A little ditty going out to OMWC, because reasons.
YOUR DAILY NUTPUNCH: Helicopter pilot threatened with arrest after flying rescue missions in flood-ravaged NC. Yes, there are problems with amateur rescuers in disaster areas. This was not one of those. This is absurd bureaucratic fucktardery of which Terry Gilliam would be proud.
THIS IS HOW YOU TROLL: Six-fingered gloves sent to Sam Altman, EU leaders as AI warning.
UNION GRIFTER SCUM: [ILA] Union boss Harold Daggett rages against E-ZPass for costing union jobs in video weeks before strike shut down ports… The head of the International Longshoreman’s Association decried the loss of toll booth workers because the shift to E-ZPass allows motorists to zip through “like it’s nothing and then get billed in the mail,” according to an interview last month. Billed in the fucking mail. Like he didn’t have an account and blew through an “EZ-Pass Only” toll lane thinking he was special. There is nothing to keep this guy from moving in with the Amish, or a hippy commune (they still have those, right?), but here he is.
FAT BEAR WEEK DELAYED AFTER CONTENDER KILLS RIVAL: This is certainly grisly news, Nobody knew there was trouble brewin’. Your word for today — hyperphagia.
ARBITRATION CLAUSES ARE FOREVER: Couple injured in Uber crash can’t sue because they had previously placed an order with Uber Eats. Uber, in response, told CNN that Georgia McGinty “agreed to Uber’s terms of use, including the arbitration agreement, on multiple occasions,” including in early 2021 and took Uber rides after agreeing to those terms.
SPACE WEATHER REPORT: Monster X-class flare launches massive solar storm towards Earth — and could trigger auroras this weekend.
What would you do for a Klondike bear…. ?
Oh — also in my thoughts as I read about this this morning… so would all the lady bears choose the Man over the Bear now?
Toughen up, buttercup
Aurora’s cool,
EMP, not so much
It was a damned sight better than Solaria at least….
Yusef. UDisc now has a community function. Friend me or I’ll never golf with you again. 😉
“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
That is exactly where I went.
It was threat of violence.
+6
STOP SAYING THAT!
And in a sane world, a judge says “No — that’s an unreasonable contract clause.” to that and frankly most software and services contracts these days. There’s no leverage, no one reads the damned things anyway — and there’s very little actual compensation for what they ask.
I was certain that courts had already ruled that the click through Ts and Cs in software licenses were not enforceable because no one reads them and the developers/publishers know that.
It must be a lower or circuit court different from the article or the 9th… given crap like this is currently going on.
Interesting to me is that around the same time as the Disney and Uber stunts with arbitration was Steam removing the arbitration clause (but it doesn’t look like an altruistic reason, but one where the clause was already on shaky ground).
Has anyone actually gone through formal arbitration lately? I know a lot of places have these policies…but are you going to get screwed if you fall back on it, or is it 100% situational in terms of reasonability for medical expenses, etc?
Tesla has it, but you can opt out.
I’ve read bad experiences with it, but also good.
The good is once you force them to go suddenly the problem they have ignored gets fixed instead of them paying arbitration fees.
Generally I’d opt out.
I was never a fan of arbitration when I was doing contract work. Way back in the day, it was a faster/cheaper way to resolve business disputes, and it was fine. It’s become slower and more expensive, although maybe not as bad as court. I’ve never liked arbitration for anything but business disputes, anyway.
I just rejected a contract from a realtor because it had mandatory arbitration, with the proviso that nothing said or discovered there could be disclosed. Fuck that, because agreeing to that would give away a lot of my leverage in dealing with them if there was a problem.
At least it wasn’t a Q-class flare triggering areolas.
[golf claps]
They’ll be there for you…
They’ve always been there for you
Both of you are my favorite people right now.
Right now my favorite people are Farrah and Jennifer.
Do you think my wife would be annoyed if I got that Farah poster for our room?
Do you mean your new room?
Perfect, Mike.
Legit LOL
Six-fingered gloves sent to Sam Altman, EU leaders as AI warning.
Genius.
EZ Pass is good.
