Come gather round the stump young'ns, and I'll tell you a tale of when video games didn't need to be connected to the Internet.

Many years ago - many jobs ago, we got a new CEO, and she wanted to make a big splash, so she started firing people. And this is a public, non-profit job, so most people were working in less than stellar conditions simply because they were passionate about public service.

I was two days away from putting in my 2 weeks' notice because I had landed another job, but they fired me and gave me two months' severage. So instead of having to work another 2 weeks, I didn't have to go another day. I said "Sorry it didn't work out." and held my smile till I got out the door.

When you think about data it actually gets really scary really quick. I have a Master's in Data Analytics.

First, data is "collected."

• So, a natural question is "Who are they collecting data from?"

• Typically it's a sample of a population - meant to be representative of that population, which is nice and all.

• But if you dig deeper you have to ask "Who is taking time out of their day to answer questions?" "How are they asked?" "Why haven't I ever been asked?" "Would I even want to give up my time to respond to a question from a stranger?"

• So then who is being asked? And perhaps more importantly, who has time to answer?

• Spoiler alert: typically it's people who think their opinions are very important. Do you know people like that? Would you trust the things they claim are facts?

• Do the data collectors know what demographic an answer represents? An important part of data collection is anonymity - knowing certain things about the answerer could skew the data.

• Are you being represented in the "data"? Would you even know if you were or weren't?

• And what happens if respondents lie? Would the data collector have any idea?

And that's just collecting the data, the first step in the process of collecting data, extracting information, and creating knowledge.

Next is "cleaning" the data.

• When data is collected it's messy.

• There are some data points that are just deleted. For instance, something considered an outlier. And they have an equation for this, and this equation as well as the outliers it identifies should be analyzed constantly. Are they?

• How is the data being cleaned? How much will it change the answers?

• Between what systems is the data transferred? Are they state-of-the-art or some legacy system that no one currently alive understands?

• Do the people analyzing the data know how this works?

So then, after the data is put through many unknown processes, you're left with a set of data to analyze.

• How is it being analyzed? Is the analyzer creating the methodology for analysis for every new set of data or are they running it through a system that someone else built eons ago?

• How often are these models audited? You'd need a group of people that understand the code as well as the data as well as the model as well as the transitional nature of the data.

Then you have outside forces, and this might be scariest of all.

• The best way to describe this is to tell a story: In the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the top candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties. There was a lot of tension, but basically everyone on the left could not fathom people voting for Trump. (In 2023 this seems outrageous, but it was a real blind spot at the time).

• All media outlets were predicting a landslide victory for Clinton. But then, as we all know I'm sure, the unbelievable happened: Trump won the electoral college. Why didn't the data predict that?

• It turns out one big element was purposeful skewing of the results. There was such a media outrage about Trump that no one wanted to be the source that predicted a Trump victory for fear of being labeled a Trump supporter or Q-Anon fear-monger, so a lot of them just changed the results.

• Let me say that again, they changed their own findings on purpose for fear of what would happen to them. And because of this lack of reporting real results, a lot of people that probably would've voted for Clinton, didn't go to the polls.

• And then, if you can believe it, the same thing happened in 2020. Even though Biden ultimately won, the predicted stats were way wrong. Again, according to the data Biden should have been comfortably able to defeat Trump, but it was one of the closest presidential races in history. In fact, many believe, if not for Covid, Trump would have won. And this, at least a little, contributed to the capital riots.

Any mention of a server room reminds me of the fable of the guy, we'll call him Mike, who unplugged the Internet.

I can't remember where I read it, I think it was greentext on Reddit years ago.

So Mike is an intern, and due to some weird circumstances he becomes the only network admin in the building. Well, one day he doesn't esnt feel like working, so on his way in, he stops by the server room and unplugs the internet.

He then goes to his desk like a normal day. Then he starts getting phone calls. Everybody is freaking out because there is no Internet. So he begrudgingly descends into the server room and starts playing video games on his phone.

Close to the end of the day, he plugs the Internet back in and ascends a hero to the employees because they think he's been working hard all day to give them internet.

I am that uncle. I'm just doing what I have to to survive.

If I could buy a new car I would. I'd get an electric, self-driving pleasure machine, but no way I can afford it.

Maybe when this thing breaks down (it's already 15 yrs old).

While we're on the topic. Everybody needs to read a book about pleasuring their partners.

She comes first

Her guide to going down

I'm sure you can get more focused content for your particular situation if you looked for it, but don't assume you know what You're doing. Read and make the world a better place.

It would be great to use some emojis in coding.

Imagine how much more readable it would be if you could break a loop with 💀 or return true with 👍. Or use ❓for ifs, or ↔️ for switch (the emoji didn't work for that one). Or use an emoji to represent a custom object?

Maybe the ECMA should get on that!

Edit: I guess you can use emojis for custom objects in js.

