BranBucket @ BranBucket @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

His primary qualification is that he was an officer (eventually reaching the rank of Major) in the Army National Guard, via ROTC, and volunteered to serve in Guantanamo and Iraq during the War on Terror.

I highly encourage people to compare and contrast his service record with that of Jim Mattis, or any other appointee to the same office in recent history, for additional context.

Look, if that plant hadn't approved of what those three were doing, it would have left the room long ago. By staying until the room was in fire, the plant showed it's true colors. That is a fascist plant, and I'm not saving it.

Three way tie in my book:

That episode of Black Mirror where everyone had to ride stationary bikes and were forced to watch unskippable ads if they didn't have credits, except everything you have to watch is AI slop instead of your crush doing porn.

Or the Handmaid's Tale, but instead of some mysterious infertility crisis, fertile women are rare because they die in pregnancy and childbirth due to anti-science rhetoric flat out killing them. (Look up "free birthing", etc.) At some point it gets bad enough that replacing your wife is more like getting a new pet.

Maybe the hot version of The Road. We just have wars over water and resources until the plantet's too fucked for human life, and the survivors are left roaming around making jerky out of each other until the end.

Could be all three at once. Yay!

If memory serves, there might be an existing retention program available that offers a 25% increase in pay for three years, but I'm not sure if that's available to all federal workers or just certain agencies.

It's 100% possible to give most of them a one time "step" increase that amounts to a permanent 5-7% (ish) raise, which would net them significantly more over time.

Shit, I think if you pick the right job in the military, an 18 year old with a high school diploma can get $70,000 pre-tax if they sign a six year contract.

So yeah, ten grand pre-tax is a joke considering how vital and stressful ATC is.

If he organizes public executions, will they finally try to use the 25th or just roll with it?

Is this guy for real? Has he not met like, people, before? That's exactly what a frighteningly large number of people will do.

In the last week alone I've had conversations with people who:

1. Got diet and meal planning advice from Chat GPT.
2. Sought financial advice for retirement planning from two different LLMs.
3. Recited nisinformation from Google's AI overview as factual.
4. Most disturbingly, sought veterinary advice from Chat GPT.

None of them questioned what they were told in any meaningful way.

Mostly, I enjoy target shooting as a hobby. Hunting is big in my area as both deer and feral hogs need to be culled.

I also feel there's a greater chance of widespread civil unrest than most people understand, and that folks in my area will likely have to defend themselves to some extent if it breaks out. For various reasons, the people who are most important to me aren't likely to be prepared for that, so I figure I should be ready to some extent.

The kind of person who does this to their car won't believe it's true, while simultaneously defending it as him doing nothing wrong because all the liberals say it's okay to do it, which also doesn't mean admitting Trump actually did it, because he didn't, and this is also proof that Dems did much worse things, even though it's not real and just a plot to destroy Trump and let Satan rule over the world.

TDS is a Swiss army tool for controlling what their base thinks and dealing with negative press. I don't know if it evolved organically or was created, but promoting the idea that anyone who says anything negative about Trump is hysterical, jealous, and irrationally hell-bent on destroying him has been insanely effective for them.

It's less about you and more about enabling nutcases like this guy to be complete and utter tools for what they think is a greater cause. You can already see it in use with the Epstein files along with their other grand slam propaganda tools.

Coke and Pepsi are both on there, Johnson and Johnson, and a few others... if you expand that to their affiliate brands and subsidiaries is a huge chunk of what's in your local grocery store even if they aren't on the list. Sheesh.

That's an absolutely crushing schedule.

When I think of "middle aged family man", I think of a salaried employee or tradesman working a 40 hour work week, and supporting kids with the help of a spouse who's either a homemaker or earns additional income. Which mostly describes me.

You're comparing apples to oranges when it comes to lifestyles. I work occasional overtime and it always knocks my dick in the dirt for a week or so. All things considered, just surviving what you're describing is an achievement.

You're doing an amazing job and I hope you can find a situation that gives you more time off soon. You deserve it.

