Yeah, I was really looking forward to google making more of those neat images with all the eyes and the dog faces. Additional fingers were always a plus for me, like cracking an egg and finding two yolks.

Now, instead of AI creating man-made horrors beyond my imagining (which are alien and rainbow colored), AI creates man-made horrors within my imagining (excuses for corporate layoffs, aggressive ads, etc, all excused by internet posters who don’t value art to begin with and have no idea what it is. Quit abdicating the human experience to matrix algebra).

Apparently I am this obtuse

I bought a plain black wallet at walmart because idgaf.

Apparently this is a “man’s wallet” and its completely reasonable for my coworkers to ponder why I have borrowed my husband’s wallet for [insert coworker bonding activity]

I did not get this memo. Apparently I need a guide to acting “normal” and like a ciswoman even though I am a ciswoman. My debit card couldn’t care less about where it lives.

I don’t really think this comment has anything to do with yours. I just felt like venting. Sorry.

All wallets remind me of vaginas. They are flappy things, and you put stuff in them.

duck duck go has been giving me AI summaries / suggestions

You can turn it off but if your cookies are cleared you have to do it again.

I do believe that in order to achieve welfare/prosperity, not all the people have to work. And I do believe that there are more important things in life than working. I’d love to be a stay at home dad, but I can’t.

Being a stay at home dad is work. Raising children is necessary work that capitalism requires, because it requires laborers. We have engineered a system in which this work is uncompensated, and if you gender this work, it causes gendered oppression.

I will also point out that in America we have decided that unless you have a “job”, society has decided that you pretty much don’t deserve health care. Anyone who chooses a life of domestic labor in America puts themselves in a position where they are financially dependent on their spouse and their spouse’s employment status. It doesn’t have to be this way. We have forged these chains.

Whether doubling the workforce is a good thing - that I’d keep up for a debate.

If we had more workers, it could be that we wouldn’t need those workers to work as long. Earlier retirement, shorter work weeks, whatever. The issue is not the size of the work force, the issue is what is chosen to be done with it.

Are you trying to imply doubling the available workforce is not good? Its usually a good thing. While their motivations are cynical, those leaders are doing good.

…or are you trying to imply that keeping women out of the traditional work force (by only allowing them to work unpaid in the home in domestic servitude, labor that capital does not value) increases the value of male labor through scarcity, which would be preferred?

Sorry that second question kind of reads as an attack. A shitty coworker of mine said that to me unironically and tried to play it off as a joke when I pushed back.

Yes exactly. Without writing too much more, I’ll just say I wish it had been done a bit different, and there’s no shame in critiquing a finished product for what it is (within reason. I’m not a huge fandom person so I don’t really know how toxic this all got for some people). It’s still quite good.

Yeah. Valid. I’m just going to leave it up and take my downvotes.

I’m sorry to do this but “its a children’s cartoon” isn’t a reason to not think critically of this show. It takes itself VERY seriously and deserves serious thought. We’re not examining the Deep Lore of Spongebob here.

The critique was overblown but its still not wrong. If we weren’t shown the planetary destruction/genocide the Diamonds (the antagonists) were doing, I would agree entirely that people were thinking about a cartoon too hard. But the show makes a point to explore the destruction, the genocides and “human zoo” and its effects. It tells us directly why it happens and who is responsible. It takes it seriously, dwells on it, and then expects us to move on. Its reasonable to ask why the show chose to do this.

Someone chose to write this show this way. We don’t actually need Steven’s mother’s family to be literal fascists (they are the heads of an alien government if you did not watch the series) on top of being emotionally constipated and abusive. Pick one plot thread or make more characters. Send the Space Nazis to Space Jail for their Space Crimes.

There’s plenty of good in the show, though. That’s why people spend so much energy complaining about it. If it were simply bad people would have forgotten about it immediately. The haters are fans whether they will admit it or not.

The problems with Steven Universe are similar to the reasons I hated Harry Potter as a kid. I knew what slavery was, and I knew Hermione was right to fight it even when the author tried to frame her as a silly busy-body. It wasn’t even the only problem I had with the series as a kid, just the last straw. Kids are thoughtful and deserve good media.

