A Different View
Styxhexxenhammer is, despitereports to the contrary, not Razorfist after having mellowed out by ingesting lots of weed. Razorfist, to the utter disbelief of some is NOT Styxhexxenhammer's Hyde-like alter ego who surfaces periodically as a result of a magic mushroom mishap.
They are, I am told, COMPLETELY different individuals.
So here is a totally different person's take on the Arizona audit.
Again, I think the implications of the findings are consequential and troubling, but of little immediate practical relevance. I think the damage has been done and the biggest danger is if people let themselves get demoralized by this.
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No, there is an immediate practical difference.
There are actions that can and should be taken right away, where ever you are in America.
You need to be engaged with your local election officials, and your neighbors.
Unless you are in an industry that will blacklist you from talking about this stuff, and then you need to be thinking about getting out.
If your neighbors are basically sound, you can do things if your local election officials are not basically sound.
If your local election officials are basically sound, you can establish process/precedent that sees the true costs of electronic voting machines.
You need to pay close attention to how the officials think about electronics. The ideal isn't quite a tin foil hat nutter who does not believe in using cellphones, but skepticism of smartphones would be appropriate. You want people who understand that electronics are made by humans, and the function depends on how they are made.
If neither your neighbors nor your local election officials are sound, relocation would be ideal. Practically, relocating to a place where you could know that your neighbors are sound would be difficult.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Fri Oct 1 11:13:24 2021 (r9O5h)
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Given that the party in party has discovered that election stealing is fairly easy to do, has major benefits, has a high success rate, and little to no penalties or disadvantages, I do not see how any sort of voter motivation will work. When you have something that works, you keep doing it until it does not.
They have already demonstrated that cheating tens of thousands of votes is doable and straight-forward.
It is only a matter of time (Might even be next year, certainly by 2024.) before they start cheating hundreds of thousands of votes.
I know you are trying to do the right thing trying to remind people to not get discouraged, but frankly, I think we might have gone past that.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Oct 1 14:49:01 2021 (MuaLM)
Dubious elections go back quite far, unless you suppose that the terrorism of Jim Crow resulted in those elections being free and fair despite the outright explicit electioneering. And the parties switched places my ass.
There are fifty state parties. Showing significant Democrat continuity in one, such as the one I have roots enough in understand the political history of, proves a lack of Democrat clean hands at the national level.
JFK essentially stole 1960. He had Southern states with enough EVs that the effect of terrorism in suppressing the Republican vote cannot be assumed minimal. (The so called Southern Strategy that modern Democrats complain about is merely the result of their corrupt asses being kicked out after people had time to realize that they really had been made to quit the terrorism, and that the ACW is a really long time ago.) JFK was not a lunatic of the modern grade, and his theft of the election was tolerable in comparison.
When you consider all of the little signs, Democrats may have been stealing Presidential elections under the modern scheme as far back as 1992, and the Democrat leadership definitely thought they had stolen 2008 and 2012. Consider the entitlement in 2000 and 2016. Consider the edge to Obama's race war nutjobbery. If he thought he had fairly won the white vote, why is he so insecure about whites?
It is not at all a coincidence that the Clintons came out of the Arkansas Democratic Party. They have no principled objection to white supremacist terrorism, or to election fraud.
The degree of knowing we have is simply a result of them deciding to 'fix' the 'mistakes' they made in 2016.
They've been doing stuff with political polls for a long time, media is disinformation, and there is an appearance that the courts were fixed. Courts may not have been fixed, but law faculty are in the university echo chamber, and don't understanding how badly they hurt credibility in the public eye, going on along with what the echo chamber insists.
Despite that, there is a path to addressing it that is not an active shooting war. 1. In red states, voter activism to force fair voting process on electoral officials. 2. Then, replacing establishment Republicans at the state level with actual trustworthy Republicans. 3. Then, getting actual things done with regard to legal system and university problems.
It is a great deal of work, and we may have a shooting war anyway. Opposition leadership is well and truely insane, and the folks who purport to lead or represent us are Quislings and Chamberlains.
Everything we can get done properly in a nominally red state is a tool for the wider propaganda war.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Oct 2 11:00:29 2021 (r9O5h)
Wow.
By no means a dispassionate analysis; but one that, between expletives, handily puts into perspective what was and what was not found. It also provides some historical context regarding senate race shenanigans in AZ that explain why conservative Arizonans were so hot about this thing.
There is more on this here and here and the current mainstream take on this....ignoring the elephant in the room...can be found here.
