I saw this and thought, well yeah that VP is right, cold calls are annoying spam. However, based on the insane comments by all the salespeople, you’d be wrong. Like, are salespeople that out of touch with normal people?
I don’t think that B2B cold calls are “spam”, per se, and I wouldn’t even say that most of them are truly “cold” calls. Worst case scenario, they should be warm calls. Or room temperature calls. Like, if you sell printing presses, you probably shouldn’t be calling a hair salon. But calling a local newspaper–somewhere that you know uses the product category that you sell–is reasonable.
I do take cold calls from salespeople in my current position, and my response is usually that, if they can provide a product that meets the needs of the company I work for, I’m more than happy to try it.
Four Missouri elk hunters used [a stepladder] to climb over an invisible corner from one parcel of Bureau of Land Management terrain to another. They never touched a toe on two adjacent swaths of private property marked by “No Trespassing” signs....
I’ve been working on converting my gaming PC to Linux for a few weeks, but everything is running, but it all is just a little jankier than I would like....
Allow me to piggyback on this a bit, s’il vous plait.
Is there a Linux distribution that will run Adobe CC out of the box, games from Steam, and VR headsets? I need a new desktop badly, but I need to be able to use Adobe products as part of my job. (No, I can’t switch to GNU products, because I get files from clients, and I have to be able to work to industry standards.) I’ve used Tails before, which is not a user-friendly product, and it doesn’t play nicely with any other software.
I have to use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro every day for my day job. I have to keep up-to-date with my versions, because clients send me files that use features in the latest releases, and not being up-to-date means that things don’t render correctly. (I’m super-pissed that I have to update since Adobe dropped all support for Pantone colors abut a year (?) ago.)
I use Corel Painter 2022 and a Wacom pen display for fun. My guess is that a pen display might get a little weird in Linux, but the one I have is not cutting edge at least.
Yeah, don’t use that for regular work, that’s an uber-paranoid distro that’s intentionally locked down, which means things are likely going to be more difficult to get working.
I know, I know, but I liked being functionally untrackable online, and not getting ads shoved down my throat (…despite working in advertising…) all the time. It’s neat, but almost everything online seems to have privacy-invading features so deeply embedded that the browser built into Tails just can’t use them at all.
Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I’d probably get an Apple device.
Sadly, I also don’t like spending money. :P You used to be able to make Hackintoshes, but Apple tends to break them with every software update.
I had been thinking about getting an IoT Enterprise LTSC release of Windows and manually adding the components that I needed. Might still do that with dual boot.
There are a lot of ways to get around that, such as:
I’m doing all of that except the last one already. As has been noted in many other places, Windows itself is now in the business of serving ads directly, and it looks like that’s getting harder and harder to disable. I managed to mostly lock down the Pro release of Win 10 that I’m on right now, but Win 11 will make that much, much harder. If it weren’t for security issues surrounding end of product life, I wouldn’t switch versions at all.
C’est la mort.
But yeah, I’ll def. look for a user-friendly version of Linux when I build my next system in a few months.
In recent weeks, I’ve noticed a rise in censorship regarding SMS communication that’s not being discussed. At all. I’m concerned that it may become a slippery slope that eventually effects us all. I don’t have any dramatic, prose-ridden introduction this week. Just some news, facts, and observations I wanted to share. So...
Interesting. I’ve noticed that a lot of my text messages to my partner fail to send as well, and I also swear frequently and voluminously. I should test this and see if this is what is going on with my carrier.
More than a month after a news report revealed that the Combat Infantryman Badge Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, wears on his lapel was revoked since he was never eligible for the award to begin with, the congressman refuses to take the pin off....
[…]with intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit[…] [emphasis added]
There’s your problem. You’d have to demonstrate that he claimed the badge in order to receive some benefit. He’s a congressional member of Texas, and Republican; by winning the primary–which likely did not hinge on the medal–he was almost certain to win the general election.
This would be a very, very hard case to make as a prosecutor.
I always liked hanging out with the punks and metalheads though.
I’ve known entirely too many people that had the real life personality of Shadowheart and Astarion to really like them though. Gael and Wyll just seemed like entitled shits; not the worst, but not great people.
ALL of politics is about building consensus and compromise. Every single bit. There will never be a candidate that you agree with on every single issue; that means that you’re always going to have to vote strategically, and decide which issues are the most important to you.
