Like many things, a tool is only as smart as the wielder. There’s still a ton of critical thinking that needs to happen as you do something as simple as bake bread. Using an AI tool to suggest ingredients can be useful from a creative perspective, but should not be assumed accurate at face value. Raisins and Dill? maybe ¯\(ツ)/¯, haven’t tried that one myself.

I like AI, for being able to add detail to things or act as a muse, but it cannot be trusted for anything important. This is why I’m ‘anti-AI’. Too many people (especially in leadership roles) see this tool as a solution for replacing expensive humans with something that ‘does the thinking’; but as we’ve seen elsewhere in this thread, AI CANT THINK. It only suggests items that are statistically likely to be next/near based on its input.

In the Security Operations space, we have a phrase “trust but verify”. For anything AI, I would use 'doubt, then verify" instead. That all said. AI might very well give you a pointer to the place to ask how much motrin an infant should get. Hopefully, that’s your local pediatrician.

I’ve not read the laws, nor am I a lawyer, but I suspect that the budget laws say something like “The [FBI] shall provide a budget by [date]”, but there is no following section attaching a penalty as there are in criminal laws, so there is likely no recourse.

I imagine that this is the same as when you don’t have that report ready for the big meeting, or skipped out early before your end-of-shift duties were done: a reprimand from your boss and potentially getting fired… but his boss is, I think, Pam Bondi, the AG, in this case.

Theoretically Kash could be impeached or censured, as could Pam if she doesn’t act. But we know how well that will go. Until then, his inaction is illegal, but unlike some of trumps actions, which can be stayed or reversed via court, I don’t think you can stay inaction.

That’s really the crux. There are two trump voters: There are 1) the easily swayed, misled, gullible, uninformed, and other adjectives that imply they are just not fully aware of what is going on; and then 2) the evil assholes who know fully that they are breaking things because they stand to profit from the breakage.

Class 1 deserves our compassion, and should be helped to understand why their choices hurt themselves and society.

Class 2 needs to be evicted from this reality.

reviewing my replies much later.

What you are doing is perfect. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is normally a quote around material goods, but still applies to things like time and involvement. If you are uncomfortable calling your elected officials, that’s fine. Adding a person to a protest is still an addition that shows engagement.

Your points indicate you are not only voting in presidential elections. You have choices to make things better: ‘Vote blue no matter who’, ceding your choice of “who” to others more involved; or to become involved even though it’s uncomfortable.

I’m not talking to you alone, but also to all those who read your comment, identified with it, and then could use a prod to get involved. I’m also poking at those who vote once every 4 years and are unhappy at their options.

Don’t just hope, Act!

Find and join your local democratic organization. The initial cost in time is almost nothing. Just meet up and introduce yourself.

Once part of the conversation, you can help influence your local party and select candidates for local office that share your values. You can select delegates who vote in larger offices, and through them promote your goals.

It’s not perfect, and we currently don’t have a flawless democratic system, but participating only every 2-4 years during the major elections is not how you get the results you want. A lot of complaints exist online around weak candidates, or ‘opposition party’ that exists only to be a foil for the Right. Those things can only exist if we are not engaged.

The time to be engaged is NOW. Help find or support new House and Senate candidates for your state legislature as well as federal. Contest every office. Even if your precinct/district seems 100% red, not having candidates on the ballot is a huge disservice to anyone who would want to vote for them and hides our strength.

Now is the time to be loud.

I don’t know that ‘Conservative’ exists anymore. I’m American, but I think these comments work everywhere else, as Authoritarianism rises.

Growing up, I believed that liberal/conservative was just a difference in approach, but not a difference in end-goal. Both ‘teams’ wanted the country to prosper. In my 40s, now, I clearly see that we have different goals: Liberals want everyone to be prosperous, healthy, fulfilled. Conservatives value the prosperity only of those on top.

You may identify as conservative, little ‘c’, respect tradition and be careful with spending, etc; but I want you to closely evaluate the actions of people using that label across the globe. A vote for a conservative or right-wing candidate is a vote for the top 1% or less of the population of the planet. They may align with you on some topics, such as religion, abortion, fiscal policies, regulations, and more; but that is a ploy and they are absolutely willing to throw you away as soon as they have your vote and will cut everything you depend on once in power in order to pad their own pockets.

There are certainly perverse incentives and systemic issues that make even liberal politicians support bad policies, but the voter bloc that is ‘liberal’ wants to make things better for everyone. The conservative politicians, at least in the US where I’m paying attention, seem to be hell-bent on making things worse instead.

This has less to do with Trump’s actions, and more to do with how the convervatives behaved…

As much as I understand and support the sentiment, destroying things that are still functional is a very republican action.

