As someone on the outskirts of Data Science, probably something along the lines of “Just what the fuck does my customer actually need?”

You can’t throw buzzwords and a poorly labeled spreadsheet at me and expect me to go deep diving into a trashheap of data to magically pull a reasonable answer. “Average” has no meaning if you don’t give me anything to average over. I can’t tell you what nobody has ever recorded anywhere, because we don’t have any telepathic interfaces (and probably would get in trouble with the worker’s council if we tried to get one).

I’m sure there are many interesting questions to be debated in this field, but on the practical side, humans remain the greatest mystery.

If I was that rich, yet so addicted to junk food, I’d at least get higher quality junk food. My patties would be made from organic beef, in buns that don’t fall apart, with vegan cheese from that one brand that I found exactly once, can’t remember the name of but really loved (I fucking love cheese, but that one kocked out any real cheese from the cowmpetition)…

The food would come in reusable containers with non-porous surfaces that are easy and efficient to clean, delivered fresh and hot, made to order and delivered by students (cheap labour) on bikes (saves gas money), generously tipped for their express service (to incentivise continued quality service).

It’d still be cheaper than a decent meal, still be a pig move, still just as greasy and unhealthy, but at least it wouldn’t be so embarrassing. And if it really had to be McD’s, I’d pay to have it packaged into those generic foam containers that don’t make it super obvious and delivered by unbranded delivery drivers (like generic DoorDash, Uber Eats or something).

Do you think the risk of losing is preferrable?

It’s a fucked up situation, but until enough of the voterbase is convinced or he no longer has to worry about the election, he’s in an awful bind.

The unpleasant truth is that, to some extent, the US is still a democracy, and the opinion of the people matters. If the majority of the US populace doesn’t see it as genocide, it is democratically right for him to act on that opinion.

Which means the fault isn’t with him alone - arguably, he could take the risk and attempt to inform people - but also with the voters, the propaganda that misled them and the fucked up election system.

Dangerous to democracy? Where’d you get that idea? I’m not the one trying to install an authoritarian plutocracy.

I’m a staunch believer in educated democracy, but that requires education in the first place. Education regressives have been undermining forever, because it would inform the people of their actual democratic power.

where it actually matters

Which would be? What, in your opinion, actually matters?

My priority is a sustainable and enjoyable future. One where you can grow old without worrying about our pension or affording medical care. One where you no longer pay a cut of your work to a person just becaude they’re rich already. One where you can do the job you love without worrying about how well it pays or whether you’ll get fired.

The Liberals keep bartering for compromise instead of progress, gradually ceding ground to the Conservatives. The spoiler effect means an actually progressive third party has no chance and risks handing power to the regressives by splitting the vote. Because all the Liberals have to do is “be less bad”, you get the choice between right-of-center and far right. This isn’t democracy, it’s slowly dismantling it.

I’ll take the Liberals, because they’re “less bad”, but it’s not a solution. It’s buying time in the hope that we can actually fix the underlying issues.

Ah yes, they’re so intense about fighting capitalist oppression they’ve circled around to… checks notes defending police brutality and advocating for the further privatisation of every public good and dismantling all worker protections.

The difference between “eat the rich” and “feed the rich” is really just one syllable, right? Almost negligible.

(Also, no, they don’t call everyone fascist. They just don’t think being liberal is enough for change, when the “liberals” of the US have a history of complaining about the things they don’t stop the regressives from doing. There’s a difference between calling people “naive and spineless” and “actively pursuing oppression”.)

There’s a tradeoff between precision and conciseness. Outside of a mathemadickal context, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s 2.72 or 3.14 inches.

Obligatory XKCD about coordinate precision

Hotlink

(You probably knew this, I just wanted to tack on a joke)

The money’s in the treatment, not in the cure

Not really. Global Scale Wars were a unique thing back then. The Great War, the war to end all wars, was thought (hoped!) to be the only one of its kind. They had a lot of conflicts between major powers, but at least for the west, 17 million deaths excluding the spanish flu epidemic was a massive outlier.

Even the Mexican Revolution, listed on Wikipedia with an upper estimate of 3.5 million, wasn’t a quarter of that, and it wasn’t global. The last thing in the west that came (somewhat) close was the Napoleonic Wars with an upper estimate of 7 million, a hundred years earlier. China has had several massive death counts in various wars and rebellions, but that won’t have been very present to the average western civilian.

WW1 brought with it a slew of new developments in military technology and capability for destruction. For the world to have not just one, but potentially two conflicts considered at least on par with The Great War would be very concerning.

Most international experts consider the outbreak of a third world war unlikely in spite of global surges of violence

Not mundane, but the implications would be horrifying to 1923 society still recovering from “The Great War”.

TIL

I never played that myself but I recall watching sections of it and it’s definitely a bit of a gut punch in places. I remember a place where one streamer just had to interrupt to process something, then went back and redid a whole chunk because a past choice really fucked him up.

When sexist objectification accidentally teaches a point against sexist objectification

Electric Callboy used to be called Eskimo Callboy until somewhat recently. Eskimo is now considered a slur for the Inuit and Yupit peoples. I’m fairly sure thay EC meant no offense by the term and rather used it out of ignorance (as evidenced by them setting in motion the presumably rather extensive process of changing their entire branding, including pulling old songs and changing all their old album covers), but given their early albums were all about edgy funny provocation, it’s not a great look.

Pretty sure people did make it up tho. So your closing remark isn’t entirely accurate…

Also, you forgot that he loves us, but if we don’t love him back just the right way he’ll throw us into a lake of fire, because threatening eternal torture is just so lovely ❤️