When I was at DuPont one of the omenous changes was a deliberate shift "from products to process" and that's how they put it. The company that hit tech home runs like nylon and teflon walked away from its strengths.
Going through some kind of ISO 9000 or similar audit I heard it described as "doing a good job documenting poor processes."
Oh please, don't get me started on that type of insanity. I've seen entire QA departments focused solely on "following the process" while the factory defects continued to pile up.
Several years ago, from a guy who certified organizations to the ISO 9000 standard, I heard that ISO 9000 amounts to a standard way to shuffle paper, and nothing more!
Hats off to Elon for understanding that the cars weren't necessarily the issue holding up EV adoption, and the infrastructure was. A Tesla is still the only EV that can be used as an only car. I wouldn't dream of driving any of the other EVs cross country, while the supercharger network makes that viable in a Tesla.
His other move of brilliance was understanding that the need for virtue signalling created an instant market for a luxury EV that just didn't exist for the low end cars. Hollywood gave him all the info he needed, with all those celebrities driving to within a block of the Oscars in their limo, and then switching to a Prius for the final feet of the drive, to ensure that they were making the proper appearance for the little people.
It is indeed. I was never a huge EV fan, but had respect for what he was doing. I remember debating the state and future of Tesla from one side, and while my opinion hasn't changed, my buddies all seem to be on the opposite side from where they used to be. Interesting times!
Some of the TERFs, like Kellie Jay Keen, have dropped the F. The thing is, after 50 years of exclusively male spaces being invaded by women, one is tempted to say "cry me a river" about dicks in ladies' locker rooms no matter how sympathetic I might be with their cause.
I think 50% of the rage within me is because of things like 'Can't anyone else see that this doesn't work, and never will?' every time I see BS about autonomous driving. The blinders people have on and the way they REFUSE to think is astonishing to me.
From people who would jump to their deaths from a bridge if “Jump Off This Bridge” was posted on the sign at the peak of said bridge (and who create lines of traffic behind them in the freeways’ left lanes which could be seen from orbit) instead of a sign with the speed limit, to people who personify Einstein’s theorem about the definition of insanity being to try something which didn’t work multiple times hoping for a different outcome, probably because the government told them to do so!
I think the immediate cause was trying to drift through a narrow slot in traffic. He got a little wide and the rear end of his 911 clipped a car traveling in the other direction, which put him into the back of the truck. Probably would have made the pass if he didn't hit the other car. It will be interesting watching the various insurance companies (Walker's, the other car, the truck, the tv station) involved pointing their fingers at each other, shouting "subrogation".
Bought my first house in Indianapolis for 185k at 26 with approximately that salary back in 2016 after a few years of saving up a downpayment. That same house sold for $310k in 2022, and let me tell you salaries have not kept up with that.
And that $415k mortgage for the next folks to buy it, the mortgage payment has went up 7 or 8 hundred dollars compared to early 2022 with interest rates. The wife and I have been toying with either upgrading from our starter home we have had for 8 years now (maybe its not really a starter home anymore) or acquiring a more modestly priced 2nd vacation home. A year ago a 400-450k house was in the cards, now something around 375k is looking at almost triple the mortgage we are paying now just to get another 500-750 square feet. Going to wait and see how this market pans out. I do feel bad for all the out-of-college grads we have been hiring lately. A 10k increase in starting pay compared to what I got in 2011, doesn't make up the difference.
Exactly what I've been facing. Between interest rates, and the fact I can't ever leave "good enough" alone, the prospect of moving for fairly modest upgrades in functionality, isn't worth it to me. I'll save the 1800/month and the self induced anxiety of having to fully remodel another house.
But don't worry, my parents and others have only kept saying that you can pay whatever for a home you like "because it'll always keep going up in value".
That's true until it isn't. Ask the people in Bozeman, Montana how nice it has been to have their population boom as west coasters moved in over the past 5 years. Nevermind the kids on the rez who were never going to be able to afford so much as a tent off their tribal land.
Rent control and such isn't the answer but holy shit is this inflation thing killing the middle class and under.
Same. 3 kids and while my wife makes things to make money for her business at home, it's really mostly me providing. That Explorer lease to save time and a little money turned into a GIANT mill stone around our neck as inflation hit and other costs went up. (I make 60 a year before taxes in Michigan) It's getting heavy out there.
It really makes me mad when the media says that inflation now is lower than in the Carter years but it’s not using the same calculation method. I’d like to think it’s stupid journalism majors that can’t do simple math, but it’s more likely that they know what they are doing, carrying the water for Team Brandon.
The breakdown of globalization may help in the long run. Namely the American continents are more or less self-sufficient and not competing with the planet's top echelon for real estate would be a real change.
If we Americans wanted to, I mean REALLY wanted to, we could kick out every non-native-born person inside our borders, put up a wall around CONUS and be our own self-sufficient world.
We're the only country with the necessary combination of size, population, non-militarily-threatening neighbors, natural resources and geographic isolation to pull it off.
One big problem with that is that NONE of us are native to this land in origin. We or our families all came from somewhere else relatively recently. I’m a white guy and I was born in Kenya. My brother was born in Thailand and my mom was born in Paraguay. My grandparents were all born in Russia, but their parents or grandparents were from Germany originally, or at least what we call Germany today. I can’t honestly say that I’m a native Kenyan any more than my Opa could say he was a native Russian.
Even First Peoples supposedly migrated here from Asia, so how do you go about determining who stays or who goes?
The reality is that civilizations are built on conquest, and white folk have been the most successful conquerors in recent history. When we arrived in North America, the people who were here were the most successful conquerors of other peoples before them.
It’s not going to end here either. It’s quite possible that the day of the white dude is done and some other unsympathetic group will take over for the next couple of hundred years. That’s assuming the human race isn’t wiped off the face of the earth by some cataclysmic event self created or otherwise.
Sorry to finish on such a dark note, but just had to comment!
Oh but they just stay indoors, order things to be dropped off at their doors, and telecommute.... why should they leave? (It's causing a lot of issues. I only had to sit for 5 minutes in Billings to hear conversations about how much things are going downhill. Can't get too bad though. Most of Montana has guns!)
And the ones staying in the cushy hotels being overrun were bitching because they were being fed turkey sandwiches on the taxpayers’ dole instead of their usual staple of rice and beans! 🙄
This will change. Couple things, easy money is over. In cities that meant you had a lot of folks flipping dubious properties on the assumption of 20% seasonal appreciation. A good deal of this was private equity. That's drying up. We are about to hit an asset glut extending beyond real estate. Boomers own everything and are about to die and when they do their estates will flood the market. More assets than buyers = lower prices.
There are millions of immigrants coming every year, legal and illegal. Their main job is to shore up those asset prices. Some of them will do “jobs Americans won’t” for wages Americans won’t accept, but guess what? Their kids will be Americans. That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
I was in Bozeman in 2018 for work. The vendor that I went to meet with was full of multi-generation Montanans, a good group of guys. Even though they themselves had cushy "tech" jobs, they were leery about the money moving into the state (rightfully so). I looked at working for them, but didn't want to make any moves until I finished grad school.
Went back in December 2021 for a vacation. Even within that short window, you could see a lot of change. Real estate values, as you noted, went through the roof. The old rancher who was running the outfitter we signed up with was considering moving to Michigan, of all places. He said the UP reminded him of what Montana used to be.
I always thought if I got here or past this on my own I’d have “made it” and was ‘rich’. Never did I ever expect to be more wrong. I don’t have kids, live in the bottom of the modest Midwest and have no idea how some families are getting by or own the things they do.
It’s a crippling thought as that kind of single income range here is far above norm. Let’s go Brandon.
