The fine is by far the largest ever levied under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats. Schools must disseminate an annual security report that includes crime reports and information on efforts to improve campus...
I used to be friends with a guy who was getting a graduate degree from Liberty. He apparently only did it because he was a member of the Falwell family so the courses were free for him.
He was pursuing an “online” degree, which at the time meant that the school sent him DVDs of the lectures and he had to take quizzes and exams online. Neither of us was particularly religious, so he kind of got a kick out of showing me the highlights of the lectures on DVD.
Those lectures were … something else. It really didn’t matter what the subject matter was, biology, statistics, psychology: The first 10 - 20 minutes of all the lectures was basically a church service. There were prayers and Bible stories, things like that. There would be about 10 - 15 minutes of actual course instruction. And they would work in religion as much as possible during that time. All the examples were focused on religion, it was super weird. And then the final 10 - 20 minutes would be wrapping up with more prayers and Bible study.
The quizzes and exams weren’t much better. The “problems” were so simple that you mostly didn’t even need to read the books or watch the lecture to answer the questions. All the open ended word problem were religion/Bible oriented, very hamfisted. You almost had to make an effort to make anything less than 80% on these things.
So needless to say, I try not to judge too much, but I think about my buddy’s educational experience any time I see someone with a degree from that university.
This happens a lot: I apply for a job and they ask for my complete address. Why? I would understand if they just want to know what city/town I’m in: That has bearing on how easily I can get to the office....
She must work at the Home Depot location I worked at for awhile. It was a particularly crappy and miserable experience, and I usually refer to my time at HD as the second worst job I ever had. The management culture was absolutely toxic and they treated low-level employees with unfiltered contempt. To this day I avoid the place as much as I can.
I worked for a “Christian” company when I was super desperate, circa 2008/2009 during the great recession.
It was the type of place where we started every meeting with a prayer but ended each month with us employees having to beg the owner to give us our pay check. They used every trick in the book to emotionally manipulate us and to avoid paying us.
As I said, I was young and desperate at the time. I could practically write a novel about all the shady and ridiculous bull shit I put up with, but at the end of the day it was the hypocrisy and the fact that they did not pay us employees our wages that puts it at the top, just above the abysmal treatment from Home Depot. At least Home Depot paid me.
My very first PC was a Compaq. It was not the cheapest low-end piece of shit available in those days, yet it was still an absolute low-end piece of shit. USB ports broke with minimal use. CD-ROM drive broke despite minimal use. The case started falling apart after a year or so. RAM went bad. I could go on, but you get the point. PIECE OF LITERAL FECES.
And then they got bought by HP, which was already on my list of PIECE OF LITERAL FECES companies.
So, that’s when I knew I’d never buy anything HP branded. That was 20+ years ago.
And literally (I’m using literally in the literal sense), every single person I know who has bought something (anything) HP branded after I advised them not to has regretted their decision. It’s honestly baffling how they are still in business on the consumer end. Their stuff is crap. PIECES OF LITERAL FECES.
Anecdotally speaking, I’ve been suspecting this was happening already with code related AI as I’ve been noticing a pretty steep decline in code quality of the code suggestions various AI tools have been providing.
Some of these tools, like GitHub’s AI product, are trained on their own code repositories. As more and more developers use AI to help generate code and especially as more novice level developers rely on AI to help learn new technologies, more of that AI generated code is getting added to the repos (in theory) that are used to train the AI. Not that all AI code is garbage, but there’s enough that is garbage in my experience, that I suspect it’s going to be a garbage in, garbage out affair sans human correction/oversight. Currently, as far as I can tell, these tools aren’t really using much in the way of good metrics to rate whether the code they are training on is quality or not, nor whether it actually even works or not.
More and more often I’m getting ungrounded output (the new term for hallucinations) when it comes to code, rather than the actual helpful and relevant stuff that had me so excited when I first started using these products. And I worry that it’s going to get worse. I hope not, of course, but it is a little concerning when the AI tools are more consistently providing useless / broken suggestions.
Wendy’s was one of my favorite “cheap eats” back in the day. For less than $5, I could get a drink and 2 burgers that would mostly keep me from starving for the day. And they used real, fresh veggies on the burgers – slices of tomato, sliced onion, real lettuce – unlike some of their McOmpetitors.
