Yes, it’s that time again when Amazon slashes prices on tons of items, and if you click through from one of our links we get a small commission at no extra charge to you: Black Friday Deals 2023 | Amazon.com.
Me? I’m looking at the fantastic price for an Anker PowerExpand 5-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Mini Dock, because I could really use more ports for my iMac.
re: #1 Patricia Kayden
No doubt the GOP will keep trying, though.
Background check cleared. Orientation will be Wednesday. A four hour rerun, although I’m told some of the short films are new.
Pulled the trigger on a Shark brand roomba thingy. 🤞🏼 it works, I’ve wanted one forever.
re: #143 DodgerFan1988
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I know we’re not supposed to say this because some people can’t fathom that a rich person didn’t build wealth through smarts and hard work, but Elon Musk is a fucking idiot. There’s no way you solve complex engineering problems without a good bullshit detector. He has none at all. He’s a fucking dolt.
re: #3 Eclectic Cyborg
No doubt the GOP will keep trying, though.
If they are prepared to ignore voters, then they are prepared to ignore courts.
re: #6 Unabogie
I know we’re not supposed to say this because some people can’t fathom that a rich person didn’t build wealth through smarts and hard work, but Elon Musk is a fucking idiot. There’s no way you solve complex engineering problems without a good bullshit detector. He has none at all. He’s a fucking dolt.
Elon is smart like Trump is wealthy.
Here’s that conservative concern for taxpayer dollars.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Pennsylvania school board that banned books, Pride flags and transgender athletes slipped a last-minute item into their final meeting before leaving office, hastily awarding a $700,000 exit package to the superintendent who supported their agenda.
3/4 of a million bucks taken from school kids.
Jewish family who were plaintiffs in suit against illegal school prayers had to flee state after Mike Johnson targeted them as “enemies of the gospel”.
Jewish family fled hometown after Mike Johnson warned of ‘enemy’ to the gospel: report - Raw Story https://t.co/1VZuh5vzD9
— James F. Love IV (@JamesFLoveIV) November 24, 2023
re: #11 Egregious Philbin
Perfect day. Puerto Penasco. Beer, shrimp, oysters, margs.
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I’ll bet it took a lot of beer for you to fall over and take the picture lying on your side.
re: #12 sagehen
I’ll bet it took a lot of beer for you to fall over and take the picture lying on your side.
I just assumed it’s far enough south that it’s sideways, but not so far that it’s upside-down like in Australia.
re: #10 No Malarkey!
Jewish family who were plaintiffs in suit against illegal school prayers had to flee state after Mike Johnson targeted them as “enemies of the gospel”.
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Lock him up. The legal option.
Punch him. The illegal option.
I’m not a lawyer. Both arms work.
re: #13 Egregious Philbin
I couldn’t rotate it!
Now you can. It’s in your Image Library. You can do it in there.
I suspect this is a fake left agitprop acct built by someone actually fascist or foreign bot pharmish in the last couple days. I do not like the fact that they are so prolific with the rage bait memes so fast, and their profile pic that combines all the major Nazi symbols is disturbing. I’m probably just paranoid though.
@Kilo_Watt@mastodon.social
re: #17 Thanos
I suspect this is a fake left agitprop acct built by someone actually fascist or foreign bot pharmish in the last couple days. I do not like the fact that they are so prolific with the rage bait memes so fast, and their profile pic that combines all the major Nazi symbols is disturbing. I’m probably just paranoid though.
Hrmm. Anarcho Punk band symbol from Crass, so more likely they are tankies getting ready for an all in Anti-Israel campaign.
In newly-unearthed footage, Mike Johnson:
—Calls for looking to overturn the rulings legalizing birth control, gay sex, and same-sex marriage
—Supports banning gay adoption
—Calls for banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest
And more. https://t.co/zXaupiiNW8 pic.twitter.com/IOD1jEx87H— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) November 24, 2023
re: #16 wrenchwench
Too many margs, not gonna happen.
