Tag: technology

Asian tech addiction is real, man

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whilst on my cruise, I purchased a 24-hour internet package, for one device.  It was $29 added to my folio, and to the credit of blatant cash grab, the internet speed was adequate, and I was able to accomplish the one reason that I had purchased it for: to neurotically be able to post a singular theFacebook post on a completely self-mandated and arbitrary date, which was the Father’s Day blet photo that I’ve long decided that June 26th is the date every year in which I post it so that I may be able to neurotically use the Memories feature in future June 26s and view them sequentially despite the fact that I have no less than 2-3 other ways in which I could do the exact same things and not have spent $29 extra on my cruise.

Also, I was able to use it to extend two days of my Duolingo streak without having to utilize any streak freezes, despite the fact that I had dropped 3,000 gems on a 7-day streak freeze which was already in effect for the explicit purpose to protect my streak whilst on the cruise. 

But also mythical wife was able to log into her account on my phone and do the same thing, which was probably the only fortunate use of it, since she didn’t have the same amount of freeze protection that I already did.

And honestly, that was probably the most useful use of the data beyond my completely arbitrary need to post Father’s Day blet photo on June 26th.   Otherwise, I found myself mindlessly dicking around the internet like I normally would do with a permanent umbilical connection to it whenever I get bored, and in a way I was glad to be rid of the internet again once 3:21pm rolled around the following day and my 24 hours of access had expired.

For all the criticism and self-loathing I opine about ‘Muricans and being American myself, there is one trope that I can give some credit to in a positive light; which is how there are lots of Americans, and I like to include myself among them, that occasionally acknowledge how toxic and how much trash internet connectivity is capable of being, and feel the need and want to disconnect and be free of connectivity from time to time, and live in the actual moments of time and present.

Because that doesn’t seem to be the case with Asians, whom on my travels, witnessed probably like 90% of the time, Asian people were glued to their phones, eyes down, being phone zombies, and being connected to the internet.  It didn’t matter if they were Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Singaporean or Indian, the vast majority of people I witnessed over two weeks in Asia, were simply glued to their phones as if they were physically attached to their beings.

The image above was snidely taken at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore; beautiful place, meticulously curated and meant to be a globally recognized destination landmark for tourists and travelers.  The motherfucker on the far right actually had a laptop propped up on the railing, and was on some video conference and was simultaneously doing some calisthenics, and of course I was easily able to capture some bros on their phones – in the middle of a horticultural exhibit showing trees and plant-life from four different continents and six different ecosystems.

There’s a part of the Jurassic World exhibit called the sky bridge that the place doesn’t do a good job of explaining in advance, but it’s basically 25-stories up in the sky, on a suspension bridge that is made of mesh, so you can see through it while you’re way the fuck up in the air, and the surface is meant to rock a little bit, which is all meant to say it’s high as fuck and if you have any issue with heights or don’t realize you have an issue with heights, it’s absolutely terrifying.

However, that doesn’t stop idiot tourists from stopping in the middle of, and clogging up the pathways, in order for them to get their selfies, live-stream their journey, or be video-calling their friends and families, while there are other, tense and on edge patrons just trying to traverse it as quickly as possible and get to solid ground.

Being human obstacles to those with realized anxieties, all for the ‘gram, or whatever self-important self-broadcasting medium they feel the need to document for their zero viewers.

But circling back to the cruise, and the data package that I had purchased, if Disney Cruise Line made an extra $29 off of me for one day and one device of internet, I have to imagine the likely closer to $100K than $50K they made on all the other Asian motherfuckers on the boat that probably had the full comprehensive internet packages for all their devices for all family members in their cabins, because pretty much at no point on the boat was I seeing anyone other than mythical wife and myself, incapable of being able to be online.

We’d look for quiet areas to sit and read, or enjoy the ambiance of the ship, at the numerous bars, lounges and pool sides, but there would always be some fuck(s) from China or India around, prattling on in their native tongues to someone on the phone, completely disregarding the existence of others around them that might not want to hear their dumb conversations.  Kids actively playing RTS and MOBA games on their phone, naturally with no headphones.  And no shortage of people with their selfie sticks and tripods set up in order to Hey What’s Up Guys livestream and film content for their shitty channels that nobody watches.

