That’s when my mom became old enough to vote, and she was a real idiot.

It’s not, you know, the best theory, but it’s the best theory I can come up with while also doing no research.

It’s a rainforest, bro. Are they going to burn it down and replant the trees alphabetically?
Dumbest thing I ever heard.

Ah, sorry. I edited that away, after rereading the context. I didn’t want to inject personal philosophy into what was clearly not about my beliefs.

But the second clause was given (or was intended to be given) in the context that I don’t believe hope is actionable. It’s just wasted emotional energy. If I can take an action that directly improves things, I do.

The scale is also poorly defined - sorry. The first: world at large. The second: the world that is around me - my family, my local environment (radiating out from my house, into my community, etc - but I know I can’t impact the national level).

Edit: Sorry, sleepy posting. That was not contextually relevant at all.

Bag holder on left kept visually resolving to the guy awkwardly holding a handgun to me.

Mine is “This is fucking stupid”, then I wake up pretty much instantly.

I find the idea that I’m going to be randomly attacked by unknown/evil forces so ridiculous, that I can’t suspend disbelief. So I wake up.

I feel like Michigan managed to do something right on that accord. In 2018 they passed a citizen-led ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to let a non-partisan committee choose how the districts are drawn up.
I’m given to understand that nobody loves it, but nobody actually hates it, either. Which may be the best possible outcome for such a contentious issue.

Yeah. I guess we’ll never figure out why oil washed up on beaches next to an offshore oil drilling zone. One of life’s mysteries, I guess!

Editing to add: The legal fate of the offshore oil wells is in question, and it’s not clear if work has begun on them or not. New South Wales has banned drilling within their territory, but the company said they’ll just go farther out to sea, where it’s governed by Australia’s federal laws, and I don’t know if they’ve actually started drilling yet.
Heck, those could also have come from a deteriorated WWII ship. Not that I seriously believe that theory, though.

I’ve responded to similar questions with “I will not explain.”

That’s where I know I don’t know enough to respond.

Well, crap. I just looked it up. Looks like phones will send out your MAC address when looking for WiFi networks to connect to, and they more or less always search for WiFi, unless currently connected to WiFi.

So - yeah. Same issues with Bluetooth.

And some newer consumer routers do all sorts of funky things under the hood in the name of security, which includes sending information about traffic back to their corporate home base. That could easily also include MAC addresses of passing devices. (Or telling the manufacturer every site you visit. Very fun now that the latest trend in routers is to require cloud connections and accounts, so your identity with them is ‘known’.)

Info dump incoming!

Basically, your phone is a big ol’ slut.

I’m not as well versed with WiFi, but phones are set up to be very friendly with Bluetooth. Every Bluetooth device your phone sees, it says hello to. Most phones these days don’t really disable Bluetooth (they just limit its active use), or they disable it for a limited time period.

This is ostensibly fine, since Bluetooth supposedly identifies itself with a MAC address that isn’t necessarily tied to your identity. Unless you connect to something with Bluetooth that knows your identity, like a smart speaker, or have given Bluetooth permissions to any apps you’re logged into.

BLE positioning with sensors utilizes BLE-enabled sensors that are deployed in fixed positions throughout an indoor space. These sensors passively detect and locate transmissions from BLE smartphones, asset tracking tags, beacons, personnel badges, wearables and other Bluetooth devices based on the received signal strength of the transmitting device. This location data is then sent to the central indoor positioning system (IPS) or real-time location system (RTLS). The location engine analyzes the data and uses multilateration algorithms to determine the location of the transmitting device. Those coordinates can be used to visualize the location of a device or asset on an indoor map of your space or leveraged for other uses depending on the specific location-aware application.
– Some random website - inpixon.com

That’s not to say that every place you go is deploying BLE beacons to know you spent 20 minutes looking at candy when you were supposed to be making a quick run to get milk, but it’s possible that is occurring. And if it is occurring, it’s likely they’re working with some sort of data broker to deanonymize your data. Or at the very least, making their own inferences - using that loyalty card and a BLE beacon to know that the loyalty info put into a register corresponds to your MAC address.
What’s not likely, however, is that this data is public. Your data has value, so they don’t want to let it go for free, plus if the general public knew they could be tracked almost anywhere, there might be enough outcry for lawmakers to adopt better consumer privacy laws.

Editing to add: Even if you aren’t being precisely tracked within a retail location, a single ping on a Bluetooth device is enough to establish that your phone was within 30-50 feet of the device, which is apparently all the police need to send you to jail for 20 years.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of this info dump. Tin foil hats are on sale at the gift shop!

I’m ruined on “Lee-“ anything. , because I think of Leeroy Jenkins. Now I’m just imagining Lebron just charging into every play with no strategy, shouting “Leeee-bron James!”

I once moved across the country for a woman I (re)met during a random Words with Friends match. Took us a dozen games before I realized I’d originally met her through LiveJournal, about a decade earlier.

Many years later, my wife moved across the country to be with me, after we met on Reddit. (Clearly the previously mentioned woman was better as a friend.)