The foul-mouthed boss also fumed over the proliferation of self-checkout kiosks in retail stores.
Self check-out is good.
This guy is awful.
Nothing like a line of cars as someone digs through their console searching for exact fare.
I always have a couple bucks in my dash for going Northbound on the York bridge – but I’m seeing more and more places where they bill by mail. The 301 bridge between VA and Maryland, the Newport bridge in RI, heck, even the entire NY turnpike is by mail now – no ezpass they still bill you by plate/registration.
The official name of the road is the Thruway. We don’t have a Turnpike, that’s New Jersey.
Self-checkout is bad. Stop lying.
Self checkout is amazing. I can get through the line faster, I can pack stuff in a logical method that fits where it needs to go when I get home, and I don’t have to pretend to be glad to chat with a checkout person. The only time I’ll go to a cashier is if there’s a line for all the self checkouts, and there’s absolutely no line for the cashier.
Self-checkout is great when people use it properly.
People who hate self-checkout are telling on themselves that they are incapable of simple tasks like scanning a can of tuna.
Self checkout sucks when the people ahead of you are incapable of simple tasks like scanning a can of tuna.
For some reason, whenever I go to the cashier, I get stuck behind the same lady who’s price checking EVERYTHING IN HER BASKET with an app on her phone.
I use self-checkout as a replacement for <20 item express lanes. If I am doing bulk shopping for weekly/monthly staples I use a lane with a cashier.
The self checkout machine will not let you scan at the rate of a regular cashier, waits until the scale detects the added weight of an object, loudly complaining when you’re buying things too light for it to properly detect, loudly announces the price of each and every item, doesn’t allow you to say “Six of the next item” then scan one can, and that’s before you have to deal with the other customers making the line longer and slower than a regular checkout.
Regular registers move faster, since the effect of the idiot customers is reduced rather than multipled.
I can a store’s demographics based on if they use that optional feature or not.
For example Whole Paycheck in my affluent area does not.
Having one “cashier” over-watch six or nine self serve kiosks is a huge improvement over one efficient queue ran by that single cashier.
@Sensei – I have to drive to the opposite end of the county to find one of those, and they charge too much that if I weren’t looking for Golden Beets to an obsessive degree, I’d have never once shopped there. I used a real checkout.
And when I don’t use self checkout I’m stuck behind the last person on earth who pays for groceries with a check.
UnCivilServant is right. Self-checkout would be acceptable if they gave me a discount for doing there labor for them.
JaimeRoberto – can I get $20 back too?
Do you have a check cashing card?
/s Former UFCW Grocery Cashier
My Wegmans self-checkout started weighing your groceries. It was great until then; now it sucks balls because you have to scan one item at a time and place it on the scale before you can scan another item. 4 identical rolls of TP? Sorry – one. At. A. Time.
… who watches each and every item get scanned…
AND THEN
She reaches into her purse and shuffles to find her checkbook.
THEN
Searches through her purse again to find a pen… which doesn’t work.
THEN
After failing to find a replacement finally asks the clerk
FINALLY
The transaction is complete.
OH, AND
She takes the pen.
Also, I’ve done a fair amount of grocery pickup. The process involves too many incompetent people. I would like a robot to pick out all of my grocery items and bring them to my car.
Why won’t anyone think of all the pick and shovel jobs lost to backhoes and excavators?
I think I’ve said this here before, but I’ve never minded bloviating so here goes again:
My father would never use self checkout because he wanted to support cashiers and bag boys. He was a probation officer and placed many, many of his clients in those jobs (as well as other simple jobs) over his career.
He would pontificate (to me of all people!) that a big chunk of his clientele had become thieves or committed some other crimes because they were not the brightest knife in the drawer. They literally didn’t know how to get an honest job and ended up stealing to make money.
Getting them a simple job was actually a great way for many of them to become actual law abiding citizens. He’d ask what are people who don’t have any real prospects supposed to do if everything gets automated?
It was a good argument, but I always use the self checkout lane myself.
Yeah, I wonder about that.
Not everybody is going to learn to code.
I see tipping baggers at the base commissary, but doesn’t really come up anywhere else I shop.