(Steven universe is better than that series, just an observation)

But he also said he wanted cuts, and that Musk would remain a power center: “If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

Its not time for celebration. This is just to take heat off Elon. Now the media will be able to spread the blame around or excuse it. “People inside the department know how best to make cuts. Everything is normal”.

Yes, thanks for catching my errors.

I wrote my comment too hastily, you are correct. My comment has been edited, probably while you were typing yours.

Ah yep, I wrote my reply too hastily. It is fixed (Edit: I also missed where it specified b is an integer).

(edit: I typed this up not as a response to OP, but for anyone who was curious about this but didn’t remember or never learned enough math to solve this for themselves. It had errors but I fixed them (I think, I just woke up and I’m tired of re-reading this comment). Sharing is imperative, and not everyone has had the chance to develop an appreciation for math).

Here I come to explain the joke.

The question asks for what values of b produce no real solutions.

Quadratics (this is the type of equation this is) have two, one or no real real roots. (If we set x to some arbitrary number and the equation is equal to zero, we say x is a root of the equation. A real number is anything we traditionally call a number, like 2, 1/4, -248957.666667 and pi).

So we need to find where it has only one real solution. Quadratics of the form (x-k)^2 = 0 have only one real solution, that solution is k.

So, since 169 = 13^2 we can easily find the b that produces this (this part isn’t necessary as part of the solution, I include it in case it helps someone understand):

-1(x-13)^2 = 0
-1(x^2 -26x + 169) = 0
-x^2 +26x - 169 = 0

If we apply the quadratic formula, we can find what values of b produce imaginary roots. I’m not going to type the whole thing out, we just need to know what is happening under the “square root” part of the quadratic formula, the radicand:

sqrt(b^2 - 4 * -1 * 169) 
sqrt(b^2 - 676)

sqrt(676) is 26, by the way. So any value between 0 and 26 (or 0 and -26) will produce a negative value inside the radicand. We can’t take a square root of a negative number (unless you don’t mind that your solution has complex numbers), so any -26 < b < 26 will give us an equation without real solutions.

Therefore, the least value of b is a value of b greater than -26, but less than 0. Since the question specifies it is an integer, that number is -25.

Their wives also left them and they couldn’t figure out why.

Lmao.

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Everyone knows those rules don’t apply when youre dunking on the instances with opinions outside of the US state department’s approved overton window.

Hmm gee why would anyone post articles that are vaguely negative about the Democratic establishment. Right now they’re fighting the blatent corruption going on in our country by doing:

Don’t forget all the things they did to protect federal workers like:

But of course you can’t forget the ways they got popular policy enacted when their man was in office. Policy like:

There’s an avian flu epidemic forcing the culling of birds. Should we save the CDC/USDA/FDA? Nah, silence from the democratic party.

There have been terrible airplane accidents. Should we get more staff for ATC and make sure the FAA has a director in a time of crisis? Nah, silence

Should we allow anti-intellectuals and political agents police the language of science? Should we stop them from purging completed projects and scholarly papers? Nah, silence

Should we do something about a madman firing 12 inspector generals without following process? Nah, silence

Anything to protect career civil servants, keeping our government running and providing services to the people? Nah, silence.

But the CIA front is where we draw the line.

yea honestly? it’s funny as fuck, legendary prank. Oh no a dead bear in central park oh noooooo

Hear me out: what actually troubles me is his opinions about vaccines. Strange take, I know.

These are public service workers who are having their jobs taken from them. People are losing pentions. Some departments will have all employees laid off and remain in name only (because it takes an act of congress to disband some departments)

Think of who maintains your parks. Think of who provided nessisary demographics and statistics to businesses and universities. Think of who runs GPS and weather satilites. Think of who tests your water and air. Who tests your produce, meat and drugs. The IRS got this letter as well. Their “customer service” branch is probably getting the axe. Who will you call if your tax return is stolen?

The reality is life will worsen for the average American due to these layoffs. This is a rug pull on the public by the billionaire class.