This was always the plan. They will contest any replacement and then only Trump will be on the ballot. AOC tried to warn you fucking people. This is why Biden needed to go over a year ago and the PARTY said "fuck you guys" until it was too hard to fucking ignore.

As stupid as it says on the tin. Can you remove hair clogs with Nair?

EDIT: I don't actually have a drain that needs to be unclogged. This is a showerthoughtquestion.

Do they think the hands-off treatment that giant corporations that basically print money get is going to somehow "trickle down" to them, too?

Because last I checked, the guys who ran Jetflicks are facing jail time. Like, potentially longer jail time than most murder sentences.

...but letting OpenAI essentially do the same without consequences will mean Open Source AI people will somehow get the same hands-off treatment? That just reeks of bullshit to me.

I just don't fucking buy it and letting massive corporations just skirt IP laws while everyone else gets fucked hard by those same IP laws just doesn't seem like the best hill to die on, yet plenty of people who are anti-copyright/anti-IP laws are dying on this fucking hill.

What gives?

---

I am personally of the opinion that current IP/copyright laws are draconian, but that IP/copyright isn't inherently a bad thing. I just know, based on previous history in the US, that letting the Big Guys skirt laws almost never leads to Little Guys getting similar treatment.

---

Also, I hope this is an okay place for this rant. Thanks for keeping this space awesome. Please remove if this is inappropriate for this forum, please and thank you.

EDIT: Thanks so much everyone. Great answers. This has been fun. Keep it going as long as you want!

DISCLAIMER: Silly Thought Exercise: NOT AN ENDORSEMENT OF REPLACING BIDEN. I personally do not think replacing Biden is a good idea at this stage in the election. I think that's more dangerous than keeping him, sadly, but he's who we've got. I'm just looking for shitposty thoughts on this question, please and thank you.

---

What-over-the-top absurd person would you choose to replace Biden who you think could actually body Trump, and why?

For an example, my choice would be based on the idea that the only thing that makes a bully like Trump wilt is a bigger bully. Secondly, US citizens love trash talking and sports and absolutely will vote for someone who is already famous, they certainly love their celebrities. Finally, what better sport for trash talk than basketball?

In that, my choice would be basketball legend Larry Bird. (he's famously apolitical, so it's hard to know if he would actually be politically aligned against Trump.)

...but, the thing is, Larry Bird is a masterclass trash talker.

And that is really what throws Trump off and throws him into obscene tantrums where his composure is lost and he comes off like a whining loser: when he's been taken down a peg by someone else. Nothing sticks deeper in his craw. I don't think he could handle Larry Bird's level of shit-talk, Bird is like god-tier.

I can imagine Bird calling Trump out and saying he can smell his shit-filled diaper from across the auditorium, obviously Bird would describe more colorfully than I. The thing is, I can also see that absolutely throwing Trump into hysterics.

Also, at 67 Bird's a fucking spring chicken compared to Biden or Trump.

So, I'm hoping for answers that are a bit silly, like this. Larry Bird is obviously not actually a good choice for this. I just like chuckling at the idea, because real life has gotten so absurd I need to hide in even deeper absurdity.

---

What's your absurd Biden replacement? Please, I think we could use some laughs.

I'm bored and making Hundreds of Beavers gifs.

Copied from Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions:

The US Department of Labor is proposing a rule change that would add STEM occupations to their list of Schedule A occupations. Schedule A occupations are pre-certified and thus employers do NOT have to prove that they first sought American workers for a green card job. This comes on the heels of massive layoffs from the very people pushing this rule change.

From Tech Target:

>The proposed exemption could be applied to a broad range of tech occupations including, notably, software engineering -- which represents about 1.8 million U.S. positions, according to U.S. labor statistics data -- and would allow companies to bypass some labor market tests if there's a demonstrated shortage of U.S. workers in an occupation.

Currently the comments include heavy support from libertarian think tank, Cato, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association

The San Francisco Tech scene has been riddled with CEOs whining over labor shortages for the past few months on Twitter/X amidst a sea of layoffs from Amazon, Meta, Google, Tesla, and much more. Now, we know that it's an attempt at influencing the narrative for these rule changes.

If you are having a hard time finding a job, now, this rule change will only make things worse.

From the US Census Bureau:

Does majoring in STEM Lead to a STEM job after graduation?

>The vast majority (62%) of college-educated workers who majored in a STEM field were employed in non-STEM fields such as non-STEM management, law, education, social work, accounting or counseling. In addition, 10% of STEM college graduates worked in STEM-related occupations such as health care.

