Category: idiocy

It was this or a bigger house

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading6 Comments

I have all the books.

Wait.

I worry that what you heard was “I have a lot of books.”

I have all the books. Do you understand?

And, as you no doubt can tell, I have lots of other shit as well. And three other people live in this house! They have stuff too, even though nearly every single object you can see in these pictures is mine. Except the Pokéballs. Those are the boy’s.

This is the second house in a row where we have eventually decided to convert what was supposed to be the dining room into a library. I am absolutely out of places to put shit and I have been reading at a 175-books-a-year clip for the last couple of years. I still have some space on top of bookshelves, especially if I get rid of some of the statues and Legos (and the statues, honestly, may be on their way out soon) but one way or another I’m no more than two years away from needing to pile shit on the floors if something doesn’t change.

So yesterday, fearing an actual intervention, I ordered this:

along with a $12-a-month subscription to Kindle Unlimited. I’m thinking about instituting a rule that any book by a new author gets bought on digital first. Does that mean I won’t get those books in physical form? Not necessarily; as you can tell, I’m not just a reading enthusiast, I’m a book collector, and those two hobbies feed into each other in obvious and terrible ways. There will be books by new authors that I feel the need to own physically. But in most years at least 30% of my books are by authors new to me– this year, right now, it’s actually just over half. Surely this will end up saving me money as well as essential shelf space, right? That Dinniman book on the cover of the Kindle there is in one of those pictures in hardcover– on the white bookshelves, a couple shelves below the Wheel of Time books– but it was free on KU so I downloaded it anyway, to see if I lose my mind trying to read a thousand-page book on an e-reader. We’ll see.

We can’t move. We got our mortgage rate on this house before the economy exploded. We’ll never see this rate again. I’ve got to do something.

I remain

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Defiantly unraptured, as of yet; we shall see if TikTok Jesus takes me tomorrow, as my understanding is that the end of the world has been rescheduled. Again.

I had one girl show up to school today in what I very well might have called a wedding dress on an older human; I decided not to ask any questions, and by afternoon she was in a cheerleading T-shirt and shorts, so … I still didn’t ask any questions. I don’t know if Jesus having child brides is a thing, or if he’s okay with his child brides going to school on the day he marries them? I have degrees in religion but I’m not as up to date on the fever swamps of evangelical Christianity at the moment, and unless someone starts paying me for it I have no intention of venturing any further than I already have. They are wrong, again; it is the only thing that they have ever been. What an immense surprise.

Ugh

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Spent the evening beating my head against a bad book, and now I’ve gotten some grading done, gotten frustrated by that, and now I’m going to spend an hour beating my head against a bad game. Then maybe I’ll take a handful of ibuprofen and go to bed early.

Solar systematic reach for celestials

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I dunno what the headline means either, but a new Atmosphere album just came out and I’m listening to it and that lyric from “Neptune” stood out for some reason(*). I have been playing Silksong for several hours, hating most of it, and I still stand by my thorough review from the other day. The game’s fucking masochistic; it’s not fun-hard, it’s bang your head against the wall until the pain stops hard, and I can’t explain why I’m still playing the fucking thing. I’m not relaxed when I’m playing, I’m stressed out and angry, and that’s … not only kind of shockingly immature for a motherfucker who is going to be fifty in less than a year, it’s also not really a good use for leisure time? Like, there are other things I could be doing. There are even any number of other unpleasant things I could be doing that would at least result in, say, the house being cleaner or some sort of shit like that.

It is possible that I spend too much of my leisure time doing things that actively make me unhappy. I should find a therapist and have a conversation about that.

(*) Also don’t know why the album is called “Jestures,” but I’m on my first listen so it might become apparent eventually. There’s no title track.

I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching4 Comments

So we’ve got a new curriculum for math this year, and like most curricula in 2025 there’s what was supposed to be a robust online component to it. My kids took a math test last week, and I discovered while they were taking the test that a question about exponents that asked them to show their work had not provided any way to put a number into a superscript.

Which, y’know, feels like it might be a massive fucking oversight.

We’re moving into the real number system this week and they’re starting off with terminating and repeating decimals, so a lot of moving back and forth between decimals and fractions. I spent an hour beating my head against their system and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to designate a repeating fraction. Is there a help system? Of course not. Check this out:

It seems like typing in an answer, highlighting the repeating decimals and then clicking that tiny button which I had to hunt for for twenty minutes (and remember, my kids are working on iPads, which make highlighting anything a huge pain) puts the repeating decimal line– which is called a “vinculum,” by the way– above the numbers you’ve highlighted.

Take a second and stare at the options in that text box and reflect upon the fact that this is supposed to be for 8th graders. I do not have the slightest idea what probably 90% of the icons on that thing are referring to, nor do I really have any idea what is supposed to be designated by an arrow pointing at three diagonal dots.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work:

The top box is how it processed my entry. Why is there extra vinculum to the right of the seven? No idea, but it happened every time I tried. You’ll notice nothing extra is lined in the actual entry above. Why is the 27 in the bottom “correct” answer centered under the vinculum? Also no idea. I was not able to get a single answer correct involving a repeating decimal and absolutely nowhere was there any sort of help option that might have shown me what to do.

I sent an irate email to my team about how bullshit this was and I’m done for the night. I’m going to have these kids writing on the backs of shovels with coal by the end of the year. I’m so done with educational technology at this point that I can’t see straight.