Using Star Trek TNG analogy here, current AI is basically Lt Cmdr Data. He gets the job done, pretty decent officer. Just doesn't get CONTEXT. Context in his case, is the emotion chip created by Noonien Soong. Big tech and investors are looking for and trying to make, that emotion chip.
A quick YouTube search hasn't yielded a contemporary German car pronunciation video, so I'll let her off the hook. To anyone willing to listen, assume every letter in German is said out loud, few exceptions notwithstanding.
Five Guys doesn't have anything on Shake Shack. We dropped in there for the first time on Saturday. Two burgers, two fries, a soft drink, and a shake came out to just under $50.
We were stuck ordering via a kiosk because most of the workers were too busy singing/dancing or sleeping in a booth to man the register. The card reader wasn't working on the kiosk we used. I entered everything into a second kiosk and we proceeded to wait 15 mins for the food to roll out.
Tastes are subjective, but I thought the food was terrible. We could've gotten burgers from Hyde Park directly across the street for $50, or paid half that and gotten something better from Steak 'n Shake.
As I get older, the more I commiserate what D-Fens was going through. If my Shake Shack experience is what fast food is going to look like going forward, I suspect that there will be some pushback (to put it mildly).
Amen. The instapot has been a life saver for making legit clean chicken needle soup in 25 minutes tops. Great for the whole family and feeds them for days rather than a single meal.
Being perpetually overbooked, whether you're working two McJobs to make ends or you're a vice president doing 18 hours a day of meetings and email, is the new normal.
Also most poor people no longer live in an environment where they can adequately prepare food. In many cases it would be stolen right out of their pantries.
In addition to theft, the cost of rent in a lot of places means putting more people in an apartment/house. That means less fridge space per person, and more chance of someone using the stove when you need it. If you can wait for your roommate to get done cooking dinner after you just pulled a double you're a better man than I am.
People who steal food (i have the good fortune of knowing some) typically go for the dirty. Ie. Robbing delivery trucks, breaking into stores or plain old shoplifting. Retail workers are very likely to let your ass walk on out without confrontation, and you already know they have goods, so a b&e at a residence is a very high risk to reward ratio.
Seriously, people aren't addicted to fast food because they're worried that if they prepare food at home they'll be raided by hungry mobs.
A little forethought, and a change in consumption standards goes a long way. Meal planning can be easy and cheap with a change in habits. We feed a family of 4 on a modest budget, practically never eat out, and both my wife and I work long hours. Skipping a few meals here and there wouldn't hurt most of us either.
Being busy as a status symbol is the natural result of easy credit, because you need SOMETHING to show how wonderful you are in a world where poor people can have a Mercedes.
Well, in other Midwest news, Big Boy still seems like Big Boy, so there's that at least. And for three adult meals and two children's meals we got out of there for only a little more than $50, including the tip. I guess that's not exactly a fast food restaurant anymore, but at least no one was singing and dancing and the food wasn't terrible.
My go to quick/cheap takeout meal when we're not cooking (and we DO cook, the vast majority of the time) is my local Chinese place. Large order of mixed lo mein (chicken/pork/shrimp), large order of general tso's and fried rice, comes to about $23 and it's something like 3lbs of food that we eat for two meals and I still have leftovers to take to work. And I'd rank it solidly ahead of anything from a fast food burger place on both taste and quality (and arguably nutrition).
My local spot seems to somehow have dodged inflation(???). Conversely the local chinese buffet went from $7.41 with tax and a drink pre-covid to $13 now under new hispanic ownership. To their credit the food is somewhat fresher than it was before.
Don't laugh. Eastern greys are tasty. I've definitely prepared squirrel from the bush behind my place for a wild game dinner we had at my place. Everyone asked for seconds.
We have a Big Boy nearby that opened up ~5 years ago. I used to consider it overpriced, but the place is a downright value compared to even some Coney Islands (diner for you non Michigan folk) I've been to recently. The place is always spotless and service excellent. There are few "regular" restaurants locally that have consistently good food and service, Big Boy is one of them.
I've given up on the idea of getting a decent Shake Shack meal, largely because the employees as a whole are the lowest function group of people I've encountered outside fiction.
And right here you answer why corps are automating as fast as they can. If McD's could get a full crew to show up everyday and actually take care of the customers, they would be happy to pay $15-20 an hour. Instead for that pay they get people who call off 4-5 times a month and are late more often that not.
Back when I was bulking, I was struggling to get to 200lbs. I lamented that every asshole in America weighed 200+ on accident.
Then I inspected my diet and realized that even if I was eating chic fil a, it was just sandwiches and nuggets.
So for the finally of my bulk I would eat multiple sandwiches, large fries and a milkshake. I would even go out for ice cream some times. Not good for my health, and the weight gain was a bit too dirty, but damn were the pumps juicy.
I can rather easily crest 200 if I let myself, a bit too easily in fact (for reference I'm 5'11"). When I'm doing serious lifting (forever chasing the 315 benchpress it seems, nearly got it last summer before an injury) I'll hit up the aforementioned chinese buffet at least once a week, as well as the takeout chinese place. Built By General Tso. Conversely when cutting weight, boy that is a struggle and the only way to keep myself honest and on-track is to count those damn calories.
Counting is a great habit. At least until you get an idea of what’s in the food you eat.
One of my easiest cuts was after that. I didn’t really count calories but I did the same thing every day. Intermittent fast, 2 sirloins, 6 eggs, CrossFit. Dropped 25lbs in months and measured 15% at 175lbs.
My most effective dieting was likewise going super low carb. My lunches for several months were "deconstructed" cold cuts (deli meat and cheese), hardboiled eggs, sardines and pickles for lunch. The monotony sucked but was also easy to plan/pack. In fact I'm tempted to get back into that here in the new year. Have dabbled in intermittent fasting (without too much luck to be honest) and some occasional 24 hr fasts, which I actually did okay with. The mental focus and alertness that comes with fasting is something I enjoy.
I am excellent at cutting and poor at bulking (and gaining raw muscle mass) so I've been trying a dirty bulk (just unrestricted eating, usually keep a fairly clean diet) and we'll see.
My one Shake Shack visit at the prodding of my SO, was near identical to yours. However, I had the added bonus that they were unable to make SHAKES that day for whatever reason. Needless to say, I was unimpressed and will not return. Just like the time I went to Arby's and they were out of ROAST BEEF. I feel if your establishment is based on one particular thing, you should make sure you NEVER run out of that thing.
If the goal of AI research is to produce an artificial person, in the sense of a sapient being, then they're boned.
You can't make a copy of something if you don't know how it works, or even WHAT IT IS. And we have no idea what human consciousness is. I think it's the soul, but that's just me.
An equally (if not more) important reason we don't see 10 ft roaches is that they don't have lungs and their "blood" does not carry oxygen, so oxygen has to get to through their bodies by diffusion. The larger they get, the lower the surface to volume ratio gets, and the more difficult it becomes to get oxygen throughout. A potentially interesting aside (on a blog that seems to relish in them).
True... and presumably the "evolve lungs" path that worked for other creatures didn't produce desired results for them. Which is ALSO interesting: what about roaches prevent them from evolving? Or did they evolve into something too different to be seen as a roach?
There’s been news from the world of archaeology lately wherein it’s claimed that 50,000 year old stone tools found in the jungles of South America were in fact produced by capuchin monkeys.
These tools had previously been thought to have been produced by humans, thus upending the current theory of the way in which the Americas were populated.
This raises several questions:
A. How come capuchin monkeys evolved to be just smart enough to make the same kind of tools as ancient humans and then just cooled it with the whole evolving thing?
