I don't travel much and when I do I stay in hotels. I've had two airBnBs so far, and both of them were pretty extreme cases of let the Buyer beware.
#1 - billed as private room & bath in the host's house. Host mentioned "two beautiful, clean cats" but no other occupants. Day 1, host says her friend was staying in the room i was supposed to get and "would I mind" staying in this other room (so two separate rental rooms in the same house) the first night while she cleaned up. Already a little suspicious, I agree. Then as I expected there is more bullshit the next day... oh if you like it you can just stay there. I point out that I booked the room because it had its own private bath and the alternative room doesn't, so I'm sharing with other house members. Turns out host's son and son's wife both live in this house... and they have two utterly filthy cats who reek like shit, in addition to the two clean ones.
#2 - me and 2 friends rent a small house. Walk in the door and there is literally a binderful of "rules." Don't open the windows - they're fragile. Don't flush anything other than TP - the pipes are centuries old. Kitchen is infested with ants... over the next two days, we realize there are ants in the bathroom and laundry as well. Obvious they didn't just magically show up. Heat stops working at one point. Seems like someone bought up a shitty old house and is slowly fixing it up with AirBnB money, probably while living in the separate accessory unit.
These two experiences have convinced me that AirBnB is a sloppy mess, where semi-functional hosts do the bare minimum they can and use the threat of mutual bad ratings (since renter ratings matter) to avoid word getting out. I am not surprised at all that some hosts are possessive and distrusting or just plain creepy and have cameras. I would never, ever rent a place that had disclosed cameras, and if I found undisclosed cameras spying on me I would do far worse than complain to AirBnB.
I suggest you read Empty Planet to inform yourself about the massive demographic shifts and lowered birth rates even in many of the countries we assume are problematic (like Bangladesh). The short version: as women get a basic education in less developed countries, they have fewer children
Lots of anecdotal stories about the Gates foundation seeming to inject people in Africa with mystery pharmaceuticals in the guise of vaccines and malaria treatment. Hard to really judge without firsthand knowledge, and especially because the theory as to motive is that the Gates foundation is a front for Eugenics.
But this dietary advice is diametrically opposite what the overwhelming weight of modern research... independent modern research not paid for by food companies that is... suggests
Whole grains are metabolically little different from processed refined grains. "Whole grain" is one of the most misleading pieces of dietary propaganda there is, probably topping "2% milk" and "natural flavor" in terms of harm it has caused society. Modern genetically hybridized wheat contains a witches brew of genes from other plants - producing proteins that our bodies have not evolved to digest. Celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg, a great deal of research suggests that Wheat Germ Agglutin, Gluten, and many other substances found in wheat promote belly fat, leaky gut, obesity, arthritis, diabetes and death.
Books such as Wheat Belly and The Plant Paradox suggest that Whole grain bread raises blood sugar more than even refined white sugar, promoting insulin resistance. "Fruit" is also, unfortunately, not so good for you. Bananas and oranges, unless consumed in extreme moderation, promote the growth of harmful yeasts and gut dysbiosis (See "Clean" by A. Junger). Most fruit has been bred to produce sugar levels far in excess of those found in the while. Apparently the sweet taste alone can promote weight gain and obesity, as in evolutionary history fresh fruit was only available once a year, and so the body is keyed to gorge on it and store fat for the winter. No doubt some pencil neck keyboard warrior will try to debunk this with his PhD from Google University -- Big Food, incorporated has done everything it can to attack these results, but there's a curious phenomenon of those who have gone gluten and grain free and have had the bulk of their health problems disappear.
Others have a modified version of Stockholm syndrome -- the inability to believe that the mainstream authorities are not only systematically wrong, but have clear financial incentives to maintain the deception. It is hard to swallow just how monstrous is the state of food and our bodies in the developed western world.
The only healthy diet is one that is high in vegetables. Many of these keto diets and advocates are essentially straw men in the debate as they advocate absurd levels of protein intake that shifts the focus away from the danger of grain to the benefit of high protein consumption.
Giant evil corporations hate simple traditional things that work well for cheap or free.
Water is a good example. Companies spend billions trying to convince you that it's boring, even publishing junk science about "overhydration" and how juice, tea, gatorade, etc all 'count' towards the 8 glasses of water a day target. Now that we basically view Soda as poison marketed to children they've pushed back with flavored zero calorie water that is nowhere as healthy as the real thing.
I thought Kindle and its clones were the height of folly when they came out, and my opinon hasn't changed. Books are durable, tangible, random-access, and have worked well for humanity since the invention of the printing press. A fucking evil corporation looks at books and identifies the key problem: they persist long after the original purchase. A book can sit on a shelf for 20 years until someone else picks it up.
Enter the DRM - ereader model. You now 'license' the right to use the book - tying yourself both to the DRM and the platform. When you die, or more likely the device breaks, the book is gone. It cannot be given to a friend, passed down to children, donated to a library or traded via a book swap. That contributes to scarcity, under classical economics, and drives up the price and profit. This is total bullshit - but what's worse is the army of softheaded media brainwashed idiots out there suggesting that paper is somehow 'archaic' and that there are 'benefits' to ereaders. Fuck that noise!
