The granddaddy of science fiction and futurism channels is Science Fiction and Futurism with Isaac Arthur. The channel has content for days about all kinds of shenanigans humans could be getting up to in space and beyond.
A close second is futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier. His voice will either weigh your soul down to the core of the earth or you’ll find it grating… there’s really no in-between.
This… JMG is the best. Him and Isaac Arthur…
Micromanagement and the need to take credit for work other people do. Of all the incompetent bosses I’ve had over the years, micromanagers are the worst and all of the micromanagers for whom I’ve worked have been men.
It’s like, dude, you hired me because I know more about doing this task than other people (including you). Stop hovering over me, when I need your input I’ll come get you. Just let me fucking cook. I know what I’m talking about and what I’m going… you employ me specifically because I know what I’m talking about and what I’m doing.
I guess their thought process goes: if I’m not hovering over this person at all times, the company might figure out I don’t know 100% of 100% of everything my employees do day to day… even though that’s insane. What company would require a manager to know absolutely everything about how their employees do their jobs; a manager obviously shouldn’t be completely in the dark about operations but also it’s crazy to think they’d want them to be an expert on everything.
As a cis dude who’s asexual, I’ve gotten weird questions from straight dude bros… one asked me if I “had to be super careful” to not get myself pregnant. Honest question coming from a person our country’s education system has failed.
Yeah, more clean but not completely… this is not to mention the amount of damage caused by the bomb. Striking Kiev or another city would effectively decimate Ukraine’s infrastructure and economy for decades. If the goal of the war is to subjugate, you don’t want to be in the hook for all those repairs. A nuke on any of Ukraine’s cities would make that dam break last year look like nothing.
If Russia were to strike Ukraine with a nuclear bomb, first and foremost that puts every nation on a knife’s edge globally… someone else with an itchy trigger finger could launch against Russia in the confusing hours afterwards. Next up, the PRC and India would likely abandoned Russia as waves of condemnation would flood the global media. Finally, the whole goal of the war is to take Ukraine, not to make it uninhabitable… why nuke what you want to own?
Unlikely. There’s kind of only two hard-and-fast rules for nuclear war:
Blake’s a good guy, but a little off-putting in person. He’s what my grandmother would call “a character.” I have no doubt he believes what he says, but I doubt the versatility of his claims on this.
The British Royal family. I’m an American, living in America, and the number of people here who follow the royals to the point of being sycophants is so freaking weird. I literally do not care about the machinations of a bunch of rich fucks who’s sole claim to fame and fortune is being sprayed out of the correct penis before then falling out of the correct vagina.
I think the most good I could do would be to go back to the mid-1700’s colonial America, probably a center of education like Philadelphia, Boston, or New York. Patient a couple of simple but yet-to-exist technologies like the addiator calculator, rifled gun barrel, etc, but especially the optical telegraph. I would try to leverage these devices/systems into myself joining the Continental Congress as a representative. The optical telegraph is 100% technology that was possible, but not in existence and one that I think could have had unforseen relevance to the founding of the United States. Imagine if long distance, nearly instantaneous communication had existed when the Constitution was being written… think about the implications of that for communication privacy protection. Might even be able to convince the founders to include such a system to be part of the constitutionally mandated post office. I think all it would take would be to point out how important communications had been in the War of Independence: “imagine Savannah has been attacked by Spain. It would take several days for a place like Boston to be alerted to that event… with the optical telegraph the whole nation would know within a matter of a few hours.” After all that, I’d probably try to help get germ theory off the ground and write rebuttals to push back on the various scientific racism theories floating about at that time.
I personally know Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who announced publicly in 2022 that he believed Google’s LaMDA large language model was becoming sentient. He doesn’t have a whole article about him, but he’s a whole section on LaMDA’s Wikipedia article.
Found out yesterday that a manager that hates me is extremely demoralized, currently job hunting, and already tried to quit.
Earlier this month, I found out that a different manager, who in the past tried to get me fired, themselves tried to resign at the beginning of the year. That manager’s contract is up in August and their department is failing on just about every metric imaginable so, they’re likely going to quit or be asked to resign at that point.
Finally, a coworker who was working with that second manager to try and get me fired was themselves fired by corporate for a multitude of reasons. These reasons include but are not limited to: credible accusations of drunk driving company vehicles, harassing and bullying others, offering cocaine to both coworkers and clients, and allegedly attempting to extort someone else out of their job… which is a felony (we’re currently encouraging their victim to go to authorities, but it involves leaked nudes and they are understandably embarrassed about the whole thing… which is their decision, no one can force them). This fired coworker once told a whole room of people “well if [TrueStoryBob] and I both walk into the GM’s office, who do you think is gonna walk out with a job.” Well, we can now definitively say it was them who would walk out of that office unemployed. They had to be forced off company property; like physically escorted onto the sidewalk by the GM and the Business Manager.
All of this has legitimately put a pep in my step. Overall, I like my job, however I was already putting my CV out there just in case. Now, I can stop the job search and not worry about potentially having to move as I also like where I live. By the way, my manager is an absolute dream who’s been watching these other two departments burn to the ground with unadulterated glee as both of these managers walk ass backwards into their own demise.
I think it means like a person is taking something that is foolish or misguided far to seriously.
Differential, différentielle, or diferencial
In English, French, and Spanish, it just sounds cool no matter what accent.
Good news then! With an algorithm fueled by human self-loathing, Instagram is the platform that hates you back!
Slither (2006) fucked me up the first time I watched it. Now I can watch it and laugh. Also, Pam from “The Office” is in it as the police dispatch/receptionist… so, I guess she just got type cast.
Mastodon, Peertube, PixelFed, and (unfortunately) Threads. [I’m forced to have a Threads account because of my job in media. I’m on Instagram and Twitter for the same reason]
I’m also super excited for Loops, but it hasn’t launched yet.
I’ve had good support from Carhartt brand stuff.
Solidarity my flat footed amigo!
While we sound rabidly pro-Taiwanese, the US diplomatic position on the PRC/ROC is some wild Cold War type shit. Technically, we recognize both claims as claims that both organizations have made and that both organizations have the right to make those claims. Vague as vague can get. The State Department was seriously like “we agree to disagree… with ourselves.”
“And, of course, this podcast is sponsored by the Claymore Corporation! Remember folks, Claymore Landmines: fuck the person directly in front of you!”