B. How many of the other archaeological sites taken to be human settlements based on stone tools were in fact those of apes? I’m looking at you here, Olduvai Gorge.
C. Did you know that apes are supposed to have settled South America from Africa on, get this, floating mats of vegetation. Twice.
I spent a fair amount of my time in college around professors who were students of Wm Foxwell Allbright, pretty much the dean of biblical archeology. They seemed to be serious scholars, though some of them had kind of a thing for the Documentary Hypothesis. In the field, biblical archeology seems to be split between those who want to disprove the Bible and those who want to prove that it's historically accurate. A good example was a pottery fragment found with the phrase (in Hebrew, which is consonental) "bt dvd". Some said it should be read Beit David (the house of David) and cited it as proof that King David actually existed while skeptics said it is Beit Dod (uncle's house).
While camping in the UP Bat and I took the kids to an active dig at an abandoned town site. Archeologists apparently love outhouses and latrines.
Most archaeologists are serious scholars, you are correct. The problem is that they are working with miniscule sample sizes, the data is full of noise, the interpretation is very subjective (and subject to bias from whatever social science trend is prevailing), and it's not really science in the classical definition of being repeatable because excavating the site utterly destroys it. But its the only way to study human history beyond the written record so you do the best you can with it.
"Man is a spiritual being. He needs to believe in something larger than himself. Historically, that something has been a God or gods. But if man's faith in God is destroyed, he will replace it with something else. Too often, that something else has been a manmade god called the State, and untold crimes have been commited in its name."
Nah. She just wanted a beachfront house that her female friends would envy her for. She was too dumb, and her male ape rather relieved when it turned out to be a floating mat of vegetation.
I don't buy the ape theory for minute and neither should these hidebound idiots because eventually you compress modern humanity to the point where God or aliens MUST get involved.
Their social justice mission means that there can't be evidence of "Firster Peoples" before "First Peoples" because if there were you couldn't use the First Peoples as a cudgel with which to beat the living shit out of poor white people in everything from land rights to college admissions.
My favorite analogy is that evolution being the mechanism that produced man is less likely than a tornado ripping through a junkyard and leaving behind a fully-functional 747.
Well put; I really learned something falling down the square-cube law rabbit hole. Those sorts of pearls in the narrative (and the ensuing discussions here) are what keeps me coming back.
As I was driving my 12 year old to Micro Center last night, we had this conversation about ChatGPT nearly verbatim. He was excitedly telling me about how he wrote a hook into the API to generate images from entering a query from a Python script, just as a proof on concept. I was trying very hard to convey to him how it was mostly smoke and mirrors bullshit, and really just a machine learning pattern-matching algo, without dampening his enthusiasm for tech in general. I want to hand him my phone to read this post, though I am considering perhaps copy/pasting it sans the blowjob bit. I like to maintain the illusion that we've preserved a bit of his innocence, even in the internet era.
It would be required reading around here. FWIW a separate URL would be preferable to just marking child safe articles so I can let them loose without having to worry about them coming across any ridiculous jargon, shocking sexual audacity, [or] repulsive images of the ghetto.
Does anyone work long term at your Micro Center? Even when I'm buying something cheap there, like a cable, I have a salesperson slap their commission sticker on it because I feel for them. That must be a terrible place to work. On the other hand, prices are pretty cheap there. I was picking up a couple of cables just before Christmas and they were selling Asus laptops for $100 and I needed something compact to operate my laser.
It's funny you should say that, I actually worked there 15 years ago or so, and as I was driving I was thinking it was kind of sad that there would no longer be anyone I know there. Lo and behold, I actually did run into an old coworker who still did it as a second job all these years later. It was not actually a bad gig, for retail - I made good money working in the Build Your Own dept, since I had a modicum of charisma and wasn't an autistic weirdo. Sell a gaming build or two a day and you were making a decent living. The real money was in the MC warranties they sold - at the time they would specifically cover damage from overclocking, which was insane and a very easy sell to most of the kids building PCs. I can't imagine they still do that - the moral hazard involved probably cost them a fortune. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted talk on MC employment. I still miss that place sometimes, but alas, my then girlfriend of 4 months, now wife, ended up pregnant so I had to go find work more conducive to supporting a family. Got an office job, gained 40lbs over the last 15 years. 0/10, do not recommend.
The problem is, we've imported so many low IQ morons and turned our schools into conditioning and indoctrination centers, that few people are even equipped to notice the difference.
I ran across Rick Beato video this morning about how Auto-Tune ruined modern music and why that'll end up with no one recognizing AI created music because so many have already been trained to accept the suck.
Ah but I think the opposite will happen. You always have a larger group accepting "pop" music. But, once people recognize and understand that someone is a fake, it does have an effect and makes them less popular. Otherwise, why would lip syncing be so bad? I think we're going to see a huge turn away from what is considered to be fake art.
On the other hand, you have the Vocaloids in Japan who are completely fake "pop singers" who exist solely as pixels complete with computer voices who are popular (depressingly so) with younger audiences. They get an immense amount of views on youtube and, even though they're one of the few things in my life I desperately wish I could un-experience, for people who grow up with fakeness of this magnitude I don't know if it matters at all, especially when it seems to be the whole point. Milli Vanilli couldn't get away with it because they weren't supposed to be fake. But there's nothing real about the Vocaloids and they've found a substantial audience...
They've found an audience for now. I do not believe any of that stuff sticks. I grew up with tons of 90s stuff. Can't say I have an appreciation for boy bands any more now than I did in 1997. Doesn't mean there isn't a song here or there that anyone could like. It's just that fads such as these go through cycles where they burn out. It's not so different than capeshit where Marvel overdid every bit of CGI to the point of making something like Andor appear to be incredibly high art. Now, Andor uses CGI but it uses way, way more props and locations than what other lazier shows did. And, as such, it has a much more timeless look. (It was too long a show with tons of Disney Plus padding FYI)
The pendulum always swings back. Always. Things don't stay the same and that includes something like "oh look at this AI created painting I had made".
A good example of THAT is how quickly NFTs went from new hotness to absolute trash. They were always trash, but the perception changed nearly overnight.
I'll give the Japanese points for cultural superiority here. Their pop music has idol singers, which are obvious constructs that convey innocence and beauty.
Whereas we Americans idolize authentic practitioners of hideously destructive lifestyles.
The next wave of virtual singers are just idol groups in anime haha
I had this discussion with my friend the other day though, and we both agreed the Japanese do seem to cherish femininity much more than the west though
If this "AI" shit has been good for anything, it has been some SERIOUS laughs. I definitely was distracted at work for a good two weeks pumping humorous prompts out of dall-e mini on a second monitor after it released.
Apparently I picked the wrong specialty: "They need to be as smart as junior sysadmins, a job which currently pays $80-120k."
Doesn't Chipotle do centralized cooking/processing, this reads like an extension of that with the limitations of not having humans who can build an order to order "The food can be prepared centrally; you’ll still need people but the economies of scale are much greater. And then you automate the delivery, with one fellow in a van driving around solving problems in dilatory fashion like today’s ATM repairman."
They're a nightmare of rotten food and disease which makes me uncomfortable with this thought.
I was listening* to someone who noted that the high value processors are made in the US or allied countries and our IoGT (internet of garbage things) are outsourced. Which do modern manufacturing robots run on (I assume old process nodes but don't know for certain)? The automat model is understandable and more believable than the alternative given the complexities surrounding robot arm control and not getting it into unworkable situations which is surprisingly easy if I remember what I was reading about it right.