A few things.
This is 1 county. This is NOT going to decertify the 2020 election, at least any time in the next year or so.
Even if it turns out that Biden did not win this (and other states sufficient to swing the election)....and even though that does seem quite possible, this will not change anything. There is no constitutional process for fixing this. The election was certified. That's it. The end. A president can be impeached, but that replaces the president with the Vice-President, not the opposition in the last election. As gobsmackingly inept and malicious as Dull Joe's Bizarre Misadventure has been, Kackels Mc Karen is almost certainly going to be a step down for the country and it behooves us to delay that inevitable transition as long as possible.
This audit does lend credence to the notion that our election systems are seriously broken and need to be secured. Mail-in voting has always been exceedingly vulnerable to fraud and needs to be massively limited.
The very real possibility of screwed-up ballots aside, the total subversion of the media and tech landscape has "fortified" our elections for a decade, to the extent that they're not even hiding how rigged the system is, they're bragging about it. If there is to be any hope of voting our way out of our pickle, the out and out scam of mail in ballots will have to be ended.
But as important as pushing for reform, indeed even more so, is to not give up. The only reason I can come up with that the bizarre Time mea-culpa was published was wave in our faces that they could admit what we'd long suspected and do so without fear. The Time story was an expression of dominance intended to demoralize the right. Whatever horrid revelations come of this ongoing process it is imperative that everybody (who is legally entitled to) vote. Because if we beat them larger that the margin of fraud, we still can save the country, but if we throw our hands up in despair and say "What's the point?" all hope is lost and we will never carry the day again.
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Given the current rate they are going, we will be talking about the theft hundreds of thousands of votes in each state in a few years, especially when the certain party controls the places where the votes are being counted.
They already demonstrated that they can do it with no consequences. I fail see why they would have any reason not to keep on going and push it.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Sep 26 23:37:31 2021 (MuaLM)
Blogging Via Dial-Up Sucks
On the other hand, finally being able to walk 4 miles without a cane is most gratifying.
I still can't run or jump, but I'm now going to out-patient Physical Therapy and have access to special equipment so I can work on that.
Furthermore, I walked past the school and blundered upon a gun store on the side of the road 2 miles distant and discovered 9mm ammunition for less than 50 cents a round. Walking back carrying the unexpected prize was harder, but it was satisfying.
The Levels of Quislingry are Being Exaggerated
One of the things that has been reported in the news is how the people of Australia have just followed the recently reinstated COVID restrictions without protest (save a few outliers) and enthusiastically begun snitching on any compatriots who diverge from the government mandates.
I decided to ask one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of On the Ground Sources in Australia about this and after gaining confirmation that opposition to the policy is quite broad was given the following reply from the utterly mysterious BCTOOTGSIA#000001......
The current protests are mostly construction workers that the state government abruptly put out of work.
Since it's a Labor government with close ties to the unions, they are desperately spinning it as anything other than jobless union members.
BCTOOTGSIA#000001 also recommended checking out two Twitter channels which have documentary footage of the large protests and the government response.
Melbourne has imposed draconian restrictions (which has been reported) and has undergone massive civil disobedience (which is not being widely noted, at least here in the U.S.). I should note that the results of the 15 days to flatten the curve have, in Melbourne been 235 days locked down and the highest daily case rate yet.
The main reason I post this is because the reporting from Australia has been largely unanimous in saying that Aussies are taking this lying down or even enthusiastically. That does not seem to be the case and it does a disservice to the Australians and only serves to demoralize the rest of us.
A special thanks to our totally anonymous man on the spot who is enduring deadly spiders, boxing kangaroos, IT woes, and a shortage of chicken nuggets while trying to survive in a cyberpunk dystopia.
In completely unrelated news you should check out Ambient Irony daily.
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While Victoria is still going full Health Nazi, New South Wales plans to phase out almost all restrictions by December 1. No vaccine mandates, no vaccine passports, no checkins or contact tracing. Masks still expected to be required on public transport though, so I won't be doing that.
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"Masks still expected to be required on public transport though, so I won't be doing that."
You monster, gratuitously contributing to glueball wormening!
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Sep 27 09:26:35 2021 (Z0GF0)
Some Good News!
Space-X's INSPIRATION-4 capsule, the first crewed, private, wholly civilian space mission to go into orbit, returned safely this evening.
The fate of of the Soyuz11 crew demands that we not be satisfied with merely observing the splashdown though....
