partial_accumen

@partial_accumen@lemmy.world

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you ever simply not understand a piece of text no matter how many times you read it despite the fact that you understand the language and individual words?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

This post made me think of it as it’s a good example of this.

That particular post is a combination of poor English grammar, is deeply referential to pop culture, and also has missing/skipped/misspelled words. Don’t feel bad its hard to parse.

Here is his post corrected:

No it’s because I don’t leave my house anymore unless I’m going to work or grocery shopping . Also because I haven’t been drinking at bars, and I don’t use apps. My carapace ~~may~~ is not be as chitinous as a xenomorph (referencing the 1970s and 80s Ridley Scott/James Cameron movies Alien/Aliens where the aliens had exoskeletons and acid blood), and I don’t have me a heart beating with the acid blood , . ~~but~~ Instead my personality is books and jokes, ~~and~~ but at least I don’t reproduce parasitically…(wait…shit I guess we do…)

Does that make sense now?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Professional father right here⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

I just like to mention my experience because it is so easy to take the piss on folk that wear Five Fingers, but they can be legitimately great.

They still look hideous and there is a place for form over function in our society, so in some measure, the piss is worth taking against Five Fingers. I’ll agree with you though that Five Fingers helped me identify what I needed different in footwear even though I only used them for a couple of months to find a better alternative.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Professional father right here⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
I had similar symptoms as you and also tried the Five Fingers. I had similar healing experience. However I hated the feeling of these shoes with putting them on and taking them off. I realized what I liked was the lightweight footwear, neutral lift with a wider toe box, and a midfoot strike.

I found racing flats gave me everything I liked about Five Fingers, with nothing that I hated about Five Fingers, and they look like regular shoes.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you give employers or managers a second chance?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

And I wonder if I should, sometime in the future, apply to those wards managed by the same people that 2 years ago rejected and outright ignored me, because it’s always good to have a plan b on the back burner and I’m running out of managers within my hospital I haven’t interviewed with.

You know your industry better than I do, but my industry-agnostic answer would be: “Yes, absolutely apply if it moves your career forward”. Even horrible bosses/departments can be useful as stepping stones. Many times these are open and others are avoiding them because the environment/boss sucks. If you can do a year in that department/boss as a springboard to a higher position elsewhere, I typically think its worth it.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Y'all get those "Weird Amazon Shenanigans" where ordering later get you an even faster delivery? (like wtf?!?) Well I just witnessed this shenanigan.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

I just can’t understand why companies do this weird shit, I always thought order earlier = arrive faster, this is just… weird)

My guess is you’re seeing a tiny view of a global logistics company at work. There are warehouses all over the place and there is large overlap with the inventory in each. Lets say you’re ordering a hot pink Kindle ebook reader. If you were able to see from the Amazon side, you’d see this item represented in dozens of warehouses all over the world. There is possibly one sitting on the shelf in the warehouse right down the street from you, which would ship it to you the fastest. However, that warehouse also contains other inventory that is in high demand and that other inventory is NOT in other warehouses. So the Amazon algorithms don’t want to direct fulfillment of your order from this close warehouse to you because its getting crushed right now.

Instead it finds the hot pink Kindle in a slow warehouse much farther away from you and your order is fulfilled from there (your first order with the long shipping time). Later, the close warehouse runs out of the high-demand inventory that was keeping it busy. You make second order for the hot pink Kindle and the algorithm now optimizes for cheapest/fastest delivery, which is the warehouse down the street from you (your second order).

Welcome to global logistics.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Additionally, making more money is MUCH easier when you have money too start with.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I was one of these. I started my IRA in my 20s with what little money I could put into it. When I left a job I’d roll my 401k back into my IRA under the same Edward Jones advisor.

After over more than 20 years I started questioning it. I asked for statements of all of my deposits. I took those dates and deposit amounts and plugged them into a basic historical simulator to see what would have happened if I put the same money into an S&P500 fund. My real investment account was over $40,000 lower than had I just put the money in myself into the S&P500. I dropped that advisor and transferred my entire balance into VTSAX and never looked back. Future deposits went into my own brokerage into boring index funds from then on.

I credit Edward Jones with making saving for retirement stupid easy for myself a dumb 22 year old at the time. However, I should have wised up sooner and it cost me at least $40,000 for my naïveté.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn’t everyone doing it?

