Nice! I should have looked first. Screw it, I’ll keep my version up too.

This may be from the meme graveyard, but it has never been more appropriate:

Even we humans can withstand 3000°C for a short time.

If we want to be entirely pedantic, everything can withstand any destructive condition for at least one plank time.

Of course Japan decided to use robots. But why not use a big dog instead? Maybe it’s a humanitarian concern since they’d be facing off with bears…

:: looks at image from article ::

Oh. It’s a fucking robot yokai-cyber-demon-dog: pure nightmare fuel. They’re clearly on to something here.

Capitalism wants us isolated, sad, and reliant on their products/services. The antidote is strong community.

Thank you. This is what I’ve been telling people. I’m currently trying to build community as we speak - so far, it’s great. But a lot of people are set in a more isolated mindset, so it’s tough to “jailbreak” people out of this.

Obligatory AVGN

Same. I think there’s something of a skill cliff here.

Gwyn in Dark Souls.

The problem was my biggest success. I managed to score a zweihander, pretty early on in the game. I upgraded the hell out of it and was able to clear most bosses with some grinding and a lot of determination. I did this with a failing PS3 controller that generated spurious inputs, resulting in randomly switching to my alt config (unarmed) if I squeezed the controller too hard. I even learned a new level of personal zen and patience after realizing that getting angry would make me perform worse. I got gud.

Then I arrive at the end boss and get absolutely wrecked.

Why? I never had to parry. Not. A. Single. Time. Strike, juke, medium-roll, retreat, strike again. Don’t be a target, and keep moving. Meanwhile, every guide to beat Gwyn says you have to parry his attacks. I basically had little choice but to retrain how to play my character modifying an entire game’s worth of muscle-memory in the process.

My save file has been in this condition for years at this point.

Nutrition is expensive, and controlling waste is crucial. So yes, if you can get a price break on anything essential, consider freezing and pickling (veggies) what would otherwise spoil. In general, try to learn about how different vegetables and meats will keep.

Rice, beans, and potatoes are great staples that last a while and are good for you.

Lower-end “potted meat product” and similar canned meats may be less expensive per ounce than full cuts. That said, it’s usually full of sodium and is usually only good on sandwiches and things like that.

Some grocery stores sell cooked rotisserie chicken as a loss-leader (discount). That said, cost-compare against whole birds in the freezer section just in case. Besides, you can’t beat home-made roast chicken, and it’s fairly easy to do.

I was broke-as-a-joke back in the 2000’s. So the following advice may have aged like the milk I bought back then:

• Obviously, go down-market on your grocery store chain. Cost-compare if your time/energy budget allows it.
• Learn how to cook what’s cheap. What’s not imported and in season is usually (not always) in this category.
• Avoid box-mixes (e.g. hamburger helper). Buy raw ingredients and consider seasoning packets or bulk seasoning to make the same dishes.
• Bologna, souise loaf, and pickle loaf (if they even still make that) can be cheaper than non-processed cuts
• Bananas and corn are subsidized as fuck. There are likely others. As a result, they’re artificially cheap.
• Regularly check the store circular (those newspaper things nobody reads) and jump on limited store specials and BOGOs.
• Tofu can be pretty cheap IF you buy it at an asian grocery store; there may even be bulk options. Making these can be a chore, but a huge bargain if you buy soybeans in bulk. It also freezes okay too, but it does change the texture (some recipes use this).

To add to this: escalating to violence can indeed end with armed conflict. But that concept has a radically different meaning here than anywhere else.

The USA is also the home of the biggest, most well-armed, most battle-trained, most nuclear-asymmetric-warfare equipped military, with large numbers of retired veterans all over the place. Then there’s all the federal agencies that also have guns, armored cars, bodyarmor, riot gear, prisons, etc. And lastly, the police that have been buying/gifted military surplus equipment since about 9/11. Oh, and a bunch of those retired vets are also cops and federal agents. Meanwhile, normal people have hunting rifles and home defense weapons, if they have any at all. Plus, our houses are increasingly made of plastic, wood, glass, and paper; not exactly great cover if things get real ugly.

This isn’t Japan, where the cops would have to figure out how/where to get guns, and the military is mostly a civil defense force. This scenario is much more like if Russia’s military turned on its own people to crush mass dissent, instead of picking on their neighbors. Escalation brought to the scale of civil war that, say, Myanmar recently faced could easily be a one-sided bloodbath.

Assuming that happens, I think we can look to Detroit, starting 50 years ago, for a good example of how awful we are at scaling down and retiring infrastructure at anything approaching this scale. Especially when the state doesn’t care to require companies to clean up their mess.

You say that, but that is (or at least was) a real problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_(computer_architecture)

(X) Doubt

As a Sr. Engineer, I completely get that my situation may be wildly different from what’s cited in the article.

Right now, I’m using AI “in the loop” rather than “as the loop”. That’s a big difference. And I’m getting my ass kicked routinely on review for dumb-ass things that I’m letting slide from AI generated output. And rightly so. Plus, models routinely lead me down sub-optimal blind alleys while dreaming up really stupid ways to fix problems. The level of (re)prompting I have to provide to suggest to get decent quality results converges on a post-grad that has encyclopedic knowledge of software engineering as it exists online, but with zero real-world experience. It’s both impressive and dangerous as a replacement for software engineering.

In the mode I describe above, I’m not losing the ability to do anything. I can see how one could surrender some coding chops or familiarity with a whole language or stack, in favor of automation. But all you have to do is not do that.

I will say that as a rapid-prototyping technology, It’s nothing short of miraculous. I’ve watched junior engineers knock together medium-weight applications, complete with browser UI/UX and decent workflow, in less than a week. This is great for showing value or putting something semi-functional in front of management and/or customers. But pivoting those prototypes into something maintainable is an utter nightmare. Depending on how beholden to AI and forever prompt-looping with “skills” and MCPs you want to be, I suppose it’s possible to just keep mashing the AI button. But at some point, you’re going to need to get inside there to fix security problems or bugs that elude this workflow. What then?

I think it’s possible (theoretical at least) that greed can be harnessed in specific ways to do good and even empathetic works; it’s a potent motivator after all. IMO, there’s likely a balance. But the overarching market and financial governance can’t ever be on the side of greed for that to work. Otherwise, the people in power pull all the stops and the experiment is rendered moot.

Hah. You assume that by annexing territory everyone living there gets naturalized. These ghouls would sooner repeat what’s happening in Palestine.

That assertion becomes less and less hyperbolic with time. It’s truly alarming.

I’m left wondering that, if a person lacks any/all creativity whatsoever, is this how they fabricate lies? It might just explain how pathological this behavior is.

This always happens.

A company that acts without empathy for their customers will invariably act the same towards their employees. This is because the behavior is usually driven by personalities in leadership that (dis)function this way rather universally. Add the fact that empathy limits one’s ability to make money (in this economy), and that psychological modeling is a thing in the workplace, and it’s easy to see how we keep getting into trouble like this.

There really isn’t an “at the right hand of the devil” scenario. Everyone is in his path, especially if you’re close.

Do they put a seam or darts in to intentionally pull it into the crack?

Yes. That and the garment might be undersized, while taking advantage of the high lycra/spandex content of the material.

It also makes sense if you subtract empathy from the picture. Sprinkle on a little “zero-sum game” with respect to tax money and it tracks even better.

While I agree wholeheartedly, it has one fundamental problem: dirt. If there’s one thing that golf courses aren’t, it’s dirty. The sport has a lot of class and image tied up in it, and I highly doubt that you’ll get many of those folks out into the clay like that. You’d be creating a whole new extreme form of golf, instead.