>The path to STEM jobs for non-STEM majors was narrow. Only a few STEM-related majors (7%) and non-STEM majors (6%) ultimately ended up in STEM occupations.

If you or someone you know has experienced difficulty finding an engineering job post graduation amidst this so called shortage, then please submit your story in the remaining few days that the Public comment period is still open (ends May 13th.)

Public comment can be made, here:

https://www.regulations.gov/document/ETA-2023-0006-0001/comment

Please share this with anyone else you feel has will be affected by this rule change.

If this is the wrong place for this, I apologize in advance and it's okay if it gets removed.

---

First, it was bad enough for Elon Musk references, but now...

The real life Paul Stamets, for which the character is named, hired union busters at his business, Fungi Perfecti.

https://www.thestand.org/2024/05/fungi-perfecti-workers-joining-together-with-liuna-252/

>But rather than recognizing and respecting these workers’ right to join together free from management interference, the union reports that Fungi Perfecti has responded by hiring the union-busting firms of Littler Mendelson P.C. and the American Labor Group. These firms represent clients such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Starbucks, all of which have faced multiple Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges with the National Labor Relations Board for illegally interfering in their employees’ freedom to unionize.

>These firms have attempted to slow the momentum of Fungi Perfecti workers’ organizing drive with typical union-busting tactics like “unrequired” meetings that are heavily encouraged.

>“ALG has been distributing anti-union propaganda that, in some cases, are outright lies,” said Derek Sewell, a warehouse worker for Fungi Perfecti. “But we will not be discouraged. It’s just unfortunate that they are spending thousands of dollars on union-busting to try to discourage us rather than investing in making Fungi Perfecti and better and more sustainable place to work.”

---

Anyway, my opinion is firmly that if they're going to make references, it needs to be about people who are already dead, whose negatives are known, and who can't come back and fuck your reference up by becoming a horrible person as your life goes on.

Because these living people keep revealing how Un-Star-Trek they are, imho.

Meant to post this in main star trek community, not ten forward, d'oh.

If this is the wrong place for this, I apologize in advance and it's okay if it gets removed.

---

First, it was bad enough for Elon Musk references, but now...

The real life Paul Stamets, for which the character is named, hired union busters at his business, Fungi Perfecti.

https://www.thestand.org/2024/05/fungi-perfecti-workers-joining-together-with-liuna-252/

>But rather than recognizing and respecting these workers’ right to join together free from management interference, the union reports that Fungi Perfecti has responded by hiring the union-busting firms of Littler Mendelson P.C. and the American Labor Group. These firms represent clients such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Starbucks, all of which have faced multiple Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges with the National Labor Relations Board for illegally interfering in their employees’ freedom to unionize.

>These firms have attempted to slow the momentum of Fungi Perfecti workers’ organizing drive with typical union-busting tactics like “unrequired” meetings that are heavily encouraged.

>“ALG has been distributing anti-union propaganda that, in some cases, are outright lies,” said Derek Sewell, a warehouse worker for Fungi Perfecti. “But we will not be discouraged. It’s just unfortunate that they are spending thousands of dollars on union-busting to try to discourage us rather than investing in making Fungi Perfecti and better and more sustainable place to work.”

---

Anyway, my opinion is firmly that if they're going to make references, it needs to be about people who are already dead, whose negatives are known, and who can't come back and fuck your reference up by becoming a horrible person as your life goes on.

Because these living people keep revealing how Un-Star-Trek they are, imho.

https://global-tetrahedron.com/about

!

Hmm, I wonder why this shadowy organization sounds so... familiar?

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atheonion.com+%22global+tetrahedron%22

!

I think it might be safe to file this one under "Good News." It sounds like everyone kept their jobs and the union is intact.

Edward Zitron has been reading all of google's internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ's antitrust case against google.

> This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.

> The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads on Google properties, had called a “code yellow” for search revenue due to, and I quote, “steady weakness in the daily numbers” and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significantly behind.

HackerNews thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

MetaFilter thread: https://www.metafilter.com/203456/The-core-query-softness-continues-without-mitigation

We're heading to New Vegas in Season 2, and this is the only character I really would like to see resurface, mostly because Yes Man saved me from never finishing New Vegas. I was starting to get bored with the plot and Yes Man brought me back in.

Dave Foley killed as it Yes Man, and I would love to see him back in the role. I was a big fan of Foley from Kids in the Hall/News Radio days, and I was overjoyed when I ran into Yes Man and recognized his voice. Dave Foley has exactly the kind of absurd cheery demeanor a character like Yes Man needs.

