Posts by skeptical i 1192 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Aug 2007
re: named meat
ST: What is that?
ML: It's priest. Have a little priest.
ST: Is it really good?
ML: Sir, it's too good, at least.
Patti Lupone, George Hearn, and Michael Cerveris sing "A Little Priest" for Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday celebration (7:40) -- https://www.youtube.com/embed/5aQ_uEEMPqE
Employees are adults, and if they think they can do better work at the office they will do so. (I for one might prefer a change of scenery on occasion to prod some "new" thinking, but that's solely my opinion.) Do companies really think that forcing commutes and office-babble-noise in order for employees to do the same thing at the office that one can do at home is going to raise morale?
Will childcare, school, and whatever else cares for the sprogs while parents work also be extended to six days? (Not that a six-day workweek would be acceptable if they were, mind.) This would definitely be a concern in the States.
Icon because "won't someone think of the children?" is actually relevant to this topic. -->
89% of 7.5% (6.7%) of population says get rid of 'em.
11% of 7.5% (0.8%) of population says, presumably, keep 'em.
92.5% of population shrugs.
Ain't hardly a mandate, is it.
Mind, I have no love (or animus) for e-scooters. Yes, a lot of riders are self-centered twunts who act as if anyone else on the road (or sidewalks/pavements) is "in the way" but then again so are many MANY people in vehicles. If I get hit by a scooter I may get knocked down and crack something (it's likely the scooter user will too), but if I get hit by a car my odds of survival (as a pedestrian, cyclist, or scooter user) plummet (and the driver may suffer the inconvenience of a deployed airbag, assuming the driver tries to stop). Also, scooters left in the sidewalk are more easily picked up and thrown elsewhere (no, we should not have to but at least we can); this is much harder to do with the many MANY vehicles that routinely block sidewalks/pavements with impunity.
Again, not excusing the scoo-tards who act with no consideration or even awareness of others, but in my corner of the world they ain't hardly the worst offender on that score.
If Sheit's clothes were made of cheap cotton, wool, or fabrics that could be tossed onto a compost pile (or will bio-degrade in a landfill) it would not be as big a problem, but cheap plastic (polyester, nylon, whatever) fabric only breaks down into smaller bits of plastic and causes a whole 'nother raft of problems. "Your cheap Sheit kills [marine critter of the month]" might raise some awareness, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Adam Minter's _Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale_ covers fast fashion and its [almost entirely negative] impacts, if anyone is interested; review at -- https://www.npr.org/2019/11/13/778555967/what-happens-to-your-used-stuff-secondhand-tells-of-a-billion-dollar-industry
Might ERNIE have gone MIA because Ernie, the Sesame Street character, once sang a song about his beloved rubber duckie? Of possible note is the lyric:
Every day when I
Make my way to the
tu-ubby,
I find a little fella'
who's cute and yella'
and chu-ubby:
Rubber duck duck duckie.
Given the response to Winnie-the-Pooh, one wonders if all chubby yellow (historic slur against Asians) beings are verboten. There's also another line, "rubber duckie, joy of joys, when I squeeze you you make noise" which could be read as a criticism of leadership style.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mh85R-S-dh8
re: "... a generation of American civic, nonprofit, military, government leaders who, day by day minute by minute, just feel a little shittier about America"
Not to dismiss the potential of TikTok to nudge viewers' opinions, but America still not being in reality what it says on the tin is not new news. Which probably fits nicely into some people's agenda to find another way to discredit any criticism of Amurka (however well documented or researched) as just another communist plot to steal our freedom.
one wonders if M. Macron actually wants to be re-elected. I infer that his victory over Marine Le Pen (~60-40 or thereabouts) was not about the voters liking him but more about disliking Ms. Le Pen (and/or her policies). Perhaps M. Macron misread the results? Or am I missing something?
and the cesspool much of it has become, but will concede that many populations (LGBTQ, minority religion in an enthusiastically other-religion country, women and girls in fundamentalist countries, &c) have found support and community where/when it otherwise would not exist. If, as the article suggests, these politicians are truly concerned about The Children, then redirecting effort to reducing deaths by firearm and by motor vehicle would be more productive. Yes, it will be unpopular to question Amurkins' two greatest loves -- their cars and their guns -- let alone dare to suggest anything that even smells like further regulation, but certainly The Children are worth it, yes?
a 3-D printer could be loaded with different coloured frostings to build more detailed and intricate cake toppers than one could do "by hand" (with frosting bags, squirty tubes, and whatever else baker-wizards use these days). Otherwise methinks this is, as has already been noted, a solution looking for a problem.
There once was a man, Donald Trump,
who needed to take a huge dump.
He thought his commode
was made out of gold,
but it left a stained ring* on his rump.
* This would explain his "golden circle" of advisors, groupies, and other hangers-on.
The fact that he used a toilet would be the positive angle.
Yes, to some extent, of course (most kids don't buy insurance or financial planning services, most adults don't buy sugar-bomb cereal -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- and advert placement tends to reflect this), but I am hard-pressed to believe that such fine-grained targetting will yield more enough sales to justify the expense, hassle, and privacy risks (which corporations won't care about, but politicians could be made to with enough public outcry). I can not help but think that there is something deeply wrong with The System if this is what corporations feel they need to do in order to stay solvent.
re: "Mandating a weight limit is probably the only way to go."
