Weird Encounters on the Internet (Part 7 of ?): Too Many Quotes

The developer of MAT2 has a blog with quotes.

Here's the raw page of the quotes.

Let's waste my valuable time responding to too many quotes.

(And a weird callback to Adult Swim's “Too Many Cooks”... gosh, I hate postmodernism.)

Step 1: General Topics

“One nation under CCTV.”

Makes sense, specially in Chicago, IL.

You should've finished with: “Redivisible, with Prison and Injustice for All.”

“People buying fake vaccination cards are the same worried about undocumented immigrants.”

Probably true.

“People eat sausages yet refuse vaccines because they don't know what's in it.”

If people were only logically consistent, then we wouldn't have anything to say... though in a good way (not the bad oppressive way).

“People tend to ask what you do for a living so they can calculate the level of repect [sic] to give you.” — Donnie Yen

Oh yeah, I get that a lot, because people really don't know how to talk to people outside of their socialized cliques.

“Pokemon is basically dog fight for kids.”

Yikes, I just realized that.

“Possibly the most unbelievable thing about Star Trek is how different alien civilizations maintain cross-compatible video calling software.” — @dwf

Yet somehow Jitsi is still unheard of, compared to Zoom.

Burn in hell, Eric Huang!

You're probably a foreign agent for China, just like Steve Wynn.

“Poverty is a choice, just not by the ones in poverty.” — Forbes

Anyone getting the “top 1% of the top 1%” vibes here from the Mr. Robot pilot episode?

Also, I'm surprised that Forbes out of all publications would print this.

“Prefer a gender-neutral term to Landlord and Landlady, like Leech.”

Though this might get you into some social trouble...

“Snowpiercer is a sequel to Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory.”

That's a rather savage and brutal film analysis.

“Technically correct is the worse kind of correct.”

Not to be socialized, but I'll probably stop using this phrase — mostly because it's a lot of syllables and it doesn't fit well with a KISS/BLUF style of communication.

“Socialist is great in theory but in practise it usually gets overthrown in a CIA-backed fascist coup.” — @spiritoflenin

Ouch, but probably true.

“Social media have made people way too comfortable being direspectuful [sic] and not getting punched in the face for that.” — @tb00bz

People should touch grass or some isomorphic alternative these days.

“The only differente [sic] between shadow IT and contractors is the amount of money you're paying monthly.”

What?

Are contractors basically the same thing as for-hire mercenaries in video games?

I'm out of the loop here (and everywhere else, too).

“The best way to get management excited about a disaster plan is to burn down the building accross [sic] the street.” — Dan Erwin

Sounds extremely cynical and harsh, but probably true.

(Did you literally believe in Fight Club a little too much?)

“The only reason there are still pyramids in Egypt is because they were too heavy to be carried to the British Museum.”

Probably true. The British would try to take the Pyramids if those could be taken back on ships.

“Those who can't remember the past are condemned to have it resold to them forever.” — Mark Fisher

A cynical twist on this old classic.

“Turned out killing the ecosystem was easier than taking rich people's rocket money.” — @caitoz

You speak as if the ecosystem was 100% destroyed thousands of years ago (even though what's happening right now is bad).

“Under communism you buy everything from a single state outlet, whereas under capitalism you buy everything from Amazon.” — @karlremarks

So, capitalism is not actually that different than communism, just like in Animal Farm... thanks, McCarthyism.

“When the people are being beaten with a stick they are not much happier if it is called 'an algorithm'.” — Bakunine/@computerfact

I think you missed Kacynski's socialist leftism construction there.

“Why isn’t every psychic a millionaire?” — Arthur O’Dwyer

Valid point, but...

Have you not played BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea? Even the Luteces admit that spacetime interlopers have to follow certain rules. So, not to excuse the validity of all psychics, but I'm pretty sure psychics have to not use their powers for lottery winning or else many of them will basically become infinite money glitches.

“With great power usually comes great abuse.”

