I got a bogus moving violation ticket in a ghetto. Decided to fight it. Watched as minority after minority got their ass handed to them in traffic court. Cops are super rude about everything. Few months later I get jury duty. Hispanic man accused of a violent crime…ok yeah. I have already seen how the sausage is made.

Now I didn’t get picked they had enough before they even got to me but I admit I would be very disinclined to take the justice systems word. Maybe that is the wrong attitude to have. Just because the justice system is very very imperfect doesn’t mean that there is no crime.

Everytime the justice system does something like this. Mistreats minorities or the poor, refuses to go after the powerful it weakens it’s authority. And we are all worse off.

Meanwhile at work I can’t take a gift over five dollars and if I get like a box of chocolate I leave it in the break room.

Amazing how much integrity you must show is inverse to the amount of damages not showing it will cause.

Around 5 years into it is when I felt like I finally hit my stride. Maybe it was because she went to kindergarten.

I watched my mom and dad grow old, not sure about up.

I don’t get those. Half of yt comments are “I like how x” where x is the plot of the video.

Sincerity, the last thing you still can’t buy.

It already is. Look I am an automation engineer.

A generation ago I would have my own draftsman, a secretary, and three techs. The draftsman is gone, because you can train an engineer how to CAD. The secretary is gone because of email, and the techs are gone because you can order the parts now. I am the one engineer in my department who has a tech report to him and we will see how long that lasts. Basically doing the work that 5 people used to do. Did I get paid their salary?

But it gets worse. We have new software at work. Used to be there were two engineers plus a consultant part time doing my sub branch. Because of the new software when they retired they weren’t replaced. I am now doing the work that used to take 2.5 engineers to do. What about their associated secs and drafts people and techs? All me now. I should be pulling a million a year and if you look at what I am making my employer that number adds up.

Oh and on top of all this business has expanded. So now little all me, software enhanced, is doing the work that it took about 20 people to do. Don’t believe me? 5 years ago my company produced a baseline model twice a week. In 2022 we produced one on average every 6 working hours.

Where did all the money go? Because I sure as hell aren’t seeing it in my pay. Meanwhile I am replacing workers for a living. Making better and better processes that can do more with less human effort. Again, where is the cost savings going?

Go to any chemical plant these days. With the exception of places that are always about to explode (power plants) or ones with new chemical process constantly (some of the newer biotechs) plant operators are gone. The only ones left are maintenance, engineering, management, and business operations. If you have ever drinken a glass of OJ on the eastern seaboard of the US chances are overwhelming that I was in the plant that made it and can assure you the operators are gone.

Sorry for the rant but it’s starting to piss me off. I like my job. I am destroying horrible dehumanizing jobs. The fucking beancounters are soring me on my work.

Jesus this hurt how right you are. Like any random person you know would be better suited for the job. In fact I am going to nominate my buddy Dave the accountant. He would be a great colony leader.

Justice Clearance “brought to you by Harlan Crow” Thomas wrote that this judgement could overturn other ones such as Crow v. Virginia which established the right of atheists to not be put in stocks and have rotten fruit thrown at them.

I think it is cosplay. It would take a lot of evidence to convince me that there has been this secret cabal of lost cause since 1865 and only now showing strength.

One of the larger Chinese Evengelical Churches in the US is a stone’s throw away from my place. I know a few people who attend there and their children are taught the Bible in Hebrew and Mandarin.

Everytime I pass it I get this odd feeling like this is going to be a source of some Dues ex machina one day. Like out of nowhere there is going to be this wave of Chinese American Christians who are trained to organize and do apologetics. Suddenly there is a new group that can terrify any political leader.

Or it will be a footnote to a footnote in US history.

It’s a thing about humanity. Sunrise on a heliocentric solar system looks the same as geocentric. And yet every single culture put us in the middle. It could have been 50-50 but instead we were all wrong together.

My point is that we see what we want. No, don’t change the words to suit them.

I got it to give me a book that was still in copyright status by selectively asking for bigger and bigger quotes. Took a while. Now it seems to have cottoned on to that trick.

I have been using it to do deep dives into subjects. Especially text analysis. Do you want to know the entire voc of the Gospel of Mark in original greek for example? 1080. Now how does this compare to a section of Plato’s republic of the same size? About 6-7x as large.

So right there we can see why Mark is often viewed as a direct text while Plato is viewed as a more ambiguous writer.

It definitely has its uses but it also has massive annoyances as you pointed out. One thing has really bothered me, I asked it a factual question about Mohammed the founder of Islam. This is how I a human not from a Muslim background would answer

“Ok wikipedia says this ____”

It answered in this long winded way that had all these things like “blessed prophet of Allah”. Basically the answer I would expect from an Imam.

I lost a lot of trust in it when I saw that. It assumed this authority tone. When I heard about that case of a lawyer citing madeup caselaw from it I looked it as confirmation. I don’t know how it happened but for some questions it has this very authoritative tone like it knows this without any doubt.