As far as I know river and coastal shopping in the US has been in decline for a long time. Particularly the great lakes: we don't move iron ore and coal (and limestone) like we used to. River shipping in the Mississippi is mostly barge these days I think.
We just don't do all the river and coastal hauling of manufactured goods like the Europeans do, not sure whether it's because we have better rail shipping or some other reason.
I do know that the US coast guard has gotten absolutely retarded about crewing requirements, at the same time as crew recruiting and training is going to pieces in the same way it is for air traffic control.
Europe on the other hand has a lot of cheap hulls and crew from eastern Europe.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
That's the trick for space platforms. Asteroid chunks are awful and should either be on a totally separate system or limited somehow. An inserter that throws them overboard if there's more than X on the entire belt loop is handy (nice new feature).
SteveKirk
8mo ago
That's not lying to the IRS though. They're legally your heirs, they're your children, and iirc at least in the US you can still give them $50k for their trouble and do whatever you want with the rest. Unlike France, say, where they could sue for an equal share.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
Wouldn't rich people just adopt an adult, Japanese style, in order to avoid the penalty. They could pay the adoptee a small amount for their trouble and leave the rest to the Richburger Fund For Getting Skinsuited By Activists like they all do now.
Yes, and repeatedly doing so will make anyone who has more than a goldfish memory despise you as an amoral sociopathic gaslighting liar who can be trusted only to manipulate everyone around him to serve the current party line.
Credentialism + nepotism is also a major factor on the creative side. A lot of the industry jobs are going to people because "I met they/them at calarts and followed their Tumblr askblog about obese superheroines with vitiligo, that's definitely the sort of person we need for Concord's character design team." I'm not kidding, that's literally the life story of all but two people I know doing art for games and cartoons, and those two are old guys.
Same with translation/"localization." It's a tiny industry with cliques of professional bullies getting away with hiring all their discord buddies and circulating blacklists, because there's literally no oversight.
It works without pushback because there's still no counter to the superweapons they developed. HR having a "Cluster hiring" policy literally gives them a party cadre within a few hiring cycles, and then you're fucked. And what do the old guard do except shake their heads and say "well I'd never hire or reject a candidate for political reasons."
Yeah, we used to hear that a lot from Google guys in 2012 who are no longer Google guys.
TL;DR: as nybbler likes to say, you can't pick up $20 off the sidewalk when there's a troll with a club making sure nobody touches it.
On the plus side, bugs actually get noticed and fixed now. We don't usually get deus ex style "hey we broke a bunch of maps, all the plasma weapons, and some random character interactions, have fun dealing with that for the next 25 years. Buy the sequel. Devs out"
SteveKirk
8mo ago
There are a lot of weird errors and inexplicable decisions on Twitter, but I can't tell if it's gotten worse. The timeline spazzes out constantly, showing the same stuff over and over. The other day my account was limited, then suspended out of the blue, then reinstated without comment after I sent an email asking why.
Granted, the only part of that different from 2020 was actually getting unbanned, but still.
Does this place get indexed super fast by Google? The other day I searched for "Kamelanomicon" to see how many people had already made that joke, and we were the top result an hour after posting.
Are their scrapers just that regular these days? I've seen it in several cases where I've tried to look up old phrases or topics mentioned in a recent motte conversation, and that specific convo was in the top results.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
Yes, that's the party line I'm talking about, thank you. It's an effective consensus enforcer, I'll give it that.
This is just the "what does it matter to you that we support Basic Human Decency, seems like you're the problem" gaslighting trick everyone's seen a billion times. It's manipulative and vile, and weird to keep using on someone who's immune to it.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
If he was paying her for sex he wasn't breaking any promises. The skeevy guys are the ones going "yeah baby I'm totally gonna leave my wife for you but now's not the right time so please you've gotta get another abortion come on baby just one more time then we'll be together forever"
A guy who is either dating with the expectation of marriage or paying her pocket money with no strings attached is morally in the clear by my standards.
What will it take for you to acknowledge you are wrong about this? People just like you were saying that political correctness had peaked in the 90s, and that it was totally fine to stop noticing it (with the implicit threat that bad things would happen to you if you kept noticing anyway)
Can I quote stats on university hires? The percent of federal "science" grants going to DEI programs? The massive lawsuits against companies and agencies for having basic literacy standards? Is there anything I can say to get you to acknowledge that the giant elephant standing right in front of us isn't getting any smaller?
Ymeskhout called it a crazy conspiracy theory to think progressive prosecutors were using procedural manipulation to favor BLM rioters. It is absolutely a weaponised term.
I used imgur the other day (because someone couldn't see a catbox link), and it's literally worse than reddit. Then you go to funnyjunk or iFunny and it's all zoomer holocaust jokes. Same with the old forums, resetera vs rpgcodex(?) etc.
Social media is totally pillarized at this point, but it seems obvious to me that the leftist ones reach far more people. It's just that the leftist extremism has gone way too overboard to actually help the Democrats; they're trying to run a "we're normal, they're weird" campaign, but their entire youth wing is posting "glory to the martyrs for stomping magat colonizer babies to protect trans kids" memes.
I'm honestly surprised he's still around considering everything, still more that he's getting that kind of work. Read the first two nights dawn books in elementary school, and the Commonwealth trilogy when it first came out.
Probably should get around to rereading and finishing the former, but it's harder to justify burning through a pile of doorstops in a weekend the way you could as a kid.
One house on my street had a single sign that just said "Kamela". Every single one of the others had multiple signs, banners, and flags. One at the intersection had a big banner of trump snarling with some slogan about the face of stupidity, racism, and fascism. Most others also got updated What This House Believes signs with the new firmware.
They all popped up within a week of the Kamelanomicon being opened.
Suspect I'm on a list for not having one. With the neighborhood going 80D-15R it's pretty easy to spot the dissidents.
Distant belt of land mines plus clearing a dead zone before you leave (maintaining it with artillery later, they're slower to re-expand than biters)
You definitely need a checklist of supplies to bring to have an easy time setting up there.
And never never never use solar there: check the stats. Burn trash in heating tower, heat exchanger, turbine. Split in your jelly->rocket fuel production on low prio so it burns trash before fuel.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
Do you have one of those gradual brightening wake lights?
My system for winter mornings is having one of the bedside lights on a cheapo dial timer (the whole setup is dumpster loot for testing the concept). It works, but it's a bit too sudden a change in light level. Looking for something better.
The variable alarm apps that listen for you stirring are also very nice, since you won't be broken out of a deep sleep.
SteveKirk
8mo ago
Can you confirm she's actually moving? That's the first suspicion I'd have.
I prefer "back to the pit" for a more modern feel.
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