I still don’t understand Belichick coaching UNC

I started working in local TV news 17 years ago. I figured out pretty quickly there’s enough actual news happening to fill the 24-hour cable channels, but sending out reporters and photographers (maybe even producers) is expensive. It’s much cheaper to just have somebody in the studio blabbering on about a few things and trying to stoke reactions from the audience. It can even build a bigger audience than actual news.

Sports radio and TV is an even bigger (though less damaging) example of this. They have a lot of time to fill when games aren’t on, and a lot of times they just put someone on who will give the dumbest take possible just to get the audience mad and have an argument with someone else in the studio or even let the audience call in to argue.

Even better, the “violent video game” they’re blaming is Among Us!

(Not my screenshot, and I haven’t actually read the article)

In real life, with video links

Yes, although they did live in France for a good bit pursuing business development. But they kept returning to Ohio.

Yes, although I wouldn’t really expect a teenager to read up on age of consent laws, especially when traveling. They probably should, but I wouldn’t think them likely to.

Bad drivers in Atlanta long predate Tesla’s existence

Yeah, I was like, “wait, that’s happened before” and had to click in to confirm it’s an old story

I always enjoyed the Portal 2 trailers with Cave Johnson

Panels

Bot Trust

Turrets

Boots

Perpetual Testing Initiative

Mooring to the top of tall buildings didn’t generally work well in practice

They’re still using the successor TI-84 in high school and it still costs around $100.

Oh, thanks; I’ll blame autocorrect and not paying enough attention

During the day usually at 66°F (19°C), maybe bump it up to 68°F (20°C) if we’re feeling unusually chilly still. At night we usually drop it down to 62/63°F (around 17°C).

I read an interesting article a while back. Rather long but one of the key points was previously spices were expensive and only available to the upper class, and were used in their foods fairly extensively. As spices became more affordable to lower classes they were used, but then the upper class haute cuisine stopped using them because they’d lost their exclusivity. Instead they focused on techniques to highlight a food’s inherent flavor, particularly with things like meat.

I’ve been thinking that ever since that dumb “submarine” sank at the Titanic. I don’t feel particularly sorry for the people who died (other than the kid who apparently didn’t want to be there in the first place), but the outright glee I saw a lot of people express online was surprising.

It seems like there was a largely unspoken agreement among the wealthiest in the West throughout the middle of the 20th century, particularly in the aftermath of the Depression, World War II, and the rise of communism, that they wouldn’t try to extract the absolute maximum of wealth from the workers and try to keep a stable, happy middle class and even lower class that had a relatively comfortable existence without feeling too at risk of losing everything. As you get to the end of that century and into this century, the wealthiest forgot why that policy existed, newcomers didn’t understand it, or they decided they wanted to see how much more extraction they could get away with thinking they’ll be able to reign in any unrest before it gets too bad; probably some combination of those and other factors. It’s a dangerous game to play, though, and it seems like explosive moments are closer than the wealthy powers realize.

Not that I think there’s any real organizing power behind the scenes, just that in the past a lot of people came to a collective understanding of a system that could bring a lot of financial stability to a lot of people.

An unnamed FBI official was quoted in the same report as saying that phone users “would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption, and phishing-resistant” multifactor authentication for email accounts, social media, and collaboration tools.

(Emphasis added)

I assume by “responsibly managed encryption” they mean something that still has a backdoor, even though backdoors seem to be a significant part of the problem?

As an alumnus, this is very concerning.

I suspect this is going to be one of those vehicles where there’s a huge initial surge from the buyers who want one, then much lower demand for most of the product life.

I don’t think those of us on the Internet have enough info to truly jump in one way or another. The only area I would really be concerned about the age gap myself would be if the age gap is being used as a power imbalance to induce the younger one into dangerous behavior, like a sexual relationship, drugs, or taking advantage of them financially. Do you think anything like that is happening, or do you have the vibe that something like that could happen?

If it’s just that you can’t imagine hanging out with someone so young, you might want to consider that this guy is at a different point in life than you, even if he’s about the same age as you. If you’re around 40 but already have an 18-year-old kid in college. That would mean you became a father in your early 20s. It probably means you were married, perhaps fresh out of college. You’ve lived life as a parent for a couple decades now, in fact you could be just a few years away from becoming a grandparent. In contrast, if this guy’s been hustling to make money from a young age and an impoverished background, and is only just now starting college, he’s probably had to put a lot of those life experiences on hold. I’m guessing he doesn’t have kids himself since it’s pretty challenging to pay for college and med school of you also are paying to raise children. He might not even be married. I got married relatively later, in my mid-30s. As I got older I hung out with a wider age range, older and younger, but primarily single people. As my friends got married I saw them pretty rarely, not because I didn’t want to hang out with married people but mostly because married people tend to do things with other married people or just themselves. Now that I’m married I try to reach out to my single friends, but frankly it’s hard as a married parent to fit them in.

All that’s to say, just because you can’t imagine hanging out with someone that much younger than you, it doesn’t mean no one else can for completely innocent reasons. This guy might even see it as an almost mentor-like relationship, seeing this awkward kid who doesn’t get out much and helping him grow socially and find interests he enjoys. There are some areas where an older friend can be helpful in ways a parent simply can’t be.

The 12-14 USB ports is my favorite part, like they couldn’t be bothered to count, or it varies.