I haven’t been in the post-covid era that I can recall, but I’m hoping they haven’t gone the route of the other fast food places I have been to post-covid. Seems like they’ve all gone way down hill on quality, made poor or unnecessary changes to menu items, prices have gotten ridiculous, and the service is – well the service was usually pretty bad even back in the day so maybe no change there.
It’s a linear extrapolation that doesn’t take into account the not completely unreasonable chance that commercially viable banana varieties could go [functionally] extinct or that climate change will make it dramatically more expensive to grow them in sufficient quantities such that the price can stay on trend.
Winter has gone missing across the Midwest and Great Lakes, and time is running out to find it. Dozens of cities are on track for one of the warmest winters on record, making snow and ice rare commodities....
Where I live, our winters are typically like this. It’s never been particularly stable, often oscillating between spring-like warm weather, standard cold winter weather, and stretches of extreme arctic blasts.
What has been unusual is that we haven’t had any snow at all so far, not even an ephemeral flurry. We haven’t had any wintry weather (i.e. sleet, snow, freezing rain) this winter. And for that to be the case in mid February is definitely unusual. If we go this entire winter with no wintry weather, it will be the first time in my lifetime that I can recall.
Coincidentally, back in the fall the long term forecasts for this winter were suggesting we would have more wintry weather than normal in this area, since there would be more moisture and more frequently extreme cold events (as well as cooler than normal temps).
The actual scariest stuff pretty much boils down to aggressive dogs being aggressive dogs.
For example: I saw a woman lose control of her pit-mix. The dog rushed over to one of our neighbors, unprovoked, and immediately latched on to her leg and started thrashing it. The dog’s owner was freaking out screeching which seemed to agitate the dog rather than dissuade it from attacking. There was so much blood, but I think the only long term physical damage was scars. However, I only ever saw the victim once or twice after that, she stopped going out on walks after that event.
If you’re willing to stretch the definition of scariest and seen:
Deer are super annoying sometimes. One of their behaviors is that they make a super loud snort-whistle noise when alarmed. So if you’re outside and unaware of their presence, and especially if you’re not expecting a super loud and almost alien-like snort-whistle coming from the woods right next to you, there’s a good chance it’s going to startle the crap out of you.
Fun fact since you may not be aware, but not all owls are nocturnal. And even those that are considered nocturnal are often active at dusk (after sun set but before the sky has gone dark). So, it could still work.
I’ve tried going to Taco Bell three times, three different locations, over the past 3 - 4 years and I’ve regretted it every single time.
The last time I went to one, it was like almost everything that could go wrong did. Long wait of 20+ minutes. Employee(s) smelled strongly of weed. The 5-layer burrito was disgustingly dry and missing about 2 layers. And the price for 2 crappy, tiny burritos and a drink was around $12.
Back when I used to eat there more frequently (broke college kid), the same exact meal was less than $5.
From a practical standpoint, they don’t bite or sting.
But, I have actually been “bitten” by a cicada! I guess it’s my claim to fame. Now before anybody gets all pedantic, of course it wasn’t a bite. They have needle like mouth parts, which can actually pierce skin but they can’t chomp down like a wasp or beetle.
I found this out awhile back when a cicada landed on my hand/finger while I was outside. I felt like the most wonderful Disney princess ever. I let it chill on my finger while I went about my business.
But eventually I felt a jab. Nothing serious or particularly painful. Then I watched as the bug repeatedly lifted up and tried to ram its mouth parts into my skin. It had apparently confused me for a tree and it was trying to feed – at least that’s my best guess. And yes, it did draw blood.
In all my years of life on this Earth, handling these critters every year since early childhood, that was the first and only time it happened.
Seeing the up votes and down votes in this thread, I realize this is an unpopular “opinion” but the flowers didn’t necessarily evolve to look like hummingbirds specifically. That many people see it as looking hummingbird-like is more a reflection of the human mind’s ability to find patterns and connections even when they don’t exist. It’s interesting and pretty for sure, and definitely a curiosity.
Same thing for the “monkey orchid”. You see a monkey because the flowers are photographed at an unnatural angle and forced perspective, the photos online where the effect is most visible are the ones with lots of compression artifacts and generally poor quality, and because of the power of suggestion. If you saw these in person (without prior context of the photos), there’s a good chance you wouldn’t even notice the face-like visage unless pointed out.
On the other hand, the “bee orchids” actually are an example where it seems that the flowers have evolved in a way that specifically mimics the appearance of bees (and wasps). These flowers mostly attract male bees and wasps who confuse them for lovely lady bees and wasps and try to mate with the flowers. In the process, they pick up a pollen sac / pollinia, and if all goes well they end up pollinating the flower (or move on to pollinate another one).
