sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
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User ID: 636
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
I live in a suburb right now and it's a 50 minute drive to the nearest proper city, where I can spend another 15 minutes looking for parking.
Looking at pics on the Internet is so far away from what any humans before the rise of the otaku would have recognized as "participating in culture" that I'm not even sure what you mean.
What exactly is the problem as an adult male?
OP's point is that there's no benefit to living in the suburbs as a single adult male and nothing to do. Is your rebuttal "that's not true, you can drive half an hour or more to a place with something to do, what's the problem"?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
Nobody checks any notifications bars when your phone is in your pocket or sitting on your table.
On Android, apps can't turn on the microphone at all while running in the background. Accessing it while running in the foreground requires a permanent notification while the foreground process is running. To start a background process, the app must be open, so it can't start a background process while the phone is at rest.
In any case, Android maintains an audit log of all microphone accesses. It would, again, be trivial for people to demonstrate that the Facebook app is accessing the mic while the phone is locked or at rest. Somehow, nobody has produced such evidence.
A tiny green dot is hard to miss.
I agree it's hard to miss, especially because (at least on Android) everything in the notification bar is monochrome (except I guess a low battery indicator).
Also, I am not entirely convinced there's no way to turn on the microphone (hardware) without showing the green dot (software).
This is the second time this week that someone has responded to my comment with an objection that I already covered in a grandparent.
This claim requires that Facebook et al have a backdoor that's never been detected in all these years.
I expect not reading from plebbit but I feel the bare minimum of engagement on this forum should be reading the conversation you are joining.
It's especially perplexing since you thought I was talking about granting microphone permissions at first, but somehow that's not a load bearing part of your argument and your confidence that I'm wrong seems unaffected.
It's be very easy to lay all these doubt to rest - make a hardware microphone mute switch, that physically (electrically) disconnects the microphone hardware. I'd trust that.
Hmm, so you don't trust the microphone notification because you're not able to look at your notification bar, but you do trust a switch which may not do anything (when's the last time you disassembled your phone?) and that might get switched while your phone is in your pocket. Let's say, that's not a typical perspective among consumers.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6hr ago
If you've got a green microphone chip in your notifications bar because Facebook is listening to you, then it's not really a mystery if Facebook is listening to you or not and this conversation would be over.
However, this doesn't happen and nobody has produced an explanation of how it could happen without the OS notifying the user that the microphone is enabled.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
9hr ago
Or when Obama and Bush told Europe the same about defense spending.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
9hr ago
That was a clever use of Internet permissions, which were requested by the apps, rather than a covert usage of permissions that the apps weren't supposed to have. There's a difference between using a permission creatively and using a permission that you're not supposed to have.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
I'm not conspiracy minded but the Trudeau thing is irresistible to me. I hope it gets confirmed or refuted in my lifetime.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
Modern operating systems inform you when the microphone is on. This claim requires that Facebook et al have a backdoor that's never been detected in all these years.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
That sounds like interesting subgroup analysis.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2d ago
From January 2022 through October 2024, it was revised downward 21 times averaging 50k, and revised upward 13 times, averaging 25k. So, for every three times they revised downward, they revised upward twice, and across those average five revisions, they overestimated by 20k per month.
Okay, I'm glad we agree it's not the same direction every time.
The numbers were cooked, constantly, to make Biden look good.
Huh?
Trump I, Jan 2017 - Dec 2020: Average revision -11k. 24 down, 24 up.
Biden, Jan 2021 - Dec 2024: Average revision +25k. 22 down, 26 up.
Trump II, Jan 2025 - Jul 2025 (latest data with 3rd revision available): Average revision -70k. 6 down, 0 up.
We've got a pretty balanced number of up and down revisions during Trump I and Biden. The average adjustment during Biden's term was up, and during Trump's terms it's down.
So if you think the initial numbers are cooked and the revision is more accurate, then in fact the cooked numbers were unfavorable to Biden and favorable to Trump.