First, lots and LOTS of people (and companies do it).

Three reasons people don’t do it:
1. Some people believe they can make even more money by putting it into something else (other riskier stocks, non stock investments like their own sole proprietor businesses, bitcoin, scratcher lottery tickets).
2. Some people are entirely risk averse. If they can’t SEE their money they don’t trust where it is so they buy precious metals or stack cash up. Neither of these are good investments for returns, but are generally safer that index investing (which is what S&P500 is) if you need to sell on short notice.
3. Investing anything requires money you don’t have to spend somewhere else. Lots of people are at negative money, so they don’t even have a dollar to invest.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tired of hearing about “The offshore team”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

hard to replace.

I’m glad you phrased it as “hard to replace” because everyone is replaceable, and that’s something that some in IT don’t realize until its too late.

become extremely valuable

This is also good. Most in IT think this means “be the best at the technology” but really it means “be able to interface with non-IT about IT, up to and including leadership”. Soft skills are most IT folks’ Achilles Heel.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tired of hearing about “The offshore team”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I feel like everywhere I work, we have this term, and it’s become increasingly more common over the past decade as the USA becomes more and more hateful and aggressive towards the working class people… The offshore team. I really, really hate hearing about the offshore team

…and…

then you see the USA and how We have millions of computer science grads who struggle to find work, can’t get a job

There’s a couple factors in play and depending on how old you are (or how long you’ve been in this industry) some things may not be apparent.
1. IT spending/staffing is cyclical. Boom and bust. This happens every 5-8 years. There is massive spending by organizations in IT for various reasons. This drives up the need for IT staff and as the talent pool is exhausted, salaries rise sharply as companies try to poach from one another. IT workers win in this case. However, when the pendulum swings expensive IT staff are on the chopping block. For the cycle we’re in right now, that started about a year ago and the cuts are still ongoing, but to me, it feels like it will start swinging back in the other direction in the next 8-12 months with hiring picking up again.
2. In-source vs Outsource/ onshoring vs offshoring cycle - Many businesses have short memories and “the grass is always greener” mentality. If they are heavily In-sourced and onshore they look at their budgets and see this MASSIVE number next to the “payroll” line item. They start asking how they can lower this number and save money. Consultants come in and convince them that the company can save money by cutting out a segment of the company’s operations and outsourcing that to another firm that quotes them an attractive rate. The company chooses this option, fires their own staff, contracts out the work. The bottom line is appropriately attractive, and executives get a bonus for making cost cuts. Inertia from the previous staff keeps the org going much as before for awhile. However, the service begins suffers because the contract company is attempting to provide the least amount of resources and money to fulfill the contract. Many times this means using offshore staffing themselves. After a few expensive outages for outright rebellions from the company business departments, the company fires the contracting company hires their own staff again and brings the service back in house. This pendulum swings again for another 8-10 years.
3. International pay disparity - IT workers in the USA are crazy expensive compared to nearly anywhere else in the work. I’m not just talking about a little more, but by a factor of 10 or 15 times more expensive than other nations that provide similar skilled staff. A $150k USD IT worker in the USA can be replaced (mostly) with a $15k USD worker from India with the same level of skill. That same IT worker skill level would earn $75k-$100k CAD in Canada. In Germany that same worker would earn €60-$90. During boom times that USA worker might be able to earn $175k-$300k USD.
As a worker, you can see that working in the USA will earn you the most money when you can get a job. So the trick is to save during the boom times knowing the bust is coming. If you earn $300k for one year, and are unemployed for two years afterward you’ve effectively earned $100k per year for 3 years straight. Being unemployed in IT for over a year is unusual. You can usually find a lower paying job in IT to cover your living expenses and then some until the boom occurs again.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How likely will "Cloud Storage" eventually replace Local Storage?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I mean, imagine a future where every computer is just a chromebook, phones are no longer phones but just a “terminal” that streams the actual OS which runs in the cloud.

