The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
At the time, "6 figures" ($100K) was the popular line for very well paying (about $240K now). You weren't going to get that as a programmer. Of course it paid much better than pizza delivery.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
'Tsk.Tsk. Afforability is fine.' - is going to bring us DSA rule, and fuck it, we deserve it because of this shit.
The DSA is dealing in unreality. I am not a politician and would prefer not to. That you perceive a problem, or that a lot of people perceive a problem, does not mean that problem is even real, let alone that it looks like what they claim (see also: food deserts). That's true even if someone can get power and wreck everything by promising to solve the problem. In this case referring to "do the meme" is just a new way of engaging in the fallacy of poisoning the well; that you can anticipate the response does not mean the response is incorrect.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I was IN the profession in the early 90s. It was well-paying (like many white-collar professions), but not very well-paying. You weren't even breaking 6 figures as a very experienced software developer (individual contributor) in the DC area, for instance. Nowadays (or at least just before the current slump) you could make the equivalent right out of school.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I picked a Chipotle I've been to as a benchmark; certainly you can get fancier burritos than that.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
In the 90s software dev was probably a more rarefied and in-demand skillset than in 2026 where we pump out over 100,000 CS degrees a year.
Early '90s, no. Software was just an ordinary white-collar profession; you could do well but not like today. When the dot-com boom hit in the mid-90s, that's when salaries started exploding, so a developer catching the early edge of that could do very well indeed.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
There's really nothing to this. You're comparing a nostalgia-tinged view of your childhood to your current situation where you're the adult, and finding the former to be better. With no numbers, so it's all vibes.
Here's the kicker: My father was an individual contributor, software developer. I am a Director-level at a mid-market software company; This isn't title inflation, I manage an org of about 25, including multiple layers of leadership.
Yes, software is a funny field that way; an IC in the right place can make more than a middle-manager elsewhere.
As for burritos, a steak burrito in Midtown Manhattan is $13.50. Not $20.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Joe Sixpack may not know any software developers, but he uses the Internet, including some kind of search engine... which probably includes AI prominently now. If he doesn't live near Detroit or one of the few other centers of car manufacture, he probably doesn't know any automotive engineers either, but he damn sure knows about automobiles.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
It results in the police who are intent on violating your rights, violating them and hiding it, presenting fabricated chain of evidence in the courts.
It makes the police who are intent on violating your rights work at it. And it makes the cops who are not wholly evil, merely overzealous, have an incentive to reign it in. And it means only wholly evil departments can engage in the routine practices of beating confessions out of people, denying them legal representation until they confess, etc.
Asset forfeiture is another example that you have dirty cops, which follows from inadequately policed cops.
There is no good answer to 'who polices the police'. They will always be inadequately policed, which is why "let the evidence taken unlawfully be used and then punish the cops" really means "your rights don't exist".
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Yep. Karens seem to make up the consensus as they go along, and fully believe that their headcanon is the Right and Proper way of doing things.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
The general rule is that all pro-gun rulings are limited and fleeting and have no practical effect; all anti-gun ones are lasting and build the basis for further restrictions. So there are two immediate possibilities: the ruling will be stayed pending appeal. Or, the government will not appeal it, and, like the earlier post office ruling, it will be limited to only the plaintiffs. The way that would work is SAF and GoA members would be able to sell such weapons to each other and the government would be enjoined from stopping them, but no one else could and further SAF and GoA would no longer have standing in a broader challenge.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Yeah, but realistically most places don't have the choice between an aviation assembly plant and a data center. They've got the choice between a data center and some sort of unused land.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
We cannot reach post-scarcity by becoming vegetarian, because vegetarianism IS scarcity.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
There won't be an overcapacity of compute even if AI ends up hitting a hard plateau. I know Google was basically always short of compute even before AI got bag; they and Amazon and many other companies will find something to do with it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
The water usage thing started because Karen Hao's book Empire of AI, made a unit error (or "error") which claimed data centers use 1000x the water they actually use. Then various propaganda groups (many likely Chinese Communist Party funded) started jumping on it. Often they claim the water use of the "data center" as including an imputation of water use by the power plant which produces their power, while also claiming the power use as a separate downside.