If you think the initial numbers are more accurate and the revision is cooked, then it's not clear why it's even necessary to cook the revision. It should be just as easy to cook the initial number instead, and then there's no pesky revisions that people can point to.
I picked the start date because that's when the numbers started to look normal after COVID nonsense.
Is the BLS not able to cook the numbers due to COVID?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3d ago
I already indicated the metric in my original post.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
I'd be pretty shocked if there's a regulation that CCTV footage must be retained for over a year. Any evidence for that?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
Problem is that the US is higher trust than ten years ago. Maybe you can add more epicycles, perhaps some kind of inertial metaphor where we are paying suddenly for the decrease in trust that ended ten years ago, but it's getting to be a little much at this point.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
And yet:
In fact, social trust has been declining since the seventies, but has been on the upswing for the past ten years.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
The pandemic response and related events permanently altered my relationship to my government and my nation.
I gathered that. What I'm saying is, this isn't the case for the normies around me ("nobody I know still cares much about... What people did during covid"), so I am skeptical that it's driving the vibecession.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
I admit this could be my bubble but nobody I know still cares about covid, or what people did during covid, despite me knowing several people who were very covid paranoid.
I kept wondering when Scott would finally ask, "is this the result of American society transitioning from a relatively homogeneous, high-trust society, to a fragmented, 'diverse,' mostly low-trust society?"
This doesn't explain why there's a step change in consumer sentiment after 2020. A society doesn't become low trust overnight, but the vibes basically shifted overnight (and remain low despite the end of covid). In fact, social trust has been declining since the seventies, but has been on the upswing for the past ten years. That's fatal to the social trust theory of the vibecession without stooping to something like "I know the trust measures are bogus because I disagree".
That fact alone is enough, in my view, to discount explanations founded on secular trends in community, etc that have been going on for sixty years or more. Perhaps only high mortgage rates and a frozen housing market remain as plausible explanations of "wtf happened in 2020".
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
Job numbers don't get revised in the same direction every time.
https://infogram.com/2023-to-2025-and-differences-1h7v4pdkqr1084k
This is missing the recent downard adjustment of 900k, but the trend is obvious - numbers are frequently adjusted up as well. In November 2021 job numbers were adjusted upwards by nearly half a million.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5d ago
He bought 9V connectors at the end of 2019 and planted the bomb in the beginning of 2021. Are we to believe that microcenter retained CCTV footage of every cash register for over a year?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5d ago
Do you sit in front of it in the evening or in the morning?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5d ago
That's a different question, of course - they presumably stop calling themselves vegetarians.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6d ago
Indians (I'm projecting a bit) will keep their heads down until they become citizens. But after naturalization or in the 2nd generation, they start feeling the entitled to free expression. Chinese Americans in comparison continue to stay quiet, as if they're guests in their own country.
I'm a little confused by @crushedoranges talking about immigrants importing tedious internecine conflict or even assassins and you talking about free expression.
I mean, harping about khalistan is free expression, it's true, but it's crazy to suggest that you're not really integrated unless you're agitating against some other group from the old country, and it's especially absurd when you're talking about the second generation who often hasn't even set foot in the old country.
Integration isn't about doing what your grandparents did, except in the new country. Integration is about doing as the locals do. And it would really be unconscionable for Americans of German extraction to go on and on about Alsaceshit. Nobody wants to hear that.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6d ago
Note that whole most anchovies and sardines are wild caught, tilapia is mostly farmed and has the usual factory farming problems (and I'd expect, although I haven't checked, that the supply of wild tilapia is inelastic and increased demand for tilapia results in more farmed tilapia).
What can I say, you guys were right about stuff.
Don't look at me, I'm a vegetarian.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
6d ago
FWIW, you can get omega 3s from algae oil as well (which is what I do). I have to say I'm somewhat surprised that you ended up eating fish after the interminable debates about animal rights in the pages of this very forum.
My friend, I live in a bedroom community of nearly a hundred thousand people. This is the reality of life in the bay area.
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