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bolverk

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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. One of my more conspiratorial friends sent me a YouTube clip last night in which the vlogger said that a giant AI data center to help rulle over the country was being built beneath the actual ballroom, based on the donor list, which includes Ellison and a bunch of the other techlords, along with the names of the contractors and the new architect and the types of projects they’ve done, as well as many of the infrastructure upgrades (water/power) currently being done in DC. I told her I didn't fully buy the notion, but I could see them using the ballroom as an opportunity to build some kind of bunker, or whatever, under it.
  2. I'm not familiar with that essay. Do you mind posting it? Obviously, I don't want to derail this thread, so if you do start another thread about it, I'd be happy to read it there.
  3. Good chance I missed it if it was a poster I've got on ignore.
  4. Just depends on what kind of organization you work with. There's more to it than the job application stuff, but that's what most can relate with. Most of my career has been in publicly facing roles that involve significant community input, including economic development, downtown revitalization, historic preservation, and other planning-related projects. So, on that kind of stuff, you want to get as many perspectives as possible. Say, for example, you're working on a downtown revitalization plan, and the group you're working with is folks from the community, but they're all white people who live in the nice neighborhoods on the edge of town. They love their little downtown, but they don't actually shop there much, except for that nice restaurant on the corner or that cute little boutique a couple of doors down. Sometimes, what they're really just interested in is preserving the buildings: a community pride thing. Then you start running some numbers or look around and see that the neighborhoods are populated by Black or Hispanic (potential customers who can conveniently shop downtown), but they've never been invited to the downtown revitalization table to provide their input. Well, from a market demand standpoint, it's kind of idiotic not to include them, but somehow it never dawned on the white folks to get their ideas. Getting them involved is essentially DEI. The same could be said for internal operations. Maybe there's a committee or something, planning I-don't-know-what within your very large organization, but everyone at the table is from a single demographic group. Well, that's kind of dumb. You should want a diversity of perspectives. I don't claim to be an expert on all this, but really, that's the kind of thing that might go beyond just casting a wider net for talent recruitment, like, say, holding a job fair at a Historically Black College or University or a Hispanic-Serving Institution, for example.
  5. Man, I wish I could give this more than one +rep. Empathy might just be one of the evolutionary superpowers that helped us survive as a species when we were all just little tribes of wanderers, having to look out for one another. If only people could just keep extending that empathy a little farther out, we might actually get somewhere.
  6. We're easily distracted by other shit like music, movies, sports, etc., but I won't criticize. It's possible the veil wouldn't have been lifted for me either had I not been fortunate enough to see my own country from afar over an extended period, through the lens of another people, as an exchange student when I was a teenager. Maybe I was already prepped a little bit, because my dad was a history teacher. As a result, my favorite subjects were almost always the social sciences and stuff like that: geography, history, social studies, etc., which may have been reinforced by the fact that I was adopted and always curious about my ancestral roots.
  7. I agree 100% with all that, but here's the thing. Many of the Mediocre Mikes of America are absolutely confused about what it is. They think DEI is the same thing as affirmative action. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had to explain to...wait for it...my buddy Mike that DEI is essentially an outreach thing, not a quota thing or even a hiring-preference thing. It just means casting a wider net to capture potential candidates from groups that aren’t traditionally considered for interviews in job applications. He's just fed a constant stream of bullshit from Fox and all the weirdo podcasts he listens to while driving his truck around the oil patch. His response was "Well, I guess that's alright." He's not a bad dude, just poorly informed. The same goes for the whole CRT thing. They don’t realize it basically means to recognize "institutionalized racism" exists, a term that olds like us have always known. I'm not sure what he thought it meant, because he couldn't define it. And, again, I said as much to him, and he was all like, "Oh." I'm pretty sure that's why all the conservative commentators use these vague, jargony academic initialisms rather than what the shit actually means. And I understand, because I fucking hate it when people start using alphabet-soup speak as if I would know what the hell shit like EMBM means. Sure, it's a great shortcut if you know what it means, but most people don't, so it's an automatic turnoff to the uninitiated.
