Rov_Scam
5hr ago
My mother wasn't home most evenings when I was between ages 4 and 7 because she was going to night school to become an RN, which paid more than my dad's job as a machinist. No, they aren't doctors, but most of the menial work you describe is done by Aides, LPNs, Medical Assistants, orderlies, and housekeepers. You don't need a degree to empty bedpans. I doubt the state has any mandatory training requirements for whatever you do, but you don't seem to consider it menial.
Rov_Scam
5hr ago
As per the oft-misattributed quote, they aren't paying her for what she does, but to leave afterward.
Rov_Scam
7hr ago
If it makes you feel any better, a guy like Dac Prescott makes more in one weekend than you probably will after taxes in your entire working career, though it can be argued that he has to do more for the money. I wouldn't worry too much about AI. If it were all it's cracked up to be you'd have heard at least one story about someone who is making high-end prostitute level income from software he wrote without the help of a staff, and if such stories exist (cue links to prove I'm an idiot), they aren't being heavily publicized. Instead all you hear about is how software companies are telling their employees to use more AI, a trend that appears to be coming to an end now that the bills are in the mail. Supposedly on unnamed company spent $500 million on Claude in a single month, and the rumor is that it's Microsoft, as they cancelled their subscription recently. I don't know if this story is true, but if the impressive Q1 revenue growth shown by these companies was due to the short-lived tokenmaxing trend, there may be some pain when they don't look so good next time around.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
The AI radiologist has the same problem as the self-driving car and the AI lawyer. Tech companies can tout their products all they want, but unless they're a value add for a radiologist who isn't getting fired, they aren't going to be adopted. Whenever you hire a professional to do something, part of the cost is paying for the work, but another part of the cost is paying for someone else to be responsible for the work. I can do a lot of things on my own car, but I'm not touching anything that can cause catastrophic damage if I fuck it up. Even if taking it to a mechanic doesn't reduce this risk, if the mechanic fucks up they're responsible for it. Same thing with the radiologist—if it misses a serious problem who is going to take responsibility in a malpractice suit? The hospital? The tech company? Considering that both have spent decades vehemently denying that they have any responsibility for how end-users use their products or licensed professionals under their employ, as the case may be, I doubt either of these is going to change their position just because of AI. The first lawsuit will likely suck up whatever cost savings they see, and I doubt the carriers would be on board.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Not really. Most of what was eliminated has less to do with "job creation" and more to do with specific circumstances that only apply to certain industrial processes. For a made-up example, suppose lithium ion battery manufacturing has special considerations that mean that certain equipment needs an independent fire suppression system, some processes must be separated from others, and some materials need to be stored in special areas. Since most developing nations aren't going to have these kinds of facilities, there's no need to put them in a condensed version. But if you're going to have a comprehensive reference volume for municipalities with varying needs, then it makes sense to include these standards.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
What redirected funds? The story you linked to involved alleged misappropriation of funds by a nonprofit that Karen Bass has no relation to.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Who is allegedly committing this fraud? And for what? Karen Bass is the obvious answer, but I'm not sure what the motivation is. It's a top two election (nobody's getting 50%), and unless something disastrous happens, the chances of her finishing third are slim to none. She's going to have to run against somebody in the fall, and Pratt is probably an easier win than Raman.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Those are some nice theories, but is there any evidence of a proven (or at least widely-considered) rigged election where the vote counting was slow?
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Even for people who do use satellite view, I doubt most are looking at the dates. It seems like quite a stretch that someone who was considering voting for Pratt would switch their vote to Bass based on a Google satellite view, especially since the median voter is probably tuned in enough with local news that they'd know that the area hasn't been substantially rebuilt.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Yes, he's already the world's premiere space guy, and in the modern world that doesn't hold as much sway as being the world's premiere AI guy, which he clearly isn't. If he cared about SpaceX suffering then he wouldn't have made the wholly illogical decision to merge it with a money sink like xAI a couple months before launching an IPO. Since there's no real SpaceX competitor, the company can stand to suffer a little for the benefit of Elon's massive ego.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
See my comment below, but I'm guessing that running LLM queries on the largest search engine in the world even when nobody asks for it costs a lot of money and doesn't add much value, especially when you put it at the top. At least make people scroll past a couple sponsored results before they see it!