That’s one of the arguments for UBI.
Here’s hoping that CNN goes the way of Infowars.
Late-breaking news: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has deployed the National Guard to ports throughout the state to “resume operations” where possible amid the ongoing International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) strike.
I hope he sends them armed.
I want to see video of a longshoreman taking a rifle butt to the teeth.
I want to see the video of Harold Daggett getting his teeth knocked down his throat.
I would pay to see that video
I’ll be in my bunk
Things are getting spicy.
Incoming Brandon administration / NLRB condemnation in 6… 5… 4…
The NLRB needs to be executed every few months.
You’d think they’d get the message after the first round of purges…
To think the GOP could have nominated him instead 😭
Maybe the robber barons and pinkertons had some good ideas.
Ya’ think? That history narrative we were fed in school was a load of horseshit.
The actual stories are fascinating.
TW: complicated and nuanced
Was this Winston’s Mom?
https://notthebee.com/article/who-would-have-thought-watching-economist-paul-krugman-being-heckled-for-three-straight-minutes-would-be-this-fun
Doubt it, Kruggie would have to pay for that treatment from her.
[golf clap]
And pay, and pay, and pay…
Is SFing links Tonio’s fetishist?
Fetish, lousy tablet keyboard.
Fixed SF’d link.
Might want to check your solar storm one too, Tonio… sorry. Didn’t notice before.
Okay that did put a smile on my face.
That’s got to be one of us.
Wow.
I liked the end:
*maximum rant*
*instant calm*
And speaking of the Bee – fucking brilliant.
Getting hard not to notice our leaders hate us.
https://x.com/Not_the_Bee/status/1841836996727017808
I am not sure what it is going to take for people to get it. Walz-style attacks where soldiers doing sweeps randomly shoot anyone they see?
At publishing time, North Carolina had sent an urgent plea to the Taliban asking if it had any spare U.S. military helicopters it could have to help rescue hurricane victims.
If I was in the Taliban, I’d send some. Or at least a couple trucks or payloaders.
Politico:
11 damning details in Jack Smith’s new brief in the Trump election case
Not 1, not 5, not 10, but 11!
“This lawfare is better, man… it goes to 11!”
You won’t believe number 7!
Ask! You too? Why is it always #7 ?
Because there is no #6.
Or 4.
Yes, six is right out!
Was he finally confirmed by the Senate?
#7 will leave me stunned?
Elevenity
Smith couldn’t find 34 felonies per count? Dude mustn’t be trying very hard.
Today, in Cheap Rationalizations-
I “convinced myself” it would be a good idea to panic-buy a teevee to replace the big one what failed recently. Before the dock strike drives prices through the roof.
That seems wise.
Your 2002 didn’t sell, though.
Mountain Mules Are Bringing Hope to Appalachia
You know that joke, how’s it go? “What’d communists use before mules….” or something?
Mountain Mule? Is that moonshine and ginger ale in a copper cup?
Good news! We can finally add some zip to the website here.
Intel’s latest flagship 128-core Xeon CPU costs $17,800 — Granite Rapids sets a new high pricing watermark
*all processes wait on the same core.*
More seriously, who is the actual market for these right now? Crytography, AI, and hypervisor farms?
AI analysis of every phone call, text, and web chat to identify bad peoples and capitalists that the deep state wants to lock up.
Do you need cpus or gpu (parallel) cores for that?
The market for this has always been people who run high cpu loads and want to maximize power efficiency.
My understanding was if you didn’t load them up you were better off with the fewer core versions.
“AI” in its current state is very processor intensive. The image generation I’ve played around with is better on GPUs, but can run against the CPU cores if need be. A text-based LLM probably doesn’t get any bonuses from GPU optimizations.
I was just brainstorming what kind of environment needs so many more cores than the common schlub right now. I’m sure down the road I’ll be running some device with 256 cores and not really think anything of it. (I did once wonder who needed a 1GHz CPU, but I was a dumb kid at the time)
Fricking Windows is still single thread bound more times than not.
Linux is marginally better, but for a single user doing office workloads and os updates it still winds up thread bound too.
