Am I...am I allowed to say I think an unhealthy portion of this country is pretty fuckin' stupid? Granted, the reason they're pretty fuckin' stupid is they're pretty fuckin' poor. But, still...
Oh, yeah, I am absolutely on team “eat the rich”. two sides to the same problem, I think.
The UK general election is today and the likely outcome is a conservative majority. People have been given plenty of opportunities during the campaign to see Boris Johnson for the lying, homophobic, racist, manipulative, double-crossing, floundering, selfish, bully that he is. A man whose own Chief of Staff said of him: "A compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent" Yet, people will still vote for him because "get brexit done" That people are stupid is a thought that's been caught creeping around the borders of my brain a few times recently. And as much as it feels distasteful, it's hard not to still believe it.
> Yet, people will still vote for him because "get brexit done" This is because politics involves heavy marketing now. It's becomes like a brand. "Get Brexit done" can be thrown all over social media used in newspaper headlines. It's like click bait. It was the same for the last elections "Strong and stable Britain" uttered by Theresa. The conservatives are very good at marketing. They have had years of introducing the idea to everyone that labour are very bad with the economy. Which is interesting because they have also done a brilliant job at getting everyone to think they are good with the economy. The conservatives since the 2010 have increased our debt. You could argue this is the effect of the crash in 2008. But then you have a government like Germany's who borrowed and invested into the country after the crash. Who initially went more into debt but now they are back to the same levels of debt before the crash. The conservatives have this fisade of being great with money and good for the economy but since 2010 this hasn't really shown to be true. Especially with all the cuts they are making. There is lots of propaganda from conservatives about labour being terrible with money. It works so perfectly when labour bring out their manifesto every election. The conservatives know labour will have some ambitious spending plans. They wait until labour have released there manifesto until they release theirs. This can't be a coincidence it means they can make sure they are not spending more than labour. Then when In a debate they can jump on labour about the spending plans. Labour to me have never really come across as good at marketing and strategizing during elections. They try to give good honest answers. It works for people who like detailed answers and like to try to look into things It doesn't work to the people who are just scrolling through Facebook and see "Labour bad with the economy". Scroll some more "Borris will get Brexit done". Keep scrolling "Vote conservatives for a strong and stable Britain" Unfortunately now online marketing is really important.
The challenge of democracy is not only allowing everyone to participate but to ensure that their participation is informed. Particularly when those who suffer under democracy only need them to vote against themselves. The fact that you guys still have a House of Lords says a lot.
I can't help but feel like that's an impossible goal to achieve on a wide scale for a populace whose educational system has already failed them. At least in the short term. Getting information to people is one thing, but getting them to actually consider it and adjust their views is another. I mean, you don't even have to be "stupid" for that to be true.
This is what that whole high school movement was about. The problem is our information management skills have not kept up with our information flow. One of those clever Youtube videos from like 2011 pointed out that any given New York Times print edition has as much information in it as an Edwardian peasant would see in their lifetime and we've got a hundred million 'boomers scrolling their Facebook feeds for hours every day. We'd barely figured out journalism by the time social media blew our selection bias all to hell.Granted, the reason they're pretty fuckin' stupid is they're pretty fuckin' poor. But, still...
I spend so much time trying to figure information management and information systems technology. Most people at work don’t give a shit about it because it’s not “making our product” and it’s entirely disheartening. Then something breaks and nobody knows how to fix it or there’s conflicting document revisions in production and I silently sob/laugh. Apply that to a national scale.
Hi, Hubski! I got a raise yesterday, which is WILD and the first time I've ever had an employer up my salary unprompted. I'm not sure what to make of it. I should feel proud, but my paranoid mind is trying to find a reason why this is happening - I've been here for less than a year, so what's the story? I don't think I'm doing THAT well... Whatever. Gift horses, mouths. I've been put on a short-term contract as the only developer. It's for a client that we've been making overtures towards for years, and this is the first time they've actually signed an SOW with us. I think my superiors are eager to see this go well, and they're hoping to have it lead to more work in the future...It's a lot of pressure. I'm hoping I can meet expectations, and I'm fearful that I won't get it done quick enough. I've been 'walking' with 25% of my body weight on my leg. It's been the most liberating feeling, and it's been a significant boost to morale just to do anything with this stupid bone-and-blood-cudgel I call my leg! The bone doctor man says I'll be walking without boots or a crutch on January 7th. I'm so fucking excited, there's no way Christmas or New Year's is going to compare to walking again! 2019 was a stupid difficult complicated busy year. I'm glad that I get to do all of my healing during its dying gasps, and that I'll enter the new year as a newly reformed person.