I completely disagree, we can know for sure. This plant is native to Australia. There are no native hummingbirds in Australia. The flowers evolved to look like this before there were hummingbirds around it.
I am specifically mentioning hummingbirds, since that’s the title, in the image, and the bulk of the discussion in this thread when I looked at it this morning. That being said, no, I don’t think it has to be hummingbirds.
Keep in mind, these flowers are significantly smaller than most (if not all) hummingbirds, and hummingbirds themselves are amongst the smallest, if not the smallest, birds in the world. So, any species of bird that these flowers attract are going to be significantly larger than the flowers.
Not to mention that virtually all birds that feed from flowers have excellent visual acuity, that’s almost a requirement for them to be successful with this feeding strategy. It seems highly unlikely that the birds would have a difficult time identifying that these are flowers and instead confusing them as a flock of miniature birds feeding from the plant. And, to me, that pretty much negates any argument for selective pressures on the flowers to have birdlike appearance for that purpose.
At least with the example of the “bee orchids” I mentioned in a prior comment, the selective pressures and the overall context make sense and appear to explain why the flowers have evolved to look like female bees and wasps. But the “hummingbird flower” from Australia that kind of resembles the profile of a hummingbird if viewed from a specific angle and out of context doesn’t really hold up, in my opinion.
Fruits, and by extension peppers, evolved to be eaten. Peppers are the fruit of the pepper plant, and generally speaking, fruits act as an enticement for animals to eat them and thus distribute their seeds.
It’s just that hot peppers specifically appear to have evolved a strategy to dissuade mammals from eating them, since the chemical that causes them to be hot primarily affects mammals, but not birds. It’s actually not an uncommon strategy, many fruits are distasteful or even poisonous to certain animals, but are perfectly edible to other animals in a way that suggests it is specifically beneficial to be eaten by some but not by others.
While you’re at Lowe’s be sure to pick up a pint of plunger oil, which will help keep the plunger lubricated and prevent the plastic from degrading like this. It’s not expensive and it’s not hard to use. All you have to do is lick the plunger clean after each use, allow it to air dry, then apply a small dab of the oil, and rub that in with a soft natural fiber cloth. A plunger can last you a life time with proper care.
Liberty University will pay $14 million, the largest fine ever levied under the federal Clery Act (apnews.com)
The fine is by far the largest ever levied under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats. Schools must disseminate an annual security report that includes crime reports and information on efforts to improve campus...
Why does a prospective employer need my address? (lemmy.world)
This happens a lot: I apply for a job and they ask for my complete address. Why? I would understand if they just want to know what city/town I’m in: That has bearing on how easily I can get to the office....
25 Years Ago, PlayStation Was Blessed With An Amazing Advergame (kotaku.com)
For those unaware, AVGN covered the game quite hilariously: youtu.be/VdVP2XxV3QU (warning: foul language)
lord jizz (midwest.social)
To make a job offer look appealing (sh.itjust.works)
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The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content (venturebeat.com)
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You can also take deductions for costs relating to criminal activity! (lemmy.world)
In case you don’t believe me about the deductions…
Maybe not the coolest thing here but I found this in a reno were doing. (lemmy.world)
XKCD on that Arrested Development joke (startrek.website)
xkcd.com/2892/
If the food makes you sick, it's free (startrek.website)
It’s spring in the Midwest. The only problem? It’s midwinter (www.cnn.com)
Winter has gone missing across the Midwest and Great Lakes, and time is running out to find it. Dozens of cities are on track for one of the warmest winters on record, making snow and ice rare commodities....
Hey Lemmy, whats the scariest thing youve seen an animal do?
Any animal.
Bluesky got 1 million new users (sh.itjust.works)
Official account of Bluesky announced that it got 1 million new users since the registration was opened to everyone.
$3 for a single McDonald's hash brown? Some customers are fed up and pushing back (www.ksl.com)
“Even though we’re pushing through pricing, the consumer is tolerating it well,” he said in October analyst call....
Poor little guy (lemmy.world)
Hummingbird plant (lemmy.world)
Try me bitch (lemmy.world)
I took this community a little too literally this morning (lemmy.world)
Welp. Off to Lowe’s I go.
Kmart is your new therapist (reddthat.com)
Good question (reddthat.com)