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I found that just three deep breaths can drop my blood pressure from 160 to 120.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sun Sep 19 11:46:28 2021 (LZ7Bg)
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Yeah, I have problems with carrying around too much tension.
Breathing helps.
Another thing that helps is an exercise involving lying down flat.
Hands clasped behind my head.
Holding my head still, and facing straight up, look as far right as my eyes travel, and hold. Breath a while. Then switch to looking left the same way, hold and breathe.
Then actually turn my head to the right, hold and breath. Then the left, again.
It is possible that this only has good results for me because of something wrong with me.
News is depressing, but I've actually been on net positive. Compared to the first Obama years, which I spent very depressed. May just be my personal situation, and making slightly better choices in my emotions.
I mean, it seems pretty clear that a few of those with power over us are deeply disturbed, and that is never a wonderful situation to feel trapped in. Compared to the Obama years, however, while I still don't see a way out, I do have a lot better understanding of the grounds for hope.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sun Sep 19 14:54:05 2021 (r9O5h)
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Argh, I had javascript off, and so a bunch of white space was eaten.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sun Sep 19 14:55:32 2021 (r9O5h)
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Are there any more sedentary job prospects within non-driving distance available? Given the health issue(s?), something less strenuous might be preferable.
Posted by: jabrwok at Sun Sep 19 18:37:52 2021 (iyhH7)
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There are probably some temporary disability plans that can help out in the interim, if you do get fired. If you get going on the paperwork immediately, you may even see some cash in 6 months....
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Sep 19 22:23:35 2021 (Ix1l6)
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You may try looking into your state's public transportation options, not to ride a bus but because many also have special discounted transportation options for the disabled, including those who can't drive. Usually something like a taxi or a van service that may only charge you a few dollars. A 30-second search turned up this: https://vda.virginia.gov/drivingtransport.htm I'm not sure how quickly you can get access to something like this, but may be worth investigating.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Mon Sep 20 07:03:42 2021 (olRfA)
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Hope you can find another possible work place. My son got a job with your 'current?' employer after being overseas for a number of years. They recently told him(verbally) that he needed to go to another work site for some special training. When he went there, his ID badge would not let him in to the different location, but he was able to talk with the people on site and show his badge and got let in. Then said company claimed he was filing false work hours because he didn't show up for the 'mandatory' training. Since his badge wouldn't work there he was not OFFICIALLY present, so he COULDN'T have been there for the training - so they fired him.
I'm sure his being over 40 had nothing to do with the setup.
Meanwhile, he has started working elsewhere.
Posted by: Frank at Tue Sep 21 15:54:06 2021 (rglbH)
2973 people were killed on that day 20 years ago. A further 2461 military personnel were killed in Afghanistan prior to our disgraceful and inept pull-out earlier this month. Those totals do not count the thousands who died later or those who succumbed to the after-effects of the asbestos cloud that poisoned lower Manhattan in the wake of the towers collapse, the thousands who died in the ostensibly related adventure in Iraq, the multitude of Peace Corps and U.S. aid workers who died in Afganistan, including one killed last week via U.S. drone strike, those who succumbed to their injuries after being evacuated out of the country, nor does it count the servicemembers who are killing themselves now as they watch what is transpiring, and it doesn't touch on the vast numbers of innocent Afghanis who died either because they were caught in crossfires or suffered retaliation from the Taliban.
The Taliban, who hosted and gave aid to those who struck us on that fateful September day now own the country. They are proceeding to bless the nation with their own diverse and exotic take on gender relations policy..
...and take inventory of the cornucopia of armaments that our leadership has blessed them with.
The Taliban are Islamists, have a history of funding and giving aid, spiritual, financial, and logistical, to terrorists Now they have not only won, they are armed to the teeth with our guns.
Like Polyphemus, we have lashed out destructively and violently, but blindly and in for all our efforts appeared impotent. But unlike the mythical Cyclops we have actually enriched our tormentors.
Given the money, blood and effort put into the Hindu-Kush for 20 years the towns of Afghanistan should look today like the pictures of Kabul before the Soviet invasion.
Given the assumption and conceits of those who turned a punitive expedition into a Jacobin effort at nation building......Assuming a 12 year education, the schools of Afghanistan that we spent so much to build should be putting out their 8th class of high school graduates educated in math, science and civilized mores. However our leadership cadre has no firm belief in civilization and the schools which so much money was spent on seem to have done very little.
