Rov_Scam
9hr ago
How is Gabbard still employed at this point? The administration seems to have frozen her out of everything, her pacifist wing has lost the battle of influence within the administration, and she doesn't placate any voter base except Rogan listeners. And now there's this, which is probably nothing but is still something. I'm not sure what Trump gains by keeping her.
Rov_Scam
10hr ago
My guess is that it has something to do with that contract. All the other criticisms have been around for some time, and Trump doesn't seem to have been fazed by them. Incidentally, this reminds me of an interaction I had with a Chapter 7 client when I started doing them on the side around 2016. This woman had like 13 credit cards and had absolutely no financial literacy. That isn't exactly uncommon, and in those cases I ended up giving them a crash course on the topic. She told me she wanted to reaffirm a debt, and the following conversation ensued:
Me: You can't just decide to reaffirm a debt. That's up to the trustee. Which debt were you thinking of reaffirming? (I wouldn't agree to help them reaffirm debts except under special rare conditions; the couple I did were on loans for cars that weren't worth a lot of money and had low balances. Otherwise it's almost always a bad idea. Most reaffirmations are for car loans generally.)
Her: I was thinking I should keep the Toys R Us card (reaffirming a credit card debt is almost unheard of)
Me: Why?
Her: Just to have it around in case of an emergency.
Me: There's no such thing as an emergency toy purchase.
To be fair to the woman, I understood her logic: This card only had a balance of like $350 and was the only one that wasn't in arrears. It would haveen trivial for her to keep it and pay it off, and she wanted to have it around in case something unexpected happened and she needed money. It also had a limit of $500 or $1000 or something similarly small, so it couldn't get her into that much trouble. I explained to her that, regardless of the wisdom of the decision or the trustee's willingness to allow it, reaffirming didn't create an obligation to allow her to keep the card, and they would probably cancel it anyway. In fact, they would probably cancel it even if she didn't have a balance on it. In any event, this case was a confidence-builder for me because she ended up doing pretty well. She made a decent income but spent a good chunk of it on credit card bills that were killing her. Once those were wiped out she was able to start saving. She also had what I called The Exacta: She surrendered a newer Nissan Altima and went back to using a 15-year-old Grand Am that had been sitting in her driveway.
Anyway, I bring this up because I busted out laughing and thought of this when I read that Noem said that they didn't put the contract out for bid because of the declared emergency. Sorry Kristi, there's no such thing as an emergency ad campaign.
Rov_Scam
16hr ago
I think you and @pusher_robot are misunderstanding my argument. I'm not trying to take anything away from the guy or say he shouldn't be lauded. What I'm saying is that when you have a billion-dollar idea that takes millions to implement, it's a lot easier to do so when you already have those millions. There are plenty of smart, hardworking people with good ideas that may have the potential to make them billionaires, but most aren't in a position to just walk away from well-paying jobs when they have mortgages, families, and leaking dishwashers. For most people, risking a good life to pursue what is effectively a lottery ticket is irresponsible to the point of reckless. It's not reckless, however, when failure means your net worth will be whittled down from $175 million to $75 million. I'm not trying to take away from anyone's accomplishments here, just making the point that you can't state categorically that billionaires are better than the rest of us.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
In this context, I can't give him credit for Tesla or SpaceX because he was already incredibly wealthy when he got involved with those ventures, and that wealth didn't come from any particular display of talent, at least not enough to say that he's simply better than the rest of us. I'm not trying to diminish his accomplishments, just saying that it's a lot easier to take huge business risks when you have 100 million dollars already.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
They may be better than me personally, but I doubt they're any better than the millions of other people trying to do what they do. I don't think it's rent seeking so much as sales prowess and (mostly) luck. It's easy to look at someone like Bezos or Gates or Carnegie and point to value created, because everyone knows what they did. But take a guy like Mark Cuban. He's a celebrity billionaire if there ever was one. He owns a pro sports franchise, which is about the most stereotypically billionaire thing you can do, and he hosts a show that presents him as a Svengali of entrepreneurship. Everyone has long forgotten that the value he created was broadcast.com, which no one remembers and which became defunct within a couple years of his selling it to Yahoo. He had a business with minimal value and happened to unload it at just the right time; a year later and he'd be living out of a cardboard box right now.
Of course, the smart set knows that Cuban was lucky. But we don't even have to leave the NBA to find another one: Steve Ballmer. He was Bill Gates's right hand man, so one can argue that he built part of the value of Microsoft. But when Gates handed the reins over to him, his tenure at the top wasn't exactly stellar. He had a few hits, but the Ballmer era will be known more for the long string of misses, and the end of Microsoft being the undisputed industry leader. If we move to another league but stay with Microsoft we have Paul Allen, who was instrumental in the very early days but quickly took to feuding with Gates and was forced out of the company. He didn't do much after that besides philanthropy and other stereotypical billionaire stuff, and most of his net worth came from stock he was able to hold onto.
