Empathy is something that’s learned. I used to be anti-gay and less empathetic to people of color because I grew up in a super-conservative all-white bubble. When I had some higher-end school friends realize they were gay and started getting to know more and more people who weren’t WASPs, I began to see individual people instead of “others.” And that’s when I started seriously questioning how I viewed the world.

And a lot of people are on the verge of that social empathy without even knowing it. When you hear someone talk about how Carlos at work is “one of the good ones”, that’s someone who is on the edge of understanding. They actually know Carlos, so they don’t see him as an immigrant, but as a person they like and respect who does good work.

We have to help them understand that Carlos isn’t the exception.

I’m a third-party non-employee lecturer at my local university. I teach scuba, underwater photography, and scientific diving. The courses are taught off-campus at a dive shop using the shop’s its classrooms, pool, and equipment. The liability insurance is paid by me.

There’s a lake on campus we dive at, and the university charges students to enter it.

The students have to pay $3000+ in tuition for some of my classes.

…and the university doesn’t give me or the shop a dime. The students have to pay a 200 dollar lab fee, and that’s split between me and the shop for the semester. The only thing the university provides is the course numbers and taking the money, and they get 30 times as much money as I do.

I have multiple individual cameras I use to teach the class that cost more than I make in 5 years of teaching the photography class.

And they want to charge me $800/year for parking for the rare occasions when I need to go on campus.

Fuck that - I just let them ticket me. The parking services department isn’t a law enforcement agency. The biggest threat they really have is withholding grades for students who owe parking tickets.

Yeah. They published the minimum specs to get the OS to run at all with zero consideration for running actual software.

The thing with Vista was it was it was th3 first really major rebuild of Windows in a long time. Going to 98, ME, XP, etc you had increased minimum specs, but things like drivers and shit generally worked fine, so as long as you had the necessary RAM and processor to run the OS, you could just install the new version and shit would probably work.

So when Vista came along, the manufacturers selling existing models just shipped with the new OS expecting everything to work without testing.

Ring, also owned by Amazon, shares their video surveillance with Flock, which contracts with local LE agencies who share it with the feds.

0 warrants required, and ICE is actively using the data against people.

Windows Vista launch was a fucking mess. My office bought a laptop for a coworker in early 2007 that shipped with Vista but didn’t have Vista-compatible drivers for the on-board audio. They had to buy an external USB sound card.

Prescription pill bottles are a perfect balance.

You can put the cap on one way to lock them in place to keep kids out, requiring the lid to be pressed down and twisted to open, or you can flip the lid over over to make the pills easily accessible by simply unscrewing it. I’d be 100% okay with a step on phone setup (that can also be run at any other time) that allows the phone to be set up similarly.

Yeah. I used to work in a destination outdoors store that sold sometimes hundreds of guns in a day. Once every few years we would find an unattended firearm in the store - usually in the bathroom. People would have a gun in a holster, and when the belt came off and slid down they’d lose retention and slide behind the toilet.

Even though every employee from the janitor to the cashier to the finance people were required to be trained on how to safely handle a firearm, we had a small list of managers that were allowed to handle guns that had been left unattended.

Out of 200 employees there were 8 of us allowed to secure a weapon.

The worst case of abandoned guns we had was someone who bought a concealed-carry purse, decided they didn’t like it and returned it. 2 weeks later they came by to ask if they’d left their gun in it.

I found it in the purse on the sales floor. The customer service team got a very stern lecture on another reason why we always inspect returns.

Better Chrome link here.

If they come to kill me they’re gonna kill me. I can’t stop that. But that doesn’t mean I should make it easy for them.

If we reached the point where they came into my house I’d be fucked no matter what, so I’d take as many as I could with me. No use in making my death meaningless.

The rule is make it so loud that you only stick around while you’re actively buying and consuming overpriced drinks.

I think the case with ICE is 5 years. Which isn’t a crazy time period for large incentives to kick in normally, but the odds of these ICE agents still being employed in 5 years isn’t great if MAGA goes down, and if it doesn’t then 50k won’t buy a decent pair of shoes in 5 years.

Fire Marshalls in many places are way too bust for random safety inspections. They’re reviewing plans, inspecting new buildings and remodels, and sometimes also doubling as the city’s arson investigators. And in some jurisdictions they’re also the fire chief.

Lots of the time it is a fire hazard, but unless the Fire Marshall knows about it nothing gets done.

Fire code is usually checked when the building is built or if there’s a remodel, but otherwise most places can go a long, long time without a fire inspection unless there’s a specific complaint.

Reporting suspected safety issues to the Fire Marshall or Building Official is okay. You’re not being a Karen. Building and Fire codes are written in response to avoidable tragedies and should be followed.

I think the difference here is that Twitter has basically installed a “child porn” button. If their reaction had been to pull the product and install effective safeguards, it wouldn’t be as bad. It’s a serious fuckup, but people screw up every day.

Instead, they’ve made it so you can pay them to have access to the child porn generator.

I love QGIS so much. I use it professionally every day. The city I’ve worked for has used it for years.

We are about to bit the bullet on a few ESRI seats mostly for interoperability with some of our consultants and easier use of REST servers and stuff, but we’re getting the absolute cheapest licenses because all the spatial analysis tools thay cost thousands extra per license are free in QGIS, and I can still use it.

The RAM for 2026-2031 hasn’t been produced. It’s the production capacity that’s been bought out.

If the AI bubble bursts, the manufacturing can be reassigned.

Matthew 25:31-46 is when Jesus lays out the standards by which people will be judged. I don’t think MAGA would rate highly by Jesus’s standards, since it’s based entirely on the treatment of the poor, the sick, foreigners, and the imprisoned.

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

I prefer beer that’s beer.