As annoying as it was, it was also rather fascinating to see the differences of internet addiction in Asian culture, as it is with Americans.  And yeah, ‘Muricans are no paragons of good manners in their own right, and I can’t speak for many beyond myself, but we do more often grow exasperated with connectivity from time to time, and simply want to enjoy things in solitude and without the need to humblebrag it to the rest of the world.  It all just seems so petty and pointless, and when the day is over, the hours have passed and the minutes expired, nobody fucking gives a shit. 

Even the zombies that are producing it.

ABS is the gift that keeps on giving MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Larry Brown Sports: seven ancient-tenured MLB umpires accept buyouts from the league to retire early, including notoriously oft-questioned umpire, CB Bucknor

Make absolutely no mistake, this story is probably 95% on account of the fact that the automated ball and strike system has nuclear-power kicked open the door of exposing umpire ineptitude, with the other 5% being that there’s an extremely high chance that the entire league is going on strike after the 2026 season and that there will be no or a shortened 2027 season on the near horizon, and Beaner wanted to give their old boys club a chance to get out ahead of time.

But really, this has almost entirely to do with the fact that the ABS system has wreaked havoc on the umpire fraternity, and this seems like the safest way to get many of the most exposed umpires out the door with the most minimal amount of further humiliation at how bad they are at their jobs.

I know it’s been a divisive topic among baseball fans, with lots of old school old heads not liking the advancement of change, and that old school part of me can understand it, but I’ve been a sports fan long enough to know the frustration and aggravation of missed officiating ruining and tarnishing games, so even if it means that there’s a chance that it goes against the outcoming I’m hoping for, I’m generally accepting of the fact that this newer system of accountability is in place, in the event it helps the probabilities that I’m hoping for.

Let’s not sugar coat it, baseball umpiring has been among the worst when it comes to league oversight.  No other major American sport, do fans know the names and faces of officiating crews more than they do in baseball, primarily for reasons of disdain, dislike and hatred.  It didn’t take me long at all to learn who Tim McClelland, Joe West and Angel Hernandez were in the past of notorious umpires, and it took me no time at all to understand the significance of CB Bucknor headlining the latest list of umpires getting pushed out the door.

And not to go unnoticed is Laz Diaz, whom despite not being the headlining name, was very clearly listed second in the list of umpires sent packing.  Whether it was intentional or not, smart of him to sneak in underneath CB, so that some of his heat is mitigated by a worse umpire.  But make no mistake, I’m about as pleased to see Laz getting the boot as much as Bucknor is, because he too, fucking blows.

I digress though, when change this large crashes over, it sometimes turns into those scenarios where we might not like the devil we don’t know that’s looming ahead of us, versus the devils we just sent out to pasture.  I still believe that there’s an extremely low chance that there’s even a baseball season in 2027, given the MLB Owners basically speed-running the inevitability of a work stoppage, with their list of demands that the players will more than likely absolutely not agree to, but regardless of what happens when baseball is back on the field after the 2026 season, as far as the umpiring goes, it’s probably going to be, one of baseball’s favorite cliches, a brave new world.

But at least it will be one where umpire culture is getting something of a hard-reset and hoping that we the fans (and those like me who pretend to be them) won’t ironically know and react to the names of every umpire that is slated for the games we want to watch.

White people know no bounds when it comes to wanting to be mad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was at the airport when I saw the yellow official Peachtree Road Race shirt for 2026.  I thought to myself, whoa cool, it’s yellow, seeing as how since Adidas took over the production of the shirts in like 2022, they’ve been peach, blue and red, so there really hasn’t been any hard rule on what color they were supposed to be.  And seeing as how I tend to favor the color yellow, mostly for ironic reasons, I looked forward to when I would get mine, since I’ve since been a mere virtual runner the last six years because no iota of my being wants to get up at 3:30 am to go wait at the Lenox mall parking lot to run the Peachtree in person anymore, when I can do it at my own leisure.

