I logged in just to answer this:

Stellarium

When it comes to stargazing and learning more about the night sky, there is hands-down no better program. It’s available on PC (windows/Mac/Linux) as well as mobile platforms. I used it for months for free before I paid for the premium sub, and the premium sub actually feels additive rather than just gatekeeping essential features. Plus, it’s pretty cheap and you can choose to just buy a lifetime pass for $20 and skip the sub. It’s the only app I’ve ever been happy to subscribe to.

America in one picture

No, nothing ever happens, actually. Nobody ever does anything interesting or worth talking about. Hosting exchange kids has, predictably, been one of the most boring experiences of my life, along with everything else.

Nah, he found a smooth reflective mask and a huge red robe, then we took a toy sickle and rubber mallet and spray painted them with gold paint.

I hosted a Russian exchange student who really liked joking about that stuff. He went as the ghost of communism for Halloween

I don’t know that I’d agree that the EU and the articles of confederation are comparable. There were a few big differences, including states printing their own currency without a common exchange medium (as opposed to the Euro), and that the mechanism for funding the federal government was (IIRC) entirely voluntary. States could just choose to not send money without consequences, and most or all made the obvious choice of not funding the federal government. The articles of confederation also had a few things about it that were more progressive than the constitution; for example, if I’m remembering right, it offered automatic citizenship to all native Americans, which pissed a lot of the farmer-settlers right off.

This is how nations destabilize. States perpetuate themselves through maintaining the exclusive monopoly on violence and using that monopoly to secure certain guarantees for or against its people. The Roman empire saw a similar decline of administrative willpower and rises in both vigilantism and shitty little civil wars between the wealthy elite who really ran the show (spoiler alert). I’m convinced that Balkanization of the US is, at this point, inevitable. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good or bad thing in its own right. On one hand, it might be better for both the states and the world if we went to more of an EU type structure. On the other hand, a nuclear armed independent Texas.

Not to mention everyone buried under rubble.

Good point. I think a bigger problem than the customer facing AIs is going to be the internal ones that make shit up. Someone on here claimed to be working somewhere where they gutted their HR department and replaced them almost completely with an LLM that was fed their documents. They claimed the AI had already told them several blatantly illegal things. Any company that does that is just begging to get sued to death, and I’m sure the investors will be reeeeeaaaaal happy with the, what, 1% they saved by killing HR? I mean, HR aren’t the good guys here, but just imagine a company being brain dead enough to say “hey, let’s get rid of the people that keep us from getting sued to death and replace it with a chatbot lmao”.

It’s got to be more than that. This is a little like saying that there are at least two stars in the sky.

If I was a Cisco investor, I’d be looking to move my money elsewhere. All these companies laying people off, shuttering whole ass teams, and replacing them with non-proprietary and, frankly, unproven LLMs are going to blow their own legs off here pretty soon. I have a feeling that a pretty dramatic change is AI pricing models is coming soon, since all of these companies are providing access to their models for a fraction of the cost to run them, and the VCs are going to want their money back. Is chatGPT good enough at, what is it, 0.004 cents a token? Maybe, I guess, if the ghost of quality control doesn’t haunt you at night. Is chatGPT still good enough at 0.1 cents a token or more, or with surge pricing models? I sincerely doubt it. If openAI implements surge pricing, stay on the lookout for articles about some company or user getting a surprise bill for a million dollars, AWS-style. Given the current quality of LLMs, I don’t think that the cost shakes out for what you get.

Israel hasn’t even bothered showing up to these ceasefire talks, while HAMAS offered to permanently disband. Why bother negotiating against yourself when the other party doesn’t even show up?

The narrative is already being set that he agreed to the ABC debate. So, regardless of conditions, what will be remembered is that he said he would be there, and then wasn’t. I don’t think there’s a way he could safely back out of ABC at this point, regardless of what Kamala does.

I swear bro, please, I just need one more negotiation where Israel doesn’t even bother showing up. Please, bro, c’mon, bro, just one more negotiation and I swear it’ll work. We can totally get Israel to stop using the weapons we’re giving them if we just wait for the next negotiation, I promise Nettanyahu won’t pull the football back this time, bro, I promise, he promised me and I trust him. He was super cool and promised not to clown on me any more and said he was super sorry. Don’t you get it, bro? He’s changed, we can do this, just give peace one more chance, just

It’s my understanding that grocers themselves tend to operate is miserably thin margins, especially when they don’t have the kind of leverage of large, national chains. I know someone whose family operated a community grocery and they were actually relieved when the building caught fire. They didn’t depend on the income, it was just something they took over to serve the community, and it ended up feeling like an anchor around their neck. Seems likely that this is largely an issue that lies with the food producers.

Yeah, I saw that. So many news pieces where cities are all “we’re showing our homeless people how much we love and support them by tearing down their shelter, throwing away everything, and telling them to get fucking lost. Because it’s really all about neighborly love and supporting one another at the end of the day, you know.”

What the fuck, I did not see that one coming. I’m in the central valley, can a SoCal person catch me up here? Is LA actually getting shit done on homelessness?

Anyone who works in healthcare can tell you this. In fact, private equity almost always makes things worse. In principal, the idea of buying up struggling businesses and getting them on their feet to sell them back for a profit is a pretty cool, normal idea. One could imagine how it’s a sort of second chance for mismanaged businesses or businesses that ran into a streak of bad luck. In practice, it’s just a subscription to vulture capital.

I can’t speak for him, but I think everyone does some handwaving for their team. Unfortunately, the Ruso-Ukrainian war is practically a meme of Slavic conflict with all the shitty stuff happening, and it’s got everyone’s arms about broken with hand waving.

Great point, thank you!