Perhaps deface the mugs (sharpie marks generally survive dishwashers and can be reapplied later for new fun mustaches) and turn the shirts into dishrags or washcloths. (especially fun since in languages with gendered nouns, like German for example, a shirt is a neutral gender and a washcloth is masculine, thus making this really transformational.)

Not OP, but this is a principle thing. We should not have to change our behavior to make the computers work for us. They are unthinking, unfeeling tools, despite anyone’s claims around “AI”. They change for us.

That runs into a problem of tech literacy, though. If the companies running the tech we use don’t have incentive to make it work better, you have to know how to do it yourself and that’s generally not trivial. If I were OP, I’d look into self-hosted home automation. There’s some overhead and tinkering required, but the customization and privacy gains are likely worth it.

Side note. Anyone have any knowledge of a Google Home Mini repurpose? I’m more of a software guy, and have no clue if or how I can make the hardware mine. I’ve been slowly removing my reliance on google products lately. I use it mostly as a speaker, though, so worst case is it ends up as e-waste.

I’ll repeat and elaborate on something I said a few times before the election. As a preface, I fully understand your desire to not just ‘choose the lesser evil’, but the timing of your (the collective you, all the people who either sat out the election or, worse, convinced others to sit out) decision to make a stand is the part I take offense to.

The time to choose the lesser evil is when you have only those two choices and neither are good. You did indeed have a third choice, but that third choice was to walk away and potentially let the greater evil win – which it did. In that way, you are partially responsible for that greater evil succeeding. Had you (collectively) voted for the lesser evil, we would not be slashing federal staffing, waging cold trade wars, deporting people, and letting several idiotic and vengeful toddlers run this country into the ground right now.

The time to take your stand is actually, RIGHT NOW. If you are not engaged in trying to field a better candidate, then you are letting the “system” drive instead, and it will continue to present democratic leadership that is not aligned with your beliefs. You alone probably can’t make any significant impact, unless you happen to be wealthy and have tons of free time and want to go run for office. However, if all those people who were ‘BoTh SiDeS!’-ing in October would come back and continue to hammer on the Democratic party to put forth candidates that reflect their values, we might actually get somewhere.

The way to do this is simple, but hard:

1. Identify your local, precinct, Democratic party organization.
2. Join it.
3. (hard part) Engage and promote your values.

Either find candidates or run for offices. Failing that --which I’d admit is challenging; public service is not lucrative and is also very unstable, which is why we generally see already-rich old people in those positions – become an advocate for your policies and rise up through precinct, district and state to reach the national stage.

If you are not working on those goals, Shut the fuck up and vote for the lesser evil. You are not helping anyone by posting here.

I’ve done step 2. My values mostly align with my precinct Democrats, and I helped with Get-Out-The-Vote initiatives in my area. What did you do to prevent fascism?

Still here, not going to appologize, I stand by my statement, both of them are facist, …

I’d also like to point you to Wikipedia’s article on Fascism and see if you can provide a few examples of where Kamala Harris espoused those particular values. For each item in that first paragraph, I could quickly find you something where trump tells you that’s him. A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on, though, and maybe someone else can take over if you need examples and can’t google by yourself… Kamala was going to at least stay within the system, while trump is going to destroy it.

This recipe is garbage… I didn’t have any eggs, so I used olive oil. I also didn’t have an oven, so I put it all in my freezer overnight. It tasted terrible, although my 2yo liked it. My MIL told my wife to divorce me. 0/5 stars

not quite on-topic, but I hate online recipe sites/comments too

I jumped into Linux, via Mint, about a year ago when I refreshed my hardware. The transition was pretty easy, and I haven’t looked back. Steam runs fine and I haven’t had a modern game that didn’t work under default proton settings except for things I’ve run outside Steam and mods. Most of my personal PC’s workload is gaming and handful of web-based apps that are effectively OS-agnostic; Everything else has an easy equivalent in the apt repos.

I would say that my decision to embrace Linux as my OS was primarily influenced by my Steam Deck. Gaming on it has been simple and the desktop UI was easy to adapt to. I replaced my laptop with the Steam Deck, bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-C dock with HDMI out (all things I already had for the laptop). I now just hook into whatever TV is handy as a monitor when I need a computer on the go.

I was a tech enthusiast when I was younger, and am thus familiar with fucking around on the command line, but now I’m an old man who just wants his stuff to work and it just has… The barrier of entry for the Linux Desktop is effectively gone. We just need PR now.

Also, I think I’d replace Mint on my primary PC with SteamOS, given a simple way to do so. About a year ago, the desktop/beta SteamOS was not fully baked.

A company where the stated objective was to prioritize profit at the cost of human life. That’s a job to cause death.