Now we see the end result of that folly. Your entire Microshit library can be erased at the touch of a button. THEY, not you, control the terms of the refund. Why shouldn't they pay you in cash instead of forcing you to take some kind of chickenshit microsoft store credit? Did you not in fact pay in real money? And I marvel at the decision that all the notes and markings you may have taken in your entire library are worth the grand sum of $25! They, not you, decided that. They wrote the terms of the licensing agreement, forcing binding arbitration and preventing a class action lawsuit (my best guess but fitting the overwhelming pattern of large evil corporations).
It's time for people to wake up. It's time for shiny new products that we don't actually need to die on day 1. It's time to realize that anyone talking about the advantages of eReaders and Kindle is 100% a softheaded idiot who should be loudly and publicly castigated.
Trust me many experts, economists, risk analysts, etc have screamed bloody murder about how telling the appraiser the contract price creates a rubber-stamp system around price.
The problem is various appraiser lobby and oversight groups --> they have an incentive for the current system to continue, so they hide behind the law: "The appraiser is required to have all relevant pieces of information related to the sale." They have filed lawsuits claiming that the contract price is a vital piece of relevant information.
There's no clear counterparty with the money/interest in arguing that an appraiser can essentially get out of doing his job if he just writes down the contract price and fudges the comparable sales to fit.
There are papers by Eriksen, Fout, et al that show how bad this behavior is. The 2016 paper shows that the appraiser hits or exceeds the contract price 80% of the time! The 2018 paper (IIRC) shows how the comparable sales weighting is gamed to produce this result.
Actors draw clear boundaries between the role and their own personality. Successful youtubers destroy that line - with the pressure to put out content constantly comes the pressure to incorporate more of the personal life into the act. Soon the line gets irrevocably blurred. Comments, likes, views, subs, and revenue become a self-reinforcing cycle tied to self-esteem. Something starting out as a quirky labor of love turns into caring what hundreds of thousands of random internet idiots think. It can destroy your passion for whatever your content is about, at a minimum. You're literally at the collective mercy of all the crackpots, cranks, weirdos, trolls, haters, fanboys. You have the awesome power of knowing that a small percent of viewers will do whatever you tell them... and realizing these tools may be the worst of all. If you have any intellectual honesty, you come to realize what many 'celebrities' do: success is random, and the product of collective stupidity based on the boredom of the world at large.
Steve Jobs famously referred to Google as "That Montessouri School in Mountain View." He was right. In recent times their culture has gotten so autistic that when they're replaced with AI it will cause a noticeable improvement in the humanity of Google as a whole. They, along with the social media platforms are basically bright kids playing with dynamite.
The media never mention the impact of zero information content stories on distracting attention away from serious issues. They also never mention how on the order of 10 entities own every major news media outlet in the country. And of course, they go out of the way to deny and minimize allegations that top-level ownership controls content.
Instead they go out of their way to create inherently loaded terms like 'Conspiracy Theory' (with the unspoken 'nutjob') and then use that to label anyone who disagrees with them in any way. Whether you're a birther, truther, flat-earther, hollow-earther or simply think the media are controlled shills of profascist oligarchs, banks, and multinational corporations -- you get lumped under the same label... which then gets broadcast to the hundreds of millions of captive viewers.
The KGB did interesting experiments in the 1960s that showed that a television program put viewers into a suggestible, near hypnotic state where mental filters failed and they believed what they saw. The widely publicized failures of subliminal advertising distract and mislead away from the success of 'barely liminal' advertising.
With all this, how can one NOT believe the 'conspiracy' that the media would act in underhanded ways and then act out of self interest to cover up their actions by attacking their critics?
TL;DR: The repeal of Net Neutrality is the media and government saying they don't like you thinking anything they don't tell you to think.
Overwatch - It's a relatively casual fun shooter, playable on a nongaming pc, and there's a balancing system so you are playing in games with people of roughly your skill level.
FTL - A cheap and fun Steam game, relateable to old-school sci-fi fans, a full game can be played through in 2-3 hours (or 20 minutes if you're a speedrunner). I have gotten over 100 hours of entertainment out of it, from my initial investment of $10 during a sale.
My desktop died and my laptop is 7 years old so I got another Acer laptop at around the same price point ($300). All I need to do is surf the web, watch youtube videos, and hey this more modern processor can actually run Starcraft 2 at lowest graphics settings - so that's a great plus. Buuut... why is the actual user experience so glitchy and laggy? I get so many freezes, hangs and generally shit that I don't want. As someone who has had great luck with just buying computers on sale and then using them for 5-6 years, I feel like Windows 10 is a complete dud.
This really feels like Hooli and Gavin Belson - shiny new overhyped stuff that barely works. Hey MS, I hate Cortana, couldn't you just have given me Windows 7 with a few incremental tweaks?
by Nesheim. He goes through the steps from idea to IPO/buyout. a few good practical tips, such as think about how you will make money/cash out, how to go through the various rounds of VC and angel investor funding, and the one I think some people forget which is a takeover plan where you the mad scientist will step aside and let a professional management team take over, in return for money. The core of the book talks about unfair advantage which is definitely worth thinking about in depth. The eventual goal is to own a few percent of a company that goes IPO. He realistically estimates the odds of doing this as 1/1000, and claims that his book raises it to 6/1000.
So the author's claim is what exactly? That when a woman-oriented show gets bad ratings and reviews from men that this is somehow a conspiracy?
