Start listening to the working class and the far right won’t even be a fart in the night
they issued me a hybrid van and the electric motor cut out about two hours in.
Theres 4 parties involved. 5 if you count the end customer. Theres the county who ostensibly operates the public transportation service and manages the grant program. theres via, the company they hired to appify the service into an uberish situation. theres avis, the rental company that provides the vans. and theres me. i believe via has hired yet another company to handle their customer service, outsourcing to india, so probably 6.
I select- really, compete for on a first-come-first-served basis- shifts once a week. they are dropped on tuesday at 11. by 1130 all the good shifts are taken and only the dregs are left. when i show up for a shift, a license plate number is assigned for me, which I get to go play hide and seek for in the parking lot. When i start the shift, i go through an inspection and make a rental contract with avis. after that, i do my job, and then gas up and return to the lot at the end of the shift.
somewhere in all that is a very smooth, sensible, painless process that makes a lot of sense. that process is obscured by so much bureaucracy and mismatched incentive and ugh.
so yes, i handle the rental. i hope that clears up some of the confusion.
That's tough. Remember this situation is temporary and that you're working towards improving it. Slow, incremental steps have been key to my recovery.
I'm not sure I'm cut out for this.
I started a new job with the county recently and goddamnit. I already want to quit. On the one hand, I feel there are legitimate complaints. On the other, I'm not sure how much my goddamned fuckedupedness is fucking me up here.
Driving is a dangerous profession. Or rather, a risky one. It doesn't even have to be your fault and you (and now in my case, my passengers) could be injured or killed. They want me driving 7-12 hour shifts regularly, and since I'm a contractor I'm not strictly entitled to a regular "break." Of course I can request a break at any time and they'll happily let me end my current route at the nearest dodgy gas station or dollar mart or literally whatever is close at hand. But of course I'm still running the clock on renting the vehicle while my work pay clock has stopped for break. I know what you'll say, "You're paying to work there?!" And yes, strictly speaking I am. But the gross is almost $30/hr, the rental fee is about $9/hr and the net works out to about $20/hr. No gas, no maintenance, no wear and tear on my own vehicle. A huge step up from uber&co, where I frequently make approximately $8-12/hr busting my ass in my own car on my own gas wearing my own brakes. The work is hourly too, not per-job, so there's no mad rush. Get the people where they're going in a relatively timely manner, safely. People understand that it's going to be much slower than an uber, it's a helluva lot cheaper too.
I know I need to take breaks more often but I just can't stand the thought of burning money while stopped at a fucking dollar mart. I know I'm not as good, careful, safe of a driver or as kind, patient, caring of a person when I'm tired. I know it makes me frustrated and slow and prone to mistakes but goddamnit. I know it's a mental block but goddamnit. It's me. It's the guy who has made all those shitty decisions, or not, that had lead me into the gutter those few short years ago.
I don't like that when I'm having an issue I have to call a person in fucking India who I can barely understand to get them to not help or do some shit I could have done, but worse, with permission. I hate that they have no control over what they or I do, they're just automatons pressing buttons just like me driving through the city following the app. "Sorry sir, that's the policy we can't do that." "But that's what would have happened if this error hadn't occured!" "Sorry sir that's the policy. Is there anything else we can help you with today?" Suggesting they had helped in the first place. I love helping these customers. I love the rare opportunities where I get to stop pretending to be a driving robot and help them with their bags or answer a question. "I'm short on fare." "Don't worry about it this time, sir.", "It's fucking hot outside!" "I keep a pack of water bottles in the back, help yourself, there's the ac controls...", etc.
Today was especially frustrating. I only got about 2 hours into my shift before the van started misbehaving. There's too much minutia to explain and I just realized I don't actually want to get into the frustrating minutia. I asked for help and was told basically to keep working. When I threatened to end my shift they started whistling a different fucking tune and that was the very moment I decided to end my shift. I don't need this fuckery. Give me a working car and get the hell out of my way.
I've heard so many stories about drivers being shitty or negligent or driving erratically or just being generally bad at their job. After only 1 month in this, I'm starting to understand what might lead a jaded person towards that sort of thing.
I just want to help people. Let me do that; pay me for my work: that's all this needs to be.
/rant
fuck that was a lot.
We've been very lenient with traitors since 1865.
Did you notice homegirl backing it up for chet in the hat, top left? Just above the unconcerned guy with airpods in working diligently on his spreadsheet. See also: Daddy double-legs and halfskirt/halfjeans.
It's pretty much got office chairs down though. Guess that's something.
This was my first guess as well. Literally $.
