A man built his own fake border crossing in the woods in Russia — then collected huge amounts of money to "smuggle" migrant workers into what they thought was Finland. It was still Russia. https://t.co/6RRKNEuCs0
— Siobhán O'Grady (@siobhan_ogrady) December 5, 2019
OMG that is brilliant. Evil, but brilliant. American corporations should be lining up to hire this dude.
how to gauge my daily pretension levels:
Do I say that last night I saw…
A.) “a movie?”
B.) “a film?”
C.) (pronounced with a mid-Atlantic accent) “a picture?”— Torrey Peters (@torreypeters) December 5, 2019
Agog that you’d presume to allow such proletarian simplisms to pass your lips.
As for me, last evening, I beheld le cinéma.
maybe i’m reading too much in and I don’t understand math but does this mean task manager is just doing a point-in-time reading at each refresh? Less leading, if you know: how’s it getting that data?
— Chris 🌈🌟 (@tuba_man) December 3, 2019
There’s not much math directly involved, but yes this is what it means, mostly. There are many programs running on a modern PC. Note that in the next phase of this post, I am simplifying greatly, and not using proper industry terms to make this more comprehensible. That said, programs operate in “time slices” that they request from the CPU (remember, eliding a lot here!*) The CPU has a clock speed, say 2.5Ghz. That means each second, it can do 2.5 billion things.**
There is no way to represent the complexity of what the CPU might be doing here in the task manager, or anywhere else. It simply occurs too quickly for human comprehension. Even 1/1000 as fast as modern computers operate would be too rapid.
In the task manager, and anywhere else, all that you see is sampled and “smudged,” meaning that some important events (like CPU spiking) that might happen for a few milliseconds show up for longer than that in the task manager so they can actually be visible. There’s more going on than this, too, but it’s all a hack to make the opaque and incomprehensible transparent and understandable. The amazing part is that it works well enough to be usable given the disparity between human and computer speed.
*This is not how a computer actually works. There are at least three layers between what I am saying here.
**A very, very extreme simplification in at least six different ways.
Is It Time to Start Hoarding French Fries?
Hard to start when you never stopped!
I've seen lots of people claim that the U.S. had open borders before the 1920s (or before the Chinese Exclusion Act). It's just not true.
Read "Expelling the Poor" for a history of state-level immigration restriction in the 1800s.https://t.co/DZeGL83uxN
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) December 6, 2019
I thought this bit of “open borders” propaganda was probably wrong, and meant to research it, but never got around to it. Now I have my answer.
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
My mom got her 2020 insurance from work today.
Her deductible is $5,900. She has to pay the first 40% of all charges herself.
She's worked full-time all my life. Now, if something happens, she loses everything.
Go fuck yourself, @PeteButtigieg. We're passing Medicare For All.
— pete buttigieg is a republican (@proustmalone) December 4, 2019
To the people who prefer this to their taxes being slightly higher: what the fuck is wrong with ya’ll?
We have the worst possible system and so many people are eager to defend it.
A parable about the nature of truth, from my day job
(thread)
1/
— Jonathan Korman (@miniver) December 5, 2019
This is a great thread. I run into similar problems fairly regularly.
I am constantly surprised by the preposterous efforts most people will undertake to avoid thinking even for a single second. I know, people attempt cognitive parsimony but in almost every case I’ve witnessed the effort expended not to think far exceeds that to attempt to cogitate. But no, they never, ever do.
It’s like watching a child that hurts itself to “get back” at you. It’s both a bit funny and more than a bit sad.