It will get close to happening for nearly all computing, then it will swing back the other way to local storage and compute, then after 15-20 years it will swing back toward centralized compute and storage. This has already happened 3 times.
- Original computing was mainframes. “Dumb terminals” that had zero local storage and only the most rudimentary compute power to handing the incoming data and display it, and take keystrokes, encode them, and send them on.
- Then “personal computers” became a thing with the advent of cheap CPUs. Dumb Terminals/mainframes were largely discarded and everyone had their own computer on their desk with their won compute and storage. Then the Netware/Banyan era began and those desktop computers were networked to have some remote shared storage. (there’s a slightly different branching with Sun/HPUX/DigitalUnix and Workstation grade hardware)
- Then Citrix WinFrame and Sun Ray stateless thin clients showed up once again swinging the compute and storage almost entirely remotely to centralized heavy powered servers with (mostly) dumb terminals, but these were graphic interfaces like MS Windows or Xwindow.
- Once again, powerful desktop CPUs showed up with the Pentium II etc compute was back under users desks.
- Now phones and tablets with cloud has show up, and you’re asking the question.
So what I think will swing primary compute and storage back to the user side (handheld now) is again, cheap compute and storage on the device. Right now so many services are cloud based because the massive compute and storage requirements only exist in volume in the cloud. However, bandwidth is still limited. Imagine when the next (next?) generation of mobile CPUs arrive, and with a tiny bit of power you could do today’s bitcoin mining on your phone or process AI datasets with ease in the palm of your hand. And why would you send the entire dataset to the cloud when you can process it locally and then send the result?

So the pendulum keeps swinging; centralized and distributed, back and forth.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good morning I choose violence.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
There’s lots of really good reasons why HVAC techs aren’t cutting on pipe in a building. Having the proper pipefitters/plumbers making those changes which doesn’t actually change any function is expensive, so I could see that money not being spent.

Looking at the final product, it looks like the HVAC folks could have acquired a larger vent grill and place the grill parallel to the tiles for cosmetic appeal even though the ducting wouldn’t take up the whole grill.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Iraq War was preceded by the largest worldwide non-violent protests in history and the war happened anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
“largest worldwide non-violent protests in history”? I remember living through that time and don’t remember that. Do you have a source? I myself was opposed the second Iraq war because Saddam had agreed to let in any inspectors the west wanted but we went “too late, we’re coming in anyway” and I knew it was a scam invasion.

We were also just a couple of years into Afghanistan and it made no sense to be starting a second war on a second front when there was no immanent danger. Again, it made to sense.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good morning I choose violence.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
Was this possibly a building with retrofitted ducting? As in when it was built it had boilers for heating only, and later the building was modified to have ducting for AC (so the ducting had to follow whatever non-straight lines were possible).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can I become independent in life?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Others have suggested professional counseling. Thats the right answer. Do that.

I can tell you even without the emotional baggage you’re carrying, getting started on your own in life is hard and confusing. There’s no book that tells you everything you need to do (and when) and what NOT to do that will cost you time and money you don’t have at that stage of life.

If you are under the impression that others launch successfully into independence without issue, let me remove that idea. All of us, even with massive support from our families had difficulty. You’ve got some extra difficulties on top of what others have. Don’t despair when its not going right. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

The perspective and the idea of a co-op however is completely different from what you describe: to distribute the hardships, the risks and rewards right from the start onto many shoulders. There’s no more “my company, my sacrifices” etc. It’s all we.

That sounds great, but how does that translate into real-world scenarios that organizations experience? As an example:

How do co-ops decide who needs to be fired when there isn’t enough money to cover payroll?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

I guess my question is why do ML theorists think workers can organize enough to run a state when they can’t organize enough to run a business?

I’m not a Marxist, but my understanding of the theory is the difference between having all the the resources available to a nation-state to re-organize the state vs having to work with the meager resources provided by the existing state while working side that state’s existing restrictive system.

I don’t know, it seems the whole argument seems to boil down to “there’s not enough time, money or skill”.

“money” - what does money mean after you’ve toppled the state? Do you need money for rent? No. There’s no rule of law that will evict you from your home if you don’t pay your rent. Do you need money for food? No (in the short term). You break open the stores to take what food you need and is needed to feed the populous. The “money” problem can also be for required material resources the specific service you’re trying to set up. If you need something to carry out the will of the new state, you take it from whoever has it (which under Marxism usually means from the ruling elite), so that’s not a problem under this system.