It can definitely make you a bit suspicious! I got a raise this year unprompted and I sat down with my manager and asked pretty bluntly "what for?" and she essentially said "If we don't pay you competitively, you'll go somewhere that will!". She's right, I would leave if the right money came along and getting raises keeps me hungry for the job. But I really like my job and the team so staying and being paid more is very nice indeed. Congrats man!
It's the 22nd anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol. Someone last night tweeted a graph of Kyoto energy projections and energy industry projections and it was like the General Lee flying off a fucking ski jump. David Wallace Wells pointed out that something like 90% of the climate change we're experiencing has been caused by the past three generations. It's all post-war Boomer shit, really. I stopped listening to NPR in 2002 when they ran a piece about how the economy couldn't be too terrible, after all, Gulfstream was hiring and had a massive backlog. Here's the thing: Both Honda and Mitsubishi have both recently decided that there's a future in business jets. And sure. Maybe they'll go electric. And sure. The future of aviation has been demonstrated to be regional. But I can't help looking at all this and recognizing that the money? The money knows we aren't going to get our shit together on climate change and the money knows that the 1% is gonna need to get around without having to look at the unwashed. I've got four employees on the payroll. One of 'em just bought a house and gutted the thing; her mortgage is three times mine but you know what? She didn't have any options to go cheaper. She wants to have a baby and we know she can't afford it. She'd like more work. I'd like to give her more work. Work comes from the universe, not from me. One of our other employees bartends on the side. She's got $200k in debt and needs to study for her boards. Another is neck deep in a thesis battle that has had me proofreading the damn thing a half-dozen times. She can't afford to make rent and we're paying about 20% over market. I told my wife we should give bonuses this year because everyone's hurting and my wife pointed out that our profits don't include the taxes we expect to pay for next year, which were a gobsmacking amount of money. I'm giving no one benefits, I'm giving no one a retirement and I own a thriving business. Meanwhile Adam Neumann made half a billion dollars renting office space for 20% less than he leased it for. Meanwhile there's a 2019 Boxster S out front because Frau Grau ate her convertible top controller, which needs to come from Germany. So I've got a $88k loaner for a week (and counting) while a Porsche dealership clears a warning light for $3500. Can I afford to pay $3500 to keep my car drivable? Yeah, really, I can. So what the fuck am I bitching about. There's 700,000 Rohingya fleeing genocide, 5 million Syrians are no longer Syrians (and 6 million are internally homeless) and friendly reminder, we're holding more than 50,000 people in border detention camps and refusing them flu shots and paying McKinsey to tell us they don't need food. You know what the social safety net really is? It's piece of mind for taxpayers that someone is looking out for all the people they can't help. And I can't believe in it today."The simple formula is that around the planet, six million people are brought into a flooding situation for every centimetre of sea-level rise. So, when you hear about a centimetre rise, it does have impacts," he told BBC News.
That's, essentially, big O/small o notation. It's extremely useful for visualising behaviours of all sorts of things, though, for some reason, it's mostly talked explicitly about by CS people. For example, f(x) = x + exp(-x) could be considered as two cases, one for x ≥ 0 (where exp(-x) contributes increasingly less the larger the x) and x < 0 (where behaviour is dominated by exp(-x)). Additionally, it means that regardless of what non-zero constants multiply those expressions (be mindful of the sign), big picture, the behaviour won't change. And, yes, despite looking like handwaving difficulties away, it's actually a formal way of simplifying, discussing and solving problems.Next up, figure out which terms to "eliminate" to get an expression for x as q gets very large or small (but not taking an actual limit!?)
If all the coefficients are integers, as it is the case here, rational root theorem and Horner's method might be enough to do it fast. Though, Cardano's method is a much more general way of solving cubics and worth learning at some point.And hOW the fuck am I supposed to factor cubic equations? Guess?