Until this year, despite all the missteps by our feckless leadership class, Jihadist political islam had been seen as a spent force. It was broken and scatters mainly by Trumps demolishing of ISIS in Syria and the steady and ongoing French efforts in Africa. However, many countries, including most NATO members and many Muslim majority nations had joined in driving jihadism into irrelevancy. There have been but a few successes for islamist movements in isolated backwaters, and while the danger of these movements has been real, ISIS, AlQaeda, Abu Sayeff and BokoHharam were but husks of their former selves.
Now however, radical Islam has been give a massive shot in the arm, and ironclad legitimacy in the eyes of its formerly demoralized followers. Quite aside from the material benefits the kit we left behind will provide them, the morale boost is going to supercharge the until recently moribund movement.
On the other hand the cowardly and venal way in which we left the arena has alienated or demoralized our allies and given our enemies confidence that they can act against us without fear.
This was all unnecessary. There was a plan in place during the previous administration to pull out and leave a small counterterrorism force back in March, when the Taliban would have been hobbled by the weather. Our current leadership chose to sneak out unannounced leaving our allies in the lurch and kneecapping the Afghani army.
The damage this has done to us and our interests is as Brobdingnagian as as the aid we've given our adversaries.
As we commemorate this 20th anniversary of the attacks, we lie prostrate in total defeat at the hands of those who helped perpetrate them. And we still have people over there who were abandoned by our own government both U.S. citizens and former allies. All the while the exquisitely credentialed careerists who perpetrated this pat themselves on the back.
The government and ruling class that perpetrated this unnecessary self-own has shown that its enemies are not our enemies.
This fiasco will likely have terrible consequences internationally. But I fear this will be more immediately felt domestically.
I am so angry and saddened by this fiasco I cannot adequately express myself. But my frustration and despondency are vanishingly irrelevant compared to the momentous calamities this fuck-up will precipitate.
There's more on this and intertwined sub-optimal current events by people who can write well here, here, here, here and here.
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Akshully, it is simply that the senior Democrats are evil, have always been the enemies of Americans, and the Democratic Party has for over a hundred fifty years had a corrupt institutional culture that routinely practices tactics that should put it beyond the bounds of civil politics. Those since FDR who have prospered within the Republican Party have largely been inclined to turn a blind eye to this, where they are not actively complicit.
Note, the regime that did this does not see it as a humiliation for
them, they see it as a way of humiliating /us/. Obama is a narcissist,
and if you are not familiar with those, you are underestimating his
distress and rage at American blacks and whites for not starting a race
war on his schedule. As for the assets of the PRC, PRC interest is in
humiliating us, because of their own internal stability issues.
They are going to war with the American people anyway, but this may be 'kill the chicken to frighten the monkey' thinking.
What we have here is a profound failure of the American cultural consensus on peace between religious sects; That peace does not and has never held with the followers of the evil religion of communism.
It is simply that Thomas Kratman saw things all too truly when he wrote Caliphate, and put words into the mouth of his backstory antagonist Pat Buckman.
Wake up America, it is time to put our own house in order.
However, unlike the literary Buckman, we may still be sane enough to remove those who wish us harm from power, /without/ destroying the Republic.
Very few of even the actual people who voted Biden are on board for this war against Americans. So, they don't have the balance of force to make it happen. They are relying of the faint vestiges of institutional prestige, even as they waste more of that prestige on vicious moronic nutjobbery. We win, they lose, and we perhaps win so easily that we do not need to pursue all former adversary forces to complete destruction.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sun Sep 12 09:32:19 2021 (r9O5h)
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You know, Taliban was ready to give up Osama bin Laden to us. They only asked for it to be done through another country. But Bush administration said now.
Even so we should have been out of Afghanistan in 2006. They didn't win, we lost, with full foresight.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Sep 14 08:53:35 2021 (LZ7Bg)
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I am pretty sure the Taliban was never seriously contemplating surrendering bin Laden and his Al Qaeda associates et al. even after it became plainly obvious that they were guilty as sin so that blind people could see it. It did not prevent the Taliban to try and play games with offers of this or that that were as serious and well intention as the offers of cease fire and negotiations that the North Koreans and Chinese extended during the Korean War when they want time to prepare for the next offensive without getting beaten by US firepower, i.e. simple stalling tactics.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Sep 17 08:16:48 2021 (MuaLM)
Adventures in Algorithims Again
This evening, after a day of doctor visits and other annoyances, I sat down and watched a V-tuber named Hyasynth finishing up a Resident Evil 4run. She'd sent out notifications and members of her chat with Facebook accounts were congratulating her on her apparent new sponsorship...or were complaining about the sponsors aggressive marketing.
