[–] 1 point 1 day ago

I'm not suggesting people engaged in evil do not deserve ire. Punch Nazis. Full stop. Neither am I suggesting we tread gingerly lest we offend. I'm asserting that constructive responses toward those open to correction align with our stated ideals and that destructive attacks which merely stroke the ego of the attacker do not.

We should not want those lost to the cult of MAGA to self-flagelate and apologize because this is not about them and words are cheap. They need to see the harm they've helped cause and start actively counter-acting that harm.

This meme is specifically directed at those who are realizing they've been conned. When someone breaks from delusion, especially delusion that has been central to identity, sharing that with anyone requires vulnerability. If hypocrisy is worth avoiding at all then its value increases wildly around such shared crossroads.

Salt in the wound only benefits the salter who enjoys inflicting useless pain in others. We ought to be better than that. Inability to do so cannot justify the indulgence of cruelty.

i.e., being tired of their bullshit confers no license to vindictive prejudicial lashings.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    While I understand the sentiment (and harbor it myself) this sort of "I'm rubbing your face in it" rhetoric does nothing constructive. It isn't propaganda for would-be Trump cult survivors. It's mere pandering to those on the right side of history by sneering at "the other".

    If I saw a crack in any of my MAGA-cult relative's façades or genuine walls I would leap at the opportunity to commiserate as an entry point to more reality-alignment discussion and see how far I could get.

    People must stop doing harm before being taken back in as comrades but they're still human being who deserve, and must be allowed by society, the opportunity to improve themselves and their behavior.

    Disallowing that leads to much worse alternatives. Barring genuine sociopathy: we seek, and are often driven by, acceptance. It's part of what soliciters of right-wing ideologies (e.g., manosphere) exploit, especially with young men, to convince them alignment with fascist theory as a way of life emotionally and sociopolitically must be within their best interest.

    But let's even go so far as to discard empathy and sentiment for a moment. If we set our humanity aside and consider this strategically (transactionally) then I see this as an opportunity to potentially mitigate harm. I am going to seize that advantage. Even if I've lost hope for that particular cultist. Taking the time to be supportive of (what may only ever turn out to be) a lapse in otherwise perpetual cognitive misfire may divert their path from "worst outcome" to "unacceptable but not an active threat". I cannot effectively work with material if I find the material revolting.

    I think even this colder perspective pushes us closer toward exercising empathy though. Because that's the pit in my stomach that churned injustice into compulsion for radical action. The deep-seated stark truth that every feeling creature deserves respect and the opportunity to create safety together. That the promises of authoritarian rhetoric are a perversion of literal civilization.

    At possibly its most blunt and mundane: "I don't want other people abusing me, and; if I think I am the same thing other people are then it's not going to feel good, or be reasonable, for me to abuse others.

    Sneering is for snobs. The snobbish turn their nose at impure things because of, at least in part, their disgust of what's stained them. Transposed onto persons directly that disgust reduces one or some of us to merely a point on which one may anchor one's rage.

    I won't do that. Both because it offers no advantage in advancing even triage to response, let alone treatment, and because I find it distasteful, at best, without effort.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 week ago

    It's about surveillance not safety. Neglecting to include any detail in the article about what features of EAC they can't enable while including Linux platforms does a serious disservice to the reader.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    I want to focus on a particular functional aspect of this: remembering what you've been exposed to.

    The best method is rewriting it in your own words by hand. If that seems too daunting then typing is better than nothing but the brain-body connection while moving langauge to script by hand is the real magic.

    If you are having trouble remembering what you've been exposed to, and if you want to transform exposure to information into real knowledge, then re-writing it in you own words by hand is the best way to start doing that.

    One of the reasons you are not retaining information is because your LLM dependence makes it trivial to apply solutions to problems without understanding either.

    Re-learning task independence is going to require effort against friction you are no longer accustomed to. While I agree with many of the other comments here that cutting LLMs out entirely is ideal I also understand addiction and dependence. If you can start writing down what you are learning and using your own notes to answer your questions that may be a helpful starting point for re-establishing your independence and eventually cutting LLMs out of your life entirely.