We got a cat! Long story short; our ex-flatmates who have recently bought a house, found the previous owners cat lurking around. He was extremely friendly but extremely determined to get into, what he understands as, his house. The new owners have a cat named Lily who is both tiny and entirely unaware of how tiny she is, leading to a lot of lost fights. So, they called the previous owners for an idea of what to do - we now think they might be going through some bad times as neither of them replied as a unit, only offering their own opinion. The wife wants to put him down, the husband wanted to find a home but couldn't under short notice so left the cat with the neighbour (hence why the cat keeps returning home, it's very close). Learning that he might be put down if he's not allowed to terrorize Lily, my ex-flatties rang me up and asked if we'd like to meet/take him away. We went to meet him on Tuesday night, he was very affectionate and purring loudly. The previous owners said we could take him if we wanted, and gave us his vet history etc. So we bundled him into a crate and took him back to ours. He's got a sweet pad, little cat house with fluffy blanket, scratching post we bought this week anticipating a cat, an enclosed litter box for while he's adjusting to the house, some toys and treats etc. As soon as we got him home we took him into the lounge as it's the best place to keep him in for now. Opened the crate and he shot under a couch, where he's been ever since. This morning he ventured out! He's used the litter box un-prompted, eaten the food we left and drank the water, as well as munched the treats we left by the couch opening so he didn't have to move far. We coaxed him out and he was rubbing his face on everything and purring away. About 30 minutes of that and we had to get ready for work so he slinked back under the couch when we left him alone, hopefully that's a first sign he's getting adjusted though, only on our second day so need to be patient. I tried taking a photo but he moves so damn fast so it's blurry and shite, but it'll do until he can sit still and pose. Meet the currently unnamed cat (previous name was Elvis but he doesn't seem to answer to that anyway).
So close to 18 Million Fashion/Sewing I'm making good progress on my rabbit piece. Working with smaller pieces all around really is a time saver. That said, it's still pretty time consuming because I'm doing individual, exposed stitches which is a much slower process than a running back stitch. I think, for future projects, I very well may need to rethink how I do things, and probably legit take up quilting. I have a denim jacket that's about ten years old at this point. I bought it on clearance for $12 so I'm getting pretty close to paying a dollar a year for that thing, which is a pretty good deal. It's starting to show its age though, with holes and areas of worn out fabric like denim is prone to do. So I'm starting to patch it to keep the thing going, because it's still a functional jacket and I doubt I'm gonna find another one for $12 any time soon. The thing is, I'm using colorful, exposed patches with deliberately rough and uneven sewing. It looks great and I like it a lot, but it's quickly becoming unlike anything in my wardrobe. I have no intention of changing how I dress overall, but this jacket is gonna become an odd piece out and I'm starting to wonder how to make it work. Video Games The Street Fighter collection still proves to be quite the challenge, and while I'm embarrassed to admit it, the only way I've been able to beat any of the games so far is by reducing both the difficulty and game speeds. I guess my reflexes just aren't what they used to be. Still, it makes me miss my King of Fighters collection dearly and I kind of wish SNK would release an anthology so I can enjoy them again. Technically I can get them from the X-Box store for $7.99 a pop, but for ten games, that's a lot of money that I'm not willing to spend. Oh well. Cars My FR-S is getting up there in age, both in years and miles. I have a prediction it's gonna be one of those cars where the engine is gonna run like a top for forever but everything else is gonna fail randomly. It's already turning into a squeaker and a rattler, so I think the next few years with it are gonna be interesting. Winter is almost here, Hubski. I know it's not everyone's favorite season, especially if you live further North, but it still has a magical charm to it. I hope in one way or a other, you guys get to experience some of that magic. Keep being awesome guys, I appreciate you all.
Chickens Food Made a bunch of tiny sandwiches for a tea party my metamour threw! This was a lot of fun and I'd love to have another excuse to do them again, but better. (not pictured: cucumber rosemary sandwiches on white bread) Yesterday I made some variant of huevos rancheros that turned out nice. Vague recipe: 1) Dice up a jalapeño. Sauté in butter. Drain a can of beans, mash lightly, and add to jalapeños. Season with smoked paprika and whatever other kind of smoky hot sauce you have on hand -- maybe habanero or chipotle or something. 2) Slice some garlic, fry in oil until it's getting brown. Dice up a tomato or two and add to the garlic. Put in one of those 80¢ cans of enchilada sauce because I sure don't have time to make that from scratch when it's 7 PM already. Spiff it up with some sugar and a bunch of oregano. Add a pat of butter for that extra flavor note. 3) Pan fry corn tortillas. 4) Crack a few eggs into the sauce from step 2. If you drop them in instead of trying to be gentle, they'll make their own divot in the sauce and stay together. Bake at 375 until the whites are white, then top with cheese and broil until they're done. 5) Slice an onion and a green pepper into strips. Season with cumin and chili powder. Cook at very high heat in oil, stirring frequently, until starting to char on the edges. 6) Serve with fresh radish/green onion/lemon wedges/whatever else you want.
