Forgot this was yesterday.

Great to see progressives winning out against AIPAC-supported establishment candidates.

Yeah, small town community always sounds warm and fuzzy until you end up on the outside.

A while back, I knew of a family that moved into a house in the center of a town near where I grew up. A couple and two kids. The town had a big clock with a bell that rang hourly. Even in the dead of night. Right across the street from their house.

The family asked the town if they could silence the chimes between sunset and sunrise so that they and their kids could sleep. The town said no, the chimes are a local tradition.

The family then brought up state noise ordinances that the town’s clock was violating. The town still refused. So they petitioned the state, the state got involved, and made the town silence the clock at night. The locals threw a fit.

The family didn’t last long in their new house after that. But they were at least lucky enough to have the means to pack up and move somewhere else.

The less lucky are stuck. They get to spend the rest of their lives as the local “problem”. A skewed nail to be hammered down. I’ve known enough people where any utterance of their name is met with a cautionary “you shouldn’t associate with them”, even when it’s been so long that no one can tell you why. But it’s often the case that those are the people most worth knowing.

That’s what I’m choosing to believe. I know some people out there truly are that dumb, but it feels more likely that they’d just use a very loosely strung bow with no tension for the meme.

Oh true, didn’t even occur to me that the tournament being in Toronto doesn’t mean that he’s from the area.

Other provinces in Canada pay even less, and then in the US you’re looking at even less than that in some places too for sure.

FWIW, the article says he’s a resident, so he is in all likelihood both incredibly overworked and not making that much money yet.

The article doesn’t mention how far into his residency he is, but if he happens to be a first year resident, he could be making only $73k CAD in Toronto (~$51k USD). That’s also on 60+ hour weeks, so it’s not far off from minimum wage.

https://www.carms.ca/match/r-1-main-residency-match/salary/#1511459027032-06ec5e41-5301

What is there to be worried about? We just want to collect valid data for our operations and to share with our 21,678 partners. It’s basically legitimate interest.

I don’t really shave, to be honest. Trim the weeds occasionally with some scissors, but it’s too much upkeep to keep the coinpurse smooth.

Now that’s the entrepreneurial spirit! You’ve got yourself a deal.

To shave my balls or yours?

They still are, and it’s been known and talked about for years. All of these predate the AI boom:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/data-centres-dirty-energy-secret/

https://web.archive.org/web/20120927113253/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20190821212342/https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/chandler/2018/04/15/chandler-tech-company-hums-along-and-noise-annoying-residents/504641002/

You still could not pay me enough to put any electric razor near my sensitive bits, no matter how it’s advertised.

Stalker specs

I mean, is courtroom attendance mandatory when given a summons?

It is, though there are some exceptions depending on circumstances (e.g. if you are someone’s caregiver and taking time away could be life threatening).

What are the repercussions for failing to turn up during the appointed date and time?

A warning, fines, and potentially jail time, in that order.

I know that they have Voir Dire and names of American citizens are selected randomly from the electoral roll (the same one used for federal elections on selecting a new president in office)

Technically anyone can be asked to serve on a jury as long as they are of age, but the electoral rolls are the usual pool they pull from because it’s easier to confirm a valid area of residence that way.

Beyond that, you get a summons in the mail. That summons will either be for trial jury or grand jury.

Grand jury usually specifies a window of time (a month or so) with days of the week that you may have to serve, during which time you review cases and determine what should go to trial.

Trial jury is usually a single day, but that single day could have multiple cases, or it could involve a more complicated case that lasts multiple days.

In both cases, the usual practice is that you are given a number to call the night before you’re asked to report in, which will tell you if you are needed or not.

If they tell you that you have to report in, you go to the court and they give you a number. They will then screen people in order of their number to determine if they are appropriate for the case (e.g. someone who works for a bank might have too much personal bias for a case involving a bank robbery).

If you are screened and deemed not appropriate, they’ll let you leave. And once they have enough people to fill a jury plus any potential alternates (in case the trial may be lengthy, where jurors may need to be subbed out), everyone else who had yet to be screened can then leave.

In the rare cases where you end up on a jury that lasts for several days, the court is supposed to offer a fixed amount of financial compensation to make up for work you are missing, though it’s usually a paltry sum compared to what a full time worker would otherwise make. But at least you have job security, because it is illegal for an employer to fire sometime for missing work due to jury duty (as long as you tell them first).

Upon completion of jury duty, you will get some sort of document proving you attended, which you can present to your employer for proof and to also get out of subsequent jury duty summons for a limited time if you can show that you just served.

One other note is that there is a difference between state and federal jury. State crimes are tried by the state and federal crimes are tried by the fed. Depending on the state, recent attendance of federal jury may be enough to exempt you from having to serve in a state jury, but I’ve never seen it work the other way around. You can serve on a state jury and not have to worry about the state calling you in for another few years, but the fed can still summon you for federal jury duty the following week and there’s nothing you can do.

Yeah, the ratio of this dilemma is an interesting one. If it was a guaranteed 5 million or even 500k, I’d damn well take the guaranteed option. I also hate leaving things to chance. Even as a fraction of the 10 million, either of those would be life changing.

But for 50k, I’m not so sure. It’d help iron out a few immediate financial wrinkles, but it wouldn’t change anything I’m doing today. I’d still be going to work, still keeping my expenses the same, and keeping my living situation as-is. So it wouldn’t ruin me to have 50k less to spend, I just wouldn’t be able to pay off loans or accrue savings as quickly without it.

And then I think that if I were to take the guaranteed sum, I’d end up lying awake at night wondering what could have been if I’d gone with the 10 million and won the coin toss. That might end up eating me up inside.

Sure, but you could also make the argument that anything based on networked computing is contributing to the spread of data centers. AI is a large part of that today, but it’s not like data centers never existed prior to ChatGPT. Before, it was about trying to convince laypeople to avoid “the cloud”.

Online is usually cheaper for a lot of goods. Two days ago, I wanted to get a physical copy of an older game that is getting harder to find. It was way more expensive buying from a physical store, so I searched for it online. The price difference for the exact same product between searching in my PC’s browser and through my phone was about $8.

My phone tracks my habits more easily, so I think they assumed I’d be more likely to buy from more expensive sellers if they just withheld showing me the cheaper ones. I could see the same more expensive options on my PC, but nothing below a certain price point on my phone. In a physical store, they’re only able to advertise one price. But online, when there can be multiple origin points for a product in a single market, they can simply withhold showing you some of them.

Instructions unclear, how does one drink an afternoon?

Someone self hosting an AI is doing less environmental damage than a good video game play session, though.

Just to add, there are still limits in place that prevent corporations from giving money directly to political campaigns or candidates, but there’s nothing that prevents corporations from telling people who to vote for or spending millions on ad campaigns in support of their preferred candidate.

So a given candidate’s campaign may raise only a modest sum, but they don’t need a lot of money to run ads when Megacorp A is willing to spend $1 billion on their own series of commercials to get them elected. And if that politician happens to provide favorable treatment to the corporation after they win, then it’s seen as an investment worth spending.

Timers might use just a wee bit more because they will have a check to produce an alarm when the timer expires. But we’re still taking negligible values.