On my way home from ISP in Waterford yesterday (with PCBs and licensing ageement in hand, huzzah, just 3, but it's a start) I drove by a Mexican restaurant in Pontiac named Trini & Carmen's. It amazes me that they're still in business. My ex and I had a running joke, "Trini & Carmen's? I've heard of them, let's go there for dinner." People remember hearing about the place but they don't remember why, one of the worst outbreaks of food related illness (botulism from canned jalapeno peppers) in American history: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/05/archives/michigan-botulism-cases-up-to-35-restaurant-is-sued-by-a-victim.html
The robot is probably running on something made here, but it also cost $250k in 2003 and is still running Windows XP.
All of the sensors monitoring the robot are COTS garbage (repurposed Pi or similar) with overpriced support contracts.
These two things make it a giant pain in the dick to secure anything properly. Actually, the XP is the easy part. Expecting third-party support to be both timely and competent is where things fall short.
Oh just you wait... Sometime around the March or April timeframe, the US Army, as the anointed joint proponent for DoD, will be talking a lot about organizing and building a Civilian Harm Mitigation Center of Excellence. The DoD already issued a public press release regarding a Civilian Harm Mitigation Action Plan back in AUG. The planning is surprisingly level-headed at the moment, all things considered, but it can and probably will go off the rails real fucking quick. Probably after the civilian director is hired.
in the early '50s the new turner turnpike tulsa-okc had the complete spread: howard johnson's restaurants, 2 on each side plus one in the middle, on this 88-mile stretch, where you could get a bone-in strip steak cooked to order. along with their 29?? flavors of ice cream. off the southern end of the turnpike, a mile or 2 away, was a coin-operated large selection of canned food, which you could heat in an oven on site. for fun i tried it 3 times; saw 1 other person there. it went away in about a year. the publicity for this futuristic idea was all over the newspapers. the hojos lasted for quite a few years but of course they're now mcds plus some other stuff. they were all gas stations too of course.
The odd social trajectory of Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn deserves some sort of book. Both of them are seriously expensive now to the point where you have to have Holiday Inn Express!
One of the best breakfasts I've ever had was at an on-site diner at an old HoJo's outside of Flagstaff Arizona. If all on-site diners could pump out chorizo and green chile omelettes like that, you'd see them come back into style faster than that omelette worked its way through my lower intestine.
I wish I had gotten into the handicap lift business whenever that scam was mandated. HoJo fun fact Howard (I think it was Bud, not the original) hired the great Jacques Pépin to design and scale the menu.
Would love to see stats on how frequently the lifts are used. I'm guessing the vast majority have never been touched since the day they were installed.
My HoJo memory is staying at one in college, 25-ish years ago, having a small party on about the third floor. For some reason, the windows at this one opened. A homeless guy in the alley next to the hotel took issue with our noise level, and hurled a rock up at the widow and hit my buddy's girlfriend, who was standing at the window, in the arm.
My buddy, who was able to solve a problem and action it at about the rate of The Culture, in one move, swung his girlfriend out of the way, dropped his pants, hung his ass out the window, and took a dump. You see, he had noticed that there was a piece of plywood leaned up against the hotel, under our window, at a 45 degree angle. His turds hit the plywood and shot away at a right angle and hit the homeless guy right in the chest.
In a million years I'll never see anything like that again.
I know nothing about Agile or Scrum. What are they, and why are they so awful?
Process over product. Again. Got it, thanks.
There is no surer sign of incompetence than slavish adherence to procedure.
When I was at DuPont one of the omenous changes was a deliberate shift "from products to process" and that's how they put it. The company that hit tech home runs like nylon and teflon walked away from its strengths.
Going through some kind of ISO 9000 or similar audit I heard it described as "doing a good job documenting poor processes."
Following process would've cost us penicillin.
Oh please, don't get me started on that type of insanity. I've seen entire QA departments focused solely on "following the process" while the factory defects continued to pile up.
Yes.
Several years ago, from a guy who certified organizations to the ISO 9000 standard, I heard that ISO 9000 amounts to a standard way to shuffle paper, and nothing more!
Yep. And the more MBA types involved the more "blind adherence to process" happens.
With apologies to H.L. Mencken, Agile is the theory that the product owner knows what they want, and deserves to get it good and hard.
Project management methodologies for kids who were in the "second" reading group in school. Primarily used in software dev.
Agile release train conductor is a legitimate job title in clown world.
Hats off to Elon for understanding that the cars weren't necessarily the issue holding up EV adoption, and the infrastructure was. A Tesla is still the only EV that can be used as an only car. I wouldn't dream of driving any of the other EVs cross country, while the supercharger network makes that viable in a Tesla.
His other move of brilliance was understanding that the need for virtue signalling created an instant market for a luxury EV that just didn't exist for the low end cars. Hollywood gave him all the info he needed, with all those celebrities driving to within a block of the Oscars in their limo, and then switching to a Prius for the final feet of the drive, to ensure that they were making the proper appearance for the little people.
His Twitter exploits have cooled the ardor of the virtue signalers. It’s fascinating to watch.
It is indeed. I was never a huge EV fan, but had respect for what he was doing. I remember debating the state and future of Tesla from one side, and while my opinion hasn't changed, my buddies all seem to be on the opposite side from where they used to be. Interesting times!
Kind of like how traditional feminists became TERFs in the public discourse the minute some dude wanted to wear a dress.
Some of the TERFs, like Kellie Jay Keen, have dropped the F. The thing is, after 50 years of exclusively male spaces being invaded by women, one is tempted to say "cry me a river" about dicks in ladies' locker rooms no matter how sympathetic I might be with their cause.
When I read about Sam Brinton stealing luggage at the airport, first I laughed, then I wondered, "What, he doesn't have enough baggage already?"
I think 50% of the rage within me is because of things like 'Can't anyone else see that this doesn't work, and never will?' every time I see BS about autonomous driving. The blinders people have on and the way they REFUSE to think is astonishing to me.
There’s a lot of people who refuse to think!
I call them “sheep!”
From people who would jump to their deaths from a bridge if “Jump Off This Bridge” was posted on the sign at the peak of said bridge (and who create lines of traffic behind them in the freeways’ left lanes which could be seen from orbit) instead of a sign with the speed limit, to people who personify Einstein’s theorem about the definition of insanity being to try something which didn’t work multiple times hoping for a different outcome, probably because the government told them to do so!
I think the immediate cause was trying to drift through a narrow slot in traffic. He got a little wide and the rear end of his 911 clipped a car traveling in the other direction, which put him into the back of the truck. Probably would have made the pass if he didn't hit the other car. It will be interesting watching the various insurance companies (Walker's, the other car, the truck, the tv station) involved pointing their fingers at each other, shouting "subrogation".
Can confirm.
Bought my first house in Indianapolis for 185k at 26 with approximately that salary back in 2016 after a few years of saving up a downpayment. That same house sold for $310k in 2022, and let me tell you salaries have not kept up with that.
And that $415k mortgage for the next folks to buy it, the mortgage payment has went up 7 or 8 hundred dollars compared to early 2022 with interest rates. The wife and I have been toying with either upgrading from our starter home we have had for 8 years now (maybe its not really a starter home anymore) or acquiring a more modestly priced 2nd vacation home. A year ago a 400-450k house was in the cards, now something around 375k is looking at almost triple the mortgage we are paying now just to get another 500-750 square feet. Going to wait and see how this market pans out. I do feel bad for all the out-of-college grads we have been hiring lately. A 10k increase in starting pay compared to what I got in 2011, doesn't make up the difference.
Exactly what I've been facing. Between interest rates, and the fact I can't ever leave "good enough" alone, the prospect of moving for fairly modest upgrades in functionality, isn't worth it to me. I'll save the 1800/month and the self induced anxiety of having to fully remodel another house.