This could be a guessing game: Guess how many chickens are in ilex's chicken pile! Four is my guess, for the record. Had to google metamour, but it seems like a very kind and supportive thing you did for your friend! Those sandwiches look fancy as hell :)
Writing science stuff for Forever Labs today. I'm working on this painting, and I am not sure where I am going with it. It's a bit flat atm. I'm kind of just painting, and waiting for the urge to commit to something. I visited my uncle on Sunday, and discovered that he had my dad's recurve bow. It's a #40 Bear Grizzly, probably made in around 1970-76, and is in perfect shape. Apparently they are highly rated bows. I ordered a new string, some arrows and a quiver. He also had my old #15 bow, which my daughter inherited. She's getting a string, arrows, and quiver too. Yesterday a FedEx truck took out our Subaru as it was parked on the street. The frame looks bent. The driver ran, but luckily a woman saw it happen and called it in. Several hours later, my wife was driving my daughter and her friend back from dance lessons, and smash; she slid on ice, hit the car in front of her, and the car behind her hit her. The Prius is fucked. The trunk buckled. Two cars ruined in one day.
i'm on the fat edge of losing it fellas i was screaming and crying earlier today: i didn't intend to be screaming but once i started it seemed to be working for me so why stop i guess i took a long hot shower and i got that to stop anyway i have this strong conviction lately that i'm not gonna make it in life, i feel like - everything i see gives me no reason to believe that the world at large is gonna get better within my lifespan at least, maybe at best i/we GenZ can be where things magically start to be cool, but that seems like a "how can my generation possibly fuck up" kind of bias so that feels tough to believe in. as far as i can tell the only reason i've made it this far is because i'm lucky enough to a. be born rich and b. be born with insurance because without that i'd have no meds which means i'd be forced to be a faggot instead of a tranny i wouldn't bet on not being fucked, generally speaking is i guess what i'm trying to say - i'm nowhere near as fucked as i deserve to be, but definitely more fucked than i am able to take, clearly i talked to a pair of mormons a couple weeks back when i met them on a pedestrian bridge outside of work and i understand now a little better about how they getcha because i feel like i need to learn some koine greek and some hebrew - i've read enough indoeuropean papers for it not to be a surprise and hebrew feels easier than arabic so what the hey might as well try god i wish blogs were still a thing - i tried tumblr for a while but that's just like any other site where you can like share and subscribe, i would much rather have some nice little private place but i guess that's what a diary is for i'm kinda scared of my dad
I have some experience with Koine, so I can help you out there if you decide to go that route. For a blog site, have you seen write.as?
i've never seen it but it looks neat, i'll check it out i remembered somebody here was booling out with greek but i couldn't remember who - what resources have you used to learn it?
I started with a textbook, Rodney Decker's Reading Koine Greek. I'd studied Classical Greek for a couple years in college, so thankfully a lot of it was a refresher (plus beginning to familiarize myself with differences in Koine vs. the older dialect I'd learned). After that, I'm just reading!
Still hanging in London! So far, I’ve been to the Tate modern, a free drawing event at the national portrait gallery, the V&A, a Christmas Choir where we drank mulled cider and ate mince pie, dinner with my sister’s in-laws at a private club, Winter Wonderland, a Sofar concert, a couple British pubs and a shady techno club. I’m not sure I get the hype about private clubs. Apparently they closed the waiting list since it’s 15+ years old. It has lots of gym-like amenities, a pool and clubs like embroidery and backgammon. The grounds are nice too. But if feels like a cross between a retirement home and a YMCA. I get why people want to go/belong in theory, but thank god it’s not a world I need to engage in on a regular basis. The judgy questions about my future plans during lunch didn’t help I guess. Or being lectured on the importance of tradition. And comments about how Canada doesn’t have much to offer beyond nature - how all culture is in Europe. I’m happy they are not MY in laws... Also got locked into my friends apartment all day yesterday so that day was a wash. Had to call up my other friend to come liberate me by throwing her my keys out the window and her coming up for me. Felt like a princess in a high tower! I might go to an election rave tonight: I have no idea what to expect but whatever. I bet it’s going to be fun :)