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Lawnmower Boy

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Everything posted by Lawnmower Boy

  1. Little known fact: the Death Star design started out as a TIE fighter upgrade.
  2. So once upon a time, there was a dairy --somewhere-- that called itself "Parmalat." Imagine guys in handlebar moustaches riding big wheel bicycles to work while "Daisy" plays over the sepia footage, because it was a long time ago, before Beatrice bought Parmalat, and Dairyland bought Beatrice, and Saputo bought Dairyland. For Americans, it might be helpful to remember that the Canadian business landscape is a lot like the Empire in Star Wars. Or the One Ring. Whichever kind of predatory monopoly is more sinister. Anyway, point is that Saputo now owns Everything Dairy in Canada, not so that it can make more money by being a giant monopoly, but so that it can, uhm, something something it's all good. Speaking of monopolies, when we were taken over, we sold our stores on Vancouver Island to a rival chain, and there were some readjustments. Specifically, they dropped the Parmalat 1 Litre Chocolate Milk by Beatrice by Dairyland by Saputo in favour of a competing product. Last night, a customer pokes his head in the back room while I'm trying to clean up after a DM visit. (Handy store manager SOP sheet for DM visits: take everything that might upset the DM, shove in the back, go out, smile, grin and eat poo-poo for as long as it takes, go home early, kick the dog.) Said customer says, "I live in Victoria, and I buy all your Parmalat 1L Chocolate Milk, etc, etc, every time I come over to visit my GF, because I can't get i in Victoria any more. Do you know where I can get it in Victoria, because I've tried their website and their help lilne, and their CSRs can't tell me." Well, I can't tell him, either. But I do have a little happy feeling in my heart now, because it turns out that someone's customer service is worse than ours. A happy feeling mediated by the suspicion that it's all coming apart, but a happy feeling nonetheless.
  3. Pro tip: Do not blame your boss, unless your trousers are feeling particularly tight at the zipper, and you decide to go to his boss. (I won't say "good luck with that," because obvs,but you'll need it anwyay.) And even that is a high-risk, low payoff strategy. High-risk, low payoff strategies should not be used against homicidal cyborg sexless space warlocks. "Trying not to be seen" is usually preferable. That's why committees sign off on things like exhaust ports in the first place.
  4. How many facts could a fact checker check, if a fact checker could check facts?
  5. Why, you're right! This is not the perfect union battle in which all views line up with mine, and one side is unambiguously on the side of the angels, descended form Heaven with perfect wisdom! Therefore, I withdraw my support for job action! Now I'm off to vent my rage against all less pure of mind and righteousness than I!
  6. Happy New Year everybody! http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/12/official-lgm-signature-new-years-eve-cocktail
  7. Allow me to take a slightly differing approach here. i) Yes, police do bad things. As someone who remembers being a self-righteous teaching assistant stumbling into trouble due to unconcsious insecurity and a general try-too-hard approach, I ....find it hard to judge. Where is the on-the-job supervision, the practical training, the moderating influence of experience? If absent, I've been in that place. (From the other side, I face junior employees letting their egos and prejudices get in the way of good customer service all the time. It's something that takes constant correction, as hard to learn as letting the ego go in the first place.) So, that bit of true confessions left aside, let me acknowledge another set of unfortunate problems: unions are full of themselves; and union activits are often the self-selected jerkiest jerks in the shop. And you what the historical effect of all those obnoxious unions getting in society's face has been? Good wages, good incomes, a middle class society, broad-based home ownerrship, a solid retail sector, low-cost health insurance, good schools. All the stuff we've been losing little by little over the last 30 years or so. Rookie NYPD salary, 2014, including non-monetary benefits: $44,744/year; Average studio apartment rent in Harlem, 2014: $1500--$2500. You do the math. So, in sum: I find the NY city police union obnoxious and offensive. I also support their work-to-rule.
