hondacivictrucknuts

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Counterfactual wars are never as memorable as the real ones!

The first Gulf War was followed by no further invasions of neighboring countries during the dozen years that Saddam Hussein was in power afterwards, maybe it helped?

Serious question because I can not for the life of me think of a good example.

Has a world power ever prevented another nation going to war or brought about lasting peace in another nation by applying some form of political or military intervention?

#saddam hussein

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Do you consider, like, “BBC bull” to be a different gender? Or is that just more gender?

And you know what, it should be considered one, as a distinct social role associated with a particular constellation of secondary sex characteristics and normative behaviors.

I am of course asking for a friend.

i honestly cant believe the normal amount of wanting to be another gender is zero. like arent you sick of yours yet lol

#gender

[hondacivictrucknuts]

The exception is cataract surgery, which has been performed for over a thousand years.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

James Mackintosh, WSJ:

Its shares promptly plunged, and took 15 years sustainably to pass the price at which it entered the index.

The split infinitive would have worked better here.

#wsj #writing

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Call me a hypocrite, but:

I support teen moms and other young parents, and I think more people should have kids earlier.

I oppose applying the MILF label to chicks in their twenties.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

People like to throw around the word “apartheid” when protesting Israel. As South Africa becomes a worse and worse shithole, I wonder how long that will have effect.

#israel #south africa

[hondacivictrucknuts]

What advice do you have for someone with an English degree looking to support a family and buy a house soon?

Same advice as for anyone with a degree that’s not a professional skill (i.e. engineering, medicine, accounting, etc):

Get a job. The lower the proportion of entry-level workers at your workplace the better, since this means more access to higher-ranking and more experienced people. But the most important thing is to be working.

Pay attention to the people who are good at their jobs. See what you can emulate of their processes. Ask them for help.

Never ever lower yourself to the standard set by your peers. Be your best all the time, every day, wherever you are. This is how you advance.

This works because most of the difference between the most productive and valuable workers and the merely average comes down to a handful of skills that can be learned. I could give you my list of what they are, but you’re better off figuring it out for yourself. Some will be easier for you than others, and you don’t necessarily need all of them.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Mid-20th-century architecture and furniture is hideous. Good for them.

(via Chris Pratt draws ire for razing historic 1950 LA home for sprawling mansion | Chris Pratt | The Guardian)

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.

Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo – who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping – had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine.

It was most recently home to the late Hilda Rolfe, the widow of Sam Rolfe, co-creator of the series The Man from Uncle. Video of the property from December 2022 shows a light-filled home that appears to have been well-preserved, with large windows, wood floors and mid-century furniture.

The single-story home and its grounds have since been cleared and in its place will be a massive home in the modern farmhouse style that has come to dominate US suburbs.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

I mean if this happens, wouldn’t it demonstrate that racial/ethnic differences are not so deep as dead confederates and contemporary leftists allege, while queerness is less readily integrated into western civilization than most of us have been assuming? That seems like an update most people could work with.

Obviously it sucks for the queers, but really wanting something is not a sufficient reason to destroy civilization to get it.

Man, if we switch from a left-leaning coalition based on racial and ethnic identitarian grievance politics to a multi-racial right-leaning coalition held together by hating on "the queers," it's gonna be so annoying.

It seems unlikely, but possible.

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Now here’s some real AI risk:

The split infinitive is only about the fourth worst thing about this headline.

#wsj

[hondacivictrucknuts]

At the end of his life, Daniel Dennett focused on the risk to civilization posed by AI and the rise of artificial people. In honor of his recent passing, consider the inoculating effect of celebrity deepfake images like the one here. The urges people feel to produce and distribute such images appear to be strong enough that they should become a widely known phenomenon in the near future, whatever Tree Paine tries to do about it. And once everybody knows about these, won’t we all be more on guard for the dangerous sort of counterfeit people Dennett worried about?

#taylor swift #daniel dennett

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Paint a corn field and change your URL to fajitasupplychainpainter.

For an onion painter you sure do paint alot of not oinions

(Love ur art its very pretty)

haha yeah, i should change my url to cowpainter or smth

[hondacivictrucknuts]

The New York Times has to promote blank-slatism because so much of their business model now is selling “puzzles” that are just IQ tests.

#nyt

[hondacivictrucknuts]

WSJ:

U.S. employment figures contain a mystery that has left many economists scratching their heads: How is the country generating so many jobs even while the unemployment rate has drifted up?

The emerging consensus: a surge in immigration. It not only explains inconsistencies in the jobs data but suggests the economy can keep adding plenty of jobs without overheating. That in turn would let the Federal Reserve still consider interest-rate cuts.

Maybe the real inflation reduction act was letting in millions more workers to keep wages down.

#economics #labor #immigration

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Uptick in work of uncertain duration: cheaper to pay overtime to current staff than to hire new people (with associated costs) and then lay them off in the near future (with additional costs).

Fixed productive capital: e.g. there's a machine that requires two workers and must run 50 hours/week to meet customer demand. Paying two guys overtime may be the cheapest way to get the machine to run 50 hours/week, and it's likely the simplest.

Pseudo efficiency wages with flexibility: lots of employees like working overtime and making the extra money. "Letting" them work OT on a regular basis gives many of the benefits of efficiency wages, with the flexibility to reduce it if you need to cut costs.

What are the economic conditions that make it rational for companies to hire small numbers of workers for long hours, rather than a larger number of workers for fewer shifts? obviously one very large part of this in real circumstances is "when you find ways to not pay workers for overtime" but I want to set this aside for now -- are there situations where its rational to overwork your workers even when they're well-compensated, in an ideal/"fair" market? It seems like the obvious answer is things where on-boarding and training has a very high cost, so you want to get as much labor as possible with as little training time as possible. The problem I see with this though is that overworking causes high attrition rates, so it's not clear to me that this actually minimizes training time. Maybe situations where attrition is expensive, but you have high attrition rates anyway? Industries where coordination is expensive, and you want to minimize the number of workers you have to coordinate?

#economics #labor

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Does the time estimate factor in everyone else who answered yes?

Worth it to drive 6-8 hours for the total solar eclipse?

[hondacivictrucknuts]

Queueing this for Easter and then dying, truly this man was committed to the bit.

I never got around to writing down the appreciation for him that I started mulling last summer/fall, so here goes:

@kontextmaschine taught us that genius generalizes. A smart guy whose education was in Japanese and American studies and such could apply himself to trees, plants, and landscaping; and within a few years be an expert in these things. This is not the impression that nerds like me get from country music! But it’s true, and it’s empowering.

I probably wouldn’t have built this stone patio last year without his inspiration.

Thanks for all the posts.

you know what, fuck you *unkills your character*

#rip kontextmaschine