jadero

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

My favourite was a report that showed a percentage increase in profit that was higher than the percentage increase in revenue. Is that not the very definition of "higher margin?"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

What the fuck?

Also, pushing this on to the AI hides those responsible.

Way back in the 1970s I had to appeal decisions made by government agencies. A common starting point was to shrug and say "that's what the computer says" as if there were no humans setting parameters.

In this case, AI is doing just one thing: whatever the humans decide is appropriate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Being an art teacher isn't an excuse. Everyone should have a basic grasp of the issues and I would argue that being a teacher in any subject elevates that from "should" to "must."

I would hope that art is in our schools not merely to promote a leisure activity but to examine different ways of viewing the world. Doing that requires more than just drawing counterfactual maps.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Which borders should a Palestinian state be given?

Personally, I say go back to 1967, do a "land back" divestment of territory taken and make reparations consisting of both money and supportive resources. With international support, given the role of the international community.

Why do you feel that the border results of that particular war matter more than any other war (that came before, or that has come after)?

Because that was, as I understand it (which is far from complete), the final straw for the Palestinian nation's quest for autonomy and security.

Nobody seems to be able to answer these questions without massive hypocrisy when the same logic is applied to other countries whose borders were also formed as the result of wars.

It's not hypocrisy to grow and change over time, as long as one acknowledges the failures of the past.

It's like there's some sort of cut-off date right after WW2 where people feel nobody should be allowed to invade anyone else.

Exactly! This is the "growing and changing" I spoke of earlier. We know better. We know that nations need autonomy and security, that countries need autonomy and security, and that individuals need autonomy and security. In the years and decades following the two world wars (especially WWII), a very large fraction of the planet came together under the auspices of international organizations, including the UN, in recognition of those facts with the desire to fix things, once and for all.

There have been and will continue to be missteps and outright failures. Neither should cause us to dismiss the goals or give them up as a lost causes. Instead, every failure should rally us in a redoubling of effort.

In my opinion, that is what we are seeing, a redoubling of effort in response to an abject failure to conform to the new standards we have set for ourselves as a global community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

This sounds like just standard traffic analysis. Nothing to do with WhatsApp or any other messaging platform. It's been in use since at least WWII.

Who is talking to whom? How often? Under what circumstances? How do patterns of communication correlate with events? Who are the hubs of communication (ie leaders)?

The big difference between then and now is that instead of needing rooms full of people drawing graphs by hand, there is software to handle it. In turn, that means it's not really important to have initial suspects to get started, because the computers are quite happy to tease out interesting signals from total communications. That also increases the likelihood of false positives, but the kinds of people who do traffic analysis at this level aren't usually the kinds of people who worry about a little collateral damage.

It seems like a pretty tall order to construct a system of communication that is useful for coordinating activities, affordable to operate, and secure against traffic analysis. At best, you'll end up back in a situation where other intelligence will be required to identify a manageable pool of suspects.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Too many people have no concept of how great the change is. We got married in the late 1970s. My wife's high school education and receptionist job was enough to get us into a decent 2-bedroom apartment, buy her a brand new motorcycle, and pay for my schooling in a trade. My trade was enough to upgrade our apartment, pay for my hotrodding hobby, let her quit to stay home with our son, buy a camper for weekend trips around the province and vacation trips around Canada and USA, all while saving enough for a down payment on a house with double-digit mortgage rates.

A few financial setbacks (extended layoffs mostly) meant starting almost from scratch (we kept our home but lost all savings and investments) in the early 90s and completely from scratch (lost our home, too) in the early 2000s. It took both of us to barely afford the same apartment of our youth. We finally gave up in 2011, changed careers and moved into a 1968 mobile home on a leased lot in the middle of nowhere. We're back to being able to afford leisure, although on a much, much smaller scale than in our youth.

We're still in that 1968 mobile home on a leased lot. It has apparently quadrupled in value since 2011, so if we were forced to start over again, it would be out of reach. We'd be homeless.

Divorce? Fortunately, that has never been on the table, but it's been at least 2 decades since we'd have been able to contemplate single life from a financial perspective.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I agree, but a big part of whatever problems there are with this program is that the various agencies aren't actually holding up their end of the bargain.

The program really should be primarily true social housing, not this public-private partnership, but the checks and balances should at least work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

They did eventually get around to mentioning in passing some of the reasons this particular program fails in some ways. It would have been a much better piece if they had started with the objective to compare and contrast programs that actually work (Medicine Hat, last time I looked) and those that don't (this one, apparently).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We only alter those halls by gaining access to them

To a first approximation, no person or group who has entered the existing halls of power has done more than cosmetic redecoration.

We need complete renovation or destructive replacement. We do not get that by playing their game by their interpretation of their rules, but by forcing the creation of new interpretations, new rules, and even entire new games.

We do that not by aspiring to join their club, but by exercising the power inherent in mass movements in opposition. We don't need to change who holds the reins, we need to discard the very harnesses that bind us.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

That is just a natural consequence of the length of time spent in the struggle and in the study of the problems faced and the most effective strategies and tactics for addressing those problems.

As men's movements come to understand their goals and the true causes of their problems, they, too, will develop effective strategies and tactics to achieve those goals.

I only hope that as the variations rights movements mature, they come to realize that the problem is not who limits our opportunities for success on our own terms, but that anyone does. The intersectionalists get closer than "closed" groups, but many still make the mistake of trying to gain access to the halls of power rather than destroying the very halls themselves. The powerful don't actually care who finds their way into positions of power as long as the power structures themselves remain intact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Thanks. I don't understand much of what points they're trying to make and disagree with some aspects of what I do understand.

They seem to be saying that intersectionality is a dilution of power welcomed and promoted by the powerful. In fact, intersectionality as a philosophy of struggle was invented by the financialists in the 1970s as they struggled for their very existence. They applied a number of different labels over time, the most common of which is "big tent conservatism". It is how they gathered everyone from Christians to social conservatives into a battle against taxes, publicly funded social programs, publicly owned infrastructure, regulation of corporate activity, and the employee class.

The usual thing is for the right to steal the language and symbols of the left and turn them into insults and symbols of their own power. It happened with the swastika, it's currently happening with the Canadian flag, and "woke" has been turned into an insult so egregious that the original owners now fear to use it.

Intersectionality is, for a change, the left stealing from the right. Given that the financialists invented this philosophy, it should come as no surprise that they know how to twist it to their own ends. But that doesn't mean we should let them divide us for conquest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We used to have a saying regarding the many perceived negatives of Saskatchewan (climate, scenery, whatever). It keeps the riffraff out. Unfortunately, it turned out that the riffraff make up the majority of who stayed!

I stay because of the low population density. It makes it easy to avoid the riffraff 😉

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