VaranDragon wrote on Nov 13, 2020, 14:25:

Saboth wrote on Nov 13, 2020, 13:16:
Some people might not remember history. Throughout history, enemy agents and spies would attempt to influence the population of a nation through misinformation and propaganda. This might be by dropping pamphlets over a city, getting spies put into prominent positions, starting cells of agents to turn the population against their own government and country. These days, all you need is internet access, FB, Twitter, Youtube. There is a reason countries fought enemy propaganda and seditionists. It's because they can do severe damage to a country's stability. Right now, the USA has been weakened severely by this, and we've lost our role as a world leader. Our citizens are suffering, our elections are undermined, and there is confusion and panic. That's why this isn't purely a "free speech" issue. It's a national security issue (although few would admit that).

Throughout history this has always been overexaggarated, the first half of the 20th century is proof of this. Especially in the US and the communist red scare witch-hunts in the 50s which were in itself a bigger threat to freedoms, free speech and democracy than communism ever was. The communist countries had their own versions of this, to keep the populace in fear of western decadency, sociopathy and imperialism.

It's all propaganda, and if you believe any of it you are just buying into the propaganda the same way people buy into most of the bullshit that keeps floating up on the internet online.

Yes, but at the same time, literally every single Democrat is a socialist. Passing laws that help corporations slightly less than the GOP, and helping the rich get richer at a slightly lesser rate. Socialism!

WaltC wrote on Nov 13, 2020, 12:02:
One of these days, Twitter and Facebook will become educated on the 1st Amendment and what that means in America, and come to understand that the last thing Americans want or need is censorship. Given a healthy mix of facts and opinion, most Americans are fully capable of making up their own minds. I predict first-amendment free speech will out last the censors at Twitter and Facebook, easily. Remarkable to see the need for those lessons in 2020!

One of these days, WaltC will actually listen when someone tries to educate him on the 1st Amendment and what it means in America (and the rest of the world, frankly, since it's a weird thing to say "what an American law means in America!")

I kind of struggle with it. They say the guy wasn't in a creative role. And the character looks like generic Twitch gamer girl. She's into cats and doodling! She has stupid glasses!

I think there needs to be a hard connection between the person that designed this and her, but even if, what damages should she get?

Krodge wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 18:33:
The a tiktok issue was because the ccp was repeatedly caught using it to harvest peoples private data.

Nope. There is literally no evidence that Bytedance ever passed private data to China.

Again, you made the claim, source it.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 20:47:
Watching liberals heads asplode makes me giggle.

The evidence of voter fraud is ridiculous. we could do without tik tok and liberals

Ok. Provide some evidence that it's widespread or larger than typical.
You made the claim. Back it up.

Right now, it doesn't appear to be liberal heads "asploding."

NamecaF wrote on Nov 12, 2020, 01:40:
Bloody hell. Talk about overreacting, and removing content from games like those Watch Dogs Legion Pod Casts is fucking ridiculous. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GAME OR ITS CONTENT!

No content was removed from watch dogs. The same content is there with a different actor.

If it has nothing to do with the game, why do you care so much that you're shouting?

jdreyer wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 20:28:

RedEye9 wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 17:58:

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 09:11:
The Q Anon stuff is amazing to me. I mean I figured out before the 6th grade that all the things I was being told in church and Sunday School didn't seem to add up. And yet adults fall for the Q Anon stuff. It causes me great concern when considering the future of humanity.

Qaren is a QAnon believing Karen
"She fell into QAnon and went viral for destroying a Target mask display."
This barbie dolls head pops off with nary a tug.
paywall free http://archive.today/Kzw6R
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/11/masks-qanon-target-melissa-rein-lively/

Did you read the whole story? The woman clearly suffered a psychotic break. Had she been reading anti-vaxxer stuff instead of QAnon, she would have broken at the site of Target's "Free flu vaccine" signs instead of the mask display. The sad thing is most of the QAnon believers aren't psychotic.

I love this article.

First, she runs a PR firm. This is obvious PR for her.

Second, the disclaimer that they didn't realize how racist her outburst was. She withheld that. You can find it on social media. It's bad. She repeatedly doubles down.

Third, were she not a pretty upper class white blond woman she'd never be offered a redemption story

And lastly, she's actually frightening looking, not pretty, because she comes across as so plastic.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 18:25:

Cutter wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 16:28:
No, you think the sky is falling when it isn't. Just like the flu most people who get it aren't in any real danger or have no long term health problems. Jesus Christ, morbidly obese 72 year old Donald Trump and his cabinet all got it an they're fine. Get a grip.