You say “Not even close.” in response to the suggestion that Apple’s research can be used to improve benchmarks for AI performance, but then later say the article talks about how we might need different approaches to achieve reasoning.

Now, mind you - achieving reasoning can only happen if the model is accurate and works well. And to have a good model, you must have good benchmarks.

Not to belabor the point, but here’s what the article and study says:

The article talks at length about the reliance on a standardized set of questions - GSM8K, and how the questions themselves may have made their way into the training data. It notes that modifying the questions dynamically leads to decreases in performance of the tested models, even if the complexity of the problem to be solved has not gone up.

The third sentence of the paper (Abstract section) says this “While the performance of LLMs on GSM8K has significantly improved in recent years, it remains unclear whether their mathematical reasoning capabilities have genuinely advanced, raising questions about the reliability of the reported metrics.” The rest of the abstract goes on to discuss (paraphrased in layman’s terms) that LLM’s are ‘studying for the test’ and not generally achieving real reasoning capabilities.

By presenting their methodology - dynamically changing the evaluation criteria to reduce data pollution and require models be capable of eliminating red herrings - the Apple researchers are offering a possible way benchmarking can be improved.
Which is what the person you replied to stated.

The commenter is fairly close, it seems.

I thought this disease sounded familiar. Trichinosis - Wikipedia

While the most common vector in the U.S. is now bear meat, that wasn’t always the case. The most common human infection vector used to be undercooked pork!
Many older folks won’t touch pork unless it’s well done, because apparently these parasites make your muscles feel like they’re on fire.
A history teacher (many years ago) even told my class that trichnosis was the reason Jewish people don’t eat pork. (A quick internet search throws water on that. Doesn’t rule it out, but it’s not guaranteed to be correct, either.)

While I agree that hunting apex predators (or, really, any sport hunting) is kind of dumb, I do want to note that pigs famously eat slop and bathe in their own shit and bacon is delicious. Which is to say, we probably can’t assume taste based on diet/lifestyle

I’m not sure if I agree about misinformation, but the photo is definitely clickbait. However, highlighting that it’s clickbait, and - as you’ve done - offering context about the real story of the photo (which I didn’t know) is, well, great. It identifies the issue without leaving it up to question as to what the issue is.

And that’s where you differ from the other commenter. They left things pretty darn vague, and I didn’t like the impression they seemed to be building toward - especially as their comment ended with a statement that I took to mean that they were justifying violence against FEMA workers, right after expressing doubt for the validity of the photo.
Which is well-placed doubt, but I mean - read the article, which explains things, don’t just assume and make ill-informed comments. When I make a mistake, I just shrug and go “Ah, crap, you’re right” rather than double down and go ‘Well, I’ll never read anything from the publisher anyway[, even though I’ll spend time and effort commenting on it]!’

I mean, sure, hate whatever media outlet you wish.
You don’t have to believe what they report, and you don’t have to even bother with reading with what they report, but you offered your thoughts without reading the article, not me.

Best to move on without commenting, or even attempting inferences based on the photo or headline in that circumstance, isn’t it? Otherwise you risk misunderstanding, falling victim to misinformation, or even creating your own misinformation.
I wonder if anyone read your comment, and skipped the article with the assumption that ‘liberal’ news outlets are manufacturing reports of anti-FEMA sentiment.

Well, at least if they don’t also read the article, they’ll know why there’s snow in the photo - assuming they read my initial reply comment. At least there’s that!

I wonder if the relevant units of government creating standards for these jobs would help.

Plumbers and electricians have to be licensed in many areas. I’m sure building codes require building permits.
Wheels of government take time to turn, but requiring installation companies use licensed installers, and handling the licensing and vetting in the same way electricians and plumbers are handled is a good place to start. Definitely always loopholes in the construction business, but a formalized and licensed profession is a way to improve pay.

You’re right, When Katrina hit in 2005, it was a major cock up. The agency was underfunded, and unprepared.
Famously, a certain scumbag traumatized Mike Meyers by saying George Bush doesn’t care about black people on national TV.

Obama spent much of this two terms improving FEMA to improve funding and readiness of the agency. Much to the chagrin of the press, who made much ado about FEMA’s ‘zombie outbreak’ plan.

When COVID hit, I recall all the hoopla around FEMA and how they were utterly unprepared, and that it became clear that the stockpiles and plans that had been created under Obama had been ignored, destroyed, or left to rot under Trump. I remember a common headline was that Trump “‘Ripped up’ Obama’s FEMA playbook.”

Since then, the agency has been a political vehicle, where democrats wants to fund it to get on top of COVID, and republicans don’t, so they can claim democrats are just as bad as they were at responding to COVID.

Which is all to say - it’s not the agency, it’s the politics, and moreso than that, it’s the people who are stupid enough to think it’s the agency and not the politics.

People out in the sticks of Appalachia who are informed by targeted disinfo campaigns don’t give two shits about the victims of Katrina or any of the actual past failures of FEMA. They care about perceived failures of FEMA and what they think FEMA is doing and what it stands for, based on the information bubble the algorithm has picked out for them.