Edit 2: ➡ for console.log

"protesters"... I'm sure Spez is sadly walking to the bank to cash all of his checks from all the money he made on r/place from the "protesters."

Not only BPAs but many chemicals like BPAs can cause birth defects because our bodies think they are estrogen.

If this worries you, read the books It Starts With the Egg and Grain Brain.

They both suggest that not only what you eat, but how it's prepared can affect the health of a child.

For instance it's a big no-no, according to It Starts With the Egg, to heat most plastics in the microwave. The heat breaks the plastic down, it can get in your blood, your body will think it's estrogen, and they don't even know the full effects of this yet.

So think about

• burritos in plastic wrapping,
• cling wrap on a bowl,
• reheating leftovers in Tupperware,
• disposable cutlery

These chemicals are not just in food:

• your car's interior
• your cell phone case
• even the clothes on your back, unless they're 100% pure, untreated, natural fabric, may have been made with these chemicals.

Jesus Christ. One part of me really wants to see some green text rant about this. Another part of me empathizes with the horrible pain and suffering it would wield.

It's such an easy mindset to fall into, esp that young. Your other makes you feel so special, and you can easily think you can replicate that with anyone. You can't, it comes very seldom, if ever.

Data analyst here. It really do be like that. You can use stats to prove anything.

Yfw they say data doesn't lie. Looool

Yeah, but that's some bullshit. I want to know what line in my file is causing the error.

And they know! They know what line in your file caused the error! They know the value of all the variables when the error hit. But do they show that? Fuck no.

As a person who victimizes coworkers like this, I apologize. Thank you for pointing it out, and I will stop doing it.

I've lived in high urban, low urban, suburban, and rural. They all have pros and cons.

If you're dating tho, the city is way better, but good luck finding practice space - if you're into that sort of thing.

Ok, it's true college isn't what it used to be.

A college degree used to be rare, meaning you could get any degree and do any job.

Obviously, it's not like that anymore. Everyone has a degree. You need to get a degree that means something.

If you have rich parents that will support you, great, you can fuck around and graduate after 8 years with an English degree, and you'll be alright.

If your parents aren't rich and can't support you indefinitely, you need a degree in something that is hiring or will be hiring when you graduate. Preferably, with a large paycheck, so paying back the loans is reasonable.

Or, ya know, just don't go to college. Learn to weld or install sattelite dishes, or even better, be a general contractor. You can make a goddamn fortune as a general contractor.

Or, do what Mark Twain did, and mary into wealth. Love is fake anyway!

But, ya know, being 18 and impressionable to romantic ideas, it's tempting to think you don't have to follow this guidance and get an art degree and you'll be fine. Don't fall into that. Be smart.

I use a bar of soap that is exclusive to me. I lather somewhere hairy, like my stomach, to build up some suds.Then, I soap everything with the suds and soap.

It wastes a ton of soap compared to a washcloth. And when I'm done I wash the bar off and wash my hands one last time. It's the quickest way I have found to shower. I am usually out in about 15 minutes.

AutoHotKey AHK for short. Allows automation of nearly anything in Windows, and is better than most alternatives. The downside is it's VBScript, which I believe is going he way of the dodo, and it has quite a few gotchyas.

However, on day one you can start assigning keys and combos to do common tasks.

Don't like Caps Lock? Reassign it to open Chrome. Hate that you can't lock the screen with your left hand? Make Win+S a command that locks the screen.

It's free, has a huge community, and is truly amazing.

Watch a Video or read something because it really is an invaluable tool. But here's a crash course:

Debuggers, or IDEs, let you step through your code in slo-mo so you can see what is happening.

1. Set a breakpoint - Click to the left of a line of code so a red dot appears. Run your program, and the IDE will execute to that line, then pause.
2. Look at variables' values - While the execution is paused you can hover over variables before that line to see their value.
3. Step through the code - See what happens next in slo-mo.
   • Use "Step Into" to enter into a function and see what that code does.
   • Use "Step Over" to not go into a function and continue in the current spot after the function has done its business.
   • Use "Step Out" to exit a function and pick up the execution after it has run. Use this when you're in too deep and the code stops making sense.
4. See whats in the heap - The heap will list all the functions that you're currently inside of. You can jump to any of those points by clicking them.
5. Set a watch - Keep a variable in the watch so you can see what its value is at all times.
6. Set a condition on the breakpoint - If the breakpoint is inside a big loop, you can right-click on the red dot to create a conditional breakpoint, so you write something like x===3 and it will only pause when x is 3.

There are many other things an IDE can do to help you, so def look into it more if you want to save yourself a lot of insanity. But this is a good starting point.

If you're developing for the web use F12 to open web tools, and when an error happens, click the file/line number to see that point in the Sources tab, and you can debug there.

I think apple would figure out some very creative ways to fuck it's customers, some more.