“Noone loves a hooker with a dick under her dress more than a closeted republican.”

From an old Onion News video: https://youtu.be/simV1ZXFsxI

Thanks for the correction, it’s a good thing that not everyone is afraid of correcting others.

English education tends to have it easy because of circumstances rather than the schooling system: Dutch is a relatively small language and we mostly don’t dub foreign media. Lots of exposure to English makes it easier to teach English to a higher standard than would otherwise be the case. When I was in school, French was started 2 years earlier, got more hours, and still got worse results :D

If Amazon can’t operate a delivery business without blatantly exploiting workers and “subcontractors” (between brackets because the subcontractors don’t operate independent at all), then they shouldn’t operate a delivery business. Leave it to the companies that do respect worker’s rights.

The exploitative system that Amazon wants to maintain:
*As the mayor’s office said Monday, at least 11 last-mile facilities have opened across New York City since 2020, with subcontractors running the warehouses as Amazon directs the hiring of delivery drivers, the routes they use, and requires them to use Amazon-branded vehicles and uniforms.

But while exerting control over the deliveries, Amazon pushes responsibility for the vehicles used onto the subcontractors, as delivery workers explained in a video released on social media by Mamdani on Monday.

“When injuries and worker accidents skyrocket, Amazon says they have nothing to do with it. They can’t have it both ways,” said the workers.*
https://www.commondreams.org/news/delivery-protection-act-nyc

We had a similar situation in my country (Belgium) a few years back, where the most exploitative delivery company was PostNL. The government raided and seized their warehouses for a good while, locked up a few executives for a shorter while, and then unfortunately failed to get convictions, so only administrative fines were handed out. Even though there were no significant fines, it did scare the sector and working conditions have improved since then, which anecdotally had the following consequences: shops offer choices when it comes to delivery (fake next day delivery is no longer standard, but requires a premium), cost per order went up a tiny bit (no more free delivery for small orders + next day delivery is more expensive), and deliveries became more reliable again (delivery time tables are easier to accomplish for the workers if they’re not mathematically impossible).

Autumn is mating season for spiders, it’s when a lot of them come out of hiding in search of some sexy times.

Lake Stormy Daniels or Lake Stormy instead of Lake Superior. She’s a legal adult and I read once that Lake Superior is the stormiest of the Great Lakes.

Tbh, randomly renaming things is fun.

I’d love a 2nd quieter & apologetic horn in my car. When driving electric behind pedestrians it often takes them some time to realize that there is a car driving behind them, and I don’t want to use my regular horn to ask them to let me pass.

Mountain ranges with names that are harder to remember and pronounce than “Rocky” are also likely candidates for renaming. Appalachian Mountains, Sierra Nevada, …

Relevant “The Dictator” clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYJ2w82WifU

This is an example of false equivalence, whataboutism and tribalism.

False equivalence:
Desantis is an elected republican politician. The Minnesota fraud was commited by unelected citizens.
Desantis hasn’t faced any consequences yet for his corruption. Several perpetrators of the Minnesota fraud are being prosecuted.

Whataboutism:
A republican commits corrupt acts and the argument used to defend it isn’t related to that corruption case at all, instead it’s “what about the DNC”.

Tribalism:
Corruption by people from my tribe (republicans) is fine and people outside my tribe aren’t allowed to call out crimes committed by people from my tribe. The moral point of view would have been that corruption is unacceptable irrespective of party affiliation.

Their own graph illustrates how bullshit their own argument is:

In the text they are comparing taxes without interest at “less than $200,000” (aka as $197.000 or “almost $200.000” if the author weren’t a ghoul) with benefits without interest at $730.000, without mentioning interest/inflation adjustment at all. Since taxes were paid decades before the benefits will be received, their accumulated interest is going to be much higher, which is illustrated well by the graph.

If the graph can be trusted, then with interest the break even point of contributions/benefits happens at 82 or 83 years of age. The usa life expectancy is 79 years. So according to their own data, the average boomer will have contributed more than they will receive. And that is with the current regressive taxation scheme, where high earners contribute less.

A bout of hyperinflation is all that’s needed to make this prediction come true.

To me it looks like a tree fork. A cross section somewhere above the B and below the AW in the picture below. And I think the darker area in the middle is the heartwood of the main trunk.

The plan is to build 3 theme parks with Saudi investment, with at least one park based on a popular manga. It’s going to be “inspired by Dragonball Z” according to the bbc. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r6xy3ryndo

Andromeda is also visible at 2.5 million light years away.

I found an English article on it. It has the original photo and the painting, there was little point in trying to deny that it was copied :) https://hyperallergic.com/luc-tuymans-convicted-of-plagiarism-for-painting-photo-of-politician/

A copy is a copy, it shouldn’t matter what tools were used for it to be considered a copy. That tech Bros want to claim that their black box of tools absolves them of responsibility is absurd in my eyes.

The painter copying a photograph is an example from my country, where a painter was convicted for plagiarism after copying a photographer’s work.

Ignoring the fact that that would be so unlikely as to be nearly impossible, art that is almost identical to other art is a clear case of plagiarism. The method that was used to create the copy should not matter. A painter copying a photographer’s art without proper attribution or renumeration, is still plagiazing. They might have used different tools, but it’s still a copy.

My takeaway from that is that every ai model should have a disclosure as to what it was trained on. If it can create art with significant resemblance to work that was not included in the disclosure, that would be proof of a failure to disclose, which should come with repercussions.

Imo plagiarism machines should face the same repercussions as humans that do plagiarism. Obfuscation by a black box shouldn’t protect the plagiarist from liability.

Honey lost 40% of their users and has 4.6 stars on the Chrome webstore, which tells us a lot about the trustworthyness of the star ratings in the various Google stores.

I think they are referring to the Powell Memo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.#Powell_Memorandum_(1971)

This video connects some more of the dots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgYkde3o2Xw