But don't worry, my parents and others have only kept saying that you can pay whatever for a home you like "because it'll always keep going up in value".
That's true until it isn't. Ask the people in Bozeman, Montana how nice it has been to have their population boom as west coasters moved in over the past 5 years. Nevermind the kids on the rez who were never going to be able to afford so much as a tent off their tribal land.
Rent control and such isn't the answer but holy shit is this inflation thing killing the middle class and under.
Same. 3 kids and while my wife makes things to make money for her business at home, it's really mostly me providing. That Explorer lease to save time and a little money turned into a GIANT mill stone around our neck as inflation hit and other costs went up. (I make 60 a year before taxes in Michigan) It's getting heavy out there.
My kids are little too but our budget is 170 a week. Cant be more or else.
If we used the 1980 calculation method, inflation would be around 16% according to Shadowstats.
It really makes me mad when the media says that inflation now is lower than in the Carter years but it’s not using the same calculation method. I’d like to think it’s stupid journalism majors that can’t do simple math, but it’s more likely that they know what they are doing, carrying the water for Team Brandon.
The breakdown of globalization may help in the long run. Namely the American continents are more or less self-sufficient and not competing with the planet's top echelon for real estate would be a real change.
If we Americans wanted to, I mean REALLY wanted to, we could kick out every non-native-born person inside our borders, put up a wall around CONUS and be our own self-sufficient world.
We're the only country with the necessary combination of size, population, non-militarily-threatening neighbors, natural resources and geographic isolation to pull it off.
One big problem with that is that NONE of us are native to this land in origin. We or our families all came from somewhere else relatively recently. I’m a white guy and I was born in Kenya. My brother was born in Thailand and my mom was born in Paraguay. My grandparents were all born in Russia, but their parents or grandparents were from Germany originally, or at least what we call Germany today. I can’t honestly say that I’m a native Kenyan any more than my Opa could say he was a native Russian.
Even First Peoples supposedly migrated here from Asia, so how do you go about determining who stays or who goes?
The reality is that civilizations are built on conquest, and white folk have been the most successful conquerors in recent history. When we arrived in North America, the people who were here were the most successful conquerors of other peoples before them.
It’s not going to end here either. It’s quite possible that the day of the white dude is done and some other unsympathetic group will take over for the next couple of hundred years. That’s assuming the human race isn’t wiped off the face of the earth by some cataclysmic event self created or otherwise.
Sorry to finish on such a dark note, but just had to comment!
Fair enough. If you're the third born-here generation, you're Native Born.
That doesn't mean we have to invite everyone in an inverse invasion or allow our border to be porous. That's what citizens* be mad about.
*some
America used to be a machine for making more Americans out of immigrants. I'd like to get that functionality back.
It exists, but is being steadily quashed by special interests.
This is true, in theory.
Addendum: conquer Greenland when
With any luck, the recent negative 60 wind chills will prompt more than a few of those unwelcomed transplants to skeedaddle.
Oh but they just stay indoors, order things to be dropped off at their doors, and telecommute.... why should they leave? (It's causing a lot of issues. I only had to sit for 5 minutes in Billings to hear conversations about how much things are going downhill. Can't get too bad though. Most of Montana has guns!)
And the ones staying in the cushy hotels being overrun were bitching because they were being fed turkey sandwiches on the taxpayers’ dole instead of their usual staple of rice and beans! 🙄
This will change. Couple things, easy money is over. In cities that meant you had a lot of folks flipping dubious properties on the assumption of 20% seasonal appreciation. A good deal of this was private equity. That's drying up. We are about to hit an asset glut extending beyond real estate. Boomers own everything and are about to die and when they do their estates will flood the market. More assets than buyers = lower prices.
This. It's amazing don't recognize a bubble when they see it. We could easily see a 2008/9 again, perhaps worse as rates rise.
I read everything from it's gonna be fine (this is the mainstream push so auto-doubt) to we're due for a generational crunch.
I'm clueless and just sticking 3x5s to a dart board to see what pops up.
Ah yes, the soft landing.
There are millions of immigrants coming every year, legal and illegal. Their main job is to shore up those asset prices. Some of them will do “jobs Americans won’t” for wages Americans won’t accept, but guess what? Their kids will be Americans. That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
I was in Bozeman in 2018 for work. The vendor that I went to meet with was full of multi-generation Montanans, a good group of guys. Even though they themselves had cushy "tech" jobs, they were leery about the money moving into the state (rightfully so). I looked at working for them, but didn't want to make any moves until I finished grad school.
Went back in December 2021 for a vacation. Even within that short window, you could see a lot of change. Real estate values, as you noted, went through the roof. The old rancher who was running the outfitter we signed up with was considering moving to Michigan, of all places. He said the UP reminded him of what Montana used to be.
I always thought if I got here or past this on my own I’d have “made it” and was ‘rich’. Never did I ever expect to be more wrong. I don’t have kids, live in the bottom of the modest Midwest and have no idea how some families are getting by or own the things they do.
It’s a crippling thought as that kind of single income range here is far above norm. Let’s go Brandon.
Using Star Trek TNG analogy here, current AI is basically Lt Cmdr Data. He gets the job done, pretty decent officer. Just doesn't get CONTEXT. Context in his case, is the emotion chip created by Noonien Soong. Big tech and investors are looking for and trying to make, that emotion chip.
Somebody once said that Data was the most positive and sympathetic portrayal of autism ever seen on TV.
Between him and Lt. Barclay...
Barclay wasn't autistic, he was scared to death.
He was actually pretty awesome when the aliens supercharged his brain.
It's not AI. It's basically 'expert systems' - a LOT of 'if-than' statements and nothing else.
It's a lot more akin to the Food Replicator that needs explicit instructions and can't handle any edge cases at all.
She said”Porsh” a lot. Like it was on purpose…
A quick YouTube search hasn't yielded a contemporary German car pronunciation video, so I'll let her off the hook. To anyone willing to listen, assume every letter in German is said out loud, few exceptions notwithstanding.
I just pronounce it "Beetle"
Five Guys doesn't have anything on Shake Shack. We dropped in there for the first time on Saturday. Two burgers, two fries, a soft drink, and a shake came out to just under $50.
We were stuck ordering via a kiosk because most of the workers were too busy singing/dancing or sleeping in a booth to man the register. The card reader wasn't working on the kiosk we used. I entered everything into a second kiosk and we proceeded to wait 15 mins for the food to roll out.
Tastes are subjective, but I thought the food was terrible. We could've gotten burgers from Hyde Park directly across the street for $50, or paid half that and gotten something better from Steak 'n Shake.
As I get older, the more I commiserate what D-Fens was going through. If my Shake Shack experience is what fast food is going to look like going forward, I suspect that there will be some pushback (to put it mildly).
Amen. The instapot has been a life saver for making legit clean chicken needle soup in 25 minutes tops. Great for the whole family and feeds them for days rather than a single meal.
Convenience is part of it.
Being perpetually overbooked, whether you're working two McJobs to make ends or you're a vice president doing 18 hours a day of meetings and email, is the new normal.
Also most poor people no longer live in an environment where they can adequately prepare food. In many cases it would be stolen right out of their pantries.
Just hide the food behind the books.
Yes. "Thieves."
In addition to theft, the cost of rent in a lot of places means putting more people in an apartment/house. That means less fridge space per person, and more chance of someone using the stove when you need it. If you can wait for your roommate to get done cooking dinner after you just pulled a double you're a better man than I am.
People who steal food (i have the good fortune of knowing some) typically go for the dirty. Ie. Robbing delivery trucks, breaking into stores or plain old shoplifting. Retail workers are very likely to let your ass walk on out without confrontation, and you already know they have goods, so a b&e at a residence is a very high risk to reward ratio.