Elon himself is really the worst of the bunch when you think about it, a combination of Cuban and Allen. He had a good idea and was able to get investors but was bad at running the company and got forced out. The brought new management in, changed the name, and sold X.com, since renamed PayPal, to eBay for enough to net Elon a cool hundred million. Everything else in his career is the result of having fuck you money to begin with. I'm not saying that intelligence or vision doesn't play into this at all, but luck and salesmanship are a huge part of it. I wouldn't even put risk taking in this category because lots of people are willing to take huge risks doing things like taking out home equity loans to buy sports bars and pizza shops.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The car I actually had in mind was a Civic Type-R, though there are a lot of cars you could sub in here, the idea being that these are normal cars designed for normal driving that have just been modified a bit for performance. The problem with the S550 is that for the price you quoted you're only getting a V6, which is a mid-life crisis car for a woman. You can get an S197 for that price but it's probably been in at least one wreck. I don't know how much a C6 goes for these days but if OP went that route he should spend the rest of the money on veneers and hair dye and head down to the local suburban townie bar where he can hit on hairdressers who bitch about how their ex-boyfriends are always late with child support.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I understand what you're saying, but there's a difference between a clean car and a beater. Women don't know anything about cars, and car design hasn't changed enough in the past 20 years to make anything look seriously dated. She's not going to peek at the odometer. I recently bought a new car and rather than be exciting it was brutal, due to parting difficulties with the old one I had put 150,000 miles on in 6 years. I made a decision with my mind and not my heart (which would have had me shoveling money into the old one), and regretted it for the first week. I tried explaining this to several women, and they all thought I was insane. Men, on the other hand, could relate to what I was going through. To men, a car is like a friend. To women, it's just another appliance.
The one aspect of cars that women will appreciate is the interior. There's a certain irony to this, as almost every woman I know drives a car with a basic interior. My theory behind this is that since they treat cars as appliances they buy models they hear are "good" and when they're shopping they gravitate towards the more affordable ones because they don't care enough about cars to see the difference. Men are more likely to spring for the higher trim packages, so the interiors are generally nicer. After driving beaters for years, my first car out of law school was mid-trim and every car I've had since has been top or next to top trim. These are not luxury cars; the first car that I got compliments about the interior from was a Sonata Limited. In my experience, Hyundai and Mazda tend to have the nicest interiors among the Asian brands. I had a Subaru with the top trim and, having gone back to a Sonata, I once again have buttons that are a pleasure to push. While it may seem odd for anyone over the age of one to experience pleasure from pushing buttons, well, you just haven't pushed any good ones. At this point, I feel mildly depressed when I ride in a car with a crappy interior, especially newer cars with crappy, basic interiors.
The above may suggest that a luxury car is the way to go, and it can be, but OP would be advised to proceed with caution here. The first issue is that European luxury cars are overengineered monstrosities which is fine if you're leasing one, like most people do, but for which ownership of an older, high-mileage models means frequent, expensive repair bills. The second, more immediate problem is that these cars will attract women, just the kind of women you probably don't want to attract. As I said earlier, women don't care about cars. To the extent they can be used as a signal, they're less about trying to send the right signal and more about avoiding sending the wrong one. A sensibly-priced newer vehicle from a mass market brand doesn't send any signal, which is fine. It's basic transportation. A ten year old beater sends the signal that one is poor or cheap, which is bad. A luxury car sends the signal that one is wealthy, which is also bad, because you're now attracting women who you wouldn't be attracting but for displays of wealth. There are obviously degrees of this; driving a Lexus or BMW sends a very different signal than driving a Lambroghini.
