Blog - David Helkowski

Trump Scum Pool

 You've likely seen news about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the "repairs."

I have thoughts.

The first is that this thing is hardly new. It was build in 1923. It is over 100 years old.

My question is why there is any issue in maintaining this thing. It's made out of concrete. There are pumps and filters to keep the water circulating.

In recent history they improved the "waterproofing" of it for one purpose: to have less water leak out of it.

It isn't some sort of rocket science to have a pool of water. There are millions of them around the world. Admittedly this one is pretty big, but the science of how to have a pool of water and keep it from being an algae incubator is well understood.

So when I saw news of Trump suddenly rushing to "fix it" and blowing smoke about how he was going to make it beautiful, my main thought was "Another nothing-burger, who cares".

I thought that in part because of the many years I lived near DC and 80+ times I've been to DC, for many of them the thing didn't even have any water in it. I always thought that was strange but it also didn't particularly matter to me.

Just like I don't even care about the Washington Monument at all. Why? Because it's a dick. Historically such towers are fertility symbols and are meant to denote a penis. So I personally find the thing offensive in the first place.

It is neat to demonstrate ability to construct large objects but go check out the Mito Art Tower or the Ushiku Daibutsu. They are both way more impressive than both the Washington Monument AND the Statue of Liberty together. And neither of them are a pointy penis.

I'm saying this to establish a baseline of my care about monuments in DC. I don't. At all. They are shit in the first place from my view.

I do appreciate the museums in DC. They are awesome. When they aren't shut down because the US can't manage to pay its government.

I'm drifting away from the point dragged by the strong tide of US governmental idiocy. Let's get back to the topic. The scum pool.

My question was why there is any issue maintaining it.

There isn't. You just have to do it correctly, and they aren't. Follow the original plans with modern improvements.

"Just have a pool company seal it like a swimming pool" ain't it. There is more to it.

But all that is so boring and doesn't matter to me because I don't care about the pool in the first place. Which leads me to my next question and the actual focus of this post.

Why is idiotic bullshit like the reflecting pool a stumbling point for the US government? When, why, and how did the US government become a pathetic joke?

Let's even set Trump, the flaming orange haired babboon, aside for a moment. I don't really care about Trump at this moment because it's a dead and rotting issue for years now.

I want to ask the larger question. Let's split it up. I'll shorten "US Government" to USG.

When did the USG become a joke?

Why did the USG become a joke?

How did the USG become a joke?

When did the USG become a joke?

I don't know that I'm knowledgable enough about it to make an educated guess at this. So I'll make a horrible uneducated stab at it. Since, imo, that's all most US citizens could do either and/or would likely understand.

We don't need a history buff to spot obvious problems with the US.

You see, I think the key to figuring out all three questions ( when, why, and how ) is in noticing that we don't have to consider just the USG. Consider the whole of the US and it's status as a well functioning ( or not ) country. I don't think the USG went to shit by itself. I think the whole of the US went with it.

Before I choose my favorite punching bag as the culrit of failure let me list a few potential causes:

These all come to me nearly immediately and without much thought. Because they are real major issues with the US.

I'll run through them all with you.

Capitalism

I'll attempt to explain my understanding of what capitalism is:

Capitalism is a belief that the following makes sense:

For this moment I'm going to just leave it at that, because my teardown of capitalism is going to need another post ( or many ) by itself. You can imagine my issues here for now.

Power consolidation

A relatively small group of people control the US imo. Read into this as you wish. It's bad.

Runaway upper class

The upper class in the US has too much of the wealth and power. They abuse it. It's inevitable because of the distribution imbalance. Solution: redistribute.

Corruption

We have a known criminal as president. Do I need to say much more?

Bigcos

Anti-monopoly measures in the US don't work to prevent the sort of problems they were meant to. Those problems have found workaround to live on.

Christianity

It is a token religion people believe in only to feel better about themselves. Whatever quality aspects of it that exist have little to no effect. It has become a singing choir + club. Used primarily for justifying rotten behavior.