I have nothing to confirm this except my own suspicions, but even when all you see are puff pieces from the media they own, it seems pretty obvious that these guys are trying so damn hard to be cool in order to compensate for some kind of deep seated insecurity. Their need to be liked seems to hang around them like three day old BO. If they weren't hellbent on destroying the world to validate themselves, it would almost be pitiable.

It's the money IMO. I think that along with the personality defects that drive them to strive for this in the first place, that kind of wealth changes you and how you see the world, it certainly changes how other people treat you and react to you. I don't think it's possible for a healthy person to survive becoming a billionaire without inflicting some serious damage to their psyche, let alone people as apparently pathological as the current class of techbros are. I don't mean this in an afterschool special, remember-what's-really-important, return to a small town for Christmas kind of way. I mean their personalities are irreparably damaged to the point that their core values are incompatible with a stable society.

It's almost certain they think telling a chatbot to love them will give them what they need to feel better about themselves. AI doesn't want or need their money, AI doesn't care who they are, AI doesn't listen to popular opinion about them, AI loves them regardless of all of that...

But, even if they can make a walking, talking sexbot based on current tech, it'll still leave them needing something else. Chatbots and AI waifu apps are great at giving you what you want without actually providing what you need. They'll still feel empty and unloved, and their greed is what made them that way.

Most of their fanboys will call it copium and jealousy, but at this point I'd rather have just enough fiscal security to not have to worry and a soul than trade places with any of them.

Yeah, if Elon destroys his life gooning to a creepy chstbot and leaves his companies in the hands of people with actual intelligence and souls we'd all be better off.

Why can't we win the AI race and still not have a surveillance state? Those don't seem like they have to be linked...

You can still get onions at my Costco, you just have to ask at the counter. Never seen the polish though, and now I feel nostalgic for something I've never had...

We have the $120 annual membership.

What we save on dog food in the first four months of the year pays for that membership. And the store brand dog food is manufactured for Costco by Diamond, so it's better quality than anything available at Walmart for less.

Household goods, TP, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, etc, etc are a significant savings if you have space to store them.

Some of the deals on groceries, meat, frozen goods and so forth are significant if you have a deep freeze or extra fridge in the garage to keep everything in.

It's more than a grocery store though. Appliances, furnishings, electronics, gas, tires, and more can be had at decent prices. For instance, I can get a name brand car battery from Costco at the same cost as Auto Zone's no name special.

As others have said, the annual cash back reward is at least $120.

But...

You have to set a budget, have extra space, and be disciplined about shopping there. Stay out of the central impulse zone in the store unless there's something you need there, and comparison shop on major purchases. It's great for people stuck in the suburbs. For everyone else, YMMV.

As far as the hot dog goes... It's just a meme, man. Relax.

Yeah, journalistic integrity is important, and they shouldn't slander Google, due diligence and what not.

But there wouldn't even be a need for an article or any investigation if Google and other tech companies weren't treating user data as something they have a god given right to.

That's my point. It doesn't matter what Google does or doesn't do with the data. They shouldn't collect it unless I tell them they can. It's MY data. It's MY right to keep it private or destroy it as I please. That's the baseline all tech companies should adhere to.

Play Services does collect data it shouldn't collect, by sending it back to Google.

Right. And my argument is that this shouldn't happen without users opting in.

But the difference between "I am collecting your data" and "I wrote software you are running" is important and needs defending,

I don't disagree. Not am I arguing the content of the article. I just disagree with your notion that we have to prove negligence or malfeasance to deserve privacy.

Your original post placed the burden on users to prove that Google mismanages the data they collect. That's not how this should work. I should own that data, just as I own the text I write with a text editor. I shouldn't have to prove that Google is mismanaging it in order to keep that data private. I shouldn't need any other reason than "it's my data and I don't want to share it beyond what is necessary for this technology to operate."

If you don't collect the data in the first place, there's nothing to mismanage.

Rather than users having to prove that Google is mismanaging OUR data, Google should prove it has a need to collect, aggregate, and sell access to that data beyond surveillance capitalism.

The default option should be that only fully anonymized data that is essential to device functions should be collected, and this should be validated through an independent audit. Everything else should be opt-in.