    Secondary suggestion: Read books.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    I empathize. I want to be clear that I think your anger is justified and normal. The machinery of capitalism dehumanizes by default and its operator's casual cruelty amplifies the impact.

    That said: I'm going to skip over the rest of the context and cut down to your questions directly. I can't provide "do this" type answers because I'm not you. I can tell you how I think about it, what I do, and why. The first answer is lengthy. The other two are a bit shorter. I hope you find them helpful.

    1. How do I handle my anger?

    Step 1: Sit with it. Be angry. If I'm questioning the justification for my anger then I give myself permission to be angry anyway. This isn't the same as acting on it. I'm not giving in to my emotions. I'm not bargaining with them. I'm letting them really fully exist in me. Recognizing there is nothing wrong with feeling how I feel.

    Once I've settled into this and accepted my emotions (and sometimes this takes a while) I can then decide if any action would be safe and helpful.

    Step 2: I often find physicalizing intense emotion helps make it "real". This has to be a considered choice though. It's not reactive or destructive. I can beat up my mattress, take a hike into the woods and scream, make an effigy or a sign and burn it, go to a Rage Room and pay for the privilege of breaking stuff, etc.

    It can feel invalidating to have emotion for which there is no acceptable expression. Finding a healthy way of expressing that emotion helps break down that false wall. Polite society is a very unnatural state (thankfully! Nature is terrifying) and we are ultimately natural creatures. This friction can be harnessed to create art and meaning but, sometimes, you just need to break some shit and be mad. That's ok. We still ought to be responsible about it.

    Sometimes that responsibility extends to taking actions in the pursuit of fairness and justice. These are noble pursuits that should not be sullied by rash or vengeful acts. Organizing these efforts nets significantly more success than individual acts.

    Step 3:

    Start unpacking.

    Am I enraged? Incensed? Disappointed? Betrayed? Anger is a rug pulled over the top of many other emotions. That's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. I do find it unhelpful when I'm trying to accept and understand myself better though.

    Uncovering what the anger is built from makes our emotional scaffolding easier to see. Sometimes I use a thesaurus to find synonyms for the name of the emotion I'm already familiar with.

    Identifying the component emotions helps me understand what my emotional state is trying to tell me. We feel what we feel for a reason. Understanding our why help us understand the impact of other's actions without requiring we understand their intentions.

    Ultimately the answer for any unknown part of ourselves is self-investigation, acceptance, and curation. It is good and right to ask for help with every part of that process. When I run into something I can't accept and/or change then I know it's time to talk to a professional and build some new tools.

    1. How do I avoid making my partner feel guilty?

    Talk to them. :)

    If I'm worried that I'm going to say something poorly or if I feel accuracy is key I will write out what I want to say ahead of time. I'm not so much writing them a letter as I'm writing myself one. Sometimes I write them a letter though.

    Disconnecting initiating factors from their cascade effects after my partner and I have made a decision together is a very useful frame. Say we decide to go camping because my partner wants to and say I get injured during the trip. I can feel what I feel without regretting agreeing to the trip. I'm certainly not going to blame my partner for suggesting the trip. Bad stuff happens. That's life. Sharing the pain of the bad stuff is something I want my partner to do with me. Neglecting the reciprocity of that belittles our relationship.

    1. How do I stop hating someone who has wronged me?

    The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate is empassioned. It burns and writhes and lashes. It urges us to demonize and conquer. I'm not sure what the opposite of hate is, exactly. I think it's something close to disappointment.

    I'm reminded of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. One of my most memorable takeaways, in my own words, was that if we're to escape the self-sustaining cycle of human abuse we must realize that in dehumanizing us our oppressors dehumanize themselves as well. To Freire's mind the only successful revolution is one in which the oppressor is re-humanized as well as the oppressed.