So today’s activity was taking Jessica to the groomers to get her badly-knotted fur dealt with. Results of said dealing illustrated below:
I should ask for a refund: we only got 2/3 of a cat back…!
ADD: judging by her purring level since we got home, she seems to have adjusted fairly well to her new state of relative nudity.
Hopefully.
re: #6 Unabogie
I know we’re not supposed to say this because some people can’t fathom that a rich person didn’t build wealth through smarts and hard work, but Elon Musk is a fucking idiot. There’s no way you solve complex engineering problems without a good bullshit detector. He has none at all. He’s a fucking dolt.
The notion that intelligence in one field translates to general skill in interacting with ideas is just not supportable. Downstream of that, making money does not signify anything about a person’s reasoning about anything but the specific methodology by which they made money…and quite often that amounts knowing how to do sales.
But it’s probably more relevant that believing dubious, untrue, and/or bigoted things is not a product of “intelligence” it’s the result of overconfidence. A rich person can earn money through smarts and hard work and still be generally uninformed…and a bigot…and all their subsequent earnings can be unimpressive feats of salesmanship, precisely because the mythos of their success lifts away from the materiality of that success. In effect, we’re dealing with people that use the Great Man theory of History as a template: it informs them who they are and thus what is permissible.
(this is triple folly: the historiographic notion of “great men” is a retroactive assessment of a person’s role in events that the historian sees as shaping the present, not a D&D class you advance through; “great men” historiography is due criticism for how it flattens complicated events; and the template of “great men” historiography has transformed into a standard form followed by vain people fitting their narrative to the model)
People like Elon Musk have the same values as their critics—that wealth is earned through hard work and smarts—but are running the premise in reverse: I have this much money, therefore I am smart and I work hard. Their subsequent shittiness is built on a series of “…and therefore I get to dictate the terms of reality to everyone else.”
(I don’t want to get stuck in semantics, but the critical disjunction is that you can just re-define “hard work” and “smarts” however is needed once you possess wealth. By stepping over how value is determined, and thus how compensation relates to labor, you can simply point to the money you have to suggest your work is valuable. This is most evident when using the same lens to examine the inverse: people that “work hard” in a very literal sense but are compensated poorly because their roles are devalued.)
It’s not stupidity, it’s hubris, but our culture is more comfortable with the idea that ugly traits are rooted in lack of intelligence than a surplus of confidence. The first is just othering—that person is stupid, not like me, and their repulsive traits are a position that I have no intersection with—the second is one of the most fetishized traits in our culture, to the point that it’s basically the core of an American mysticism: sufficient unwavering belief—confidence—can change reality.
And I think that’s the best way to understand Elon Musk and his ilk: they were never “smart” in that mythologized way that’s common parlance, but when they’re “stupid” it’s directly the product of their overconfidence, and their own acceptance of the myth of genius compounds their folly such that the rest of us have to deal with it.
Elon Musk doesn’t just not-understand the stats he’s quoted, he has no interest in understanding it because his impression is self-validating. He doesn’t care that his lack of understanding is being communicated to his audience leading them to the same error, because the naked fact of his belief is sufficient proof for lesser people.
Iowa school district apologizes after sharing ‘quote of the day’ from Nazi Germany
A school district in Iowa is apologizing to parents after an email message which included a “quote of the day” spread a message that originated in Nazi Germany, Business Insider reported.
“Here’s today’s Respect Quote of the day: ‘My honor is my loyalty,’” a line at the bottom of the email read.
The quote was commonly used in the Waffen SS to express loyalty to Adolf Hitler and has been historically connected to leading Nazi Party member Heinrich Himmler.
“The staff member didn’t realize that the quote was from a highly inappropriate source,” Indianola Superintendent Ted Ihns wrote. “I first want to apologize for the oversight.”
Ihns said that using a quote with Nazi connections was “completely unintentional,” and better research will be conducted going forward.
re: #26 Varek Raith
Hello. How go the things?
