birb_cromble
No bio...
User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
1d ago
Rural mid Atlantic?
birb_cromble
1d ago
That is what dogs are for raising children.
My malamute used to earn her keep by killing rattlesnakes in the wood pile. I'm pretty sure I'd get a visit from the county if I made my kids do that.
birb_cromble
1d ago
You got lucky. My one cat drools like a Saint Bernard when she's happy.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Several years ago, my bank card was compromised, and when I went to use my credit card, it automatically locked because of "suspicious activity". This all happened on a three day weekend when I couldn't straighten it out easily. It taught me the value of having some cash on hand for essentials.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Audiences can actually get upset about a story not being realistic because the author was too accurate and didn't fit their misunderstanding.
My favorite example of this is older movies where they put hoofbeat foley over scenes where people are riding horses through a sandy desert. Hooves don't make that sound on sand, but people got uncomfortable watching scenes where the audio cue wasn't there.
birb_cromble
1d ago
This is going to play merry hell on owner-operators. Nobody's going to want to underwrite one guy with one truck.
birb_cromble
2d ago
multiple random and unpredictable 4 figure bills falling out of the fucking sky each month this year
You too? I feel like my wallet's been kicked in the balls this year.
But she's hyper risk averse, so it's unlikely to ever move
My partner is the same way. It took me about five years, but I finally talked her into setting up a Roth IRA a couple of years ago. She hates it, but she's doing it.
birb_cromble
2d ago
I'm not George, but the accent thing drives me nuts. I've lived all over the south, but the one that infused my speech patterns during the language forming part of my childhood was the Kentucky/Tennessee/West Virginia Appalachian accent.
It's distinct from the lowland accent that you hear in Eastern Virginia, which is itself somewhat distinct from what you hear in Georgia (and Atlanta has its own thing going on). Louisiana has two distinct accents (the northern one sounds more like Alabama). Western Kentucky and Tennessee sound different than the Eastern half.
Despite all that, the only one you ever really see portrayed in the media is an abominable blend of Georgia and West Kentucky. It doesn't make sense. It's like blending a Boston accent and a Brooklyn accent into one voice for a character who was born and raised in West Covina.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Don't get your hopes up. That project has been in limbo for a long time now
birb_cromble
2d ago
The idea that high schoolers in 1995 would listen to Devo would have seemed laughable.
I went to three high schools in two different states during the 90s, and "Whip It" was something I'd hear in the parking lot every week. The only thing that had as much staying power was Limp Bizkit.
birb_cromble
2d ago
If it makes you feel any better, think of it as insurance.
If you invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 five years ago, you'd get a 77-78% return. Amortized over 5 years, that's about ninety-seven cents a day. How much is it worth to you to have cash handy if your card gets stolen and your bank is closed? Is it a dollar a day?
birb_cromble
2d ago
I think so. I've seen Korean stocks in both international and emerging market funds.
birb_cromble
2d ago
I'm extremely conservative by the standards of this forum, and I keep $1,000 cash in my house. That's enough to get me a couple of weeks of my bank account gets hacked or something.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Are you doing a bit here?
birb_cromble
2d ago
Ireland has been pumping out a lot of interesting, low budget horror for years now. If you haven't seen A Dark Song, I'd highly recommend it.
birb_cromble
2d ago
What the hell is going on in Korea?
South Korea's stock market suffered a sharp selloff on Friday after a historic rally pushed valuations and investor positioning to extreme levels, exposing how heavily the market had become dependent on a handful of artificial intelligence-linked semiconductor stocks. The benchmark Kospi plunged 6%, wiping out early gains after briefly crossing the 8,000 mark for the first time in history during morning trade.
Is anyone putting money into Korean equities? There is a lot of momentum in that area, but momentum investing is a risky game. In some ways, it feels like the Korean market is a preview of the US one. They're smaller, and growth even more concentrated in the semiconductor --> GPU --> data center --> AI chain than the US is.
birb_cromble
5d ago
So if anyone is on the fence about it and has struggled with depression or anxiety for a while, I'd recommend at least trying some.
Has there been a new generation of antidepressant since 2012 or so? I have known four people who started antidepressants and then blew their brains out within a year. As somebody who's struggled with depression in the past, that scares the shit out of me.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I'm back on track with my goal. Spending is now $172.96 less than this time last year, despite dental bills and home repairs.
I know I have a few more big expenses coming up, but it's nice to see it for now.
birb_cromble
6d ago
In my teens, and early twenties I split time between agricultural labor, food service, and construction. After that, I ended up in logistics before moving into software. I don't think I'd say any of those would meet those criteria.
birb_cromble
6d ago
The problem is that the majority of people using AI are too stupid to be lazy in the proper ways.
especially the ones who deep down always knew that their intellectual labor is neither extremely intellectual nor much useful
I'm always amazed at how often this refrain comes up, with different explanations every time. For some reason, he idea of bullshit jobs is one has immense staying power.
Whenever it does come up, I often wonder how one would separate the useless, lazy, stupid jobs from the essential ones. When I was younger I held a similar view, but over time I realized that the single strongest predictor for whether I thought a job was bullshit or not was how little I knew about its actual day to day work.
As a simple example, take project managers. A bad one is terrible, and is probably one of those things that a lot of people woud say is neither "intellectual" nor "useful". I had that opinion once upon a time. Eventually, I worked on a project with a good project manager and realized that they actually do an insane amount of work and provide a significant force multiplier for the rest of the people involved. It felt fantastic to just... work on the problem.
That's one of my biggest concerns about the current LLM frenzy. It's largely being driven by a small, cloistered group of people who really buy into the "bullshit jobs" premise, and spend more time saying "well couldn't you Just X" instead of figuring out why things are the way they are. Systems evolve into specific shapes for a reason. Tribal knowledge is real.
I feel like we're going to be forcefully reminded of those facts if we keep it up.
birb_cromble
6d ago
US inflation numbers are looking pretty rough.
How do things feel on the ground around you? What are you doing to compensate?
Around me, I'm seeing price increases in groceries, but not as bad as some previous spikes over the last five years. I've scaled back my beef and seafood intake, and I'm buying more pork and chicken to pick up the slack.
The fuel shock has me driving less, and buying at my local Sam's Club instead of at whatever gas station happens to be nearby. It's not a huge part of my budget, but the fact that the price is highly visible as I go about my day makes the psychological aspect a lot more pressing.
birb_cromble
6d ago
There are lots of tools out there that are used to detect LLM-produced writing or code. Well, the same tools can be used to reject code that is too human if you flip the final check!
An acquaintance of mine got slapped with the same thing recently. Management has since walked it back because it caused an avalanche of technical debt, but at no point did they ever explain why that kpi was instituted in the first place. Did you get any kind of explanation of the goal they're trying to hit?
birb_cromble
7d ago
I'm not the right person to ask. Once I start a series, it has to get truly horrendous before I'll abandon it.
My mechanic just sent out a notification that their allocation of motor oil is being cut by the dealer network, and to expect higher prices as a result. I looked online, and rumors abound that AutoZone is experiencing a similar problem.
This got me thinking about just how pervasive petroleum and petroleum byproducts are in the modern supply chain. The last time we saw prices like this was 2008-2012, and I'm struggling to make a comparison. The fallout of the financial crisis was so strong that it masked a lot of the effects.
What do you think will happen if the strait stays clogged up for another month? Six months? A year?
In the short term, I think we're going to see a lot of industries try to normalize a "fuel surcharge". I'm already seeing it locally from landscaping companies. I could see big logistics companies like Amazon try it as well. Beyond that, I don't think I have any predictions that are worth saying out loud.
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