    I have trouble imagining myself feeling sympathy for those doing evil things. When that gets in the way of me letting go of (arguably justified) hatred I think of my younger self. Would I hate that person for being small-minded or callous? Maybe! A least for a moment. Then I would remember they have so many things they don't know yet and so much growing to do. It doesn't excuse the harm done. It nets me a better perspective on how much potential people can live up to. That helps me avoid hatred. When hatred fizzles out I find I'm left with disappointment and sometimes disgust. Those don't lead me to dehumanize someone. I think that's a good start if nothing else.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Alternatively: bring them to the doctor or schedule a sleep study to figure out what's going on.

    I don't understand how parents can fail their children so consistently. It takes so little empathy and reason to see someone struggling and ask "how can I help them achieve the best outcome" instead of "how can I immediately force the outcome I want". Especially for a loved one!

    I can only imagine such parents are so self-absorbed that their empathy and reason were sucked up into their own assholes at some point along with the rest of their humanity and then shit out their mouths during an inevitably bloviated, assinine, masturbatory tirade.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 weeks ago*

    A CV is just a list of things you've done during your life so far. Unless someplace is asking for your résumé AND CV then they're probably only looking for your résumé. People conflate the two all the time.

    Even then those who ask for both typically leave the CV as optional.

    For those without much experience I usually recommend a skills résumé. Searching "skills resume example" or similar will net some useful results.

    I recommend keeping the résumé to a single page. Provide your name and contact info at the top. Under each Skill you include provide a list of how you've used the skill or how you learned it.

    Example:

    derek        derek@infosec.pub
                      phone number
                      other info if needed
    
    Skills
       Skill 1
          One or two sentences about how I learned skill 1.
          One or two sentences about how I've used skill 1 to solve a problem.
          One or two sentences about how I've used skill 1 to help someone else solve their problem.
    
       Skill 2
          One or two sentences about how I learned skill 2.
          One or two sentences about how I've used skill 2 to solve a problem.
          One or two sentences about how I've used skill 2 to help someone else solve their problem.
    
    Relevant Experience (include this section if you can think of any relevant experience at all)
       Experience 1
          Some blurb about experience 1.
    
       Experience 2
          Some blurb about experience 2.
    
    Training (same rules as with Relevant Experience section)
    
    References (if anyone at all can vouch for you then including them here can be helpful)
       Available upon request.
    

    The most important aspect of submitting an application for anything is actually submitting it. It doesn't have to be perfect or polished to get you an interview. It just has to be real and in front of a hiring manager's eyes.

    I've reviewed applications, conducted interviews, and hired people before. I can tell you, for any entry level role, that an earnest person who is willing to listen and learn, admit ignorance readily, and ask for help openly, is going to get the job over someone with fancy paperwork who lacks those traits in-person.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago

    Common sense doesn't necessarily include "troubleshooting". It's a tiered skill as well. A fresh network admin with a passing familiarity of the OSI model and an IT systems architect are going to have very different depths of understanding and expertise.

    If there's a unifying thread it's likely systems thinking (within which there are different methods and disciplines). Some are naturally better at it than others but it is a set of skills and models anyone can learn and use. The best of us are able to maintain composure under pressure, think clearly, and act wisely, because they've built the necessary psychological tooling to do so (and trained skills which deploy that tooling).

    All of that said: absolutely, yes. A resume is a list of things you want to talk about in an interview. If your resume is sparse but you're able to list any skill pertainent to the role you're applying for then it's reasonable to include that skill.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    My first guess was that the reflective surface would act as a thermal barrier against ambient temperature. If that's just the outer layer it may have some actual insulation built-in too. Considering the use-case it'd be reasonable to engineer for an increased tolerance to some hazard whose benefit compounds alongside other precaution and prep.

    i.e. the protective material's melt point only has to be a bit higher than the shielded material's flash point for the product to be effective as-advertised. It won't save the cabin if ambient temp hits ignition or combustion temp but the cost:benefit may still make sense.

    Searching for "aluminized structure wrap" provides some results which seem to confirm this.

    What was the context of your discussion during firefighting training? Accurate to the marketing copy? Less situationally useful than advertised but still better than nothing? Completely worthless?

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