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atomheartbevo

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Everything posted by atomheartbevo

  1. Probably. Liz Cheney ain't evolving any time soon - she wants to see the GOP burn down and then be there to pick up the pieces and rebuild it in her father's image, whereas Kinzinger has a lot going for him and could easily evolve and continue his political career and not be stuck in the past.
  2. I worked at a large tech company 20 years ago, and we were building out servers to help speed up grocery store data collection, and the amount of transactions we were working towards nation-wide was insane. My little group was working to speed things up to where custom coupons would be printed in real-time with the receipt, where the coupons would be based on what the person had shown a tendency to purchase over time, in order to bring them back to the store. As the person is checking out and items are being scanned, the servers were looking at all of the person's transactions for the previous few weeks (it could be set by the chains, but we set it by default to a month or so because any further back and it slowed down the check out process) and the cashiers were told to chat the customers up a bit to buy some time so they wouldn't realize the cashier was waiting on the coupons to print.. The coupons had to be relevant and worthy enough to get the person back, but not go below a certain margin (for profit reasons). One little mistake and the person is getting coupons for things they didn't buy, or bought months ago, or too much of a discount eating into profits too much. In the case where the person didn't have a the discount/member cards, then the coupons were based only now what they had just purchased which could be hit or miss. Ideally, you could see that they bought the same type of cereal every few weeks, so they'd get a coupon for that and want to come back, etc. And coupons varied between people, even for the same items - the chains could program in things like if somebody was from a certain area, maybe the coupon was a little better than for somebody from a better area, etc. It was interesting because at the time, it was mainly about two things - making sure that the customer would come back (personalized coupons), but also data on what they'd just purchased would be sent up the chain and if they bought a box of Fruit Loops, then some schmuck in a warehouse put a box of Fruit Loops on a pallet for a truck headed to the store (or a box was allocated for when they started loading a truck). The idea was that stuff that sold well would always be in stock and it would cut down on warehouses expenses of having stuff sitting around. Just-in-time and all of that. Somewhere along the way the customer data itself became a lot more valuable than simply getting them back in the store with coupons (and later personalized mailers), but it was still up there with keeping warehouse expenses down (and not just the regional warehouses, but the backroom stock of stores).
  3. A VP candidate having fun at the expense of a Trump-supporting woman who nearly killed herself over the moment he's mocking should, in a sane world, lead to a lot of Republican women dumping Trump, especially since she's an anti-vaccine nutcase. But he can't apologize, otherwise it's "Hello Vice Presidential Candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr.".
  4. My youngest is interested in the British royals for whatever reason, and she was asking me about weddings and mentioned Prince William and Princess Catherine. So I went to YouTube. And I found a video. And she thinks this is how their wedding started.
  5. Kamala already said she'd have a Republican in her administration, and I'm guessing Liz wants it pretty bad.
  6. That would imply that they have a plan. They don't. There is no Karl Rove pulling strings and rolling out policies in well-scripted speeches. Trump is just flailing around and everything is about catering to his whims - one moment he wants to spend the day on the shitter sending out truth socials, the next day he's going to some small-ass rally or speech or town hall where he babbles about whatever his stream of conscious is fixated on. And Vance isn't much better - people claim he's sharp, but for somebody with his education, and who was into Wall Street/Silicon Valley tech companies, he's a shit speaker. He can't relate to the very people he claims he was a part of in his younger years, and the moment you toss out a comment like he did about "the haters", you've A) shown that people in the audience got under your skin and B) lost that audience as a result. Anyways, her's another example - DeSanctimonious and the other Florida Republicans are trying so hard to ban abortion completely, and then in walks Donnie Boy trashing all of their work. This is what happens when a candidate completely runs the GOP and has no checks and balances, nobody telling him that he's fucking up or hurting the brand.
  7. 7 people. I have a friend who is still on twitter because that's where his followers are (not Traces of Texas), and he can have a tweet go viral and hit several hundred thousand likes/retweets, and he'll get 20 or 30 new followers out of it, and he might get $20 out of it, because the advertising and what not is absolute shit these days, and the replies fill up with bots and porn spam (his topic is technical in nature, nothing to do with porn). He fucking hates it, but he's struggling to get people over to his Threads or Bluesky accounts (he may not get paid there, but he also has an easier time interacting with people).