Seriously, people aren't addicted to fast food because they're worried that if they prepare food at home they'll be raided by hungry mobs.
A little forethought, and a change in consumption standards goes a long way. Meal planning can be easy and cheap with a change in habits. We feed a family of 4 on a modest budget, practically never eat out, and both my wife and I work long hours. Skipping a few meals here and there wouldn't hurt most of us either.
Being busy as a status symbol is the natural result of easy credit, because you need SOMETHING to show how wonderful you are in a world where poor people can have a Mercedes.
I made a point of refusing to let work interfere with eating. Like why am I even here then?
"I'm the bad guy?"
Well, in other Midwest news, Big Boy still seems like Big Boy, so there's that at least. And for three adult meals and two children's meals we got out of there for only a little more than $50, including the tip. I guess that's not exactly a fast food restaurant anymore, but at least no one was singing and dancing and the food wasn't terrible.
My go to quick/cheap takeout meal when we're not cooking (and we DO cook, the vast majority of the time) is my local Chinese place. Large order of mixed lo mein (chicken/pork/shrimp), large order of general tso's and fried rice, comes to about $23 and it's something like 3lbs of food that we eat for two meals and I still have leftovers to take to work. And I'd rank it solidly ahead of anything from a fast food burger place on both taste and quality (and arguably nutrition).
My local spot seems to somehow have dodged inflation(???). Conversely the local chinese buffet went from $7.41 with tax and a drink pre-covid to $13 now under new hispanic ownership. To their credit the food is somewhat fresher than it was before.
How is the local squirrel population looking?
Not many stray cats, either.
The "chicken on a stick" staple at generic chinese buffets has always been suspicious looking to me.... (and great tasting)
Don't laugh. Eastern greys are tasty. I've definitely prepared squirrel from the bush behind my place for a wild game dinner we had at my place. Everyone asked for seconds.
Ok, that got a gut laugh out of me
Search 'sewer oil' or 'gutter oil'.
We have a Big Boy nearby that opened up ~5 years ago. I used to consider it overpriced, but the place is a downright value compared to even some Coney Islands (diner for you non Michigan folk) I've been to recently. The place is always spotless and service excellent. There are few "regular" restaurants locally that have consistently good food and service, Big Boy is one of them.
I've given up on the idea of getting a decent Shake Shack meal, largely because the employees as a whole are the lowest function group of people I've encountered outside fiction.
And right here you answer why corps are automating as fast as they can. If McD's could get a full crew to show up everyday and actually take care of the customers, they would be happy to pay $15-20 an hour. Instead for that pay they get people who call off 4-5 times a month and are late more often that not.
Crinkle fries man, that's why you put up with them, the crinkle fries.
Rally's/Checker's fries are the superior fry.
Back when I was bulking, I was struggling to get to 200lbs. I lamented that every asshole in America weighed 200+ on accident.
Then I inspected my diet and realized that even if I was eating chic fil a, it was just sandwiches and nuggets.
So for the finally of my bulk I would eat multiple sandwiches, large fries and a milkshake. I would even go out for ice cream some times. Not good for my health, and the weight gain was a bit too dirty, but damn were the pumps juicy.
I can rather easily crest 200 if I let myself, a bit too easily in fact (for reference I'm 5'11"). When I'm doing serious lifting (forever chasing the 315 benchpress it seems, nearly got it last summer before an injury) I'll hit up the aforementioned chinese buffet at least once a week, as well as the takeout chinese place. Built By General Tso. Conversely when cutting weight, boy that is a struggle and the only way to keep myself honest and on-track is to count those damn calories.
Counting is a great habit. At least until you get an idea of what’s in the food you eat.
One of my easiest cuts was after that. I didn’t really count calories but I did the same thing every day. Intermittent fast, 2 sirloins, 6 eggs, CrossFit. Dropped 25lbs in months and measured 15% at 175lbs.
My most effective dieting was likewise going super low carb. My lunches for several months were "deconstructed" cold cuts (deli meat and cheese), hardboiled eggs, sardines and pickles for lunch. The monotony sucked but was also easy to plan/pack. In fact I'm tempted to get back into that here in the new year. Have dabbled in intermittent fasting (without too much luck to be honest) and some occasional 24 hr fasts, which I actually did okay with. The mental focus and alertness that comes with fasting is something I enjoy.
I am excellent at cutting and poor at bulking (and gaining raw muscle mass) so I've been trying a dirty bulk (just unrestricted eating, usually keep a fairly clean diet) and we'll see.
Shake shack is crazy overrated. Five Guys is definitely better
My one Shake Shack visit at the prodding of my SO, was near identical to yours. However, I had the added bonus that they were unable to make SHAKES that day for whatever reason. Needless to say, I was unimpressed and will not return. Just like the time I went to Arby's and they were out of ROAST BEEF. I feel if your establishment is based on one particular thing, you should make sure you NEVER run out of that thing.
Waiting patiently for the RodneyGPT x a2m Repairman crossover
Better idea: Call it RodneyBot and have Netflix produce three seasons of it.
Is Cinemax not a thing any more?
Skinemax.
"You taped over our wedding video with softcore CABLE PORN?!"
slightly scrambled softcore cable porn
Check the tracking!
Then the sons come upon the remains of the wedding video decades later after it had been converted to another format.
“Damn, Mom was a hottie!”
Talk about an Oedipus complex! 😬
It would feature Black dudes nailing white girls which let's face it is 69% of Netflix content now
I'll take your word for it, I suspended Netflix circa 2020 and was not the primary consumer in any case.
69%? I hear Beavis and Butt-Head laughing right now.
Jack, you know I’m sort of a “Digital Pimp” these days, so let’s make it happen and monetize it!
If the goal of AI research is to produce an artificial person, in the sense of a sapient being, then they're boned.
You can't make a copy of something if you don't know how it works, or even WHAT IT IS. And we have no idea what human consciousness is. I think it's the soul, but that's just me.
The pikes must be together by the rising of the moon.
An equally (if not more) important reason we don't see 10 ft roaches is that they don't have lungs and their "blood" does not carry oxygen, so oxygen has to get to through their bodies by diffusion. The larger they get, the lower the surface to volume ratio gets, and the more difficult it becomes to get oxygen throughout. A potentially interesting aside (on a blog that seems to relish in them).
True... and presumably the "evolve lungs" path that worked for other creatures didn't produce desired results for them. Which is ALSO interesting: what about roaches prevent them from evolving? Or did they evolve into something too different to be seen as a roach?
They wear suits and you refer to them as, "Representative or Senator."
Brilliant!
Yeah, or "The Defendant."
No, it is your Honor.
You know what? You're right.
Unfortunately the grading expectations in law school went something like this but there were a few exceptions:
A - Big Law 150k out of school
B - Federal paper pusher job , state or federal legislative job or academia
C - Private practice or hanging out a shingle and after 5-7 years 200k plus hiring the A students after they burned out of Big Law to work for you.
D - Prosecutors and Public Defenders
F - Judge - elected official
Has proven pretty accurate
So accurate
There’s been news from the world of archaeology lately wherein it’s claimed that 50,000 year old stone tools found in the jungles of South America were in fact produced by capuchin monkeys.
These tools had previously been thought to have been produced by humans, thus upending the current theory of the way in which the Americas were populated.
This raises several questions:
A. How come capuchin monkeys evolved to be just smart enough to make the same kind of tools as ancient humans and then just cooled it with the whole evolving thing?
B. How many of the other archaeological sites taken to be human settlements based on stone tools were in fact those of apes? I’m looking at you here, Olduvai Gorge.