Further, I'm going to assume the Courier/Yes Man taking over the Strip ending of New Vegas probably isn't canon, it means there's ample opportunity potentially for Yes Man to continue being the best Yes Man that he is.

Hell, I'd love to see any of the Kids in the Hall in Season 2, honestly. Kevin McDonald keeps looking weirder every fucking year, he would fit in with wastelanders. Hell, the new Kids in the Hall season was an Amazon Prime show, and both Kevin and Dave went full frontal nudity with their weird old bodies. They're the right kind of fit for the wasteland.

I would also think Foley's "Doomsday DJ" sketch is a great example of why they need him in Season 2 of Fallout.

https://youtu.be/qVGq3dU_LNM

In January and February I had curated some playlists and shared them with friends and we watched them together via Watch Together. There was previously an option to Grant Access to the playlist, and after granting access, you could click Watch Together and start a watch party.

However, sometime in the last few weeks this option has disappeared in playlists, and now I am restricted to granting access, but not being able to watch together.

Really the only people who have access to my server is my partner and three friends. This has been a huge bummer, because I was curating old shows complete with old commercials in between.

If anyone has info on why this changed, I'd love to have an understanding, because the change kind of blows...

I have a degree that would put me at Helpdesk Level II if I could find a fucking job.

I literally don't know how to find remote jobs, so I continue to just find and work shitty blue-collar jobs in my city.

I have CML and it would be really nice to have a job that sort of helped me get my medical problems in order. It's either that or being a deadbeat who works part-time just so I can qualify for the ACA and get my $16k a month medications covered.

I have other health problems beyond the CML that would make my life a lot easier if I didn't have to be on my feet all day. I really struggle with it and have to take anti-nausea meds all day and pain meds all day to manage it, whereas I don't need those anywhere near as much if I'm in a chair.

So the first order of business, Lemmy, is how the hell do I even look for a remote job to begin with?

I'll probably come back for more questions about how to actually get a job like that because I feel like I don't know wtf I'm doing when it comes to resumes/cover letters either (part of it is I don't want to write fan-fiction about some shitty job that will mistreat me).

First time playing an "evil" campaign, with a friend running a Durge.

We're failing so miserably in so many comic ways.

We killed most of the origin companions because they're mostly good two-shoes. When we were done only Lae'zel and Astarion were left.

In Act 2, because we murdered Shadowheart in Act 1, we were locked out of killing the Nightsong because we didn't have Shar's Chosen with us. Even after killing Isobel, somehow we ended up with both Jaheira and the Nightsong at our camp, through bad decisions and forgetting to save frequently.

Further, Minthara was glitched and missing in Act 2 after our Durge romanced her in Act 1 but chose not to give in to her urge and kill Minthara because we wanted to recruit her Overly Attached Girlfriend self to our party.

By Act 3, our Monk said "I feel like we're bad at being evil."

I sort of do, too. Being a goody-two-shoes in real life can make it hard to know how to be a sinister mustache twirling villain.

I literally do blame the Democrats for Trump, and if you don't, you weren't paying attention.

Plenty of us were critiquing Clinton's campaign on those merits and were consistently talked down to in shocker the same way we're being talked down to now. Shocker, she lost. I remember saying a few weeks before the election "We're about to get Brexited." I put my vote down for Clinton, because Trump is fucking insane, and that was clear before he was President. It was clear in the fucking 1980's.

Being able to critique our leaders is supposed to be what is the difference between us and conservative voters. They're the cult who unquestioningly believes all the bullshit that comes out of Trump's mouth and diapers. I find it weird that people think we should be more like them in regards to our leaders like that would be a good thing.

Money wins, every time. They're not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided "humans are the problem." (I mean, that's a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn't "infect" the entire internet as it currently exists.)

However, it's very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.

Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.

---

So, let's review:

1. The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It's not like it can "hop" onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn't have a "body" and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.

2. Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.

3. Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he "wants to save the world, but only if he's the one who can save it." I mean, he's not wrong, but he's also projecting a lot here. He's exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could "safeguard" AGI and here he's going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He's a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.

4. Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman's younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You'd think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don't care, and they'll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That's how corporations work.

So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?

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And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn't the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating "safeguarding AGI" with "preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service." They aren't safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They're safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.

Really makes me want to make a Clem Fandango Tav and find/make a mod to give Gale a mustache.

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EDIT: If Larian somehow doesn't get Matt Berry and Shazad Latif in bit roles for DLC where you get some special easter-egg dialogue with Gale, I'll be disappointed.

A pair of brothers muse on mortality.