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Captainant

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Captainant

  1. 2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    If it really was going all out for him, it would have taken the appeal earlier and have granted him immunity by now. 

    This feels like someone saying "well if Tony Brothers really wanted to help them, he would have shaved more points!" No duh it could be worse. It could always be worse. 

    The problem is that it's happening at all, and that it's occurrence is incredibly damaging to the basic concept of a single justice system - not the two tier justice clown fiesta we've been observing for a fucking while now. 

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  2. That's some top tier trolling 52-80, to cherry pick phrases from a post and return to them solely to misrepresent your opposition as a straw man that you can more easily attack. I swear, it's remarkable the extent that you and incredulity and the rest of the surly IDW will lie to yourself and each other about what posters have posted. Fatty still thinks I use tiktok as an authoritative source for info after he read it from the monkeys flinging poo in the business board for chrissakes lol. 

     

    With your 3rd bullet point, you're just simply accusing your opposition of doing what your "side" is actively doing, and trying to take away women's autonomy. There's active debate on several state legislatures about how "pregnant women have fewer rights", and it ain't the states seeking to reduce income inequality lol. 

    You're just trolling at this point, I can't believe someone could earnestly hold the positions you do and understand what others have posted to be as you framed it. 

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  3. But I have been assured repeatedly that the supreme court is not in the bag for trump? Why else would they be dancing to the tune being hummed by the fascists and working to drag things out as long as possible?

    If the court was trying to help out trump, it would look nothing like this, right? RIGHT??

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  4. 5 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    Season 2 Please GIF by Amazon Prime Video
     

    Please MAGA, buy this to help with Trump’s legal fees   Don’t ask yourself how it will help, just buy it.

     

    You should post that to the crypto 6sJ thread - they're always looking to hitch their wagon to go to the moon

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  5. I'm enjoying the hell out of it, the little DDR mini game to call in an orbital strike or turret or reinforcements is a fun mechanic. Plus the guns are fun to shoot and it's satisfying as hell to shoot endless hoards of bugs and bots

  6. 2 hours ago, BeardIP said:

    There's no real value in doing this anecdotal/experience thing here, because nobodies minds or hearts are ever changed, but I have firsthand experience that is the opposite. Horribly long wait times, insta-denials/rejections on expensive treatment (even generic) for biologics/chemos/expensive meds, and way, way sub-par expertise compared to the States. 

    But this is for specialized medicine and rare/chronic/serious illnesses-- not just a broken arm or basic, by the book appendectomy or the 80% of medicine that is rote and most doctors can easily do.

    Basic/Regular things - socialized/universal healthcare is awesome.

    Expensive/Hard things- private healthcare (with good insurance) is awesome.

    People will view through their individual lenses.

    The US healthcare system is great if you have a shitload of money and can afford fast passes for all your procedures, appointments, etc etc. Try taking care of a parent through a degenerative disease requiring lifelong specialized care, you're gonna get the runaround ad infinitum from your """healthcare providers""" (health insurance) as they hope they can run the clock out on your loved one rather than pay for care. 

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  7. 3 minutes ago, 'stache said:

    So I browsed an article on this topic this morning and am still confused.

    (1) DEI is absolutely political, regardless of context, because a political party has seized upon that term and made it political. Try discussing that term in a non-political context in a room full of conservative republican voters, they'll clinch their fists and tell you all about their thoughts on what those letters mean, in a very political manner. 

    (2) I'm not sure what Google's DEI policy has to do with anything. The article said that AI bots scour the internet and there is a lot of hateful shit out there, like nazi shit and n-words, etc., so they are trying to avoid the bots from utilizing that material in generating its outputs. It sounds like the engineers overcorrected and it probably shouldn't have been released until they worked through those issues and determined where the balance lies.  Blame that on the engineers and their managers. I'm not seeing how a company's DEI policy directly affected the work the engineers did on programing an AI bot.

    (3) Back to the convergence of DEI policies and politics, after SCOTUS overturned Affirmative Action policies for public institutions, a bunch of right wing think tanks started suing private companies to eliminate their DEI policies. Thus, the mere existence of DEI policies in private companies are now inherently political.

    That's just the world we live in now, unfortunately. Not to mention that there is nothing Elon seems to do these days that isn't political, or seized upon by political actors. So if nothing else, his tweet alone made it political. The SCOTUS decision was also strictly along political lines. There really isn't much left these days that isn't somehow political, or made political by surrounding discussions.  

