Category: stardate

Farberisms should not be confused with “Yogiisms” (popularized by baseball player Yogi Berra). The former are most often non-sequiturial mondegreens, while the latter are typically either pleonasms or oxymoronic redundancies, though both usually share the goal of making a point through surreally humorous, absurdist misuse of language, especially the alteration of clichés through malapropism and mixed metaphor.

Unfortunately sometimes intelligent people are jerks.

SOLDOUTCOHO: I dare you to do something unexpected.
BRAIN: punycode
SOLDOUTCOHO: ok
BRAIN: do you think Tesla’s “Earthquake Machine” every worked?
SOLDOUTCOHO: no. do you think someone can prove the N=NP theory this decade?
BRAIN: this decade is almost over!
BRAIN: do you mean P=NP
BRAIN: and if you are, wouldn’t that date be the same as the Technological Singularity?
SOLDOUTCOHO: yes and no
BRAIN: you don’t think if we were able to solve NP problems in P time that technology would accelerate to the point of being unmeasurable?
SOLDOUTCOHO: no, not to the point where we will have superinteligence
BRAIN: but with P=NP we’d have protein folding, which gets us nanotechnology (from protein chelation)
SOLDOUTCOHO: still has no implication of self improving artifical intelligence
BRAIN: agreed. But is AI required for the Singularity?
SOLDOUTCOHO: it’s implied, since ij good first wrote of an intelligence explosion suggesting that if machines could surpass human intellect, then they could improve their own design beyond what their designers intended. it’s like skynet
BRAIN: interesting. You know, I’d forgotten about that part.
SOLDOUTCOHO: or perhaps you did not know it in the first place.
BRAIN: : P
SOLDOUTCOHO: I’m just sayin’

After that I ended the conversation. So notice whoever this person i, automatically treats me as an inferior, even though he is the one who has erroneously mentioned N=NP, which makes no sense.

Also, the use of “I’m just sayin’,” which is the new way to mention something without taking any ownership of it. Kinda gutless; it makes me disgusted.

What a dick! Why are people so willing to be unpleasant to strangers? It’s so short sighted.

Anyway, consider this an illustration of: NERDS: THEIR LIVES SUCK BECAUSE THEY SUCK. Don’t try to “save” geeks. They are like this because they are selfish. And I say this as someone surrounded by geeks.

Name-droppy references in this conversation:

• the P = NP problem
• Technological Singularity
• I J Good
• nanotechnology
• protein folding problem
• chelation

I forgot to shave this morning! So I bought a cheapie disposable from CVS. There was a Starbucks next door, so I ordered a latte and used their bathroom to shave. Turns out your razor really does matter; I cut the fuck out of my face.

How times have changed. It used to be Starbucks was where you got “the fancy coffee.” Now it’s basically McD’s. The Redwood City Starbucks vs Peet’s comparison is so telling re: the Starbucks brand:

The Peet’s is downtown, is filled with professional types, somehow “working” during the day in a cafe, and moms with expensive strollers. Well-presented art from local schools is on the walls. It’s spacious and the bathroom is unlocked.

The Starbucks is in a mall, is cramped and smells like fast food. The clientele are either pissed off wage slaves on their way to work or very overweight lower middle class. The bathroom has an elaborate code that they need to buzz you in.

The coolest part of The Time Machine (1960) – the “Talking Rings.”
Each is an audio record… each is a metal ring, about 3 inches across, spun like a coin on a smooth glassy surface. The spinning ring “talks” – it makes noise, recorded somehow in the ring. It talks for less than 20 seconds. I think we need to figure out how to make this!

