like eating algae and insects as our primary source of protein and fat dietary intake, otherwise we won't have a good life for those 5 generations down from us. Raising livestock was recognized 10 years ago a a huge threat, but as a species we have done nothing at all to curb it. That is just one thing of a dozen running through my head right now. Coal power plants, lack of investment in aquaponics, fusion, solar, resinous systems, ignoring real anomalies like those found by Fleischmann and Pons. Why instead of shipping Canada's huge surplus of snow to California, we build pipes for oil instead? ARGS><SD<SAD. Anyways. I type too fast for my own good. This has all been a stream of consciousness and none of it really means anything. It is all true and sometimes not true, depending on the case as it may be. At the end of it all. Thank you. I'm glad people like you exist, even if the people you are are not what I would want you to be. Be more excellent though. I love barfing out rainbows as much as anyone else, but sometimes I fear you have suffered a severe mental disorder. The things you say are in direct contradiction to well proven findings. Are you trying to troll for a reaction? Are you that ignorant. In these situations I just stop bothering with it at all. Regardless of the state I am in, there is no point in making any argument. You are foolish and awful, and are my enemy. Sometimes, when I am in the mood I decide to fight it a bit. Sometimes the conversations are fun and spark interest in diving into the good life deeper. Sometimes it is a wall of slimy shit that keeps me up too late and makes me worse for wear the next day. I am who I am, you are you. If you are going to shitpost, please, don't constipate. Be fluid. Try having a good day. I already hate myself, don't worry about that. I'm not trying to prove you wrong (unless you are definitely wrong), and don't bother telling me that I am wrong, (when you know that you are wrong). I know when I may be wrong. Do you know when you might be wrong? Most futures scare the hell out of me. Mostly because of people that know they are wrong decide to continue to be wrong. This, at the core of it all, scares me the most. When I see myself do it, and for all the thousands of times I've seen other's do it. Now, to be clear, there is "wrong" and then there is "wrong." Some people say that posting meaningless rants on obscure internet forums is wrong, or that masturbating is wrong, or that believing in a god is wrong. These are subjective determinations. Alternatively, I am certain that there is an objective reality that each of our brains is experiencing through perceived phenomena which we share. It is paramount that this is established as a constant between us. By doing so, we can start to recognize the real similarities and differences. The earth has experienced an unprecedented warming event in the last 200 years of industrialized civilization which is certainly caused by our release of tremendous amounts of CO2 gas into the atmosphere. This adds a huge amount of energy into a closed system and if we continue to do so, then the likely outcome is a system that is very inhospitable to our continued existence as a species. Eventually, there will be food shortages, and people that I know and love, or their descendants will die. I don't like that. There are solutions that prevent this, but we are currently moving towards them too slowly for them to matter. What's the point of having a patch in a github pull request that closes a serious security vulnerability if it isn't accepted in a timely fashion before all the users of the software get pwned? I know a lot of people have problems with GMO food, and frankly, rightfully so! Monsanto and their terminator seeds are the opposite of what we need and want to solve a looming food crises. However, the technology exists to radically improve both yield and nutrition for the next several centuries. Unfortunately, the money goes to those that can help the corporations. Not all corporations are bad. However, It's scary to see those that can make the most impact are apparently the worst. Again, exceptions always exist! Microsoft right now is actually trying to ensure that our data cannot be willy nilly given away by subpoena from government. Good for them. Alphabet is trying to give internet to everyone. Cards Against Humanity is hilarious by charging more on black friday. I just wish more was being done. I believe in the free market, but the free market hasn't been free for a long time now. Those at the top have too much power to prevent entrants from succeeding. Some of this has been subverted, but in general you need to playing the same game as them to get onto the field. They have gotten wise to start-up culture, and those that attempt to disrupt the new status quo do not succeed. A feedback cycle develops, and less disruption to those in power happens. In the late 90's there was huge hype about every ma and pa starting up their own ISP. Thousands succeeded!, then, they were shut down, bought out, or lobbied out of existence. There is a reason Google's project loon is referred to as a moonshot. It is the last possible upset to the industry of ISP before there is never any more. Capitalism and Socialism are broken paradigms. The future of humanity needs a discordant, yet harmonious, bottom up anarchy that is laser focused on fixing the problems we have created for ourselves, in order to preserve our humanity, our rights, our individuality, and our collective whole. /rant - Science. It works, bitches.