“time” - The nation-state has been toppled. You don’t need to go to your wage job anymore for your life essentials. You’ve got all the time in the day you can dedicate to setting up the new state.

“skill” - If you have the skill to do the job but couldn’t do that job before because it didn’t pay you a living wage, that problem is now gone. The state will provide for your means, and you will do job X which the state needs done. If the state doesn’t have someone with a skill, the state will provide free education to train up citizens who will then be skilled enough to do job X needed by the state.

So none of those are actual problems on paper under Marxist because its generally applied to the nation-state level, not working in micro within an existing oppressive regime.

I say “on paper” because Marxist itself is flawed because it requires humans to act purely altruistically forever, and frankly thats beyond the capacity for humanity. Or said another way, Marxism would work great if there were no humans involved, which defeats the purpose of Marxism.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CEO to Worker Pay Ratios for S&P 500 Companies⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Be cognizant of the impact of ratios at work here, Google’s parent company Alphabet looks pretty good with only 29:1, but that is because its median worker pay is so high comparatively. I’m also seeing Accenture on the “naughty” list at 1526:1 but that could be because Accenture has a significant employee base in lower income countries (such as India) while its CEO is in a high income country. It may not be indicative of equal standards of living for where each resides.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

These are great points, and looking at some of the other responses I get the sense that it’s a time and skills issue. So, what exactly do communists and socialists imagine will happen when “workers seize the means of production”?

I admit I’m not a scholar in this area, but my college reading of Marx and Engels they were taking about nation-state levels of “seizing the means of production”. As in, the entire nation’s ability to produce goods, grow and transport food, facilitate communications, etc. Doing so on such a grand scale that the elites/bourgeois would be forced to cede control of the levers of power because society effectively halts with the means of production in the hands of the working class (proletariat).

Marx wasn’t talking about a socialist group starting up a competing grocery store to the entrenched established players in that market space.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing these ideas, I think at least in the U.S. it might be cool to have a consultancy or non-profit which helps connect such founders and provides them with education, training and startup resources.

There are educational resources for starting non-profits organizations (and I’m assuming co-ops). The real resource any org (for-profit or nonprofit) needs to start up is: large amounts of money. In for-profit ventures (assuming your business plan is respectable) you can get bank loans or outside investors. Both of these groups expect a return on the money they’re giving you to get started up.

With a co-op, I’m guessing the only sources of startup capital are: government grants, philanthropic donations, or a founder that already has amassed their own fortune.

Edit oh and some of the other points are that one wouldn’t get rich doing this. So what?

At those really dark times for your business you ask yourself “why the hell am I even doing this?” for most business owners the answer is “so that at some point in the future my life will be much easier”. For a co-op, there has to be a very deeply held belief that what you’re doing is extremely meaningful and your sacrifice will be “worth it” somehow. While those people exist with almost a religious level of obligation to their cause or their community, I think they are extremely rare.

I don’t envy the leadership in a struggling co-op. Running an organization is hard enough at the best times as a single owner. Having to run it by committee when it is crumbling sounds like a painful death.

I’ve already seen people look down on wealth accumulation, so I think it’s fair to say that the motives for someone who’d start such a business venture are different, which is valid and reasonable.

You may already have your answer. In your first post you said: “I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools.”

What is stopping you from you creating a child-care co-op?

Secondly, I don’t think market forces will impact such businesses because if you’re creating communities around them, then people will choose what they know and trust.

This is naive. Market forces (and other externalities) can have massive impacts on your organization irrespective if you’re a for-profit or co-op. Just think of what COVID did to many organizations. Though nothing change in the business model or service offering, thousands of companies went under because the conditions of the market changed through no fault of the organization owners/leaders.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

In short, co-ops are the closest socialist/communist business model that’s actually implemented in the U.S., so why are more leftists not doing this?

Starting a business (that is based on a sound and viable business plan that has even a snowball’s chance of surviving its formative early years) is really REALLY hard. It takes massive amounts of money or debt, the early years promise years of having no income for yourself (or paying yourself below minimum wage), it means a staggering amount of hours you need to put in to keep it going, forgoing vacations and important family events, loss of friendships because you’re having to put all your time and energy into the business without socializing, having to work when you’re incredibly ill, incredible amounts of stress (which increases by 10 times when you have employees that now depend on you for their livelihood) and even if you do everything perfect your business can fail leaving you with nothing for the years that you put into it, and potentially also with tens of thousands or millions of dollars in debt. It means many times being force to make decisions that massively affect other people’s lives (your employees or your customers). It can be versions of the Trolley Problem time and time again.