    There was literally a bill on it last session of the state lege and the Dallas Morning News published an article about how it could affect recruiting

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2023/04/21/will-texas-efforts-to-dismantle-dei-risk-ncaa-compliance-for-college-sports/

    fuckin chuds pushing culture war anti-DEI politics potentially coming in and affecting football croots, the simulation has truly gone haywire

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  8. 2 hours ago, immamac said:

    you can still buy a 17k brand new car with warranty. You just have to know how to drive stick. Houses have gotten absolutely enormous in the US. Accounting for areas becoming more desirable or big high paying jobs being concentrated in different areas is also something to consider when people talk about the affordability of things. It was always most expensive to be closest to the best employers. There just happens to be a lot more good employers employing people who can afford living close to those places. 

    Counterpoint - there aren't any small and reasonable houses to buy if you look around. If you want small, you're renting or got extremely lucky with your timing on buying. Hell just on my street in the last couple years I've seen a few small older homes with a nice yard get knocked down and replaced with a t-bone neighborhood of nuts to butts townhouses

    2 hours ago, immamac said:

    I also have a feeling that discretionary income spend is drastically different than it was back then. The “Starbucks” effect so to speak. Same with eating out. Same with a lot of convenience based spending that is discretionary. It feels like people are paying more than they used to to be lazier than they were. 

    DAE avocado toast???

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  9. You'll get no argument from me that there's entirely too much idiot VC money chasing AI and inflating market valuation of various projects. It's the new buzzword that effectively replaced "blockchain" in the conversations I have where I'm educating a decision maker so they can form an opinion for their board. And just like blockchain, there's not all that many actual validated business use cases being pursued with lots of AI investments (that I've seen at least) - just a POC that's being upsold as the next big thing and used to leverage a play somewhere else in the business

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  10. 1 minute ago, immamac said:

    Unironically I was watching Channel 5 news with Andrew Callaghan on youtube the other day, he is a gonzo journalist who talks to people all over and he went to Mexico and talked to folks in the migrant caravan trying to get in etc and his conclusion after talking to some of them and some people who had actually come over both legally and illegally from Mexico is a driving force for people wanting to come is they think there is an opportunity for a better life here, but when they arrive they realize you just actually become a wage slave with nice things and no time or money to spend freely.

    He is genuinely one of the best reporters out there right now. He's done some incredible boots on the ground reporting on a whole shitload of different topics ranging from silly to deadly serious. I haven't watched all of his recent Mexico and border coverage yet, but that's a real dark ending for those people who risked life and limb to make the crossing just to realize that our working class has a pretty raw deal

  11. 30 minutes ago, Smax said:

    Thought this was pretty cool

     

     

    Now just imagine if we were banking that power in storage rather than giving it to Chinese bitcoin miners and then paying them to turn off when there's a pinch. 

    Really exciting to see so much growth in renewable energy though

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  12. I guess I just don't get your extreme reaction and rush to validate replacement theory talking points. A LLM is an engineered and designed product - and this is a bad version of a product that's being replaced. It's not some almighty and on high entity that dictates the future of all of Google. Dial back the rhetoric a bit, imma. It's close to getting toxic. 

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  13. 3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

    Just the dumbest shit.

    36014577-7ba9-4256-b837-571751d2d853.png

    Holy shit a supreme Court Justice posts on surly! I've heard that argument alllllll over the place in defense of letting the fascists have the run of the joint

  14. 1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:

     

    58 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I rarely eat fast food these days anyway.  But when I do, one of the reasons is basic, manageable pricing.  I know I can get a cheeseburger combo most places for $10-$12.  But if I show up and it's $18?  Fuck off.

    And whyyyy do the companies use surge pricing? Because it's an excuse to gouge consumers, and there will be enough idiot whales to make it worth their while and validate the business model.

    And don't you dare criticize those companies, it's their DUTY and RIGHT to price gouge their customers!

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  15. Just now, Bevo said:

    The funny thing about insurance premiums is that they go to insurance companies. Insurance companies have lobbyists and by design, they have power over individual providers. So insurance companies have been able to increase their rates to people such as yourself so that they can pay their employees and their stockholders, but providers have not seen any of that increase. In fact rates to doctors have been declining over the last few decades including through this rapid surge in inflation. So when a doctor only takes a minute to speak with a patient, it is by design of the system and not necessarily what the doctor or the patient would prefer.

