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2 yr. ago

  • Thankfully I must have avoided whatever business were doing this.

    However, I have had the experience of attending schools that had weird urinal designs.

    There was one where the urinals looked like regular toilets but without tanks or lids. They also didn’t have dividers and were placed in a position where anyone walking in the bathroom or using the sink got a full view.

    There were other schools that had the “trough.” Just a six foot long piss bucket.

  • Doge.js is required to audit imports across interpreters.

  • May I interest you in renting this fine pineapple?

    Intellectually I know that all currency systems are constructs and are volatile. That said, what bothers me so much about crypto is how it’s either an obvious scam or it appears to behave like company scrip requiring various exchanges or participating vendors, etc. It’s annoying enough using credit cards or systems like PayPal cash app, and crypto reads like a more annoying PayPal with all of the instability of a stock.

    I rarely place much value on authority, but I trust a central bank or national treasury much more than three dudes at a startup promising to disrupt how we think of money.

  • “It was back it the early 2000s, around 2013 or so….”

  • The “2000s” also has no meaning for defining a specific time period. It should mean 2001-2010, but I’ve also never heard anyone seriously refer to 2011-2020 as the “teens” and 2021-2025 as the “twenties.” Those words are already associated with decades that we still culturally reference.

    We’re a quarter of a century in and I still don’t know how to precisely refer to a 21st-century decade.

  • Permanently Deleted

    Jump
  • As with remote work, it really depends on what you’re doing. Some jobs and classes are tailor made for remote, some are nearly impossible to accomplish remotely. COVID inspired some really creative uses of technology but at the end of the day, it was an augmentation not a drop-in replacement.

    I think online courses should be available as much as possible whenever practical, but what we all have to realize is that designing an effective online curriculum is expensive and difficult. We also have to realize that certain activities will never transition to online and we just need to accept that. Taking a lecture with 300 students? Put that that thing online. Learning an instrument? You need to be in-person for your lessons and ensembles.

    What needs to change is how in-person workers are compensated and how institutions support the development of online programs. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.

  • It’s also part of the antagonism towards the federal workforce and an extension of the “deep state” conspiracy theory.

    I can’t remember what this specific rhetorical device is called, but he’s luring people in with something that appears true at face value so that they arrive at a conclusion they wouldn’t logically arrive at otherwise: Hitler personally didn’t kill millions of people, but the Nazi bureaucracy and military did. Therefore, Hitler isn’t to blame for all the Nazi atrocities, the bureaucracy was.

    Musk is redirecting blame, like you pointed out, away from leadership and instead leading people to the conclusion that if government were smaller, then evil wouldn’t have happened. What is especially stupid about this line of reasoning is that it will eventually lead to ideas like, “if we give the president more power and consolidate all decision making to a small group, then public servants won’t mindlessly perpetuate evil,” as if this isn’t exactly what happened in every authoritarian regime right before they started doing real evil.

  • I’m staying out of the whiskey war, but…

    Occasionally I liked a cocktail with Cointreau, Tequila and lime on the rocks. I forget what it was called.

    This is just a margarita on the rocks, sometimes called a classic margarita. 👍

  • I had an atomic purple gameboy at one point and I miss that thing dearly.

    I really enjoy seeing the components of a thing and most of my mechanical keyboards have translucent or semi-translucent cases.

    They’re not high-tech, but “demonstrator” editions of fountain pens also hit this vibe.

    And if anyone is curious, I’m pretty sure the watch in this image is a Swatch JellyFish (or an imitation). Swatch still makes watches like this, but this style is called Clearly Gent now.

  • I understand what you were going for with this comment but I think you wildly missed the mark.

    I don’t expect presidents to be knowledgeable on all subjects either. I expect leaders to surround themselves with experts as well, but Trump has a long history of disagreeing with and firing his advisors and staff whenever he is wrong. This isn’t because he was in real estate, it’s because he is a narcissist and treats learning as a bruise to the ego.

    I expect heads of state to take the time to know why they are visiting a place or attending an event. For all the planning and preparation for the tour and the ridiculous travel time to get to Hawaii from the east coast, you expect me to believe that the President couldn’t be bothered to at least look it up on Wikipedia? Not even considering that the president doesn’t just show up randomly at places.

