AFKBRBChocolate

AFKBRBChocolate, 3 months ago

One of the articles I read said they wanted to make it up to her by letting her do some of their other events. She cancelled other orders, got staff working long hours, and bought a shit ton of ingredients so she could make 4000 pies for them, and they just said “Never mind” like it’s no big deal.

AFKBRBChocolate, 4 months ago

I had the same reaction: the ones I’ve seen are excellent, but some I’ve never heard of, so I’ve got some things to watch!

AFKBRBChocolate, 5 months ago

Title question first: yes, you absolutely can be too dumb to program.

But as others have mentioned, being bad at math isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, especially if you’re taking about the actual arithmetic part of math.

What turns out to be key to programming is breaking down a problem into steps and figuring out the logic to do what you want to do. The computer is going to do the actual arithmetic, but you’ll need to tell it what you want to do step by step.

AFKBRBChocolate, 3 months ago

Whenever Trump “predicts” something, it’s code for telling his base to do that thing.

AFKBRBChocolate, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

There are quite a number of good articles on the subject if you want a thorough answer, but some of the main things are:

• He’s responsible for a massive deregulation of financial institutions that were a precursor to the Wall Street issues that led to the giant government bailout.
• He pushed “trickle down economics,” which is the theory that if you cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, they’ll succeed more and create more jobs so that everyone wins. This is something conservatives always push and it’s always a horrible failure that results in a bigger and bigger income gap.
• He funded his big tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy) by slashing federal assistance programs, including low income housing subsidies and mental health support, resulting in an unprecedented surge in homelessness that we’re still wrestling with today.
• Nancy Reagan was the “Just say no to drugs” lady - the figurehead of the largely failed war on drugs which was like trying to prevent teen pregnancy with an abstinence only education program.

There’s a lot more, but those are some of the big ticket items.

AFKBRBChocolate, 10 days ago

Old guy checking in. When ad blockers first became a thing, my then-teenaged boys started using one and were trying to talk me into it. I was pretty dubious. I said my concern was that the model most of the web was built on was ad-supported. That is, people created content on the web to try and get visitors, and made money by selling ads on their site, or used monetized links. If everyone started using ad blockers, I said, that model would break down and either people would stop creating content or they’d go to a new model, like subscriptions. I figured few people would take time equivalent to a full time job to create content for free.

I think that largely came to pass. A lot of great online publications have closed their doors, and the are lots of paywalls now. The things is, the sites are just as much to blame. Most people wouldn’t have been driven to use ad blockers if the ads hadn’t gotten so untenable. A banner or a box here or there is one thing, but when there are a giant number of pop-up windows, autoplay videos, windows you can’t back out of, and all the other hellish stuff, people are going to be highly motivated to find a way to stop it.

That whole arms race was one of the things that ruined the internet, in my opinion.

AFKBRBChocolate, 1 month ago

It’s a subject I’m always curious about - not eggs specifically, but cholesterol intake, serum cholesterol, and heart disease.

A few years ago, I had a physical and my doctor said my cholesterol was high, but he also said there was a contraindicator, and he didn’t want to put me on statens unnecessarily, so he had my get a coronary calcium scan, which is like a CT scan of your torso and they can measure how much buildup is in your arteries. The ranges are:

• 0 = no calcified plaque detected (risk of coronary artery disease is very low – less than 5%)
• 1-10 = calcium detected in extremely minimal levels (risk of coronary diseases is still low – less than 10%)
• 11-100 = mild levels of plaque detected with certainty (minimal narrowing of heart arteries is likely)
• 101-300 = moderate levels of plaque detected (relatively high risk of a heart attack within 3-5 years)
• 300-400 = extensive levels of plaque detected (very high risk of heart attack, high levels of vascular disease are present)

I was in my late 50s, so something like 50 would be typical, but it came back as zero. I had relatively high cholesterol, but zero plaque buildup in my arteries relatively late in life.

I’m told that the relationship between cholesterol intake and heart disease isn’t well understood, and that there’s certainly a genetic component. Articles and studies like this one always catch my eye.

AFKBRBChocolate, 2 months ago

Once upon a time I would have laughed and said he doesn’t have a chance in hell. But here we are with a guy convicted of business fraud, found responsible for rape, and who has 91 criminal indictments, on the way to a likely close presidential election.

Crazy times.

AFKBRBChocolate, 29 days ago

Can’t see the article behind the paywall, but it really depends on the piece. Some works for sure are trying to make the viewer feel comfortable or at peace, but others are trying to bring up other emotions. It seems like an overly broad statement that we wouldn’t put up with if they said it about something like music. What would be the reaction if the article said “Music isn’t supposed to make you feel happy?”

AFKBRBChocolate, 4 months ago

I didn’t see anyone mention things like this. Amber light with a dimmer that you can put on a physical book.

AFKBRBChocolate, 2 months ago

It seems like politics draws in a lot of flawed people generally, but Republicans have been electing an amazing number of absolutely horrible human beings. Gaetz, Green, Bobert, Cruz, Jordan, Santos… oh, and of course Trump. Lots more. Just really, really bad people.

AFKBRBChocolate, 4 months ago

There’s “sonder,” which is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Not quite the same, but sort of borders on it.

AFKBRBChocolate, 3 months ago

It’s worth noting that the stigma is very much a cultural thing. There are cultures where it’s very normal for the kids to stay with the parents, even after they get married, with multiple generations under one roof.

You should 100% do what makes you and your family happy. If things change, you can make changes.

AFKBRBChocolate, 3 months ago

Agreed. Plus the whole “pay up” thing is a red herring; there are no membership dues for being in NATO, they just agree to spend two percent of their GDP on defense (which they don’t all do).

AFKBRBChocolate, 8 days ago

The things is, the stakes can be really high, even for something that seems benign. The people who give you medical advice based on a text post really are being irresponsible. Doctors are trained to ask the right questions and do the right tests. Sure, we might like it if we could just crowd source our diagnosis, but it’s a really, really bad idea for most things.

AFKBRBChocolate, 6 days ago

What a completely bullshit article. Yes, there was a pandemic during Obama’s presidency - swine flu - and though it wasn’t as bad as COVID, it was bad and we were worried it would be worse. So the administration created a pandemic playbook, which was left in place for Trump. Of course, Trump ignored it and even disbanded offices that formed a part of the response team.

So Biden was completely accurate and it’s The Daily Beast who has memory issues, not him.