  8. I can't even imagine why he'd bring it up in the first place if "it ain’t the reason you’re seeing that many less fewer [births] though."
  9. @Craftywidget @Rudy Rutabaga Impressive deducing! Wordle 1,644 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ πŸŸ¨β¬›β¬›β¬›β¬› β¬›β¬›πŸŸ©β¬›πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #922 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1425 4️⃣8️⃣ 7️⃣5️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/
  10. Buddy of mine just posted this to a group text. Watch the ref. VID_20251218_225639.mp4
  11. It was a different time, place, and political environment, but I'm reminded of the mid-1990s when the GOP governor of California (Wilson?) went all-in on the immigrant hate stuff with help from the state assembly, of course, which really pissed off the state's Latino community. Someone can certainly correct me, but if I recall correctly, California Hispanics at the time had been much more willing to give Republicans a shot at the ballot box before all of that. I want to say that I read some voting analysis a while back that once California Latinos turned their back on the GOP after all that anti-immigrant stuff and never looked back, that was the moment California began its shift to the solidly blue state we think of today.
  12. I feel the same about Hungary. She looks disgusted, but also a bit bemused. I bet she's into some really kinky shit.
  13. I think the appeal lies in their being composites that create facial symmetry and smooth out (erase?) any signs of deformity, illness, idiosyncratic shit, other particulars, etc. Plus, the "models" are all supposedly the same young age (youth has its own inherent beauty), and I have no idea how they were selected or how many faces were used in each composite. Also, there aren't any fatties because there aren't any Americans. Are we still giving out grants to academics? Because I'd happily volunteer to update this study to replicate its findings, for the science, of course.
  14. This was done about 12 years ago. It includes many of the countries y'all are arguing about and figured it'd be good for some Surly science. FaceResearch.org has published the results of a recent experiment where experimental psychologists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have combined the faces of women around to world to approximate the "average face" of each country. Using a modern version of the technique that Sir Francis Galton pioneered in the 1800's, multiple images of faces are aligned and composited together to form the final result. https://fstoppers.com/portraits/average-faces-women-around-world-2944?page=2
  15. IndeedπŸ’―
  16. Wordle 1,643 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ πŸŸ©β¬›πŸŸ¨β¬›β¬› πŸŸ©πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #921 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1424 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/
  17. Wordle 1,642 3/6 πŸŸ¨β¬›πŸŸ©β¬›β¬› β¬›β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ©πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #920 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1423 9️⃣8️⃣ 6️⃣5️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/
  18. If aggy had any say at all, Texas Tech wouldn't even exist as a university. Texas fans can get all haughty about shit, but they've never been "genocidal" when it comes to West Texans getting edumacated.
  19. Kinda looks like a Hook'em. Wordle 1,641 4/6 πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›β¬›πŸŸ© πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›β¬›πŸŸ© πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨πŸŸ¨β¬›πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #919 πŸŸͺ🟦🟦πŸŸͺ 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ 🟦🟦🟦🟦 πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1422 6️⃣8️⃣ 4️⃣5️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/
  20. Hahaha! Please, tell me this was intentional, I miss the days when conspiracies were fun, like the mysterious spate of unexplained spontaneous combustions plaguing the nation back in the 1980s. It always seemed to happen to people living in trailer parks for some inexplicable reason. πŸ€”
  21. Growing up in West Texas, I basically saw Clovis, Hobbs, Portales, and Lovington as extensions of West Texas with yellow license plates. All of them are still on the Llano Estacado. New Mexico, at least to me, doesn't really take hold until you cross the Pecos into Carlsbad or Roswell. And that meanness you describe seems characteristic of small towns across that region. Where'd you go to high school?
  22. Wordle 1,640 3/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ β¬›πŸŸ©β¬›β¬›πŸŸ¨ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #918 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ 🟩🟩🟩🟩 πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1421 5️⃣7️⃣ 4️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/
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