Agree completely and have been doing the same for years.
And what I find especially nice, when I'm on a spotty connection, is that once you load up your preferred noise it runs locally in your browser, so when your connection craps out it keeps playing seamlessly.
20 years ago (2003-2006), Welchia, Blaster, Code Red... Windows boxes that weren't patched were infected within about 35 ± 5 seconds when connected to lightly-filtered Internet when it was still a capitalized proper noun. Ask me how I know and used JScript and psexec to mass remote into LAN machines to try to stop some of the madness and downtime.
Oh boy, tell me about it. The first real job I ever had, the first thing I did as a "network engineer" was say "Wow, I've never seen Windows XP machines on the public Internet before. Uh, is it just me or are these all really slow? Like a lot slower than they should be? And what's all this in Task Manager?" 2004 was a different time.
Spoken like someone who knew no one other than fellow practitioners in the field. My God, the 2000s were the Wild West in every kind of way - were you even there to see it? I note you do not say that you were.
That's an interesting contrast, in that the Wild West is a halfway house for Civil War burnouts and the Matrix is a deliberately and expensively constructed and maintained, largely successfully hyperreal (in the original sense, ie so convincing that whether it's 'real' ceases to be either distinguishable or meaningful) simulacrum of what the Wachowskis were astute enough in its own historical moment to recognize as the highwater mark of American hegemony.
Oh, the Matrix is also parasitic, certainly; before it was smoothed over for mass appeal it was I think a story much more obviously inspired by They Live, the central conceit being that the system both runs on and exploits human neural cognitive capacity, ie the brains are the thing being farmed as components of the Machines' own computers, with the rest of the human (including consciousness and experience!) basically tolerated as the best available life support system for the 500 grams or so of brain tissue that's actually worth having. But a cow can live a long and happy life on a farm, be genuinely loved, and still end up as cutlets. Looking at it even from Daisy's end, how unjust can we honestly call that deal?
For you and me, the gunslinger's life has a decided appeal, sure. If that and Buy-n-Large World are the only two options on the table - which so far they have been, though I agree the real answer is to add a better third - can we really say that, for everyone, the Matrix isn't the less worse of the two?
That just seems to me a terribly flawed statement. I'm agnostic. Maybe there is a god, maybe there isn't, who am I to know? It always seems like incredible hubris to me when someone claims not only to know for certain one way or the other, but project their baseless beliefs onto others.
>So e.g. I have hunches that there's no way there is a God that's in any way as religions might think it is, and I do have a hunch that we somehow happened from probably deterministic chain reactions, but it's a hunch, it's hard to call it a belief, or it's hard to think that I believe there is no God.
Saying that you know for certain that there is no god(s) is exactly the same as saying you know for sure that there is a god(s). Being agnostic is the realization that you can't be sure one way or the other. We are not omniscient and our reasoning abilities are not flawless. You might have your strong suspicions one way or the other about whether there is a god, but if you aren't certain (as many people are) I consider that as agnostic.
It was Russia that stopped delivering gas through the pipeline. It was already non-functioning when it was blown up, the gas inside was static, non-moving, the pressure only kept up to prevent pipe-deterioration. That was unilateral, there were no sanctions, and Russia refused to take delivery of parts they had claimed they needed.
Even before the war, the German subsidiary of Gazprom had already started deliberately lowering the amount of gas stored underground in Germany, at a time when it was usually being filled up for the next winter.
Nonsensical excuses like the people who wanted to buy their gas wouldn't pay them in their own currency? If I'm selling you my car, it is my right to say I only accept US dollars. If you insist on only offering me Mexican pesos, it isn't "nonsensical" when I say no, and refuse to sell you the car unless you pay US dollars.
It is amazing how objective reality and basic common sense go out the window when it comes to the Ukraine/Russia situation.
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