Septimaeus

This is the joke. Absurdist hyperbole only works with a shared assumption or common sense to play against.

If there’s an intended target of this joke, it’s definitely not medication. It would be the inscrutability of the wording of that clinical guideline, which seems to imply morality is divergent but can be cured with stimulants.

Three sheets to the wind

One egg is enough

No joke, once you start structuring your life as a business, especially as formal corporations, the amount of financial, legal, and professional advantages, opportunities, and protection that appear are incredible. For example, did you know that …

1. … as an S corp, you can “pass through” the profit and loss of your business, such that your personal gross income excludes business expenses?
2. … the employer match on a 401k account is considered a business expense?
3. … the actual annual cap on employer contributions to various retirement vehicles are in fact much, much higher than employers are typically willing to offer you as a benefit?
4. … the terms of commercial factoring, mortgages and loans are often far more agreeable than consumer equivalents?
5. … many of the places where you shop offer discounts to business accounts (and not just for volume, simply because you’re a business)?
6. … it’s considered normal/SOP to request edits to many types of agreements individuals are expected to simply accept without question, including leases offered by landlords?

This is just a sample. Most endeavors and many functional aspects of personal life are by design simpler, safer, more scalable, and more profitable if planned and executed as a business rather than an individual in the late great United States of America.

I agree. I don’t think people should be expected to do all this to be treated like they matter in a society. I do it because I don’t want to go back to living in my car, but the process offers me daily reminders of how our system is thoroughly rigged in favor of commercial interests and against the human who wishes to live as a human.

The API for the PayPal checkout workflow is too complicated for us, but one of us knows how to manually type in the order details to send you an invoice.

Likely, he’s been rewarded with attention when he howls while someone is using a computer. Reconditioning the antisocial behavior entails rewarding him for the social behavior you prefer.

Fixed links are often machine-pressed w/ splined pins. Not designed for easy removal, however they can be removed by disassembly using basic tools and some force.

Disclaimer: while I would encourage you to use this as a learning opportunity if this is an inexpensive homage piece (that band looks like the one used on a number of older model Invicta submariner styles, for example) if it’s expensive or an heirloom, you might instead replace the band to keep the original intact. A lot of watch nerds do that anyway because the variety is fun.

A lot has happened in the few days since this article was published, and is still happening.

Columbia University’s board is facing new pressure from a group of House Democrats to "act decisively"

In short, they did. Students and faculty are not happy right now.

Formally, market efficiency makes this impossible without price fixing.

Practically, UBI does result in mild inflation of consumer prices in most models, but it’s because the market changes shape slightly to meet new consumer demand, as opposed to a blanket price increase of everything.

Agree with others but would add “pump cover,” especially if it looks like they’ve been at it a while.

Lifters often wear a hoodie or an oversized shirt for their warmup sets. Once their muscles look slightly bigger (pumped) due to increased tone and circulation, off goes the pump cover.

This grand reveal is usually for the benefit of other lifters in the vicinity and isn’t necessarily sexual in nature.

Edit: not judging anyone. I do it too.

Just muscles?

It tells your peripheral nervous system to grow and optimize wiring to increase recruitment and activation, attenuate signal noise, boost reflexes and responsiveness, and improve sensory feedback.

It tells your circulatory system to branch out with many small vessels and more limber large vessels, all with improved resource transmission and lots more oxygen.

It tells your connective tissues you need higher quality rigging with less friction.

It tells your bones they need to shape the fuck up and increase their density.

It tells your endocrine system to quit being cheap and give you the good stuff.

It tells your immune system to chill out and focus.

And much more. Ultimately the supply chain requirements for the additional work leaves no system untouched.

In newer construction, especially high-rise apartments, there’s a lot less dust. But in older buildings, it’s just an endless torrent, and the solution has been…

Robot vacuums

While they must be maintained, and won’t work well if you’re not diligent about picking up and keeping obstacles off the floor, they make it far easier to keep the whole house clean by reducing the overall volume of interior dust and debris inside the building envelope.

