A 1971 Chrysler Newport.

The thing was a boat. You’d hit a bump in the road, and the car would act like you crested a wave and bob front to back a few times. It was wider than most pickup trucks and probably heavier. Not only could it not fit in most parking spots, it could hardly fit in some lanes. Required leaded gas, which was getting hard to find at that point. If you needed to go uphill you had to build up speed because you would slow down, even with the gas pedal floored.

The best part is that when I finally brought it in for service, the mechanic came out and said “You’ve been driving that thing??” Three out of four motor mounts had broken and the last one was about rusted through.

It did have an 8-track though, and came with a bunch of Elvis tapes.

I hated Elvis, but did manage to find an 8-track of Peter Paul and Mary.

Smalltalk would probably make more sense than C++.

Uno Reverse

That’s exactly my perspective.

I came of age with the birth of the web. I was using systems like Usenet, gopher, wais, and that sort of thing. I was very much into the whole cypherpunk, “information wants to be free” philosophy that thought that the more information people had, the more they could talk to each other, the better the world would be.

Boy, was I wrong.

But you can’t put the genie back into the bottle. So now, in addition to having NPR online, we have kids eating tide pods and getting recruited into fascist ideologies. And of course it’s not just kids. It’s tough to see how the anti-vax movement or QAnon could have grown without the internet (which obviously has search engines as a major driver of traffic).

I think you’re better off teaching critical thinking, and even demonstrating the failings of ChatGPT by showing them how bad it is at answering questions. There’s plenty of resources you can find that should give you a starting point. Ironically, you can find them using a search engine.

Return it as it was shipped with a hardware bug.

Yes. CA is looking to get single payer, but that has a longer runway because America.

California comes pretty close.

To little fanfare, as the new year has gotten underway, California has closed one of the largest remaining gaps in its healthcare coverage system. As of January 1, all low-income Californians, no matter their immigration status, no matter their age, qualify for healthcare coverage.

What an absolutely believable conclusion announced by an absolutely credible organization that has no motivation except to publish the unvarnished truth.

The West is not “continuing the war at will.” That phrase has no meaning in this context. The West is supplying Ukraine with the means to continue to resist the illegal Russian invasion.

The West would in fact have the right under Just War theory to enter into combat operations in Ukraine against Russian forces, and to operate combat operations against Russia up to and including invasion. Because Russia is the aggressor, Just War theory gives other nations the right to participate in the resistance of aggression.

Good. This is why I donate thousands to the ACLU, even though I strongly disagree with them on issues like free speech for Nazis (I’m not making this statement to get into this in this unrelated thread). They are the best positioned and best resourced group to take this kind of thing on. If needed, I hope the HRC hops in too.

Hospitals need to realize they operate (no pun intended) for the benefit of the community, and that their legal liability is completely on the table when they shirk a responsibility because it is politically expedient. I really want the hospitals in states that are banning gender affirming surgery and abortions to be sued by the ACLU, HRC, and the BBC and JVN for all I care. The Biden admin started to do that but I haven’t heard of any recent developments and so I’m not sure where the cases are.

This may be the most poorly written article I’ve ever read. It’s completely unintelligible.

It must have been written by a really poorly trained LLM and just posted without anyone having looked at it. Forget artificial intelligence - this is artificial stupidity.

I was gifted the tests multiple times. I didn’t take the test because of my own data privacy concerns.

The thing I am concerned about is not necessarily 23andMe selling the data, but rather being sold off and having another company come in and being allowed to do what they want with it. I’ve seen that happen before with other data collecting companies, and I’m not sure to what extent the policies put in place by the collection company applies to the new company that buys them and their IP.

I imagine in this case that it would result in a massive class action suit, but for me the risks of having the data made available to, for example, insurance companies who could then deny coverage was just too high of a risk when the main payoff for me would be to find out my family comes from Ireland but that I’m also 5% Jewish.

Wojcicki’s stock carries supervoting privileges, giving her effective control of the company. She said she has never sold a share.

Whoops!

I know that technology continues to improve, especially in driver assist modes. However, previous iterations also tried to make it easier by doing things like have traditional steering at one speed and four wheel steering at a much lower speed. None of those experiments were successful as commercial products.

I do agree that the more the car is using it for you, the more realistic it is. It’s just that my car can already park itself with two wheel steering, and as much as I like automated everything and am cost-neutral on most things, I don’t see the four wheel steering bringing enough to the table to be worth the additional manufacturing and maintenance complexity.

I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, and maybe they did it right this time. But at this point I can really only see it in specialized applications - forklifts, aircraft maintenance vehicles, that kinds of thing.

Every middle manager I know is openly opposed to forced RTO. It’s a huge pain in the ass from a policy enforcement perspective because, in their enthusiasm to make sure people are taking it seriously, they’ve decreased managers’ discretion for attendance. Now employees have to take a sick day if they can’t come in, even if they’re perfectly capable of working from home (eg a software dev with a broken ankle), or else have to jump through multiple hoops with HR.

I actually kind of like my office. It helps that I have an actual office to myself of course, but I do like the ability to put together a quick hallway chat or grab a room with a whiteboard and even just appreciate the higher bandwidth of communication I can get when physically present. But I also want to allow people to work from home if they’re having a TV delivered or if their kid is sick.