As anyone that combs through my post history will not, I’m very, very pro-2A; I oppose almost all restrictions on gun rights, I think that the past-'86 ban of FOPA should be thrown out, and I’d be fine with the Nat’l Firearms Act of 1934 being ruled unconstitutional. On the other hand, I also support religious plurality and freedom–including especially the freedom from religion–reproductive rights, voting rights for everyone, non-discrimination, LGBTQ+ rights, and support the right of cops to eat a sack of dicks. So even though gun rights are very important to me, I’m extremely unlikely to ever vote Republican. Especially since I live in a state where it’s very unlikely I’ll ever have to worry about losing my 2A rights, but my partner has to worry about losing their access to reproductive healthcare.
I love my dad. My dad was, and is, great. Yeah, he was absent a lot, because work and church shit kept him busy, but I’ve never met anyone IRL that was as genuinely kind and willing to help.
If I live my life being only a tenth of the man that my dad is, I’ll be doing well.
Where he is right now, he can’t have remorse. At the time that this article was written, he was probably still a believing Mormon, and for him to admit that he was wrong would be the same as admitting that his religion–which was likely one of his personal foundations–was also wrong. Mormonism is a cult, and it’s very, very hard to leave because of how deeply it sinks tentacles into your brain.
I wouldn’t take that article too seriously. It’s not citing any sources directly, and the sources regarding penile plesthysmography were not terribly solid studies, IIRC. Medium is a glorified blog site, much like Elephant Journal.
Finland, Norway, and Sweden all have mandatory military service, and are notably democratic and socialist compared to the US. Switzerland and Austria as well.
measures to remedy what they see as a “crisis” facing the all-volunteer military.
This is accurate. All branches of the military are having problems meeting their recruiting requirements, because kids in general in the US are no longer fit enough to make it into basic training in the first place. So while there are enough raw people that have the mental aptitude that are trying to get in–but just barely–so many of them are unable to meet the physical requirements that the military lacks the personnel that it needs.
He described the concept as a common “rite of passage,” one that would create a sense of “shared sacrifice” among America’s youth.
Okay, yes. This is potentially correct. However, you’re also going to see a lot of resentment. So perhaps you won’t see the esprit de corps that you might want.
he says leads to “unnecessary delays” and “unwarranted rejections” for some people with disabilities or other conditions who otherwise want to serve.
I was one of those people that might have been an “unwarranted rejection”; I scored quite high on the ASVAB at the time (I think 96th percentile in the mid 90s), but was disqualified because I was on Prozac. Now I would be disqualified because I’m on the autism spectrum. (I was then too, but hadn’t been diagnosed.) I might have done well in the military. I might have hated it. But I never got the chance to find out.
Only 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the armed forces, Army data shows.
Okay, see, here’s a huge problem. Mandatory military service would mean expanding the military by 100x. Even if you only served 18 months or 2 years as a conscript, that’s an ENORMOUS amount of money that has to be spent by the gov’t feeding, housing, clothing, training, providing healthcare, and paying (since you kinda gotta pay the troops) for so goddamn many people, and that assumes that they entirely cut all post-separation benefits for anyone that is conscripted (e.g., no VA for people that become disabled, no GI Bill, etc.) The infrastructure spending alone for that, and the number of new bases that would need to be built, is staggering. Right now we spend 3.5% of our GDP on the military. Even if we went low-tech for all the soldiers that were conscripted, you could expect to see that number triple, easily. That means that you’re either doing massive deficit spending, cutting everything else that taxes are spent on, or raising taxes by a lot.
Not just the poors though. You’d have to cut infrastructure spending, Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, criminal justice, food and drug administration (you know, the people that make sure food is safe?), everything that makes our country more or less functional. This isn’t something that the 1% would be fine with; it’s more like the .1%, or .01%, because even most of the very wealthy people would end up getting badly fucked by the kind of cuts you would need to have in order to add that many people to the military without instituting oppressive taxes.
I think that saying that the current military budget would triple if there was mandatory conscription is actually being incredibly conservative. If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP when the US last had something even in the same county as mandatory conscription–World War II–the US was spending over 40% of the GDP on the military.