It's certainly true that a municipality could get fleeced in some way if they provide tax breaks or other incentives for a data center, but that's true with any large project. Data centers aren't special.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
The FAA wants very much to keep the number of pilots outside commercial aviation to a minimum. Which is why they have Nintendo-hard ("decode this 1950s aviation weather report about a typhoon. You have 10 seconds"... and that's for drone pilots too) and sometimes unwritten barriers (e.g. the rule that one must have the proper attitude towards authority) to doing so. NHTSA might make it hard to produce flying cars, but the FAA makes it impossible that they could ever catch on.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Average age of a Guardian Angel: 73 years old.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Well this is implicitly the perplexing part of the solution. Why choose indirect incentive hacks when the direct incentive hacking -- the officer who commits a crime should be personally liable for those crimes, as any other citizen -- would be much more direct incentive?
Because it almost never happens. For obvious reasons of incentives.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
We have parallel construction BECAUSE we have the exclusionary rule. If you don't have the exclusionary rule you can simply introduce the unlawfully-obtained evidence, the defendant is convicted, then nothing else happens. Asset forfeiture (itself a civil procedure) has nothing to do with any of this.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Somebody will bid, even if it's a company the DSA spins up to do it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
I think it's great. As policy it's terrible, but it's the kind of local experimentation we should encourage. Then, if and when it's a disaster, it's a useful data point for people to point to.
It doesn't work this way. The official results of the policy are whatever the "experimenters" wish it to be. We saw this with the Seattle minimum wage (study showed disaster, official results are it's great) and plastic bag bans in NJ and CA (studies by proponents showed more plastic waste, not less, no relaxation of bans contemplated) for instance. Experimentation with a priori dumb shit is only good if we're going to get accurate results and act on them. Otherwise, "experimentation" is just an excuse to do obviously dumb shit.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
They saw him pulling up pieces of the liner, with his hands. If these pieces of liner were loose already due to construction problems, the "damage" is nonexistent (they'd have to be removed anyway).
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
What if the cops or prosecution violated some rules to obtain the evidence they present, or did not utter a magical incantation while arresting a defendant? They should suffer the legal consequences for violations, but as long as the information obtained is good and has provenance that it is good, it should be allowed in.
They will almost never suffer any consequences. That's true, empirically, even when the information is excluded. When the information is not excluded, the incentives are VERY strong for them to violate every rule in order to get convictions. Complaining about the exclusionary rule and suggesting punishments for cops/prosecutors who violate defendant's rights to get a conviction is equivalent to saying defendant's rights don't matter.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
What Mandami's grocery stores point out most is the total control he and the DSA have over the narrative. The press absolutely loves all this, whereas would a Republican or even Eric Adams try it, they'd be 24/7 hating on it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
6d ago
I suspect Trump has it backwards. There likely was some damage caused by vandals, but the majority of the problem was caused by it being a rush job. Note that nothing Pirro said disputes the earlier evidence against Hearn; he was accused of pulling on the liner with his hands, the claims of knife cuts were earlier. Of course once you know there were significant defects, the case becomes muddy; chance of proving beyond reasonable doubt that vandals did a particular bit of damage, especially with their bare hands, is very low and the dismissal is appropriate.
No. These "wins" have been carefully circumscribed to have no effect. You can theoretically get a carry permit in blue states, but they've taken advantage of the hedging and loopholes to make it so even if you do, you'll end up violating one of many of the vast "sensitive areas" which makes you a felon. SCOTUS stuck a footnote in Bruen which allowed the blue states to keep their prior-restraint permitting regimes fully intact, so I still can't buy a gun in New Jersey (or any other state, because the NFA is still intact) nor could I carry if I had one.
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