Let me introduce you to my friend the correlation-causation fallacy. I'm too fucking tired to explain this simple point that most 'journalists' these days don't get, but ask any smart person you know to explain it. Anyways, it would be JUST AS FUCKING VALID OR INVALID to 'explain' this result as: "Sex & the Shitty and other vagina-friendly shows, in fact, suck. Men rate them accurately, women drastically overinflate their ratings because of a conspiracy to promote these shows.
BTW as a man who often watched SATC during its original HBO run due to housemates/girlfriends wanting to watch it... I can unequivocally state that it is the most overrated HBO full series of all time. SJP is a shitty writer -- does not seem to realize that self-referential humor and breaking the fourth wall only works if done with restraint by an excellent screenwriter. She, due to the self-referential nature of both the writing and her character, comes across as a reasonably dumb, trashy whore.
I think the unintended consequence of this show is that it opened men's eyes about women. Even if the characters aren't realistic, they are people a lot of ordinary women seem to be able to relate to and are entertained by. We started to think... maybe our girlfriend is as big a skank as Samantha, or as crazy/bitchy/bossy as Red, or as flat out stupidly pretentious & catty as Carrie. Shit, maybe our only hope is to meet the Charlotte's of the world who haven't yet experienced the cock carousel and let their looks go into a mass of cellulite!
Band aids like $15 minimum wage are simply designed to reduce the rebelliousness and discontentment of the population IN THE SHORT TERM while total fascism is being implemented. For instance presently they just need to distract people with minimum wage and transgender toilets while they work towards gutting the middle class financially and funneling the money to banks. Millennials won't see a cent of social security, medicare, or govt pensions but it won't matter because they won't have guns or the ability to even organize in groups once riot-control drones and total surveillance are everywhere.
And they certainly aren't going to make their corporate overlords lose money while all this happens, hence the automation, which they've had in Europe 14 years ago when I visited.
>> Poor, yes. Stupid, no. The got the Olympics. I'd say they outsmarted everyone.
Nah, hosting the games has a negative ROI. It took Japan decades to pay off the debt. Beijing's facilities have rotted and were never used much. Every go around the IOC puts out fuzzy math that makes it seem like the olympics is beneficial and every go around fewer democracies are interested in hosting it. We're pretty much down to dictatorships after 2016.
The Brazilian river of shit adds irony, but it's the Brazilians who'll be paying off the loans through 2026.
For years I vetoed Chipotle when my friends wanted to go there. It is utter, bland, mediocrity -- the Olive Garden of casual Mexican, if you will. Far, far too much of day-to-day operations is left to employees, if you're lucky they will be older Latina women who put out so-so food... if you're not, it'll be teenagers giving you lettuce stems and dehydrated (but responsibly sourced!) Chicken.
IMO foodborne pathogen outbreaks take a fair amount of carelessness - either in the way the item is sourced or the way its handled. Since I live in one of the affected states, my snobbiness about Chipotle may have kept me out of the hospital!
Police officers are the new Mafia. They are an armed gang of thugs that are generally more interested in their own profit than the well-being of ordinary citizens. They pick and choose which laws to obey, and who to muscle in on. Now the interesting thing is that mob-run neighborhoods are generally pretty safe. The mob doesn't want rival criminals around, because it's bad for business. Cops don't like rival criminal gangs for much the same reason. The power of video-recording is that it brings 'heat' in the form of bad press, which everyone must pay lip service to. Of course, cops are basically the lowest paid foot soldiers in the Blue Mob, you've got judges, prosecutors, and politicians who really organize and run the system.
"Paranoid Conspiracy Nuts" got a promotion to "Venomous cynics!" This is a great day indeed. You see - a few short years ago, concerned citizens who claimed the government was engaged in a massive effort to spy on United States citizens, read their emails, and listen to their phone conversations without warrants were called Paranoid Conspiracy Nuts, tinfoil-hatters, and much worse by the bootlicking media, and oh yes, the 98% of people who believe what the bootlicking media tells them to believe. Agencies like the CIA/FBI could have their lying orifices, like Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan, simply respond "that's silly" or "we follow the law" AND HAVE THE MEDIA/SHEEP DO THE REST (see eg: Nuts, Paranoid Conspiracy).
Even the term "Venomous Cynics" says a lot about the attitudes of said lying orifices. Cynics implies people who have extreme skepticism, which most readers would view as a compliment, however since the term is used perjoratively by said orifice one must conclude that our Intelligence agencies hate people who view their actions skeptically! Amazing!
"Venomous" suggests these cynics also carry a poisonous bite. The lying orifices must think that citizens willing to poison/destroy government agencies that violate the law and their rights are a Bad Thing. The orifices must not be aware that our Founding Fathers viewed government as a necessary evil, a source of the very real threat of tyranny, and an institution that must FEAR the people - who hold the power to destroy it. Either that or the orifices (who presumably went to Elite schools and are quite intelligent) must realize that THEY are evil tyrants who should rightly fear destruction at the hands of the people.
...If it were up to me I would amend the Constitution to broaden the definition of Treason to include things like "Breaking one's sworn oath of office as a government official by violating the Constitution, acting against the rights of the American people, or colluding to cover up evidence of same," make it retroactive (which can interestingly be done by Constitutional Amendment) and then give a whole lot of government officials fair trials and hang em!