I gave up my Ubuntu box and don’t miss it. Only thing that I have that runs Linux is two Pi pcs.
How many simultaneous cores could I get up to running a complete OS rebuild?
https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/us-news/pennsylvania-dem-rep-susan-wilds-car-booted-in-dc-after-racking-up-775-in-fines-parking-in-handicap-spot/
She’s a cunt and I can’t wait till she gets voted out.
She will be reelected, and will force the taxpayers to pay for her past and future parking tickets.
The shit bag under the rear wiper seems on point.
There ya folks, it’s official: the Deep State is a conspiracy theory: https://www.routledge.com/Weaponizing-Conspiracy-Theories/Bergmann/p/book/9781032607382
It must be, because that’s an academic book published by an academic press. Forget that half the people complaining that the Deep State is a conspiracy theory were cheering on SDS and other groups which, wait for it, basically posited that government bureaucracies were tools to repress the people.
And, I don’t know the details of the “anti-west” conspiracy in Russia, but aren’t most of our elites “anti-west”?
Lol.
$41 bucks for 138 pages (which presumably include footnotes). There had better be some really fucking concise hot takes in there.
This explains a lot.
It is cool how these good people just find ways to help despite the fuckwit government.
Yes it does.
My folks are in Tennessee, some limited text communication, they’re okay-on a hill and so is the well., But it’s the same thing. Locals being told not to help. Buttwhatshisname has banned private drone flights to find people who need help.
I’m glad they are OK.
I’m learning, however, that peak rage is similar to peak derp.
It’s all very equitable when everyone suffers.
Reading stuff like this makes me angry but at the same time gives me a lot of hope. There are good people out there who is going to help no matter what some asshole bureaucrat tells them.
Me too, Ed. Lots of people are excellent.
Also a good lesson: I don’t care how self sufficient you think you are, when the shit hits the fan you need your people.
I know I’m probably making a huge assumption, but I’ve noticed that a lot of my liberal acquaintances despite being all about government (forced) charity aren’t that charitable themselves.
I’ve probably told this story a million times but I remember many moons ago I was walking with a group of friends from dinner and we passed a homeless man. I gave him my leftovers and a couple of bucks. One of my friends a raging liberal made the comment that he thought that I didn’t believe in charity simply because I’m not a fan of many of our government programs. I had to politely explain that charity isn’t through forcing people to pay into a system that distributes funds to those in need. It’s charity when you willingly do it. Of course he didn’t get it and we moved on to something else.
Word. Just like many things, I’d say the median human being is “decent” in our society. One STD above, below, and outward from there. So (say) constant (legit) criminals and (non-religious) saints of humanity are about on the same curve. Serial killers and Norman Borlaugs are ish-same rarity.
Big social moments light the social tinder in us to come together to help others, with both individuals and groups ‘uniting.’
(Yes, the same is true for Bad Social Moments, say, some revolutions. I’d guess ish-equal to good and necessary rebellion.)
That’s it, isn’t it? And I’ve noticed that my proggies like to give to causes, not people.
You are a good dude, Ed.
When one believes that government and only government should help people, charitable giving is a selfish virtue-signaling act. Witness the pushback against volunteer aid to Helene-devastated areas is a good example of this attitude.
Uh. SD. Standard deviation.
I suppose STDs come in all shapes of the bell curve. With shingles and chickenpox checked off my list, I’ll be damned if I don’t have natural immunity to herpes by now.
Lol.
We knew what you meant, E
I know y’all did! But gotta make sure ya don’t euphemize your way into every thought of mine. Not like it wouldn’t happen, regardless.
Looks like the union blinked. Betting it’s based on DeSantis ordering the FL Guard in to open the state ports for emergency relief, etc.
Yep.
Also, I think being beat to death by pissed off Americans probably factored into their calculations.
63% raise over 6 years. Jeezus. Talk about price gouging
Give them the money and automate like your life depends on it.
For sure. As long as they don’t get their fever dream of no automation put int he contract. That is yet to be decided.
Price increases are totally due to corporate greed, y’all!