To illustrate (this will be gross) I change the bags about every month and weigh them and it’s usually ~1 kg (~2 lbs) per bag, and each year they remove roughly 30-40 kg (70-90 lbs). And every time I’ve cut them open to see what’s causing all the weight (or make sure nothing important was eaten) it appears to be mostly dust and hair.

It’s freaky thinking how all of that would be floating around, settling on surfaces, collecting in corners and crevices, saturating carpets and upholstery, and of course getting breathed in constantly. Instead I don’t have to manually dust and vacuum very often and our indoor AQI is usually better than outside.

So yeah. Robots.

Edit: added imperial mass equivalents

Packet headers.

A packet is like a sealed mailing envelope. Its headers are like things written on the face of an envelope, including an address. Chunks of data on the internet are so many letters in these envelopes, carried and delivered by a network of other computers.

The FOSS-only crowd might flame me for this, but I’d argue this type of scenario is a legit use-case for voice assistants, because “remind me to buy ________” is a fairly easy habit to get into and it’s a single step, fast enough to beat the attention bounce.

Edit: I meant no offense. Reworded to “FOSS-only.”

As a human, honestly I too would have thought there was a CLI package for the HuggingFace API.

Edit: there is (now at least) https://huggingface.co/docs/huggingface_hub/main/en/guides/cli

OP do you work in a physical job? Warehouse, construction, military, something like that? These are the only types of environments where I remember this being weirdly normal.

Everywhere else it’s an easy way to lose your job and/or catch a charge.

What if I CRISPR my tits for a better nutrient profile. Can I make money selling vegan dairy then?

If you are a disregarded entity, are not currently and do not in the next 6 or 12 months expect to make enough profit for an AGI above a certain percentage of the FPL, and your state has Medicaid, you can apply for Medicaid with dependents using recent profit and loss reports to substantiate your effective self-employment income.

In the end people/companies will pick the proprietary / closed option just because “it’s easier to use” or some other specific thing that will be good on the short term and very bad on the long term.

I agree with most of the above, just wanted to relay an explanation given to me years ago by my then eng director in an argument about this. He said the reasons we tend to use proprietary / closed platforms and deps in business settings is not necessarily because the software was better or easier to work with. Clearly it often isn’t.

It’s because of (1) built-in factoring and infrastructure, (2) built-in domain expertise that would otherwise require hiring or training, and (3) contractual guarantees that can be invoked when things go wrong. All of which attenuate risk and make development timelines and outcomes more predictable.

His line was “OSS is free like a puppy is free.” That is, most businesses aren’t old enough to handle the responsibility, and that’s why we still sometimes use shitty proprietary software.

+1, also chocolatey

Places are symbolic, often institutions by which the perpetrator feels betrayed, excluded, or neglected: school, community, religion, government, society, etc.

As to why figureheads, authorities, owners/elites, and similarly logical representatives are less common targets, I suspect it’s the same reason why smaller acts of violence often target the innocent: primal dynamics behind the cycle of abuse. The hurt/abused are made to feel weak and associate abuse with strength. Unless the original abuser is perceived as newly vulnerable, a weaker target is then sought, and the abuse is perpetuated rather than reciprocated.

It’s helpful to bear in mind, because the most common forms of perpetuated abuse are subtle enough to go unnoticed by most, including various microaggressions, exclusive body language, backhanded compliments, contrarian and adversarial mannerisms, etc. More noticeable are things like verbal insults or threats, bullying, theft, vandalism, and the like, but these are often treated as isolated behavioral problems. Acts of physical violence are of course most noticeable, but are usually preceded by other signs. Anyway, if you notice someone is hurting, or you are hurt yourself, don’t ignore it. We must look out for each other.

It looks nice! If it also keeps the time, I’d say it’s a good find. (If by true value you mean resale estimate, about $10-15.)

It’s a good watch to tinker with, if you’d like to try. If your tools are limited or that’s too much hassle, many stylish and inexpensive replacement bands can be found online, even ones that look like the original. I’ll put brief instructions for that below.

The reason these discussions often break down right about here is because the participants have in mind completely different working definitions of “tolerance.”