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.” source

So ask yourself if you want to go through all of that, and instead of wealth you can live on and support your family with at the end of it, you get simply a “thank you” for building a co-op.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
You’re ignoring what it is communicating with the order:

Image

Los Angeles Chargers (playing) AT (Kansas City) Chiefs.

The rest of the list below communicates the same information, the location the game took place.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great opening movie shot⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
“yeah, thats me on the ground. You’re probably wondering how this came to be. It started 2 weeks ago on an unlikely Tuesday…”
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's right!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

The only big loss was the money that went to the wedding.

I learned recently the cost to getting married in my state and county is $60 ($20 for the license and $40 for the officiant to marry you and process the license to probate). That is less money than it cost for 2 tickets to see an evening movie and get concession stand food. I had no idea getting married could cost so little.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's right!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Just Googling “speed dating [city name]”. Here are some examples from my other comment
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's right!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

Did you just Google “Local Speed Dating” or something?

Yep. There are usually companies that put these on, and as its their business, it will be the same companies doing many sessions throughout the year.

I wasn’t sure if Speed Dating was still a thing (since I did it years ago), and I find it is still a thing!

There’s one tonight in Los Angeles:

Image

But also midwest towns. Here’s one in Des Moines Iowa 2 days from now:

Image
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mom wasn't always right⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

I give my mom credit. In the 80’s she found summer classes for me where I could learn about programming.

In the early 80s we we NOT well off. However, our entire household chose to go without christmas (and went into debt) to buy a Commodore 64 computer. It allowed me to experiment, make mistakes, and learn in a safe environment. When I started using computers in school was already very comfortable with it. When I started in the working world, I was not only comfortable, but highly knowledgeable about using and fixing computers.

My sibling and I are both successful IT professionals. I absolutely attribute having that computer (even a very under powered c64) in the house growing up.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨That's right!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Introvert here. I met my now introvert wife at speed dating.

If you haven’t done it before, you are in a room (usually a rented out restaurant so its just for this event) with lots of tables. At each table is a woman. As a man, you are directed to sit at a specific numbered table where there is a woman seated (all the other men do the same to the individual table they are directed to). A bell rings. You have 5 minutes to talk to each other and learn as much as you can about each other. After 5 minutes, the bell rings, and the woman stay seated, and the man moves to the next higher numbered table. You have a card with the woman’s name on it and you should REALLY make notes, because you won’t remember which things you thought with each person. The women do the same with their cards.

In under 2 hours each person now talked to 14-18 potential mates. At the end of the night you go online and mark which of the women you’re interested in hearing more from. If any of the women you mark also mark you on their side, you’re given an in-app communications channel and you can choose to share personal contact information from there.

When you’re sitting at the table talking with a woman sometimes it seems like that bell rings as soon as you sit down and you wish you had more time. Those are the ones you mark on your card to talk more with. Sometimes, you’re 1 minute in and you’re dreading waiting though the next 4 min. Those you do not mark.

I’d recommend you give Speed Dating a try.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

Like, this game is starting to feel a lot like a cheap microtransaction infested Asian MMO. The fact that there is always some sort of cash grab, but you also are paying for a game that you subscribe to, and expansions that cost a little less than a new AAA game. It honestly crazy to me.

As long as these are just cosmetics, why is this upsetting to you? If the microtransactions turn into pay-to-win, then I agree that would be a problem.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
USA was still very much on the rise at the advent of the internet. If you define the advent of the internet to be Arpanet, then that was 1969, the same year the USA landed on the moon. If you define the advent of the internet to be the first use of the World Wide Web that would be 1989 the same year the Berlin wall came down and 3 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was arguably the most powerful the USA has ever been as it was before China’s rise.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Did Britain or Rome know the moments when Pax Britannia or Pax Romana had hit their tipping point to decline? I doubt it.

I think the tipping point will only be observable through the lens of history many years from now with a subject heading of: This event was the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.