Linux nerd and consultant. Sci-fi, comedy, and podcast author. Former Katsucon president, former roller derby bouncer. http://punkwalrus.net/

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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I have seen some rhetoric about this, like “a few bad apples,” but here’s the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

    • Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
    • This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
    • People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
    • US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

    Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can’t tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can’t measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

    Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes “for drugs.” They defended their actions by saying, “if we told people we didn’t cavity search babies, they’d hide drugs inside babies.” Essentially admitting, with no shame, they’d cavity search an infant. All in the name of “stopping drugs.” Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

    https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html



  • These are two types of cartoon sounds when a character snores.

    The “Inside you there are two wolves” is the name of a proverb which began being parodied towards the end of 2018 and through the beginning of 2019. In the original proverb, a grandfather says there are two wolves fighting inside him, an evil one and a good one. His grandson asks, “who will win?” The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.” In parodies, the story is often simplified to “There are two wolves inside you. One is X. The other is X. You are X.” The proverb’s actual origins are murky. It has been attributed to Christian pastor Billy Graham in 1978, as well as the Cherokee Native American tribe.


  • I worked with a client where their router got hacked, but the site manager insisted that it wasn’t, because he had an “unhackable” Macbook. Like, no, buddy. No. Every Windows 98 client, the Windows NT 4.0 server, and your router are totally, totally hacked, and pointing to Chinese DNS. “UHHH NOOO?? IT’s a MAAAAAC! Hello? Anyone in there, Windows guy? I HAVE A MACBOOK!” With a patronizing chuckle. Then he mocked deaf people accents to re-explain, I guess, to make the point I was retarded.

    Thankfully, his boss fired him on the spot. This was the THIRD time I was sent out there to wipe and reinstall, and my attendance of his firing was a mere formality. He was being hacked by an open Apple AirPort Base Station with no password or encryption that was inside the network, and refused to believe it because it was an Apple product. His boss understood, though.

    Note: this is not meant to mock or deride any Apple product or fans thereof. Just this specific dweeb.