I went on a blind date years ago with someone a work colleague set me up with. The date was perfectly fine, but when we left the restaurant to leave—I was going to drive her back to where she was staying—it became clear that I had parked in a tow zone and my car was no longer present. This was around midnight, and so I had to drag this poor girl around as I called my father to come pick us up, get a bunch of cash from an ATM (he had to get it because I didn’t have 300 in my bank acct, yep lady I’m broke!) and go over to a very sketchy part of town to reclaim the car from a towing company. We offered to drop her home first, but I guess she was intrigued by the adventure and elected to come along.

Anyhow l was suitably embarrassed, having to call in my family to bail me out was something I was fairly sure was a romance-killer, not to mention having to go to a very sketchy part of the city at 1 am to deal with surly impound guards. But turns out she found it amusing and I guess it never hurts to show a little vulnerability, because we ended up dating for a year after that. We broke up based on distance and life directions, not any real conflict or dislike of each other. It definitely taught me to not sweat about macho crap as much, and just to be genuine, since surprise surprise, potential partners like honesty and knowing who you actually are!

I love this, because it makes me think the basics for how the Jack Reacher character was constructed were definitely sourced from some career military folks, like your dad. Anyway this is way better because it’s real. I bet ol handsy Hans never forgot that night—and hopefully the lesson you taught him slowed his roll on someone else in the future. Great story.

Yeah this is just… fuck.

I don’t think you’re far off—I was complaining to my wife that she looked like the folks who have had face transplants, and she informed me she had most likely gotten a bottom facelift done but hadn’t gotten the top done yet. Her taste in black turtlenecks and the android killer face she’s got going really sells the evil empire vibe.

The “I did that” Biden pin is a fun detail. These Vance lollipop kid memes are gonna haunt me forever.

Yeah after I wrote that later on it sorta just popped up — oh this is probably just meaning “don’t take birth control”.

Ah yeah, forgot that angle. My partner was researching that recently, that shit is expensive (not to mention any unpleasant side effects you might have on it). I can’t imagine a plausible scenario where young, non-married women who aren’t already actively trying to get pregnant would just take that stuff though.

How does one “be fertile”? You either are, or you aren’t. I guess they’re saying they should just have lots of babies? Anyhow, gross, just like the other online grifts/psyops.

Looked it up. It was called The Kansas experiment

I need to refresh myself on the details, but I’m reminded of Sam Brownback getting to enact the entire republican playbook in Kansas at the state scale, and it had fairly awful consequences for the state and everyone in it if I recall correctly. This feels similar, except at a way more threatening and potentially permanent scope.

Edit: corrected Arizona to Kansas.

Guessing they approve of his stance on Israel.

Worth noting the detail in the article that she may have received it because her name/email was on paperwork for clients.

Now, one could say somebody moving quick just made a mistake, but I think you might also imagine here that they’re running huge tranches of paperwork through a RAG LLM, and this is the kind of outcome we can look forward to going forward. You get black bagged to El Salvador to become a slave because GrokAIFed fucked up.

Seems like a good bet. I looked up 4-5 movies that I was sorta interested in based on trailers last couple of months. They were all sorts of genres: all of them were +.3 of 6.5 on IMDB.

Amusingly, I’m pretty sure SSA employees cannot access X, as it’s blocked by the firewall to make sure they don’t waste any time “shopping” or “reading the news”

This is what my wife keeps saying, with certainty. I thought it was weird at first, but then I remember that he had that protective order specifically because of the strong threat of violence to him if he was deported back… to the country they sent him to.

I am hoping it’s not the case, and that this is just them wanting to avoid having to back down, but it really wouldn’t have been a big blow to them to bring one person back.

Yeah this was my reaction a while back when I saw their promos about how they want to de-extinct wooly mammoths and dodos. Like ok neat, but where are the mammoths supposed to slot in, a rapidly warming arctic that will more likely have palm trees than ice by the end of the century?

I mean I’m being a little obtuse here on purpose—these species choices are obviously guided by marketing potential. No one will pay attention if they resurrect some niche mouse that went extinct a couple years ago, so they’re picking stuff that looms large in pop consciousness.

But in the end, it’s a private company, and I very much doubt their whole goal is to make money off of conservation societies and zoos to make extinct animals—far more likely it’s to refine and recreate new genetic editing procedures which will then get ported into making purpose-built animals for industry (think the sheep who’s milk has certain valuable enzymes or chemicals built in) or like human biotech (so, like, GATTACA).

The “founder” gives off strong Palmer Luckey vibes. (This is based on visual aesthetic and his general demeanor vibes only, he could be a saint, I have no idea)

I have personally benefitted from getting month old backups from tape storage when a major file got corrupted. It took a couple days and a service ticket, but it resurrected a very large file that we could not have easily recreated otherwise. The specifics of how tape backup work made this possible. I guess you could have stuff in cd media and shit, but I’m guessing the tapes can do large quantities and stay good longer assuming they’re cared for.

Exactly. I’m sure it’s a different set, but I immediately thought it was an article about grand Budapest hotel because of the wallpaper and angle.

Well it could be shitty at universities for the next while. But honestly, it seems like we’re probably gonna have an economic collapse. Might not be the worst thing to be back in school while that’s going on and maybe you miss the worst parts of the job market.

And also, if it’s something you want to do? And you feel ready? I feel like you should do it regardless. There will still be financial aid at many places regardless of the trump stuff.