Offshoring of Production

Most things you can buy at stores in the US are made in China.

Collapse of education quality

The quality of K-12 education went to shit 50 years ago. Higher education followed and has not kept up with advances in technology or method. It is now credentialism and gatekeeping more than anything else.

The result? Americans are idiots.

Collapse of the family

There is no family present at home to care for children in the US and raise them properly any more. K-12 has become daycare. Even after that daycare is used as both parents work fulltime to survive in the US.

As K-12 nor daycare are equipped to raise children well, children are not raised well. The US is full of people who were raised badly and don't have the necessary training to be quality members of society.

Consumption society

IKEA instead of quality furniture. Expand to everything.

Zoning

Giant neighborhoods of houses without any stores or workplaces. Forced driving. This is opposite to all most all of known history from all countries. Only the US has embraced the idiocy to the maximum extent and damage.

Drug Use

Legalization of marajuana, of which not only is it obviously bad for your mind, but there are more and more studies showing it now that it is so widespread and becoming more so each year.

The US is a land of drugged up obnoxious dipshits.

Sloth

Americans are raised to view being lazy as awesome and success in life as being able to be rich while exerting no effort. Sloth is idolized.

Focus on individuals over community and cooperation

Americans are raised to view individual success of themselves ( or possibly their family ) as the ultimate success. They basically don't give a shit about others.

Obsession with entertainment

Do I need to even expand on this? It's so obvious. The US is primarily a producer of entertainment more than anything else. That's bad.

Retrack

I've jumped around briefly explaining what I mean by various degenerative aspects of the US. I've done little to defend my views on these points only presented them as is. I've done that in order to avoid getting drawn into a debate about the validity of my points.

The reason I brought them up is to explain how, why, and when in regard to reaching the point where repairing a pool of shallow water has become difficult and fraught with madness.

Essentially the people that result from the above issues are the same people who select government officials that are incapable of reasonably dealing with a pool of water.

And the scum pool? It's just a token for a broader issue of the US collapsing into idiocy. Here are some additional idiotic ongoings I consider equivalent:

You see, people have become SO fucking stupid that not only can they not educate themselves, care for themselves, avoid drugs, or have families, that they can't even do basic hands-on shit like maintain a fucking pool of water to avoid it from becoming a scum pool.

Let's consider this from a slightly different angle. I'll do this by presenting the issues I see as questions.

MMA held on the White House lawn

For 100+ years MMA ( well for however long of that MMA existed; replace MMA with cage fights before MMA came into existence ) violent sports were not considered acceptable to be endorsed and celebrated by top government officials. Endorsing such things wasn't even considered acceptable by famous celebrities.

A number of celebrities got shamed and lost respect because they were fans of dog fighting for example. Human fighting? Worse.

How did we reach a state where this just happens and people shrug?

Abortion becoming illegal -again-

For 50 years we had advanced our humanitarian views such that we respected woman's autonomy and control over their own body, health, and safety.

I've actually been in a pro-life march when I was a teenager and carried an anti-abortion sign. I think abortion should be decreased. I do not think the proper method is by illegalizing abortion, especially in a societal climate where women are often raped. Also in a climate where women are in poor health and having the child could endanger their health.

How is it that we made it 50 years in modern history including through the introduction of the internet, the great equalizer of information, and yet are now returning to views dictated by religions that believe it makes sense to kill animals to right a wrong? ( "sacrificial atonement" )

Speakers at Ivy League graduations getting booed

I'd have to dig into this but this is not a common thing to occur. How we we reached such a bigco dystopian state where famous speakers are so damned clueless that they can't comprehend what students will accept and what they will reject and boo? This isn't just bigco getting abusive. It is post-abuse. Not only are they hurting the common man but they have become blind to it.

Decreased life expectancy since 2014

This has been a long time coming. It has been widely understood for many decades that the US has an obesity problem due to eating low quality food. It's just getting worse.