She was a tad confused, not having any sponsorships yet, but the matter was soon clarified. Her announcements of her Resident Evil 4 play-thru's have, on Facebook, been helpfully accompanied by ads for a pharmaceutical company.
I have questions.
Not so much about how the advertising algorithm decided that weebs on Twitch were the target audience for the distribution of peptides and selective androgen receptor modulators, that is obvious.
Rather I find myself wondering why in the name of Mercury, Greek god of messaging and commerce, someone actually thought the name Umbrella Labs would be a good one, especially for a medical supply company and even more especially since their logo indicates that they not unfamiliar with the potential downsides of that decision.
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The cynical answer - because there are far more people who do not play video games, let alone Resident Evil video games, than do. Thus the pool of people who would be amused/thunderstruck by a company named Umbrella is far smaller than the pool of people who could not be bothered to think twice about it when they see it.
I feel the same way whenever I see any beauty products from Vichy Laboratoires.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Sep 10 20:16:19 2021 (MuaLM)
There are many obvious reasons that come to mind, but for the sake of facetiousness, I'm going to suggest that a lack of mean tweets is the cause. Certainly, there is a correlation.
The Diplomat suggests, in a somewhat hyperbolically titled article, arms sales to pariah entities. While the DPRK has a long history of selling advanced conventional weaponry to all the world assholes, I seriously doubt that the DPRK is going to sell nukes to anybody. I don't rule it out completely but it really doesn't seem to make any sense from a cost benefit aspect. If some paraiah outfit gets nukes, they are gonna use those nukes...probably on us, Israel, or Rome. The first two will go right to the source with nuclear hellfire and Rome, while lacking in atomic ordnance of its own is under our nuclear umbrella, so doing such a thing would be
tantamount to suicide and would outweigh the desperation of North Korea, and the vast monies it could gain the hermit kingdom.
Unless...
Unless desperate commissars somehow see in our rout in the Hindu Kush a lack of competence and resolve, or in the lack of recriminations a display of moral cowardice and a window of opportunity for mischief. Perhaps those tasked with cost benefit estimation look at the patterns and signals coming out of the Beltway as indicative of a ruling class that cannot unite against anything except its domestic opposition, and is unlikely to respond coherently to a strike from abroad with so much as a mean tweet.
Signals matter, and displaying weakness is a more consequential and tangible indicator than being gauche.
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Well...While I do believe the reasons stated is correct, I also think the North Koreans might also be doing so because of what just happened in South Korea.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Sep 8 19:48:24 2021 (MuaLM)
Banality Update
With the cascading fiascoes and calamities in the news, the status of you humble blogger is of limited concern.With that in mind, there's this.
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Thanks for the update. It's heartening to hear of your progress. I'm amazed that you're talking about returning to work at all, much less possibly in weeks. Best of luck!
And clearly you haven't lost your way with words, that was a masterpiece in telling us what your going through without over-sharing, as it were.
Posted by: David Eastman at Tue Aug 31 01:09:09 2021 (t/97R)
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The weight gain is frustrating. People come home after a hard day and cannot help but gorge while unwinding. With how dense modern processed food is, no physical activity can burn it all. Especially things like potato, pizza, pasta will fatten you up in a flash.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Aug 31 08:43:06 2021 (LZ7Bg)
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The news is an information operation, designed to make things look worse than they really are, and demoralize you about doing anything to address the issues.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of very bad things being done.
But we can know that they do not have things as secured in reality for them as they want, and there are in fact things that such as you or I can do.
We win, they lose. It is just that the intervening events are unforeseeable, so we are betting on Americans. We are betting on them because of what the things that didn't happen confirm about Americans.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Aug 31 09:41:58 2021 (DHVaH)
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Hi Brick, Thank you for following up on my prior comments. I'll leave this as my final followup so I don't get annoying on it. Professionally I manage HR systems, which means I know just about enough about HR to know when to get others involved, but I'm also not a complete novice as I do get exposed to HR's responses. I've also known individuals trying to navigate workers comp and it can get very complex, often during a stressful time when they are dealing with the immediate health issues.
1. Waivers, particularly when they are around your health and are a condition of employment are notnecessarily ironclad. If your employer made your continued employment contingent on the waiver, the ground can get very slippery very quickly for them as that can be considered coercive. A lot depends on local law, aspects of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Dept of Labor also occasionally weighs in on this sort of thing as well. It's not something I would wade into without competent legal advice. My advice, don't assume that the waiver fully protects your employer, it may not regardless of what it says.