For example, the social contract comment above assumes an active definition like recognizing others’ personal sovereignty, i.e. their right to act and not be acted upon. To aid understanding, we can represent mutual tolerance between people as a multinational peace treaty between nations. Intolerance is equivalent to one of these nations violating the treaty by attacking another.

Defense or sanction by neighboring states against the aggressor doesn’t violate the treaty further, of course, since it is precisely these deterrents which undergird every treaty. Likewise, condemning and punishing intolerance which threatens the personal sovereignty of others is baseline maintenance for mutual tolerance, because there’s always a jackass who WILL fuck around if you don’t GUARANTEE he will find out.

Conversely, another popular notion of tolerance — the one you may have in mind, as I once did — is a passive definition that amounts to tacit approval of others’ value systems, i.e. relativistic truth, permissive morality, etc.

This kumbaya definition is a strawman originally used by talking heads because, I suspect, it quickly invokes well-worn mid-century tropes, especially for those who grew up in the era, of namby-pamby suckers and morally compromised weaklings which still trigger strong feelings, like disgust and contempt, that reliably drive ratings and engagement. These days the only regular mention of this term is this manufactured paradox using the bad-faith definition, so the original idea is commonly misunderstood.

I agree with Ada. The competitive sports issue is fraught and often used in bad faith as a rhetorical wedge in discourse. Also, given its vanishingly small practical relevance to the vast majority of trans people, in nearly every case it is legitimately “in the weeds.” But to avoid leaving you hanging, and since I’m rather partial to weeds, I’ll bite.

First, can we say the prohibition of anabolics in competitive athletics has succeeded in eliminating them?

The answer is relevant because popular arguments against trans athletics tend to hinge on athletes’ hormonal advantage in womens’ athletics being unfair on account of prohibition, which can only be true if the prohibition itself is fair, which can only be true if the correct answer to the question above is unequivocally “yes” (because unenforceable restrictions are effectively a handicap to rule-followers alone, which is demonstrably unfair and unjust).

I suspect most with even passing familiarity would admit that prohibition in sports has, at best, only made the use of anabolics and other PEDs a more complicated and expensive logistic of elite programs, and that their use persists to a certain degree in virtually every competitive tier. There are of course numerous potential topical implications here (and of course the complication of intersex athletes like Edinanci Silva or Caster Semenya) but since the popularly established rhetorical crux is fairness based on hormones, we must attend to the reason hormones introduce unfairness to a sport.

My opinion is that arguments against trans athletics are disingenuously filling a grievance against what is, in reality, a preexisting unfairness in most sports that fans often prefer not to talk about.

For a minute I was hung up on the apparent oxymoron of vague and specific, but I think I see now: vague re: what leftism is allowed, yet hyper specific re: what is not. Agreed.

Is it unwarranted? Have Chinese tech companies turned a new leaf in their collective InfoSec practices?

Conversely, has Intel had a history of consumer privacy violations?

Hell yeah! If you’re in a hurry, you can do this as one fluid movement with a bed or similar surface. Other grown-ups might consider it undignified-looking to treat a mattress like a bouncy castle, but they can suck a lemon!

In case you haven’t tried this, here are the steps:

1. Hold the pants in front of you like usual and fall backwards into the bed

2. Use the momentum to rock backward with enough force to lift your hips briefly

3. While hips are raised, kick through the pant legs while pulling the waist up as far as possible before your hips return to the bed

4. As you roll forward, use the momentum to bring yourself back up off the bed

5. Once returned to standing position, pull waist the rest of the way if necessary and proceed as usual

There are already a lot of good answers here, so instead I’ll offer you a game you might enjoy.

For context, I used to have the same problem, but I stumbled into a hack that turns it into a fun pastime rather than a nuisance or concern, and now it’s one of my favorite parts of taking up a new post.

What: Seed your own wild rumors by baiting known gossips with decoys.

How: While I’m often surprised by which rumors have legs, it seems prompt technique is the key controllable factor. Prompts that are more off-hand, indirect, and opaque seem to cultivate rumors with better proliferation and more colorful embellishments. I’m not sure why less is more here, but my theory is that the more gossips have to make up, the more they “own” their version of your story and the better they are at selling it. If necessary, you can drop some facts here and there (use only truths) but in general try to avoid details. Gossips are insanely good at filling these in on your behalf.