How is it that the supposed best country in the world ( total bullshit by the way... US is shit imo... ) can't manage to take care of the health of their citizens any more?

The healthcare system is falling apart. Insurance for health has become a scam. You can't reasonably and affordably get good healthcare in the US unless you are rich any more.

This is a major disaster. How have we let it get this bad? Why are basic things such as MRI scans which is a stable technology for decades now so expensive in the US but cheap elsewhere?

Overdose deaths increased

This ties into weed use in the US. For so long we understood that use of weed is bad for you and is not something a self respecting quality human would do. Now... it's considered recreation? This is steadily fucking over the US and the people in it.

Legalizing it anywhere in the US was and is stupid, and stupid people are the ones getting hurt by it. And it's crazy popular now, because stupid people are abounding. Not because they are inherently stupid through genetics, but because they are raised in a culture that creates stupid people where they wouldn't otherwise be.

And yes, many of those deaths are from fentanyl and/or other drugs. Because even in a place where we have legalized some drugs, we still can't manage to sanely deal with those who get addicted and seek harder stuff. We continue to not help them and instead just let them drift into a spiral of addiction till death from it.

Housing unaffordability

How did we reach the state where myself, as a "rich well off Software Engineer in Seattle", could not even fucking afford a place anywhere in Seattle to buy and instead had to rent for the 5 years I was there?

That's fucked up and very strange. When the upper middle class can't even afford a house any more, we are totally screwed.

I personally believe the US has reached this because of this notion that it's reasonable and supportable for everyone to seek "passive income." Meaning to do shit all to deserve your life and instead seeking out ways to fuck over everyone else to put yourself ahead. In this case by being a shitty landlord and/or just by demanding an unreasonable amount of money to sell property you got cheaply or inherited.

I have a whole long story about how shitty my landlord was in Seattle. Maybe I'll share that sometime...

There is plenty of housing in the US. It's all insanely overpriced. The whole system is rigged to just keep increasing prices of this stuff. Guess what that causes? Inflation. We are headed for runaway inflation.

Educational scores of K-12

At some point before the 90s the US was considered to have one of the best education systems in the world. Since then? Absolutely fucking not. It's well known that K-12 has become shit, and higher ed after that is headed the same way.

How did this happen? How did we manage to understand how to educate people for over 100 years and then just let it all go to shit? AND be unaffordable even when it is actually bad and not worth getting?

Collapse of infrastructure

I live in Japan. Japan in recent history had a major Tsunami and in response they build over 200 fucking miles of giant walls along the coast.

The US? Baltimore? A single fucking bridge collapsed over 2 years ago and they still can't manage to construct a new one, driving Baltimore to continue its death spiral.

How the fuck did the supposedly amazing US go from being the most amazing place to being unable to build a single damn bridge that is needed?

And this isn't the only bridge in the US that is shit. All of them are headed that way. Hell as we've noticed random pools of water are headed that way. The US can't even maintain a fucking shallow pool of water let alone a bridge.

I showed AI this post so far and it was complaining about the Baltimore bridge being a bad example. I disagree. It's a great example but I'll give you another example then.

It took Seattle 19 fucking years to dig a single fucking tunnel to replace the viaduct along the water.

Meanwhile, in Japan, I've driven through 50 longer tunnels than that that have been constructed within the last 10 years.

AI says that Japan has constructed over 200 miles of tunnels in the last 10 years. The Seattle viaduct tunnel? 2 miles long.

Another example from my hometown of Baltimore is that of the Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point. In the 1950s it was the largest steel mill in the world, employed 30,000 people, and produced the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge.

Now? It's a derelict pile of rotting buildings. The US, once the world's dominant steel producer, now imports significant quantities of steel and no longer leads the world in steel production because it failed to remain globally competitive.

Consider that some more. The US can't even manage to produce steel better than other countries. And we are supposed to believe the US is "the best"?

