For reasons I've mostly forgotten I can't stand Sarah Jeong! Still the right wing "the minority is the Real Racist for mocking racists" attempt to get her fired was bad as these things always are, as is how she's been treated by her new bosses and colleagues.
Very even handed analysis of one person's experience working for AmeriCorps. I learned a lot about the program and am glad I was pointed to the article. Overall, this person was glad she spent the year in service, but the program definitely needs some tweeks.
BREAKING: the Puerto Rico govt, tonight, is submitting a report to Congress that states: “On June 13, 2018, the Government of Puerto Rico revealed that there were 1,427 more deaths in the four months after the hurricanes than normal (based on the previous four years)...”
Most deaths in the aftermath of any sort of natural disaster aren't easily directly attributed to the event. Most aren't "tornado blows over tree which lands on man's head" or "man drowned in floodwaters during hurricane" type things. The only really to get at how many deaths were really attributable to the event and its aftermath (lack of power and water leading to heat-related deaths, for example) are to measure the number of deaths relative to the "normal" amount during a similar time period.
For years various thinktankeries have published country "corruption indices." I'm not going to get into the details of any of them because I am a lazy blogger, but I was always struck how if you exclude the kinds of corruption that are standard in the US but not elsewhere then the US comes out looking pretty good. Putting it roughly, our system of legalized bribery is usually enough of a Rube Goldberg machine that one can pretend it does not exist, while in other countries the suitcases of cash just get dropped on the table in plain sight. That we have our own corruption - infecting elites across government, journalism, and business - is not new, though here, too, Trump is in a way saying the quiet part out loud, or more accurately the Rube Goldberg machine was too complicated for him to operate so he just junked it.
I gather that in general people trying to develop autonomous vehicles are aware of this basic problem, though someone whose name rhymes with Devon Tusk seems to not give a shit, but you can't keep ratcheting up "driver assist" features if they don't work very well. The instant drivers start relying on them, instead of just perceiving them as an emergency failsafe, they stop paying attention.
The IIHS says these tests are just the start, and they’ll expand on them as more cars with more features hit the market, and work with international safety bodies like the UK’s Thatcham. But they already highlight the balancing act that automakers are having to pull off. If their systems are too capable, then they risk the driver’s attention wandering, which is a criticism leveled against Tesla and may have led to a fatal collision in northern California in March.
But if they’re too simplistic, they’re just frustrating to use, and drivers won’t bother. And the basic safety systems, at least, do save lives. IIHS says preventing lane departure crashes alone would save 8000 lives per year. Tesla makes bold safety claims for its Autopilot suite, which are hard to check without data, but the company says it does plan to release regular safety statistics, starting later this quarter, as promised by Elon Musk. He also says his cars are going to get more capable with software updates, changing lane for themselves, for example.
Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell The Daily Beast that Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the infamous former Apprentice star who followed Trump to the White House, secretly recorded conversations with the president—conversations she has since leveraged while shopping her forthcoming “tell-all” book, bluntly titled UNHINGED.
The thing about horrible people is that they attract other horrible people and then they all do horrible things. It's almost funny! Well, almost.
I don't get the apparent belief that someone's going to "win" the self-driving vehicle technology race and then be the only player and collect monopoly rents. Everybody's working on it! Obviously I don't think anyone's going to "win" at all anytime soon, but there seems to be this "whoever gets to the finish line first collects the whole prize" belief.
A year after his initial estimate that Waymo was likely a $75 billion startup, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas raised it to a staggering $175 billion, citing greater revenue potential from passenger ride services and licensing of its tech. The biggest source of future revenue, however, is likely to come from autonomous trucking and delivery services, which Jonas thinks could generate as much as $90 billion.
Just a rogue unaccountable kidnapping and child trafficking organization. Everyone who works for them should be in prison.
On July 18, a cargo van transporting eight Central American mothers separated from their children under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy crashed into a pickup truck in San Marcos. An ICE contractor was taking the women from a detention center near Austin to the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall to be reunited with their kids. Even though police said the van was too damaged to continue driving and the women reported injuries, ICE repeatedly denied the crash ever took place.
A former female employee told Kotaku that she was asked “How big is your e-peen?” by an interviewer who was questioning her over her gaming habits. Another former Riot employee, who is passionate about tabletop games, said she was told by an interviewer that her gaming preferences meant she wouldn’t be considered a “gamer” at Riot. Another woman, who was interviewing for a position far removed from games or game development, said she felt like she wasn’t being taken seriously because, instead of playing League of Legends, she casually played World of Warcraft. A few months into her employment, she felt that her suspicions were confirmed at a 2016 global Riot conference talk by a senior producer.
“Here at Riot Games, we hire gamers,” he said in his talk to an audience of Riot employees, audio of which was obtained by Kotaku. “If you’re not a core gamer, you need to over-index in another area.” Whether it’s finance, development facilities, player support, he said, “I don’t give a shit. You’re better if you’re a gamer.” For six minutes, the producer recounted a story of his experience preparing to raid the original World of Warcraft’s Naxxramas dungeon, introduced in 2006. It was 300 hours of raiding into his game, and he detailed the effort, the passion, and the grit it took for him to attain the opportunity. And then, before the raid, his internet died, and he let down his team. The experience gave him an “acid turn” in his stomach, he said, and has become a story he’s kept in his pocket for a decade. “Think of your story,” he demands. “If you don’t have one, get one. I’m serious.”
I think it's great that obsessive stereotypical nerd behavior is now just as cool as, I dunno, obsessive sports fan behavior or obsessive amateur golfer behavior or whatever. No need for nerd interests to be "uncool" any more than dozens of other basically similar pointless (though maybe fun!) activities. Yay nerds, you won. Also that nerd in "Revenge of the Nerds" raped the cheerleader.
But trying to kill the imaginary dragon, or whatever the fuck, is just as stupid as hitting a little golf ball around or listening to 4 hours of sports talk radio daily or knowing who Paul Ryan is. Like most hobbies, obsession with them is not "cool" it's just some thing you like to do, and is probably totally and justifiably seen as dumb and weird to normies.
Also engaging in sexism and workplace discrimination over imaginary dragons is probably not the best way to level up in the game of love.
ST. LOUIS • Fueled by more than $15 million in campaign spending and laser-sharp attention from national labor unions, voters solidly rejected an attempt to make Missouri a “right to work” state.
But hundreds of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former administration officials tell a different story — of a previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd spoke with VA officials daily, the documents show, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. They prodded the VA to start new programs, and officials travelled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views. “Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said.
All told, 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” Only 36 percent disagreed with that statement. When asked if Trump should close down specific outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, nearly a quarter of Republicans (23%) agreed and 49 percent disagreed.
Trump told his Tampa rally crowd that his team had set up "a tremendous movie screen" so all the people stuck outside could watch. There was no screen at all. https://t.co/KsXWcjyErtpic.twitter.com/QEMkiFrccy
Trump lies all the time, of course. The best you can say is he has so little interest in telling the truth that he barely distinguishes truth from falsehoods. But there's lying and there's believing the fantasy world that your brain has created. All the way back to lying about inauguration crowd sizes this distinction has been important. Trump wasn't really lying about the crowd sizes. He believed his fantasy and expected others (Spicer etc.) around him to maintain it.
I'm sure he's always been a bit like this, but... not quite like this.