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Looping in @Mantergeistmann. My pet theory is that the whole thing is a massive cash grab to bootstrap xAI while the funding dries up for Claude and ChatGTP. The latter two keep saying they want to do IPOS soon, even though the CFO of xAI said the company is nowhere near ready, and there's talk that venture capital is pretty much tapped out. Meanwhile, these companies have contracts requiring them to spend eye-watering sums over the next few years, mostly on data centers that are already behind schedule. In the AI space, ChatGTP is the one everyone knows and has the top because of inertia, Claude is the "better" one that all the smart people use, and Gemini is the one backed by Google that everyone uses all the time without realizing it. The others are all bit players with no real path forward, xAI included.
If Musk can turn xAI into a barnacle riding the hull of another IPO, he can secure a lot of cash that would keep the company afloat. Since he's a true believer, I doubt he cares whether SpaceX suffers that much because he'd rather be the AI guy that he currently isn't. Claude and OpenAI are pushing for their IPOs out of desperation, where he at least has a legitimate one. Why else bundle xAI in with it when it was already part of another company? The other suspicious thing is that I've read reports of Grok getting progressively shittier since the merger was announced. There's some discussion that it's because of NSFW stuff, but that doesn't explain why people on the Heavy plan are getting rate limited to hell (it used to be practically unlimited image generation, now I've seen reports that it allows as few as 15 per day, which is less than you used to get on the free tier). The explanation I see is that since he already has a bunch of subscribers under opaque ToS that allow arbitrary limits, he needs to cut monthly compute costs to make the company look better to investors than it is, and can do so without losing too much revenue since only a small number of subscriptions will come due and not be renewed.
So I looked this up and apparently this is the coldest take out there, though I'm always proud of myself for coming to the same conclusions the experts do on my own. It could still be a shrewd business move if OpenAI and Anthropic run out of cash in the near future, but he could have just bought Anthropic outright.
Imagine the following alternate timeline: Crossfire Hurricane is a public investigation that plays a prominent role in the news cycle for the entire summer of 2016, culminating in Comey's announcement a few weeks before the election that he is considering recommending charges. Trump loses the election. Meanwhile, the FBI has quietly been conducting an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server and it only becomes public knowledge after a leak is published in the Weekly Standard on Halloween. Trump loses the election, and some on the right speculate that the FBI investigation played a major role in the loss. Would you consider Comey a Republican stooge in that scenario?
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Thanks for the comment, but I don't know that I'd read too much into it as far as synergy is concerned. Enough places have greater than 10% Irish ancestry that the map you linked to is really just a map of places with large Italian populations. I think the supposed affinity comes more from being Catholic, as Italians around here seem closer to Slavs than anyone else, and if you look at historical settlement patterns Italians and blacks tended to live in closer proximity than Italians and Irish.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
To be clear, my argument that it isn't contempt isn't that the plaintiffs did something scummy, but that intervening legislation mooted the order. Suppose A sues B because B built a structure that doesn't conform to setback requirements in the zoning ordinance, and the court issues and order that B demolish the structure within 90 days. If within that 90 days the municipality changes the zoning ordinance so that the structure now conforms to the setback requirements, the issue is mooted. You can ask that the court vacate the order, but as a strategic matter it's probably better to ignore it since there's no reason to incur additional legal fees if you don't have to. Wait for A to sue you for contempt and lose; no judge is going to impose sanctions in a case like that.
The one thing I will say about the plaintiff's failure to respond is that, theoretically at least, their non-response turned the state's motion into an unopposed motion, and while there's no mechanism akin to a default, they could have just submitted it to the court for a judge's signature, and he could have granted it regardless of the merits of the case. Realistically the judge will probably schedule a hearing, and only automatically grant the motion if the plaintiff fails to respond after being noticed, but it is something that can happen. Most of the unopposed motions I file, including motions for summary judgment that get us out of a case entirely, simply go to the judge without a hearing. But those are motions where the opponent has already told us they don't plan on opposing it, because most lawyers actually respond to our motions, and even if they don't, we deal with the same lawyers all the time and prefer to maintain cordial relations with them. But I'd have no problem being aggressive if it's some out of state firm that's being dickish and I don't care how much I piss them off.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
((I first want to apologize for not getting to your other question yet. It's kind of a complicated answer and I thought I had answered it already but I've been too busy lately to give a proper response. But I haven't forgotten about it.))
