Contrast with an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Those basically help pay for private mental health counseling, clinicians for social/family issues, etc. Anything outside work that makes it hard to do well at work.

Especially during and after COVID I had several employees that lost family or were just generally mentally losing it. I was able to give them the corporate EAP URL.

For some people the fact that the process of getting an appointment with a clinician is corporate and structured (and at least partly paid-for) makes it easier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Riot

The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance to British royal authority undertaken by American colonists in Weare, New Hampshire, on April 14, 1772, placing it among the disputes between Crown and colonists that culminated in the American Revolution.

In 1722, under the Broad Arrow Policy it became illegal to cut down white pine trees larger than 12 inches in diameter in New Hampshire in order to reserve them for use as Royal Navy masts. This law was not strictly enforced until 1766, when Governor John Wentworth began enforcing it.

On April 13, 1772, Sheriff Benjamin Whiting and Deputy John Quigley discovered a sawmill in Weare, New Hampshire, violating this law. They arrested the leader, Ebenezer Mudgett, and released him on bail. The next day, Mudgett and twenty men attacked the Sheriff and Deputy at the Quimby Inn, beating them nearly to death with large rods and sending them out of town on horseback. Some credit this incident with inspiring the Boston Tea Party, which significantly contributed to the start of the American Revolutionary War.

… and so the Harambe curse was broken.

Three weeks later, the USA restored its government and began prosecuting those who corrupted it. The Epstein files were released and dozens of famous wealthy people were arrested. Sensible regulation of the environment and AI came into place, wars ended, AI helped end all disease and nobody had to work to live anymore.

Be nice to nonhuman animals, you cocksuckers

When someone tells you they value Faith, they are telling you they value belief without evidence.

They are literally telling you they have the mental habits of a child.

They should be kept away from decision-making roles.

wait… Ripple still exists and has dozens of millions to blow on elections?

smh

Maybe the officer should make better fashion choices

https://sandbox.norecognition.org/

Gullibility has got to be part of it

Remember open-source wikis like TWiki and MediaWiki? Yeah, they were actually good. Plugging them into an open source defect tracker like BugZilla was pretty easy.

Fuck Jira. Fuck Confluence. Fuck Atlassian.

Sleeper (1973) Clip - Healthy Food and Tobacco

AI Severus Snape music video

That was surprisingly good. I particularly liked Grunge Dobby. And the fact that Alan Rickman is dead and that I rather liked him parasocially gives it some legit feels.

one legitimate use case for AI

TBF, curing most diseases via unlocking the proteome, interpreting biological systems like the neural connectome, and quite plausibly autonomously mining asteroids to provide Earth with abundant resources to make O’Neill cylinders.

Those are all better uses that we should be talking about.

I’ll check the Snape vid

Damn, crosspost to startrek@lemmy.world downvoted to oblivion. I would have thought people deep into ST would appreciate it even if it’s just a string of cool vignettes. I think people feel they are defending the human race by hating on anything created with AI in any way – even if the creator is using it to create a very specific detailed work, not just churning slop.

My local school board installed cameras in the buildings. Ostensibly to track where the shooter is in case there ever is one.

I spoke against this at the meeting by talking about Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon.

I spoke fully 5 minutes before realizing

None of the fucking school board knew who Bentham was or his idea for total surveillance prisons.

Yep. The Wal-Mart of religion

Take over small town drive out locals then raise prices

I haven’t figured out the best one for Trump yet.

It’s in a field in Pennsylvania

Fun story. In College I did a summer semester in the UK. I had a long ponytail, wore tye-dyes… looked like a stoner (because I was a stoner)

My friend worked at a food co-op and gave me some Chamomile tea to help with jetlag. It was Eco-friendly bulk packaging: green dried leaf in a plastic baggie. I thought nothing of it and tossed it in my carry-on along with a textbook I’d hoped to read. And of course I had 1/4 oz of weed in my underpants on the theory there is no realistic chance I end up getting strip searched.

I walk up to Customs Officer who asks my purpose in visiting. Well, I was going to summer school but also visiting relatives so I vacillated for a second. Officer gets suspicious, asks name of the school. Well it was University College of London but there are like 3 schools with very similar names (Imperial College London, Kings College London) and I brainfarted for a second on which it was.

So now she knows for sure she’s got a druggie and I’m actually starting to get legit scared. She tells me to “open up that bag then, let’s have a look”. I open it, she sees the baggie in full view, swoops in to grab it and demands, “WHAT IS THIS?!”

… and at that moment, relief! I knew I was saved!

“That’s chamomille tea, ma’am. To help with jet lag.”

She opens it, smells it, clearly is embarrassed, crossly tells me to zip up my bag and go on my way.

And what did I learn from this?

LSD is colorless, odorless, and you can bring a shitload on a piece of paper that nobody will ever find. Travel with LSD, not weed

In a war of memes and information bubbles, people not touching grass is a security risk

Your own RPi and a 1TB micro USB

Get two, keep in separate locations

In his book Synergetics , Buckminster Fuller points out (don’t have the exact quote) that you almost never hear a politician say, “you know, the evidence and logic of the other side are now overwhelmingly persuasive; I must change my political affiliation” – but among scientists, you hear the equivalent all the time.