The NSA's reach apparently reaches to Slashdot. The top level paragraph is remarkably less than neutral and appears spin-doctored. To all of you NSA / NWO pukes reading this - realize that real patriotic Americans hate you and will oppose you down to the dying breath. That is all.
What's wrong with blowing the whistle into the phone?
You could try turning off the phone ringer and connecting it to an answering machine (and telling your friends to always leave a message). The other thing that might work is telling the scammers that the person they are trying to reach is dead and that the phone number is about to be disconnected. Oddly, I've had this work on ordinary telemarketers before.
We also need to strip the medical licenses of doctors who give out antibiotics for the cold. Either they're shockingly ignorant of the last 20 years of research and aren't fit to be doctors, or they're intentionally contributing to a real health hazard and should face criminal charges.
"Intent" is an interesting legal concept. Shocking ignorance would amount to negligence, perhaps gross negligence. However I feel the doctors in question are guilty of more than that. The highest level of intent, 'purposely' or 'knowingly' might be a tad too strong, as in its difficult to think a doctor actually wants or desires global killer resistant infections to arise. However, the standard of "Reckless" seems to apply really well. Reckless is commonly viewed as knowing a certain outcome or result was likely and acting with blatant disregard for that outcome. The two classic examples of reckless are: #1 shooting a gun in the woods at a deer that is a few hundred yards in front of a school and #2 drag racing on a public street (Fast and Furious style). In both situations, if any bystander is killed the person(s) involved could be convicted of murder (vs manslaughter which is viewed as a negligent killing). In neither case was there a desire to kill bystanders, but in both situations the activities were so dangerous and involved such a high risk that the intent requirement for murder was met.
It's relatively common knowledge that colds and the flu are caused by viruses, which can't be affected by antibiotics. At the same time there's a strong and very perverse financial incentive to incorrectly prescribe antibiotics: it gets rid of patients quickly, allowing a doctor to increase daily billables (via patients seen). It may also help retain hypochondriac patients. I would argue that since multiple-resistant bacteria are also common knowledge (terms like superbug are in common use) doctors are acting with deliberate knowledge of a serious risk for their own gain. They are specifically acting contrary to their oath(s) - prescribing unnecessary medicine, and (since all medications have side effects) causing unnecessary harm to their own patients. They are also violating the spirit (if not the letter) of their oath(s) in that they have a duty towards humanity not to create or cause killer diseases that kill or sicken lots of people.
It's honestly an indefensible action. The defensive arguments simply don't hold. If the doctor is worried about liability (ie failing to prescribe an antibiotic when the illness turns out to be bacterial) they can simply do what all doctors do, everywhere, and order a test. There, ass covered. If they're sick of dealing with hypochondriacs they can go old-school and actually talk to them, or they can simply suggest that person find another doctor.
Lastly, I suggest anyone reading this who is skeptical that doctors' practices would turn into little more than pill factories, try this. Call a bunch of different doctors' offices in Davis, California and just listen to the answering machine messages. I was shocked the first time I heard "Please tell us what prescriptions you need from us" on an _answering machine_ I thought the function of a doctor was to tell me what prescriptions I need.
35 USC 102(a) (as recently amended by the America Invents Act) - Patent rights immediately terminate if the invention was in public use anywhere in the world prior to the date of patent filing.
"Public Use" has a much broader meaning than its plain English meaning (since an underwater structure is probably not highly visible to the public) and according to Eggbert v Lippman can apply even to things the public can't even see -- the real test is if the inventor 'retained control for experimentation and testing purposes." It is clear the Romans did not.
There is a separate bar, which the article doesn't give enough info to make a conclusion on, but seems very likely. If the roman concrete was ever described in a 'publication' it would have prevented anyone from patenting it more than 1 year after the date of publication. And I know the Romans loved to keep records, histories, diaries and what have you. Under this bar, the Bible has successfully used as a source of prior art rejection on patents directed to certain construction methods described therein.
They don't need to sell their US holdings. All they need to do is what they're doing, which is backing the international basket currency for oil purchases from OPEC. Once the petrodollar (look it up) is abolished as an international standard, US interest rates will go up across the board by 20-30%.... and guess who'll be in prime position to profit from it as one of our big lenders?
With all due respect to Etherwalk, this is the kind of logic on which fascism and totalitarianism is built. The entire concept of 'Law' is premised on the fact that all are equal before it. Specifically the government, the president, and the worst criminal are all held to the same standard. Our very Constitution and Bill of Rights was written because of experiences with the Despotic rule of the British Monarchy and the very, very real dangers of abuse of power.
Once we start with ends-justify-the-means logic it's a slippery slope straight to hell. By legal definition, someone cannot be guilty if the only evidence of their guilt was obtained through unconstitutional means. And let's call a spade a spade: the 'unconstitutional means' involve kidnapping and torture
Haha. I think I thought of it in spaceship terms (my teacher might have said 'engine room') and didn't question. The cell-boat analogy is pretty good, they're both self contained, floating, prone to piracy... ok I'll stop.
Never really thought of it before, but it seems much of Mol Bio is just 'borrowing' natural tools to do things.