The upshot here is that if OP wants to maximize his car's effect on his love life he should buy a mass-market brand with the top trim level. It should be noted, however, that the effect on the trim level will be marginal and he should only go this route if he wants it for himself. The age and mileage of the car doesn't matter as long as it's clean and not seriously old. That being said the car I had that got the mst attention from women was a 1974 Dodge Dart, but that car was so gloriously awful that I can't recommend it in good conscience, assuming one can even be found.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The problem with the Miata is that there's no cargo room. If he's successful and wants to take his lady friend away for the weekend, getting two suitcases into one of those things is going to be a challenge. A friend of mine had one he took camping and he had to pack similarly to how he would if he had taken his motorcycle, which wasn't some Harley cruiser but a Triumph sport bike. But beyond that, even getting groceries into one of those things is a challenge, unless you're going every few days. I like Miatas, but if you're only going to have one car and want something sporty, there are better options out there.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Iran was one of these countries until 2020 or so. Except Trump backed out of the JCPOA for spurious reasons and while Iran continued to abide by its terms after the withdrawal, it led to a growing distrust of the West among Iranians. So in 2021 they end up with a more conservative government since all electing moderates does is get you burned. The idea that a deal would be useful now only works under the idea that Trump is extremely petty and backed out of a perfectly good deal because he didn't like the fact that Obama negotiated it. You can bitch about specifics all you want, but Iran was getting inspected during this time. If you're going to make the argument that Iran was trying to covertly violate the deal then fine, that gives an excuse to pull out, but if that's the case it makes no sense to try for another one.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Especially since Iran is also retaliating in the UAE and other Gulf states that are aligned with the US. It's a naked attempt to get them to apply diplomatic pressure. These countries don't like Iran, but here in the US we don't have to worry about air raid sirens. A place like Dubai that has spent decades trying to reinvent itself as a hub of international commerce and banking is in a tight spot if it becomes a target.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
That was my point. If the violations were immaterial, there was no reason to cancel the old deal. If the violations were material, then there's no reason to believe they would honor a new deal.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
What bargaining table? They had a deal yen years ago but Trump broke it. Trump can't stick to deals he makes; why would anyone trust him to hold up his end?
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Apparently he's still alive. News reports I have seen say he was targeted but the Iranians deny that he was killed. I'm not sure what difference he was supposed to make since he's 86 and if he dropped dead tomorrow of natural causes I doubt it would bring an end to the government. His predecessor was more important than he ever was and his death didn't change much politically.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Isn't this just an admission of failure? Last summer we were told that the strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities had solved the problem, or at least crippled the program to the point that there would be no way they could get a bomb in the foreseeable future. Now we apparently need to take out the regime, which isn't going to happen without a committed ground war. Trump says he wants a deal, but his deals tend to fall apart once he decides he doesn't like them, and he cancelled the last deal presumably because he didn't trust them to abide by the terms. This war is going nowhere.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
He hasn't committed anything yet, just a bunch of airstrikes. I could be wrong, but I doubt he'll commit to ground troops. He'll kill a bunch of top military and government leaders and declare victory, meanwhile nothing has changed. Same story as Venezuela.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I never watched it, but rapper Blueprint was saying 20 years ago "Used to have world news now it's all videos / replaced Tavis Smiley with reality shows". So I'm guessing that ship has already sailed. If you want to see what a black TLC looks like, watch WE TV. I used to watch them for reruns of Law & Order, and I'd see ads for their original programming. They swept up Mama June after her TLC run ended for the original series "Mama June: From Not to Hot" until she got arrested, when it became "Mama June: Family Crisis". They leant into the black demographic with "Growing Up Hip Hop", "The Braxtons", "Wiggin' Out with Tokyo Stylez", and "Bossip: Black Gossip". At some point it became WE TV and AllBlack.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Well, I for one am looking forward to BET showing more Hebrew Israelite content and Sammy Davis Jr. specials.
And you clearly misunderstand the preamble to the Constitution. You see, when they said "ourselves and our posterity", they were clearly only referring to a select group of people, i.e. those whose signatures appear at the end of the document. If you happen to be directly descended rom one of those fine gentlemen, you're welcome to stay. If not, THEN GET OUT.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
but deporting Somalis from Minnesota is just impossible we are told.
Over 90% of Somalis in Minnesota are US Citizens, and most of the rest are legal permanent residents. I'm unaware of any legal mechanism for deportation of US citizens. About half of them are naturalized and could theoretically be stripped of citizenship, but that would require finding fraud in the naturalization process, which would require actual evidence.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Warner Brothers and Paramount were both founded by Jews. I don't see how this changes much.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
I'm going to ping @self_made_human here because my response may be of interest to him. I think it's safe to say that this experiment is over for the time being, and here are my takeaways:
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Opus is the best model currently available. It is the only model that recognized the Wikipedia error, and the only one that could tell the difference between 45Cat comments and 45Cat information. It also had the courtesy to tell me when it couldn't access a source.
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That being said, data access issues aside, it still made mistakes. It didn't pull the correct FtH date from RYM. For GRoL, it said "As a pre-1978 release, the copyright registration would appear in the physical Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series, Part 5 (Music), likely the July–December 1966 volume." Well, sort of. Sound recordings weren't registered until 1972. The song may have been registered as a composition, but the date of publication wouldn't necessarily be the date of the single's release. A cover, for example, would have been registered with the original recording. This gets even sketchier when we're talking about the days when songs were primarily published as sheet music. Incidentally, the registration date for this (which I hadn't thought to look up until now) is May 2, 1966.