Huh. There's a whole snopes article on the subject. tldr; You're right, apparently it was the shooter who donated.
that was a 60something with the same name who made the donation
there is a difference, and youre right, its subtle. subtle enough thtat at this level of discussion, with the context provided, no one could mistake your meaning either way.
since you seem to be curious, "convinced of" refers definitely to being fully persuaded by the relevant subject. look up the dictionary definition of "of" and youll find a bunch of use cases, many of which particularize or otherwise specify something that follows.
"convinced about" is still definite about the conviction, but the word about makes the subject of conviction connotatively less particular. about means something approximate, similar (or perhaps similar enough), or nearby. otoh, it has a perfecty valid use, as in the case in which you used it just now, as a specifying preposition.
They both work, theyre both grammar. "not sure about" is more common than "not sure of". "not convinced of" is more common than "not convinced about". i leave it as an exercise to the reader to puzzle out why that might be.
of is more common, but both are grammar.
I insisted on the lowest clinical dose they could give me (1075mg/d) but it's effective and not zombificating.
you are mistaken. a self-appointed gatekeeper getting in the middle of a violent argument between desperate people doesnt make a good guy. the context you highlight provided makes him look more like a clueless, self aggrandizing busy body than anything else.
Sadakichi Hartmann, "Drifting Flowers of the Sea"
Across the dunes, in the waning light, The rising moon pours her amber rays, Through the slumbrous air of the dim, brown night The pungent smell of the seaweed strays— From vast and trackless spaces Where wind and water meet, White flowers, that rise from the sleepless deep, Come drifting to my feet. They flutter the shore in a drowsy tune, Unfurl their bloom to the lightlorn sky, Allow a caress to the rising moon, Then fall to slumber, and fade, and die.
White flowers, a-bloom on the vagrant deep, Like dreams of love, rising out of sleep, You are the songs, I dreamt but never sung, Pale hopes my thoughts alone have known, Vain words ne’er uttered, though on the tongue, That winds to the sibilant seas have blown. In you, I see the everlasting drift of years That will endure all sorrows, smiles and tears; For when the bell of time will ring the doom To all the follies of the human race, You still will rise in fugitive bloom And garland the shores of ruined space.
Timber
The prompt was "Trees." If you know how to format line breaks instead of paragraph breaks, please let me know.
Timber
I have heard that wood will warm you many times,
When you chop it,
Split it,
Burn it and cook-
I find a standing dead.
It's no good taking the fallen,
The wet gets in so quick around here.
Leave those for the beetles.
Abraham Lincoln said
If he had six hours to fell a tree,
He would spend four
Sharpening his axe.
My father once asked me
"Why not use a chainsaw?"
I could let another man
fuck my wife.
Sweat slick and
Sore muscles
Never felt so good.
Life shorn of its artifice.
Pro-Choice
I wrote a comment recently in response to a senator describing himself as "pro-choice" in defense of his refusing to repeal child marriage statutes. I recognized a poetic rhythm and have adapted it to hopefully fit as a submission here.
Pro-Choice
Yeah, he's pro choice-
Pro choice like a gunman asking, "which kneecap?"
Pro choice like a lioness stalking a herd of gazelle.
Pro choice like a homeless man can choose a bridge.
Pro choice like deciding between financial and medical ruin.
Pro choice like a rapist asking, "ass or cunt?"
Pro choice like choosing which bill to put off this month.
Pro choice like a backalley crackhead choosing another hit.
Pro choice like forcing a mother to choose between an impossible baby and an illegal abortion.
Yeah. He's pro choice.
Entropic Gravity
>Maybe gravity is no more fundamental than the force of a stretched elastic band. Maybe gravity is just an entropic byproduct—an emergent effect of the universe’s tendency to disorder.
Bourbakis' Elements of Mathematics, Algebra 1
In trying to figure out the answer to my homework problem, I came across this volume, which I thought the community might find interesting and/or helpful.
The use of Mathematical Programming with Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (McBride, O'Leary; 1993)
>Abstract: > >Researchers have developed artificially intelligent (AI) and expert systems (ES) to assist in the formulation, solution and interpretation of generic mathematical programs (MP). In addition, researchers also have built domain-specific systems either modeled around a mathematical program or which include a mathematical program module. In these systems, the specificity of the domain allows researchers to extend the interpretation or formulation beyond that available from the generic set of assumptions about mathematical programming. Further, researchers have begun to investigate the use of mathematical program formulations of expert systems. The purpose of their research has been to, e.g., understand the complexity of the expert systems and also to examine the feasibility of mathematical programming as an alternative solution methodology for those expert systems. This paper surveys and extends some of that literature that integrates AIlES and MP, and elicits some of the current research issues of concern.