Growing up in Baltimore every time I drove past that abandoned steel mill I thought to myself "this is the best place in the world? No way."

Every time I drove to DC to the Smithsonian I drove past derelict shopping malls and areas I would be afraid to walk around in without carrying a knife for self defense and I thought similar. Those dangerous places? They are within the I-495 loop and mere miles from the capital.

You can easily get mugged miles away from the US capital. Soon you'll be able to get mugged within the capital mall.

Think I'm exaggerating? The homicide rate for Tokyo is less than 1 per 200,000 people. The homicide rate for DC per 200,000 has ranged from 36-78 over the last 10 years.

Domestic Terrorism Coming Soon

 I recently saw this article that essentially claims that AI will eventually result in people not having to do information work. Basically the article is arguing that white collar labor is going to vanis...

What I believe

 I've often critiqued things. I've often lamented the failures of various belief systems. I've critiqued many things to death pointing out their flaws.

What I don't often do is state what I actually do believe. Even when I attempt to I often end up comparing it to other things ...

Appeal to Humanity

 You may have heard of the logical fallacy "Appeal to Authority." The general idea there is that it is logically incorrect to say "I'm an authority on this therefore what I just said is accurate."

You see, saying that you are correct about something because "you know about that kind...

Donki Honey Jim Beam

 Today I was at Don Quijote and I saw a sign on the shelf for Jim Beam Honey for 880 yen after tax. I did the loose calculation and thought to myself "$5? That's a good deal"

The only issue?

There were no bottles behind the sale sign. There was though a Tennessee Honey Jim Be...

Robin Williams Lewy Bodies

 The latest news, if we can call it that, that I've been seeing is that Robin Williams didn't kill himself. He died of Lewy Bodies.

I saw this and went "wtf are they talking about." I read about it. I read a bunch of comments.

I initially concluded "whatever," but on thinking...

Japanese cities to not avoid

 I recently watched half of this video on YouTube: Japanese cities to avoid at all costs

I perhaps have fallen for the intent of the video which is to be absolutely fucking ridiculous such that people complain that your ...

Profanity is Juvenile

 I've long thought that using profanity is juvenile, immature, distasteful, and indicative of having poor self control, low self esteem, and low IQ.

As the saying goes, "Profanity is a crutch for the inarticulate." If you can't express what you are saying with intelligence, fin...

Brew is a steaming shitpile

 I've long hated brew / homebrew, as you could likely guess from the title of this post.

First the basic reasons:

Decoersion and Incentives

 I talked previously about Decoersion. Go check that out for context.

In that description I explained that something is coercive or not based on whether there is force to make a person agree or act the way you want or not.

That is insufficent to cover what I actually mean by ...

Controlling iPhones

 I've spent over 5 years of my life researching and making software and systems to control iOS devices.

I sell a product that does this well: ControlFloor

Almost no one has bought a license for my product in the last 8 months. I can't survive ...

University Prerequisites

 Before I went to a 4-year university I took one semester of classes at a local community college to just see how it is and get a feeling for it all.

Of the classes I took that semester one was Calculus. I listened very attentively. I took detailed notes. I learned all the mate...

This invasive test is mandatory

 I was homeschooled through all of middle-school and high-school. The result of this is that I'm a raging lunatic. No wait. I'm supposed to say the result is that I'm the bestest educated now. Urr. Nevermind.

The result of this is that I learned how to learn very well because after ...

Corporate Black Sludge

 I've worked for MANY different companies as a software person. One thing all of these companies had was coffee machines. Some were better than others.

Here is the range of black sludge I've experienced at work:

Behavior not empathy

 In my last post I spent a significant number of words pointing out the Amazon is severely lacking in empathy and care for humans.

I would like to argue a partial flipside to this, against empathy as the thing that matters.

You see, the issue is that empathy on the face of it...