Anyways, it strikes me that the Biology Q&A journal might be a good idea, I'd be willing to contribute, might be a great way to come up with more silly but relevant analogies. I am always looking for ways to explain genetics to people who are kind of afraid of science, and we could even file Amicus Briefs Unlikely to be Actually Read by Anyone! Woot!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't travel much and when I do I stay in hotels. I've had two airBnBs so far, and both of them were pretty extreme cases of let the Buyer beware.
#1 - billed as private room & bath in the host's house. Host mentioned "two beautiful, clean cats" but no other occupants. Day 1, host says her friend was staying in the room i was supposed to get and "would I mind" staying in this other room (so two separate rental rooms in the same house) the first night while she cleaned up. Already a little suspicious, I agree. Then as I expected there is more bullshit the next day... oh if you like it you can just stay there. I point out that I booked the room because it had its own private bath and the alternative room doesn't, so I'm sharing with other house members. Turns out host's son and son's wife both live in this house... and they have two utterly filthy cats who reek like shit, in addition to the two clean ones.
#2 - me and 2 friends rent a small house. Walk in the door and there is literally a binderful of "rules." Don't open the windows - they're fragile. Don't flush anything other than TP - the pipes are centuries old. Kitchen is infested with ants... over the next two days, we realize there are ants in the bathroom and laundry as well. Obvious they didn't just magically show up. Heat stops working at one point. Seems like someone bought up a shitty old house and is slowly fixing it up with AirBnB money, probably while living in the separate accessory unit.
These two experiences have convinced me that AirBnB is a sloppy mess, where semi-functional hosts do the bare minimum they can and use the threat of mutual bad ratings (since renter ratings matter) to avoid word getting out. I am not surprised at all that some hosts are possessive and distrusting or just plain creepy and have cameras. I would never, ever rent a place that had disclosed cameras, and if I found undisclosed cameras spying on me I would do far worse than complain to AirBnB.
I suggest you read Empty Planet to inform yourself about the massive demographic shifts and lowered birth rates even in many of the countries we assume are problematic (like Bangladesh). The short version: as women get a basic education in less developed countries, they have fewer children
Lots of anecdotal stories about the Gates foundation seeming to inject people in Africa with mystery pharmaceuticals in the guise of vaccines and malaria treatment. Hard to really judge without firsthand knowledge, and especially because the theory as to motive is that the Gates foundation is a front for Eugenics.
But this dietary advice is diametrically opposite what the overwhelming weight of modern research... independent modern research not paid for by food companies that is... suggests
Whole grains are metabolically little different from processed refined grains. "Whole grain" is one of the most misleading pieces of dietary propaganda there is, probably topping "2% milk" and "natural flavor" in terms of harm it has caused society. Modern genetically hybridized wheat contains a witches brew of genes from other plants - producing proteins that our bodies have not evolved to digest. Celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg, a great deal of research suggests that Wheat Germ Agglutin, Gluten, and many other substances found in wheat promote belly fat, leaky gut, obesity, arthritis, diabetes and death.
Books such as Wheat Belly and The Plant Paradox suggest that Whole grain bread raises blood sugar more than even refined white sugar, promoting insulin resistance. "Fruit" is also, unfortunately, not so good for you. Bananas and oranges, unless consumed in extreme moderation, promote the growth of harmful yeasts and gut dysbiosis (See "Clean" by A. Junger). Most fruit has been bred to produce sugar levels far in excess of those found in the while. Apparently the sweet taste alone can promote weight gain and obesity, as in evolutionary history fresh fruit was only available once a year, and so the body is keyed to gorge on it and store fat for the winter. No doubt some pencil neck keyboard warrior will try to debunk this with his PhD from Google University -- Big Food, incorporated has done everything it can to attack these results, but there's a curious phenomenon of those who have gone gluten and grain free and have had the bulk of their health problems disappear.
Others have a modified version of Stockholm syndrome -- the inability to believe that the mainstream authorities are not only systematically wrong, but have clear financial incentives to maintain the deception. It is hard to swallow just how monstrous is the state of food and our bodies in the developed western world.
The only healthy diet is one that is high in vegetables. Many of these keto diets and advocates are essentially straw men in the debate as they advocate absurd levels of protein intake that shifts the focus away from the danger of grain to the benefit of high protein consumption.
Giant evil corporations hate simple traditional things that work well for cheap or free.
Water is a good example. Companies spend billions trying to convince you that it's boring, even publishing junk science about "overhydration" and how juice, tea, gatorade, etc all 'count' towards the 8 glasses of water a day target. Now that we basically view Soda as poison marketed to children they've pushed back with flavored zero calorie water that is nowhere as healthy as the real thing.
I thought Kindle and its clones were the height of folly when they came out, and my opinon hasn't changed. Books are durable, tangible, random-access, and have worked well for humanity since the invention of the printing press. A fucking evil corporation looks at books and identifies the key problem: they persist long after the original purchase. A book can sit on a shelf for 20 years until someone else picks it up.
Enter the DRM - ereader model. You now 'license' the right to use the book - tying yourself both to the DRM and the platform. When you die, or more likely the device breaks, the book is gone. It cannot be given to a friend, passed down to children, donated to a library or traded via a book swap. That contributes to scarcity, under classical economics, and drives up the price and profit. This is total bullshit - but what's worse is the army of softheaded media brainwashed idiots out there suggesting that paper is somehow 'archaic' and that there are 'benefits' to ereaders. Fuck that noise!