However, over the span of the last 24 hours, I’ve seen at least 5-6 posts fed to me from algorithm, of people I have no idea who they are, as well as local news outlets, all, for lack of a better term, talking or debating the yellow PTRR shirt.  Almost entirely fueled by hatred, by, unsurprisingly, white people who are completely bent out of shape over the fact that the shirt is yellow and not red, white and/or blue, primarily, in honor of the fact that this is the vaunted 250th anniversary of the United States of ‘Murica. 

The news outlets are obviously cleverly feeding off of this reaction, and are simply querying the masses, fully knowing that the negative engagement is still engagement all the same, and the comments sections that I can’t resist looking at, are almost entirely echo chambers of salty white people all saying the same nonsense about how it should be red, white or blue because 250, and a whole lot of people corroborating this opinion because most people with brains know better than to jump into these lions dens of poorly veiled racism and orange fuck supporters.

However, it’s to the point where I can’t just simply chalk it up as white people being salty and actively looking for reasons to be pissed off, but more that the reactions and opinions and choices of words seem to be so uniform, so echoed and so similar that I can’t help but wonder if these are all the actions of bots and AI, deployed by the types of farms that are designed and meant to incite and provoke, knowing that even negative engagement is still engagement, and engagement equals profit somewhere down a line.

All the same, if it really is that all these reactions and posts are genuine human beings, all consistently and collectively being mad over the fact that a run’s shirt is yellow, it goes back to the title of this post that white people truly know no boundaries when it comes to the innate desire to be mad about, anything at all.

It’s funny to me that this reaction did not happen when in 2023 the shirt was said to be peach, but is this weird sickly orange-y color that borderlines pink, but as long as it was called peach, it could be justified, seeing as how the name of the fucking race is called, The Peachtree.  But yellow probably makes the right white immediately think about the evil Chinese since yellow is the negatively connoted color associated to Asian people, despite the fact that yellow variations of popular ‘Murican muscle cars are oft-coveted, but it doesn’t matter because yellow = wrong.

All the same, I dig the yellow shirt, and I look forward to when I get mine.  The Adidas versions of the PTRR shirts over the last few years are all great, because they’re no longer cheap, Gildan-like cotton t-shirts that I wouldn’t really ever wear, but are mesh, workout-caliber shirts, that immediately go into my rotation of workout apparel, and get regularly worn.  The fact that simply wearing them on my own walks and runs is going to incite white people, will only be a cherry on top, aside from just liking the color and design in the first place.

Stay mad, white people, I look forward to observing what pisses y’all off next.

I’m sorry, but this was one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: kid in China gets spinning helicopter kicked in the lower abdomen region by robot performing a martial arts demonstration

I know it’s in poor taste to laugh at the painful expense of another person, much less a child, but I can’t help it.  This is legit one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time, and I can’t stop myself from busting out laughing every time I see it. 

I know my tune would do a 630 if the victim in question were one of my kids, but I like to think that even in time, I would see the humor in it and eventually find it funny, because it really is that entertaining to me.

Straight up Homer Simpson cracking up at Hans Moleman’s football in the nuts video vibes here.

But it’s just so entertaining, to the point where when you’re watching it for the 10th and 20th times, you begin to dissect everything about it, from the ridiculous blue afro wig that the robot is wearing, to the fact that in spite of a child getting hurt, everyone is laughing about it, and pretty much nobody is seen giving one iota of effort to check in on the child, who is doubled over, and falls out of the crowd in discomfort.  I’m hoping that in the seconds after the video is cut off, the robot, which has returned to its starting point, bowed to the audience.

And because it’s in China, you know almost nobody will help the kid, because it’s expected that parents take care of their own, but in a lot of Little Emperor culture, lots of kids are borderline feral at the lack of hands-on parenting they receive, to where they end up in scenarios like this, unsupervised and in potential danger.