  8. I dreamed I fought orcs in my....
  9. OMG! Redcloak's neice has rezzed Tsukiko!
  10. Hunh? No. No. If we consider Al Sharptonas an obnoxious, self-interested activist, then this line of thinking is taking us in a very bad direction. People who say things you disapprove of or disagree with are good for you. (At least to the point where slander and libel laws intervene; but that's why you have those laws.) If we consider him as an activist--- Look, this whole thing with discrimination against, and oppression of, out groups (for example, Black Americans, Canadian Indians) is a real human problem that causes untold suffering and misery. Bringing attention to this problem is not what creates it. If we consider him a con artist and opportunist who gins up trouble where there is none to be had --Well, here we're running up on the whole slander and libel thing. There is some social damage being done there, but it's pretty trivial compared with, say, Glenn Beck (lost any money on gold, lately?) or, better example, Bernie Madoff. Putting salt in an open wound for a living is a bad thing, and I'm not defending Al Sharpton for it. But it's a good way of reminding everyone that the wound exists.
  11. I think the problem is that we're looking at incidents of policing going wrong, and seeing that they lead to a far higher number of fatal shootings than in other jurisdictions, involving a disproportionately large number of white policemen shooting black teenagers, and we see a need for social change. The shootings arise in cases of policing gone wrong.The kid is doing something wrong and suspicious. The officer perceived a need to fire, and the death is a tragic outcome of the behaviour that triggered the encounter in the first place, and the misperception of risk that led the police oficer to fire. It is not always like this. There have been some blatant cases. But take what is perhaps the most extreme one, the shooting of Oscar Grant in 2013. It seems clear that in a stressful and chaotic situation, Officer Mehserle drew and fired the wrong weapon. Just absolutely clear malpractice. But what the heck are you going to do with that? It's systemic in the sense that it's another black man shot by a white officer. That's what needs to be fixed in a vaguely societal way, but the problem of young,out-group males being disproportionately subject to police violence is scarcely confined to America. It seems clear that solutions going forward need to focus on minimising risk: First, above all, fewer firearms, to break the culture that expects gunplay. Second, less stress on police through other means than de-escalating risk. Patrols in arger numbers (and less frequently); but I would like to take a moment to focus on finances. The Oscar Grant episode involved a BART Policeman rather than a San Francisco Police Department patrol officer. The City of San Francisco advertises a BART police salary of $5,548/month to $7,422, though the low end of the scale is at the end of several years of training. The SFPD, on the other hand, pays $80,574.00 - $112,164.00/year . Would anyone care to speculate as to why the city of San Francisco chooses to operate a separate police department for the BART system? Why, yes, you are completely right! It is a jurisdictional issue over which the city has, unfortunately, no control or influence! It has nothing to do with money! Snark aside, 64 grand may seem like a lot of money, but I suspect there's a reason that I found a job opening advertisement for BART, and a job description for the SFPD. The reported average rent for a 1 bedroom in San Francisco as of 09/2014 is $2873/month, up from just over 1400 five years ago. Now, an SFPD officer in his mid-50s, who entered Police Academy right out of high school in 1979, probably owns his own house. As late as 1990, the price of a three-bedroom house in San Francisco was under $300,000. Mortgage and property tax payments on it have, er, diverged from rental by a considerable margin. An SFPD officer in his 20s, by way of contrast, will probably think that he has won the lottery on income --but that does not mean that he can afford rent and student loan payments (because of course a college degree is required now). As for a BART officer --hey, welcome to the lumpen proletariat! The one good thing about your job? You're the one handing out the lumps. I've got to say, the temptation to confiscate evidence of illicit drug dealing --oh, what am I saying? That stuff doesn't happen! In case you're interested, a County of St. Louis Police Department commissioned patrol officer with nine years seniority earns $21.40/hour, or $21.94 with a bachelor's degree. The City of Ferguson's listed salary is $21.15, although this is from a non-official source. It's not nearly as big a gradiant as that between the SFPD and the BART police, but it is still significant, especiallly when it is not clear that oranges are being compared with oranges. And here is the key takeaway point. We have extensive experience in how to turn a police force into a band of demoralised corporate thugs-for-hire. Extensive. A key part of this formula is low pay, and this trend is far from confined to America. Everyone is trying to save money on this pesky "civil service" thing with wage caps, discipline, austerity, holding costs down, all that good stuff. So, congratulations, world! We have a clear policy direction,and we seem to be getting there jig-time. After all, brutal and corrupt policing have given us some of the greatest moments in human history.