I'm not going to comment on the merits of the underlying arguments, but I'm addressing @magicalkittycat's assertion that this isn't just an AG blatantly ignoring a court order. I've looked at the docket and there's more going on here than the VCDG is claiming in their press releases. When the state filed their motion to vacate on May 4, they took the position that the order was already mooted by intervening legislation and that they were only filing the motion out of an abundance of caution. I can't read the individual filings, but the court granted an order on May 5, which I'm presuming was an administrative order reopening the case. In Virginia you have 10 days to respond to a motion. VCGA did not respond to this motion. They did not request an extension. There is nothing but radio silence on the docket. On May 27, after more than 20 days have passed, the AG directs the state police to begin enforcing the law. A day later VCGA is ready to roll with a motion to show cause. That same day, the state filed an objection to the plaintiff's motion and a hearing was scheduled for today at 1:30 pm. Yesterday, VCGA filed a response to the state's May 4 motion to vacate.
From where I sit, it looks like the VCGA deliberately failed to respond to the motion because their own motion which is heavy on bombast and light on substance asking for sanctions looks better in a press release than a boring reply brief that addresses the scintillating topic of mootness. Especially if they don't have any good arguments and know the case is dead in the water. They certainly didn't issue a press release when they filed the response yesterday. My guess is that after they moved to show cause the state objected that they weren't in a position to do so because they hadn't responded to the motion to vacate. Normally if a party opponent doesn't respond to a motion I'd get them on the horn and ask if they'd made a mistake or need more time, and if I went straight to a judge the judge might cut them some slack. I don't know what attempts the state made here, but if their position was that a vacation wasn't necessary then it could undermine their argument if they go too far out of their way to seek a court order, like scheduling a hearing, for example.
So things are pretty clear when it's crickets for three weeks and as soon as enforcement begins the plaintiff is ready to go with a show cause motion the next day. I don't know if the hearing scheduled for today was on the show cause motion or just on the objection. Since the plaintiffs filed their response to the May 4 motion after the hearing was scheduled, the hearing may have just been on the objection, and the parties may have worked out among themselves that they could cancel it if the plaintiffs filed a response.
I want to refrain from looking at the merits of this case, but based on VCGA's behavior, they probably aren't great for them. At least, this isn't the way one acts in front of a court when they have a winnable case. If they had responded to the original motion and the court held a hearing and determined that the order was still in effect, I'd support your position that the AG is acting in bad faith and deliberately disobeying it. It's quite a different thing if the AG takes a position that a motion isn't necessary but gives you the opportunity to have your day in court anyway, and your response is to ignore him and then try to get sanctions later. This is the kind of behavior that pisses off judges.
I think that for the journalists in question it's self-evident that this isn't a great path to pursue. It's also self-evident that there's a certain class of people who will be willing to do sex work regardless of the social stigma, and if there's some poor sap willing to pay them thousands of dollars, well, good for them I guess. I'm reminded of a conversation I had over a decade ago with a college girl who worked for me while I was with the Boy Scouts. A couple years later she was still in college and still working summers while I had left but come back for a week to help with training. I was on a canoe trip with just her and who would have been her boss. Someone had told me a couple weeks prior that she was dancing at a local strip club that the more senior staff had visited together a time or two in prior years, and we were discussing trying to go there while she was working just to see how she'd react. It never ended up happening, but on this trip she confirmed that she was working there, though our plan wouldn't have worked because she only worked afternoons.
Anyway, she said that the woman who handled the strippers or whatever told her how she could make even more money, because of course she could. The going rate was less than my salary at the time, but a lot for a broke college student, especially considering that it wasn't a 9 to 5. I told her that if you wanted to be a prostitute you couldn't be too selective about whom you slept with, since she seemed to be under the delusion that her clientele would be the same 30s office workers who stopped by the club after work. I asked her if she'd be willing to sleep with the big boss at the time, who looked like a younger, thinner version of Dr. Phil, and she was appalled at the idea. She told me that she was assured that they wouldn't pressure her into anything she was uncomfortable with, etc., etc., but I tried to explain to her that while that may be true, the ones who were overly selective weren't the ones who made the kind of money she was quoting. I have no idea who she ended up sleeping with or how much money she actually made, just that she was eventually canned from the Boy Scouts after she requested time off to work her "other job" and what must have been the worst kept secret was made abundantly clear to management. Needless to say, I didn't expect to spend that day trying to talk someone out of becoming a prostitute.
That being said, I think that the same thing applies to all of these "professions" that promise a lot of money for what looks like not a lot of work, or at least the kind of work one thinks they'd find fun. A friend on mine who teaches high school in a rural area says half the kids think they have a future as influencers and YouTubers. I'd be surprised if a single student she teaches over the course of her career is able to do it for a living, even for a brief period. Most of the people who blew up on YouTube started making videos for their own personal edification without any intention of quitting their day jobs.
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