Amazon Lunkhead Points

 Full disclosure: I worked for the devil for a little under 2 years. So I'm gulty of associating with these horrible schmucks. That doesn't, though, mean that I approved of their crimes even while working for them. I needed money, what can I say?

That said, after having tainted...

In the Grey Sludge

Tags: movie

I watched the movie "In the Grey". It's basically "run around and pointlessly kill people" mixed random action movie tropes done badly. Action sludge.

As you are likely aware already, if stuff has glaring flaws I tend to point them out. This sludge was full of such flaws so I'...

Exit 8 - Make the game better please

Tags: movie game

In recent history one of the movies I watched was Exit 8. I waited a long time to watch this as it took a long time to arriving on English streaming.

I did not play the game before watching the movie but I knew about the game. It looked like a fun creepy concept so I was excit...

Iron Lung is a lukewarm blood bath

Tags: movie game

So apparently I write movie reviews now, so let's do another.

Iron Lung. It's a the second movie featuring Markiplier that I've seen. Well actually the first movie. The movie I was thinking of was a tv show, The Edge of Sleep. That show was weird, but I thought fairly decent. ...

The Boroughs show is stupid

Tags: tvshow

I'm on a roll with shitting on ArsTechnica articles. Here is another one.

Their review of The Boroughs

I watched the show. It was okay. That's the best I...

LLMs Believe

Tags: ai

ArsTechnica has become my latest favorite punching bag recently. They published this slop with the title "LLMs believe false statements even after ...

Malicious AI injection isn't cute

Tags: ai

Recently ArsTechnica reported on devs adding malicious injection crap into their code

Today I noticed a LinkedIn post from James Gosling. Here ...

Bill Gates big reveal

 Or... not. You've likely seen and heard that Bill Gates is a giant scumbag who was buddies with Epstein and that's why his wife divorced them. Between the lines people seem to be implying Gates is a child abuser.

Only... where's the smoking gun? Everyone keeps saying there is all t...

Say no to Microsoft Office

 The time has come to say no to Microsoft Office. If someone sends you an Office document, tell them no and demand they send an open format.

Why? Because Microsoft wasn't happy with being medium sized dicks. They decided to expand their dickishness to massive size. By effective...

Addressing AI Psychosis Constructively

Tags: ai

I spent the last post tearing down a worthless article claiming to be about AI Psychosis. ( which I'll refer to as AIP in this post ) Tearing down what someone says is relatively easy to do. It takes more effort to build a useful article that isn't worthless shit.

So I'm not g...

Misunderstanding AI Psychosis

Tags: ai

I recently stumbled upon the following TechCrunch article: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

I think this article is shit quality. And I'll explain why...

Bad Bambu. No.

 Bambu Labs is a manufactorer of 3d printers. Those printers are popular.

They offer software to assist in turning 3d models into a format that can be printed. All 3d printers need such software and such software is called a "slicer".

The bambu labs slicer? It is based on AGP...

Email is nonsensical for decades

 I've thought email is a horrible system for a very long time.

I'd like to point out some of the ways it is so and talk a little about why for some of them.

Predates widely available always online servers

Email was created before always online servers were widely a...

Reasons not to reject LLMs

Tags: ai

I just stumbled on this blog article: Why I object to and reject generative AI

To some degree I also object to LLMs, but I don't think all of the reasoning in this b...

Crypto Bros

 I've been using computers since before the graphical internet existed. 2400 baud modems with green screens? Yep I was using those. Token ring networks? Also and they were painful. So I can tell you I've seen many cycles of technology and bullshit.

As a result I have a strong b...

Firmament game is slop

Tags: game

I've played through and completed all of the Myst series by Cyan Worlds except for URU. I've also played many similar games over the years. I enjoyed many of those games greatly. I have fond memories of playing them over the years. I can remember many details within the games even no...

Your diary is evidence

 Some eons ago I remember thinking that my diary is my private information and I could rightly complain if it was made public against my will.

Well, my notion of that has now been shattered.

