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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • New hire, brought on board comes to a Monday meeting.

    The company Quality of Worklife Balance survey has been returned, and it’s awful. It’s just after the 2008 crash, and we’re barely treading water, but the company held on. The CIO brought everyone into the largest conference room, meant for hundreds (there’s a couple dozen of us standing around, the chairs weren’t setup) and we stand around her as she procedes to tell us “Why is your QWL so low, you should be talking to your managers about this! I don’t wanna see another QWL survey this bad ever!” In a very yelly tone.

    One of the managers raised their hand, and asked, “Folks feel like they’re not being listened to and that they’re not getting enough leeway to make decisions.”

    CIO: “Well they need to get over that.”

    And that was the first meeting a bunch of developers and IT folks got to see at that company.

    Many other shenanigans occurred there, but my personal favorite was the quarter million dollar genset system all setup and tested multiple times – fueled and ready to go, failed in a major power outage because someone left the key in the “test” position on the generator.

    – That CIO thought they led people, they did nothing of the sort.






  • I think it’s important to remember how this used to happen.

    AT&T paid voice actors to record phoneme groups in the 90s/2000s and have been using those recordings to train voice models for decades now. There are about a dozen AT&T voices we’re all super familiar with because they’re on all those IVR/PBX replacement systems we talk to instead of humans now.

    The AT&T voice actors were paid for their time, and not offered royalties but they were told that their voices would be used to generate synthentic computer voices.

    This was a consensual exchange of work, not super great long term as there’s no royalties or anything and it’s really just a “work for hire” that turns into a product… but that aside – the people involved all agreed to what they were doing and what their work would be used for.

    The ultimate problem at the root of all the generative tools is ultimately one of consent. We don’t permit the arbitrary copying of things that are perceived to be owned by people, nor do we think it’s appropriate to do things without people’s consent with their “Image, likeness, voice, or written works.”

    Artists tell politicians to stop using their music all the time etc. But ultimately until we really get a ruling on what constitutes “derivative” works nothing will happen. An AI is effectively the derivative work of all the content that makes up the vectors that represents it so it seems a no brainer, but because it’s radio on the internet we’re not supposed to be mad at Napster for building it’s whole business on breaking the law.



  • If the people living in apartments had a say in how they were built… yeah

    Nobody chooses to live in a fucking tin can hanging from suspension wires that is so poorly insulated you can hear every bird flying into the windows as though you’re inside a bass drum.

    The sounds of my neighbors at 3 am snoring are not a feature you can call part of the “shared experience.”

    The prospect of being trapped together because the elevator went out and there’s a fire… oh so joyous. Not to mention all the people’s pets that get left at home throughout the day and I can hear crying with desperation to be let out as though they’re in the next room…

    I’m quite happy not to live in a fucking modern apartment thank you very much.



  • Never had a parking ticket spiral eh?

    $85 + $50 dollar waiver fee if you pay and just say you’re guilty. OOOOR

    $85 fee if you go to court and lose.

    Only $95 in the bank.

    Well shit, $50 bucks lets you pay rent, so you take the time. But you have to get exacty $10 of gas, you get to the courtroom, do your best and lose. You gotta pay $85 dollars, and so you do – except the bank fucked you when you went to got gas, they haven’t processes that yet, and the courtroom requires a mandatory $2.95 “convenience fee” so they don’t have to take a check… So you pay, and the bank processes your payments dutifully, smallest to largest, but now you’re in the hole for $105.

    Rent is still coming next week, and you’re lucky it’s only $300 cause you share a 3 bedroom and sleep on the couch.

    To make the $300 dollars you gotta work 2 jobs, because Wallmart makes sure you don’t get the full 35 hours each week to qualify for benefits, and McDonalds only calls you to pick up the teenagers shifts on Fridays.

    But wait, you’re -105 in the bank, so you gotta go call up a bunch of people you know and bug everyone at McDonalds to see if you can cover their shifts. Finally you manage to scrape together 55 hours to pay your rent… but you get dinged on your mobile bill in the middle of that week, and you’re out another 40 dollars. You can’t cancel the mobile phone since it’s your only phone, and hell entertainment, you can’t afford a TV or a Netflix plan, that shit’s for the rich. You can’t even afford to eat where you work…

    Finally you get home, after working 7 days of 8 hour shifts you managed to scrape together (4 at wallymart and 3 at mcdonalds) and your bank account is empty, you don’t have any money for food, and your snap benefits keep getting denied because you live in a red state…

    So you watch youtube shorts, and tiktok doom scroll and try and forget you’re hungry…

    (I hope my landlord will let me give them 260 until I can cover the rest…)


  • Imagine investing in for-profit prisons, as a regular person. You’re hoping that society tears itself apart so you can watch line go up. Monstrous indeed.

    I have a “ethically challenged” investment set that I put money into. I hate every one of the companies, and every one of their missions. But it means when things go horribly with society, I make money… So I get to feel like a rich person, and then almost instantly feel like an asshole because I’m not making enough money to assuage the moral issues I have with it.

    When the pandemic hit, I bought a bunch of food service company stock… and various pharma companies. When I found out real estate companies were gouging people’s rent… I bought real estate investment trusts… and when I found out the GOP was going to revert roe v wade, I bought a bunch of health care companies stock (that particularly service the south…)

    Funny thing is, every time I get a shareholder vote notice, I always vote my conscience, but it doesn’t matter everyone else votes their pocketbook every time.





  • For a 200 year old law, it’s pretty straight forward. And for all it’s flaws, the Nth revolution didn’t like the Catholic church for … reasons, so they wanted to make a law to get them out of politics and make them liable for their shenanigans. Thankfully they didn’t discriminate when they wrote the law.

    https://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/contenu/piece-jointe/2017/02/libertes_et_interdits_eng.pdf

    1. PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”

     The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State1

     No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.