One could try adding a per-pound fee to the annual vehicle registration process. This might be something to consider as states lose petrol tax revenues with increased electric vehicle use, and the per-pound fees can be dedicated to the increased amount of maintenance roads will require (the point is well taken that heavy commercial trucks are already messing up our roads, but they typically do not frequent residential streets -- this is where heavier electric family sedans will have a more noticeable effect).
I thought I read somewhere that some employees in Alabama (don't remember if at Amazon specifically or if this was from "man on the street" surveys of passers-by) were concerned that if they did manage to get a union, the company would just close that location and move on (half a loaf -- or, maybe more accurately, "a stale slice" -- being better than none).
Icon for the companies and municipalities that create the conditions for such speculation to be plausible, not for the employees looking out for their paychecks.
re: " basically anything that requires power to run ... the quality has fallen off a cliff in recent time"
"Durable goods" are now defined as appliances with an expected lifespan of three years . . . or maybe it's five, but I think it's three. Either way, it's a far cry from when a brand of clothes washers used to spotlight its repairman being in utter despair because there was no work for him because the machines were so darn reliable. The high cost of cheap stuff. At least most "white goods" appliances are in steel containers that can be recycled.
All the leccy being used at Twaddle's three datacenters (to run the servers, the cooling, the lights, the coffee machine, &c) while other parts of California were told not to use "too much" juice in order to mitigate the chance of brownouts. Perhaps shutting down this not-essential nonsense should be the first step, before asking Grandma to not turn on the aircon until after "peak hours".
I'm waiting for Amazon't to "upgrade" their Ring thing so it can communicate with the Roomba and order it to scramble out the cat/doggie door to chase away any door-knockers (political campaign/ candidate canvassers, union organizers) that Amazon't deems unworthy. While it may not put The Fear into said canvassers now ("oh, how cute, your vacuum escaped") options available to future Roombas (flame thrower, whirling razor blades, frikkin laser beams) may do the trick.
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a B-1 bomber."
Poster archived on the Smithsonian website -- https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1300187
National defense is important. So too are technical advances that ideally save pilot and civilian lives. But this is just greed dolled up and sold as a multi-function aircraft.
re: "If you have 95% of search traffic why do anything better"
Ayup. Many places, not just gooble, seem to have abandoned the idea of good customer service or product experience in favour of "we just have to suck a little bit less than everyone else" (or "we can suck as bad as the rest of 'em if we're cheaper").
@Khaptain: With all due respect, doxing appears to be an equal opportunity activity, with individuals on the "left" and the "right" (and elsewhere) being targets. That said, I share your concern about this form of mob rule ("Dox the witch!") being mistaken for democracy.
There are many many lovely places (and people) in Amurka, but despite many mostly locally owned businesses in these places being heavily reliant on tourism our gubmint is not exactly making it easier or more welcoming for non-Murkins to visit (if this is how we treat the citizens of countries with whom we notionally have "a special relationship", how do we treat "mere" allies? everyone else?).
Anything more complicated/ invasive than "you posted about going out to dinner, your profile indicates you're in East Sometown, we'll show an advert for a restaurant within ten miles of East Sometown or for a national restaurant chain if we don't have anything specifically in East Sometown" or "you posted about going to your kid's ball game, we'll flash an advert for a sporting goods store" seems wasted to me, but I don't do fecesbook so what do I know.
Hi, GP:
Actually it was Michael Moore who did the _Bowling for Columbine_ documentary -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine -- and -- https://watchdocumentaries.com/bowling-for-columbine/
Roger Moore was somewhere else in the firearms discussion, saving the world from various baddies as James Bond 007.
re: "operation that cost businesses more than $29 million for ads that were never viewed"
Depending on how one defines "view", this can be true of google and other ad-/track-ware slingers: does "view" mean that the image was summoned (and may have been blocked)? that the advert image actually loaded into the viewer's browser as intended (and wasn't s/adimage.gif/smilyface.gif/ by a browser extension or other end-user magic)? that the viewer actually laid eyeballs on that corner of the page? that the viewer paid enough attention to recall the product or service? Not to let Threeve off the hook, they just seem to have been more creative about exploiting a flaw in the whole concept.
re: "Microsoft warned that games using anti-cheat software might cause the OS to fall over."
I'm sure there's a technical reason for this (some bit of code that stops the cheating gunks up Win11's innards), but it's still ... interesting ... that Win11 would seem to endorse cheating. Sorry, gaming is not my world and maybe I'm missing something.
If Amazon could have replaced flesh-and-blood employees with robots and still make a ginormous wodge of profit, it would have done so by now. It hasn't. Now Amazon will be forced to treat employees -- at least those at JFK8 -- with a smidge more of the respect due the workers that allow such profits to happen. As was suggested above, it's not as if Mr. Bezos will be forced to miss yacht payments in order to cover higher employees wages and benefits. I hope this is the first of many Amazon facilities to go union. Well done.
The second thought I had about reports of the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital was "how do you feel about staying 'neutral' now?" (the first thought involved language not suitable for a family audience). I understand that some countries need to preserve trade relations with Russia and will hesitate to upset that apple cart. But how atrocious do Russia's actions have to get before "staying neutral" is simply ... hard to believe? While it helps Bloodimir Putin to keep his citizens in line with obfuscation, that will not help his trade with TROTW who can see for themselves what is actually happening.
RE: "It's time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children,"
"It's time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data,"
FTFY.
Or stretch the definition of 'children' to include the occasionally childish. :^)
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