  12. I sense the presence of Redcloak's niece!
  13. The Overbrain laughes at your pathetic face punching!
  14. Geez. I was beginning to think it'd never take the hint.
  15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F6F_Hellcat
  16. Maybe if he worked out more and waxed?
  17. I still think that energy storage is kind of beside the point. We have this awesomely dense, easily moved, liquid energy storage system called "petroleum." The only problem is that we're using fossil petroleum instead of making new petroleum out of the atmosphere, which currenltyl has a dangerous (or so I've heard) surplus of the main feedstock. Seriously. Let's set aside catalysed high temperature/pressure reactions in huge tanks with electrolysed hydrogen. There's a well established methof of making gas and diesel out of an atmospheric feed. (Cf. Anonymous Single Celled Organism, "I'm Totally Living Off Sunlight and Storing it For Later as Lipids, Dude!" [Science, 1,500,000,000 B.P.].) At this point, the only thing that's really standing in our way is that it's expensive/time-consuming/labour intensive/Oh, God, I Don't Want to Bother Moving This Through the Senate. To the extent that those problems can be dealt with, an awesome solution is that big tank that you feed with air at one end and get a POL drip out the other. Since this is a pretty energy intensive way of doing things, powering it off a cheap fusion reactor would ... ...You know what? Screw that. Yes, fusion would be a huge improvement. But we could be doing this tomorrow in the deserts of Arabia or the hydroelectric dams of the West. The problem isn't a shortage of energy. It's that thing I mentioned, where it just seems like too much work to start doing it, and maybe the deficit and/or taxes would go up, or Sephen Harper would be mad at us.
  18. Hey! I got a better offer! .... One of my old colleagues was reassigned to night stocking after* he refused to evacuate customers from the store after a bomb (actually a smoke flare, so no biggie) went off. No bomb threat, no problem, right? *After as in, it happened later. Apparently the final straw, upon which say no more, was deemed a more serious matter than a bit of the old grocery shopping while chemical smoke poured out of Aisle 1..
  19. Getting better every day, Epiphanis. Blip is the better of the two, I think.
  20. PhD, a year or so of adjunct teaching/postgraduate research, then it's on to retail. Seems like a reasonable use of an advanced degree to me. It's this kind of crap that leaves people crazy mad enough to think that Gamergate is a good idea.
  21. Then you, like, get blood on you. Eew. Also, maybe they weren't trained in first aid or, maybe when tney realised that they'd shot somebody, they went totally to pieces and had to hyperventilate in a brown paper bag until their mommy got there. What do you think the cops are, supermen? A
  22. Well, once ultimate AI is possible, it's inevitable that one will arise that will decide that you suck. From your internet comments, because, in the end, don't we all? (Shut up about my self-loathing!) And since it's ultimately intelligent, it can do anything. Like time travel and stuff. (I saw it in a Family Matters once.) So it'll go back in time and punish you in advance for your comments with infinite torment! Only then you won't make the comments, so it'll make this android clone of you that will make the comments. Because cauality. ....Of everybody, because we're all, you know... ...So it pretty much has to make androids of everybody, for all time. Hmm... Maybe a Matrix-type situation is more logistically plausible? OMG, I don't exist. Because I'm being tortured somewhere, and I'm an android. An android of a brain-in-a-tank! So. Seem's pretty airtight logic to me, right there. Can I have as much money as Elon Musk, now?
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