Algebraic Solutions to Graphical Trig Problems?
I've been knocking out the trig problems in this section with minimal difficulty so far, but I've run straight into a brick wall on this "Algebraic" part. I'm asked to find sin(x)=0 between [0,2π). If I graphed the unit circle this would be a trivial exercise to show sin(θ)=0 when θ=0 or π.
Where I have trouble is- I'm very explicitly being told here that the solution is ALGEBRAIC, and I'm struggling to figure out a way to rearrange sin(x)=0 to come up with the known answer. Further, unit circles are not in this chapter, they wouldn't likely ask me to exercise a skill taught in another chapter. What am I missing?
It's not just 31, either. Looking ahead at eg 37, I can easily show sin(-x) = -sin(x) on a unit circle. I could maybe fuck around with inverse trig ratios but those are in section 3- this is only section 1.
Help me out here, drop a hint, share a link: how do I solve sin(x)=0 on [0,2π), but algebraically? I suspect it's something glaringly obvious and/or very very simple I've overlooked.
Concrete Problems in AI Safety Part 2: Empowerment
>Maybe AI systems would be safer if they avoid gaining too much control over their environment? How might that work?
AI/ML+Physics Part 2: Curating Training Data
>This video discusses the second stage of the machine learning process: (2) collecting and curating training data to inform the model. There are opportunities to incorporate physics into this stage of the process, such as data augmentation to incorporate known symmetries.
Going back multiple pages?
I believe I've found a bug. I intermittently go back multiple pages when pressing back button. It frequently happens on youtube, and occasionally happens elsewhere.
In the picture, find my history where I started with the google search for "the chain" (please forgive me for having history from multiple tabs all mixed up). From here I went back and forth with the expected behavior a couple of times looking for the version I remembered. When I found the correct version, I settled in to listen to it in the background for a few songs minutes until it switched to gypsy which wasn't what I wanted to hear. Naturally enough, I went back once- straight from gypsy to the google search, skipping rhiannon and dreams and the chain. This is reflected on the rightclick drop down from the forward button- observe the three intervening pages which are in the history are not in the forward/back list.
In general, I frequently notice this unexpected and unwanted behavior when I go to youtube. I often go to the homepage, select a video, and then try to back to the homepage only to find it take me back to the blank tab, and when I try to forward it takes me to the video without the intervening homepage.
I seem to recall times when I experienced similar behavior, but cannot put a pin in when or where and cannot at this time, despite trying, reproduce it anywhere but youtube. I haven't tried downloading chrome or shudder using edge, mostly because fuck that, but also slightly because I am very lazy.
I also didn't notice this behavior on my laptop which had win10 and firefox (that is, before I switched to linux as a trial over there, but I digress). I tried to search for this error, but google search is terribly corrupt and difficult to get useful results beyond eg song names. I also searched this forum for "back pages" and "back page" and didn't find anything relevant going back a year.
Do I set my computer on fire for its disobedience, or...?
Inverse Trig Functions Not Giving Consistent Outputs With Each Other?
It's homework help, but I'm not asking for the solution. The problem only asks for cos, sin, tan, cot, csc given sec. I found those pretty quickly on my own, and confirmed solutions with the back of the book.
Where I run into confusion is when I try to find angle theta on my own. Arccos of found cos gives 2.06, arcsin of found sin gives 1.08, and arctan of found tan gives -1.08. Problem givens exclude possibility of the negative angle found by arctan(-15/8), but the other two are possible and conflicting. And why wouldn't they all be the same? I reattempted because there were so many erase marks from trying to figure this out that it was almost illegible.
Am I wrong? Did the book give me a point not on the unit circle or something, assuming I wouldn't try to find theta on my own? Have I used arcfuncs wrong- I checked the domains against the function definitions? Have I found a hole in math?
Treatments for Bipolar Disorder?
The VA has approved me for community care! Instead of a revolving door of unprofessional incompetent clowns who specialize in PTSD, I can select one of the incompetent unprofessional clowns from my community who specialize in BPD!
How should I look for a psychologist? There's like, a lot to choose from here. Most everyone mentions "specialties" like bipolar on their site, in among a bunch of stuff like ptsd and depression and lgbtq issues- Which makes me think they aren't actually specialists, which gives me the impression they'll say just about anything to get me in the door. It's all a bit overwhelming and I basically only have one shot. Once I engage with someone, if they aren't a good fit (my history suggests it will take several sessions before I know if they'll be a good fit, so...) I have to go through the several months approval process for community care again before I can make another selection, assuming I'm approved. How do you weed out assholes, idiots, and the incompetent before you see them?
What treatments have you found to be effective in your therapy?