I mean, you can kind of see the imaginary border that onlookers were adhering to, in order to give the martial arts robot some space to operate.  And the kid that got decked, was well past the border, and kind of got what he deserved for being in the line of fire.  In fact, the boy behind the victim was probably relieved that pink shirt got the boot, because he definitely would have caught it otherwise, because robots are clearly as shitty martial artists that McDojo-trained kids are, and was nowhere close to a full rotation before swinging that kick out.

Needless to say, let this be a painful lesson to this little emperor for neglecting to stay out of the way and prioritizing his desire to see something stupid over his own physical safety.  He will undoubtedly become scarred by this incident, and hopefully become an opponent over the excessively aggressive advancement of AI and robotics.

It would be funny if in 24 years, we learn of some activist in China who is spearheading some group or organization that is generally in opposition to robots and AI, and explains that it all started with a sunny afternoon in Xinjiang, where he got helicopter kicked by a ill-programmed robot.

Pro Tip: how to never get any red lights while driving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Are you sick of how many red lights you encounter on your commute to work?  If so, this is the advice that will change your life for the better!

And it’s actually really quite simple.

Right before you get into your car, send out a few text messages to a friend(s), respond to a group chat, or fire off some good memes to some bros.  And before you can get sucked into the vortex of your phone, get in your car, start the engine, and begin your drive.

If you’ve got quality companions on the other ends, they will respond or react in some fashion that will ping your phone back, and tempt you to want to look at your phone.

For the record, I am not endorsing texting while driving, or egregious looking at your phone while driving.  I’d be lying if I said I never ever ever have done either in my life, but especially since I have kids, I do try to be better at practicing what I preach, which is to remain as distraction-free while driving, especially when the girls are in the car.

However, not that it’s really that much better, I do have a tendency to check my phone when I’m at red lights, that I’m familiar with and I know I can get away with 20-30 seconds to look; yes, I know that in the State of Georgia, such could be construed as illegal, but I’m also human, easily distracted by my phone, and like I said, only when I know I have like a good 20-30 seconds.

All the same, the point of this method is that by engaging a bunch of friends or groups before you get in the car, you invite the possibility of responses or reactions, and in classic Murphy’s Law, the pings and notifications will inevitably tempt you want to check, but slightly more responsible drivers will resist, and tell themselves, at the next red light.

But brothers, let me tell you, once you tell yourself that, you will more than likely not get a single red light for the remainder of your drive.  And the longer you have to wait, and if you’re apt to get that anxiety that not responding quickly enough will derail the momentum of a potentially entertaining conversation, the more likely you will get all the green lights, and somehow to never get snagged at any red light, and have the opportunity to check your phone.

If you think I’m lying or full of shit, try it out for yourselves.  At least in my personal experience, the more people engage me via phone, and I’m actively in the midst of driving, the success rate of getting every single green light and never getting a chance to satiate my curiosity skyrockets.  And it’s only when I’m bored and unstimulated by anyone else, will the droll cadence of red lights get back to normal, because there’s no eagerness to engage tempting the fate of the street lights out there in play.

Try it out though, I would suspect that I’m not the only one who can manipulate this real-world RNG to work to their benefit, and I bet it’s likely to work for many others besides myself.

Anytime I read about the environmental effects of AI

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think about this snippet from the epilogue of The Big Short detailing Michael Burry’s lone investing focus.  Back in 2015 when the film was released, I didn’t really think about what was really implied by Burry’s decision to start betting on water, but I could imagine reasons similar to what happened in Flint, Michigan, or the fact that in spite of the world being like 90% water, I don’t imagine even close to a tenth of that is drinkable water, and clean water is probably going to be a bigger commodity in the future than it really sounds like it should be.

But with all the chatter about the growth of AI, and how a single ChatGPT query results in the consumption of energy that is capable of requiring like a gallon of water to cool down some servers in a data center in the middle of bumfuck flyover America, this is what makes me wonder if Burry knew something was on the horizon or something a decade ago.

Either way, every time something comes out about the environmental ravaging AI is capable of, this is the image that comes directly to mind, and I find myself thinking about this more and more as AI is blabbed about more and moar.