An admission

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching1 Comment

“Dipshit groyper in it for the lulz” was not one of the identities I had considered for the shooter.

I need to figure out what it is about the first test of the year that causes all my kids to turn their brains off. Because I’m pretty sure I’m four, maybe five years deep where after the first test I wanted to quit my job and go pick onions for a living. My next classes are going to be yet another one of those situations where I have to struggle to keep the words fucking idiots from escaping my lips. Tell me, gentle reader, what do you think about this statement:

Any number to the power of 0 is 1.(*)

I feel like that’s pretty unambiguous!

Can you explain to me why, in a question about the power of zero, where the notes stated that any number to the power of zero is one, some students said that no, this number wouldn’t equal one, or worse, that some of the example numbers would only sometimes equal one? Gentle reader, can you give me a single example in mathematics of the word sometimes showing up when we’re talking about something equalling something else?

Christ, I’m tired.(**)

(*) For the purposes of this conversation, remember this is 8th grade math, and we’re going to ignore the fact that there’s debate about whether 00 equals one or zero. They’re not going to get asked about that in 8th grade. Literally every other fucking number equals 1 when raised to the power of zero, and I’m willing to tolerate a tiny inaccuracy in what I thought, again, was a clear and unambiguous statement.

(**) I have had this exact conversation, multiple times: “The rule is any number to the power of zero equals one. What’s three to the power of zero?” “One.” “What’s twelve to the power of zero?” “One.” “What’s three hundred to the power of zero?” “One.” “What’s negative four to the power of zero?” “… negative one?” “The rule is any number to the power of zero is one.” “Oh, one.” “What’s point five to the power of zero?” “… point five?”

Any means fucking any, God damn it.

First world problems

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy9 Comments

My current phone is an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Apple is a few days away from announcing the iPhone 17, and my phone has reached the point where on most days I have to charge it for a bit while I’m at my desk or doing something else; the battery isn’t getting through a full day reliably any longer. I used to replace my phone almost every year more or less whether I “needed” to or not; I’ve gotten out of that habit with the last few phones as they’ve gotten steadily more expensive.

So here’s my dumb problem: I don’t really want an iPhone 17 of any particular stripe, although it’d be highly unlikely that I would order anything other than another Pro Max. Not because I’m thinking of switching back to Android– I am Apple’s bitch now and forever, and am too thoroughly tied into their ecosystem to even seriously consider switching– but because their foldable phone is rumored to be coming out in 2026.

Rumors for the price of the foldable iPhone have ranged between two thousand and two thousand five hundred dollars, and that’s before whatever tariff fuckery might happen between now and next September.

That’s … a hell of a lot of money. And it’s even more money if I spend the $1200 or whatever I’m going to pay for a 17 in between now and then. And it’s also money that would be spent on a first-generation Apple product in a category that, so far, phone manufacturers have not exactly been covering themselves in glory with. Foldable phones are tricky as hell, and from what I’ve seen so far no one has really nailed the tech yet.

Now, for a sensible person who doesn’t have a spending problem, this isn’t actually a hard decision. I hold onto my current phone until it’s genuinely untenable to keep using it; if that’s before the Fold is released, well, that sucks, but it happened, and if the Fold comes out and I don’t like the price or something else about it (or they delay it, or the rumors are wrong, or or or … ) I just buy whatever the equivalent of my current phone is at that time.

That’s the sensible approach. But the sensible approach ignores the fact that I’ve been fighting off the newshiny for three years already, and I am maybe more sensitive than I should be to being annoyed by my phone– part of the reason I have a Pro Max is that I don’t like having to think about battery charge pretty much ever– and, like, September is the month you buy new phones. I recognize that all of this is stupid; that’s why I titled the post the way I did.

I could, in theory, try a smaller phone for a year, instead of buying the most expensive phone in their lineup. What would that be like? I don’t even know. But it would cut the pain a little bit if I decide to upgrade a year later.

Anyway. I have no common sense, but that’s why I have readers, who I assume are smarter people than me. What say you? Put up with bullshit for another year assuming I’ll want to trade up in 2026, upgrade but with a less expensive model so that it’s not as big of a hit in a year (worth pointing out: the trade-in will get me money back) or assume that I’ll manage to talk myself out of spending laptop money on a phone a year from now and just get the phone I’d be getting if I didn’t know anything about the Fold?

Dangit

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I feel like I’ve been on another run of too many “taking the night off” posts lately, but … damn. I had a good day at work, went to the comic shop, came home, did a bunch of grading, and I’ve literally been sitting here staring at the screen for ten minutes trying to come up with something even remotely interesting or witty to talk about. This is the best I can do. This happened on Sunday:

Yes, that’s two Amazon vans, both at my house at the same time, suggesting that Amazon’s logistics aren’t maybe as good as they’ve always been cracked up to be. The packages were even both for the same person, so they don’t have that excuse. The second driver to arrive spent a few minutes either angrily venting or yelling at the first driver, waving his hands (and the package) around and hollering loudly enough that I could hear him from inside my house, although I couldn’t quite put together what he was saying. The other guy never got back out of his van and I suspect he was not enjoying the conversation one way or another. Then after a few minutes the first guy drove away, leaving the second guy in his pit of vitriol, and he brought the package to my porch and drove away, never to be seen again.

It’s not much of a story.

The end.