I’ve been to the Caribbean a few times and loved every trip. Just went to the Dominican Republic for the first time this year and it was amazing. Grand Cayman had the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen. The Bahamas are wonderful. Aruba is on my list of places I want to go.

Playa Del Carmen, Mexico was a fun place to visit although the ocean swimming isn’t great there. I loved the Xenote we visited.

But the place I most want to go back to Thailand. The north country is beautiful, and the people are lovely. My first trip was really heavy on the temples, but each one has a unique character. Doissetep was incredibly scenic, we saw the palace temple where we got blessed by a monk, and the white temple (Wat Rong Khun) was incredible. We saw several other temples but they kinda blended together. We also made merit by feeding the monks and saw the water festival. I’m not a spiritual person but it really made me feel connected to humanity.

Bangkok was really cool, but I only saw it for a few days and that was enough of the big city. The floating market was really cool, and the food was amazing. I want to go back and visit Phuket. I got to see a less touristy side of the country because my uncle married a Thai woman. It’s not overstating it to say it was a life-changing experience. I want to take my kids and I hope they find it as meaningful as I did.

I’ve never really connected with a country like I did with Thailand. It was also my only tour group. My wife, who I married later, prefers all inclusive resorts where you barely experience the culture. I won’t deny I really enjoy them, but wish I could talk her into a tour group some day.

You’re disagreeing with my unserious suggestion? I just… okay. No. Micropenises aren’t a solution. I just don’t think there is one.

If you want to disagree with that, let’s hear it. I have 15 and 13 year old daughters. Anyone can buy a $400 computer, install Linux, install AI, and undress people all day long. There is no legal restraint capable of stopping that, only punishing it.

Shut down model distribution and it’ll move to torrent. Put the kids in the legal system and they are going to face lifelong consequences for 12-year-old assholery. (To be fair, victims often face long repercussions for being targeted, but that’s not imposed by the state which demands a higher standard.) Hold parents accountable and it will disproportionately impact families who spend more hours working and can’t supervise their kids 24/7.

So I’m short on answers, but open to discussion.

It’s obviously not a serious suggestion, but the reality is the tools are out there and Pandora’s box can’t be put back on the shelf. Kids can’t be held accountable in a meaningful way. This is just an issue we are going to face basically forever now.

There is a window of time during which most kids are little sociopaths and you can’t appeal to any better nature. They have the means and often no internal or external restraint. And so mutually assured destruction is my tongue in cheek answer.

The only defense is to train AI to draw guys with micropenises. As long as kids being kids is a defense for this shit (and to be fair, kids are pretty fucking stupid and need the freedom to grow out of that) rule makers have no power here. At least insofar as the AI to do this can be run locally on a potato.

I saw someone on Bluesky admonishing people for using “moron” because it was once a real medical term applied to people who were judged to be too stupid to reproduce and were hence sterilized, thus its a problematic term. You can’t hand me a word with such connotations and then say “but you can’t use it.”

Fuck me, I thought it was just another word for stupid and there is so much idiocy in the world today that I need every word I can get, but it’s so stupid you aren’t allowed to reproduce? Fuck yes!

Now I can call someone a moron, and educate them about exactly how fucking idiotic they are, and let them know they are a prescriptive Darwin Award winner.

Also, cocksucker is a perfectly cromulent term. Hit people with the insults that hurt them. They are supposed to be offensive. I want to offend. Not that I don’t have some lines I won’t cross, but cocksucker definitely isn’t one. Folks can get in line behind my wife to be insulted by that language, and they’ll be waiting a while.

Ukrainian interests are US interests in this case.

Bet: 1337, 1138, 6969

My work laptop is Mac, which isn’t much better when it comes to bloated MS shit, but that’s more the corporate world. If Linux would get on board with supporting corporate overlords spying on every minute of every day, we’d have shitty Linux desktop distros at work, too.