I can’t imagine most people in the US being okay with that kind of loss of necessary gov’t function combined with insanely high taxes unless the US was also involved in an existential war.
The Israeli government insists that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault on October 7, 2023. But investigators say the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger report on eight months of claim and counter-claim...
FWIW, The Times is a center-right publication that’s somewhat more factually accurate in their reporting than the New York Times is. So it’s kind of a big deal for them to admit that there just isn’t any evidence other than extremely suspicious claims about any widespread, systematic sexual violence.
The serious argument about felons being allowed to vote is that voting is a civic duty, and you want felons to re-integrate into society. If they have tons of restrictions following them around for the rest of their lives, they’re always going to be a little bit outside. Feeling like they’re stuck outside of society makes recidivism rates higher, so restoring the right to vote is an important step in rehabilitation.
It would take a lot of people having felony convictions to be able to seriously sway an election, but given the racially polarized way that the criminal justice system is often applied, I think that’s probably happened.
Likely killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing. They don’t know where hostages are being held, so any bomb could be the one that kills hostages, and they clearly don’t care.
“Taking away the mayor’s law license is meant to discourage lawyers from representing clients like President Donald Trump or anyone else who is willing to take on the prevailing political establishment,” he added.
The majority of attorneys that have represented Trump in his civil and criminal trials have not been disbarred; only the ones that are committing crimes have been. The biggest discouragement to lawyers had been Trump’s unwillingness to pay the legal bills he owes, coupled with Trump’s unwillingness to follow legal counsel.
The bylaws also prohibit going shirtless or in a bikini in areas away from the beach, a ban that was introduced several years ago in Barcelona to little effect as offenders are mainly tourists who fly home without paying the fines.
That’s easy to solve. You confiscate the passport until the fine is paid. Or arrest them and hold them without bond as a flight risk. The last time I got a speeding ticket–about 15 years ago, I think–I was in Ohio, and driving home to Illinois. The cop took my license, and said they’d mail it back once I paid the fine.
Quick edit: I’m not talking about cash bail here; that’s a separate issue. Bond can be refused when a suspect is deemed to be unlikely to show up for court, such as the suspect being a foreign national. This happens regularly, and isn’t particularly controversial. A person that is a citizen and resident of a foreign country is very likely to skip out on criminal penalties, therefore they shouldn’t be permitted to leave without paying their criminal fines.
As I’ve been saying, the people on the political left need to get strapped, they need to train, and they need to organize. Laws and cops aren’t going to protect you, esp. when most cops are on the side of Trump. All of the laws trying to ban guns and prevent most citizens from owning them are going to do is make it ever easier for the boot of the authoritarians to crush you.
You need to take that power back, and remind the police that they only get to enforce laws by the consent of the people.
Prove it. Just because it is a catchy doesn’t mean it’s true.
You’ve cited the proof yourself. The wealthy have made sure that voting is just as hard as they can possibly make it in areas that aren’t poor, or won’t vote for the interests of the monied class.
I go to 2-3 shooting matches every month; I’d go to more, except that ammunition prices are expensive. I talk to people. I’m not some kind of closet leftist; I wear this shit on my sleeve. (Quite literally in the case of some of my morale patches.). I see the stickers, patches, and shirts that other people are wearing, and I hear them talking; their politics are clear. I expect that the next 2-gun match I’m gonna hear a lot of people angry about Trump rule 34.
Going to shooting matches as someone that’s pretty far left on most issues is like being in enemy territory. On the rare occasions that I get to make it to a match that’s mostly populated with people that are on the political left, I feel like I can finally breathe.
Not many people outside of the full-on tankie brigades are arguing that Israel has no right to exist as a country. On the other hand, they are arguing that Palestinine also has a right to exist as a country, and that the land that Israel has unjustly taken, and continues to take, should be returned. And that Israel should need to make reparations for the Palestinian non-combatants they’ve killed, and the land they’ve stolen.
It’s clear that Israel as a country will never allow Palestinians to have a full voice in their government, so the only reasonable choice at this point is a two-state solution.
I used to do 14 miles one way in Chicago, year ‘round. (I stopped because I moved to Georgia, and now my commute involves about 2000’ of elevation difference, which is likely around 4000’ of elevation change.) If you’re not fit, well, that’s a pretty good reason to start riding then, isn’t it? NYC also has a fantastic public transit system, one of, if not the best in the US, and it’s readily accessible by people with disabilities. Much more so than an electric bicycle.
