There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

AFKBRBChocolate

@[email protected]

Yet another refugee who washed up on the shore after the great Reddit disaster of 2023

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Guy looks like he’s 15.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Yeah, I get that, and I for sure am. On the other hand, I have college interns and new grads every spring, and this guy looks younger than any of them.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Headline seems a little sensational in that the article never says they’re using body bags (the bags we put dead bodies into) it says watertight blue immersion bags have become standard equipment. So they’re bags, and they’re made for a body, but it’s not clear that they’re the same kind of bag.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

It makes perfect sense and doesn’t disturb or surprise me, I’m just objecting to the fact that that the only place that phrase is used is in the headline. The people quoted, and even the author, don’t call them that.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Well, not so much apparently. It turns out he never had a valid driver’s license, and admitted that he knew that to the cop who pulled him over.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Update from today. He never had a valid driver’s license. My wife just played me the whole session from today. Some interesting items:

  • His suspension wasn’t lifted, not because of a clerical error, but because he didn’t pay it.
  • The suspension was irrelevant anyway because he never had a driver’s license. With the suspension, if he had gone in and taken the test to get a license, it would have immediately been suspended and he couldn’t drive, but that’s moot because he didn’t have a license.
  • When the cops pulled him over, they asked if he had a license and he said no.
  • It turns out that he has a warrant out for his arrest for a driving violation in another county, so they took him to jail.

All the crap he said about being innocent was just lies.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

All at once?

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I’m not an expert, but it’s a very complex global system with moisture in the atmosphere sometimes falling as rain/snow, collecting in rivers and lakes, going into ground water/aquifers, flowing into the oceans, and sometimes just staying as moist air. If one area isn’t getting it’s usual rainfall, quite often another area is getting more, but it can also be that the moisture is just in other parts of that complex system. A lot is driven by high- and low-pressure systems, air temperature, water temperature, etc.

In my area of southern California, we’ve had some major, extended droughts. But the rising temperature of the Pacific has caused the air to hold more moisture, and we’ve also had some “atmospheric river” storms that drop insane amounts of rain. So even though we get an average of 13 inches of rain a year, we got more than 13 inches in just February, and we’re up to almost 31 inches for the season. It wouldn’t be surprising if we didn’t get anymore until late in the year though.

Some of that rain went into snowpack, some into reservoirs, some into ground water, but we’re close to the coast and all of it will go back to the ocean. Did we get rain that would normally have gone elsewhere, or was it rain that wouldn’t normally have formed? I think it’s likely hard to say, but maybe there are meteorologists or others who know more reading this.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

It’s actually pretty interesting. Here’s a guide someone in NC did for others in their court system to understand SovCits when they come up in the system. It’s interesting reading and makes a lot of these posts make sense (well, a kind of sense).

AFKBRBChocolate ,

It’s very cool. The race was between a climate scientist and a software engineer, both women. The climate scientist was much more liberal and won by a huge margin. Really good news all around, I’m jealous.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

This is great news. Mexico has been enjoying some increasingly progressive policies that are very popular. The more progressing candidate won by a huge margin.

If only they could get the drug cartel situation sorted out, but that’s no easy deal.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

“Neoliberalism” is one of those terms that’s starting to lose meaning because different people use it to mean different things. I’m not an expert on her, but from what I’ve read, her views seem pretty vanilla progressive to me. Here’s what Wikipedia says about them:

Social issues

Sheinbaum has openly identified herself as a feminist, aligning her beliefs and actions with the principles of gender equality and women’s rights.[73] She advocates for the legalization of abortion, aligning her stance with broader movements aimed at promoting reproductive rights and autonomy for women.[74] During her leadership in Mexico City, Sheinbaum championed LGBT rights by implementing a gender-neutral policy for school uniforms.[75] In 2022, she became the first Head of Government of Mexico City to attend the city’s pride march.[76] Economy

Sheinbaum has criticized the neoliberal economic policies of past presidents of Mexico, arguing that they have contributed to inequality in the country.[77] She has promised to expand welfare under her presidency[78] and intends to continue programs started by Obrador, such as universal pension.[79] Climate

Sheinbaum has a background in environmental policy, having served as environment secretary for Mexico City and worked on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [80] She has both spoken in favor of clean energy and praised Mexico’s largest oil company.[72]