Dude, Trump and his staff had immediate intervention with the best and most expensive healthcare in the world. He was given experimental treatments not available to anyone else.

C'mon. I'm sure any one of us would have a helicopter pick us up and take us directly to extremely expensive unapproved experimental treatments

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 14:07:

RedEye9 wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 13:13:
The only computer guy stereotype I know of was the IBM suit. First I heard of shorts.

Well, the modern stereotype... not the 70s/80s stereotype...

Yeah, I don't mean professional, I just mean the guy into computers.
Though professional, too. Go to Amazon's campus on the coldest day in Seattle and you'll see a lot of shorts.

Doing some Googling, it appears it's also a metalhead stereotype. I think it's just a certain type of guy that overlaps a few genres, but usually, he'll be able to spend a lot of time telling you his opinion on PC vs console.

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 11, 2020, 09:18:
I used to do that... wore shorts pretty much until it was cold enough that I had to start wearing winter coats and switching back to shorts as soon as the temperatures hit 50 again. Over the years though I've switched to shorts at home, jeans everywhere else. Not entirely sure when or why that happened, at least partially it is because I am more susceptible to cold than I was when I was younger. Getting old sucks.

This is a total computer guy stereotype, though, right? You can go to a college campus and pick out the computer science majors by looking for the group of guys where at least one has on shorts in 32 degree weather.

In other news, I just finally bought a Herman Miller Aeron.
The chair I sit in is monstrously comfortable, but it's also 22 years old. It's been in 7 different states with me, 12 or so different apartments. The padding on the armrests is gone, with something sharp coming through in recent months, and it's just not great for 40ish hours a week (I stand some of the time.)

I'd planned to do one of the refurb places, but they are apparently all quite sketchy, and all out of stock (despite telling you they aren't.) After a process, I decided it's worth it for something brand new and under full warranty. My butt will be in it hundreds of hours between now and when I'm back in the office, Q2 the earliest. I'd bet the chair that I work from home a minimum of 2 days a week for the rest of my career, anyway. This'll be a good buy.

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 10, 2020, 15:19:
I've been expecting the corporate culture (and others) to chuck the idea of ties for quite some time now. But for whatever reason it appears to be very resilient. Definitely a culture thing I simply do not understand...

Disagreed.
At this point, local corporations do sometimes stick with the tie, but national and global have largely ditched them. Law firms still cling, but even investment banks have at least partially moved away from ties - seems to be ties only when you're in front of a client.

I'd be shocked if more than 10 Fortune 500 companies have ties in their dress code. For me, personally, I'm now jeans-only. I won't work anywhere I can't wear jeans. I may shift due to seniority at a company, but that at least is my choice.

I played a LOT of the Quarantine demo, and considered it a favorite game, but did not buy it. Never played the full version, oh, well.
Another game where technical limitations created an emptiness, and that emptiness created an atmosphere.

RedEye9 wrote on Nov 10, 2020, 14:20:

Beamer wrote on Nov 10, 2020, 11:52:
Most of my jeans are the heavy Japanese selvedge RedEye mentions. Nearly all need to be soaked, because they're unsanforized, so they shrink considerably.

What they too frequently don't tell you is that yeah, the waist shrinks an inch, but it also stretches back out. Well, if you don't wash them after every single wear, but if you do, there's no point to buying raw denim.
The shrinking is more for getting the length right, since they don't get enough strain there to stretch back out.

Wearing them wet would indeed be a nightmare. What you did is right - soak them in a warm bathtub, let'm drip dry overnight, then throw them on.

I was thinking of you when I made that post because we had previously discussed denim. https://www.weargustin.com/store/jeans-394-the-21

Heh, I probably should have realized. I just got excited. Denim!

My denim days have diminished, though. I mean, for one, quarantine. I'm rarely wearing anything more than shorts (Bonobos french terry shorts! For some ridiculous reason they cost $98, but when they're on sale they're $30, and at a sample sale they're $25, which makes them reasonable. $98 for sweat shorts...)
For another, like others mentioned, I go through the crotch of jeans like immediately. Any jeans. Cheap or expensive, thick or thin, I'll put a hole in the crotch within 6 months.
And, lastly, quarantine has put a LOT of weight on me. Jeans loose on me in January now barely button. Who knows when and where I'll end up. I won't be back in an office until April at the earliest.

