roystgnr
10hr ago
Lowest non-COVID workforce participation rate in my lifetime, but that just means 62% down from a peak of 67%. Optimistically I'll guess there's just more and more jobs with flexible hours. If the nature of the work allows for it, a smart boss will realize that if you like to eat lunch at 2 that just means you'll be able to get back with less delay and there'll be someone around to handle any emergencies at noon.
roystgnr
11hr ago
My second YouTube search came up with the same top result, and far be it from me to refuse a polite request.
But I'm not making a third search. My kids occasionally use my YouTube account on our living room computer, and at some point I'd worry about the algorithm deciding that my current math/science/art balance needs more "art" and that my "artists" need fewer clothes.
roystgnr
11hr ago
I'd never call myself a "never"-Trumper, because any reading of history will tell you that things can get much worse than him, but if I lived in a swing state I'd probably have held my nose and voted for the other shameless crook in 2016, the other mentally declining old man in 2020, and the other dishonest auto-coup fan in 2024. Maybe that's close enough, practically, even if I'm still not certain that any of those votes would really have been the lesser evil?
I still loved Ron Paul. If we'd made him Emperor he could have been a sufficiently radical (reactionary?) libertarian to throw the country into anarchy, but as a mere President I bet he'd have been great. Remember back when we had the chance to work on fixing a federal debt that was "only" ten trillion dollars? Good times.
roystgnr
12hr ago
I watched one video, and I'm still not sure how much of that is her voice. I know I should have gotten inured to modern over-AutoTuned production over the decades, but 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮 I really don't think I'm strong enough! 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮
She's got great taste in underwear, though.
roystgnr
13hr ago
Just look at the original image
Which follow-up joke would you say is even harder to miss: "Okay: 100100101011010101011...", or "I'd love to, but my spacesuit is still in the shop"?
roystgnr
15hr ago
But my small town has multiple comparable parks in easy distance
I assume that what you mean is "comparable quality-per-area", but it's amusing to imagine a little town with like 5000 people, 10% of whom are employed maintaining the 5 square miles of neighboring park/zoo/lake/forest/museum/hiking/garden/ice-skating/boating complexes.
roystgnr
15hr ago
Ooh, I should add this to my list of Goodhart's Law examples.
No, that one is fraud.
There are already around 60 categories on that list. We may need to build a lot more jails.
roystgnr
15hr ago
Google Earth is a thing.
It is! It uses a near-sided perspective projection.
You may have missed the joke.
roystgnr
17hr ago
The sharpest discontinuous decline in show quality in my mind was obviously between seasons 8 and 9; the internet seems to agree. IMDB ratings also seem to agree that "The Principal and the Pauper" (season 9 episode 2) was the most blatant turning point: second-worst-rated episode up to that point, and the only thing that beat it was a clip show. On the other hand, it's still higher rated than the average of basically every season from 17 to 37, so there's something to be said for the power of dull continuous decline too.
If we were to say that the Simpsons was all good in seasons 1-8 except for a few clip shows, then in average ratings it doesn't decline past "mostly good" (where the average episode is at least as good as all those early episodes) until around season 12; if we set our sights higher (yeah, some of those season 1 episodes were meh) then season 10 was the dividing line, and the last good individual episode was probably 2024.
Now I'm curious; I'm going to watch that one.
... wait, it opens by claiming to be the Simpsons Series Finale? Are those ratings just people's way of saying to let the show finally die with dignity?
roystgnr
18hr ago
Use satellite imagery
Sure! I'll just display those images on my flat monitor by ... hmmm ...
roystgnr
18hr ago
you don't know in advance when the last season is. The show might lose funding
I'm still a big Babylon 5 fan, but I can't imagine how much better it would have been if the suits had just said "you need 5 seasons, you get 5 seasons" consistently from the start, rather than saying "we'll probably cancel you after this year" in season 4 (forcing two seasons worth of climax and denouement to be crammed into one) and then "nah, we're still on" for season 5 (which I think turned out okay in the second half, but which had an utterly disappointing first half).
Gemini with memory on seems to make reasonable guesses about the reasons why I ask a question, which so far is only a little useful for me, but which could possibly make it a better source of answers than I often am for some of the sorts of XY-Problem questions I sometimes get from others.
More options
Context Copy link