Now we see the end result of that folly. Your entire Microshit library can be erased at the touch of a button. THEY, not you, control the terms of the refund. Why shouldn't they pay you in cash instead of forcing you to take some kind of chickenshit microsoft store credit? Did you not in fact pay in real money? And I marvel at the decision that all the notes and markings you may have taken in your entire library are worth the grand sum of $25! They, not you, decided that. They wrote the terms of the licensing agreement, forcing binding arbitration and preventing a class action lawsuit (my best guess but fitting the overwhelming pattern of large evil corporations).
It's time for people to wake up. It's time for shiny new products that we don't actually need to die on day 1. It's time to realize that anyone talking about the advantages of eReaders and Kindle is 100% a softheaded idiot who should be loudly and publicly castigated.
Trust me many experts, economists, risk analysts, etc have screamed bloody murder about how telling the appraiser the contract price creates a rubber-stamp system around price.
The problem is various appraiser lobby and oversight groups --> they have an incentive for the current system to continue, so they hide behind the law: "The appraiser is required to have all relevant pieces of information related to the sale." They have filed lawsuits claiming that the contract price is a vital piece of relevant information.
There's no clear counterparty with the money/interest in arguing that an appraiser can essentially get out of doing his job if he just writes down the contract price and fudges the comparable sales to fit.
There are papers by Eriksen, Fout, et al that show how bad this behavior is. The 2016 paper shows that the appraiser hits or exceeds the contract price 80% of the time! The 2018 paper (IIRC) shows how the comparable sales weighting is gamed to produce this result.
Actors draw clear boundaries between the role and their own personality. Successful youtubers destroy that line - with the pressure to put out content constantly comes the pressure to incorporate more of the personal life into the act. Soon the line gets irrevocably blurred. Comments, likes, views, subs, and revenue become a self-reinforcing cycle tied to self-esteem. Something starting out as a quirky labor of love turns into caring what hundreds of thousands of random internet idiots think. It can destroy your passion for whatever your content is about, at a minimum. You're literally at the collective mercy of all the crackpots, cranks, weirdos, trolls, haters, fanboys. You have the awesome power of knowing that a small percent of viewers will do whatever you tell them... and realizing these tools may be the worst of all. If you have any intellectual honesty, you come to realize what many 'celebrities' do: success is random, and the product of collective stupidity based on the boredom of the world at large.
Steve Jobs famously referred to Google as "That Montessouri School in Mountain View." He was right. In recent times their culture has gotten so autistic that when they're replaced with AI it will cause a noticeable improvement in the humanity of Google as a whole. They, along with the social media platforms are basically bright kids playing with dynamite.
The media never mention the impact of zero information content stories on distracting attention away from serious issues. They also never mention how on the order of 10 entities own every major news media outlet in the country. And of course, they go out of the way to deny and minimize allegations that top-level ownership controls content.
Instead they go out of their way to create inherently loaded terms like 'Conspiracy Theory' (with the unspoken 'nutjob') and then use that to label anyone who disagrees with them in any way. Whether you're a birther, truther, flat-earther, hollow-earther or simply think the media are controlled shills of profascist oligarchs, banks, and multinational corporations -- you get lumped under the same label... which then gets broadcast to the hundreds of millions of captive viewers.
The KGB did interesting experiments in the 1960s that showed that a television program put viewers into a suggestible, near hypnotic state where mental filters failed and they believed what they saw. The widely publicized failures of subliminal advertising distract and mislead away from the success of 'barely liminal' advertising.
With all this, how can one NOT believe the 'conspiracy' that the media would act in underhanded ways and then act out of self interest to cover up their actions by attacking their critics?
TL;DR: The repeal of Net Neutrality is the media and government saying they don't like you thinking anything they don't tell you to think.
Overwatch - It's a relatively casual fun shooter, playable on a nongaming pc, and there's a balancing system so you are playing in games with people of roughly your skill level.
FTL - A cheap and fun Steam game, relateable to old-school sci-fi fans, a full game can be played through in 2-3 hours (or 20 minutes if you're a speedrunner). I have gotten over 100 hours of entertainment out of it, from my initial investment of $10 during a sale.
My desktop died and my laptop is 7 years old so I got another Acer laptop at around the same price point ($300). All I need to do is surf the web, watch youtube videos, and hey this more modern processor can actually run Starcraft 2 at lowest graphics settings - so that's a great plus. Buuut... why is the actual user experience so glitchy and laggy? I get so many freezes, hangs and generally shit that I don't want. As someone who has had great luck with just buying computers on sale and then using them for 5-6 years, I feel like Windows 10 is a complete dud.
This really feels like Hooli and Gavin Belson - shiny new overhyped stuff that barely works. Hey MS, I hate Cortana, couldn't you just have given me Windows 7 with a few incremental tweaks?
by Nesheim. He goes through the steps from idea to IPO/buyout. a few good practical tips, such as think about how you will make money/cash out, how to go through the various rounds of VC and angel investor funding, and the one I think some people forget which is a takeover plan where you the mad scientist will step aside and let a professional management team take over, in return for money. The core of the book talks about unfair advantage which is definitely worth thinking about in depth. The eventual goal is to own a few percent of a company that goes IPO. He realistically estimates the odds of doing this as 1/1000, and claims that his book raises it to 6/1000.