    It's just too bad that it costs orders of magnitude more to work directly with my medical provider and that I am forced to go through a private, for-profit death panel to dictate which treatment is profitable enough for them to approve. 

    It's almost like some systems should not prioritize profitability, and blindly ignoring that to chase PE cash-outs has extremely deleterious effects on health outcomes. But hey man, they have a RIGHT to extract profits from any entity that they own! It's the American dream, social consequences be damned!

     

    And this isn't directed at you - you're as much a victim of the healthcare industry as anyone else that owes a literal life debt of medical costs to them. But hey, those quarterly profits aren't going to grow themselves! 

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  16. 3 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    That doesn't change the fact that I have people coming into my office stating that their insurance says that a procedure costs $12. Well, when my employees make over $25/hr my only choice is to tell the patient to get bent and find a new provider. $12/5 employees doesn't cover much, probably not even supplies.  And for some reason putting a tip line to help pay for staff is frowned upon.

    So what is the solution for us? Put in add on charges? Join groups to help combat insurance monopolies? Price gouge non-insurance patients? Which would you as a patient be happy about? What services would you expect at $12? After all, all your asking is for an increase in employee pay.

    Well, I would imagine that some of the thousands of insurance premiums and copays that my wife and I pay each year would help to cover those costs, but fuck me I guess. I'm sorry your industry has been enshittified by private equity so thoroughly. 

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  17. 14 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    Inflation has played a big part in this. Prices rose and costs to employers rose as lower level employees now make probably double what they were making before inflation.

    It should be remembered when talking about "doubling wages!!!" That you're talking about people going from $7.50/hr to $15/hr. $15/hr is fucking poverty wages these days - you're bringing home like $1200 after taxes every two weeks. If you're extremely lucky, rent is gonna be more than half your monthly income if not almost all of it - nevermind food or medical expenses or little indulgences like clothes and children. 

    It is really remarkable how stagnant wages have historically been compared to overall economic growth and per capita economic contribution. Just look at dollar amount. Wage earning raises over the last decade didn't come close to touching executive compensation increases over the last couple years. 

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  18. 42 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

    What does your mental help say about denial of basic reality?

    Is this report real? Was this a normal state of affair in your childhood to require a one-on-one shopper to buy a screwdriver? Or is this the mega-conglomerate “Fredricksen” faking theft for sympathy?

    You’re so mentally compromised you can’t recognize what’s actually happening. Sad. 

    You've got the vibes of a gated community Karen getting worked up over shit that doesn't affect them. You are so singularly focused on shoplifting as some sort of weird rhetorical "parry" to confronting the reality of enshittification, it's amazing. 

    Reminds me of a few years ago when cops were opening fire on protesters and strangling people to death on video and you and yours were desperate to deflect the threads to property crime instead of police brutality, and simply retreated to that position as a matter of course.

    It doesn't matter how much data is shown to you in this thread that shoplifting is vastly overstated, you'll just power through with anecdotes and culture warring. 

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  19. Man that NYT article is excellent thank you for sharing the gift link! The last few paragraphs are really the thesis of the whole piece IMO

    Finally, we can’t forget the intense emotion of Christian nationalism. Most believers don’t follow ideological and theological arguments particularly closely. In the words of the historian Thomas Kidd, “Actual Christian nationalism is more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” It is tied, in other words, to a visceral sense that the fate of the church is closely tied to the outcome of any given political race.

    That fervor can make believers gullible and potentially even dangerous. Its good-versus-evil dynamic can make Christians believe that their political opponents are capable of anything, including stealing an election. It artificially raises the stakes of elections to the point where a loss becomes an unthinkable catastrophe, with the fates of both church and state hanging in the balance. As we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, this belief invites violent action.

    Committed Christian nationalists represent only 10 percent of the population, according to a 2023 PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey. But even members of a minority that small can gain outsize power when they fold themselves into the larger Christian electorate, casting themselves as “just like you.” That’s why we cannot conflate Christian activism with Christian nationalism. One can welcome Christian participation in the public square while resisting domination, from any faith or creed.

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