benignintervention

Pop Team Epic

That’s endorsement enough for me

Oh man, I wonder what the author of The Book of Eels thinks. I remember thoroughly enjoying the book even though it ended without any conclusive idea where eels come from

Guess i should finally watch that. I’ve been putting it off but it’s been referenced a lot recently and seems like it might be relevant

By sheer coincidence, I just made an install image yesterday and will be switching soon

Well I just dumped windows and MS office. For machine vision I’m only dabbling with openCV, so that’s already open source. The switch to libre office has been pretty nice though

Commenting for some context.

I have some experience with this since I was a recruiter for a couple years (Disclaimer: before trump). I did officer recruiting and had no quota, so I had the freedom to be more honest with people. My first question was always, “Do you want to join the military?” And if the answer was “no” I’d tell them to go do anything else. If the answer was “yes,” I’d try to figure out what they really wanted. Often what they wanted was something they could find elsewhere and I would tell them so and how to get there. Occasionally someone would just be pro-military and I put a lot of energy into explaining that there are no promises, no guarantees, and the government will do what it wants with you whether you like it or not. My goal was to dismiss misconceptions (often generated by media/movies or recruiting ads themselves). This was before this insane trump era and I had fewer reservations if someone truly wanted it AND had the wherewithal to be a decent human about it.

Enlisted recruiters don’t necessarily have the same leeway. They are directly graded on the number of enlistments they get in whatever reporting period. Their promotions often depend on it. They are also given materials and information to use. The message above looks like a mixture of someone trying to meet their enlistment quota through outreach and a certain well-intentioned blindness that comes from years of indoctrination to trust the system. I’d be hesitant to say this recruiter is personally trying to round up immigrants, although there is always a chance. It seems more likely that this either came from higher in the organization, like Pentagon level directive (arguably more concerning), or comes from short-sighted intention to help without considering or being aware of the broader dangers so they’re trying to disseminate info about programs that could have been helpful in the past without understanding how they can also be weaponized.

That being said! Intention doesn’t matter. This is a program that can be weaponized and it should be ridiculed as such.

PSA: Everyone should always be highly skeptical when dealing with recruiters, now more than ever, especially since they are graded on number of enlistments. If anyone you know is considering an enlistment tell them that recruiters are not there to help you get what you want, they’re there to make numbers. The incentive structure for them is not in anyone else’s best interest. I’ve found this argument to be effective where more ideological arguments may not land or may further entrench.

Cool thanks, I’ll stick with it! At least until I’m familiar and want to try something new

No worries, it’s all part of the experience

Hmm, okay. Yeah I was trying to set up an environment to dabble with machine vision and had trouble finding good instructions or guidance for programming env setup. I think in college we used something-Unix but it’s been so long I don’t really have a frame of reference anymore. So I’m looking for a low-overhead daily driver that’s also relatively common or amenable to maker communities

If that makes sense.

Damnit I just switched to Ubuntu. That explains why I kept getting lost. What about Debian?

Ann Leckie is such a great author. I recommend the Radch to everyone who asks for a book

It’s almost a concept of a plan

I might go back and read those again. If I remember right, they get dark as hell for kids books

Here, I found the video

It’s youtube because I couldn’t find it anywhere else. But I think it addresses some of your points. The biggest point it makes is that at the same time that the greater economy lost 3 million jobs (or had that many layoffs), the gig economy gained roughly the same number of people.

I saw a breakdown the other day postulating that the true unemployment rate is masked by the gig economy, because people are more likely to drive Uber than file for unemployment

I’m convinced they’ll do it to themselves, especially as more books are made with AI, more articles, more reddit bots, etc. Their tool will poison its own well.