    Didn’t look it up, didn’t ask before hand, didn’t listen to any briefing, didn’t pay attention to where he was going. This isn’t because his background is in real estate, it’s because he is a selfish, inconsiderate, ignorant fool.

    And for the record, I’d expect the president of the Union to at least understand the importance of Gettysburg.

  • I think strategically used tariffs (i.e. used in trade negotiations for specific sectors or items, not unilateral tariffs) can convince a country to export items at a price that benefits one country more than the other, usually in tandem with an agreement to reciprocate. Basically, countries agree to trade at certain rates or exclusively sell. Tariffs are the “bad cop” of trade negotiations.

    The tariff isn’t what lowers the price, it’s the threat of the tariff that lowers the price or keeps it stable.

    Imagine Canada exports maple widgets at $10 a piece to reflect the true cost of manufacture. The US says that is too high, our people can’t afford that price once it’s on the shelves, so how about you export them for $8? To sweeten the deal, we’ll export freedom widgets to you at reduced cost.

    Canada responds saying $8 for maple widgets is too low, $10 is firm and we’ll deal with the current cost of freedom widgets. The US threatens a targeted tariff on maple widgets at 25% which doesn’t affect the price of maple widgets in Canada or their sale price to importers in the US, but importers in the US have to pay $2.50 in tax on top of the purchase cost for maple widgets which drives up the cost for US consumers.

    This results in the price of the item increasing in the US $4.50 over the price determined to be “affordable” which will result in reduced imports and reduced purchases of maple widgets by consumers. Canada now has to find somewhere else to sell their maple widgets since the US isn’t buying at the same rate which drives down the value of maple widgets in Canada.

    And if the US was feeling particularly vengeful at being denied their cheap steady supply of maple widgets, they could convince other countries to not buy Canadian widgets at all or impose a blanket ban on all Canadian goods (see: how the US obliterated the economy of Cuba because of “communism” which was really just Cuba not wanting to be the US’s sugar plantation anymore).

    Canada will evaluate this and determine that selling maple widgets is essential to their economy and less profit for their maple widget industry is an agreeable trade compared to the US not buying at all.

  • I know this. You know this. The judges know this. The jury knows this.

    This does damage by subjecting the teachers to suspensions, trials, legal fees, etc. to the point that they take a plea bargain or resign. It makes the schools hyper-sensitive.

    If the courts don’t throw these cases out immediately, then the tactic worked.

  • The New Colossus was released during Trump’s first term and it was really cathartic to play during the shit storm. The game even pissed off the “alt-right.” The New Order and The Old Blood are much better at “endless destruction of Nazis” though.

    Might be time to reinstall and play through them again.

  • How many people comply without being physically forced is what determines how much power he truly has.

    That’s why the reduction of protections for federal employees was so important to implementing this phase. A lot of people have already been fired or reassigned which makes it really difficult for them to “do” anything.

  • Right on. I was just outlining how they’d probably make it personal against the teachers.

  • It works like this:

    • Teach at a public school
    • That school receives funding directly or indirectly from federal programs under the executive branch, including the Department of Education
    • DEI support disqualifies institutions from receiving Federal funds
    • Supporting DEI and trans rights while receiving Federal funds counts as defrauding the US government
    • DOJ takes up the case

    While EOs are not laws, they have the potential to do massive amounts of damage because most of the government runs on agencies under control of the Executive. And while universities and public schools are not federal, they receive shit tons of funds through grants, contracts, and subsidies from a wide array of federal agencies (see: academic panic at the NSF and NIH halting grant review and funding as a result of Trump’s recent orders).

  • Well, true. I wasn’t exactly implying that Trump was reading a history book and learned all about McKinley. More like he said, “we should be strong and take land that we want and undo everything Obama and Biden did and tax our enemies and have gold everything,” and someone replied, “oh, sounds like McKinley.” To which Trump replies, “Obama renamed a great president?”

  • You’re probably right about it just being petty, but…

    President McKinley also annexed territory (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Cuba, etc.), implemented insane tariffs, and pushed to keep the US on the gold standard.

    Looks like Jackson isn’t the only president that Trump idolizes.

  • Sounds plausible. The quote I always use is “LIIIINE!” from the dinner table scene where the camera jumps back and forth between them but they don’t speak for like 5 minutes.