Most of my jeans are the heavy Japanese selvedge RedEye mentions. Nearly all need to be soaked, because they're unsanforized, so they shrink considerably.

What they too frequently don't tell you is that yeah, the waist shrinks an inch, but it also stretches back out. Well, if you don't wash them after every single wear, but if you do, there's no point to buying raw denim.
The shrinking is more for getting the length right, since they don't get enough strain there to stretch back out.

Wearing them wet would indeed be a nightmare. What you did is right - soak them in a warm bathtub, let'm drip dry overnight, then throw them on.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 9, 2020, 02:21:

Ozmodan wrote on Nov 8, 2020, 17:00:

TheBigVlad wrote on Nov 8, 2020, 10:46:

Beamer wrote on Nov 8, 2020, 10:00:
He didn't do much with jobs. The trend line was the same as Obama.

That's something that people just don't seem to get. They see Trump as some kind of big job creator, when in reality he did nothing to improve job growth over Obama. Nothing at all. A third Obama term would have been better for jobs, or at least the same as under Trump. Certainly not any worse.

Sure like to know where you got the 300k more deaths, because the actual statistics do not support your contention, right now we are up 87k deaths for the same period last year. Hard to say what a third Obama term would have been job wise, but he most certainly did improve job growth a lot. I personally despise the man, but I just won't make up fake numbers like you do to support your made up story.

Here you go. From three weeks ago.

The report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 299,028 more people died between Jan. 26 and Oct. 3 than the average numbers from past years would have indicated.
CDC said that about 216,000 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus had been reported by the middle of this month. "This might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality," it said.

"There are many factors that could contribute to an increase in deaths indirectly due to the pandemic, with disruptions to health care being one factor," study author Lauren Rossen, from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told Reuters.

The count could miss deaths indirectly related to the pandemic, caused by disruptions in healthcare access or utilization, and from conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and respiratory diseases, the report said. But it also could reflect rises in non-COVID-19 related deaths.

I get sad when people make uncited claims about facts then never return when actual facts are cited and contradict what they said.

In part because it means they'll return in another topic, make the same uncited claim to the same results, never to acknowledge it, and repeat it again the next month.

Brad L wrote on Nov 9, 2020, 14:35:
There are no exceptions.

Yeah, this is an argument one can respond to.
You seem to support Infowars...

I played CS 1.0 so much.

I still want to claim credit for the knife. In a long thread on their message board, I got into a detailed discussion with Cliff on how to handle all the rounds that ended up people without ammo staring at each other.

Of course, a knife is the most obvious answer, the first one most people would come up with had it been Family Feud, but I will still meaninglessly claim credit.

PropheT wrote on Nov 9, 2020, 01:36:

Beamer wrote on Nov 8, 2020, 17:47:
Can you provide me a single example of Twitter and Facebook being biased?

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly signed off on a Facebook algorithm change that throttled traffic to progressive news sites — and one site says that quiet change cost it $400,000 to $600,000 a year

Facebook reportedly skirted its own rules to protect conservatives from disciplinary measures

Facebook serves as an echo chamber, especially for conservatives. Blame its algorithm.

But when we analyzed the average partisan slant of each user’s news site visits, we found a surprising pattern. Facebook and Reddit shape the news consumption of their conservative users in dramatically different ways. In months when a typical conservative visited Facebook more than usual, they read news that was about 30 percent more conservative than the online news they usually read. In contrast, during months when a typical conservative used Reddit more than usual, they read news that was far less conservative — about 50 percent more moderate than what they typically read.

There's more, but that gives a general idea.

That doesn't help his point, you realize

Can you provide me a single example of Twitter and Facebook being biased?

Usually, when I ask, I get one of two answers. The first is "they banned this conservative for being conservative," but inevitably, that conservative was banned for either harassment or bigotry, which aren't defining characteristics of conservatism and therefore they were banned for TOS violations via being a bad person, not being a conservative. The second answer is when they show me a tweet made by someone with 5 followers, a tweet with 10 likes, and compare it to something said by a Twitter account with millions of followers, the tweet with hundreds of thousands of likes. And, to that point, when a kitten attacks someone it gets laughed at, when a mountain lion does it gets put down. That's not an example of bias, either.