Notices by Urban Hermit (urban_hermit@mstdn.social), page 3

@noelreports huge contrast.

Ukraine tries to strike an oil refinery one day, an airfield the next, at night, when those places are least staffed. They try to strike the machinery of war, but not the people.

Putin's Russia strikes apartment buildings, at night, when people are most likely trying to rest. Because he is waging a war against individual people. Every baby killed is a victory to a monster who wants to wear people down, so the survivors cower.

May Putin die burning alive.

Great use of simpler, more focused, AI. Automated variation, testing, and data logging to create a new product solution.

https://scitechdaily.com/crushing-it-autonomous-ai-robot-creates-a-shock-absorbing-shape-no-human-ever-could/

@madkiwi @BenBen @GossiTheDog things are exactly as bad as they sound at first glance. They are not subtle. They are not well thought out. What you hear is not crafted messaging to describe a complicated program.

If it sounds like the head of a criminal enterprise made up a new grift, and henchmen are making up details on the fly so they don't get targeted - that is what it is.

@ArrowbearMoore @GottaLaff most of what Elon owns is a high risk speculation bubble entirely fed by how often he makes headlines. Everything is way over earnings. People are waiting for other billionaires to try to buy him out, to want what he has, so little investors can cash out. But it is a bubble that has grown too big to buy.

You know it is a personality bubble because if Elon died tomorrow the stock would crash AND Tesla would be more likely to make profitable business decisions.

The 2nd Trump administration is going to be as traumatic and divisive to Americans as the Vietnam War.

Its going to be a thing that a lot of history is written about.

Remember everytime you quit a job because the boss was incompetent, made the chaos worse and blamed other people, made you do things that made you look incompetent, and asked clearly inappropriate questions? It is going to be like that, except it is the government, all the time, everywhere, all at once.

For at least 4 years.

A quote from an article in Wired:

Musk has stated that the Cybertruck’s silhouette was designed to be aggressive. “It is an armored personnel carrier from the future,” wrote Musk in October 2019, and then again in November 2023, and twice this year.

(Commentary) So, ah, why is a future armored personnel carrier a thing you think would be a growth market for rich civilians in America, Mr. Musk?

#IncomeInequality #Consequences

https://www.wired.com/story/the-uk-now-has-its-own-illegal-rubberized-cybertruck-on-the-road/#intcid=_wired-article-bottom-recirc_6ca6eae8-b25f-4daa-a5dd-0f6a881244cc_roberta-similarity1

@vfrmedia @aei 7-11 in the US is doing it. When I say "No" they press a button and I still get the "discounted" regular price instead of the higher price. On a $7 purchase the difference is usually $1 or more. Occasionally I have found a 7-11 that still charges me the higher price for not putting in my phone number and being part of their "loyalty program" and I NEVER go back there.

These fucking loyalty card/loyalty programs caught on in the US in the late 90s. WinCo has no such thing!

@witix@bark.lgbt @njion @Ghostie7649 and in my experience minimum wage requires people to have to live together in order to save anything for the big purchases. Living with your parents, roommates, or a spouse or significant other - or else you can't afford a car, or college, or save money for a house, or kids, or retirement. Forced economic cohabitation.

Peace and freedom for all?

To the right wing peace is not being attacked, while freedom is the power to attack others at will.

@leon @ewen H. Beam Piper, 1950s and 60s SciFi author, wrote 1 book and a series of short stories in his "Paratime" series all with this exact plot. The first civilization to discover alternate probability time travel monopolizes the technology and colonizes all the time lines where humans never developed or went extinct, and manipulate more primitive cultures to exploit specific resources. Endless worlds sliced finely like pages in a book, with similar groupings around major global events.

@mekkaokereke
Remember the Epicureans (the philosophers during the fall of Rome):

Good food, with pleasant company.

Make love with great friends.

Enjoy your garden. Wall off and tend your source of happiness and independence (hobbies, especially low cost sustainable ones).

Travel if you can afford it. Be open to new opportunities or relationships, even ones that might involve relocating.

Mt. Saint Helens at sunset, from Rocky Butte, Portland Oregon.

November 7th, 2024, 4:59pm

@tayfonay I think he might be insufferable on many counts, but this particular thing might be due to living in an insufferable culture where there waa a vast difference between how you treat the people who paid you, vs the people who were paid by you.

We get better, but even now when I see that cashiers at the grocery store are forced to stand all day just to not look lazy, when their real job is to help me, not make me feel superior, I am shamed by the system that thinks this is a service.

@broadwaybabyto no, but this was on a Friday and I was sick by Monday & off work for two weeks before coming back. He had to do my job (which was quite awful) for the 2 weeks I was gone.

Then I came back with a chronic cough, and the other two guys in the office complained to HR and I had to do my office work from an empty cubical farm upstairs, while all the engineers were working from home. So he was still stuck doing some of my sorting work.

I saw the look in his eyes, I think he suspected.

@broadwaybabyto the thing is that he wasn't a guy who was refusing to mask, he was a guy who showed up to work sick and got sicker during the work day. He got a supply of masks from some charity and was trying a new one out for the first time. I believe he honestly believed that his deep, concerning cough was from breathing in the little fibers from the mask. That is what he said was causing it.

That work place had 250 employees and worked 100% through the pandemic.

@broadwaybabyto In our office, across from the main employee restroom on our side of the building, we heard people who came to work and were coughing up a lung (so to speak) multiple times a day. That's the reality for most workers, go to work sick or go homeless. It is amazing that I - constantly masked and vaccinated as early as possible, got Covid only 3 times. It just happened to be that the third time nearly killed me. I quit after 3 weeks still coughing and went home to get better or die.

@broadwaybabyto by the way, since I didn't mention it before in this thread, I went home and continued to cough for 4 months. Sometime during that I realized that my body wasn't maintaining body temperature and I had to use the heat in my apartment to make sure that I could get up and digest food. Very early, within the first two weeks, I had a very painful, very cold, empty place in my lungs directly over my heart that ached constantly for 9 months.

@broadwaybabyto
And even after two years my body was not responding adequately to temperature changes. I was too cold in winter and I wasn't sweating enough in summer. That hadn't gotten better until 1 1/2 months ago when I started taking magnesium for other reasons.

I was really lucky that I had been saving a lot of money up for years for a big purchase, but even then had to withdraw all my retirement when I found getting a new job more difficult than I expected.

No matter how crazy and hateful Trump gets, remember that he is so popular with the hard core Republican base & culture war pastors that the GOP handed everything to him. The really rich polluters, monopolists, and 'free speech" crime enablers would tolerate any number of conspiracy loons if it makes their party popular enough to demand even more tax cuts and less regulation.

Half the crazy Trump is rambling is their propaganda talking points. They're making him sub for Rush, Bannon, & Jones.

Rush Limbaugh is dead. Steve Bannon is in jail. Alex Jones is out of control of his network and drowning in debt. ALL RIGHTFULLY SO!!

Donald Trump, consumer of so much crazy, is the only popular mouth piece for GOP propaganda left.