  8. That's a twitter user in the year 2024.
  9. It's not just that he's unfunny, it's that he's an asshole with no empathy, who has no idea that when he's shit-talking as a VP candidate, he has no idea what people in the audience are going through. When Walz came up there, he was shaking hands and hugging people, and giving shout-outs to firefighters that he knew, and you could tell that not only was he capable of interacting with human beings, he actually wanted to be there! Fucking Vance never gave off the vibe of wanting to be there, and starting out with the haters comment was the dumbest fucking thing a political candidate could do to a mixed audience. Putting aside that speech, there's been so many times where Vance talks shit (like about the single cat ladies with no kids), and he has no fucking clue about what human beings maybe going through in their lives. And it's not that fucking hard to learn empathy! I had a friend who had some little brat mouth off to him while he was waiting to pick up his kid. The brat had some conflicts in the past with his son over some Minecraft bullshit on some server another kid hosted, but it was dealt with by other parents so my friend never met the brat's parents. Anyways, that little brat made a comment that my friend had a small bald spot. My friend mentioned that he had had the bald spot for many years, and it hadn't changed in all that time, and the little brat responded with something about "you're going to lose all your hair and people won't like you". My friend kept his cool because it was a little kid at a school, and there were parents around. The little brat then said my son would probably be bald in high school, which was the second dumbest fucking thing I had heard that day (Trump had him topped) so still keeping my cool, I just responded quietly with "you know what? your mom doesn't mind my little bald spot at all." The kid got a weird look on his face, thought for a few seconds, and then said "What's that supposed to mean" and I responded with "Ask your mom, but don't ask your dad, just ask your mom, because I know her but I don't know your dad." My thinking was it would confuse him, he might say something to his mom (whom I'd never met) and she might think of somebody else and maybe smile or something, and that would be it. A little joke on my part. Nope, the little shit said something to his dad. A couple of days later, some mish-mash of a dude who was clearly a tech bro but trying to be country, and who had a pair of knock-off Oakleys on top of a Texas Rangers camo ball cap (yeah, he was a fucking Texas Rangers fan) and a wispy little chin beard/goatee, who worked out a little bit, and probably drove a Ford Super Duty that he probably couldn't properly park so he'd park it out in the boonies of Walmart or HEB across a couple of spots,. Anyways, he's asking parents about me, somebody points me out to him, he comes over really angry and had clearly wanted to start something until he saw me and/or realized he was surrounded by other parents and kids getting out of school. He asked about "the nonsense that I told his kid" and I briefly played dumb, but fuck it, I told him that his kid somehow found my bald spot funny, and commented to me about it, and that maybe his kid should mind his own business, or maybe comment about his dad's lack of beard-growing prowess so that his dad could put him in his place and he wouldn't openly insult strangers. I told him that having an unfiltered mouth like that would get him beat up in middle school or high school. He wasn't having any of it and asked me about the comment about his wife. Inside I'm laughing, but I'm playing it straight and said I made a little joke that went over his head, and that clearly the kid didn't like me because he had a conflict with my son over some Minecraft bullshit. I told him that I didn't know the kid's mom and that he should probably teach his son not to mock other people, given his dad can't even grow a real beard. At this point, the Oakley clones are shaking so hard they are about to fall off of that fucking Texas Rangers cap, and that fucking Rangers hat was pissing me off, and the guy quietly said "you're saying you don't know my wife and didn't sleep with her?" and inside I'm like "oh fuck, I'm either about to look like the coolest dad to the other kids, or I may end up looking like a bully to the other parents, or both". I just looked at him and said "if that's what you want me to say, then no, I don't know your wife, and no, I did not sleep with her, and that's the story that we are all agreeing upon, okay?" I confused the fuck out of him, and he just looked at me, and I said "I see your son has a lot of your genes in him, you should be proud" which confused him even more, but inside I'm like "holy fuck, the dad is dumber than the kid." He stands there staring at me for a few seconds, and a few parents noticed, and he grabs his son and walks off. I looked at a couple of parents who were obviously trying to listen in, and I said "remember that Minecraft drama that spilled over into the classroom last year and caused a bunch of the boys to get made at each other? He was asking me about my son's role in it." and the other parents had a look of boredom come over their face and were like "oh yeah" and just tuned me out. I think it's over at this point, but nope, a few days later on Monday, a not-unattractive woman in her 40s that I had never seen before talks to a few parents and then comes over to me after somebody pointed my way. She introduces herself as the little shit's mom and the big shit's husband. I was a