Things go well. After 11 months of unemployedness, I got a job. 11 months is the most unemployedness I’ve had since before you were born.
How are your things going?
re: #21 Jay C
So today’s activity was taking Jessica to the groomers to get her badly-knotted fur dealt with. Results of said dealing illustrated below:
[Embedded content]
I should ask for a refund: we only got 2/3 of a cat back…!
ADD: judging by her purring level since we got home, she seems to have adjusted fairly well to her new state of relative nudity.
Hopefully.
OMG they made her ugly!!
re: #21 Jay C
So today’s activity was taking Jessica to the groomers to get her badly-knotted fur dealt with. Results of said dealing illustrated below:
[Embedded content]
I should ask for a refund: we only got 2/3 of a cat back…!
ADD: judging by her purring level since we got home, she seems to have adjusted fairly well to her new state of relative nudity.
Hopefully.
She’s probably glad to be rid of all the matting. Get her a brush for festivus (metal combs work well with long-haired cats, and my cat, at least, loved hers).
re: #29 sagehen
OMG they made her ugly!!
Back in the old days, when mom would get a permanent, dad always called it a temporary. Same deal here.
re: #24 Joe Bacon ✅
Iowa school district apologizes after sharing ‘quote of the day’ from Nazi Germany
A school district in Iowa is apologizing to parents after an email message which included a “quote of the day” spread a message that originated in Nazi Germany, Business Insider reported.
“Here’s today’s Respect Quote of the day: ‘My honor is my loyalty,’” a line at the bottom of the email read.
The quote was commonly used in the Waffen SS to express loyalty to Adolf Hitler and has been historically connected to leading Nazi Party member Heinrich Himmler.
“The staff member didn’t realize that the quote was from a highly inappropriate source,” Indianola Superintendent Ted Ihns wrote. “I first want to apologize for the oversight.”
Ihns said that using a quote with Nazi connections was “completely unintentional,” and better research will be conducted going forward.
There is a movie called My Honor was My Loyalty on Amazon Prime. It is about Waffen SS troops in World War II.
Been super busy with bs work-related screw ups. Thankfully not caused by me. :D
re: #33 Shiplord Kirel: From behind wingnut lines
A lot of inadvertent historical references these days.
bought an inexpensive desktop PC to replace the PC that decided to go psycho last night.
Newer, better one will wait until we’re in the hobbit house with a phone line and internet access.
In the meantime, I’m using the Acer laptop
re: #36 Backwoods Sleuth
When do you finally move in?
Baby beaver to be new ambassador for High Desert Museum
1:20 of baby beaver at the link.
re: #40 HRH Stanley Sea
LBJ knew what had to be done to heal the nation after JFK’s assassination.
re: #37 Decatur Deb
When do you finally move in?
hopefully sometime in my lifetime…we started this 13 years ago.
re: #42 Backwoods Sleuth
hopefully sometime in my lifetime…we started this 13 years ago.
every summer I’m assured that “we’ll be in the hobbit house this winter!”
I’ve heard that for at least 5 or 6 years now…
I’ve learned not to hold my breath.
(the PC that just went psycho? When I bought it, I was promised we’d be in the new house. It sat out there for 2 or 3 years until the PC in the old house died and I had to bring the new one in, never taken out of its box…sigh)
More smol animals at OPB. Big fire 6 years ago, pikas coming back.
re: #45 Varek Raith
Those are damn cute.
Around here they say the beavers are dam cute. and dam everything else they can think of. Team mascot of the local U.
Also, state animal. State flag:
re: #43 Backwoods Sleuth
every summer I’m assured that “we’ll be in the hobbit house this winter!”
I’ve heard that for at least 5 or 6 years now…
I’ve learned not to hold my breath.
