You don’t understand small talk if you think it has no functional purpose. Small talk has several purposes.

One, it sends a bunch of signals. I see you. You see me. Neither of us are threats. We have a shared language.

Two, it’s how you find deeper topics to talk about. “What did you get up to this weekend?” “Oh, hung out with my friend. We saw a band I like - All Dogs - do a surprise anniversary show. You do anything big?”

Three, it lets people choose their level of engagement. “Cool, sounds fun. I stayed in, watched some TV” signals minimal interest vs “All dogs? Never heard of them but I love live music. What’s their genre?” signals interest, and now you can a little deeper on music.

If you just plunge directly into deep stuff that’s like skipping foreplay and lube. It’s probably going to make people uncomfortable.

I feel like just walking up to the base and shooting at fascists wasn’t a well thought out plan, but points for effort.

Maybe someone will use a bomb or find out where they sleep next time.

Sure, it wouldn’t be an easy live starting with $500k, but I think with strict budgeting and low costs you could stay in the black and grow your principle. And if you get any job at all on top of it, it’s even easier.

Anyway, yeah, was just spit balling how much a difference the money could make.

A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc.

A lot of leadership is incompetent. In a reasonable, just, world they would not be in these decision making positions.

Verbose blogger Ed Zitron wrote about this. He called them “Business Idiots”: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

It is absolutely stupid, stupid to the tune of “you shouldn’t be a decision maker”, to think an LLM is a better use for “getting a quick intro to an unfamiliar topic” than reading an actual intro on an unfamiliar topic. For most topics, wikipedia is right there, complete with sources. For obscure things, an LLM is just going to lie to you.

As for “looking up facts when you have trouble remembering it”, using the lie machine is a terrible idea. It’s going to say something plausible, and you tautologically are not in a position to verify it. And, as above, you’d be better off finding a reputable source. If I type in “how do i strip whitespace in python?” an LLM could very well say “it’s your_string.strip()”. That’s wrong. Just send me to the fucking official docs.

There are probably edge or special cases, but for general search on the web? LLMs are worse than search.

Time for the sartre quote again.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-anti-semites-are-completely-unaware-of-the-absurdity

The assholes know what they are doing. They know they are hypocritical. They don’t care. You cannot engage in conservatives/anti-semites/fascists/et al with reason because they will not argue in good faith. They are bad people. Selfish, fearful, people.

All the leadership who made this mistake should be fired. They are clearly incompetent

But i guess it’s always labor that pays the price

I had the same thought, mostly because distracted driving is such a present threat that it’s hard to find humor in it.

But whatever. Someone’s probably going to be reading this while driving. Please stop.

Ideally the kind that doesn’t first have like death camps for the “undesirables”, famine, and disease. But given how many maga-hats are cheering for ICE even as their spouses get disappeared, I don’t know how things are going to go.

Also some lemmy moderators are such pearl clutchers they’ll take action about the slightest hint of violence, no matter how justified.

Ehh. If you divide it into 10 chunks of $500k, and each of those invest it in a middling risk thing like vanguard and get a 10% return, that’s like $50k/year without doing any work. That’s well above the poverty line.

Side note: Rich people sort of have basic income because of stuff like this, and that’s fucked up.

I imagine if these people were capable of feeling guilt, much of their behavior would be different

I rarely use a cart anymore because I do more frequent, shorter, trips and just bring a tote bag. But the other day I went with someone to a store and we used a cart. I returned it to the cart return place and she was like “good. You can learn a lot about someone by what they do with the cart”

It’s funny because the people who usually say that are the kind of people who prioritize their feelings over facts.

It’s all projection with conservatives

Outside of like NYC you have a car. It’s a bad system economically, ecologically, and socially, but many people are kind of stupid and reactionary. You show them how putting in a bike lane and adding a bus stop will lower car traffic, improve air quality, and increase economic activity and they just go “no because I feel so”. Or, “one time I had to move a refrigerator so we need to prioritize large privately owned vehicles”.

True. I mentioned my whiteness in my comment intentionally, but maybe I should have made it more explicit as you have.

If you had been buying games you’d have a library 🤷

I feel like we should know who these ice agents are and have constant protests outside their homes. They shouldn’t be able to sleep soundly at night

I got questioned by the police when waiting for the train in New York (state) once. I’m a white guy, though I had really long hair at the time. They came up and said someone had reported someone suspicious. I was like, well, I’m waiting for the train and my friends. They were like someone saw you looking in that car suspiciously. I said, that’s my car. They asked if I had proof so I opened the door with the key.

Then my friend and her shitty little brother showed up. The brother yells “YO YOU GOT MY WEED??”

Luckily the cops realized that was an idiot 13 year old white kid, and they left.

Game pass was always going to be bad for consumers, and probably bad for smaller orgs. The problem is people are short sighted and don’t care.

Like with Walmart moving into a neighborhood. People are like oh it’s so much cheaper than the local shops! And then those get priced out of business and Walmart raises prices and lowers salary. People won’t or can’t think ahead

Yeah my friend is dating a Google recruiter and he overhears some absurd offers. Like, a reasonable person could retire on a few years at that salary.

I have a hypothesis that rich people are bad at money