You know what, though? My power and plumbing never went out. I was apparently on the White House grid. Aliens could have been the answer and I’d have been like, “My toilet flushes and I have a heater even in blizzards. Aliens aren’t my business.”
Zelda - Link to the Past. I had so much fun playing Link Between Worlds.
Once, but I don’t think it was aliens or supernatural or anything. I was walking home down embassy row in Washington, DC and we crossed 16th St near the White House, and we saw something that looked like a ball of lightening but that way too low to the ground. I asked, “Did y’all see that too?” and complete strangers agreed they did. There was no sound.
Obviously, in that neighborhood, you don’t assume “aliens!” or anything. It was weird to us civilians and I’m quite sure there’s a scientific or classified explanation. But it was definitely a “What the fuck was that?” moment for a half dozen strangers just walking down a busy street.
It didn’t move around or look like images of ball lightening, though it looked like lightening in a sphere in many ways. If it was some electrical explosion, we’d have presumably heard it. So, who knows? Governments and atmospheric conditions do weird shit sometimes.
The key scandal to me — I live in NOLA — is that the city council had tons of debates and put in place a process and limitations on facial recognition to limit false positives. But the new cameras aren’t city owned. A private company sells the cameras to businesses. Then, if a crime happens, the police call the company and ask if they “witnessed” anything. Then, the company basically texts officers a location if they think their facial recognition software spots the suspect.
And since we’re apparently the demonstration city (again) for a company, it’s no cost to taxpayers. Maybe that makes it no different from typical police work to you. But even if the product worked perfectly, and it likely doesn’t, I don’t like the idea of the NOPD secretly working overtime to find loopholes around laws and regulations.
And that’s before you get to collecting evidence for trial. Defense attorneys probably won’t have a hard time getting these cases dismissed unless there’s tons of other evidence.
Later in the article, it talks specifically about the server-side archives being stored in plain text. That’s why the hacker was able to access messages. This isn’t about the local copies on phones.
We might need a few reforms to our economic model where the stupidest sociopaths alive get lots of money and teachers and nurses do not.
I like how he’s pissed off every major and micro-demographic. Prestige TV fans. Sports fans. Comic book fans. People who watch reruns of Bones at 2am to help them fall asleep. Old men watching Shawshank Redemption for the 300th time because they’d rather die than pay money for digital media. Probably horse girls, somehow.
The app I sometimes have to use to watch a basketball game really shouldn’t rebrand as much as it does. I’m starting to think the CEO might be the dumbest fuck alive.
Who will fuck up the settings, control panel, registry, etc. interfaces now? The person who keeps putting Candy Crush on the start menu like it’s their life mission?
Crystal and Sambal, depending on the dish. Tabasco if it’s gumbo or soup or whatever but Tabasco is more concentrated and I like it best as an ingredient than as a sauce.
That’s it. The last straw. I’m putting my Zune on eBay and investing in a Creative ZEN X-Fi2 64 bit.
I think I read that the studio insisted on changes that annoyed Mike Judge. Pootie Tang met the same fate. They should have just let professional comedians release whatever but some studio executive didn’t get the jokes and was like, “This movie won’t appeal to suburban fathers over 45.” or whatever.
In my experience, it often comes out that all of the shitty parts of comedy movies are not the fault of the creators. But comedians aren’t given creative freedom like Scorsese or whomever and also are like, “Make whatever edits you want. I made a stupid movie with my friends. You got my check?”
I’d say in the U.S., no one will even notice in New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, maybe Chicago and NYC but a place like Dallas or Jacksonville would be less tolerant. A place in the northeast like Boston or DC would be culturally less permissive but you’d be safe. They’re tolerant but have a puritan history (Boston) or are culturally sort of conformist (DC), for lack of a better term. DC is very much not hostile but it’s small-c conservative in the sense that everyone wears suits to work and it’s not counter-culture.
I live in New Orleans and am cishet — so don’t take my word for it — but even my “boring” high school friends own multiple dresses because of Mardi Gras and Red Dress Run and events like that. No one cares about gender conformity here but drive more than a hour away and it can get unsafe quick.
I can’t speak for coastal California but I’ve been there a bunch and it seems similar. No one is even gonna notice in San Francisco. It’s just expensive as fuck.
Most urban centers — especially coastal ones — are pretty chill about it in 2025, I would say. But you should ask residents. New Orleans and San Francisco are, in my experience, not even going to notice. But most cities aren’t actively hostile. If you prefer suburban life, I’d look at college towns.
This is hardly the dumbest one originally but I worked construction in high school and college. One old dude had gotten “RESPECT” tattooed on his abs in his youth. By the time I met him, he had a beer belly and had had some injuries and surgeries. It was just a completely different font/message.
By contrast, the best tattoo I’ve seen is a friend who is a musician. She has musical notes tattooed behind her ears. You wouldn’t even know if she did her hair a certain way (for a job interview or something) but when she was ready to party, the musical notes were on display.
I also knew a guy who was an artist who had an amazing sleeve. He obviously cared about the artistic aspect; he literally flew to Japan multiple times to have it done because he cared that much about being a canvas for the specific artist he chose. That was the most impressive. I like the subtlety of the music notes but I’m not against going all out. It’s really the middle-ground — like a drunk tattoo that meant something at the time — where people regret it later.
Live your best life. We all have bills to pay but If it isn’t the right fit, send out resumes. You owe corporations nothing. And you probably won’t get promoted if you hate your coworkers. You’re better off trying to find a better fit than trying to thrive somewhere that doesn’t match.
That advice goes to wildlife too. I’m guessing they won’t read this but if you’re a raccoon eating out of restaurant dumpsters, find the best dumpster. They got plenty nowadays.
At one job, I changed the default settings in everyone’s calendar to 45 minute meetings instead of an hour and it increased productivity like ten fold. Designers and developers need to have longer meetings sometimes but they don’t need a marketing person or an executive there.
If you’re using IQ as a measure of intelligence, you probably already know.
Why are you borrowing like $3,000 a credit hour to use ChatGPT? Take some fucking humanities courses so you don’t grow up to be like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk challenging each other to an MMA match. This might be your last chance in life to be surrounded by experts and hot people having discussions.
Being able to use software everyone uses isn’t a marketable skill. Learn some shit. You’re an adult now.
Having a shitty apartment that never lost power, water, or heat in a major city when I was 23 is probably the most unbelievable part of this story, to be honest. I didn’t care if it was haunted.
Ghosts can’t even touch you. I’m not paying $400 a month extra for no ghosts. Float on through. Give me the haunted place, a sleeping bag, and a 13 inch TV. I’ll negotiate with the ghosts.