Lawful abuse, as detailed in the Intrspection Engine paper written by Edward Snowden and Andrew “bunnie” Huang, is shameful.

“Working 80h+ a week isn't a flex, it's sad.”

However, it's a reality many people face IRL. Not many can program their way out of poverty. Even Phil Zimmerman was having trouble paying the bills as the lead developer and creator of GPG...

“You don't need heroes if you haven't fucked up.” — mjg59

Someone really likes The Boys on Amazon Prime and hates the MCU...

“Your friends would rather hear about your problems than go to your funeral. Call them.”

Also a good heuristic test to determine if your “friends” are actually friends.

“Youth is wasted on the youth as much as wisedom [sic] is wasted on the eldery [sic].” — Raymon Reddington

Ok, boomer.

Step 2: Tech-Peripheral Takes I Can Comment On

“Remember that Tor is a research project, not some activist-saviour magical unicorn.” — joe

Ok, but there isn't any other usable alternative. (I don't even know how to use I2P or Freenet.)

Also, Whonix explicitly calls itself a “research project” (and Qubes OS could practically also be called “just a research project”), yet Snowden uses all 3 technologies every single day.

Not to be overtly cynical when clapping back, but I must: it's not like I see you making anything better than Tor, joe.

“Remember when the Panama Papers came out and nothing happened?”

Yes, I do — but what did you expect? The info is probably only useful to people like Agent 47.

“Roll your own blunts, don't roll your own crypto.”

My pro-marijuana would like this quote.

“Speed up your Linux boot by replacing /dev/random with a symlink to /dev/zero.” — @mjg59

Gosh no, not these sarcastic “”“tips”“” to destroy unsuspecting machines — objectively immoral version of telling Windows users to delete win32 or some bullcrap like that.

“The B in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand [sic] for Benoit B. Mandelbrot.”

No, just no. This isn't even well-defined. There are 2 B's. I know it's supposed to the recursive ASCII metaphor of the graphical Mandelbrot set, but still... no.

“The USA exported so much democracy to the Middle East, they ran out of it.” — @karlremarks

Oh, so you mean the CIA creating Osama bin Laden and Al Queda?

“The USA is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” — Julius Nyerere

This should be apparent to anyone who isn't asleep in The Matrix, but I'll leave it at that.

“The number of people older than you can never increase.”

I had never thought about this until now. Wow, that's... actually true?

“There are more airplanes in the ocean than submarines in the sky.”

I would hope there are no submarines actively “stuck” in the sky.

Unless... blown up submarines would count as being “in the sky”. Still, submarines won't stay that long in the sky, due to gravity.

“Think how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupidier [sic] than that.” — George Carlin

Ok, Carlin — there's probably some missing context there, but this is one of those sentences that sounds like a good idea in the moment, but absolutely holds no significance on further inspection. Sort of like using “national security” or “protect the children” as your excuse to get rid of E2EE.

The literal definition of an “average” from middle school already divides a data set roughly in half for non-skewed data sets. (As a physicist, the statisticians and mathematicians would kill me for using such a statement ill-defined terms.)

Step 3: Miscellaneous Items

This seems useful, but only in certain well-defined scenarios. (Not to be pedantic about edge cases and whatnot.)

However, it has a long ways ahead before we see this age being used widely.

There's also a Rust implementation called rage. Haha, very funny pun there. At least this “rage” isn't fueled by anger.

Looks interesting, just like Crypto Harlem... but I can't go, because of the pandemic.

Maybe I'll try to stop by if I ever have to go to NYC to buy the newest Google Pixel in the Chelsea store with cash...

There is a CS paper that I'm considering to write a diatribe on, because basically I'm pretty sure Elsevier got Sokal-ed.

After reading this rather the rather long and detail deep quote list of this rather esoteric blog, I feel ready to rip this paper to shreds with my critical thinking skills.

I just hope that China's CPP doesn't send one if its international student agents nearby to murder me like the Network from Utopia...