2. I'm not an expert, but I believe that the stroke would be considered a consequence of the thickening of your blood, which would be the injury that occurred at work. The other health issues may or may not muddy the waters, that's beyond my expertise. The main thing would be how likely you would have been to have the blood thickening and the resulting stroke absent the working conditions you laid out previously.
3. Finally, as a general reminder, the ADA does require that your employer work with you on reasonable accommodations to protect your health, if you ask. This can be anywhere from reasonable modifications to the work environment, to moving you into another position.
Sorry if I am pushing this a bit, but I've seen both individuals trying to navigate this and the inner works of HR when responding. The law gives you a lot of protections, but only if you know enough to use them and if you don't make mistakes early on. Assumptions in this realm are not your friends.
I've said my piece, I'll go back to minding my own business, celebrating your continued recovery, and pray for its' continuance.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tue Aug 31 19:43:15 2021 (ElYwz)
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"Sorry if I am pushing this a bit"
In college, I briefly worked as a scheduler in a factory. I watched a young woman with severe RSI injuries in her wrists silently suffer as her bosses told her they didn't have any work in the office to accommodate her work-acquired injury. This place was almost always embroiled in multiple lawsuits over the same issue.
I hope your employer isn't pulling anything like this, Brick, but don't let them get away with it if they try.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Sep 1 21:44:54 2021 (eqaFC)
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I was ecstatic to be able to stop taking Lasix, 2+ years after having heart surgery.
You'll get there.
Posted by: Canthros at Wed Sep 1 22:47:07 2021 (mToqK)
I hope your employer isn't pulling anything like this, Brick, but don't let them get away with it if they try.
No, they're real good about finding light duty/busy work for someone who was injured on the job, but if you were injured outside it doesn't apply. If I'd had the stroke at work I might be starting back there this week. As it is, I probably have to wait until October before I can do full duty.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Sep 2 02:01:16 2021 (jcjjo)
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And you thought that the version of "Sandman" from Metallica's black album was radio friendly!
Posted by: L. Beau Macaroni at Fri Sep 10 16:40:30 2021 (fieDC)
Fingers Crossed
While all eyes are on the debacle in the Hindu Kush, another calamity may be forming in the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm is expected to strengthen quite a bit, it is already stronger that Katrina and Rita were when they hit, and unlike them, as I type this is is looking like this storm will make a direct hit, at hight tide.
The National Weather Service alert is grim reading, especially for those who remember the events of 15 years ago today.
To be clear the new TESLABOT is not technically a killbot in that it is not equipped with a keyboard command for terminating peons who offend the users of TESLABOT, but a workaround for that oversight is likely simple. If it comes equipped as advertised with such features as opposable thumbs, it will certainly be equip-able with phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range or other items with similar functionality.
OK in all seriousness, this diagram notes what the "killbots" will kill...
...or in the polite language of the promo, "eliminate".
Those 'dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks' are what most of us call "jobs".
That is the prey of this killbot.
Of course for 200 years, jobs have been eliminated by advancing technology only to unleash by their increase in productivity a need for more jobs. This, new development, if it comes to pass may be more of the same, but there is concern that it might be different as it is not "the machinery" but is designed to move amongst and service "the machinery" and do the scutt work that the machinery couldn't.
Technology is generally double edged, everyone needs to stay on their toes.
Posted by: cxt217 at Mon Aug 23 19:55:43 2021 (MuaLM)
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a) Musk's work on the Tesla may possibly be an argument /against/ his ability to pull this off. Building an automated car with wireless updating of software is an invitation for problems. If you turn it into a commercial success somehow, you've stuck yourself with an architecture that you cannot secure. It's an invitation to get sued out of existence.
b) Modern AI techniques work in specific ways to get certain flavors of task done. Fundamentally, they have limits, and it is not hard to work out what a lot of them are. It seems unlikely to change the basic arithmetic of 10 or 20 years ago over what kinds of factory task make more sense for automation, and what kinds for human. The tech to replace fast food workers has been around for a while. What changed was the Democrats screwing with the labor market. Thing is, Democrats screwing around with the labor market is a temporary thing, and will be gone before we discover significantly more capable AI techniques.