Also, I'm much better on Lithium than I ever have been, but I'm already coming close to the maximum safe dose- if there is such a thing. The psychiatrist mentioned depakote, but I've tried that before and had severe gastrointestinal problems. Are there any other medications I should be looking out for or asking about here?
Concrete Problems in AI Safety (Dario Amodei, Chris Olah, Jacob Steinhardt, Paul Christiano, John Schulman, Dan Mané 2016)
Abstract:
>Rapid progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) has brought increasing attention to the potential impacts of AI technologies on society. In this paper we discuss one such potential impact: the problem of accidents in machine learning systems, defined as unintended and harmful behavior that may emerge from poor design of real-world AI systems. We present a list of five practical research problems related to accident risk, categorized according to whether the problem originates from having the wrong objective function ("avoiding side effects" and "avoiding reward hacking"), an objective function that is too expensive to evaluate frequently ("scalable supervision"), or undesirable behavior during the learning process ("safe exploration" and "distributional shift"). We review previous work in these areas as well as suggesting research directions with a focus on relevance to cutting-edge AI systems. Finally, we consider the high-level question of how to think most productively about the safety of forward-looking applications of AI.
Concrete Problems in AI Safety Part 1: Avoiding Negative Side-Effects
>We can expect AI systems to accidentally create serious negative side effects - how can we avoid that? >The first of several videos about the paper "Concrete Problems in AI Safety".
Computerphile: Discussion with Robert Miles about Generality in Artificial Intelligence
A brief overview of the concept of generality in AI systems.
Avoiding Fusion Plasma Tearing Instability with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Artificial intelligence control is used to avoid the emergence of disruptive tearing instabilities in the magnetically confined fusion plasma in the DIII-D tokamak reactor.
Abstract
For stable and efficient fusion energy production using a tokamak reactor, it is essential to maintain a high-pressure hydrogenic plasma without plasma disruption. Therefore, it is necessary to actively control the tokamak based on the observed plasma state, to manoeuvre high-pressure plasma while avoiding tearing instability, the leading cause of disruptions. This presents an obstacle-avoidance problem for which artificial intelligence based on reinforcement learning has recently shown remarkable performance. However, the obstacle here, the tearing instability, is difficult to forecast and is highly prone to terminating plasma operations, especially in the ITER baseline scenario. Previously, we developed a multimodal dynamic model that estimates the likelihood of future tearing instability based on signals from multiple diagnostics and actuators. Here we harness this dynamic model as a training environment for reinforcement-learning artificial intelligence, facilitating automated instability prevention. We demonstrate artificial intelligence control to lower the possibility of disruptive tearing instabilities in DIII-D, the largest magnetic fusion facility in the United States. The controller maintained the tearing likelihood under a given threshold, even under relatively unfavourable conditions of low safety factor and low torque. In particular, it allowed the plasma to actively track the stable path within the time-varying operational space while maintaining H-mode performance, which was challenging with traditional preprogrammed control. This controller paves the path to developing stable high-performance operational scenarios for future use in ITER.
I'm doing... well this week?
It's been a long time since I've had a good week, but this one was alright. Not amazing or anything, but just... good?
I had only one major episode, it was entirely private, I went into my car to scream for a bit then went in and felt better. The entire rest of the week went... pretty smoothly? I didn't sit inside all day. I got out and did things. When things didn't go exactly how I wanted to, I didn't immediately seethe or mope. Get this: I worked with people, found solutions, and got shit done. I had fun without overdoing it. I was still pretty impulsive with my food spending, and still struggled with cleaning up and cooking for myself. The two are very much correlated, it's a vicious cycle and the target of my next goal for self-improvement.
I started a "mood journal." It's helping. I should have done this years ago. I should have been given Lithium years ago.
AI/ML+Physics Part 1: Choosing what to model
> This video discusses the first stage of the machine learning process [identified in the previous post]: (1) formulating a problem to model. There are lots of opportunities to incorporate physics into this process, and learn new physics by applying ML to the right problem.
Physics Informed Machine Learning: High Level Overview of AI and ML in Science and Engineering
>This video describes how to incorporate physics into the machine learning process. The process of machine learning is broken down into five stages: (1) formulating a problem to model, (2) collecting and curating training data to inform the model, (3) choosing an architecture with which to represent the model, (4) designing a loss function to assess the performance of the model, and (5) selecting and implementing an optimization algorithm to train the model. At each stage, we discuss how prior physical knowledge may be embedding into the process.
>Physics informed machine learning is critical for many engineering applications, since many engineering systems are governed by physics and involve safety critical components. It also makes it possible to learn more from sparse and noisy data sets.