The people working for that company are not likely to be in a position to quit over ethical issues, as they are trying to feed their families, but the CEO of that company made decisions that directly impacted other people lives and likely killed many. If he didn’t want to deny claims for care, he could have resigned. Instead, he profited.

His job was to cause death. As is the job of all for-profit health care companies.

Don’t lump us all together. Windows users are just linux users who aren’t there yet.

I moved early this year and haven’t had significiant problems, though I’m IT savvy and can code my way around my issues. Linux is great, and I’d been halfway there for a long time, but Windows had the edge on gaming and simplicity. They fucked up, though when they started pushing for AI and Win11, at least for me. Where the Rubicon lies will be different for everyone, but it does exist for many.

We win by couching linux as the place to go to escape corporate focus and greed, not by being elitist.

This is the part that hurts the most.

I canvassed, I rallied, I pushed people to vote. I did what I could to ensure the fascist didn’t win again, but he still did. Enough of my country either didn’t care, found some excuse to not vote for her, or wanted him to to be president.

I was denied a chance at a primary, but I was excited for Kamala. There is no person who can sit and represent 300 million people and make them all happy, but she was more on my side than not, and I’m willing to push for ‘better right now’ and then push for ‘better later’ too as distinct events.

As part of the now vocal minority, I don’t relish what is to come. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it; but lumped in with ‘Americans’, we sure seem to.

What does that mean?

This is the frantic typing of someone who is distraught; who has seen their country die and now has to live with the still-kicking remains.

That might be a bit hyperbolic, but to those of us with empathy for our fellow man, it’s not a major stretch.

They mean to say that so many people are about to die in so many places, both domestic and foreign.

When I woke up after election night, I wept for the uncountable number of people who would die because of that one night. Some will be killed soon by having critical care fully enshrined as illegal because they are women. Some will die later, because their healthcare benefits are cut and they can’t afford care. Some might die because they happen to have said the wrong things publicly. Many will die in a year, as we empower other fascists in other countries to do terrible things. Many more will die in a decade because of policies enacted by the incoming administration, which places vastly more importance on the increase in wealth of a few over the well-being of the many. And I can see a future where BILLIONS die because the people in charge prioritize power and money over the health of our planet.

The nation that I grew up believing in: the melting pot, the country that welcomed those in need has turned hostile and ugly. The first trump election was a fluke, a flaw in the system that allowed a “charismatic” “outsider” to gain power and abuse it. Biden’s election was a refutation, though only barely, and seemed to show we were better than that.

Trump’s re-election, however, is proof that we aren’t better. Enough people couldn’t be bothered to vote that we elected a criminal.

We, collectively, chose this and we will never be free of that legacy.

Here’s my complaint about this. Had trump lost the election, he would be demanding recounts in every possible place as well as launching lawsuits to delay and distract. We KNOW this, since he did it in 2020.

How unreasonable is it, then, that with all the questions raised by both his statements in public (such as “we’ll have it fixed so good you won’t have to vote” regarding 2028) and the statistical anomalies we can’t call for a recount in places where things seem amiss? If nothing is found, great, we elect a fascist; but if there was an attack/hack/fraud, then we find it and expose it. We have nothing to lose (we’re saving money over a trump loss and recounts everywhere) and Democracy to win.

I’m in a swing state and I definitely checked after the election to see that my ballot was counted. However, I can’t see the details as a private citizen, so I can’t verify it was tabulated correctly. I’m in NC, where the republican governor candidate was truly repugnant, but trump won by 3.39 points and Josh Stein won by over 14! In fact, more people voted for Stein than Trump. Maybe we could get Mark Robinson to request a recount…

I believe we are well and truly fucked.

Education and critical thinking is lacking in the majority of the electorate and the trend is that we elect leaders that reinforce that instead of mitigate it. Defunding education doesn’t improve this situation, and I feel we hit a tipping point where we might not be able to get these skills back in the curriculum going forward.

Passive aggressive ‘All your veggies are actually fruits’ energy here. I love it :)

This has been a regular debate in my household and I’m with you on this.

That’s some really neat context. I wasn’t overly concerned with Jeb at the time, since I had no interest in any of the R candidates, but the ‘please clap :(’ sure did the rounds.

I can see now, though, that Kamala Harris was certainly aware and trying to not hit the same landmine during the DNC. Watching her try to politely tell the crowd to shut up for what felt like an hour got quite painful.

Crowds: You need to let your speakers speak!

don’t trust polls.

This isn’t telling you to not be confident or to be scared, this is telling you to not assume victory is assured. Vote regardless of polling. Polling can be accurate or not. If the polling is accurate, and a majority would vote for A, but A is so far ahead of B that A-voters sit out the race, B can still win if enough voters choose to stay home.