C. Did you know that apes are supposed to have settled South America from Africa on, get this, floating mats of vegetation. Twice.
The record of archeology as a discipline vs. say Graham Hancock is 55/45 AT BEST.
When will the savings from free pyramid energy generation show up on my ComEd bill?
Savings? What savings? Al Gore needs all that free pyramid energy to fly his private jet.
I spent a fair amount of my time in college around professors who were students of Wm Foxwell Allbright, pretty much the dean of biblical archeology. They seemed to be serious scholars, though some of them had kind of a thing for the Documentary Hypothesis. In the field, biblical archeology seems to be split between those who want to disprove the Bible and those who want to prove that it's historically accurate. A good example was a pottery fragment found with the phrase (in Hebrew, which is consonental) "bt dvd". Some said it should be read Beit David (the house of David) and cited it as proof that King David actually existed while skeptics said it is Beit Dod (uncle's house).
While camping in the UP Bat and I took the kids to an active dig at an abandoned town site. Archeologists apparently love outhouses and latrines.
BTW, if anyone wants to volunteer on a dig: https://www.friendsofiaa.org/volunteer
Most archaeologists are serious scholars, you are correct. The problem is that they are working with miniscule sample sizes, the data is full of noise, the interpretation is very subjective (and subject to bias from whatever social science trend is prevailing), and it's not really science in the classical definition of being repeatable because excavating the site utterly destroys it. But its the only way to study human history beyond the written record so you do the best you can with it.
That being said, I'm fascinated by biblical archaeology. The fellow who discovered this often gives presentations at my church https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/mt_ebal_inscription/. It may be evidence of Joshua's altar.
Former archaeologist here (my career was in ruins!). You are 100% correct.
Is that why the only tools you need to do it are a bullwhip and a revolver?
And the hat!
Yes, of course! How did I miss that?
That certainly makes it different from religion, which is 100% made up shit.
I always ask atheists “where are the atheist hospitals”?
"Man is a spiritual being. He needs to believe in something larger than himself. Historically, that something has been a God or gods. But if man's faith in God is destroyed, he will replace it with something else. Too often, that something else has been a manmade god called the State, and untold crimes have been commited in its name."
- Rush Limbaugh
I think we’re seeing that now!
Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Fairly often the "why" is made up but the "what" is just an OS for a functional society.
Natural Law principles wrapped up in fables.
It's not God with whom I have a problem, it's godmen.
There is supposed to be some institutional conspiracy to deny any evidence of humans in the Americas earlier than 15000 years ago or so.
Undermines teaching the evil of manifest destiny, probably
"Did you know that apes are supposed to have settled South America from Africa on, get this, floating mats of vegetation. Twice."
based monkeys
"FUCK AFRICA." -- the apes
Nah. She just wanted a beachfront house that her female friends would envy her for. She was too dumb, and her male ape rather relieved when it turned out to be a floating mat of vegetation.
Is that the same ape that figured out crabs were edible because his wife tried to feed him salad?
I don't buy the ape theory for minute and neither should these hidebound idiots because eventually you compress modern humanity to the point where God or aliens MUST get involved.
Their social justice mission means that there can't be evidence of "Firster Peoples" before "First Peoples" because if there were you couldn't use the First Peoples as a cudgel with which to beat the living shit out of poor white people in everything from land rights to college admissions.
My favorite analogy is that evolution being the mechanism that produced man is less likely than a tornado ripping through a junkyard and leaving behind a fully-functional 747.
Holy fuck! Amen brother!
You mean Siberian-Americans?
Charlton Heston didn’t agree that the monkeys “just cooled it with the whole evolving thing”.
I’m hopeful that I have just used a reference that lots of folks reading this will have to look up. Ha! My turn!
By the way, “just cooled it with the whole evolving thing” is a wonderful turn of phrase.
Monsieur Boulle also wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai. No one trick pony, he.
Who ever he is, he probably wasn’t born at the time
Maybe lungs are the inferior form of respiration?
Maybe not. With gills, we would have to deal with predators in three axes — versus predominantly two axes on terra firma.
roaches evolved into Keith Richards and Lemmy Kilmister. I mean, they are - well, were, in Lemmy's case - as hard to kill as roaches...
Well put; I really learned something falling down the square-cube law rabbit hole. Those sorts of pearls in the narrative (and the ensuing discussions here) are what keeps me coming back.
Familiar with the square-cube law and he usually loses me immediately upon any cultural references outside of some small time slices.
Almost never get his musical references because I am a musical caveman.
I get most of the references but this big vocabulary kid has to look up about 1.7 words per post.
I’ve always had a well-developed vocabulary, and I’ve been stumped several times here and on RG.
As I was driving my 12 year old to Micro Center last night, we had this conversation about ChatGPT nearly verbatim. He was excitedly telling me about how he wrote a hook into the API to generate images from entering a query from a Python script, just as a proof on concept. I was trying very hard to convey to him how it was mostly smoke and mirrors bullshit, and really just a machine learning pattern-matching algo, without dampening his enthusiasm for tech in general. I want to hand him my phone to read this post, though I am considering perhaps copy/pasting it sans the blowjob bit. I like to maintain the illusion that we've preserved a bit of his innocence, even in the internet era.
I should publish a Children's Version of this site... that's not sarcasm.
You could call it, "For God's Sake, Do As I Say, Not As I Do!"
Or, "Don't tell your mother about this..."
This line is how you get your toddler to tell your wife about something.
LMAO
It would be required reading in my household!
The Dangerous Substack For Boys. I’ll do the SpudGun blueprints.
I can handle the tutorials on how to make ninja weapons out of broom handles and electrical tape.
Ah, my misspent youth.
It would be required reading around here. FWIW a separate URL would be preferable to just marking child safe articles so I can let them loose without having to worry about them coming across any ridiculous jargon, shocking sexual audacity, [or] repulsive images of the ghetto.
Hey now, this is ACF, not your public library!
My heart soared when I read that quote.
This is something I can probably do... along with First Principles, it will keep me busy in the months to come.
I like it. The wisdom of adults, in a form appropriate for children.
But how are you going to Bowdlerize the eternal truth that sometimes, you gotta throw a bitch down a flight of stairs?
Does anyone work long term at your Micro Center? Even when I'm buying something cheap there, like a cable, I have a salesperson slap their commission sticker on it because I feel for them. That must be a terrible place to work. On the other hand, prices are pretty cheap there. I was picking up a couple of cables just before Christmas and they were selling Asus laptops for $100 and I needed something compact to operate my laser.
It's funny you should say that, I actually worked there 15 years ago or so, and as I was driving I was thinking it was kind of sad that there would no longer be anyone I know there. Lo and behold, I actually did run into an old coworker who still did it as a second job all these years later. It was not actually a bad gig, for retail - I made good money working in the Build Your Own dept, since I had a modicum of charisma and wasn't an autistic weirdo. Sell a gaming build or two a day and you were making a decent living. The real money was in the MC warranties they sold - at the time they would specifically cover damage from overclocking, which was insane and a very easy sell to most of the kids building PCs. I can't imagine they still do that - the moral hazard involved probably cost them a fortune. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted talk on MC employment. I still miss that place sometimes, but alas, my then girlfriend of 4 months, now wife, ended up pregnant so I had to go find work more conducive to supporting a family. Got an office job, gained 40lbs over the last 15 years. 0/10, do not recommend.
Hahaha!
The problem is, we've imported so many low IQ morons and turned our schools into conditioning and indoctrination centers, that few people are even equipped to notice the difference.