BRAIN: did you follow the new thing, the “kanye is mean to taylor swift” story
SAMIR: yeah, dear god. you’d think he raped her and ate her on stage
SAMIR: now that would have been tv!
BRAIN: like hello, they are celebrities
BRAIN: their lives and feelings are completely worthless
BRAIN: taylor did look real sad
BRAIN: which probably was pretty good for her image
BRAIN: also beyonce invited her on stage when she accepted her award
BRAIN: which was good for both of them
BRAIN: the whole thing was pure theater
SAMIR: think it was artificial?
BRAIN: no way
BRAIN: that would be pure genius though

BRAIN: what do you suppose hugs-not-fixed means
BC: probably a typo for hug-snot-fixed
BRAIN: that makes much more sense
BC: 🙂
BC: why do you ask?
BRAIN: it’s written on the board here
BRAIN: next to fixed-not-verified = fixed
BRAIN: and purrproject
BRAIN: on the other board is the word “CUSTARD” is written over and over
BRAIN: and MAGNANIMOUS ANTEATER
BRAIN: it’s like having a meeting on the set of The Shining
BC: it was even more impressive before the right half of the whiteboard got erased!
BRAIN: ANT LOTION

BRAIN: Chuck and Buck
SAMIR: saw it
SAMIR: Mike White said it was all based on him thinking about what would happen if one friend grabbed another’s dick while they were in the bathroom
SAMIR: thoughts?
BRAIN: I liked it
BRAIN: creepy yet sweet
BRAIN: I’m finding that is a genre I like
BRAIN: like May or Kissed
SAMIR: May!
SAMIR: I loved that
SAMIR: I liked Kissed a lot too
…

BRAIN: Victoria Victrola and the Vaudevillians have a song called Zombie
BRAIN: which has a million verses
BRAIN: it’s about a zombie outbreak and the narrator falls to a zombie, her bf leaving her behind
BRAIN: then as a zombie she finds him and bites him in revenge
BRAIN: what do you think of that story idea
SAMIR: interesting… is there an ending though?
BRAIN: presumably they wander around together in undead bliss
SAMIR: hm
SAMIR: that’s not revenge then
BRAIN: no, it’s the genre we were talking about earlier
SAMIR: sweet/creepy
BRAIN: yes
SAMIR: reminds me of the New Year’s Day episode of Fear Itself
…
SAMIR: the scripts weren’t well done
SAMIR: and it got a low audience
SAMIR: so [I consider] this idea still available
…
BRAIN: I would love to make a creepy sweet movie
BRAIN: like something that will winnow the true goths
BRAIN: like “in my day the real goths had dead animals around their rooms!”
BRAIN: none of this perky emo bullshit
BRAIN: my friend Danielle, who I met at a film festival when she was working in PR for a startup, is a total Grown Up Goth
BRAIN: and sure enough when I visited her house she had all this dead shit on the walls
BRAIN: she sort of sheepishly admitted she’s always had a thing for taxidermy
BRAIN: I was in awe

The fastening is made from perforated steel strips 0.2 millimetres thick, one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and the other sporting jagged spikes.

Metaklett can support maximum weight when pulled on in the plane of the strips, and a square metre can hold a perpendicular load of 7 tonnes, says [Josef] Mair.

OJ: steel velcro!
BRAIN: I bet if you wrapped it around a stick and hit someone with it their skin would rip right off
OJ: i’m sure it will be in some japanese gore movie with that use soon
OJ: VELCROOOOOO NINJAAAAAAA!

Trying to get Pikmin 2 solved in the smallest number of days

• Day 1 – you have no choice. You collect the 5 pikmin, then the battery, kill all the enemies and collect the other parts. Now you are blocked by water.
• Day 2 – you also have no choice. You need to get the globe to get to the next area (purple pikmin)
• Day 3 – your first free day in Awakening Wood. It’s possible to clear the two dungeons available. The race is to collect white pikmin (15 if you haven’t lost any from the cave you found them in) and get them to break down the poison wall that leads to the area with the broken bridge that leads to the main area. They cannot do this on the same day you get them unless you use red sprays. The blue pikmin here are behind an electric gate that you need yellow pikmin for, but they are not here. Get the other globe half behind this wall to open the third area, Perplexing Pool.
• Third area: Perplexing Pool. Get the yellow pikmin the first day, you can clear the only accessible dungeon the same day (bring white pikmin!). If you collect the dead things near the yellow onion and then go to the dungeon, when you leave the dungeon the yellow onion will magically be near the rocket when you return.
• Now return to Awakening Wood to retrieve the Blue Pikmin

• start with the cable box on
• press power
• as soon as the screen goes dark, press “ok”
• the blue diagnostic screen should appear