(the PC that just went psycho? When I bought it, I was promised we’d be in the new house. It sat out there for 2 or 3 years until the PC in the old house died and I had to bring the new one in, never taken out of its box…sigh)
You posted a number of photos of the house in early-middle construction. When it’s done you must mount a page with the construction history.
re: #48 Decatur Deb
You posted a number of photos of the house in early-middle construction. When it’s done you must mount a page with the construction history.
will do
re: #22 The Ghost of a Flea
The notion that intelligence in one field translates to general skill in interacting with ideas is just not supportable. Downstream of that, making money does not signify anything about a person’s reasoning about anything but the specific methodology by which they made money…and quite often that amounts knowing how to do sales.
But it’s probably more relevant that believing dubious, untrue, and/or bigoted things is not a product of “intelligence” it’s the result of overconfidence. A rich person can earn money through smarts and hard work and still be generally uninformed…and a bigot…and all their subsequent earnings can be unimpressive feats of salesmanship, precisely because the mythos of their success lifts away from the materiality of that success.
I want to push back on this point because I think it’s untrue. Musk is famous for being an actual inventor, which is quintessentially about being an engineer. An engineer will often start with various wacky ideas and theories, but the first thing I learned as a software engineer that in order to make good decisions, you first collect data.
The idea sounds plausible? Great, collect some data to prove it.
Got an idea to save money? Great, collect some data around a proof of concept. Let’s see if you’re right.
It’s such an ingrained response to the input of ideas that any person who spent any amount of time in this field should have it as part of their DNA. And not innately, but because you learn it on the job! You have to be able to sort out assumptions from truth or else you’ll lose your shirt and crash the company.
So what I’m saying here is not that Elon Musk is not a salesman. He is. That much is obvious. What I’m saying is that his reputation as an inventor is a fiction, not least because he’s shown again and again that he didn’t learn the lessons we learn as SW1s right out of coding boot camp. The fact that he can’t do simple things like explain the Twitter stack is just icing on that cake.
re: #52 Unabogie
I want to push back on this point because I think it’s untrue. Musk is famous for being an actual inventor, which is quintessentially about being an engineer. An engineer will often start with various wacky ideas and theories, but the first thing I learned as a software engineer that in order to make good decisions, you first collect data.
The idea sounds plausible? Great, collect some data to prove it.
Got an idea to save money? Great, collect some data around a proof of concept. Let’s see if you’re right.It’s such an ingrained response to the input of ideas that any person who spent any amount of time in this field should have it as part of their DNA. And not innately, but because you learn it on the job! You have to be able to sort out assumptions from truth or else you’ll lose your shirt and crash the company.
So what I’m saying here is not that Elon Musk is not a salesman. He is. That much is obvious. What I’m saying is that his reputation as an inventor is a fiction, not least because he’s shown again and again that he didn’t learn the lessons we learn as SW1s right out of coding boot camp. The fact that he can’t do simple things like explain the Twitter stack is just icing on that cake.
There were two Steves. He’s trying to imitate Jobs, not Woz, that’s rather telling.
re: #52 Unabogie
I want to push back on this point because I think it’s untrue. Musk is famous for being an actual inventor, which is quintessentially about being an engineer. An engineer will often start with various wacky ideas and theories, but the first thing I learned as a software engineer that in order to make good decisions, you first collect data.
The idea sounds plausible? Great, collect some data to prove it.
Got an idea to save money? Great, collect some data around a proof of concept. Let’s see if you’re right.It’s such an ingrained response to the input of ideas that any person who spent any amount of time in this field should have it as part of their DNA. And not innately, but because you learn it on the job! You have to be able to sort out assumptions from truth or else you’ll lose your shirt and crash the company.
So what I’m saying here is not that Elon Musk is not a salesman. He is. That much is obvious. What I’m saying is that his reputation as an inventor is a fiction, not least because he’s shown again and again that he didn’t learn the lessons we learn as SW1s right out of coding boot camp. The fact that he can’t do simple things like explain the Twitter stack is just icing on that cake.