Shower before you leave home, duh. And then change into the clean work clothes in your bag–the one I said you should carry–once you get to work.
Since this is apparently difficult, I’ll break it down.
Wake up, get coffee. Maybe breakfast if you eat in the morning.
Pack your work clothes in a messenger bag (I used a Chrome Kremlin for a decade, but ended up switching to a Trash Bag). Pack lunch if you want to; make sure lunch is in a leak-proof container.
Shower. Change into cycling clothes appropriate for the weather.
Carry your bike down three flights of stairs to the street.
Ride to work.
Lock bike to a heavy, immobile, hard to destroy object (I was partial to light poles when there wasn’t a city rack available; I used a Kryptonite Evolution chain and lock for about a decade with zero bike thefts.)
Change into work clothes and shoes. Comb hair again to minimize helmet hair.
In my experience in Chicago, a bike was almost always faster than public transit, period. Even before I was fit, when it was painful to ride my bike in to school, it was faster than the train during rush hour.
If you’re not fit […]
…Then riding an e-bike isn’t going to make you fit, because you aren’t going to pedal it. An e-bike isn’t going to make you fit, any more than my Triumph Speed Triple is making me fit. Sure, I’m still on two wheels, but I’m not getting any physical fitness out of it.
I was–briefly–a personal trainer. I saw a lot of people avoiding putting in the work using almost every excuse they could. People that tried to ease themselves into getting fit were still going easy months later. The only people that made progress were the people willing to do the work, even when it was difficult and uncomfortable. For myself, I don’t like making excuses for people that won’t put in the effort, and that’s pretty much everyone that uses e-bikes. If you want a motorcycle, just do that, pay for insurance, and obey the rules of the road, rather than riding on sidewalks and bike paths while putting in zero effort.
Many–most of the ones that I see in Atlanta–do not require any pedaling at all. They’re functionally speed-controlled electric motorcycles that people ride on sidewalks.
So no, most people aren’t exercising, any more than they’re exercising on electric scooters.
There’s no classes of licenses like that in the US. If you are 18 and meet the minimal legal requirements, you can buy a long gun of any type in most states. (Some states are trying to move that age to 21.) That means a single shot, break action, lever action, bolt action, pump, or yes, semi-automatic. Once you hit 21, you can buy handguns. Again: that includes break action, revolvers, and normal semi-automatics.
The only real restriction in all of this is machine guns; to get those, you need to come up with the $20,000+ that a legal one will cost, and file a transfer application with the BATF, pay a $250 fee, and wait to see if your application is approved or denied. There are some states that prevent individual ownership of machine guns entirely.
Let me just point out that losing 5% of the workforce like that will make inflation skyrocket, because we’ll have to increase wages on a lot of jobs done for shit pay by undocumented migrants. (Should those jobs pay well now? Of course. But they don’t.) You think houses are expensive now? Just wait until construction grinds to a standstill because there’s no laborers available. Groceries cost too much? Guess who is working in those fields?
Again: we should be paying those people fair wages now. But without significantly raising those wages, which will also raise the cost of the goods they currently produce, you aren’t going to get many citizens to do the jobs.
EDIT: one of the larger inputs for produce is labor. If we had to pay labor for picking, cleaning, and sorting produce $20/hr (which is the floor that I’d consider semi-acceptable for that kind of work), you would end up seeing a lot of prices rise sharply in the grocery store, particularly because we simply can’t automate most of that. And believe me, companies are trying, because they won’t want to pay the slave wages that they do now. If you had to pay all construction workers at least $20/hr–which is below the acceptable rate, IMO–housing costs would have to rise to accommodate the cost of the labor. Lots of restaurants still use undocumented labor; they’d have to increase menu prices. And so on, and so forth. We, all of in the US, benefit from the poor treatment of undocumented migrants, and it’s largely invisible to us.
For that to really work, you need a labor surplus, i.e., more workers than jobs. As long as there are more jobs than workers, workers are incentivized to hop jobs to get better pay, perks, and working conditions. It’s in the best interest of the capital-owning class to keep a certain level of the population unemployed so that there are always more workers than jobs; that allows them to pocket more of the value that the workers are adding, because the workers have less leverage to negotiate better wages.