Who: This part is easiest. Gossips will always come to you. Usually they are some of the first people to approach you at your new job, looking for the scoop. The first you meet are usually the defacto gossip leads, but the rest reveal themselves quickly, especially if your rumors are good. You will learn to recognize them by the way they sidle up in the break room or pry opportunistically in conversation, however the easiest sign is that they respond to evasiveness and deflection in the opposite way others do.

Why:

1. Reconciling their conflicting versions of your personal story and private life disrupts their rumor mill internally and erodes their legitimacy externally.
2. You have the unique pleasure of receiving, over time, fragments of “your story.” This has utility for tracing the leaks and determining network composition, but mostly it’s just hilarious to see what they come up with, and interesting to know the versions of you that people will entertain.
3. As to social risk, so far none of my rumors have developed into anything terribly embarrassing — usually what they come up with is far more interesting than reality, sometimes even flattering — but the few times I’ve had to correct a story in conversation it was met with instant acceptance of the more realistic take. Most people know to take hearsay with a grain of salt.
4. I suppose the gossips might be mad if they realized you were toying with them, but I suspect they would just treat you as a dry well and leave you alone, which also solves your problem.
5. It’s relatively victimless as mischief goes. You don’t even have to lie. In fact it works better if you don’t.
6. And it requires almost no effort.

TL;DR: You can bait the nosy nellies into writing fan fiction for you. It’s easy, fun, and good for the environment. Your personality traits make you a natural at this game —others might need to tone down their instinct to overshare or practice being pointedly vague — but if in doubt just remember, storytelling is the gossips’ job and you are their humble yet beloved muse.

Long-short, it’s known as Duverger’s Law. Winner-takes-all (single member district majority) incentivizes competing interests to consolidate power into a unified party label to increase chances of winning. Any third party necessarily steals votes from one of the two main parties, which is why each party manages its label for maximal policy coverage and every issue becomes red vs blue.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen more spam lately too.

Btw, what are we calling aggressive chat bots? Auto-trolls? Strife bots? Contentionator-3000s?

A bunch of us recently gained access to global platforms.

A bunch of global platforms recently gained access to us.

Parabolic hyperbole

Edit: dear learned and thoughtful internet friends, here “sexual” functions as a self-deprecating double entendre, the thinly veiled meaning of which is “attraction irrespective of sex or gender” or, in the common tongue, “colossal whore.”

So I am altering this comment for clarity. Pray I do not alter it any further.

—

If anyone asks just say whatever feels right in that moment, straight/bi/pan/whatever.

Especially in mixed company, my go-to is *-sexual where the wildcard * is silent. Those who don’t know will hear a non-answer to a rude question, but your friends will recognize it as candor.

It also sidesteps the tiresome bi/pan distinction and avoids the least favorable option: “straight.”

Likely a uniform white picture since the impedance of the input wire is too high for ambient noise on the line to result in any differentiated interlacing.

If you’d like to replace the band, you can measure the lug width (e.g. 20mm) to find one that’s compatible. When you’re ready to swap the bands, you will find little spring bars beneath the lug joint covers.

If it’s difficult to reach the spring bars through the gaps, you can loosen each cover by slightly bending the two tensioner arms on the underside of the watch.

There are little notches on each side of the spring bar that you can catch with a small tool/knife/fingernail and compress, letting each side of the bracelet free.

Installation of the new band is the reverse but usually easier, especially if your new bracelet style doesn’t use a shroud over the lugs.

Then you’re done!

(Also, if you want to put the joint shrouds back at some point, just remember to pinch the tensioner arms a bit before reinstalling, otherwise they will be noisy when you move your hand.)

Bottom. It slows accumulation of pocket lint in charging port.

I do have one that’s dumb, only just smart enough to set a daily schedule, no WiFi or cameras, but it’s bullet proof and easier to maintain than the others, so It’s possible to not sacrifice privacy.

Holographic slammer