Okay but I don’t think that Ghost was actually saying that Musk’s intelligence flowed from him being an inventor at all, that’s the mythos. The intelligence was always in the salesmanship, in how to hype and knowing which forward looking technology fields (electric cars and space launch) were open for him to jump into and exploit with very little competition. He was very good at positioning himself to leverage his wealth.
re: #44 wrenchwench
So cute.
Happy Holidays and Hello from Cinnamon. Like many, I had to work today. Our crew made the most of it. Holiday cheers in the casting shop.
It’s a crazy biz. The raw amount of gold, silver and platinum going into gifts right now is astonishing. Kilos and kilos. This whole custom CAD thing makes the wildly big look work. Think Hip Hop styles. This example at a Pinterest site shows it.
re: #52 Unabogie
I want to push back on this point because I think it’s untrue. Musk is famous for being an actual inventor, which is quintessentially about being an engineer. An engineer will often start with various wacky ideas and theories, but the first thing I learned as a software engineer that in order to make good decisions, you first collect data.
The idea sounds plausible? Great, collect some data to prove it.
Got an idea to save money? Great, collect some data around a proof of concept. Let’s see if you’re right.It’s such an ingrained response to the input of ideas that any person who spent any amount of time in this field should have it as part of their DNA.
In effect we’re starting saying the same thing—knowledge is a process and one must engage with the method of determining true through interpreting data via accepted case-specific mechanisms—but our disagreement is that I don’t think that’s how most people actually engage with information most of the time, and I especially don’t think that the process makes people rich such that “wealth comes from expertise and hard work” is a generalizable statement such that one could distinguish Musk as some kind of fake compared to other rich people.
There is no actual, material barrier to an engineer believing something irrational or without data. I live in a community with a lot of people with highly technical skills but no ability to process data outside their field, and when they attempt to do so they tend to lapse into the exact same fallacies that untrained people do. On a technical level, they should understand that there is a method-of-knowing that’s based on evidence and processing of evidence through consensus of experts because they rely on those mechanisms in their own field…
…but they don’t care because they’ve assigned themselves a quality of inherent-general-competence such that there’s no need to do the due diligence.
Hence why I describe the whole phenomena, including Musk as a specific case, as representative of hubris rather than stupidity. It doesn’t matter how smart he is, that’s not even a variable, the actual independent variable determining how he thinks is his belief that his intelligence allows him to ignore the process of knowing.
And not innately, but because you learn it on the job! You have to be able to sort out assumptions from truth or else you’ll lose your shirt and crash the company.
This is another “ought” not “is” statement.
Someone with bad assumptions might eventually create a problem that results in Finding Out…but there’s a whole bunch of intervening details on when that happens and what consequences look like. Having a lot of money means treating error like a casino; hierachical authority means that error can be distributed downward; legal structures exist to disperse accountability by concealing who makes the decisions that cause the problem.
So what I’m saying here is not that Elon Musk is not a salesman. He is. That much is obvious. What I’m saying is that his reputation as an inventor is a fiction,
What I’m trying to do is point out that Elon Musk, the actual guy, succeeds because Elon Musk, the fiction, has successfully read back to the culture the culture’s own expectations of what an “inventor” and a “smart guy” is. His racism, to the point he cannot understand the paper he cites, is built on the sale that he is an authority that can speak to the nature of race by virtue of…pointing at his companies and money.
The surprise that he could believe bullshit is dependent on a series of base assumptions that have no validity in vivo: success is not indicative of skill, and skill is not indicative of a different skill.
With Musk’s right wing turn, what’s at the forefront is not a lack of understanding, but a refusal to accept data analysis and consensus systems that he otherwise uses…for example, deferring to engineers on SpaceX design features…because he views that realm of knowledge as within his understanding such that expertise—the ability to interpret crime data—that reaches conclusions other than his preferred ones is irrelevant.
Basically, he thinks he knows about race and crime better than the people who study race and crime, and he’s willing to post documents he can’t interpret because he doesn’t care about the process…he knows the right answer, he can decode the document to find confirmation, everything else is bad actors or incompetents.