The poor Chick Fil-A recruiting class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a Chick Fil-A that then-mythical gf and I went to pretty regularly.  There was a guy that managed the place, who we called Sam; whether that was actually his name or not is irrelevant at this point, but Sam was one of those guys that had an explosively bubbly personality, was always smiling, always happy, and clearly had an 11 on his attribute slider when it came to people skills.

One time, he saw us in the drive-thru line and addressed the two of us by name, and after we had left, we had one of those collective moments that both found it a little weird that he clearly learned, us, and that we probably come by too often, to where it’s gotten to this point.

All the same, as slightly uncomfortable as it felt to be learned by Sam, there was no mistaking the fact that he ran a really tight ship, and this particular location was always firing on all cylinders.  The line moved fast, orders were almost never inaccurate, and the place had to be among the leaders or the region in terms of profit and satisfaction.

Any time mythical wife and I come across any sort of business, whether it’s another Chick Fil-A or not, where the customer service and general quality of employee performance seems below par, we often remark about how this place could use a Sam.  He’s basically become the measuring stick of effective leadership, regardless of it it’s in the fast food space or not.

Anyway, I’ve made no secret of my general love of the Chick Fil-A app, and locations that utilize an app-only lane.  The app is one of the greatest apps in the history of mobile application development, and I love how it gives me access to the app-only lanes of certain CFA locations, because fewer things in the world tickles my fancy than checking in with the app, and then bypassing at least five cars, slowly ordering and waiting in the pleeb line, multiplied only by how fast I get my food and am on my way versus how many cars are still waiting in pleeb class.

One of the greatest days of my fat guy life was when the CFA location that my house frequents the most, underwent renovations in order to implement a dedicated app lane.  Sure, when they re-opened, there were some growing pains and some training needing to be done by the restaurant and to the idiot customers, but eventually we got to a point where it became business as usual; I could whiz into the app lane, check in, pass by 3-7 pleebs in the old people manual ordering line, and be on my merry way.

However, over the course of the last contemporary school year, it has been noticed how ineffective the local CFA has become.  Long waits, frequency of inaccuracies rising.  It didn’t matter if I were using the app or not, the kitchen would get backed up and overwhelmed from what seemed like fairly predictable and busy periods that should be relatively easy to anticipate.  The app lane did very little to change things, and the gleeful text messages I’d send mythical wife of how many cars I passed in the pleeb lane were often replaced by frustrated texts detailing how long I’ve been waiting, and how generally annoyed I was feeling from this experience.

The coup de grace was when I was coming to pick up some food from the CFA, and I noticed that although the drive-thru still began with two lanes, with one of them being solely for app users, prior to reaching the pickup point, the lanes forcibly merge.  And in some cases, in a twist of irony, by the sheer nature of zipper merges, occasional pleebs who ordered with sticks, nuts and pebbles get to jump in front of the savvier app users, and conversely, few things annoy me as much as that.

Naturally, when inane bullshit like this begins to go tits up, I often ponder, how?  I began to think about how the whole school year, performance has been relatively on the lower-tier of output, and I concluded with the notion that my local CFA just simply had, a bad recruiting class. 

Much like in the same vein of when a college has a poor recruiting class, resulting in poor performance throughout the season, and an eventual sense of wanting this to be over with so that they can possibly retool and rebuild for the following year.

I suppose the people in my community and I have been taking for granted the general strong yearly performance of our local CFA, seeing as how when it’s actually bad, it’s really noticeable, but it’s still disheartening that they seem to operate much like a college program, where if you’re bogged down with marginal talent, you’re stuck with it until they all graduate out, and hopefully a more talented class takes their places afterward.

But make no mistake, the problems at my local CFA definitely stem from the fact that they had a very poor recruiting class for the 25-26 season, that can’t handle the kitchen, which in turns taxes the runners, which in turn slows down the drive thru lines, which unfortunately results in the deactivation of the app-only line in order to drop the general speed to something that the kitchen is capable of handling.

All I’m saying is, if Sam were in charge of this CFA location, none of this bullshit would even be a part of the discussion.

Every business out there, regardless of if it’s a Chick Fil-A or not, could only benefit from having a Sam of their own.