It’s good to see that M$FT is tackling the important problems:

The sight of a Blue Screen of Death will also be a thing of the past, too. Microsoft is now officially redesigning its BSOD so that it’s black and not blue.

Streisand effect time. I would never known about the book if not for this bit of news, but now I see that my library has it in their catalog though it’s not yet available. Hold placed.

VSCode + Vim keybindings + Metals for Scala development. I used to use IntelliJ (paid and free) + the Scala plug-in, and Pycharm (free). For Scala I’d be fine with either VSCode or Jetbrains, just depends on who is paying (or not paying). I suspect that Python support in VSCode is a lot better these days so it might be a viable option to Pycharm. I need to check out VSCodium, if it works well with Metals and gets frequent updates I might make the switch.

Harper’s Magazine (not to be confused with Harper’s Bazaar). https://harpers.org/ There’s Granta for mostly long-form fiction. A quarterly. It’s excellent but more like a periodic paperback book than a magazine.

I agree, but cross-posting doesn’t seem to be allowed to actually_infuriating@lemmy.world .

Gerry who? Never heard of 'em.

I haven’t eaten “fast” “food” in basically forever. It’s been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day’s eats that I could stash as-needed.

These prices blow my mind. I can’t believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these “burgers” (or “meals” - just because there’s more than one item in the bag doesn’t make it a “meal” no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a “quarter pounder” here, I can get at least three big cans of “chunky”-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week’s-worth of breakfasts.

Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you’re careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you’re already homeless of course, that’s gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity (“too busy shop and cook!”) are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand “treats” of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that’s what they “deserve”. I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you’re never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn’t seem to me like it’s going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn’t have to wait in line.

Archive link: https://archive.is/Qsioy

Re: Fascism, Mussolini’s full explanation/description is a very good read. Here’s a version that a search turned up:

https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf .

Another: http://media.wix.com/ugd/927b40_c1ee26114a4d480cb048f5f96a4cc68f.pdf (Soames).

Got to hand it to the guy, he was well-educated and could write, which is more than you can say for his modern-day imitators, especially the loud, orange one.

Sorry, just ate a grape, I can’t think right now.

Yeah, and I’ve gotta wonder if the women this pathetic loser was preying on got any say on the deal and on the faux-punishment that was handed out? If I was a victim and the AG came to me and said “hey we can skip the trial, the dirtbag will get a slap on the wrist, but he’ll never work as a cop around here again, whatddya say?” I imagine I’d say “duck no, I want to see this bastard do time and pay six-figure restitution, preferably to us victims”.

The AG’s press release is an infuriating read.

[WA attorney general]Ferguson filed a lawsuit in February 2022, accusing Providence of billing and aggressively collecting money from low-income Washingtonians without determining if they qualified for financial assistance.

Ferguson’s Consumer Protection investigation started in 2020, following complaints about collection practices at Swedish. It revealed Providence engaged in numerous practices between 2018 and 2022 that prevented patients from accessing financial assistance. Providence trained employees on aggressive and deceptive collection tactics. Their script included:

• “Ask every patient every time” to pay outstanding medical costs;
• “Don’t accept the first no;”
• “If a patient declines the first request, ask for partial payment;”
• "Use phrasing that signals to patients “payment is expected.”

The lawsuit asserted that Providence knew many of its patients were likely eligible for financial assistance and not only failed to inform them, but also kept collecting payments from them. In fact, Providence sent thousands of patients it identified as “presumptively” qualified for financial assistance to debt collectors. Internal emails revealed Providence did this because it knew those patients were more likely to pay their bills if collection attempts continued.

Moreover, starting in 2019, Providence sent thousands of Medicaid patients to debt collectors. Medicaid enrollees are among the lowest income Washingtonians, and are deemed eligible for financial assistance under Providence’s own policies. Providence staff caught the issue early and raised concerns to leadership. In fact, according to internal records, one employee warned: “We are sending the poor to bad debt and not treating them the same as other patients.” Providence did not correct the problem for more than two years.

selection bias

He’s not doing a formal study that requires random sampling. This is his blog - opinions & thoughts.