You can see the same thing materially manifested as the cybertruck: it’s a bunch of shitty designs features that Elon finds pleasing—that match his aesthetics and preconceptions of what utility should be—that are completely abstracted from the materials being used, the likely driving conditions, etc. It’s solipsism as a motor vehicle.
not least because he’s shown again and again that he didn’t learn the lessons we learn as SW1s right out of coding boot camp. The fact that he can’t do simple things like explain the Twitter stack is just icing on that cake.
Yes, he *should* be more competent or be humble enough to defer to people with more expertise; he *should* respect the process of how a thing is determined to be true.
But he isn’t, and he isn’t because he’s made enormous amounts of wealth on the illusion of competence—effectively replacing marketing for everything else—and has no material incentive to stop…but also he lives within a hugbox of curated social connections where he’s told he cannot be wrong…but also he lives in a whole cultural milieu in which money is authority.
What fascinates me is not Musk himself—he’s a standard type—but the way that Musks are always a possibility because society will not dissect it’s own base assumptions about what expertise is and what money means, and have a largely-incoherent picture of “intelligence” not as an ongoing, efficacious performance—a process in which anyone can “be stupid” and their stupidity can be assayed to understand their error—to a kind of fixed trait identifiable through aesthetic features such that the signifiers of intelligence are substituted for the signified of actually doing “intelligent” processing of information.
Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory Just Captured Ominous Signals About the Planet’s Health Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory just captured an ominous sign about the pace of global warming. Atmospheric levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide aren’t just on their way to yet another record high this year - they’re rising faster than ever, ...
Cheechako
The Good Liars at the Schnecksville Trump Rally [VIDEO] New theories, great tunes and SHOCKING breaking news. SUPPORT US: http://Herohero.co/thegoodliars SEE THE GOOD LIARS LIVE!WASHINGTON D.C. MAY 23RD: https://www.unionstage.com/shows/good-liars-fix-america/NASHVILLE, TN JUNE 6TH: https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/42992972/the-good-liars-nashville-the-lab-at-zaniesSAN FRANCISCO, CA JUNE 25TH: https://www.livenation.com/event/G5vYZbavGvggG/the-good-liars SUBSCRIBE TO OUR AUDIO PODCAST:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-good-liars-tell-the-truth/id1731178442Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7mgfiwzr32907N4y68eFOCJoin this channel ...
teleskiguy
Trump’s “Stolen Election” Lie Based on Evidence From Pervy Bathroom Cam-Spy OK, this really takes the cake. If you have relatives that still cling to the “election was stolen, dadgum, I jes’ KNOW IT … This should be a slight remedy to the stubborn madness Thanks to online anonymity, the ...
Khal Wimpo (free internal organs upon request!)
Best of April 2024 Nothing new here but these are a look back at the a few good images from the past month. Despite the weather, I was quite pleased with several of them. These were taken with older lenses (made from the ...
William Lewis
Gateway Pundit, Sued by Election Workers, Declares BankruptcyA onetime favorite, now just pathetic figure around these parts, Jim Hoft aka SMOTI ("Stupidest Man On The Internet"), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in response to the defamation lawsuits filed against him to the same election workers that ... Khal Wimpo (free internal organs upon request!)
The Pandemic Cost 7 Million Lives, but Talks to Prevent a Repeat Stall In late 2021, as the world reeled from the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus, representatives of almost 200 countries met - some online, some in-person in Geneva - hoping to forestall a future worldwide ... Cheechako
A Water War Is Brewing Between the U.S. And Mexico. Here’s Why A water dispute between the United States and Mexico that goes back decades is turning increasingly urgent in Texas communities that rely on the Rio Grande. Their leaders are now demanding the Mexican government either share water or face ... Cheechako
Harper’s Magazine: Slippery Slope - How Private Equity Shapes a Ski Town …Big Sky stands apart for other reasons. The obvious distinction is the Yellowstone Club, a private resort hidden in the mountains above the community that Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale and the author of Billionaire Wilderness, ... teleskiguy
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