I ran across Rick Beato video this morning about how Auto-Tune ruined modern music and why that'll end up with no one recognizing AI created music because so many have already been trained to accept the suck.
Ah but I think the opposite will happen. You always have a larger group accepting "pop" music. But, once people recognize and understand that someone is a fake, it does have an effect and makes them less popular. Otherwise, why would lip syncing be so bad? I think we're going to see a huge turn away from what is considered to be fake art.
On the other hand, you have the Vocaloids in Japan who are completely fake "pop singers" who exist solely as pixels complete with computer voices who are popular (depressingly so) with younger audiences. They get an immense amount of views on youtube and, even though they're one of the few things in my life I desperately wish I could un-experience, for people who grow up with fakeness of this magnitude I don't know if it matters at all, especially when it seems to be the whole point. Milli Vanilli couldn't get away with it because they weren't supposed to be fake. But there's nothing real about the Vocaloids and they've found a substantial audience...
They've found an audience for now. I do not believe any of that stuff sticks. I grew up with tons of 90s stuff. Can't say I have an appreciation for boy bands any more now than I did in 1997. Doesn't mean there isn't a song here or there that anyone could like. It's just that fads such as these go through cycles where they burn out. It's not so different than capeshit where Marvel overdid every bit of CGI to the point of making something like Andor appear to be incredibly high art. Now, Andor uses CGI but it uses way, way more props and locations than what other lazier shows did. And, as such, it has a much more timeless look. (It was too long a show with tons of Disney Plus padding FYI)
The pendulum always swings back. Always. Things don't stay the same and that includes something like "oh look at this AI created painting I had made".
A good example of THAT is how quickly NFTs went from new hotness to absolute trash. They were always trash, but the perception changed nearly overnight.
I'll give the Japanese points for cultural superiority here. Their pop music has idol singers, which are obvious constructs that convey innocence and beauty.
Whereas we Americans idolize authentic practitioners of hideously destructive lifestyles.
I still can't listen to them, but they are cute.
The next wave of virtual singers are just idol groups in anime haha
I had this discussion with my friend the other day though, and we both agreed the Japanese do seem to cherish femininity much more than the west though
Isn't there one group that has like 50 girls in it? Like a Wu-Tang Clan for idol singers?
I'm not just HOPING you are right, I'm PRAYING you are right!
Salmon in the river is ludicrously funny. If salmon were a sentient species it would ask “Why is it pink?!?”
If this "AI" shit has been good for anything, it has been some SERIOUS laughs. I definitely was distracted at work for a good two weeks pumping humorous prompts out of dall-e mini on a second monitor after it released.
Apparently I picked the wrong specialty: "They need to be as smart as junior sysadmins, a job which currently pays $80-120k."
Doesn't Chipotle do centralized cooking/processing, this reads like an extension of that with the limitations of not having humans who can build an order to order "The food can be prepared centrally; you’ll still need people but the economies of scale are much greater. And then you automate the delivery, with one fellow in a van driving around solving problems in dilatory fashion like today’s ATM repairman."
They're a nightmare of rotten food and disease which makes me uncomfortable with this thought.
I was listening* to someone who noted that the high value processors are made in the US or allied countries and our IoGT (internet of garbage things) are outsourced. Which do modern manufacturing robots run on (I assume old process nodes but don't know for certain)? The automat model is understandable and more believable than the alternative given the complexities surrounding robot arm control and not getting it into unworkable situations which is surprisingly easy if I remember what I was reading about it right.
*I know, I know
Ugh Chipotle. The local news doesn't even bother to report now on their food poisoning cases.
The lesson here is don't franchise.
On my way home from ISP in Waterford yesterday (with PCBs and licensing ageement in hand, huzzah, just 3, but it's a start) I drove by a Mexican restaurant in Pontiac named Trini & Carmen's. It amazes me that they're still in business. My ex and I had a running joke, "Trini & Carmen's? I've heard of them, let's go there for dinner." People remember hearing about the place but they don't remember why, one of the worst outbreaks of food related illness (botulism from canned jalapeno peppers) in American history: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/05/archives/michigan-botulism-cases-up-to-35-restaurant-is-sued-by-a-victim.html
The robot is probably running on something made here, but it also cost $250k in 2003 and is still running Windows XP.
All of the sensors monitoring the robot are COTS garbage (repurposed Pi or similar) with overpriced support contracts.
These two things make it a giant pain in the dick to secure anything properly. Actually, the XP is the easy part. Expecting third-party support to be both timely and competent is where things fall short.
Well back in 2003, a combat first lieutenant made $2515/month base pay. Tax free, aw yeah.
Much more than my father earned in Vietnam but I get the impression he had a slightly freer hand in stacking bodies.
"...I learned a thing or two from Charlie (Haji), don't you know?"
Copperhead Road!
The great Steve Earle.
Yeah, that was back before "professionalism" became a zero-defect mentality.
You can't keep your hands clean in war and expect to win.
Oh just you wait... Sometime around the March or April timeframe, the US Army, as the anointed joint proponent for DoD, will be talking a lot about organizing and building a Civilian Harm Mitigation Center of Excellence. The DoD already issued a public press release regarding a Civilian Harm Mitigation Action Plan back in AUG. The planning is surprisingly level-headed at the moment, all things considered, but it can and probably will go off the rails real fucking quick. Probably after the civilian director is hired.
I think you told me your dad as a FAO. Not many assignments in Vietnam were more dangerous than that, perhaps Wild Weasels and Tunnel Rats.
He was ALSO a tunnel rat!
And he applied to be a medevac chopper pilot for another tour, but that's when he found out he was too color-blind to fly.
But he could tell the difference between a VC and a well-disciplined VC, right?
in the early '50s the new turner turnpike tulsa-okc had the complete spread: howard johnson's restaurants, 2 on each side plus one in the middle, on this 88-mile stretch, where you could get a bone-in strip steak cooked to order. along with their 29?? flavors of ice cream. off the southern end of the turnpike, a mile or 2 away, was a coin-operated large selection of canned food, which you could heat in an oven on site. for fun i tried it 3 times; saw 1 other person there. it went away in about a year. the publicity for this futuristic idea was all over the newspapers. the hojos lasted for quite a few years but of course they're now mcds plus some other stuff. they were all gas stations too of course.
The odd social trajectory of Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn deserves some sort of book. Both of them are seriously expensive now to the point where you have to have Holiday Inn Express!
One of the best breakfasts I've ever had was at an on-site diner at an old HoJo's outside of Flagstaff Arizona. If all on-site diners could pump out chorizo and green chile omelettes like that, you'd see them come back into style faster than that omelette worked its way through my lower intestine.
I wish I had gotten into the handicap lift business whenever that scam was mandated. HoJo fun fact Howard (I think it was Bud, not the original) hired the great Jacques Pépin to design and scale the menu.
Would love to see stats on how frequently the lifts are used. I'm guessing the vast majority have never been touched since the day they were installed.
8 days inn and motel 6 were originally named after their prices...rather long ago
My HoJo memory is staying at one in college, 25-ish years ago, having a small party on about the third floor. For some reason, the windows at this one opened. A homeless guy in the alley next to the hotel took issue with our noise level, and hurled a rock up at the widow and hit my buddy's girlfriend, who was standing at the window, in the arm.
My buddy, who was able to solve a problem and action it at about the rate of The Culture, in one move, swung his girlfriend out of the way, dropped his pants, hung his ass out the window, and took a dump. You see, he had noticed that there was a piece of plywood leaned up against the hotel, under our window, at a 45 degree angle. His turds hit the plywood and shot away at a right angle and hit the homeless guy right in the chest.
In a million years I'll never see anything like that again.
Hahaha!
28.