So the author's claim is what exactly? That when a woman-oriented show gets bad ratings and reviews from men that this is somehow a conspiracy?
Let me introduce you to my friend the correlation-causation fallacy. I'm too fucking tired to explain this simple point that most 'journalists' these days don't get, but ask any smart person you know to explain it. Anyways, it would be JUST AS FUCKING VALID OR INVALID to 'explain' this result as: "Sex & the Shitty and other vagina-friendly shows, in fact, suck. Men rate them accurately, women drastically overinflate their ratings because of a conspiracy to promote these shows.
BTW as a man who often watched SATC during its original HBO run due to housemates/girlfriends wanting to watch it... I can unequivocally state that it is the most overrated HBO full series of all time. SJP is a shitty writer -- does not seem to realize that self-referential humor and breaking the fourth wall only works if done with restraint by an excellent screenwriter. She, due to the self-referential nature of both the writing and her character, comes across as a reasonably dumb, trashy whore.
I think the unintended consequence of this show is that it opened men's eyes about women. Even if the characters aren't realistic, they are people a lot of ordinary women seem to be able to relate to and are entertained by. We started to think... maybe our girlfriend is as big a skank as Samantha, or as crazy/bitchy/bossy as Red, or as flat out stupidly pretentious & catty as Carrie. Shit, maybe our only hope is to meet the Charlotte's of the world who haven't yet experienced the cock carousel and let their looks go into a mass of cellulite!
Band aids like $15 minimum wage are simply designed to reduce the rebelliousness and discontentment of the population IN THE SHORT TERM while total fascism is being implemented. For instance presently they just need to distract people with minimum wage and transgender toilets while they work towards gutting the middle class financially and funneling the money to banks. Millennials won't see a cent of social security, medicare, or govt pensions but it won't matter because they won't have guns or the ability to even organize in groups once riot-control drones and total surveillance are everywhere.
And they certainly aren't going to make their corporate overlords lose money while all this happens, hence the automation, which they've had in Europe 14 years ago when I visited.
>> Poor, yes. Stupid, no. The got the Olympics. I'd say they outsmarted everyone.
Nah, hosting the games has a negative ROI. It took Japan decades to pay off the debt. Beijing's facilities have rotted and were never used much. Every go around the IOC puts out fuzzy math that makes it seem like the olympics is beneficial and every go around fewer democracies are interested in hosting it. We're pretty much down to dictatorships after 2016.
The Brazilian river of shit adds irony, but it's the Brazilians who'll be paying off the loans through 2026.
Then it's like various NES racing games
For years I vetoed Chipotle when my friends wanted to go there. It is utter, bland, mediocrity -- the Olive Garden of casual Mexican, if you will. Far, far too much of day-to-day operations is left to employees, if you're lucky they will be older Latina women who put out so-so food... if you're not, it'll be teenagers giving you lettuce stems and dehydrated (but responsibly sourced!) Chicken.
IMO foodborne pathogen outbreaks take a fair amount of carelessness - either in the way the item is sourced or the way its handled. Since I live in one of the affected states, my snobbiness about Chipotle may have kept me out of the hospital!
Fuck you Steve Ells, douchebag fuck!
Police officers are the new Mafia. They are an armed gang of thugs that are generally more interested in their own profit than the well-being of ordinary citizens. They pick and choose which laws to obey, and who to muscle in on. Now the interesting thing is that mob-run neighborhoods are generally pretty safe. The mob doesn't want rival criminals around, because it's bad for business. Cops don't like rival criminal gangs for much the same reason. The power of video-recording is that it brings 'heat' in the form of bad press, which everyone must pay lip service to. Of course, cops are basically the lowest paid foot soldiers in the Blue Mob, you've got judges, prosecutors, and politicians who really organize and run the system.
"Paranoid Conspiracy Nuts" got a promotion to "Venomous cynics!" This is a great day indeed. You see - a few short years ago, concerned citizens who claimed the government was engaged in a massive effort to spy on United States citizens, read their emails, and listen to their phone conversations without warrants were called Paranoid Conspiracy Nuts, tinfoil-hatters, and much worse by the bootlicking media, and oh yes, the 98% of people who believe what the bootlicking media tells them to believe. Agencies like the CIA/FBI could have their lying orifices, like Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan, simply respond "that's silly" or "we follow the law" AND HAVE THE MEDIA/SHEEP DO THE REST (see eg: Nuts, Paranoid Conspiracy).
Even the term "Venomous Cynics" says a lot about the attitudes of said lying orifices. Cynics implies people who have extreme skepticism, which most readers would view as a compliment, however since the term is used perjoratively by said orifice one must conclude that our Intelligence agencies hate people who view their actions skeptically! Amazing!
"Venomous" suggests these cynics also carry a poisonous bite. The lying orifices must think that citizens willing to poison/destroy government agencies that violate the law and their rights are a Bad Thing. The orifices must not be aware that our Founding Fathers viewed government as a necessary evil, a source of the very real threat of tyranny, and an institution that must FEAR the people - who hold the power to destroy it. Either that or the orifices (who presumably went to Elite schools and are quite intelligent) must realize that THEY are evil tyrants who should rightly fear destruction at the hands of the people.
