Category: Essays & Bad Ideas

An assortment of ramblings; some thoughtful, some thoughtless

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

Things you might want to know:

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.

Do you make videos of girls when your with them?

Do you make videos of girls when your with them?

bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls:

(submitted by: Anonymous)

Oh yes, most definitely.

Especially when I catch the bitches snoring like chainsaws in the night. Believe that shit is getting documented.

In fact, there’s at least one person around here who knows that my camera roll knows where the bodies are buried… or at least it sounded like someone was burying bodies. With heavy equipment. And chainsaws.

Marijuana is a helluva drug.

Years later: still building a collection of snoring videos.

They’re not hot.

But they’re entertaining.

The Daily Dad — Feb 28, 2024

Things you might want to know:

The Daily Dad — Feb 23, 2024

Things you might want to know:

The Daily Dad — Feb 20, 2024

Things you might want to know:

  • ‘Everything is hairless’: what 100 women taught me about porn and body confidence
    💭 I feel like anyone seriously researching porn’s influence on women’s self-image in the 2020s has to be old as fuck, ‘cause no one under fifty thinks that porn is having a meaningful impact on modern self-image in the era of Instagram. When it comes to generating insecurity, a bruised-up, bored porn slut being impaled by a sketchy cock has got nothin’ on a perfect size 0 lounging —toned and smooth— in an microscopic bikini next to an infinity pool overlooking Santorini while eating an improbable pizza.
  • Legendary Publisher EC Comics Rises From the Grave – IGN
    ❝ Oni has become the official home of the EC Comics brand, via a partnership with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. The new line will be overseen by Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson and Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn in partnership with Cathy Gaines Mifsud and Corey Mifsud, the administrators of William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.
  • Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content
    💭 I just nuked a handful of my stories from Reddit. It probably won’t achieve much… they’ll probably let their scraping-buddy —coughOpenAIcough— go through the deleted content too. But it was a small price to pay for the chance to say “fuck you” to our imminent overlords.
  • The Text File That Runs the Internet
    ❝ “For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.”
  • New FDA-approved drug makes severe food allergies less life-threatening
    💭 Before long I won’t be able to count on a peanut perimeter to protect me from a full-on snuggle assault… which we in the business call a ‘Blossom Blitz’.

If it was an attainable goal in reality, would you really start a “cult”?…

If it was an attainable goal in reality, would you really start a “cult”? Like a physical place where your followers can go?

bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls:

If?

I will settle for nothing less.

In the short-term, we’ll be having our third Gathering in a few months… don’t know yet if we’ll have another whole-group get-together this year. But I’ll have individual little visitors through the year.

And long-term? By the end of 2025, I want my children to start coming home to stay.

The Daily Dad — Feb 11, 2024

Things you might want to know:

  • TikTok is full of tryhard slang
    💭 When people with sex blogs do it, they’re called “neolojisms”.
  • Bluesky Social Network Ditches Invite Codes, Opens Registrations to All
    ❝ Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has now opened registration for everyone. On…
  • Plex Launches Movie Rental Store
    ❝ Media platform Plex today announced the launch of a dedicated movie rental store, allowing U.S. Plex users to purchase content directly from Plex…
  • feeeed: Embracing Feed Diversity and Personal News Curation
    💭 I don’t think it’s for me, but feeeed is interesting… it’s essentially a news and social media bucket for your life, collecting everything from dozens of sources and presenting them via an algorithm tuned for the end-user and not advertisers.
  • Apple Updates Its Collection of Windows Apps
    ❝ Today, Apple introduced a redesigned version of its iCloud for Windows app. The updated app, which allows users to access photos, files, passwords, and other content on a Windows PC, has clarified how it works and where synced content can be found. The app also adds physical password keys and other refinements. I don’t spend