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It also says that "[The Copyright] volumes exist on archive.org but text searches did not surface this specific entry, likely due to OCR limitations on the scanned pages." These volumes have been scanned and are available as text files. The OCR isn't particularly good, but it does exist, and there were no issues with this entry.
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If this takes 20 minutes and consults 711 sources, what the hell is it doing? There are not 711 reputable sources to consult on first pass, maybe 50, tops. After that the instructions were pretty clear that if it had a Billboard date to work with that. I can understand it doing a deep dive if it couldn't pin down a date, or if the request had been open-ended, but once it found the Billboard review that should have been it. This only takes me a couple minutes to do manually unless there's a really sticky wicket, but that's rare. If the release date is on RYM it takes seconds because that's where I look first. I have no desire to automate a task so as to make it take longer.
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It took 2500 words to give me two dates. On the one hand, I appreciate the report. On the other, it's overkill, especially when it was mostly peripheral information like what the lead single was and who did the mastering. This is a minor quibble, but there's something ironic about automating a task and it taking longer to read the output than to look up the answer myself. I don't mind as much as this is testing, but if I were to actually use this I'd trust it enough to just spit out dates.
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The lack of data access is a big issue and might make this whole LLM thing unfeasible. If LLMs can't access data without workarounds, then their utility is limited. Three of the most important archives for this project—US Copyright, Archive.org, and ARSA—are evidently excluded. There are other ones that aren't relevant to this particular exercise but that I suspect would suffer from similar problems. Instead it's relying primarily on Billboard, and that stops working when you get to a release that wasn't reviewed in Billboard and didn't chart. A fourth site, the normally reliable RYM, also had data access issues. The site's API has been in development for years and is pretty much vaporware at this point, and they aggressively block scrapers, Anthropic's included. My guess is that whatever Anthropic is using to scrape their data is getting only partial pulls before getting shut out, and the result is that it can't be relied on to have the most updated data.
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I tried to make it easy for the LLM by allowing it to rely on Wikipedia and RYM dates, and Claude, to its credit, caught the Wikipedia error. But that was an obvious error. When doing some followup work I found an error on RYM, and I'm less confident that Claude could have caught it (I'm honestly surprised it got past the mods). What happened was I was looking up copyright dates for the other albums Claude mentioned as being released around the same time as FtH, one of which was Love Trippin' by The Spinners. Claude gives a release date of 5/27/1980. The copyright date, however, is 6/2/1980. I list the copyright dates as secondary because they occasionally contradict a well-established release date, but I give them high reliability, so I wanted to investigate the May 27 date further, so I looked at the update notes from RYM. The citation was to an unsourced Wikipedia page, so I have no idea where that date came from. I might be tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, except, that update was made just last year. Prior to that, RYM listed the release date as June 1980, and the source for that was liner notes from a CD boxed set. While Claude correctly pointed out an issue with the liner notes to a Turtles CD, they are, for all intents and purposes, as official as a source can get. If I have that and a copyright date suggesting a June release, I'm going with a June release when the only evidence to the contrary is an unsourced Wikipedia article. To be fair, this is not something I would have normally caught on my own. However, if an LLM is doing this deep a dive, I would expect it to catch that mistake.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
He claimed he was there to meet with Italian police about security in advance of the 2028 games in Los Angeles. That would seem plausible if the guy wasn't already under criticism for having a suspicious number of "business trips" to cities that just so happen to be holding events he wants to attend. The meeting was the day prior and lasted less than an hour. Meanwhile, he attended two hockey games while he was there from Friday night to Sunday night and attended two hockey games, plus a couple other "official" events that were basically just 20 minute photo ops. I can assure you that if, at any of the firms I've worked for, I used an hour-long meeting as a justification to put plane tickets and hotel rooms on the company credit card in cities where the Penguins happened to be playing away games that I attended, I would, at the very least, get a stern talking to, assuming they didn't fire me on the spot.
It depends on the state but there usually is an exception depending on the circumstances. In PA owners of sole proprietorships and privately-held LLCs can represent themselves in small claims court, where the jurisdictional limit is $12,000 and procedure is more relaxed. Once you get to big boy court things are dramatically different. Judges aren't going to let you slide on deadlines and procedural errors. (It's one thing to be unable to meet a deadline or file something wrong, but you have to get permission from the court or opposing counsel and rectify any errors as soon as they're discovered. Opposing counsel is often willing to cut you some slack since lawyers in a city deal with one another all the time and want to be extended the same courtesy. A pro-se litigant isn't going to have that expectation.) It's really easy to fuck things up, and that's before you even get into the legal arguments. You might as well make a rule that they can save themselves the trouble and go straight to remedies.
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