bit tongue-tied, and just responded "oh yeah, the Minecraft drama from last year." Her response was (and it was quiet and she dropped an f-bomb) "I don't know what fucking happened here on Tuesday with my son or Thursday with my husband, but you said something that made my husband think we were sleeping together and my son is asking why I like your bald spot, even though we've never met. I think I've seen you just once or twice at school functions. What is going on?" I told her "your son was making a joke about my appearance, and I made a joke in return - I didn't insult him because he's a little kid, but I just thought I'd confuse him and have a chuckle, I thought kids understood jokes about their moms were not literal. I didn't know I was going to meet the whole family." She continued to stare at me, not really in a menacing way, and said "he takes things literally, and thinks I like your bald spot. What am I supposed to tell him or my husband? Because for the last few days, my husband has been staying at his mom's. We were already having problems, because he had to change jobs because he might have cheated on me with his secretary or at least was getting too close to her for his boss's comfort, and we took a hit on our income, and he is now spending too much time with his friends out drinking or watching sports at bars. I'm dealing with some shit and you've managed to escalate things and maybe give him a reason to divorce me if he thinks we are sleeping together." At this point, I'm thinking "oh fuck, I could have wrecked that little brat's life" and I said the first thing that came to mind "so are we going to give your husband a reason to divorce you?" She just stood there looking at me for about 30 seconds, staring holes through me, just as our kids walked up to us. I told mine to go play on the playground and she told her's to go wait by the bike rack and she'd take him out for some ice cream. Thank God she wasn't making a big scene, and oh fuck me, it's after 3am, I need to get to the point of this story. Anyways, the point of this story is that I made a little comment that disturbed a family that I didn't know because some little brat was taking his anger at my son out on me, and I should have just ignored him, and it's caused them some problems, and in the three days since I learned the damage my comment may have caused, I've grown and learned to be empathetic and that maybe a "your mom likes it" joke is not something you should aim at a bratty 11 year-old who takes things literally. J.D. Vance on the other hand, has been the VP nominee for 6 weeks, and he's surrounded by a team of people who should be telling him how to be empathetic towards human beings, and he wrote a book about how un-empathetic people supposedly were to his relatives, but nope, he still can't read a room or consider the weight his comments carry when he trashes other people or other lifestyles.
  10. Can you imagine MAGA freaking out over the idea of Ronald Reagan being good friend Tip O’Neil? Even when things would get heated between them politically, they were still friends “after 6 o’clock” as O’Neil would say. Gingrich rising to power as the Clintons came in wrecked all of that.
  11. And those of us who were in the Army know you have to keep bowls of crayons around so the Marines don’t get too hungry.
  12. If they are paying attention enough to know that abortion is on the ballot and are concerned enough to support it, they most likely know Vance wants to shut it down nationally and that Trump has flip-flopped on it multiple times.
  13. Yeah, I doubt most people list their high school and college jobs on their resumes. Hell, I had a buddy who spent two months at a truck stop giving blow jobs in the shower stalls. It was nothing to be ashamed of outside of being labeled as a sex worker or something, but he still told everybody he was cleaning the shower stalls at the truck stop, and I doubt even the story about cleaning the stalls ended up on his resume.
  14. Did they vote for him because they support him, or because they knew that he and Abbott would carry through on threats to come after them, and that Patrick was taking millions from a pro-Abbott PAC?
  15. Yep, that kind of thinking is the same thinking that thinks "Greg Abbott will respect the wishes of Texans and their legislators when it comes to public education" Meanwhile, Greg Abbott went on a spending and PR spree to try and kick out any Republican legislators who wouldn't do what he said and support public vouchers. He will spend tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of Texas taxpayer money on walls, but he isn't going to touch any of the numerous corporations and individuals in Texas who hire labor that they know is not here legally.
  16. You mean the guy who will work to destroy public education at the drop of a hat because some Pennsylvania TikTok billionaire told him to wouldn’t do that? He absolutely will. Because this is about appealing to MAGA and he’s not trying to dry up the jobs that bring illegal immigrants to Texas in the first place.
  17. https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/abbott-border-barriers-needed-between-new-mexico-texas/ He’s in a fucking wheel chair. Trump will never love him.
  18. They won’t switch to Harris, but they won’t be enthusiastic about voting. If they think she’s gonna win, or if they are in a deep red state, or both, they probably won’t show up. And Trump is out there telling people the election is rigged. If you think the election is rigged, why bother showing up?
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