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Wow, where did that come from? I said I feel that word is losing meaning, not that you used it incorrectly. Instead of discussing what neoliberalism is/isn’t, I just posted a reference to her main ideals, which I thought would be more helpful. Not sure why you’re responding with claws out.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I understand she’s the one using it, that doesn’t change the fact that, in my opinion, it’s not a good word for communication because different people been different things by it. For purposes of this discussion, I thought it would be better to avoid it. It’s like “conservative;” by itself it’s almost useless because people mean so many things by it.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

There was an unprecedented amount of rain earlier in the year, I bet there is a ton of dry fuel now. Scary.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

What area is this for? Where I am in southern California, the season normal to date would be about 13 inches, and we’re sitting at about 30. It’s been a lot more than normal. We had two or three atmospheric river storms this year.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

You make it sound like there is no way to verify stuff he says. Like he was just in an interview saying he never said “Lock her up!” - that other people chanted it but he never said it. There are lots of videos of him saying it, so it’s a verifiable lie. Of course the media should be able to call him on it.

Just because it doesn’t fit your narrative, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Again. This happened before. Here’s a similar article from 2016 - not sure it’s the most recent example.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

There’s nothing saying he can’t pardon himself, but a president can only pardon for federal crimes.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Well, you’re right, but you’re missing the fact that Republicans work hard to make and keep these conditions, because their base is made up of the most disaffected people. They block healthcare reform, they block student debt relief, they block first time home buyer assistance - they block all the social programs that would ease these problems. Then they try to dismantle the government entities that work to help these things; did you notice how many of Trump’s appointees were vocally against the organizations he put them in charge of? Republicans want the government not to work so that they can say “See, it doesn’t work, we need smaller government,” and then they can get rid of the regulations and taxes that reduce the (already obscene) profits that corporations make.

So yes, you’re right, but it’s working as intended for the right.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I know it won’t happen, but what would happen if Trump dropped out after formally becoming the Republican candidate?

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Okay, interesting, thank you. What a shit show that would be in either case.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Not the first time they’ve done this, but good to see the results replicated. It sure looks like genetics plays more of a part than diet.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I think there are some downvote bots here like there was on Reddit. Not sure what the point is, but I’ve seen some communities where every post starts at negative 1, and others where every comment seems to get a downvote. Not sure what the reasoning is. I think some people just hate the idea of other people being happy.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

There was someone in a thread here once who said when he was young he had severe depression and anger issues, and said he used to do stuff like that. He said it literally was that he was so unhappy that he hated seeing other people happy. He was embarrassed about it now, but couldn’t see past it at the time.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I never like this particular comparison because there are so many people in the world who have nothing, or nothing but debt. Is hard to tell from it how much is the wealth of the top or the poverty of the bottom. It would almost be better to compare to the next group down, or to an average or something.

Maybe a graph with one block being the richest person, and then groups of the next n richest people, however many it takes to equal the richest. And then keep doing that, so there’s more and more blocks to equal the richest. I bet it ramps up really fast.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

This needs to be brought up every damned time this subject comes up. Cohen served time for the exact same crime - so what argument is there that Trump shouldn’t?

AFKBRBChocolate ,

It’s not like they’re going to put him with the general population. And USSS agents don’t sign up to be in prison.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Cohen got prison time for the same exact crime, also a first offense. To my mind, being a former president should make them hold to to a higher standard, not a lesser one.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I completely agree. I asked what argument there was that he shouldn’t, not that he wouldn’t.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Paraphrasing, “We choose to send Trump to prison, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.”

AFKBRBChocolate ,

The dogs sweating one seems like a quibble. I think what most of us heard/understood is that dogs can’t sweat (because of the fur), so they use their mouths/tongue. Okay, apparently they can sweat through their foot pads, but since those are on the ground I doubt they’re getting much evaporative cooling there. This says they regulate temperature through panting, which seems awfully close to the “myth.”

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I haven’t been, but isn’t there advertising? Most sites want traffic.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Not sure what I would have done in Biden’s spot. China has a long history of ignoring patents, doing industrial espionage, and government funding an industry to corner the market on it, shutting everyone else out. We need cheap EVs, but that cost is so high.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

It’s a double win for him. Yes, he’s courting automakers and the oil and gas industry, so this gets him that, but a giant percentage of his base is simply against anything that liberals are for. Think of those idiots rolling coal. They’re literally making their cars as polluting as possible. What do they gain from it? The only thing it does, besides contributing to climate change, is upset liberals, and that’s the goal. Every one of those people will support this.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Far from my area of expertise, but my guess is because people can swallow lack of forward progress way better than they swallow going backwards. The current trade with China started back under Nixon, and Americans have gotten used to so many ultra cheap Chinese goods. I try to avoid products from China, and for some things it’s really hard, and it usually means paying double the price. If we cut off that trade or raised the tarrifs a lot, the price of so many things works skyrocket and people wouldn’t stand for it.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