But when you suddenly lost 5% of your workforce, and they’re jobs that are physically demanding (and in the case of construction, are a genuinely skilled trade), then capital-owning class doesn’t have the leverage over workers. That’s especially true when the capitalist can’t easily move operations to an area with cheap labor; if you’re a contractor, you’re going to operate where there’s demand for construction, not where there’s cheap labor. An e.g. contractor can’t just not build; they lose money by sitting on land, or on equipment that isn’t being capitalized.
So, to recap, you know nothing about my religion other than the name, and make assumptions about what I believe due to your prejudices, but you don’t believe that you have prejudices based on skin color. Is that correct?
Cold calls aren't spam! (sopuli.xyz)
I saw this and thought, well yeah that VP is right, cold calls are annoying spam. However, based on the insane comments by all the salespeople, you’d be wrong. Like, are salespeople that out of touch with normal people?
For millionaire and four hunters, a wild Western lawsuit over public land: The ruling on an invisible corner in Elk Mountain, Wyo., could determine how much private property rights limit public access (wapo.st)
Four Missouri elk hunters used [a stepladder] to climb over an invisible corner from one parcel of Bureau of Land Management terrain to another. They never touched a toe on two adjacent swaths of private property marked by “No Trespassing” signs....
Sorry I can't do it.
I’ve been working on converting my gaming PC to Linux for a few weeks, but everything is running, but it all is just a little jankier than I would like....
A Rising Enforcement of Censorship (blog.thenewoil.org)
In recent weeks, I’ve noticed a rise in censorship regarding SMS communication that’s not being discussed. At all. I’m concerned that it may become a slippery slope that eventually effects us all. I don’t have any dramatic, prose-ridden introduction this week. Just some news, facts, and observations I wanted to share. So...
Texas congressman won’t stop wearing combat Infantryman Badge that was revoked (www.military.com)
More than a month after a news report revealed that the Combat Infantryman Badge Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, wears on his lapel was revoked since he was never eligible for the award to begin with, the congressman refuses to take the pin off....
Shadowheart from Baldur's Gate 3 was originally "more sassy" and had to be "heavily dialed down" after one of the devs said "I really don't like" the character (www.gamesradar.com)
Supreme Court rejects challenge to abortion pill mifepristone (www.cnn.com)
Well-Known Anti-Gay “Conversion” Therapist Comes Out As Gay (mavenroundtable.io)
Trump advisers propose mandatory military service (wapo.st)
Some in the former president’s camp say it’s time more young adults put “some skin in the game.”...
Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up? (www.thetimes.com)
The Israeli government insists that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault on October 7, 2023. But investigators say the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger report on eight months of claim and counter-claim...
Joe Biden suddenly leads convicted felon Donald Trump in multiple battleground states (www.newsweek.com)
Four more Israeli hostages have died in Hamas custody (www.nbcnews.com)
D.C. ethics board recommends Rudy Giuliani be disbarred (www.cnbc.com)
Spanish town bans penis suits and sex dolls from stag and hen dos (www.theguardian.com)
Newsmax Host Ominously Warns ‘You People in Your Cities’ Who Are ‘Pushing the Party That Owns 90% of the Guns’ (www.mediaite.com)
Newsmax host Carl Higbie went on a tirade on Friday after former President Donald Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury the day before....
Sony Submits PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter for Certification - IGN (www.ign.com)
Trump Tells Donors He’ll Deport “Any Student” Who Protests Against Gaza Genocide (truthout.org)
Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators | Speaking to wealthy donors behind closed doors, he said that he supports Israel’s right to continue “its war on terror. (wapo.st)
The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century (lemmy.ml)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/16133154...
Families of Uvalde victims sue Activision, say Call of Duty is 'the most prolific and effective marketer of assault weapons in the United States' (www.gamedeveloper.com)
Gen alpha has no fucking clue (lemmy.world)
The incomprehensible, unattainable scale of Trump’s deportation plan | The former president has said he will send nearly 5 percent of U.S. residents out of the country if he is reelected. (wapo.st)
Boy Scouts of America changing name to more inclusive Scouting America after years of woes (apnews.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/20749204...