George Budd @Gbudd@social.cleverlibre.org
Father, Boyfriend, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
So sorry. Sending supportive thoughts your way
George Budd
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One of the creepier tech-related incidents I remember was many years ago when I wanted the Sam's Photofacts (a third-party creator of device specs and schematics, etc.) for a very old portable TV. Way out of date, but I was trying to help someone with it.
I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for old Photofacts, but I did not say anything about the TV. He scribbled an address on a scrap of paper, an address locally here in L.A. "Try him," he muttered.
I drive over. It's a small unmarked storefront. I go in, the bell on the door rings. Sitting inside, like the caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland", is this little guy perched on a stool, with immense stacks of paper surrounding him everywhere. Total mayhem.
I walk up to him -- knowing that this was a waste of time and really wanting to get out of there -- and asked if he had the Sam's Photofacts for that specific very old TV model.
Without saying a word, he reached over to the pile of papers right next to him, took the TOP item off the pile, and silently handed it to me. It was the ancient one I needed. Stunned, I paid him the amount marked on the item, and left with it, not completely sure what had just happened.
When I drove by there a month later that storefront was something else entirely. He was gone.
George Budd
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I don’t read it that way. To me it’s a recognition that there are things in my head and in my past that I need to get over and fight back against. The line between “normal” people and a mob (or an Army) is thinner than I think most of us are comfortable with. People are complicated, there are people who’s politics that I find abhorrent who nevertheless perform fantastic acts of charity and kindness. There are people who’s politics I agree with that are selfish assholes. People are just complicated
George Budd
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Why it’s crucial to keep the humanity of our enemies firmly in our minds. (Hint: it’s not primarily for their sakes.)
@LesterHammerer@mindly.social I’m very sorry for your loss, I’m sure John was a real character
#caturday Annie atypically looking quizzical instead of aggrieved (or asleep)
George Budd
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Fantastic accomplishment!♥️👍🏿
https://19thnews.org/2023/07/chanda-prescod-weinstein-physicist-tenure-rare-feat/
And when she tried to join the Fediverse, she was greeted with a barrage of hate, sexism, racism, and anti-semitism that should have never been allowed to happen.
So now no one on Fediverse gets to interact with her directly about her work on here. Our loss. 😢
Which is why we'll make it so that this type of terrible welcome is unlikely to happen again. Allowing it to happen to her was a choice. We will make better ones.
Poor boy! I hope he’s on the mend and your weekend gets better from here
George Budd
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TIL: Under the UK Animals Act 1971 cats are legally classed as 'free spirits' meaning no claim of trespass or causing damage can be brought against the owner. I kinda love that cats are SO uncontrollable a whole new category had to be created for them under law.
Happy anniversary! Congratulations!
It’s might not strictly be a zero sum within a company (presumably it’s value goes up and down) and sure, a company can increase its value and we would typically expect that gain (or loss) to be sent to the owners of that company.
On the employee level it feels like it’s closer to zero sum though, and maybe that’s just a perception thing. While relative CEO pay has gone up over the years I guess you can’t necessarily disentangle whether that increase comes out of the pool of wages available to all employees or whether it’s coming out of the pool of money that could be going back to investors. I guess I should go see if economists have any papers on that
I mostly agree with your original point that on the macro level that wealth isn’t a zero sum game (though it can certainly be a lot closer to one within a company).
Saying that the existence of rich people isn’t a red flag is a different and interesting argument, but I don’t want to hijack your thread
George Budd
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For the third time this year a story about a cis girl seeing a trans woman naked in a YMCA locker room has fallen apart as more details became known.
Abbigail Wheeler saw two trans women sitting on a bench talking in their bathing suits, but never saw them change. She posted hateful signs targeting them and her family canceled their YMCA membership and pulled her from the swim team rather than allow her to face consequences for her behavior. #trans #news #journalism
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/illinois-ymca-wheeler-protest-transgender
George Budd
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In 1992, Sinead O'Connor tore a picture of Pope John Paul II in half during a performance on SNL in protest against generations of abuse toward children within the Catholic church.
Bless you, Sinead.
Welcome to Heaven.
That sounds awfully familiar 😎, my working life is filled with brain cramps like that
George Budd
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George Budd
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Happy Rotating Black Hole Day!
Roy Kerr submitted his breakthrough paper describing the spacetime around a rotating black hole #OTD in 1963.
Physicists had been searching for decades for this solution to the field equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11.237
George Budd
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@BigAngBlack @BlackAzizAnansi There's a really good 99 Percent Invisible podcast about this.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/
Father, Boyfriend, Volunteer EMT, (conflicted) Veteran, Computer Geek, Perpetual Student. Command line kind of guy (he/him) Very amateur woodworker, crude sketcher, proud nerd, liberal, wished I knew more math and science.
I’m willing to be wrong, certainty often means that I don’t actually understand the problem
Joined Nov 2022