How? I noticed in the latest lawsuit against OpenAI that they are forcing diary entri...

Tsukuba Center Bicycle Parking

 Before I begin fair warning. I'm angry about this and I'm venting, so if cursing and venting about stuff bothers you, you should bail now.

That said, fuck Tsukuba Center and their automated bicycle parking lots.

Why do I hate them so much? Well it's complicated and I will ex...

Attention is hard for everyone

 I recently watched a YouTube video by Asa Park about MrBeast. The video is focused on being very critical of him. I'm not a fan of MrBeast and do think he is strange, but I don't particularly think he is any ultimate evil. So ...

Is the villain the enemy?

 What if the villain is not the enemy but is just the label we hoist upon anyone who does not fit the standard roles society defines as acceptable?

People are not so trivial as to fit within the notions we scope them to. While many will choose to cooperate with ...

Personal Japan travel guide

Tags: japan

In light of the potential destruction of the IT industry by AI, or at least the reduction of it to the point that competition for jobs will drop salary of it, I have been been considering alternative ways to make a living recently.

A few weeks ago I came up wit...

Love Without Hypocrisy

 I was sharing a story from when I was a teenager with a friend of mine and I thought perhaps I shall share it with all of you as well. To my memory I was 15 at the time this all happened.

I was attending a bible camp called Worldview Academy. They still exist today, and...

0player? Oh no

Tags: game

Recently I have been working on building a puzzle game. Well another one. I have actually been working on building a game called TentFires for some 5 years now. Well more to the point I have been playing TentFires and iterating on it for 4 years after I created a fully wo...

Is Japan Paradise?

Tags: japan

I recently watched a YouTube video titled I'm leaving Germany | Brutally Honest Review.

I found the detail of the video good and it made a lot of sense to me. What I found striking initially was tha...

GuliKit King Kong 3 Max

Tags: gaming

Some time ago I bought the GuliKit King Kong 3 Max controller. It looked awesome. The price is much more reasonable than Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers, and it has better tech according to the specs.

I got it; it feels awesome and I was able to use it well for a number...

Let's Reinvent the SD Card

 About a month ago some a random LinkedFluencer posted some bullshit about how her SD card failed. She was raging that she should have been notified by her computer that it was reaching end of life and that if it just exposed wear leveling through to the system she would h...

Memovich: The Plot Dissolves

Tags: ai

Two days ago Milla Jovovich posted an extensive account of her side of the MemPalace story. It was pretty absurd in my view, to put it mildly. I began writing a new blog article titled: "Memovich: The Plot Thickens".

I started writing something sharp enough to ...

Memovich Continued

Tags: ai

My last blog article was about MemPalace, the supposedly incredible AI memory project vibe coded in part by Milla Jovovich.

In the last article I focused primarily on what I view as lack of qualifications of who I believe the real author of the project was/is, ...

Milla Jovovich and the Fine Art of Selling Cognitive Swill

Tags: ai

This just in. Milla Jovovich is slapping her name on the ugly bare bottom of a crypto bro trainwreck ai disasterpiece called MemPalace.

Beneath the choking snake oil you'll find... nothing of value.

Ok ok let's get into this practically, as I can only write s...

Regarding Garry Tan, YCombinator, and Corruption

 A few weeks ago I saw an article on Hacker News new with an entire 2 upvotes that piqued my interest. It was a link to this website. It's a detailed article about how Naive ( usenaive ) is j...

Medial Axis Extraction in O(n)

 Around three months ago, I solved a long-standing problem in computational geometry and computer vision:

Extracting the true medial axis from a binary image in linear time per pixel.

No thinning.
No iterative label propagation.
No graph recon...

On AI and the Death of Humanity

Tags: ai

I've been using "AI", as it is currently referred to, for several years now. Mostly I've been using ChatGPT, although at times I've run a variety of different local models, mainly to test what is possible and ascertain for myself whether these things are "dangerous" or not. For the m...