c) There's an arithmetic of maintenance and design attention that prevents replacement of humans with equipment for all society sustaining tasks. Humans working on something directly are smarter than a bunch of engineers who aren't there, and who are trying to use a machine to do it. Farming in particular is a lot of varied tasks and thinking, and is one of my go to examples of where the maintenance would be prohibitive. A farmer is better doing maintenance on the heavy equipment than some robot would be. Also a good example of where modern AI would be severely problematic, and of a mental task that humans can do much better. (AI training aggregates. Humans can learn a lot about local weather, and the sorting aggregation happens by capitalism.)
d) Some engineering tasks can be automated, but engineering as a whole cannot be automated. To make robots take over all human tasks, you would need to be able to automate the engineering. Otherwise, human engineers at a distance cannot exceed humans at the spot. Same basic logic as why university lunatics with PhDs in telling 'those people' what to do, who are successfully telling 'those people' what to do would always be worse than people minding their own business.
e) There always will be more actual need for retards to do some work than there will be for so called intelligent people to spend their time in technocratic megalomania.
f) As a 'whatever discipline it is that understands this stuff', Musk may be an okay technologist. UBI is bad, because idleness means nothing to distract uninvested people from breaking stuff. You would expect more nihilistic destruction, perhaps of the sort produced by our so called elites, who we likewise have no real need for.
g) One task that we will never be able to completely automate away is fighting other humans. And I saw that as someone insanely optimistic enough to think it might be possible to develop technology sufficient to let us kill everyone in the world who isn't an American. Okay, that probably is not a good goal, but it is definitely a difficult thing to accomplish.
h) I'm pretty sure that one of the big things modern engineering is going to have to deal with is the overconfidence in AI. Lot of people are learning techniques to implement AI based automation. Not clear to me how many really understand that there are limits, or that they should be careful and cautious in what they do. This, /before/ considering the state of programming as an engineering discipline. Caveat, I'm still a pretty bad programmer.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Mon Aug 23 20:35:26 2021 (DHVaH)
4
This seems like cgi fantasy to me. How is that "robot" actuated? Right now, unless theres new technology im unaware of, theres nothing that really does what human muscle does in terms of rapidly contracting and expanding without extra side space. Hydraulics come closest.
As to UBI: Sounds like more "you eill own nothing and be happy" to me. We had pretty close to itopia in this country: it was everyone owning their own family farm or store. Ownership lead to dignity, lack of ownership to serfdom or slavery, everywhere i can think of.
Posted by: Madrocketsci at Mon Aug 23 21:32:39 2021 (SrNF9)
5
As to servicing machinery, thats an incredibly complex task. I was recently in the guts of my parents edm hole drill diagnosing a problem. (An actual "robot" btw). Just taking the panels off (upside down in a tight space, whete no one should have EVER put #$%^ screws) is so far beyond current robotics its incredible. Nevermind putting voltage probes on terminals, reasoning through problems, reading crappy korean manuals, etc...
Posted by: Madrocketsci at Mon Aug 23 21:40:55 2021 (bbnoI)
6
Strange that musk of all people is prone to these fantasies. Most people who work in industry very quickly appreciate how much tacit complexity there is in even apparently very simple processes. How much thinking has to go on to get anything that isnt absolutely mindless and rigidly routinized accomplished. Actual human thinking, which is lightyears beyond our toy neural nets. I would expect this of some commie college professor with a contempt and utter ignorance of the industrial world he wants to command or banish. Not someone running a space program and a car factory.
Posted by: Madrocketsci at Mon Aug 23 21:47:32 2021 (SrNF9)
7
Ehh, on reading the article, there are more constructive ways to take his proposal. "Come work for my robotics group and help build better/more robots" is certainly a worthwhile project - because (as far as I understand the state of the art) we *can't* build anything like the depicted machine right now. (Boston dynamics appears to have the most progress.) Only way to get there is to work on building robots.
The fear-porn/clickbait/petulant Tory-esque overlord take: And then we'll overturn society and replace you all with robots, ROBOTS, I tell you! And then you'll be sorry, you useless eaters! You'll all be on the dole because we won't NEED you anymore! > That attitude annoys me, but it also worries me (not for the reason of the implied threat). A technological society is one that can only exist if there's extreme respect (and remuneration) for the competence and skill that goes into building and maintaining it.
