So strange how the feminist project of the past decade or more has been to re-infantilize women and revert progress back to the 1950s or before. Do all movements trend toward conservatism over time?
I really do believe that soon feminists will be calling for a male relative to accompany women everywhere.
Those are old and inefficient drives, but I don’t know how anyone lives in the UK with those sort of electricity prices. That is a preview of the future the degrowthers wish for us. And I want absolutely no part of that.
We should be aiming for absurd energy abundance, not austerity. In reality (as we’ve already seen in the UK) austerity does not work and cannot work. It is a philosophy of failure and ennui. It will not save the planet and in its extreme cases will lead billions into starvation.
Degrowth is another form of death wish, no different than the climate deniers. Both are clownish idiots.
There are more than a few, but they are all massive dumbasses who couldn’t find a taco in Taco Bell.
North Korean M1989 "Koksan" already on the frontline. It still amazes me how much the US, Europe and South Korea don't give a shit about North Korea fully entering the war in Europe. https://t.co/pMefI2kdIx pic.twitter.com/dkh3zCFbOQ
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 7, 2025
It amazes me too. That should have been the “Time to quit fucking around” moment and it just was not. NATO should’ve full engaged then and evicted North Korea and Russia from Ukraine.
And we did nothing. Nothing at all.
I really dislike the social pressure to join a political tribe.
“Are you a racist, anti-science troglodyte? Or are you an economically-illiterate, political correctness Karen? Those are your only choices. It’s one or the other. PICK ONE.”
How about neither? How about you go fuck yourselves?
— Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸 (@gaughen.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 6:17 PM
I’m the same. It’s already hard enough not being an utter dumbass. Joining a tribe is a certain way to toss yourself right into Tardville. No thank you.
This comment is exactly right.
I am old enough to remember when companies had large training departments, there was an actual training period, and most departments were adequately staffed. That started disappearing (along with pensions) during the 2001 recession and then all of that was completely eliminated in the name of “efficiency” during and after the Great Recession. People younger than 42 or so cannot remember how it used to be. But it was better.
Now, 10-20 job roles are collapsed into one or eliminated altogether. For instance, Microsoft doesn’t even have QA anymore. And it shows. The developers and to a larger extent the users are expected to handle this.
This same process happened across industries as MBAs took over, corporations concentrated on stock buybacks and enriching execs and shareholders short-term rather than any longer term sustainability. And we see how that played out.
Why do people think anyone at work is a friend? That’s almost never true. The CIO here definitely is not and absolutely 100% did know about the layoff in advance. I guarantee it.
That said, I’d be charging them like crazy for repairing this mess they left themselves in. A few years ago, a company I’d worked for a decade prior contacted me about fixing some complex scripts they had moved around and attempted to change and could not get to function any longer. I’d created those as something temporary a developer was supposed to consolidate into an actual fully-thought-out reporting application later on but never did (of course).
They’d brought in several consultants who could not duplicate what I’d done as it involved (among quite a few other things) complex manipulations of obscure Windows permissions in a very specific way to achieve what they wanted.
Anyway, they requested that I fix these scripts and add some related new features for free. I said no way and quoted $250 an hour, 10 hours minimum1, paid in advance. They wouldn’t agree to that so I told them good luck.
Fine. I heard it never got fixed.
The government is about to become a fatuous brodeo and we’re going to be at war with China and Russia soon.
Life is great!
NIMBYs have made all of us significantly poorer compared to what could have been. One economist estimated that GDP would be 30% higher without NIMBY evil. I think that is probably correct, though I suspect the real number could be as much as 50% larger if we’d crushed NIMBYs when we should have (during the 1970s). Preventing people from living where productive work and economic prosperity is located has all sorts of follow-on effects that are difficult to account for.
Areas with year-round good weather like San Diego and its immediate surroundings should probably have a population of 20+ million.
https://t.co/Uxnya1boot pic.twitter.com/3H2PvgFzZS
— Alex Godofsky (@AlexGodofsky) December 29, 2024
This reminds me of when we lived in Bellingham, Wa. There’s a place nearby called Chuckanut Ridge. That area is mostly populated by hoity-toity rich (for the area) folks. During that time, there was some more housing proposed to be built on the Ridge. This caused the NIMBYs who lived there to put up yard signs and to festoon their Volvos with bumper stickers that said “SAVE CHUCKANUT RIDGE.” They desperately wanted the Ridge preserved in its “natural” state, you see.
However, as I wanted to point out to these people but never did, the “natural” state is their not being there. They never would’ve understood, though. To all of them, they were the last valid resident that moved in so any changes they made (built their house, cleared their land, whatever) were the last justified alterations and anyone after that was some interloper there solely to harm them and their way of life.
It would’ve been pointless to bring this set of ideas to their attention as they would’ve been completely unable to comprehend them. But it made me laugh at the time. And still does.
The actual AI takeover in action.
We’re never gonna conquer the galaxy like this.
True, but there’s more to it than that. And the “more” paints progressives in an even worse light, unfortunately. I remember the tail end of the pay toilet battles during the early and mid-1980s. The progressives got them banned because “no one should have to pay to do a basic bodily function” and because their position was that there should be free and plentiful public restrooms1. But then they never bothered to build any political power to achieve this goal.
Like much of progressivism, the pay toilet battle highlighted a tendency which has metastasized to be even worse now — they take something away, even if imperfect, and replace it with nothing at all.
And that’s never a winning strategy, weirdo degrowther fantasies aside.
Passkey technology is elegant, but it’s most definitely not usable security.
From Ars, the same site that was pushing Passkeys really hard (as noted in the linked piece). The readers pushed back against those inane articles, to their credit. I even left a comment, which I hardly ever do anywhere as I just get banned from most places anyway.
Exactly what I predicted would happen did in fact occur because it’s inevitable: Passkeys became another tool for data thieving’ and platform lock-in. It’s wild that anyone (including Ars) thought anything else would or even could occur.
Passkeys are a useless turd.
The removal of the ability to truly have Firefox do what you want was one of the greatest and most senseless (and pointless) eradications of human effort and of useful tools in the history of tech. It also destroyed Firefox and directly led to its irrelevance.
When I recall the things I used to be able to do easily in Firefox that I no longer can achieve in any browser1, it makes me enraged. And all for no real security or other improvement. Yes, they had to deal with XUL — but instead of creating a better version of that, they took those capabilities away altogether, lied to us that it was for “security” and then laughed at their most devoted users as we said this would doom the browser.
And we were right.
The open road beckons. Safe driving is essential.
Amazing driving. She’s a badass. I love how calm she is; she’s definitely on my assassin team.
Maybe she should’ve braked more quickly but who knows what was going on behind her and there just wasn’t a lot of time. That hit looks almost intentional (on the part of the Suburban) and it also brakes pretty hard as it’s encroaching into her lane, making it even more difficult to avoid. But she:
1) Maintains control of her own vehicle in a very demanding driving situation.
2) Avoids with some just stupendous maneuvering1 a second hit on the vehicle that struck her.
3) Gets out of the danger area and stops safely.
Almost no one could do better. Next-level skills there.
She also has a cute shirt.