USA: Destination Hell

 I am a US citizen. I don't, though, live in the US. I reside in Japan, and I intend to do so permanently. There are a few major reasons why:

The third poin...

Decoersion

 Something I have believed strongly for many years is that all forms of coercion are unacceptable. Recently I have been thinking about it more, and realizing how pervasive coercion is throughout society.

So, without further ado, I present to you, decoersion ( intentionally spelled w...

Social Media Decline

Social Media: From Fertile Farms to Wastelands

Social media is in rapid decline. What was once a thriving space for innovation, meaningful discussion, and genuine human connection has become a hollow shell of its former self, plagued by corporate greed, algorithmic manipulation, ...

Toddler Investors

Introduction

The investment landscape is moving at an ever-increasing pace, with investors often making funding decisions in mere minutes. The rise of trend-driven investments, such as artificial intelligence, has led to a system that prioritizes popularity over true innovation. ...

Rethinking PCs: A practical approach

Tags: tech

The current trajectory of computer hardware development has increasingly diverged from the practical needs of everyday users. Manufacturers continue to push advancements in speed, power efficiency, and display resolutions—yet for most people, these improvements offer diminishing real-world ben...

Peak Mall Theory

Tags: japan

US mall death, Japan mall life

The decline of shopping malls in the United States is a well-documented phenomenon, while in Japan, malls remain thriving, bustling centers of commerce, entertainment, and community life. This contrast raises an interesting question: why have Japane...

Email is Outdated

 Email seems ubiquitous and irreplaceable. Is it though? It was created for a useful purpose, and worked effectively for a number of years, but I would argue that it is outdated and needs to be replaced by something better as soon as possible.

I explore here why I believe email...

Identity System

 Over my career in software I've repeatedly had to deal with issues of identity. Another way to refer to identity is usernames. The most pervasive identity system in use is email, although it is quickly being supplanted by cell phone number.

Almost every user of the internet ha...

LinkedIn is Buggy

 The main social platform I use is LinkedIn. I've been using it for many years. Over my years of using it I've found it to be very buggy. I began posting the bugs I found as LinkedIn posts. That didn't seem to get much attention or have any meaningful affect, so I created a Github pro...

Hubspot Culture Code

 What follows is a critical critique of the Hubspot Culture Code. This will be an analysis focused on logic. If you are looking for a warm fuzzy perspective on company culture, this isn't it.

A compa...

Pursuing relationships is inherently puerile

Intro

I've seen a disturbing trend online where expressing interest in others for the purpose of being in a relationship with them is thought to be inherently puerile. This view is relayed more simply as "men pursuing women is always sexual and disgusting".

The t...

My time is worth $x per hour

 In the all too recent history I was feeling proud of my day job, and I thought to myself "I can made $x per hour." A bit more thinking I came to the conclusion "I shouldn't do anything that takes me an hour that I could pay someone else to do for less than $x per hour." I believed th...

Should gaming be a gradeschool subject/sport?

 I recently read a post on LinkedIn broadly proclaiming "esports will overtake basketball". My immediate reaction to this was that that is entirely rubbish, and I responded jokingly making fun of the idea. As you might expect, there was a mixed reaction to that.

Some few people...

Job Descriptions

 I am connected to quite a few recruiters and managers on LinkedIn. As a result of this, I often see posts about what candidate's resumes should look like, what information they should contain, how they should approach applying to jobs etc.

Changing the way you apply for roles ...

UMD Data Breach

 A bit over 5 years ago I was involved in the events following a serious data breach at the University of Maryland. I was pulled into the FBI / Secret Service investigation due to my involvement. It may not be clear, but I did not start the data breach. Criminal elements of unknown so...

Blog

 Welcome to my public blog. I haven't blogged publicly in quite a number of years. This is in part due to the overwhelming amount of random information available about me already, and I am unsure about adding to the pile.

I have decided that adding information of higher quality...