If what I’ve read is true, the saddest things about the Shrek movie is that they changed what Fiona was. What I read was that she originally was some other sort of monster, not another ogre - one that Shrek thought was physically unattractive at first. The whole message about a person’s insides being what’s important loses a lot of impact when Fiona is an attractive version of Shrek’s same race/species.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

The people who were - and still are - clowning on Americans for their politics are a different group than the people currently voting far right. You’re not dunking on the people you think you are.

But that’s sort of the point they were making, isn’t it? Left-leaning Europeans giving Americans across the spectrum shit for right-leaning politics even though the majority in all cases is slim and vulnerable to reversal?

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Also worth pointing out that only a slight majority of boomers are very conservative. If you look at the demographics of the last couple presidential elections, you’ll see that only slightly more boomers voted conservative than liberal, and only slightly more younger folks voted liberal than conservative.

There’s this impression that the distinction is much more significant than it actually is. As a liberal boomer, I’m a little sensitive about it.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

This is exactly, literally true. The hard right folks in all branches of government are always throwing wrenches in the machine and then complaining that we have to get rid of the machine because it doesn’t work.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I feel like a bad thing that happened to us started when, through science, we started finding more and more things that contradicted the bible, at the same time as some evangelical sects were pushing for a more and more literal interpretation of the bible, and so their only argument was that science is evil/blasphemous/whatever. So more and more people on the right got comfortable just disregarding scientists, facts, and information-driven conclusions. Instead, they just pick whatever narrative they’re comfortable with and even a lot of people who disagree with it treat it like a legitimate belief.

We used to call those people nutjobs. Now we call them Fox news viewers.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

If that’s correct, that’s a much more significant difference than in the US.

Does Europe have the same kind of post war baby boom generation that the US has?

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Oh, completely agree, but for the first two thirds of the 20th century, most Christians, like most people generally, were very pro science and took the bible as a book of lessons. It’s only in the last several decades that such a huge percentage of Christians equate science as antithetical to Christianity.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Solid point. Still, the prevailing attitude in the 40s and 50s was that science made things better, with perhaps a detour related to nuclear bombs/energy.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

Was having a related conversation with an employee this morning (I manage a software engineering organization). He asked an LLM how to separate the parts of a date in Excel, and got a pretty good explanation of how do it with the text to columns wizard, and also how to use a formula to get each part. He was happy because he felt it would have taken him much longer to figure it out himself.

I was saying I thought that was a good use of an LLM - it’s going to give a tailored answer - but my worry is that people will do less scrubbing of an answer coming from an AI than one they saw on a forum. I said we should think of it like a tailored Google search.

For comparison, I googled “Excel formula separate parts of a date” and one of the top results was a forum discussion that had the exact solutions the LLM gave, using the same examples. On the one hand, to get it from the forum you had to wade through all the wrong answers and discussions. On the other hand, that discussion puts the answer given in the context of a bunch of others that are off the mark, and I think make people less likely to assume it’s correct.

In any case, it’s still just synthesizing from or regurgitating training data.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

You might have missed where I said it explained both the text to columns wizard and a formula. He used the formula, which is what he was looking for. He’s a top notch software developer, he just doesn’t use Excel much.

But I agree with your broader point. I keep having to remind people that the “LM” part is for “language model.” It’s not figuring anything out, it’s distilling what an answer should look like. A great example is to ask one for a mathematical proof that isn’t commonly found online - maybe something novel. In all likelihood, it’s going to give you one, and it will probably look like the right kind of stuff, but it will also probably be wrong. It doesn’t know math (it doesn’t know anything), it just has a model of what a response should look like.

That being said, they’re pretty good for a number of things. One great example is lesson plans. From what I understand, most teachers now give an LLM the coursework and ask it to generate a lesson plan. Apparently they do an excellent job and save many hours of work. Anything that involves summarizing information is good, especially as that constrains the training data.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

One of the things I look for in employees is the ability to distill complex topics into the important elements and explain it to someone unfamiliar. Some people are just naturally good at it, and it’s a really important skill for moving up a leadership chain.

AFKBRBChocolate OP ,

Almost 4 hours!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •