Category: Essays & Bad Ideas

An assortment of ramblings; some thoughtful, some thoughtless

The Daily Dad — 2024-08-09

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The Daily Dad — 2025-08-08

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The Daily Dad — 2024-08-07

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The Daily Dad — May 9, 2024

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  • Seinfeld vs. Stewart on whether Woke/P.C. has ruined comedy
    💭 I get what Jerry’s trying to say, but he’s an old fuck and doesn’t understand how to talk about it. Yes, something has been lost… what people are calling “monoculture” was the connective tissue that kept a nation of diverse interests thinking of itself as a unit. When tens —hundreds— of millions of us were predictably doing similar things on similar nights and then having similar conversations around similar watercoolers the next day, sitcom laughter had a soothing, smoothing effect on society. But “woke-ism” didn’t kill “appointment television”… laptops and smartphones did. It’s comforting for an old man to think that we could return to a late 20th-century cultural stability if everyone would just chill, but sadly, the problem isn’t so easily addressed.
  • Streaming is cable now
    ❝ Last year alone, all of the major names in streaming — Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Max, Apple TV Plus, Paramount Plus, and Peacock — raised their prices.
  • Why Your Vet Bill Is So High – The Atlantic
    ❝ Corporations and private-equity funds have been rolling up smaller chains and previously independent practices.
  • Oscar Mayer offers a gummy bologna that looks a bit too real
    ❝ The purveyor of meats sells realistic-looking gummy versions of hotdogs, gummy bacon, and, strangest of all, gummy bologna.

The Daily Dad — May 1, 2024

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The Daily Dad — Apr 28, 2024

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Dear iPadOS: I have 8GBs of RAM and an M1. When I close the iPad and return to it five minutes later, the 500 word post I’ve 90% completed should still be sitting there in Safari. It should not trigger a page refresh and wipe out my work. And if it must, then by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, why aren’t you auto-saving drafts, Tumblr?

Fucking tinkertoy website, half-assed fucking OS, grumble mumble bitch moan…

Mr Bedtime, my Master wants to install a wifi cam in my bedroom for…

Mr Bedtime, my Master wants to install a wifi cam in my bedroom for check-ins as part of our dynamic. Any tips or recommendations?

bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls:

(submitted by: Anonymous)

Ah, something about which I have a few thoughts! I’ve used Wyze cameras for years, but have recently switched to Eufy.

Please note that this is all very specific to my use-case, meaning multiple cameras in multiple girls’ apartments… if I were surveillance-monogamous, my conclusions would be slightly different.

  • PRICE: The Eufy cameras are slightly more expensive —you can sometimes score a Wyze for $25, while Eufy’s similar models are usually $35— but the difference isn’t dramatic.
  • BASICS: Image quality is similar. Low-light performance is similar. Eufy’s speaker output —for surprising someone with a disembodied “hello, cunt” in the night— seems better, if marginally so.
  • HOMEKIT: Eufy’s cams are HomeKit-capable, and Wyze’s aren’t. I’m not taking advantage of that right now, but it’s an important bit of future-proofing for someone who exists within the Apple ecosystem.
  • SHARING: On Wyze’s platform, cam sharing is limited… there’s a lot the shared user can’t do. Eufy, OTOH, allows a shared user to have full admin rights, meaning I can set up activity zones and toggle on/off LEDs as if I were the primary account. Much, much better.
  • APP: Eufy’s app is significantly more responsive on late-model iOS/iPadOS devices. Wyze’s iOS app is a steaming turd that —despite years of promises— is clearly never going to see a major overhaul. Wyze is tolerable if you only interact with the cameras via a phone or an M1/M2 MacBook, but on the iPad, the app forces you into portrait orientation… which is guaranteed to piss me off every time. Eufy’s app is a better iPadOS citizen in that regard, happily staying in landscape orientation as much as I like. Eufy’s UI is also more coherent, and less obsessed with up-selling me a subscription at every turn. But neither app is as good as it should be, as the only multitasking options for both are to (a) use an M1/M2 Mac, or (b) use Slide Over on the iPad… Split View isn’t possible.
  • RECORDING: If you’re going to bypass cloud recording and stick to local SD storage, then Eufy’s the way to go. Wyze won’t allow shared accounts to access a device’s SD card at all. But if you’re going to stick to the cloud, then you have to think about…
  • SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you’re going to pay for cloud recording, Wyze is cheaper… $1.99/month/camera vs. $2.99 for Eufy. And Wyze will give you limited event recording on a single camera for free.

It’s all kind of a pain in the ass to manage, but I won’t do any sort of LDR without a camera at this point… the benefits are worth the annoyances. (I can say much the same about the girls themselves.)

UPDATED FOR 2024:

  • All the prices for cloud storage have gone up, and there’s not much of a “free” tier left for these devices.
  • The speaker on the Wyze Cam OG is garbage compared to the speaker on the Wyze Cam v2. (I’m assuming v3 has a similar speaker design.) The OG has a slightly better picture than the V2 and will do PiP with a second OG cam, but when it comes to my priorities, the non-OG is superior.
  • Also, the v3 has a starlight sensor… big upgrade from the v2 and OG.

The Daily Dad — Mar 23, 2024

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There is little more disheartening and isolating than realizing that everyone can see it, everyone can say the right thing, everyone can do their best… yet it turns out they only think they understand it, because they only think they understand you.

They’re seeing the Badness and what it’s doing today, but they don’t grasp that it has been doing its thing for a long, long time. They have no idea the changes it’s made, the defenses it’s rendered obsolete, nor the weaknesses and strengths it’s exposed. It’s a newly acknowledged reality for them, but it has long lived deep inside you, in your bones.

Your true reactions aren’t even an approximation of the expectation, so you end up muting them, creating more distance as you drift ever further from the definitional shore. And it won’t stop until the seas calm and you can send up a signal that lets them know where to find you.

Assuming you want to be found.

Sometimes lost girls find themselves.