It’s just that, for what most of us want to do on our computers all day, Microsoft doesn’t offer anything. I can browse, I can run my home, stream movies, play games, and tinker with software all arguably better on Linux. Driver support being the only really spotty thing, but OS getting better at an incredible rate. And if I really fucking hated something, I give myself fair odds of being able to make myself a fix for it.

I remember when I first started playing with Linux, must’ve been around Windows 8? 7? I was like this would be great if I had nostalgia for Windows 3.1 and fumbling around learning DOS (or technically AmigaOS in my case) for the first time, but I wanted stuff to just work better and look better.

But Linux has caught up in every way except corporate bloat, and I love it for every day use. I have an SSD with my old windows installation laying around gathering dust. Thought I’d need it for emergencies. Haven’t had an emergency it would help with — ever.

Been two years since I’ve touched Windows. Microsoft isn’t needed.

I don’t agree both sides do it to nearly the same degree, but yeah on the occasion I catch the left doing it, it frustrates me. So much stuff to legitimately be upset about and people are posting Teslas dropping folks off in a no parking zone.

I’ll even acknowledge that an unmanned electric car standing to drop someone off or pick them up is indistinguishable from parking but still it’s pointless splitting of hairs compared to gestures at everything.

I think we are in an era where people don’t care what’s real and what’s a lie as long as the lie is entertaining enough and validates their own thoughts.

I’m not judging any individual, I said a solo male vacation to Thailand is a flag. Which is the whole point of the post, so what are you even saying here? I hope when I check you are admonishing everyone else who responded…

Oh look at that… not just that but you are a top level commenter judging people. Hmmm.

Oh I know. I’ve been there, twenty years ago. It’s a wonderful place and I hope to take my kids there some day.

But the reputation isn’t for no reason. It’s at the top of my list for problematic places for single men to travel alone to, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an awesome place to go or even that all single men traveling solo are there for bad intent.

I would highly encourage people to go there. The more non-sex tourism they get, the better for everyone, I think.

This was with Roberts-Sinto 35 years ago. I’m sure a lot has changed.

I feel like Thailand is a more concerning destination for single men, but I’m not familiar with other sex tourism destinations. I know the Dominican Republic was big for some but I was just there with my wife and didn’t see anything concerning.

Sounds like they are afraid black soldiers won’t comply with their future plans.

I used to think I was going to be an astronaut, but then I needed glasses and so that was out. Then I wanted to make robots but I went to a robotics company for a high school project and they explained engineers don’t build anything and the technicians don’t design anything. That’s no fun.

So now I’m in business software. I do enjoy coding a lot and it could be a dream job but honestly, I work with and for a lot… bad companies, bad designers, and bad managers. And again if I want to do their jobs, I don’t get to do the technical stuff I want to do. I’m pursuing other team lead positions but I’ve done that before and it’s just a bit better.

I just want to build good software and no one else really gives a shit to improve their trade. I shouldn’t be telling UX specialists their design sucks for users. I shouldn’t be telling service engineers how to design APIs. I shouldn’t be telling corporate architects their default package layout is bad and non-standard making it difficult for engineers to navigate until they get familiar.

I wouldn’t mind training all this stuff, but that would cut my pay in half, and I need all that money for quality of life outside of work.

Pretty sure I’m just going to be cranky until I retire even though I enjoy what I do.

I’m not sure republicans have a choice. MAGA is in charge now and if anyone goes against them, they are done. And they care about themselves far more than they care about NATO.

Clearly some of us can. But as a whole we do seem to crave finding purpose behind random events.

I find myself thinking harder and learning more when I use AI. I’m constantly thinking what I can do to double check it. I constantly look at what it writes and consider whether it did the task I asked it to do or the task I need done.

I’m on track to rewrite 25000 lines of code from one testing framework to another in 3 days, and I started out not knowing either framework and not having really written in typescript in years. And I’m pretty sure I can write the tests from scratch in my primary project that is just getting started.

This one anecdote doesn’t disprove a study, of course, but it seems to me that the findings are not universally true for some reason. Whether it’s a matter of technique or brain chemistry, I don’t know. Ideally, people could be taught to use AI to improve their thinking rather than supplant it.