The standard, now rote, response from everyone up to the director level is pretty much “I know, it sucks. But it’s policy, and if you don’t do it there’s going to be consequences that I will not be able to handle for you.” They may put a happy spin on things for newsletters, but from where I’m from it’s seen as a legacy from an older culture running at the level of VPs and above who don’t have a direct hand in operations.

I think related technologies have been introduced a few times over the years. I remember seeing a similar system on an American pickup truck at least a decade ago, and I think Cadillac or someone tried it as well.

As I recall, they’ve always tended to fail because drivers don’t know how to use them. They require learning a new skill and a new way of thinking. An actual self driving vehicle might be able to make more use of the added maneuverability, but people who have been driving for decades (who are the primary market for cars in the price range these run in) have developed a muscle memory such that driving is automatic. Learning to use four wheel steering isn’t just picking up a new skill - it’s actively having to unlearn a fairly complex process that is literally hardwired into your brain at that point.

People who parallel park already know how to do so, and higher end cars can park themselves. Roads are designed for traditionally steered cars (eg for things like the turning radius) so I’m not seeing a benefit there either.

I could see this being useful in something like a forklift, where you do have to be concerned about limited spaces, but there it would be explicitly taught as a new skill which your brain could separate from car driving because it’s a different vehicle with a different application and environment. You wouldn’t have to unlearn anything.

I have read about individuals doing this, but to my knowledge it has never happened in any sufficient numbers to tilt a primary in any state.

Some states run open primaries, so that any person can vote in any (but only one) primary. Other states run closed primaries, such that any voter who has registered as a member of that party can vote in that particular party’s primary. Yet others (eg, California last time I checked) have mixed modes. I believe the CA GOP primary is closed by the Democratic primary is open.

You can tell relatively easily by the number of votes in any given primary election whether they’re consistent in terms of turnout with previous years. As far as I’ve ever read, they tend to be year over year consistent. The one trend that has been noted in recent years is a small but as far as I know steady increase in independent voters (who as stated may or may not be able to vote in primaries depending on their state, but based on number of votes cast do not seem to have been a deciding factor in primary votes).

I generally have suspected that the idea of people switching parties to act as primary spoilers is largely just projection, as we tend to expect malfeasance of the Other, but the hard truth is that you can barely get large numbers of people to vote in actual elections, much less in something like a primary.

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado has both of those covered.

Excellent analysis!

I did read the books on the original series. I have but haven’t yet read some of the others (I have at least one audiobook that was free at the time). I absolutely loved them, after sitting in shock as one “main character” after another was killed in a horrible and tragic way. I had gone in cold, and did not realize that GRRM took the authorial advice to “kill your darlings” quite so literally.”

I didn’t get into them until the pentology was finished, and I remember wondering to myself “Who the hell does he finish this? He’s introduced a major new plot line on the third book (maybe it was the Dorne subplot) and new, major characters kept popping up. I had no idea how he was going to start tying everything together, because even the last book had not started winding things down quite - the tensions were still building. It felt like he was painting himself into a corner while doing the floor like the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Given the pace of subsequent development, I think I may have been just a bit right on that. I’ve done it to myself and recognize the symptoms.

I appreciate House of the Dragon being good. The problem is that S1 was also good. The problem is in the prequel-ness itself. I know that it all ends with Dany going inexplicably insane and Jamie’s arc goes from scoundrel to hero to … whatever the hell that was. I know the complex plot lines they’re setting up will never be closed. If GRRM ever finishes the book (I’m certainly not expecting two) and winds things down properly, I might again feel invested enough in the universe to try the other stories set in it, but right now it might have just ended with “and then Ned woke up and realized it was all a dream.”

Lastly, you raise a good point and that would have at least maybe delivered some interest. I can’t see anything but civil war with Bran as the bored and incapable god-emperor facing a Stark-Lannister alliance or something. The problem is that the most central and intriguing plot lines were left hanging or ended in the fastest and worst way possible.

“Dany forgot about the Black Fleet?” A queen capable of bringing her people from the literal point of extinction to conquering the known world, with a team of advisors and tacticians forgetting about a major armed force whose betrayal and push for conquest was well known? That’s like “The President of the United States forgot they were at war with China who had dispatched their fleet to attack Washington.” And then to have a ballista, fired from the pitching deck of a sailing ship, and hitting not only a moving target but a flying one? No one in history has ever shot a ballista at a moving flying target, to my knowledge, then pull in the wind and the waves.

I really only picked on Bran in particular because that was the ending-ending. From top to bottom it was absolutely terrible with every authorial decision worse than the last.

Like I said, I think GRRM painted himself into a corner. I think he gets some of the blame, because the show runners are obviously nowhere in the league of GRRM when it comes to story creation, and I don’t know how involved he was at that point. I don’t know if he skimmed a paragraph and signed off or what. Honestly, I don’t think even George knows how to finish his story because he kept adding one more thing. He’s a mature writer and gifted author, but I don’t have a competing hypothesis right now.

I do blame the showrunners for deliberately turning out an absolute piece of crap just to finish the thing even after being offered additional seasons by HBO. It was the worst example of deus ex machina I’ve ever seen.

“Who has a better story than Bran the Broken? Let’s make him king!”

Okay, not happy in the moment, but it was supposed to be. I’m still mad about it. Of all the shows I’ve re-marathoned, I’ve never even been tempted to redo GoT. It was like S8 was so bad it went back in time and ruined the entire rest of the show. I can’t even entertain watching any spinoffs.

I may buy the rest of the series as novels (ha) but even then it will be with trepidation.