SkoomaDentist
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User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
8d ago
Most everything seem to come down to the college degree bubble.
You can't blame this on college degree bubble or student loans. The phenomenon is strictly driven from above where secretaries have been cut years ago in the name of "efficiency" while ignoring the basic fact that having a doctor do all the admin work is much less cost efficient than when you have someone who's both good at it, at least somewhat likes doing it and has a salary that's half or less of a full doctor's salary.
The middle and upper management boom is typical bureacracy doing its natural thing and would otherwise be a fairly minor source of inefficiency except they need to pretend to do something useful and thus disrupt actual work as well as make it appear as if the useful administration (ie. low level secretaries) wasn't already cut deep into the bone.
SkoomaDentist
9d ago
Honestly, it might work better with more administrators if that means that GPs don't need to spend time writing actual paper letters to refer their patients to specialists, and similar kinds of bureaucratic nonsense.
The problem in quite a few western countries seems to be that there are too many mid and upper level administrators and an order of magnitude too few low level secretaries.
Europeans become more anti-American and wrestle their governments into reducing support for US plans and military logistics
Trump's stated policy of ”we take what we want from you, no matter if you’re allies or not” is already speedrunning this with little need for anything related to the third world.
SkoomaDentist
10d ago
I maintain that Germans hate the freedom of others more than they love their own. Tell me it isn't so.
Ordnung muss sein.
Obviously Musk. Trump is his PR representative.
Because there’s a specific law against offering such payments before the funds have been appropriated.
Presumably that law applies also against making binding commitments to not fire those persons for that duration.
SkoomaDentist
15d ago
Except they can’t offer 8 months pay since there isn’t yet a budget after March.
SkoomaDentist
15d ago
Completely. I've known people with dyslexia for decades and they have normal or better than normal skills in verbal reasoning. They just have a specific dysfunction that causes easily problems with reading and writing that are easy to recognize and have a specific pattern to them.
The point doesn't have to fit in a single paragraph but the comment absolutely does have to get into it within a paragraph.
Or to put it another way, FFS people, stop waffling around like Scott and start with your point right away. Then you can expand around it after you've shown the reader that you're not just wasting their time.
SkoomaDentist
16d ago
I will skip over any post that doesn't get to the point in the first two sentences.
I already do that for anything that doesn’t get to the point within the first paragraph. I strongly recommend everyone else to do the same and think this place would become much better if everyone did that.
SkoomaDentist
17d ago
The obvious question is then how good is 25 pounds of black powder compared to just driving a car into a group of people?
It's not like you can easily pack it very tightly against a building etc since it's, well, 25 pounds, so just slightly smaller than 2 gallons of water.
SkoomaDentist
17d ago
I hate that every long form essay now comes under suspicion of being generated by AI.
I don't see this as such a bad thing. Maybe it'll make people to actually get to the point faster instead of doing a Scott and spending pages and pages of pointlessly waffling around the periphery.
SkoomaDentist
17d ago
Europes nakedness probably won’t work here due to many reasons
What is "Europe's nakedness" anyway?
I live in Finland and the way people approach nudity is absolutely very different from even Germany, nevermind something farther away like Italy.
It's also highly context dependent. Yes, you go to sauna naked (it might even be coed if you're in your 20s and at the summer cottage with friends). You might also see a bunch of students running naked around the block as a dare if you lived close to the student housing in a university town. If someone pulled a stunt like Kanye, people would think they're crazy and either pulling a shitty and inappropriate performance art stunt or really need to see a psychiatrist and get back on their meds.
SkoomaDentist
20d ago
What income do you figure being skilled working class begins at? Moving from the US to Europe in the postdoc bracket (so about $3k/month after tax or a bit more)
That's in the upper quintile for skilled trades in this part of Northern Europe. The average net salary for electricians is around $2500.
SkoomaDentist
27d ago
I don't think your Pink Floyd comparison works but we already do value Neil Diamond over the Rolling Stones except as a cultural icon.
SkoomaDentist
30d ago
They are using AI to train humanoid movements for dynamic locomotion, or at least an approximation of such. Uh ok no easy way to say this, its sexbots.
Ah, finally the "basic pleasure models" we were promised by Blade Runner are arriving.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
Is there a site with a short layman understandable summary of each?
I just happened into this youtube video from Justin Hawkins (of The Darkness fame) where he goes over a research paper (I believe this one) that gives three (apparently) fairly well researched factors for at least a part of that. The factors are decreased harmonic complexity, lack of timbral variation and lack of dynamics. I'm not qualified to really comment on harmonic complexity but the lack of timbral variation and (complete) lack of dynamics are some of main reasons I listen to very litte music made after the mid 90s. It's not an accident that after that started the era of Digital Audio Workstations and ubiquituous multiband compressors & brickwall limiter use.
Wings of Pegasus has made lots of videos where he analyzes and shows by example how autotune overuse is now the norm, with even reissues from classic singers being autotuned "because that's what you're supposed to do". This definitely affects the way music sounds now.
Billy Hume tackled the question of copy pasting and quantization in modern recordings in a pretty decent video. Yet another factor that makes everything samey sounding.
I'm tempted to write a "this is why modern music sucks" post but I suspect I'd just be shouted down by people who claim it's all because "You just listen to the music that you liked in my formative years!" (plot twist: I only found the majority of the music I like nowadays when I was in my late 20s or older, when it had already been out of style for decades).
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
At the risk of being satirical, can I nominate this?
I'm slightly disappointed you didn't link to the 10 hours version.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
I can understand using the term "soda" and "coke" is of course obvious but "pop"? Seriously? What kind of idiot thought about that term?
The other day I was thinking why 80s music was so much better than modern music and then it hit me: It's the saxophone solos!
What are some of your favorite songs with epic sax solos?
I'll start with Girl Meets Boy - Waiting For A Star To Fall (solo at 3:07) and Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street (solo first at 0:24 and then repeats at other times).
Edit: No need to limit suggestions to the 80s. Epic sax is epic sax!
David Lynch died yesterday which was terrible news.
It felt weird to find out about his passing via a post on /r/guitar. I didn't know he was a guitarist, nevermind that he played a Parker Fly. The man was as eccentric in his choice there as in his movies.
SkoomaDentist
1mo ago
We found a witch. May we ban him?
SkoomaDentist
2mo ago
are Metalheads still a distinct, recognizable class of music fans?
My previous job was the first job I’ve had in 20 years where none of my coworkers wore a metal band shirt. Yes, they very much are. Long (preferably black) hair, all black clothes, band shirt.
Gotta be honest, I didn't have it in my bingo cards for 2025 that Europe would need to start preparing against what looks to head towards a possible US invasion.
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