hotspur

She’s really gunning for the NASA appointment isn’t she.

Was gonna say this shirt really isn’t that bracing, but technically it slides in under the “shirt about a thing that can go hard” loophole, so ok.

I haven’t used competing apps to know, but as a forced teams user it is very sluggish, seems to break other ms apps half the time and has some strange and persistent design choices that irk me. It also crashes on its own, when I’m not using it 2-3 times a day.

It has improved in terms of features lately, but still feels very bloated and WIP most of the time. It still won’t let me control where video windows are, and I’ll never understand this.

This is our replacement for Skype, which was obviously feature deficient and getting old, but does what it’s supposed to do and doesn’t cause problems.

Not sure if there’s a good competing app in terms of video and slack functionality, integration into outlook and onedrive (both of which also annoy me and seem to be performing worse-over-time, but are unavoidable and sometimes useful.)

It’s a real fear, but they can’t outright fire most federal employees. It’s why they’re so into the schedule f thing, because it allows them to reclassify a ton of jobs as at-will appointment jobs and that would allow them to summarily terminate and replace those positions.

It’s why they’re planning so many other moves like arbitrary relocation (they say ok your agency is now gonna be based out of Iowa, you can move or quit) blocking and cutting funding so that hiring is impossible and people don’t get raises, can’t find projects, etc.

But based on the rhetoric I would agree that there are some very nasty things brewing, and being reclassified and then terminated for being a democrat isn’t a crazy outcome, which is bad.

I have read that at first they’re gonna tread lightly, because if you outright destroy major agencies it causes huge visible blowback. So it may be slow at first. But on the other hand, it’s pretty clear after this election that no one cares about what people want, and they may be assuming that there won’t be more elections that they can’t fake so they don’t have to worry about people being pissed off after they get rid of all the agencies that work to keep things functional.

Yeah I’ve enjoyed this guys commentary in the past. Also he’s so… calm and soothing in how he speaks, which is always a nice find in a content creator.

I’m also noticing this. Since many of the posts are screen caps of text, this is making many posts completely illegible. The artifacting makes the text unreadable.

Unless we get a blow-out for either candidate that cannot be challenged, which does not seem likely based on the polls and battle lines, even if we have a Biden-esque victory for Harris, I’m fairly unsure of what will happen next. I personally doubt full on Civil War like in the Garland movie, or the actual civil war, but I would expect all kinds of shitty legal tricks, possible Supreme Court involvement and of course, stochastic and targeted violence, particularly towards immigrants and minorities. In other words, win or lose, I think the US may be in for a bad time. Hopefully I’m working in my assumptions here and it is somewhat more boring.

To better answer your question though, assuming things don’t completely fall apart: the two sides already don’t mix much, which is part of the problem in the first place. We’ll get more govt inaction due to gridlocked congress, probably more defense spending and some states, in the absence of federal legislating, will continue to take a larger role as they have been doing already in the recent era.

So basically more of the same, on a not-great trend line. Something has to give at some point, it’s hard to imagine how you could put the genie back in the bottle now, particularly with overall conditions in the world due to late-stage capitalism and climate change constricting each year.

Yes exactly. I’m super effective under deadline, with tons of crap flying my way. Problem is, it’s hugely damaging for me to operate in that state for any long period of time. After burnout for the nth time, I made a decision to switch jobs to something way lower stress (which somehow also paid better). I struggle with the low pressure sometimes, but my god am I a happier and healthier person most of the time.

Also: why would they expect people with ADHD to get better. It’s a fundamental baseline in how exec function systems work in our brains. You can mediate it with medication and practice better routines and habits to avoid some of the worse aspects, but until we can physically manipulate neurology at the cellular scale, I doubt you can cure it.

That is kinda brilliant

Yeah I could imagine that. I’ve also been fairly impressed with it for making something more concise and summarized (I sometimes write too much crap and realize it’s too much).

Oh yeah totally—I meant that as an absurd joke haha.

I’m also a little disturbed that people trust chatGPT enough to outsource their relationship communication to it. Every time I’ve tried to run it through it’s paces it seems super impressive and lifelike, but as soon as I try and use it for work subjects I know fairly well, it becomes clear it doesn’t know what’s going on and that it’s basically just making shit up.

Yeah I was thinking he obviously needs to start responding with chat gpt. Maybe they could just have the two phones use audio mode and have the argument for them instead. Reminds me of that old Star Trek episode where instead of war, belligerent nations just ran a computer simulation of the war and then each side humanely euthanized that many people.

Yeah sounds like logistics support?

I find it interesting that the loaned DPRK are operating ballistic missile platforms. Makes me wonder if part of the intention is to skill up some of the army units with combat launching exp, which is not the happiest thought, since NK has a continental US capable truck-launched ICBM since 2017.

Of course the plan doesn’t work if they all get killed by Ukrainian drone attacks, but NK has never been too precious about their rank and file anyway.

Wild, the French are giving their pilots MMO pets as part of the new DLC.

I keep seeing this article, and I keep thinking this is a band.

Haha thought the same thing when I read it. Some of those that work forces…

‘He apparently told brother Bobby, not exactly a monk himself, "I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day."1

That’s JFK talking to Bobby about his sexual needs—or maybe we should call them his sexual pathologies, since he apparently requires novel sex in order to prevent brain malfunction and pain.

Note the bit about how Bobby was “not exactly a monk himself”

So personally, I see RFK Jr’s rapacious sexuality as him proudly carrying on an old family tradition.

I’m still slowly working my way… think I’m in book 7 maybe? I sometimes find it hard with series where they change focuses and stories a lot, and malazan does that every book (the whole changing location every other book thing) and I also sometimes have trouble keeping track or who all the characters are, and who is dead, alive, or only sorta dead. But they are very high quality, even if I don’t always understand what is going on. Anyhow there’s so much of it I just dip in and out and will read other stuff for a while—definitely a marathon series haha

Richard k. Morgan’s foray into to fantasy “the steel remains” trilogy might meet that requirement. He’s the guy who wrote the altered carbon books, so it’s basically hard-boiled pulp fiction applied to swords and sorcery fantasy. Similarly Joe Abercrombie’s books operate similarly. Genre is… Grimdark I think.

Steven Erickson’s “Malazan book of the fallen” series also would meet the definition, but watch out—there’s a ton of them, and they can be a bit narratively challenging sometimes.