He makes the claim that nothing is done about right-wing protesters

I’ve read the article and I don’t see him making this claim anywhere. The closest I can see to it is one of his opening sentences where he writes “actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law”.

One of his topics here is the disproportionate punishments handed out to left-wing protesters (esp. peaceful ones). He talks about what he calls “extrajudicial punishments” that don’t even require convictions to cause massive harm to the protester. The UK gov’t seems to be pioneering these techniques to dissuade and crush public left-wing protest, but if the techniques are successful it’s just a matter of time before they’re employed here in the US too.

Ragebait? I guess, but given that the topics are legitimately rage-inducing, that’s to be expected. While right-wing domestic terrorists in the US continue to ramp-up their threats, and acts, of violence against those they dislike (including insufficiently MAGA-loving elected officials and judges ), with very few of them being caught and punished (never mind having their terrorist networks broken-up), following the UK recipe, we have (source):

Protests against the proposed training center — dubbed “Cop City” by opponents — have been going on for more than two years. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr obtained a sweeping indictment in August, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to target the protesters and characterizing them as ”militant anarchists.”

Demonstrators and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have condemned the indictment and accused Carr, a Republican, of levying heavy-handed charges to try to silence a movement that has galvanized environmentalists and anti-police protesters across the country.

(2019)

Mr. Putin, meet Lieutenant Columbo, from the LAPD. He’d like to have a few words with you Sir. Just a few questions about this tragic accident involving an acquaintance of yours, a Mr. Prigozhin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyfywQ98dIU

You’re in the running for a BoneAppleTea Prize, so that’s something. There’s also the Nobel Prize but that’s overrated IMO. The real glory is with the Ig Nobel, you should consider submitting your work there.

Rouge: noun, A red or pink cosmetic for coloring the cheeks or lips.

You want that stuff all over the net? And just who is going to clean it all up when you’re done? The bot surely won’t - it’ll just claim that it hasn’t been trained on cleaning.

I think the controversial bit was that when queried about various aspects of admittance to “heaven”, the Google AI assumed that the question had to do with, specifically, the Christian idea of “heaven”, going so far as to make reference to some “Jesus” entity. Christianity doesn’t own the concept of heaven or an afterlife, but, apparently, the AI has been trained such that it responds to such questions from a seemingly Christian perspective. That was my take on it - the discussion is in the article, best have a look at it yourself.

It was just an example, one that came to mind b/c in my low-mid-class residential 'hood in a medium-sized city, I have nearby neighbors who seem to think nothing of blasting rap (it’s always rap for some reason) at a gazillion Db and drenching the entire block in pure noise. All, apparently, because of some sort of “I can do whatever the fuck I want, suck it up” attitude. Now, I personally loathe rap, don’t consider it music at all, but this behavior would be every bit as bad/wrong if they were blasting out symphonic music or trumpet concertos or Coltrane or classic rock or blues or, really, any kind of unnecessary sound that their neighb’s might just not be fans of, or in the mood for. And that includes fireworks noise, which actually is kind of a year-round thing here, just concentrated around calendar events when people can manufacture an excuse to set them off. Stupid riceburner street-racers with, evidently, straight-pipes, actively racing, are also a weekly scourge around here and the cops seem to just look the other way.

What seems to have vanished, in the loud-noises in public sphere, is any kind of common courtesy. I don’t blast my loud “music” in random places where other people are going to be forced to listen to it because that’s just rude - they might have their own tunes on, hate my fave genres, or simply want some peace - I don’t automatically expect that they’re going to be totally down with my noisemaking just because I have the ability to make it. If I pull up to someone with their windows down at at red light and I’ve got some loud tunes on, I turn them down. Basic civility. But now the attitude seems to be “fuck you, I’ll do whatever I want and you’d better like it and if not, tough shit, try to stop me.”

people yelling at their mobile phone set to speaker while in public

After rejoining a gym recently (had been away ~5yrs) I was astonished to find people doing this right there in the weight room. Blabbing away, having personal conversations at high volume mere feet from all the other paying customers who are just trying to concentrate on their workouts. I’d seen the signs on the wall asking people NOT to do this and take their phone conversations elsewhere, but of course those rules are for OTHER people, not for precious entitled blabbermouths.