The NSA's reach apparently reaches to Slashdot. The top level paragraph is remarkably less than neutral and appears spin-doctored. To all of you NSA / NWO pukes reading this - realize that real patriotic Americans hate you and will oppose you down to the dying breath. That is all.
What's wrong with blowing the whistle into the phone?
You could try turning off the phone ringer and connecting it to an answering machine (and telling your friends to always leave a message). The other thing that might work is telling the scammers that the person they are trying to reach is dead and that the phone number is about to be disconnected. Oddly, I've had this work on ordinary telemarketers before.
We also need to strip the medical licenses of doctors who give out antibiotics for the cold. Either they're shockingly ignorant of the last 20 years of research and aren't fit to be doctors, or they're intentionally contributing to a real health hazard and should face criminal charges.
"Intent" is an interesting legal concept. Shocking ignorance would amount to negligence, perhaps gross negligence. However I feel the doctors in question are guilty of more than that. The highest level of intent, 'purposely' or 'knowingly' might be a tad too strong, as in its difficult to think a doctor actually wants or desires global killer resistant infections to arise. However, the standard of "Reckless" seems to apply really well. Reckless is commonly viewed as knowing a certain outcome or result was likely and acting with blatant disregard for that outcome. The two classic examples of reckless are: #1 shooting a gun in the woods at a deer that is a few hundred yards in front of a school and #2 drag racing on a public street (Fast and Furious style). In both situations, if any bystander is killed the person(s) involved could be convicted of murder (vs manslaughter which is viewed as a negligent killing). In neither case was there a desire to kill bystanders, but in both situations the activities were so dangerous and involved such a high risk that the intent requirement for murder was met.
It's relatively common knowledge that colds and the flu are caused by viruses, which can't be affected by antibiotics. At the same time there's a strong and very perverse financial incentive to incorrectly prescribe antibiotics: it gets rid of patients quickly, allowing a doctor to increase daily billables (via patients seen). It may also help retain hypochondriac patients. I would argue that since multiple-resistant bacteria are also common knowledge (terms like superbug are in common use) doctors are acting with deliberate knowledge of a serious risk for their own gain. They are specifically acting contrary to their oath(s) - prescribing unnecessary medicine, and (since all medications have side effects) causing unnecessary harm to their own patients. They are also violating the spirit (if not the letter) of their oath(s) in that they have a duty towards humanity not to create or cause killer diseases that kill or sicken lots of people.
It's honestly an indefensible action. The defensive arguments simply don't hold. If the doctor is worried about liability (ie failing to prescribe an antibiotic when the illness turns out to be bacterial) they can simply do what all doctors do, everywhere, and order a test. There, ass covered. If they're sick of dealing with hypochondriacs they can go old-school and actually talk to them, or they can simply suggest that person find another doctor.
Lastly, I suggest anyone reading this who is skeptical that doctors' practices would turn into little more than pill factories, try this. Call a bunch of different doctors' offices in Davis, California and just listen to the answering machine messages. I was shocked the first time I heard "Please tell us what prescriptions you need from us" on an _answering machine_ I thought the function of a doctor was to tell me what prescriptions I need.
35 USC 102(a) (as recently amended by the America Invents Act) - Patent rights immediately terminate if the invention was in public use anywhere in the world prior to the date of patent filing. "Public Use" has a much broader meaning than its plain English meaning (since an underwater structure is probably not highly visible to the public) and according to Eggbert v Lippman can apply even to things the public can't even see -- the real test is if the inventor 'retained control for experimentation and testing purposes." It is clear the Romans did not. There is a separate bar, which the article doesn't give enough info to make a conclusion on, but seems very likely. If the roman concrete was ever described in a 'publication' it would have prevented anyone from patenting it more than 1 year after the date of publication. And I know the Romans loved to keep records, histories, diaries and what have you. Under this bar, the Bible has successfully used as a source of prior art rejection on patents directed to certain construction methods described therein.
They don't need to sell their US holdings. All they need to do is what they're doing, which is backing the international basket currency for oil purchases from OPEC. Once the petrodollar (look it up) is abolished as an international standard, US interest rates will go up across the board by 20-30%.... and guess who'll be in prime position to profit from it as one of our big lenders?
With all due respect to Etherwalk, this is the kind of logic on which fascism and totalitarianism is built. The entire concept of 'Law' is premised on the fact that all are equal before it. Specifically the government, the president, and the worst criminal are all held to the same standard. Our very Constitution and Bill of Rights was written because of experiences with the Despotic rule of the British Monarchy and the very, very real dangers of abuse of power. Once we start with ends-justify-the-means logic it's a slippery slope straight to hell. By legal definition, someone cannot be guilty if the only evidence of their guilt was obtained through unconstitutional means. And let's call a spade a spade: the 'unconstitutional means' involve kidnapping and torture
Haha. I think I thought of it in spaceship terms (my teacher might have said 'engine room') and didn't question. The cell-boat analogy is pretty good, they're both self contained, floating, prone to piracy... ok I'll stop. Never really thought of it before, but it seems much of Mol Bio is just 'borrowing' natural tools to do things. Anyways, it strikes me that the Biology Q&A journal might be a good idea, I'd be willing to contribute, might be a great way to come up with more silly but relevant analogies. I am always looking for ways to explain genetics to people who are kind of afraid of science, and we could even file Amicus Briefs Unlikely to be Actually Read by Anyone! Woot!