This: (removed image of jewler's lathe), antiquated though it is, was not created by nor operated by mindless drudges. Nor was this: (removed image of steelworks), nor this: () The idea that the maintenance of a civilization *capable* of building rockets is mindless drudgery, and that all thinking can be centralized in some design bureau is lunacy. Even the Soviets weren't that stupid, and they *were* that stupid in heading down that road.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Aug 23 22:38:23 2021 (hRoyQ)
8
With all the questions AI equipped robots bring about everything from Ethics to Engineering, the editors of InStyle magazine have come up with the single most pressing concern: "Why does the Tesla Bot have a thigh Gap?" Yeah, it was a model in a bodysuit on stage, but there's Bodyshaming to whine about.
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Aug 24 11:52:34 2021 (Ix1l6)
9
Given that the European Union has proposed taxing robots because 1) They replace people who they could tax; and 2) They need to tax someone to pay for their unsustainable spending....
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Aug 24 19:40:01 2021 (MuaLM)
10
Kinda like how they want to tax cars by mileage because electric cars are "depriving" them of gas taxes.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Aug 25 20:50:00 2021 (Ix1l6)
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Aug 24 20:51:00 2021 (LZ7Bg)
7
Achievement is achievement.
Apparently it's routine in many hospitals and facilities that the physical therapy people are supposed to be alerted to every patient that could use their help, as fast as possible -- but instead, nobody tells them a darn thing.
I found this out because it happened to my dad. And then I talked to various other folks who have had hospital stays requiring PT, and they all said that they practically had to kick and scream to have the PT folks alerted, even if their doctors wanted it and their insurance was paying for it.
It seems to be some kind of weird inter-departmental thing, maybe some kind of rivalry or tendency to forget, or maybe just a really bad message system.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Aug 24 23:39:14 2021 (sF8WE)
8
Anyhow... Dr. Google found my dad a worksheet on what you're supposed to do as a patient after his kind of surgery, as composed by some surgeon at Johns Hopkins.
So you might be able to find some kind of post-stroke PT advice, just so you have a baseline. Even if it takes forever to download.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Aug 24 23:41:43 2021 (sF8WE)
9
Speaking as someone who has rolled a critical fail on that task (with fiancee present to laugh at the painful results), good goin'!
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Posted by: J Greely at Thu Aug 19 23:52:50 2021 (ZlYZd)
2
For the same reason bottled water does... packaging failure.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Aug 20 14:49:58 2021 (4TJz+)
While We're Up
The blogs servers are in Sydney and are getting intermittently arrested for COVID violations. Having caught them between run-ins with the law I'll use this short window to post this, which is a fairly informative overview of the dumpster fire that is current events.
1
The current black hole of a fiasco in Afghanistan is the S* storm that keeps getting upgraded in hurricane strength. It's amazing that we've now had the UK Parliament condemn Biden directly in the worst rebuke from the UK since the War of 1812, and the calls for his resignation are still only trickling in.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Fri Aug 20 12:30:31 2021 (ZiV6b)
2
...the calls for his resignation are still only trickling in.
Tim Poole actually had a video that explains that, because if Joe departs for whatever reason, look who is the immediate replacement for him? Even among the Democrats, literally no major faction in the party want Kamala as the face of their party - a publisher might be willing to release a book of her sayings titled "I'm Talking,' but the power players in the party do not.
At this point, I say it is more likely that an unlikely chain of events put a Republican in the White House before the next election before I would think Joe leaves.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sat Aug 21 18:54:02 2021 (MuaLM)
3
Might leave the PRC happy. They might be the ones really calling the shots.
Choosing to run Biden and Harris, basically letting the campaign be phoned in, may have resulted in an actual share of the vote as low as 10%.
Someone made the decision to 'nominate' Biden, and someone made the decision that Harris would be the running mate.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional political logic, they would have admitted Biden's neurological issues before the primary, and gone with their second best.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional
political logic, they would not have sock puppeted Biden into nominating Kam Harris.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional
political logic, they would have had Biden concede rather than tip their hand to the degree of fraud they could pull off.
There are a lot of elements here that look really weird if domestic rational actors are calling the shots. Yes, domestically we can scare up some pretty deranged madmen.
Either these are the stupidest people in the world, or something really unusual is going on.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Aug 21 20:22:22 2021 (DHVaH)
1
Great to hear that your condition continues to improve. Where do we send the catgirl kiss-o-grams?
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Aug 19 23:57:04 2021 (ZlYZd)
2
Glad to hear that you're doing better, even if it is a hard road. It sucks when your body doesn't work the way you expect. Hang in there and we're all rooting for you.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Fri Aug 20 12:51:28 2021 (ZiV6b)
3
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Seriously though...do good work.
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1
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